Elaine Pagels on Gnosticism -- great interview!

http://www.realitysandwich.com/gnostic_interview_elaine_pagels

"Pagels stressed this issue throughout much of our discussion for the basic reason the terms "Gnosticism" and "Gnostic" hijack an individual's ability to fully retrieve the bounty found in the formative stages of Christianity. In essence, these terms are a sort of light pollution that has dazzled scholarly and religious minds but obfuscated an almost endless constellation of elemental Christian sects, each emanating from the same theological Big Bang but with their own unique and educational illumination.

Pagels perhaps went further than other academics in stating that even accepting Gnostic subdivisions such as Valentinianism and Sethianism was potentially falling into the mental quicksand of leaning too much on expedient but generalizing labels. Doing this inevitably creates a myopic projection into the Nag Hammadi library itself, conceivably aborting the possibility of taking accurate snapshots of youthful Christianity."

I've been a big fan of Pagels since I first read her in college and grad school.
I don't understand why she isn't more highly regarded by scholars--at least the
ones I've talked to. I like this notion of the concept of Gnosticism as "light pollution" very much. Much of the writing in the field of Renaissance Magic has been clouded or washed out by this optical phenomenon. In reconstructing the actual visionary practices of whatever "Gnostic" group we want to study, we must be very careful about imposing some external, anachronistic category of "Gnostic Myth." But I understand those who feel that it's necessary to have a post-Jonas category of gnosticism that doesn't fall into the same traps, while somehow managing to cover the different "Gnostic" groups. I think it's important to make tables like we see in Michael Williams' book so that we can keep track of these differences, and after ten years of study I'm afraid that I simply despair at the notion of trying to keep "Gnosticism," although I'm just as shy about simply discarding the category. From a scholarly point of view I'm stumped, but from a visionary magical point of view I would insist that we respect these mysteries for the sacred and terrible things they are. This goes for all historical practice, but we should be especially careful when dealing with actual esoteric enigmas.

On the other hand, when using tools like the concept of "Gnosticism" to develop our own contemporary visionary practices, these technical problems of definition can be more or less useful--and I don't see a problem with contemporary practitioners who simply stop worrying about the problem. It doesn't matter if the term "gnostic" equally applies to Agrippa and Hermes, let along the Sethians vs. some other gnostic sect, or whether there's a rigorous historical meaning informing one's understanding of "Hermetic visionary magic." So long as one is having successful visions, philosophical contemplations, ecstatic transports, or whatever results one needs, historical accuracy is merely the icing on the cake. Whether or not we can get in touch with the visionary practices of the ancients (and I'm much more skeptical than many of my peers in the magical community, although I am getting therapy for all the terrible abuses of grad school discourse!) we can still be inspired by the mysteries and texts they left to our own visionary experiences. I would love to be able to understand exactly how the experiences I've had "really" tally against the experiences of my favorite hundred or so notorious mystics, but I'm content to understand that we are all approaching the same divine mystery from different angles. I don't feel any need to control the mystery, and I can live with not knowing those things that the sacred evidence won't allow me to know.

Aleister Crowley on the Veil of the Aethyr

The veil of the Aethyr is like the veil of night, dark azure, full of countless stars. And because the veil is infinite, at first one seeth not the winged globe of the sun that burneth in the centre thereof. Profound peace filleth me, — beyond ecstasy, beyond thought, beyond being itself, IAIDA. (This word means "I am", but in a sense entirely beyond being.)

The Vision and the Voice, Cry of the First Aethyr

Aleister Crowley on the Holy Guardian Angel

"the Angel is in truth the Logos or articulate expression of the whole Being of the Adept, so that as he increases in the perfect understanding of His name, he approaches the solution of the ultimate problem, Who he himself truly is... The Angel is the spiritual Sun of the Soul of the Adept... The Angel [is] the True Self of his subconscious self, the hidden Life of his physical life."
- Aleister Crowley, "Liber Samekh"

Newton's Laws of Motion in Latin

AXIOMATA, SIVE LEGES MOTUS

[Leges solæ descripta sunt, commentariis prætermissis.]

Lex I

Corpus omne perseverare in statu suo quiescendi vel movendi uniformiter in directum, nisi quatenus illud a viribus impressis cogitur statum suum mutare.

Lex II

Mutationem motus proportionalem esse vi motrici impressæ, & fieri secundum lineam rectam qua vis illa imprimitur.

Lex III

Actioni contrariam semper & æqualem esse reactionem: sive corporum duorum actiones in se mutuo semper esse æquales & in partes contrarias dirigi.
http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/newton.leges.html

Crowley latin ritual

APPENDIX VI

A FEW PRINCIPAL RITUALS
Grimorium Sanctissimum.

