Audio: Donkey & Pyre

The Donkey & The Pyre, 20th November 2022

The Donkey Deity

There are very early Gnostic stories of a man, a priest, who went into the Holy of Holies. So in the temple, the center of the temple, you find the Holy of Holies, which is veiled. And only the initiated are allowed to peek behind the veil to see what is kept there.

Now there's a lot to be said about why a mystery should be veiled. There's the question of someone being inappropriately prepared for what they might see there, such that it's dangerous to the uninitiated. There's also something to be said about profaning the sacred by having someone who's not appropriately prepared contaminating what we might find there.

But, the story goes, this man, he went into the temple and he peeked in the Holy of Holies and instead of finding the god that was being worshipped by the masses, in this temple - Yahweh in this case, right? - instead of finding that god there, he found the donkey deity. 

In variations of the story, sometimes there is a golden statue of a donkey, but I like the version where he sees a human form but with a donkey’s head. And this is not the god he expected to find there. So he rushes outside to tell all the people, ‘Secretly you've been worshiping this donkey deity. And it's not the god that we think we've been worshipping.’

But the God stops up his mouth, prevents him from speaking. Later on, or in different versions of the story, he manages to speak again. And he tells the people about what he's found there. And promptly, the people murder him. 

What a curious story. And what does it mean?

So the people, they follow the prophecies and the teachings and the law given by their god. And they believe that what they're doing is moral, and they're following divine law, and that what's promised to them will come one day. And they do this at the behest of this apparently beneficent god.

Secretly, all along in the temple, in the Holy of Holies, is a god of chaos, a god of evil, who is fooling the people, and leading them to their own destruction, and this is the donkey deity. Some people speculate that this donkey deity is in fact the god Set, in Egypt, who has a curious shaped head. Some people think it's a donkey's head.

But the fact that the head is vague, is appropriate for a god of this nature. [See WORP FM for further discussion of this ‘Nameless God’.]

So the people are worshiping a false god, but not because they intend to, but because they've made a case of mistaken identity, they've been fooled and in pursuing this false image, they are inadvertently doing the bidding of an evil and malevolent force.

Curiously, the person who sees this and understands it, either says nothing, because his mouth has been stopped up by the god, or he says something and he's murdered for it. So, two possibilities. You either don't say anything, or you say something and do something about it.

So this is, again, a very curious structure.

The Donkey Deity in the Structure of Binding

In Magia, there's a principal teaching, which is this idea of us being gods, standing in the fire of eternity, casting our shadows into time, which we take to be ourselves. And then we play out these shadows, or these roles, in the drama of existence. And by doing that, we're able to complete the circle of creation.

Or rather to end up transformed through the accruing of a memory, such that what cannot be changed remains exactly how it is, except with the addition of a magical memory. If you remember, I went into detail about this during the second talk. 

From this principle teaching in Magia, we have the binding practice.

So, it's possible for us to recognise, in terms of the first step that we make, the test of faith, that the way things are unfolding in our lives is not the way we want it to be, that there must be something other than how things appear.

Part of this growing consciousness or this organic impetus behind everything that we do, this searching, even if we can't put into words what it is that we're looking for, is this growing awareness that our actions are leading in the opposite direction to the promise that they make.

Binding practice is a way for us to invite the roles that we play in our lives, the dramas that we find ourselves embroiled in that we recognise aren't leading to what they promise they'll give us - it's a way of inviting those shadows or those roles or these false identities that we've claimed for ourselves through making a case of mistaken identity, either in the past or before we incarnated (that would be an existential shadow) - we can invite them to go home so we can complete the circle of creation in regards to that particular shadow or drama.

When we go through the binding practice, we start off with an example of a problem in our lives, a drama made up of scenes. And holding off from deciding what we believe about it, holding off from adding any opinions or best guesses or strategies or so on, for the first time, when we do the binding practice, we allow ourselves to turn our attention over the details such that the details grow all by themselves until we have a complete image of what this apparent problem is, or what this role actually is.

That means we end up seeing where it came from. We take it back to its origin, and a crucial part of binding a shadow is going beyond the superficial appearances in terms of what's promised by the playing of the role to uncover the malevolence that hides under the surface.

Contraction, failure, cost, absence and falsehood are the five aspects that we look at when doing a binding in order to spell out this malevolent action.

