So now that we've examined what makes the core ritual of the LHG as laid out in chapters 1-3 & 6 let's get into the more practical elements of this little book. In these parts we get into exactly all the things, in most ways, that the older grimoires promise. There aren't any promises that you will fly or treasure instantaneously appearing in front of you out of nowhere, but the LHG promises that we will *deep scratchy voice* learn to control the minds of others, win the lottery and various dark and sundry things.
After we have worked with the techniques laid out in the previous part of this series, which, while skipping around in the little book, form a core set of practices and strengthen our contact with the spirits, we can more effectively work these other lessons in a more effective and cohesive manner. Alas we run into what is in modern magical circles, a question of ethics very early on and I want to address this here...
uh oh, I am going to say something controversial!
The fourth lesson in Lucky Hoodoo covers "how to control the minds of other people". Sounds spooky or unethical don't it? In fact, maybe we should just skip this chapter right? Who needs to control the minds of other people after all?
You do.
"Woah this guy is an evil manipulator who uses magick to try to get in the pants of every little hot blonde he meets innit he?"
"Right you are Gino, he's a right dodgy lil ponce"
Yes, yes, I know it sounds really questionable but this is a complete grimoire and reading through the grimoires of the past we find all kinds of spirits with the intent of doing this very thing. We see spirits who will make naked ladies dance in your doorway or make kings love you etc. ad nauseam.
Well get your knickers out a bunch and forget what my Bill Clinton's are or are not doing.
This lesson can be used in ways that can improve your life and those around you in positive ways.
We all work jobs, we all want to exceed and we all see people less qualified than us get the position we wanted at some point in our lives yes? It's frustrating! Well now you have a key to unlock that and what it really does is increase not just our awareness of qualities that will help us get what we want from people around us, it also amplifies those qualities in the target's perception. It isn't really controlling minds per se.
Actually, it is. I'll explain that. All social interactions are attempts at influencing people around us, demonstrating value in an exchange that ever escalates and jockeying for position in the social order. Immediately, on an unconscious level, we establish a pecking order when we approach people or groups. We use our words and actions to communicate with people in relationship to one another, exerting perceived influence to establish that pecking order. Some people are more naturally skilled at this than others, thus putting them higher in the pecking order. Some of us learn the skills through seminars, classes and books and elevate ourselves higher in the pecking order through our understanding of these matters. This little ritual does the latter. We learn how to influence events through our actions to get the desired outcome.
Now sometimes yes, we can literally bend people to our Will and sometimes it can be necessary, but most times isn't. Using this ritual to make someone fall in love with you isn't a matter of taking control of her mind in the sense of she becomes your slave. This can happen and you will quickly learn it is the wrong approach. What the ritual, in this example, does is give us opportunities to demonstrate to our target who we really are and why they should give us a shot, to invest in us emotionally and we exhibit those qualities. To get our boss to promote us over the less qualified person, it gives us the opportunity to exhibit why we should get the position over anyone else.
And yes, there are times when we need to use it as literal mind control. We need to eliminate someone who is making our lives hell etc. and this is a moral question, not an ethical one. How much do we push back? Through all of hoodoo we find powders to influence judges, to get people out of our lives, break up couples. Oh that latter one sounds horrible doesn't it?
Well what if it is a case of the reason a father isn't paying his child support is the new woman in the picture. Because of her he has disappeared and stopped payment that he had previously been very timely and forthcoming with? Then why the hell not break them up? This is your child's father and this new woman is obviously the part of the equation that is causing the congestion in this man's brain about his moral and ethical responsibilities!
In summary, this lesson is a big key to opening blocked channels, eliminating obstacles in your life to self improvement in love, sex, money and employment.
But there is a key here and a very important one. You have to get to a point where you want to fuck this person. Wait... if I hate the woman in the above example how why would I want to do such a thing???
Yeah it isn't easy. Sometimes you have to transcend your own gender or orientation and this is why things like love spells are easier to pull off than promotions and that ilk. But there is a reason for you to make this deep spiritual contact.