Arcanum Arcanorum Quod Continet Nondum Revelandum ipsis Regibus supremis O.T.O. Grimorium Quod Baphomet X Degree M... suo fecit.
De Templo.
1. Oriente ............... Altare
2. Occidente ............. Tabula dei invocandi
3. Septentrione .......... Sacerdos
4. Meridione ............. Ignis cum thuribulo, GR:chi. GR:tau. GR:lambda.
5. Centro ................ Lapis quadratus cum
Imagine Dei
Maximi Igentis Nefandi Ineffabilis Sanctissimi
et cum ferro, tintinnabulo, oleo.
Virgo. Stet imago juxta librum GR:Theta-Epsilon-Lambda-Eta-Mu-Alpha.

De ceremonio Principii.

Fiat ut in Libro DCLXXI dicitur, sed antea virgo lavata sit cum verbis "Asperge me..." GR:chi. GR:tau. GR:lambda., et habilimenta ponat cum verbis "Per sanctum Mysterium," GR:chi. GR:tau. GR:lambda.
Ita Pyramis fiat. Tunc virgo lavabit sacerdotem et vestimenta ponat ut supra ordinatur.
(Hic dicat virgo orationes dei operis).

De ceremonio Thuribuli.

Manibus accedat et ignem et sacerdotem virgo, dicens: {325}
"Accendat in nobis Dominus ignem sui amoris et flamman aeternae caritatis.

De ceremonio Dedicationis.

Invocet virgo Imaginem Dei. M.I.N.I.S. his verbis. --- Tu qui es prater omnia... GR:chi. GR:tau. GR:lambda."
Nec relinquet alteram Imaginem.

De Sacrificio Summo.

Deinde silentium frangat sacerdos cum verbis versiculi sancti dei particularitur invocandi.
Ineat ad Sanctum Sanctorum.
Caveat; caveat, caveat.
Duo qui fiunt UNUS sine intermissione verba versiculi sancti alta voce cantent.

De Benedictione Benedicti.

Missa rore, dicat mulier haec verba "Quia patris et filii s.s." GR:chi. GR:tau. GR:lambda.

De Ceremonio Finis

Fiat ut in Libro DCLXXI dicitur. GR:Alpha-Upsilon-Mu-Gamma-Nu.

Hermetic "Mystical Silence"

“Now, O Father, thou hast put me to silence for ever and all my former thoughts have quite left and forsaken me, for I see the greatness, and shape of all things here below, and nothing but falsehood in them all.”

- The words of Tat to his Father from the 7th Book of the Corpus Hermetica

quote lifted from The Eyeless Owl

exciting news about the Voynich manuscript

Experts Determine Age of Voynich Manuscript

"the manuscript's parchment pages date back to the early 15th century, making the book a century older than scholars had previously thought. "

I'll have to think more about the implications but here's a little bit clipped from a Facebook rant

the dating is important because it shows that the Voynich manuscript predates any of the renaissance magic that has been read into/associated with it (i.e. passing through John Dee's hands) and also predates the early modern alchemical flowering that gave us proto-spiritual alchemy or the medical alchemy of Paracelsus... so the idea that the text is some kinda allegorical head trip becomes more intriguing as it would have been way ahead of its time, we get a new perspective on the originality (I like to compare it to hypnerotomachia polyphilii which is the greatest dreamy text ever but obviously slightly less obscure... see also the modern codex serafinus which is a badass avant-garde art homage to stuff like voynich) ... the early 15th century was decidedly still the medieval head space, it's fascinating to me that somebody wrote that book out of it. utter, unspeakable genius if it's half the joke it seems to be.

The connection with Dee is resonant because of the aura of hoax that surrounds Dee's angelic conversations with the alchemist Edward Kelly, who had his ears cropped for some kinda fraud and may have been running an elaborate con on Dee. I like the idea that the Voynich manuscript isn't really a code, but that it's a fake code designed well enough to seem like it's impossible to crack, although it's really nonsense. But it was such an expensive manuscript to produce, that it would have to be some really heavy con game.

If it's a hoax it's an amazing hoax, more admirable than if it's merely an alchemical or herbological text. Here's why: some of the best cryptologists in history haven't been able to figure out if it's even a code or not. If it is a hoax intended to fuck with people's heads like that, then it's one of the greatest masterpieces of guerilla ontology ever created. As I understand they still can't prove that it's not a code, although there are whole sub-disciplines in cryptology being invented in order to study the information content and make the determination of whether it's a code or not. If it really isn't a code, but rather a hoax designed to look like a complicated code, then the guy who wrote it was hundreds of years ahead of his time. If it just means something we can't figure out, or is really just gibberish, it's far less interesting, although it would turn out to be merely a remarkable historical accident (of Jungian synchronicity proportions on crack!) that it has stumped the best minds in cryptology so far.

Granted, if it really was an alchemist giving the method for making a philosopher's stone that works, that would probably be bigger news. But it would be big news because our lives would change forever, not because it's interesting from a cryptological point of view.