And then it's possible for us to give the role or the shadow a name, its real name, which is the opposite to the apparent name that we give it based on its appearances, based on its promises.

And by uncovering the real name for the role - that was hidden this entire time - and naming it, it can no longer be believed.

And therefore, we eventually see that it has no being of its own, except for what we gave it. 

The Donkey Deity as the Problem of Evil

So this is a way of understanding the problem of evil.

When it comes to roles, we have to spell out the actual malevolence, otherwise it hides, it remains hidden, and it remains something that we don't uproot. But if we spell it out and we get to see what it actually does, and we go to the extreme of seeing that it's actually evil, it's only then is it possible for us to see that it has no existence other than what it gets from us.

So it's a parasite that has no being of its own. 

That structure is what we find in the story of the donkey deity. 

The Donkey Deity in the family

We can have our own familial beliefs that are handed down through the family, therefore we have a number of people who all worship, we might say, the promise of these roles that we play out.

Families have an emotional atmosphere of their own and you have to be initiated into it and things are kept in the family and people outside of the family wouldn't understand.

When you go home to visit your parents, you find yourself, despite your best intentions, playing out the roles you always play in the family. You just slot straight back in.

The Donkey Deity in the culture

There are also cultural roles. Larger cultural movements handed down through cultures.

And it's important to recognise that when I'm using the word beliefs, I'm not talking about arguments or opinions that have been put together and handed down.

I'm talking about non-verbal false beliefs that are transmitted with the same structure as an initiation through special moments, either through the family or through the culture, sometimes through direct experience with reality itself. Sometimes that can be the case. Then of course we have the existential false beliefs.

The Donkey Deity is a Case of Mistaken Identity

But they all have this same structure. A number of people are all pursuing something based on a promise. And they think that that promise will lead to what they consider to be good. It's a case of mistaken identity.

If you can enter into the temple and peek into the Holy of Holies, you'll see that there's a false god there. And naming it, seeing it, what it's real nature is, it can no longer be believed.

So you can't go through with the worship that you used to go through with before. It's something that you can't do anymore. It's not possible. 

The Donkey Deity as its own drama

However, what do you do about all those people that are still captured by these false beliefs?

Good luck telling your family that they're delusional. Good luck bringing up past false-transmission events with your parents. See how well they take that.

Cultural beliefs? Good luck with that.

This structure that I'm talking about, once you see this structure through your own experience, in terms of binding practice, it becomes difficult not to see it everywhere. There's a growing awareness that happens where you can see that everywhere you look in every direction people are playing out these dramas and none of them lead to what they promise.

At first, it's merely you looking at your own personal problems and that's fine. And that's how it should be. It would be radically inappropriate for someone who first begins looking at this practice to be exposed to the truth of the depth of the darkness when it comes to the playing of roles throughout existence.

But you will eventually end up there, seeing the fact that existence itself is pitch black.

It's very important at this point for me to point out that when I say ‘this world’, I'm talking about existence.

Remember, there's two worlds. These two worlds, one we can call heaven, one we can call hell. One we can call the true earth, one we can call the underworld. One we can call being, one we can call existence, one we can call eternity, one we can call time.

These two being found one through the other is what creation is. And where creation happens we find the human being at the centre of it.

I just want to make sure everyone grasps that and understands it. You'll see that travelling up the tree, which is what we're interested in doing, necessitates encountering opposites. We move from one to the other to accommodate both opposites and go beyond them, and we'll see that pattern repeating over and over.

It's very easy to get stuck with one extreme.

So I don't want anyone to misunderstand what it is that I'm saying. There's no need to get all depressed, right?

Okay, so we find ourselves when we see this structure, this universal structure repeating itself, we're like the guy who's gone into the temple, and we look in the Holy of Holies, and whoa, there's an evil donkey god, and everyone's worshipping a god with a donkey head.

What is everyone doing? Well, you know what? It's probably best not to say anything at all. Best not to say anything at all. Who's going to understand this? Who's going to believe you?

Best to say nothing, so be passive and endure it.

Or you tell everyone, ‘Hey guys, you're making a big mistake, there's a donkey deity in the holy of holies!’ and then they kill you for it.

They kill you for it. Why would they kill you for it?

They kill you for it because they cannot see outside of the herd. They kill you for it because they cannot see outside of the necessity of placing this supposed moral good above anyone who doesn't go along with the worship. 

