-
Influence Behind Obstacles
Let’s make this a little more experiential shall we? Understanding Ganesha can be easily approached by understanding the human history with elephants. In the pre-industrial age, elephants were really never a threat to humanity, and the cultures that learned to live with them even came to see them as beneficent allies. They never really domesticated…
-
Remembering the Ways of Genesha
Shall we get down to the applied part of this theurgy? Well, there are traditional holidays associated with Ganesha, and you can observe those, but you can also adapt those or develop your own. The path of Ganesha has proven culturally very flexible as long as the spirit is understood and preserved. Observation is fairly…
-
Ganesha as Yidam
Even the elephant rests though. Even, in a sense, circles the wagons metaphorically speaking. So even retreat is necessary, and that’s where the inner part of applied theurgy comes in regarding Ganesha. Ganesha can serve as a yidam. Are you familiar with the yidam? Know how the yidam is discovered? Ever notice when you meditate,…
-
Egyptian Reverence for the Gods
My applied theurgy classes are about ways understanding and reverence for the gods can have practical benefits in life. Recently, they have been examining closely how the brain works in many different cases, and one thing that is proving universally true is everything about brain function seems to be dependent on context. In Egyptian metaphysics,…
-
Associations of Bast
The best way to understand the Egyptian gods is to understand the culture they lived in. Egyptian spirituality was a living and changing thing so over time the roles of the gods changed as both the politics and the culture of the various Egyptian nomes changed. When Egypt was unified, eventually the city states expanded…
-
Applications of Bast
So applications of the way of Bast in modern life? Well, one would be simple as the citizens of Per-Bast did share their life with a cat. In Egyptian spirituality there wasn’t as much devotionalism as there was in other religions. People saw themselves as living with their gods, alongside them, and living in good faith…
Category: Applied Theurgy
The ultimate goal of all theurgic practice is to advance spiritually, to draw closer to the divine, become more God like, and any spiritual gifts are seen as secondary to the pursuit of the exalted state of harmony or even oneness with the God. There is a functional framework to theurgy. Their practice involves a walking in their Gods footsteps. It’s believed that by acting as the God acts and performing the functions the God performs, you advance along the path they set out.
There is a caveat as far as practice goes. You can only embrace the full path of a divinity you can literally imitate, because theurgy parallels imitative magic. You can respect other theurgic practices as a whole, but still have to have one that you yourself could follow.
So theurgy is as broad a study as magic, and if it’s of interest this can become a series where I touch on the theurgy of different deities, even of different divine or spiritual forces.
Open the Chapter on: Asherah | Eros | Asteroth | Shiva | Sutekh | Kali | Ganesha | Bast
“When we know what God is, we shall be gods ourselves” George Bernard Shaw (Irish literary Critic, Playwright and Essayist. 1925 Nobel Prize for Literature, 1856-1950)