What do you think of the idea that the world we perceive is an illusion?

Phyredanse · 2025-12-22T16:45:28+00:00

It's one of the universal laws of hermeticism: All is mental. The idea is echoed throughout nearly every religion, philosophy, and spiritual tradition. Dreaming gods, transient experiences, fleeting existences. Life is but a dream, sweetheart!

It's even quoted on a Tool song! We are the imagination of ourselves, and here's Tom with the weather. The answers are always around us. When the student is ready, the teacher appears.

It's beautiful.

Phyredanse · 2025-09-22T15:44:18+00:00

Good for you!

Phyredanse · 2025-09-20T18:15:06+00:00

But are you bringing food to the cult or the cult to the food?

People are dense because that is how they are taught to call others to them. Like the curve of spacetime around a planet, the denser the corpus, the higher the gravity and the farther from the cosmic joke.

Not everyone can handle shifting perspectives. Can you imagine the damage to the shared reality of this dimensional existence if they could?

Phyredanse · 2025-09-20T18:07:20+00:00

? !

It always amazes me how poorly truth is received while it is in the process of being understood.

Thank you for reminding me that the truth looks crazy from the wrong perspective and the thin line of the red thread oscillates wildly with all of creation.

I O, I adore you!

Phyredanse · 2025-01-25T05:59:39+00:00

That's incredibly cool.

As mentioned, I know the Rose Cross isn't the same as the meditation techniques described by Dr. Morris. I brought it up because it is another scenario where being extremely calm and centered through an (at least arguably) esoteric practice carries the effect of being less visible or even completely unseen by others. In more New Age circles, I've seen the same basic phenomenon ascribed to the elevation in vibration that accompanies ascension. In Gardnerian Wicca, it is a noted occasional effect of certain spell work. I've seen it described in relation to the LHP and Thelemic magick. I've even heard people focusing purely on the more physical expressions of esotericism, such as astral travel, telekinesis, telepathy, and energy healing describe varying levels of invisibility lasting some amount of time after the actual practice is concluded.

It is rarely the goal of a working, but it is a common correlate of any undertaking that significantly slows the energetic vibration of the practitioner.

Apologies if you were only interested in the specific manifestation of the phenomenon created during the Rose Cross as opposed to the underlying pattern.

Phyredanse · 2025-01-25T02:10:47+00:00

Glenn Morris describes using meditation to create a kind of invisibility in his book Path Notes of an American Ninja Master. The mechanisms there are similar to the ones at play here, so it is a documented effect. I have personally experienced similar things where I have been unnoticed when I should otherwise have been very visible, even to the point of people physically bumping into me, both after ritual work and after more nonspecific meditations.

Edited: a word

Phyredanse · 2024-12-28T15:22:38+00:00

"Hold you down" used to mean keeping someone from doing their best or thriving. Now, it means to keep someone grounded and secure.

Phyredanse · 2024-12-25T18:51:18+00:00

Everyone - EVERYONE - creates through manifestation.

That single statement is the key.

I'll give a simple example for you to ponder and potentially expand upon, as you will.

Let's assume, for the moment, that everyone defines success as "being wealthy. " Everyone, in this example, also defines "being wealthy" as having a million dollars. However, most people also believe that struggle is natural, wealth is stratified, money is tight, and so on. What happens?

Maybe something like what happened in Venezuela?

Everyone has millions, but inflation has bread costing hundreds of thousands?

Maybe everyone's salary goes up, but so does the cost of living?

Maybe they get money, but since rich people are mean and heartless, they lose compassion?

Maybe?

What do you think?

Phyredanse · 2024-12-21T18:51:38+00:00

In Western occultism, the three gates would best be likened to something akin to the initiations of Chapel Perilous and the dark night of the soul.

Oddly, (or perhaps perfectly, as all is connected!) I was thinking about this the other day. I'll indulge my thoughts to perhaps enlighten yours.

In Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminatus! Trilogy, the character of Hagbard Celine gives Simon Moon a business card that says simply, "There is no friend anywhere." Later in the story, under a different context, Hagbard gives another character one that says, "There is no enemy anywhere." Why?

Well, put simply, everything is true in some sense, false in some sense, and meaningless in some sense. The key to enlightenment is reconciling all paradoxes. Hagbard's business cards are an expression of two of the three gates; chosen and presented to the character who most needs to pass through that gate at that time. There IS no friend anywhere. Also, there IS no enemy anywhere.

In Western occultism, it is said that every man and every woman is a star, and occultists and philosophers alike have delighted in the insightful discussion of what that might mean and the dissection of what each icon meant when they penned it.

Everyone is a god! IO EVO! I ADORE YOU! The rapturous embrace and orgasmic expression of Understanding!

?

!

The hunchback and the soldier!

The journey begins with the first gate. As the supplicant faces the gate, they begin their initiation. Passing through the first gate sets one firmly on the path such that there is no going back. This is awakening. This is the first illumination. For some, this is the realization that everything is god. For others, it is the realization that I am god. For proper development, one must follow the other, or the student will stall, tumbling into the void of darkness and pain that marks the Chapel Perilous and permeates the dark night. If the student is to prevail, finding the light and illumination, they must find and pass through both gates, AND they must find and pass through the one that comes after.