We will talk about the horse and the herd next time in more depth. It's another variation of the same thing. Hopefully people can see we're talking about two things and how they relate to each other and what's beyond that relationship in each of these talks. Just from different angles. 

So, this structure of the donkey deity, upon seeing it and recognising it, becomes a drama of its own. How do you get out of it? What do you do? What can you do?

It's fascinating to consider that this structure is found, described, in wonderful detail in gospels that go back two thousand, two and a half thousand years. Isn't it extraordinary that these people understood this structure? But it's the structure that we find when we do binding practice.

How to travel through the Donkey Deity drama

Inherent in the drama of the donkey deity is this idea that people are being sacrificed to this false god. They don't know it and they're willfully sacrificing themselves, saying yes to something that they would ordinarily say no to.

For the person that uncovers this terrible truth, they wish for others to stop doing what they're doing. They wish for others to be other than they are. Because the world would be a better place, wouldn't it? If that was the case.

Either they say nothing, hopefully it passes and things change. Or maybe they say something and hopefully people will change and they'll stop doing this.

But if we're always looking to the other, we're denying our own responsibility in terms of making a choice. In the sense that it doesn't come up for us, does it? As a question. Rather, it's the responsibility or the choices being made by the others. They need to change what they're doing.

Now, of course, you can't make a choice for anyone else. It's not possible. So it's quite the bind.

Now, one way of thinking about this is that you wish to use others as a means to achieving the end that you care about. You can think of that as the sacrifice of others. And certainly those others are sacrificing themselves for this false god.

You could say the false god is sacrificing others to sustain itself because it has no being of its own.

Now the only way out of this drama - because as you can see it's quite the damned bind, isn't it? How do you get out of it? - is to fundamentally change your relationship with others, or rather, with the divine.

Instead of looking for the divine in others, or outside, or in the holy of holies, etcetera and so forth, instead, you make the choice to turn inward. At least this is one way of expressing it. 

Sacrificing others vs. sacrificing yourself to yourself

Here's another way, because that can be misleading. People think turning inward means no longer engaging in the world. That's not what it means.

Instead of taking appearances on their own terms and wrestling with them, instead of doing that, we decide to follow something else instead. Instead of looking to the sacrifice of others, we look to the sacrifice of ourself to ourself.

So instead of trying to change others, instead of trying to sacrifice others, we sacrifice ourself, but to ourself. 

Now this doesn't mean that there's no such thing as working with a deity, and I'll come around to that in a second. But this notion of sacrificing yourself to yourself, sacrificing yourself to yourself, what does that look like?

The Pyre

We've talked about this man who went into this temple.

Well now let's talk about this woman who went to the pyre. I mentioned Marguerite Porete, that's the historical reference, but for now it's a woman and she went to the pyre.

Her story is, through sacrificing herself to herself, she came to know God. She came to realise that all of the rules and all of the cultural requirements followed by devout Christians as prescribed by the church, everything considered necessary to lead a good Christian life, actually wasn't important. In fact, you needn't focus on those things. Instead, what you should focus on is God, and sacrificing yourself to yourself - another way of saying, sacrificing yourself to her understanding of the nature of God, a God that you find within.

Curiously, all the virtues that come from following the law of the church arise spontaneously simply from what she called, dying in God - finding death in God - all of these virtues would manifest spontaneously.

Now the argument would be that she's not really denying the rules and the laws and the behaviours prescribed by the church as being a part of a holy or religious life. Rather she was saying that once you discover God and you die within God, the virtues will manifest spontaneously that happen to match up with following these rules.

How do we think the donkey god took this?

This is like someone saying, ‘Hey, all of this stuff that you lot are doing, you don't need to do. We don't need to follow these rules. We don't need to try and live by the edicts of the church to do any of this stuff.’ That's how they took it.

Well, we can't have that, can we? So, she was arrested, charged with heresy. 

She was encouraged to defend herself in court. ‘Defend yourself in court’, they said. ‘Here are the charges. You can defend yourself. Maybe you'll get off. If you can explain it away, you know, and defend yourself, maybe you'll be alright. And you won't be charged with heresy and everything will be fine.’

In other words, capitulate. Capitulate to the rule of the church. And the laws and the rules that have to be followed in order to worship whatever it is that lies in the Holy of Holies (the equivalent) in the church.

