March 27
Dear All,
Socrates' daimon has a limited, if important, role: the daimon acts as a kind of superego, cautioning Socrates against doing the wrong thing, though by no means just the wrong thing morally. The daimon is not the source of Socrates' ideas and is not an interlocutor. The daimon is akin to the good fairy in Pinocchio.
Rumor has it that the son of Gadaffi who clearly did not write the PhD awarded him by LSE is now claiming that his second self wrote it.
Robert Segal
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From: Society for The Academic Study of Magic [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Odrade Atreed [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Sunday, March 27, 2011 8:25 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [ACADEMIC-STUDY-MAGIC] FORTHCOMING: WHO IS THIS PERSON WRITING MY PHD?
Dear Toyin,
Plato mentions the etymology of Daemon in Cratylus, but he speaks more detailed about the figure in The Symposium. I have got this information from the Wikipedia because I read his dialogues long years ago. That is a beautifull dialogue about Love. Enjoy it.
About the Holy Guardian Angel (SAG) and the Demons, they are clearly intertwined. One of the powers the SAG is to govern the demons. It is claimed that the Angel and the Demon is one. You cannot invoke the Angel without confronting the demons. This means a lot of magical experiences of the SAG finishes with terrible psychological problems, because the demons cannot be governed.
There is a complete system of magic, Maat Magick, where you can go from the SAG to the Forgotten ones. It is written by Nema. Here the Demons are conceptualized as the instincts which are in the base of our evolution. It is a very instructive system.
I only can talk about this particular subject as a practitioner. I donīt know which are the experiences associated to a familiar spirit, but there are some descriptions very acurate about the experience of the SAG. When the contact is completely made, you can be with demons, and they cannot touch you. You know your True Will, and you know the name of the SAG. If some of those things are not there, you cannot be sure that it is your SAG. Although when you arrive to this experience, you can recognize his presence long time ago, there are another entities which could be around you.
I definitely think that art and writing can give you a way to develop this contact, and there is a contact too in scholarship. Discipline, in any way, and the fire of developing a mastering can put you in contact with your True Will. But I have found that although that kind of work, scholarship or meditation or writing are necessary, they are not enough. To make the contact it is necessary a magical oath. I donīt understand why, but it is a key thing in the whole process. So, could it be possible walk through Scholarship and get in contact with the SAG? Yes, could be, but I donīt know which kind of oath could be made in this case.
In other words, the SAG is supposed to be in all the personal process involved with the True Will, so if you are doing things which are related to your True Will you can feel his/her presence, but the art of contact and conversation with him/her is part of the Magical Art. Of course you can develop a Magical Scholarship, a Magical writing as many magicians have done: Michael Ende, C.I. Lewis, etc., a Magical Fighting, like Aikido. But you need to use some Magical tool or theory to get to this point.
Thanks to you,
Ana.
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De: toyin adepoju <[log in to unmask]>
Para: [log in to unmask]
Enviado: dom,27 marzo, 2011 16:29
Asunto: Re: [ACADEMIC-STUDY-MAGIC] FORTHCOMING: WHO IS THIS PERSON WRITING MY PHD?
Thanks for that detailed response, Odrade.
I wanted to reflect further on your inspiring post before replying but the need to respond has been nagging me so this effort will have to do for now.
Could you let me know in which of his works Plato mentions the Daemon? It could be a good starting point for my need to read Plato, filling one of the more significant gaps in my education.
Thanks for referring to the Abramelin ritual. I find it attractive, because as Regardie describes it The Tree of Life: A Study in Magic, it is quite simple and is adaptable to various ideational contexts, being centred in consistent and gradually increasing invocation to the Holy Guardian Angel. My worry, though, is about the invocation to the Princes of Evil that is described as concluding the ritual. Aleister Crowley's intriguing account of his performance of the ritual presents a horrifying description of baleful forms materializing through the drawing of the relevant sigils but how does one reconcile this with what might seem to be his psychological interpretation of these Princes, unless I am not recalling accurately his account in his autobiography? There are other accounts of performing the ritual, but they seem to be careful to communicate sparingly the details of the experience.