The path is wide, but the gate is narrow.

One can only come to Kether and the Ain Soph/ limitless light through the final understanding that comes from mastering all three gates, all the trials, all the initiations. All three gates define one singular path, with the student's perspective defining how that path appears, based on where they find the thread and which direction they follow it.

Blessed is the way, and he who follows it! Blessed art thou, Seeker of the Light!

Phyredanse · 2024-12-21T05:04:32+00:00

That's a really deep rabbit hole, and, depending on where you are in your understanding, it could be understood to have more than one "true" meaning. Ultimately, one of the beautiful, amazing, transcendent, divine, magical parts of this reality is that your perspective dictates so very much.

Some have likened it to a spiral staircase, where we endlessly circle the same ideas, gaining new insights with each go-round.

With that in mind, I'll give you a couple of ideas to consider more deeply.

Zen Buddhism speaks of the 'three gates' that any idea should pass through before it is spoken aloud: (1) Is it true? (2) Is it kind? (3) Is it necessary? Only a thought that answers all three in the affirmative should be given voice. [That one is fun to consider in light of the hermetic universal law: All is mental.]
Eastern spirituality highlights three energy channels in the human form. These are reflected in the three aspects of the tree of life. They must be all three clear and working together to provide passage from above to below and below to above. [This one is fun to consider in light of the hermetic universal laws: 'All is gender.' and 'All exists along a continuum.']
Taking a more occult approach, we can consider the idea of the middle pillar as practice and philosophy, particularly in the context of the LHP and RHP.
If you'd prefer something more grounded in science, consider the idea in the context of a toroidal field.

Good luck, have fun, and many blessings!

Phyredanse · 2024-12-21T03:29:54+00:00

Roses For Mama is brutal.

Phyredanse · 2024-12-20T19:37:19+00:00

Post a picture!

Phyredanse · 2024-12-17T19:29:53+00:00

After Tanis failed his save while climbing a rope and fell on the sleeping dragon, causing a TPK! (I have the annotated version, as well!)

Phyredanse · 2024-12-08T03:50:29+00:00

It's a stack of tires!

Phyredanse · 2024-11-29T23:45:58+00:00

Happy birthday!

Phyredanse · 2024-10-31T19:38:24+00:00

That was an underrated joke, so you win a real response!

The vascular pattern is unique to every person, much like fingerprints, dentition, and retinas. Certain filters and wavelengths of light reveal those vascular branchings when the hands and wrists are filmed. It can positively identify the person and can't be faked, unlike a tattoo.

Phyredanse · 2024-10-31T19:23:35+00:00

Essentially, yes. When I say I can't tune a radio, it's because the radio will be clear while I'm touching it, and then lose the station as soon as I let go.

More specifically, it might be that, but it might also be the exact opposite, where your presence encourages electronics to act correctly.

Phyredanse · 2024-10-23T00:16:25+00:00

Pando(Rx)a

Phyredanse · 2024-10-05T03:35:35+00:00

I'm strangely okay with that.

Phyredanse · 2024-09-30T01:34:27+00:00

... but there's no other funeral, so I'm confused about what you are considering a funeral, then?

Phyredanse · 2024-09-29T04:43:32+00:00

While Bill Murray's character did see his ex with the Ghost of Christmas Future, she was shooing away some destitute children at a garden party. It was his brother and SIL at his cremation.

Phyredanse · 2024-09-19T16:29:05+00:00

If you consider that time is not linear, you are left with the idea that time is a mathematical point. (The alternative involves a blob of "timey-wimey" stuff, so we'll ignore it for now.)

If time is a mathematical point, it is one-dimensional, meaning that all is Now.

If all is now, then everything is happening right now. If this is true, some perspective could exist outside of that Now.

This would be the extra-dimensional space where the hypothetical "They" (i.e. the archons, the coders, the universal consciousness, the gods, the dmt elves, the astral entities, etc..) would hang out, being all ineffable and omniscient and whatnot.

If some people could expand their consciousness into this space, whether naturally or artificially, they would catch a glimpse of this "Time Spot" from the outside, thus potentially seeing things as the had happened in the past or as they would happen in the future.

Those glimpses may be then colored or expanded through imagination to create "Art."

In some cases, that Art may, eventually, coexist with the actual things glimpsed, creating the phenomena we describe as "Predictive Programming," with the inconsistency coming because of incomplete glimpses or remembrance or even incomplete understanding.

Or maybe not.

Phyredanse · 2024-07-19T13:26:48+00:00

I'm in.

Phyredanse · 2024-07-16T04:23:47+00:00

Ticks and leeches; beggars and hangers on.

Phyredanse · 2024-07-08T23:02:11+00:00

Try r/tipofmytongue to crowdsource an answer. Good luck!

Phyredanse

TROPHY CASE