But she wasn't listening, because instead she was listening to something else.

She was following the same thread she’d always been following that led her to write the book that contained a light that illuminated the details of what it is that the church is doing and who and what it is that they're worshipping.

Now, she didn't say, ‘You're worshipping a donkey god’, but through following a light that's inside, instead of wrestling with the darkness outside, following this light inside, she came to produce a book, and the book was an expression of this light being brought to bear on the structure of things, on the nature of things, and included in that is the nature of the church. Or what it is the church expects you to do. 

The Fire illuminates only, personal choice remains

So you might just say she merely told the truth, because that's really all that light does, it illuminates.

Like doing a binding practice. What does it do? It doesn't do anything other than it illuminates.

Going into the Holy of Holies, peeking your head past the veil, isn't really doing anything other than illuminating the space with your consciousness..

And whatever is there that's been exposed, for some it can no longer be believed.

Others will still refuse to look.

And the choice always belongs to each individual person.

So you can be told, and it can be demonstrated, but the choice is still yours, what it is that you decide to do.

The Politics of the Pyre

She had already made her choice, so she kept following the same thread, sacrificing herself to herself.

So, rather than take part in the institution of law that was part of the church at that time, she didn't even bother recognising the charges. This doesn't mean that she was defiant, or that she was ‘sticking it to the man’. It wasn't that.

She wasn't wrestling with the darkness. She wasn't saying to them, this is a political statement, wasn't any of that.

She just had eyes on the divine. That's all. So if this was God's will, this is what it would be.

Now, of course, shining a light like this, and exposing the darkness for what it is, and uncovering the malevolence underneath, is unacceptable to the malevolence, obviously. And the people that serve it. So, they decided she would need to be burnt at the stake as a heretic. 

It’s the Donkey Deity who roasts

But the closer she walked to the pyre, the greater the light that was shone, the more the darkness was illuminated, and for many could no longer be believed.

And she walked to the pyre, apparently unfazed by what she faced, such that people watching her being burnt to death were brought to tears by her serene and peaceful divine countenance.

And in that structure of her walking to the pyre, we see the same thing that happened with Christ on the cross. We see the same thing that happens when we do a binding. We see the same thing that happens with the priest who sees the donkey deity.

If the darkness is allowed to run away with itself, it says too much and, for some, can no longer be believed. But what's accomplished is already accomplished. It can't be undone.

The Donkey & The Pyre

So what is the relationship between the donkey deity and the pyre? The donkey and the pyre, right?

The greater the light, the more you will expose the donkey deity, you'll find this malevolent influence.

Upon seeing it, however, there are two options. You're either passive, maybe you endure it until it passes and it goes away, or you're active, you try and do something about it and it leads to your demise. Quite the bind.

This is true for all dramas, there's two sides to every role, active and passive, it's exactly the same. It's damned, there's nothing you can do about it.

The answer is not to do anything in terms of the nature of the drama itself. Instead, we grow what we care about.

Instead of fighting with the darkness, we cultivate the light.

So we walk towards the pyre. We walk into the pyre, because after all, the fire is the fire of awakening. And that's what we concern ourselves with.

Now, I mentioned before how one way of talking about this is like turning inward. And that just sounds like going hiding in a monastery, doesn't it? Or a nunnery, or a cave, or something like that. And just leaving the world alone.

Except that's not what it means. Porete, in her story, the woman who goes to the pyre, she doesn't do it in isolation.

Instead, she wrote the book and created a movement. She traveled into the heart of the institution itself, of the church, and there, illuminated the darkness.

So what's the relationship between these two things?

If we turn inward, if we follow the thread, if we say yes to the fire of awakening, it has the effect of illuminating where the donkey deity is found around us. For some, they get to see what the truth is and it can no longer be believed, but the choice always falls to each individual.

But you see, seeing the fire - the fire awakening - the donkey deity and its followers wish to claim the fire for itself or themselves, or wish to extinguish it so it can remain in the darkness. And therefore, it can't help moving towards it.

Even though it says no, it doesn't want that light, it doesn't want that fire; it says yes to moving towards it.

And the pyre, instead of being the fire of awakening that it is for someone who said yes, it becomes the tormenting fire of hell for malevolent entities - those acting out the spirit of the donkey deity and the donkey deity itself. And by doing so become exposed.

