So basically, if I understand, you subscribe to the energy paradigm: it’s all in your hands and there’s no higher beings interfering with your life, blocking any of your spells or pushing you in any direction.
Well, I don’t know precisely, but yea, that’s a reasonable way of putting it. In so far as I believe there are entities that can aid, hinder, or ignore us - yes, I believe so. But do they absolutely control us, I believe not. We are primarily in our own hands, for better or for worse.
But in the spirit paradigm, the spirits (godforms) are even able to control access to the power – and control it through “Initiations.” So the power is not freely available.
But the spirit paradigm isn’t everything. Spirits can certainly help you, and the initiations are paths to power. But those aren’t the only paths to power.
But the spirit paradigm isn’t everything. Spirits can certainly help you, and the initiations are paths to power. But those aren’t the only paths to power.[/quote]
Let’s be more specific here. It’s not to say that one paradigm or another isn’t true. But how do we measure results? We’ve seen what getting involved with Lucifer brings into the situation. Can we manifest such massive results simply by creating a servitor out of our own energy?
If I can just add some of my own experience to this fascinating conversation, it’s been my experience that when you go to make something yourself to replace something that already exists, you can end up “reinventing the wheel” aka wasting a lot of energy on some work that has already been perfected by people, entities, or “the universe” as a whole, long before.
The perfect outcome they created can’t be bettered by you, in any way, so no matter how you come at it, your work will simply mimic theirs.
I love doing novel things and it’s a risk I’m happy to run, however, I suspect that in order to create a servitor that was exactly like Lucifer in all respects, to get it 100% right you’d have to create a being so alike to Lucifer, you might as well have saved yourself the trouble and called on him.
I COULD BE WRONG! < This is important, and I’m not just saying it out of British modesty.
I don’t know how your idea would pan out in reality, or if it’s even possible, but I just wanted to share my own experience so far of various experimental magick, for whatever it’s worth.
But the spirit paradigm isn’t everything. Spirits can certainly help you, and the initiations are paths to power. But those aren’t the only paths to power.[/quote]
Let’s be more specific here. It’s not to say that one paradigm or another isn’t true. But how do we measure results? We’ve seen what getting involved with Lucifer brings into the situation. Can we manifest such massive results simply by creating a servitor out of our own energy?[/quote]
You’re asking a question that each sorcerer finds the answers to individually.
For a short answer I would say yes.
I think Lady Eva’s explanation is important though. If you were successful in perfectly creating a servitor to match a spirit already existing, then you wasted that time as you could have simply used the pre-existing one.
However it’s possible your needs are not covered by what’s available, in that case you might be better served to create your own servitor, or use any other method.
To quote you, ‘How do we measure Results?’, is the key question here. If results are what matters, then the means to those results are the path, not the goal.
I do not think ascent and sorcery are opposed. Although even from a purely materialistic point of view, achieving a set of goals and then becoming complacent with your results will lead to a lack of progress in mastering the physical reality through sorcery.
Thus I posit that ascent, if it is understood as growth of the individual, is an intrinsic and natural consequence of successful sorcery, whether one uses spirits or not.
Creating a thoughtform/servitor that mimics a spirit that already exists might not sound useful but it truly is. First of all the creation of such a spirit demonstrates that you are capable of creating just about anything on the spiritual plane, you might even start to wonder what really goes down when you do an evocation. Second is the fact that when one creates consciousness there is generally a sense of pleasure and love attached to the work, which in my experience enters the created consciousness and allows for a very strong bond between yourself and the spirit. This makes it much easier to come into contact with the being but also receive the things you desire the spirit to help you with.
But the spirit paradigm isn’t everything. Spirits can certainly help you, and the initiations are paths to power. But those aren’t the only paths to power.[/quote]
Let’s be more specific here. It’s not to say that one paradigm or another isn’t true. But how do we measure results? We’ve seen what getting involved with Lucifer brings into the situation. Can we manifest such massive results simply by creating a servitor out of our own energy?[/quote]
This dips into an area that I have less knowledge of. What I was getting at, is that there are many many paths to power. Some are perhaps more limited/limiting than others. You don’t need to have any entities outside of yourself in order to grow your consciousness / power / energy / knowledge / ascent / etc. I don’t believe that gods / entities / spirits / etc. hold all the keys or maintain all the paths.