It would be most gratifying if one were really to move towards an intimate relationship with the Holy Guardian Angel. I wonder, though, if the experience experience described is easy ti distinguish between such a persona entity or another entity, intimate but not personal, like a familiar?
Can scholarship be one method of pursuing this relationship with an exalted inner self? Why not? The long hours spent listening to oneself as one composes ideas, of trying to weave various strata of ideas in the mind, cultivating a relationship between the need to earn a living and a vocation along with other marks of the life of the scholar and the academic can be described as fruitful ground for such whispers of profundity, and a increasing integration with deeper aspects of the self understood in terms of the religious language represented by a description of such possibilities as the Holy Guardian Angel.
In fact, accounts of creativity from people of different philosophical or religious backgrounds, from scientists to artists, suggest this sensitivity to aspects of the self that are not circumscribed by ratiocination and evokes intuitions of the holy or the sacred. Thats related to the impression I get from works like Miller's Imagery in Scientific Thought and Paul Davies' The Mind of God. Karen Armstrong describes a similar idea in relation to her own work and classical Jewish conceptions of religious scholarship in her Through the Narrow Gate. Does Richard Dawkins not make a related point about the sacred in non religious terms in relation to intellectual research in The God Delusion, from what I read of of his first chapter?
I wrote that before reading Sabrina's response.
Thanks
Toyin
On 23 March 2011 15:19, Odrade Atreed <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
Dear Toyin,
I have just seen the letters about your experience, and I think my own personal research can give you more information.
There is a figure, the Daemon, which is mentioned by Plato when he transcribes Socratesī words. This figure is a kind of entity which is related to the person in a very deep way.
In Western Magick, this figure is called, indistintively, Higher Self or Holy Guardian Angel. The nature of this being is not clear, because it depends on the theory envolved and any of the people contacting this entity claims a different nature, but the experience is similar. It is a figure which has a knowledge higher than yours, it has itīs own purpose, which sometimes is opposite or different to your conscious porpuse. But it is own of the principal goals of Magick to get in contact with this entity, because when you gain access to his presence, and you know his name, you know your True Will and you know who you are and what are you here for.
There is a traditional method, described by Abramelin the Magician, to contact with this entity, but in the last decades, since the work developed by Crowley, there are different methods involving meditation, access to different levels of consciousness, work with the qabalistic tree and a personal commitment, through and explicit oath, to develop this magical work.
Before this final experience, it is very normal to be in contact with this entity, which is with you always, and to feel it in many different stages of your life.
When the process is done, you realice this entity and you are the same, although this manifestation, material, cannot manifest your true self completely. And there is a feeling of a sense in your life that there was not there before. Your personal story makes sense into the light of this revelation.
Yours,
Ana.
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De: toyin adepoju <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
Para: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Enviado: mié,23 marzo, 2011 14:31
Asunto: Re: [ACADEMIC-STUDY-MAGIC] FORTHCOMING: WHO IS THIS PERSON WRITING MY PHD?
Thank you very much, Emma.
Your careful account helps to place things more clearly in perspective.
I hope the presence again becomes as vivid as it was in 1993, when I always sensed it behind me almost wherever I was going.
I was disturbed about it then, but like other encounters with the conventionally enigmatic which have left me wary even though they are the kind of experiences a magician ought to anticipate and welcome, I will be better prepared if, as I hope, that level of 'concretisation' occurs again.
Thank you very much.
Its so good to have fora where one can share such experiences and get sensitive, informed and well meaning responses.
All the best
toyin
On 23 March 2011 11:29, emma wilby <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
Hi Toyin,
So far as I know a familiar can certainly by acquired without intending to do so. Indeed, it could be argued that even in traditional shamanistic cultures the 'spontaneous' acquisition of the familiar is just as - if not more - common than the deliberate. From what I have read it seems that the familiar never completely relinquishes its 'autonomous' nature, though the shaman can gain a certain amount of control over it.