So we find in the story of Porete, the woman that goes to the pyre, we see this happening.  Same thing with Christ. We see the pattern repeating in lots of different places. We see it happening with Suhrawardi, who was a Muslim saint. Same thing happened to him. And that's the relationship between the two.

So the donkey deity will be exposed, but not by attempting to expose the donkey deity, but by instead, simply following the thread back into the House of God, or by willingly walking into the pyre. 

The relationship between the donkey and the pyre is something that we can see repeated throughout history. And hopefully it's a way for us to appreciate that. 

The Initiate & The Soul

It's also a way for us to appreciate the relationship of the human being and the soul.

In this case, the symbolism would go like this: the human being, or the initiate, is the man. We might say the son, if we were to look at the formula of Aion as a way of understanding the Holy Family. But the son, the initiate, that's the human being. We see this in the old images of the Kouros of the Greek culture, or Hellenic culture.

The initiate is usually depicted as a young naked man, stepping forward into the mysteries. It's the fool. It's the person that says, ‘I'm going to look to see, I'm just going to look to see. That's what I'm going to do. I don't know what's behind that veil, but I know something is. I'm just going to see what it is. That's all I'm going to do.’

Rather than a question of whether you believe something or not - because one way of understanding this first step is that it's an act of faith - rather than thinking of it as being, ‘Do you really believe what it is that you're worshipping is behind that veil or do you believe there's something else there?’ That's the wrong question. The question is more like, ‘What is it? What is it?’

When it comes to magic, this is something you should try and keep in mind because too often magic - and everything associated with spirituality and magic - is always pigeonholed into a drama around whether or not it's something you really believe. ‘Is this true or not? Is this real or not?’

If you do a working to speak to a dead person, there's the question, ‘Am I really talking to a dead person or not? Do you really believe that? Do you believe this stuff is true? Do you believe this working is beneficial? Do you really believe what it is that you were told?’

What if the question is something else? What if the question is, ‘What is this? What is this?’ Asking that question is like just being willing to see.

Now, when do you stop being willing to see? You don't.

So you can hold off on believing in whatever it is someone wants you to either confirm or deny.

Now that isn't a fudge, like a way of dodging things, because if instead of having a belief, you can have understanding; instead of having faith or doubt in a belief, or a generalisation, or an opinion, you can have the certainty of making sense.

So, ‘What is this? What is it?’ - that question nicely encapsulates the attitude of practice. So, when you do your unbinding practice, maybe you're having a bad time during your practice. The correct orientation is the question, ‘What is this? What is it?’

You can believe things about it if you like. You can believe that you suck at your practice. You can believe that reality hates you. You can believe that awakening isn't for you, it's for everyone else though. Et cetera, et cetera.

Or, ‘What is this? What is it?’

Maybe you have a wonderful time during a practice. Maybe you have profound spiritual experiences and so on. Maybe you believe you've made it. ‘Finally, this is it! The ride is over. I can stop. I've achieved what I set out to achieve. This is the highest realisation ever. Ooh, I've gone through all six stages of the mountain in the space of a week. Ah, I'm done. That's it!’

Or you could ask the question. You could believe all of that if you wanted to. Or you could just have the question, ‘What is this? What is it?’

And that would be an intense week. There are people who have intense weeks, but believe what it is that I just said.

So, ‘What is this? What is it?’ Now that question embodies the attitude of what it's like traveling through these opposites. And going beyond them, their relationship. ‘What is it?’

So that's the man, he goes into the temple. It's the son, or the young adult male. That's the initiate.

The soul is the daughter. This is the woman that walks to the pyre. Why does she walk into the pyre? Because the pyre is her own nature.

This is the nature of the soul, nature of the psyche.

In Magia, there is the talk of the stranger that walks through the forest holding the lamp. And the light from the lamp attracts butterflies that wake up, who've been sleeping in the trees. The trees are human beings. The butterflies are the souls that wake up. Upon seeing the light, the mere illumination of the light of the fire, they wake up and then they follow the light or the stranger up the mountain.

In this regard, the tree is like the man who's in the temple. The butterfly is like the woman who walks into the pyre. The son and the daughter.

We have to take the first foolish step. That's the test of faith. We decide to - for the first time - follow something, to see what the case might be. Just to see. Just to look. Even though we don't know what it is that we might find. It's like we're called to do it.

