Post i refer to: The Challenge Of Darkness - LET'S SEE IF YOU'VE GOT WHAT IT TAKES
In this challenge you blacken your chakras at some point. I heard that blackening your chakras is just new age bs and that its rather harmful then helpful.
Can someone explain and would it be possible to leave that out and still complete the challenge?
It’s basically just pulling a different type of energy through them. It’s really nothing special, despite the use of the edgy word “blackening.”
I’m not sure tbh, as a qigong practitioner, this made no sense to me, it fits no parallel in energy working techniques,and the purpose “to become darkness incarnate” also makes no sense. It sounds like it could cause imbalance from my world view, IF you aproach it as energy working… I think it is not though.
According to the cited post in Challenge six:
… blackening the chakra’s is a powerful technique, but not only does it reunite aspects of consciousness, but it is a rite of becoming darkness incarnate.
One of the things I like about qigong is the system is complete and makes holistic sense that gains tangible results. I don’t know if this has a basis in any energy working system to explain it, but it seems not, therefore, energy working is the wrong mindset for this.
So, as it’s magick and we are creator beings, all you have to do is be clear on what your intention is.
Possibly. This could be your intutition just telling you it’s not for you right now.
I don’t know what “becoming darkness incarnate” means to even try this myself… I can’t (won’t) perform a working if my intention is not clear. Wishy washy intention will make for unpredictable results. As I don’t get what this is for, and in fact it seems a bit… romantic to me, I have no use for it.
(I get is as a goth but goth is artistic and aesthetics not magick. )
Depends why you want to complete a “challenge”? If it’s for the challenges sake itself, no. If it’s because working though it teaches you some things, yes. Learn the other stuff and come back o this afterwards or later if you feel like it.
Magick is highly personal: at this level, just make it yours, and do whatever you want to do.
i see thank you both for the proper explanations/advice i will see what i will do with said challenge and yes i wanted to do the challenge to further myself as i have noticed C.Kendalls rituals meditations have been working fantastically for me
If i may ask what type of qi gong do you practice? And what cab one do with it.
I thought qi gong is just movement and mastery of energy
Qigong means energy training. I learned theraputic qigong from teachers in person around the turn of the century. It’s just qigong.
I know some moving forms like soaring crane, wiji tai chi and tai qi chuan, but I’m mostly just interested in the still meditation.
I posted a bunch of books that are reliable resources in the Book Recommendations collection thread of you want to check that out.
From my perspective, blackening of the chakras is merely a symbolic visual metaphor of taking the split light spectrum of all its colours into the infinite blackness. Symbolising the very aspect of whats commonly known in “ahrimanic” circles as ‘counter-creation’ absorbing the finite and tapping into the true raw limitless potential.
In the gatekeepers pathworking its very much the same premise, the blackness representing the cosmological “infinite black river” known as “the abyss” the bridge which separates the lower planes from the highest. It is the alchemical substance of nigredo, ergo by engaging with this internalised force you’re engaging in ones own personal transfiguration a truly transformative inner alchemy which resonates with the challenge.
Whilst i agree there are many things that are harmful in regards to chakra work, i wouldn’t say this is one of them. You’re merely embracing your own self (finite) represented in this challenge as the light spectrum and youre embracing pure unfettered, untapped pure and raw limitlessness symbolised through (the blackness).
This is found in a variety of paths and systems, the traditional blackening of the sephirotic light for example as the mythological blueprint of the light of creation created the husks, and the complexities within that leading to the second tree of the qliphoth. Just like the conversation of the black iridescent light which shines from the black diamond in Asenaths works.
I assure you i know “black” this and “darkness” that can offen get a bad wrap for coming across as edgy and i suppose of course sometimes it does. That is not the intended purpose here, it isnt just a “become the dark lord, oh look at me my chakras are pure dark, i’m so dark and mysterious”. No not at all rather to me it has metaphorical symbolism and real transformative effects. Its to embrace both sides of things and you arent “shutting out the light” as some RP vampire D&G magicians would have you believe.
You’re merely undergoing a temporal state, like a godform assumption ritual for example. Its a temporal assumption of that godform, you aren’t that god when you walk down the store or eat your popsicles or whatever. However even afterwards if geared the right way, you do and will have its transformative effects.
Now of course i used language such as “darkness incarnate” you’ll have to forgive me, when i first started writing i did have somewhat a flair for the dramatic. As i read through even some of the descriptive language i use still makes me laugh, however thats just the result as my growth with language and writing in general.
So once you get passed the strange old writing style you do get to the benefits which is what i experienced and what many others experienced. Which is an overall acceleration in the development of their inate spiritual skills and a quite noticeable increase in the effectiveness of their own ritualistic and magickal successes.
Remember all this is symbolic from the language, to the colours, to the visualisations. Some visualise a chakra as a wheel, others as pure light, some as an orb. Some switch around colours in certain systems, some will use different symbolism and different words and techniques. Yet they are referring to the same thing whether it is Qi Gong, Tai Chi, or whatever you indulge in.
Remember these are tangible physical things with actual form, shape or colour. It is us that give them this structure, just like one of my favourite scenes in the movie Doctor Strange. Wherein he is shown different diagrams, she first holds up this design
As a response he scoffs and she replies with
“You don’t like that map?”
She then proceeds to show him others.
And another …
And she herself says
“Each of those maps were drawn up by someone who could see in part, but not the whole”.
This scene is really a great analogy to me, because thats what we do. We create systems, structures, shapes, designs and colours. We ascribe the meanings, we determine the symbolism. Whilst some systems share similarities there are others out there that are vastly different and yet they still work in the same manner, all that this is then is another blueprint and system which you can follow if you so choose to.
I spent years debating, arguing, fighting and debunking different methodologies. Different techniques but who am i to do that, who is anyone in this forum or in any place, who are they to say that a specific method won’t work.
Now granted the individual who says such a thing, in their own system or self created parameters/self determined beliefs, an alternative way of doing things, seeing things or whatever may not fit.
However just like the scene in the movie the character says another quote which resonates with me.
“Your a man who has been looking at the world through a keyhole, and you’ve spent your whole life trying to widen that keyhole to see more, to know more, and now on hearing that it can be widened in ways you can’t imagine. You reject the possibility”.
This hits hard because i too was guilty of this, just as are many magicians. We work within specific frameworks, blueprints, systems and paths wherein things are done in certain ways. Whenever some mentions something which may run contrary or even oppose what we do, we will tend to superimpose our system onto it while critiquing it.
Yet as i’ve grown I’ve come to understand that what works, simply works and sometimes each system will be completely different that doesn’t make it any less real, effective or potent than any other.
