I would like you to do is show exploring Aleksandr Dugin and Michael A. Aquinos work grooming the world to summon egregores. We can also talk about how Jordan B Peterson help assist them in their profiling work.
I would argue the most important passage Crowley wrote on the subject is... "It is immaterial whether these exist or not. By doing certain things certain results will follow; students are most earnestly warned against attributing objective reality or philosophic validity to any of them." - Liber O vel Manus et Sagittae, chapter I, paragraph 2
@@MarcoVisconti Don't remember mee? I'm on the other side of the pond, but we have about 93 friends in common ...or we used to. Last I heard, yoo don't consider any of us friends anymore. I'm down for being cool with yoo if yor down for being cool with mee.
The psychological model has always struck me as one which seeks primarily to earn the validation of materialists, in that sense it is the very opposite of 'radical'. I would suggest that it is the spiritists, the practitioners who believe in the literal existence of the entities they evoke, who are the true radicals, especially in our contemporary age of performative scepticism.
it is a simple business model tried and proven. take an old concept that works.... let's go with breathwork for example. forget calling it fire breath or some other nonsense. we cant quantify fire very well anyhow. now lets add a bunch of words and rename it. don't forget to slap your name on the project. now add in psychology or quantum to the name and wallah! aether= quantum field. posession= religously induced command oral and verbal hallucination. woman= not sure I've only had a bachelors in bio so far.
During the years I've followed both the believer perspective and the psychological perspective, and I've found that neither of them explain everything and are still ultimately in the realm of beliefs
Trying to use a model to analyse a model will do that. Psychology is a model that focuses on results, whereas Cowley and other ceremonial magicians are focused on magick as a process, as an art than a science.
Well, the delusional religious brain that exists outside of the parameters of logic and reason will do that. Materialistic naturalism is all that there can be and all there ever will be since it is materialistic naturalism, there may be para-normal (not common) but there can never be super-natural, because for a non invention phenomenon to be outside of nature is impossible.
What's the purpose to explain something? To satisfy someone in particular, or to a group of people? The first and most important thing is to acknowledge that everyone is free to believe or not, and that's all right, i.e. no one should start pretending to be the owner of the one and only truth, just by calling it Truth. Individually, the body is involved. So are senses and the brain. Anything can be a satisfactory explanation for any individual experience as long as the individual is convinced. Is more difficult to get a common agreement for a bunch of people, depending on the conditions they share for a satisfactory one. Science for example, requires the disbelief in its actual explanations, that's why research is so important there. Knowing the Truth would mean the end of Science. And just maybe, the end of History.
@@juanjoseescanellas3798 all truths are but half truths so even the truthful bits of our fabricated history are 50% bs at best. did history start with the gregorian calendar or is that the exact moment it was deleted? i don't know why we are so hell bent on explaining everything. but we seem to work like drones for some unseen queen, classifying everything. as if anything could be new under the sun. gotta love how researchers autograph body structures or diseases, how new age rebrand hermetics, or how psychology uses the same old shit with a different word.
Although I didn't know much about Crowley, I was surprised by his intro psychologizing demons when I picked up a translation of the Goetia. The fact he was inconsistent in espousing this belief, leaves me wondering whether (as you discussed) this was perhaps a transitive stage in Crowley's thinking or even a disingenuous apology meant to legitimize the practice for a materialist audience.
Interesting video for a complex figure. I would like to add that Jungs idea of the unconscious doesn't imply fabrication, the collective unconscious in particular allows for the existence of independent, autonomous beings.
An alternative view to a potential appeal to secularism is Crowley's interest in Yoga and Tantra (and syncretism) esp. the various chakra/nadi systems having bodily locations and correspondences. Goetia- Yoga-Psych perhaps all being woven together. Israel Regardie further ran with this, interpreting Goetia and Magick largely along more Jungian lines than Jamesian. Footnote: For those looking to complete the circle James Hillman then returned Jungian factors back into a more animistic and entity based formulation.
It's very comforting to know that I'm not the only person dealing with spirits/deities and alternately talking about the experience as a psychological one and an objectively real one.
I think Crowley like most practitioners probably went back and forth on it a great deal. I have no problem saying that I don't have a clue how it works haha. Maybe it involves the brain but there could be components outside it too. It's very difficult to tease out with certainty.
I can’t wait for new research to be done. Now with string theory the possibility of something existing in the same space we exist in, but not being able to see it has the potential to be more than psychological. I have always wondered if frequency had something to do with “spirit” type experiences. Humans can’t see ultraviolet like bees or hear what dogs can hear. Those frequencies are out of our range. We know of it now because someone believed, then explored, etc and now technology can show us something. All so fascinating. Love how this video ties into the short the other day!😂❤
I am very skeptical of the Psychologized reductionism perspective representing/explaining older practices as it feels largely like an attempt to cede some ground with modernity. It feels like a radical departure from the "enchanted" qualitative intuitive perspective premodern Occultists operated under and a transition towards the standard which demands quantification, measurement and existence within pure materiality. I doubt very seriously that any Occultists before this trend were operating under those kind of mindsets and much of it reads more like Crowley and company reading what they desire to out of the older texts. There were older traditions that did operate with a kind of naturalism or living universe in both the material and immaterial sense, but the way in which those concepts are approached in modernity is quite different conceptually. The assumption that there is even a need to cede ground to quantitative modern standards of truth and materialist empiricism is in of itself something that should be subjected to some scrutiny.
well obviously you fail to understand that newer is better, old is dumb, and teletubies were prophets. there is no way in hell people had better tech and spirituality than we do! now excuse me while i take a simple concept known for thousands of years, rebrand it as psychology or quantum something, and add 4 or 5 words to make it sound fancy.