What I thought was interesting about your description was your linking of some initial vision and/or strong sensory experience with the subsequent more day-to-day sense of a presence. In shamanistic narratives the familiar is usually initially acquired through one or more 'peak' experiences - often a dream or vision encounter, but can also be a powerful auditory hallucination or experience of physical possession etc. But after this dramatic event it seems to me that a shaman's ongoing interactions with his familiar (that is, in daily life but also healing rituals and intentions not involving public seance) can often be more prosaic. The shaman 'talks to' their familiar and 'listens to' what they may have to say but in the way a Christian might communicate with God through prayer - a process of trying to interpret certain feelings and thoughts as spiritual communications and to understand the senses of presences as opposed to directly confronting and face-to-face interactions with the 'other'.
As for how to take advantage of a familiar - I'm not an expert here. I suspect there are as many ways as colours in the rainbow - shamanistic techniques, ritual magic techniques, wiccan techniques .... Christian techniques ....
With all good wishes,
Emma
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From: toyin adepoju <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tue, 22 March, 2011 5:31:36
Subject: Re: [ACADEMIC-STUDY-MAGIC] FORTHCOMING: WHO IS THIS PERSON WRITING MY PHD?
Thanks for your response , Emma.
Please forgive my late reply.
The impressions come and go on their own terms.
Can you tell me more about the nature of a familiar and how one may take advantage of it? Can it be acquired without intending to do so?
Thanks
Toyin
On 19 March 2011 08:03, emma wilby <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
Hi Toyin,
An evocative account of - what seems to me like - the acquisition of a familiar. I wonder - can you bring the sense of the presence to you (through some form of intention) or does it come and go of its own accord and on its own terms?
Emma
________________________________
From: toyin adepoju <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wed, 16 March, 2011 16:04:49
Subject: [ACADEMIC-STUDY-MAGIC] FORTHCOMING: WHO IS THIS PERSON WRITING MY PHD?
WHO IS THIS PERSON WRITING MY PHD?
Toyin Adepoju
I ask myself this question in recognition of the sense of wonder that continually emerges for me from the development of ideas in the PhD I am undertaking in Comparative Criticism.
You see, some of the best ideas of the PhD are not written wholly by me. They are developed in collaboration with someone I dont know, someone I am only beginning to be able to identify through subtle cues that define the contours of the persons personality.
I have chosen to describe this being in terms of a distinctive personality because the entity actually demonstrates a shape representing their nature and style of working.This shape is perceivable in mental terms through subtle promptings about possibilities for developing ideas, through the sense of an invisible personality behind me or at my shoulder as I compose ideas in writing, through a sense of looking forward into a landscape of knowledge I can only dimly sense with an awareness of the certainty of its existence, like an animal smelling water from a far distance.
Perhaps a more realistic interpretation of this mysterious experience is to understand these cognitive unfoldings as demonstrations of conjunctions between the conscious and subconscious minds as they work together to constitute a whole, even though the processes of the subconscious are not often available to consciousness.
This interpretation may clarify the majestic motions of ideas as they enter into particular orbits, mesh and undergo transformation, but can they explain the sense of an invisible personality by my side or behind me that flashes in and out of my awareness as I work?
What is the relationship between this current sense of an unseen personality and an earlier impression of an invisible figure that began to follow me everywhere after about a year of daily magical invocation and meditation in 1993?
What connection could these experiences have to the two experiences in my living room in Benin in 1996 in which as my mind went to my earlier interest, abandoned for the previous three years, in developing the cognitive potential of the Yoruba/Orisa Ifa system of knowledge and divination, I instantly sensed an invisible presence at my side, a sense of an intangible presence that recurred at various times as I carried out this work on Ifa during my MA at the University of Kent in 2003?
Can these experiences be related to a particularly striking experience in the late 1990s in which, as I reflected on a forest that awed me by the numinous presence that radiated from it, I suddenly found myself elsewhere, in a different room, in non-verbal but eloquent dialogue with a woman. Having ascertained who I was, that I was not dreaming, that I was in a strange place in which I had been welcomed, I opened my eyes to find myself back in my study?
Could these experiences of mine demonstrate interactions between personal and extra-personal fields of consciousness?
Full essay forthcoming
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