Everything has a spirit, from the trees outside my window, to the printer just inside, to the computer screen and my cereal bowl by my left hand. The idea behind the "fucking" this person is actually the idea of becoming enthused by their spirit and communicating with it. This is something that is gone into very deeply in the first few months of the Monastery of 7 Rays first year course and extrapolated on in later lessons as well. Through this spirito-erotic contact with their spirit, and this is exactly what you are doing in this exercise, you are telling this deep inner aspect of the person what you want to happen by the energy you are giving off from the flavored brandies you use to the magical square you have made of their name, firing that square into the pleroma.
This spirit aspect of them transcends the ego, or Ruach, of the target and in the communication the information is passed up to the ruach in subtle cues from the subconscious that the person picks up. Attitudes change, actions alter according to the attitude changes and the result manifests.
In order to understand this concept of "enthusing" check out this lecture by David Beth: Sorcerous Gnosis of the Living All. In this lecture David goes very deep into concept that will help you to make these rituals work even more effectively. This is a brilliant lecture and his example of the tree is beautiful and humorous.
Crowley called this enthusing "enflame yourself with prayer" and Eliphas Levi "the astral light". Here we are making the magical link.
So ethically speaking we aren't "controlling the minds of others" but using our powers developed in the previously discussed lessons to make contact with the purest part of our target and convincing that part of them of our desire. As a culture we tend to define people on their egos and sense of personal identity, or I. This "I" is an ever evolving and changing aspect of self. The "I" of me when I started this article is not the "I" that currently exists. While writing this piece of MLH I have developed a deeper "subjective synthesis" of the material and formulated my ideas on what this lesson is expressing! This is a very different "I" from the "I" then. It is an integration of what were previously fractured thoughts on the topic and seemingly unrelated concepts congealing into a cohesive statement on the "truth" of this concept. I am going to digress here for a minute to discuss this "I" in relation to all of this work.
The I, I am ditching the quotation mark for this little bit in this short discussion, is a falsehood because it is something we think of as "us" and who "we are". It is something very difficult to transcend and is in fact the concept that makes magick so damn hard to pull off. When Aleister Crowley talked about the destruction of the Ego in coming through the Ordeal of the Abyss, this is what he was discussing. Not the Ego in the sense of the personality complex through which we create our view of the world, but the notion of self as separate from the rest of the universe, or the I. This I prevents us from seeing the interconnectedness of everything. It prevents us from accessing the substrata of our subconscious in a useful manner and from working magick. Austin Osman Spare and the Chaos magick movement puts a huge emphasis on eliminating the I in order to launch sigils and similar magical concepts into that ethereal aspect of ourselves.
This whole notion is derived from the Golden Dawn fear and restrictions on hypnotic techniques. Yes, I am saying that "gnostic trance states" are a requirement created from that fear. The need to use hypnotic induction techniques to bypass the I came about because of this fear. The definition of "gnosis" has become synonymous with altered consciousness. For the true gnostic this is unnecessary, and I am sure many long standing magician who have overcome this fear of hypnotic trances will agree. Gnosis is a living, deepening connection to the dreamlands represented in the subconscious. It isn't something we have to rig, but something we are living now. It is the difference between day & night consciousness.
This isn't to say that using trance induction techniques is bad, or unnecessary, in fact it is essential but as one learns to go deeper and deeper and make these connections the trance just comes. This is the secret to clairvoyance and psychic phenomenon. The key is to turn it on and learn to turn it off as opposed to learning to turn it on and then it just clicks off when we are done.
When the I begins to see itself in the quantum entanglement with everything else it falls away and we have to reassert the I, or come back across the abyss, in order to understand what we are experiencing. The I changes from a concept of self to a concept of true perception filtered through the ego. I is no longer related to the Ego. We aren't becoming space cadets but seeing the world as it really is and concepts like "models of magick" fade away as the falsehoods that they are. All is consciousness and all is connected to this consciousness.
The "left hand path" initiates assert the I as essential and invoke it as God, exalting their personalities as the most important. The quotation marks are there for a reason. That isn't the left hand path as indicated in the works of the people who created the term. I have digressed too much and may extract this bit to make another post in the coming weeks.
Now, back to our Lucky Hoodoo lessons.
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