And at first, we cannot help it. We cannot help it - we will just find ourselves fighting with the donkey deity and his followers. That's what we find ourselves doing. We’ll either try to be passive, and endure the damned drama that we find ourselves in, as a parody of trying to find the true God: ‘We have to deal with the evil God, the fake God, or else how can we find the true God?’

This fake God is in the temple, where the real God is supposed to be. ‘But look everyone, you're worshipping the false God! I've been worshipping the false God, I found it there, in the Holy of Holies. If we want to worship the true God, we have to get rid of the false one. If you want to wake up, you have to get rid of delusion. If you want to express your divine inheritance in the world, you have to deal with your problems. You have to get rid of your problems because they sound the same, don't they?’

But they're actually opposites.

Before waking up, however, you can't help this. You will think that the way that you will wake up is by either being passive and enduring your delusion, or by being active and wrestling with it. Fighting with it. And that's okay.

As long as we're willing to keep asking that question. ‘What is this? What is this?’ And you'll discover that you don't actually care about a donkey deity. And you never did.

What you care about is the true God, for whom we have a name, and this little thing that we're talking about now, the donkey and the pyre - we could say the priest and the priestess, the initiate and the the Martyr. We could put it that way - it's the beginning part of that formula, of understanding the nature of Aion, the real name.

And finding ourselves with nothing to go on other than making this choice that we've made. Saying yes to something that is other than appearances. We will travel through the darkness and we'll see what's there, the malevolence. But it can't be believed and we go beyond it.

And eventually we'll find ourselves consumed to a greater degree - as we mature - by the fire of awakening. But that fire of awakening, it doesn't consume us in the sense of destroying us. Rather, we're sacrificing ourself to ourself. Because we are the fire. We sacrifice ourself to ourself. That means we're always going beyond ourself. We're always going beyond ourself.

The idea of God that Porete had, was an idea or a way of recognising the most profound experiences that she'd ever had were contained in a relationship, an intimate relationship, that was continually going beyond itself. So hopefully what I'm saying now is something you're familiar with, something that I've spoken about in terms of the unbinding practice.

Identifying entities revisited (with the Donkey & Pyre)

How do you know if you're speaking to a deity - what its nature is? How do you know you're not being fooled? How do you know at any point that you're not actually falling for the trickery of the Donkey Deity?

Now, given it is a fact that you will be uncovering where you're already worshipping the Donkey Deity in various different forms, that's fine.

But let's say you do a formal magical working where you summon some god. How do we know that this god is really what it says it is? How would we know that? What if it just tells you what you want to hear? What if it whispers sweet nothings in your ear?

The key is in what we've talked about. You need merely ask this. ‘What does the deity want from you?’ I say deity, but it could be any kind of entity. What does it want from you? Let's say you start having some kind of spontaneous vision and there's some entity there. Okay, what does it want? What does it want from you? What's it looking for?

If you have to meet certain criteria in order to please the entity - in whatever form, right? What's it asking for? Is it a trade? Does it merely want the interaction? 

All gods ask for an offering.

But what is the offering? What's the nature of the offering that they want?

If something is good, what does it want for you? To attain, you're awakening, good things. Good things. Yeah.

So if they wanted that for you, what would be the thing that you would offer?

If I know that you have an inheritance, a nature that is miraculous, and I want you to realise it - that's what I want for you, I want the best for you. ‘If only you knew who you are, and what's yours!’ - what would I want? How would I go about that?

I would ask you to offer your false understanding of yourself. How you currently understand yourself and who you are.

If what is yours, your destiny, what's promised to you, is bigger than how you are now, what would I ask? I would say, ‘Offer this up.’ If you offer it up, and the reason you're offering it up is to realise what it is that's yours, that is beyond your current understanding of who and what you are. Offering yourself to yourself.

When we do the unbinding practice, using the beloved analogy, you make an offering.  ‘I offer you my momentary fate. I offer you my false understanding of who and what I am. That's what I offer.’ I'm sacrificing myself to myself.

The kind of entity that would want that must have the same nature as you, ultimately. Wouldn't that be the case?

It's hard to express the degree of the miraculous, how good it is. It's too good to be true. Too good to be true. Okay, if you're going to interact with that, a divinity that's too good to be true, what would it want?

Nothing but your realisation of that. Is it a trade? No, it's not a trade is it?

Does it want a giant bowl of porridge?