However, let’s look at what you’re asking. Can you create power for yourself by creating an entity rather than using an existing one? Yes and no. Like Eva said, that effort and expenditure is reinventing the wheel, and so acts as its own cost - time is also a factor when it comes to getting things. Think of it like taking a very long bike ride. Do you start out with a bicycle that someone else has made, or do you build your own? Could the bicycle you make be anything as good as the one someone else with expertise makes? If you invest the dozens, hundreds, thousands of hours into becoming a bike making expert, you have already gone on a journey of a very different kind. You perhaps still never went on the very long ride, but you have become an expert in a craft. However, your bike skills may still not be on par with that of a factory which has employed many experts, specialists, technicians, engineers, athletes, and marketers over the course of a hundred years or more.
Likewise, when working to create your own spirit, especially a powerful one, and of course assuming we believe spirits to be independent entities that can grow in power, a true existing spirit which has been courted and cultivated over potentially thousands of years seems to hold a very large advantage over one that you have made yourself.
IF entities are really just templates that we use for ourselves with no power other than our own, then certainly creating your own is just as useful and perhaps moreso than using an existing one. However, if this is the case, then they could also be dispensed with entirely. I don’t think it is the case that entities are merely an extension of ourselves, but it’s worth noting for discussion sake.
To measure results, in practical terms, maintain your journal. Keep track of your observations, your rituals, and the like. Also keep track of your progress and the attainment of your goals. Are your rituals working? Can you do / see / experience more now than you could 6 months ago? These are results. Sometimes the act of defining and clarifying what it would mean to obtain results is just as valuable of pursuing said results.
In my experience, it’s no great accomplishment to create a complex egregore. Groups of all kinds do it without even thinking, but most never use them, know they’re there, or actively participate in their creation and moulding. That being said, it’s a hell of a lot harder to create a powerful, intelligent, independent egregore on your own. Creating one to be a facsimile of a pre-existing entity is virtually impossible, depending on the entity, how well known they are, and how powerful they are. I’m sure you could try and succeed to some degree, but by the point that they’ve become almost identical to their mould, they might as well just be an extension of the original entity- and might have become one.
In my experience, an entity’s power stems from focus and knowledge as much as worship or their actual power. Humans create egregores based on them all the time. Satan went from a rather unpleasant- but necessary -voice of dissent, opposition, and questioning that was still welcome in the heavenly assembly (but chose not to dwell there) to the embodiment of all evil. Some entities like the changes made to them and the masks added by shifting human belief, but ultimately I’ve found they dislike having their free will being so fundamentally changed. Ultimately, any entity is tinged by your perception of it.
However, worship, and knowledge does increase power. Totemic animals are some of the most powerful spirits you can work with, if you manage to make them intelligible to you in a way that doesn’t lose things in translation. Most deities fall back upon the archetypes they embody for power when times get tough, because those ideas and templates never really go out of style, but ultimately they get the most power to work with out of genuine attention, knowledge, and worship on themselves- not just the idea they represent.
So, following that train of thought, angels and demons are probably the most powerful anthropomorphic entities in existence right now- given the massive amount of focus and reverence given to them in the past God knows how many millennia. In terms of other well-known groups, my gut says that the other most powerful anthropomorphic entities are the Greco-Roman and Norse pantheons, with the Norse pulling just a bit ahead. The Greco-Romans are very commonly depicted on official buildings, and the focus granted to those buildings most likely feeds back to them. But on the other hand, the Norse deities are actually being actively worshipped in fairly large numbers again, and nothing can really compare to genuine worship.
EDIT: Oh, and one more disadvantage an egregore would have. Lack of experience. Some of these entities have been around for millennia. Even a dilapidated, mostly forgotten deity from a religion no one except anthropologists and practitioners would know about could still run circles around a human or a young egregore simply because they’ve had centuries and centuries with no purpose other than to hone their skills and perfect their talents. In comparison to a god, a human is a clumsy brute with a sledgehammer, and an egregore would be worse.
Indeed: the gods (demons / angels) are running things, and many so-called humans are merely servitors themselves.
What I can’t get into is that most of you seem to believe that limitations like time and space are a global fact in all states of being. I know for a fact spirits do not deal with time like we do, in essence they often struggle with the truth we think to perceive, it is so different from their experience. As they progress upon the ladder of consciousness the concept disappears entirely. Learning and experience thus becomes a different thing, and a fresh born spirit is as old as it desires to be and can attain any information and experience it needs. We’ve all moved files from one folder to another and have seen the Matrix uploading Kung Fu to Neo… how different is experience and personal information really? I read an article this morning that science has figured out how to both remove and inject memories into our minds, it seems we are getting there real fast. Are we then not all egregores in the end? A result of the collection of thoughts and ideas and the perception of others, which in our case manifest physically over time.
When you place and project your limitations upon a desired creation it can be no surprise that you were better off dealing with an already existing spirit.
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