No system has been more abused in this way than the Tibetan systems. I realize that Tibetan magick stimulates the imagination. They have spent as much time in the last 1000 years working on magick and meditation that we have on science and industry. All the cool superheroes like Mandrake the Magician, The Shadow, and even Dr Strange get their powers through Tibetans.
It was bad enough before Tibet opened up and people like Blavatski and even my hero Franz Bardon, would write absolute false crap about Tibetan Magick. But today, there is no excuse. NO EXCUSE! You don't need to base you knowlege of what Tibetan magick is like off people that wrote in the early 1900's and had the barest of exposure to it. You don't even need to travel there youself to find out: They come here every summer. Some even live and teach here year round.
Yet I still real the same crap about Tulpas, Chod, and Kyil-Khors that Alexandrea David Neel misunderstood being bandied about like its news. May as well just pretend that Blavatski was right and that the Dugpas (Drukpa Kagyu) are the source of all evil in the world.
What brings up this rant you ask.
The author of la Croix petite claims:
"The monks apparently have a system they use to access this technology which as far as I can tell is based on years and years of meditation. But I have discovered a short cut: hallucinogens and pranayama. My favored cocktail is lsd + mj. For pranayama simply the 'little pranayama' (hum-sah) is all that is needed."
He has dscovered a short cut ladies and gentlemen! Get the Fucking Dalai Lama on the phone! Tell all the monks to just drop some acid and do a lame pranayama meditation picked up from Modern Magick. Thats really all there is to it!
Speaking as someone who has worked this system AND someone who has worked with psychedelics and pranayama I can assure you that its not even remotely the same thing. The two dimensional sand-mandala that he points to is not even meant to be meditated on directly. Its a map for a three dimensional space generated through meditation, entered through initiation, and actualized through various completion stage practices.
I have no doubt that he gets something from doing what he does, but to confuse it with what the monks or yogis do is just criminal. Its like discovering that if you take acid, do pranayama and look at a car, its a short cut to driving.
13 comments:
Hi there, Jason. Where does one begin to learn about Tibetan magic? I know _nothing_ about it.
One of the tenets of the Tibetan Vajrayana tradition is that to learn it you need to study with a lama who is authorized to teach the system. I don't know where you live, but it is likely that there is a group of Vajrayana students near you that you can contact if you live near a major metropolitan area. I would recommend contacting them and see if there are any teachings coming up that you could attend if you are interested in learning more.
This restriction is maintained at least in part to prevent the promulgation of "wrong views" about the system like the nonsense this Magick42 guy is putting forth.
Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln... How did you like the play?
Heh. The first time I read through Bardon in my teens that was my big disconnect with him, because I'd read about shakta tantra before that (if it's scandelous I want to see what those folks are doing!) and was like.. "Wha.. That's not right at all!"
It was the first obvious misinformantion I found in his books that couldnt be chalked up to translation issues or editing issues.
But.. I totally agree with you. The same was done with Taoism. Esp. by Crowley et al. Traditional Taoism is one of the most awesome magical religious systems I've ever SEEN! I'd like to think that hermeticism could have gotten there if it had been given another thousand years.
Using out dated source material is not being "traditionalist" or "romantic". All it is, is poor fact checking and mages should know better!
A lot of folk in the Neo-Shaman community think that almost any and everything can be explained by taking some enthogens and trancing out, brah.
What can you get out of "Traditional Taoism" that you can't get in Hermeticism? I mean, when it comes to the real magic of the grims and papyri, Agrippa and a conjure ceremony are all you could possibly need to get everything in the universe. How much more advanced is it supposed to get?
Frater R O
Much Much More advanced.
Listen man, I am working in the western traditions primarily myself because I like the creative freedom, and I just find its where my work takes me, BUT...
You have no idea how much amazing shit the Tantrics and Taoists are doing that blows any Grimoire stuff out of the water, both in terms of spiritual realization and thaumaturgical might. I have seen Kunzang Dorje do things that I don't even talk about because no one would believe me.
There's more than just grimoires, you know.
Of course there's more than just the grims. They're "grammars," after all. They're the A is for Apple of magic. The starting point for magicians in the western Hermetic tradition.
But they are the grammars. The advanced PHD stuff is going to be built on the curriculum laid out in the grims.
The idea that the taoists and tantrickas are thousands of years beyond what we can do in the west is terrible to me. I'm not saying it isn't true. I'm saying it isn't right. We ought to be able to get to the same point, or further, using the techniques of the West.
I'm not one to postulate without testing it. I believe they've got some serious shit going on out in their caves. I just think there's got to be a way there through the grims that got lost somewhere in the age of "enlightenment."
Aryeh Kaplan gives the permutations of the tetragrammaton in one of his works - as in the entire meditative sequence. All it's going to take is for someone to bite the bullet and learn everything from hekhalot to merkaba, and then teach it without the cultural baggage.
Hi Ben - out of curiosity, can you narrow that down to the specific book? I'd be interested to read more on this.
On page 87 of Meditation and Kabbalah. This book, as well as all of his other works, is absolutely packed with references to original texts, and anyone with sufficient ingenuity can track them down.
Thanks, Ben. I appreciate it.
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