Would this entity that I'm talking about - that is good beyond good - would it want you to sacrifice a pigeon?

Does it need blood? Does it want to trade you magical favours for a temporary experience of being a human being? Does it need controlling? Does it need binding? Does it need bargaining with? Does it require you to plead with it? Do you have to worry about angering it?

There's another way of putting this: we often think that people or entities or objects, whatever it is that we might encounter, they have an origin or they have a source. Which determines what its nature is. But once produced, separated from that source, how do we know where it comes from, or what its real nature is? How can we know that?

But the truth of the matter is, the nature of the source is the same thing as the nature of the thing itself. And they're actually inseparable. Nothing is hidden.

What I'm putting to you now, is the product of asking that question: ‘What is this? What is it?’

‘What is it and what does it want?’

Is there a definitive image that we can put on our altar? For the kind of divine goodness that all it wants for us is that we sacrifice ourselves to ourself? What would be that image? What would it be?

There are lots of entities that you can summon into a triangle, you can bind it into a pact to do things for you. You can speak to benevolent beings who are nice, they don't want bad things for you.

But nevertheless, it's a transactional relationship.

Now, there's nothing wrong with paying a plumber to fix your pipe problems instead of doing it yourself, because maybe you've got better things to do. There's nothing wrong with that, is there? But it's a trade, isn't it?

You don't have the same relationship with that plumber that you have with your intimate other, your beloved. If you tried to have a trade with your beloved, it's a completely different relationship, right? Then it becomes a parody of a loving relationship, doesn't it? Where you pay someone to be intimate with you. Becomes a parody.

Question: How do you square the divine want us to offer up our momentary fate but at the same time, it wants adult human beings to take responsibility?

This is again a demonstration of a goodness beyond comprehension. It wants the best for us. It doesn't coerce us, does it? Doesn't coerce us to do it. It's a choice and that choice requires us being willing to see. Do we want to see what it is? Do we want to follow this thread? 

That inheritance isn't merely saying yes to something such that we no longer exist. We say yes to it here, don't we? And by doing that, creation itself is placed in the hands of the created by the creator, including the destiny of the creator itself.

That's like a parent and child relationship. If you have children, you're actually placing your destiny as a parent in the hands of your child. I know that might be a curious thing to think about, but that is the case.

A parent puts - whether they like it or not, or whether they've thought about it or not, you could argue about the degree to which they've contributed, but - everything that they've created is placed in the hands of the created.

Everything they've created, even including the nature of the child, which at first is the responsibility of the parent, everything gets placed in the hands of the creator, doesn't it? That's true through all of your ancestors. Consider that. Entire lineage, your historical lineage, has all been placed in your hands. What are you going to do with it?

Yes, this question: ‘What is wanted?’

If you worship a deity that makes promises that never turn up and keeps saying, ‘Just one more step, just one more step and you'll get there.’ Where other people have to be sacrificed for the good of worshipping the deity.

You have to ask the question, ‘What does it want? What does it want for you?’

So these are questions to ponder. Now there's no hiding the nature of something that pops up. If you decide to talk to some kind of entity, using whatever available means of manifestation’s at your disposal, you can ask questions. ‘What does it want? What is it doing?’

It's very common for you to chat to something. You'll talk to it. What does it tell you? It will talk on and on and on and on. And what's really going on? It's feeding off the interaction. It's persisting through the interaction. It'll tell you exactly what you want to hear. It'll string you along.

How do you get to see that? Do you have to guess? You don't have to guess. Ask the questions, see what results you get. Have a conversation. Maybe they seem really nice. Maybe you're having a great time. Maybe you're enjoying yourself. But why have you done the working in the first place? What is it that you're doing?

Why is that important? Let's say you do a working because you want to see what might happen. Why do you want to see what might happen? What is it? What are you looking for? Do you wish to understand the nature of the interaction? What it means to speak to a disembodied voice?

It doesn't take long to see what it is, what its nature is. What's its relationship with you? I hope this is making sense. Too often, this is what happens. People explore magic, they talk to entities and gods and do invocations and evocations and demons and divination and usually mix it up with over-powered psychedelics. Do all of this stuff.

If you leave them alone, come back in 20 years, they're doing the same thing. 

‘So you've learned nothing? You still don't know what these things are? You still don't know what it is that you're doing?’ Why is this? Because they're still in this domain of, ‘What do you believe about this? What's the evidence? Do you really believe that? What's your theory for this? What do you think about this?’

