I have been reading Works of Darkness and the first few exercises involve surrounding oneself with black mist/energy and also bringing that dark energy into yourself. It also mentions imagining the blackness in your third eye somewhere in the text.
So is it counterproductive to do the dark ritual when on another day you do the white light or indigo colour version? Is it best to stick with one or the other?
Also, not that Im going to, but could you also attain omnipotence prior to evocation using complete black energy as opposed to the white divine kind?
It’s my opinion that if working through that book, you should dive in to the Darkness completely. Focus on that alone. Become surrounded and possessed by the Darkness. Let it and The Emissaries teach you.
Just speculating here - but I would assume that you can only reach omnipotence by achieving a merging with the source. All authors, including EA, have described the source as a brilliant pulsating “light”. Which leads me to believe that you would have to first achieve omnipotence via the light meditations, and then utilize its shadow.
That is only my educated guess, I could be completely wrong. But that is what makes sense to me.
The source in my experience is formless and people who have percieved it all see it differently. In my opinion it is an exercize to align yourself with the dark current of the universe and springboard your ascent with that dark attunement. After all darkness is simply what’s there when the lights are out.
Yeah thanks,
It was just an alignmnet ritual and by what I can gather not something that is an ongoing exercise. I originally thought it was an ongoing thing!
Self inflicted pain and or some form of sleep deprivation will make the communing with Darkness much more effective. I would say it IS indeed an ongoing ritual and should be done often if walking the sinister path.
I’m not one for inflicting pain on myself, that seems like self hatred to me which I don’t have and I don’t feel the need to punish myself for anything. If on the other hand pain came via a hot sadistic girl with a whip who wants to suffocate me by sitting on my face… then I welcome the darkness!!
I do see your point on it being a continued practice though
Hmmm. The darkness from a beautiful woman sitting on my face…now that’s the kinda darkness I would love to immerse myself in That would get any man off the proverbial “armchair” lol.
Darkness is the soil, light is the seed. Earth and fire. Female and male. Space and time. Substance and change.
You might call the source light, but if it is, it certainly couldn’t be the source of darkness, and nor could it bring anything to fruition without something into which to shine or the earth into which to plant itself.
Like Kitari I’ve experienced the Source as beyond form, beyond darkness and light, beyond all description really. By what I’ve learned from the Source comes the electric and magnetic fluids. The core energies of the prime elements, Fire and Water respectively. Fire and Water carry the attributes of Light and Darkness.
I’m not totally sure how to reconcile the Elemental Key with the “Darkness” as in WoD though other than attributing it to the Water element.
in my experience, they serve different purposes. the light visualisations elevate the vibratory rate of your body/psyche for obvious ends. dark visualisations are uncomfortable at first because they often leave you with the feeling that you’re not in control (but then again, control is an illusion). these practises bring you closer to the physical and the veil between worlds. when i performed the dark visualisations for a week, it took two more before i stopped seeing the astral all the time, and everywhere i looked (and i honestly thought i was experiencing a psychotic break, which i wasn’t). dark work pushes the physical at a base level and causes the astral to spill in uninvited. this is great for daemonic or self work, but light visualisations attract the higher self, angelic vibrations and the like. although i work with light during ritual for empowerment purposes, i still utilise dark meditation to connect more strongly with the astral (usually in the days prior to a ritual).
So James, you say that the dark increases your connection to the astral… does that mean it also opens your inner vision more strongly in your opinion?
I understood the exercise as more of a way of aligning yourself with darker energies, currents, and other entities. I think there are probably better exercises to practice to develop your astral senses or have visions. Of course, meditation of any sort will open your inner vision to a degree.
yeah when you start thinking of things in terms of lighter and darker, it gets too easy to polarise everything you come across. i prefer to see things as more or less physical, and dark work definitely blurs the line between what we would consider physical reality and the astral.
what i found when i got to the end of one session of dark visualisation was that the room would pulsate and sway with invisible currents much like seaweed under water. it’s hard to explain but it’s a lot like watching a documentary on coral or something. it’s that undulating, waving kind of flow, but it’s moving the darkness of the room itself. right after that the mist appears everywhere, then colours, double-images of objects in the astral etc, but the astral is always moving.
it’s incredibly hard to explain but once you see it, you’ll never forget and you can always call it up in ritual once you reach trance. it’s a receptive state, though, and you have little control over anythig. the opposite is true of light meditations, but you tend to see the astral less, and higher vibrations more. similarly, you can implement your Will using light but you become naturally less receptive to what’s going on around you in the astral.
i guess you could say dark meditation makes your third eye more receptive (left hand), while light meditation makes it more projective (right hand). obviously, receptivity is best for crying, divination, communication etc, while projectivity is better for casting circles, opening gates and raising energy.
I haven’t experienced any auditory results yet, the most vivid visuals I’ve had where the eye looking at me, the entity that has shown me some wild stuff and the wave of flames engulfing me.
I’ve been getting similar results to both you guys. Very detailed visions that seem very real with eyes closed and also a sense that it could materialize right before me in the darkness. It feels like being in a lucid dream at times. In my normal day or night frame of mind it is becoming really quick and effortless to slip into a deeper relaxed state where I see dark shadows or lights out of the corner of my eyes or even just to the side of direct vision. I’m getting the usual physical pops and bangs but thats been normal for years now but now it’s like everytime I hear one, there is a message behind it, like a way of communicating. As long as I’m in tune I will pick it up.
I believe that working with darkness really amplifies your perception of the reality that we live in and as a result can be seen as the beginning of the unveiling to the astral world to some degree. I found that the more you practice this the more the darkness that you are working with can come alive, but I also found that depends with the physical space your working with. I also found that there is a sticking point which you have to overcome once working in the same space so you will need to experiment in different environments. I did say this once before but I’ve found that there are areas which I regarded as " Dead Space" where nothing really moved but these were small pockets. My ritual chamber was the second place where I practiced as the first place lacked what I expected “Dead Space”. But once working in my ritual area, that’s when things kicked off. Try it and see what you think.
heh
That would get any man off the proverbial “armchair” lol.