Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Jason: What's your opinion of the "Lam" individual shown on pg. 665 of the black & gold ed. of _Gems from the Equinox_? Any monastery teachings, or Tibetan - Bon folklore? Or is this just Hogg-Wild little green men speculation? Thanks Neighbor

The first thing you need to know is that Crowley named the being in the painting LAM knowing only that the word meant "path" in Tibetan. He probably picked that and what little else he knew about Tibetan Religion from the works of Alexandria David Neel, which while exciting and inspiring and groundbreaking for their time, are filled with factual errors, grand embelishments, and theosophical interpretations. Other than borrowing the word LAM, Crowley included 2 Phurbas in his tarot, but called them Vajras. Outside of this and maybe a few other ancillary bits that he picked up, Crowley did not interface much with Tibetan Magic.

In other words, there is no folklore, Bon or Buddhist, that relates in any way to the being known as LAM which Crowley painted and which is the key for what is known in some circles as "The Cult of Lam".

Instead, this figure was the end result of the Amalantrah working, where Roddie Minor, acting as Crowleys seer, passed along a message from the Wizard Amalantrah. The message was that Crowley must "find the egg". The exact nature of how Crowley encountered Lam himself is unclear to me (I am not a Crowley scholar) but what is clear is that he considered Lam to be this "egg".

Members of the Typhonain OTO and many others throughout the world, myself included, experimented with the instructions in the LAM Statement issued by Kenneth Grant. The instructions were basically to meditate on the image of Lam, use the word as a mantra, and psychically project into Lam himself. At this point you look through LAMS eyes and he shows you what he shows you. I have done this. It was interesting, and served as my first introduction to what I call the "Stellar Colleges". My opinion is that the being is worth contacting and working with, especially as a guide to intelligences beyond our solar system.

The similarity between Lam and the "Grey's" type of Alien spoken of in UFO circles is too much for some to ignore. It is not however too close for me to ignore, which I do.

Though there is no connection between Crowleys LAM and any genuine Tibetan figure, that is not to say that the idea of extra-terrestrial intelligence is a foreign concept to Tibetans. In fact there are many Tantras claiming to represent contact with beings from other planets. Dzogchen for instance is said to be taught on twelve other planets. One of them claims that Dzogchen is taught primarily through smell, which, I just think is very cool.

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