How does one work a LHP or RHP work (book) without compromising your soul so to speak?
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Why would a book compromise your soul? That doesn’t make sense so could you please clarify what exactly you mean.
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Perhaps I’m reading too much into OAA, but EA even says he failed at one point due to pride. If that’s the case, it may not be a deal breaker for him as he is 100% LHP, but for folks that are into gray magick, it could be a showstopper.
Then there are questionable grimoires out there, particularly ones tied to certain groups. Ceremonial Magick is Ceremonial Magick. But even on the RHP, certain vows are taken to protect the egregore.
Or perhaps I’m not in a right state of mind this week.
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I’m middle path. I use whatever I fancy in the moment. Demons, angels, elementals, planetary, it doesn’t matter. I use Sanskrit, Hebrew, Enochian, Celestial and Demonic mantras. I’ll summon an angel in the morning and a demon in the evening and in the afternoon I’ll do some Taoist qi gong or Hindu yoga. As EA once wrote, “whatever brings power should be mastered.”
I don’t understand .What does this have to do with the OAA? Can you clarify? What do you mean about “vows to protect the egregore?”
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On vows … the Golden Dawn vows in the elemental grades are pretty explicit. I’ve seen people turn their backs on me, and my tools break.
Perhaps it was chance, but it happened about the time I receĂved OAA. The person who handed it to me said and I quote…
“Do not treat this as one more PDF. Treat it as if your life depended on it, because it does.”
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I do have the tendency to blow things up out of proportion. Perhaps it’s mid grade jitters.
For the past two weeks, I’ve had broken segments of sleep which does not help me.
I wake during the witching hours, especially between 2 am and 4 am. Meaning my loco-ness is not made better because of it.
I think I’ve hit on something that I need to work on, namely a better state of mind.
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Yes, oaths are taken seriously in the spiritual planes. In his book Advanced Magick for Beginners, for example, the chaos magician Alan Chapman talks about making an oath as a teenager to “do his part and work with the Secret Chiefs,” which he promptly brushed off and forgot about, until the Secret Chiefs came to collect on it ten years later.
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What do you mean by “compromising your soul”, and what is a soul to you?
At first glance, I don’t think this is a thing. You have free will, and there’s no such thing as invalid experience. It’s all learning. Our JUDGEMENT of whether we LIKE our learning experiences is not the same thing as a spirit being damaged.
I think what CAN happen, is you’ll have a strong emotional reaction, which causes you to remember this particular event or experience between lives more easily, and that can have an effect on your other incarnations down the line.
For example, I just listened to an audiobook of Robert Munroe talking about his past lives, and noticing that if he learned to love a thing very much in a past life, he also loved it in this one - like he was a sailor in one life and continued to love the sea in this one.
Ref: “Ultimate Journey” book by Robert Munroe.
What egregores, what vows exactly? - remember, most peeps on this forum do not follow Thelema, have never read a Golden Dawn book and don’t know what you mean.
In general, I’d say don’t make promises you don’t intent to keep. If there’s upfront consequences for breaking your promises, then that’s between you and the spirits and you have tacitly given them permission to mess with you.
Sooo, if that book asks you to make promises and you have zero intention of keeping them, don’t do that… and then you won’t get any repercussions. Right? 
There’s no vows in OOA. You life does not depend on a pirated PDF. (Ok, you should have bought it, we can’t condone stealing here, but E.A. doesn’t curse his books and those curses don’t usually work that great.)
But I think what he meant was, you can use magick to improve your life and possibly to the point that you save yourself through the use of magick.
Maybe, but if you have promises out there that you could act on and are not, maybe work on those, make contact and work it out.
Some people make pacts - which are also vows or oaths or promises - and forget they did them. Try to remember and don’t make so many you can’t. They should be very special and unforgettable.
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I foolishly made my own oath when I was homeless to pursue Ascension no matter what and it has had the unfortunate consequence of preventing me from ever turning away from magick.
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can you elaborate on this? Im interested if youd like to share.
Thats good, I mean in terms of you deciding what you needed and wanted, and to have the balls and strong mind in pursuing it.
I will say that since @Mulberry pointed out, perhaps Golden Dawn isn’t exactly the best for me, as it’s about 75% of my study, perhaps it’s holding me back. However, since I’ve made a vow to finish what I start, perhaps i will keep on course and finish it.
The course: Simultaneous study and practice of “Kabalah, Magic and the Great Work of Self-Transformation", and “Modern Magick”, as well as the main textbook supporting them both, “The Golden Dawn” 7th Ed.
In addition to this, OAA is also being taken underway as a solid foundation for magick practice.
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I guess what I mean as soul is that inner divine spark we all have, tainted through the lens of our human being as through a lens of a Baptist Church, and their take on Christianity.
Per my last journal note:
“THOUGHTS:
Perhaps shadow work is necessary. Perhaps I need to quit being frightened by the thought of demons, and other spirits. Some are obviously not in the best interest of anyone who cares summon them, but this is what makes or breaks the magician and the human being. This and the idea of the Golden Dawn, and the Baptist Church are holding my evolution and Ascension back.”
I thought or rather recalled a thought, that when students of the Golden Dawn or Thelema practice writing Hebrew words or letters of an evil influence, they are supposed to “balance” themselves by writing the opposite good word or letters. This is typical during study of gematria.
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Huh. I get what you are saying, but I think you are attaching a ton of emotional baggage to something that really isn’t as emotionally charged as you think it is. I mostly work with demons. I felt anxious when I started, because of all the drama in our society about them. However, when I sit down to a feast with the demons and spirits who I regularly interact with, there is no great spiritual menace. They are my equals and friends, and we are spending time together. That’s it.
I can understand wanting to finish a path if you have chosen it. However, there is value in realizing something isn’t for you. To me, dropping something because you are too lazy and choosing to stop going in a direction that does not serve you are two different things. There are a lot of paths in magic. Being able to figure out which ones work for you is, I think, one of the most important parts of someone’s practice. If you find that something isn’t working, it might be worth it, as others have said, to talk to the people, entities, organization, whatever that you made your pact with/promise to, and see what you need to do to end it. If you gained something, you may need to pay for it in some way, give back what you took, etc. That’s fair. However, being stuck in unending servitude to one organization or path seems … like you are giving someone permission to take advantage of you.
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