And that happens not just at that level, conceptually, it also happens at the level of the communications themselves that you might have with entities in the experiences. Let's say you get a string of symbols. ‘What does a symbol mean? Do you believe it means this? Maybe it means that. Maybe it means something else. Maybe it's going to mean this.’ You're in the same space. Right?

If you're asking the question, ‘What is this? What is it?’ It only takes so long for you to see what it is before you start to go beyond the boundaries that make up your profoundest conception of where you find yourself and you'll go beyond it.

This is like saying you move from the Bailey into the Motte. Remember what we talked about last time, the last two talks?

That means moving from the Donkey to the Pyre.

When you ask, ‘What is it?’ - ‘What is it?’ doesn't say, ‘Don't do these things.’ What it says is, ‘If you're going to do these things, ask this question: What is this? What is it?’

If you can ask that question, you can be fine.

If you have beliefs - ‘What do you really believe?’ - you'll get into trouble. I cannot tell you the number of times I've seen people - professed magicians, of all stripes - who do magic, don't really believe it's real, and then they do crazy things. They do crazy things with appalling consequences, but none of them seem to be asking, ‘What is this?’ They'll have silly beliefs about what it is that they're doing, such that they do something really stupid, and then a bad consequence follows.

But even with the bad consequence, they don't then say, ‘Hang on a minute, what is this?’ They just continue like they did before.

For those kinds of people, maybe it's better to say to them, ‘Look, don't go near magic. It will destroy you. You'll ruin yourself. If you do it for too long, you'll crash and burn. Best to stay away from it.’

However, I like to think that we're a bit more mature than that. So I don't want to say, ‘Don't do these things.’ What I want to say is, ‘If you're going to do these things, I have that question. What is this? What is it?’ 

To summarise what I'm saying about understanding the identity of things. It's not hidden. At first blush, it might not be obvious to you. But if you’ve decided that you wish to talk to something, then you start talking to something, if you're asking, ‘What is it?’, as it proceeds, things will go well.

If you're continually asking, ‘Do I believe this or not? Is this really the thing? You know what, this might be the worst thing we've ever called up. We tried to call up something nice. I think we've called up something terrible. Hmm, I don't know if I believe this.’

That's like someone's invited you to their house, you go into their house, you go, ‘Are you really you? What have you invited me in here for? Is it a trap? You're going to trap me, aren't you? Maybe, okay, tell you what - tell me, what's your understanding of geopolitics? Can you tell me that? What is it?

You're like, ‘Why are you in my house? I didn't invite you around for that. Thought we were going to do some unbinding together. I invited you around for a binding session. Why are you asking me about Ukraine?’

Anyway, it's just rude. But, ‘What is it? What is this?’ Just ask, ‘What is it?’

Now another way, another shorthand for this - but this is something that you'd have to look at after the fact - what is the outcome from doing it?

If your girlfriend's hair is set on fire, are you going to do that again? What do you think the nature of it is?

Ooh, but if a prophecy is made and then you have an awakening - I don't care what you call that, but I can see the pattern. I can see the fruits, yeah? 

Another way of putting this, if you're walking into the pyre, that's what you start off with. That's another way of saying consecration, which is another way of saying recognising a sacred purpose. That's what you've said yes to. It's like the test of faith. It's the first move.

If you do any magic whatsoever, if the first move you make is consecration, that's like saying you've gone to the Motte. Through the Bailey, straight into the Motte. Then you're coming back down again. And when you come back down again, everything there, you can interact with. It's fine.

First move, consecration, test of faith. So, we would make a big mistake if we think it's about method or we think it's about tradition. What are you aimed at? What is the thing that you're aimed at? If you've said yes to that already, that's like walking into the fire, the daughter in the fire of awakening.

If you encounter something that's like the donkey deity - guess what? It'd be illuminated, wouldn't it? Would it not be illuminated?

So that question, ‘What is it? What is this?’ It reveals itself. If you're consecrated to a divine purpose, it reveals itself. 

The Purpose of Magia in Society

What's your function in society as someone who practices magia?

It's someone who walks into the fire such that the light illuminates the donkey deity.

‘What is this? This is what this is.’ It's everyone's individual responsibility, what they say to that, what they choose, right?

But a choosing will happen.