Dr. Angela makes a great point here about the ambivalence of Crowley with respect to the emerging psychoanalytic trend and a separate "devil" such as the author of Descartes' cogito" of deception. Crowley specifically curses "Because" in his famous rant during his honeymoon in the pyramid (which was condemned by Regardie), strongly underscoring the point that the experience, not explanation is the goal, which is why the whole thing is a waste of time without "The Scarlet Woman." The things that Goetia, Ars-whatever, The Bride and so forth reveal is summed up his the conclusion that you find your own numbers in Gematria. In a way, it seems the philosophy behind it is to work atrophied groups of cognitive "muscles." Since "cosmology" comes under the heading of the rejected Because (as an obstacle to Will), the existentialism of Kierkegaard (who never concluded conclusively for either materialism OR theology) seems to be the place that Mathers, James, Bergson and others landed with Crowley on the "Absolute" nature of the "substance" of anything "supernatural." As far as Crowley ever losing interest in his own "vital" functions, it is only too obvious this DIDN'T happen. Perhaps his conclusion on the separateness of deity from psyche is a triune idea. such as the relationship between the the human, the divine, and the aggregate itself as its own entity. Crowley's Praise of Bertrand Russell indicates his partiality to paradoxical puzzles. Many people today will benefit from Angela's academic treatment of Crowley, even if they don't agree with his conclusions. Like the Roman Catholic Church itself, the questions Crowley raises are more important than any dogma harvested from the husks of his writing. Its his method for seeking he sought to communicate.
I think it's a very hard question to answer at this point, but I really disagree with those who say the answer doesn't matter. If it is all just psychological, mainstream psychology offers the same benefits more reliably, and magick ultimately provides no true transcendence. On the other hand, if it is able to connect with something outside the practitioner, it not only carries enormous metaphysical implications, it also offers a means to connect with a deeper reality. There's an enormous difference, regardless of if we are able to see it materially.
Hi! Just to add another piece of information to your great video: in Magick Without Tears, the (as far as I know) last book written by Crowley, he seems to have left behind any form of psychologization of disembodied entities. Nonetheless, he proposes a distinction between entities which are non-autonomous pieces of the All (like elementals, angels etc) and entities that are a complete microcosm like human beings and thus are fully autonomous (like the Secret Chiefs and the Holy Guardian Angel). Just my 2 pieces!
@@RalloR when i checked for Goatia spirits for instance you can see some spirits have origins you can find in Antiquity, but some others seems more like creations/servitors indeed.
I had no clue this tendency to psychologize spirits dates so long back! Thanks for telling the tell! It's quite funny to discover that nowadays materialists scientists such as Robin Carhart Harris (psychedelic science), who are very much into the psychologizing of psychedelic experiences (including spirits encounters) kind of have Crowley as a sort of precursor!
Naturalistic understanding of--well, everything, but that includes "occult" experiences--is a core axiom of Atheopaganism, and I'm glad you made this video. While some are resistant to the idea that there is no supernatural, these are usually people who simply do not understand how fallible our brains are, and how prone to mistakes. If we apply Occam's Razor, it is far more likely that such experiences are brain glitches/misperceptions than that they are actual supernatural beings, entities, or events.
Very informative. I tried getting into some of Crowley's oeuvre, but didn't know quite where to start when it came to parsing his candid speculation on the naturalistic perception of religious experiences. I've always been fascinated - though skeptical - with most matters of parapsychology. Frankly, I find REGULAR psychology to be an endlessly vexing field in itself! As for me, I think it's important to emphasize Crowley's influences; the social, cultural, and academic zeitgeists of his time, I feel, should prove deeply salient in the scope of his literary corpus. As you mentioned, this was an era of burgeoning (though nascent) sociological and psychological theory. Unfortunately, many of these foundational pioneers in their respective disciplines - both within and beyond academia - weren't exactly proactive in terms of qualitative, empirical fieldwork. As such, I generally prefer a more anthropological approach to the study of religion, as I feel it renders a more complete picture of beliefs, experiences, and lifeways. To that end, though, I can't help but be intrigued by Crowley's take on the matter, recognizing many of my own sentiments in due course. Although I must admit that a totally naturalist perspective is somewhat reductionist (and, I would argue, ethnocentric at times, as it often superimposes Westernized idioms onto longstanding etiologies), it is ultimately important to understand that most people, in most scenarios, can recognize causality and contingency. The real rub is if/when we designate an intrinsic sanctity or profanity to these implications. It is this latter dichotomy which, from my experience, speaks volumes about a person's worldview and, in turn, their religion.
Thankyou Dr.Angela Puca for a wonderful talk about Aleister Crowley and spiritual entities. Alieister Crowley has left us a lot of knowledge and it is our choice to delve into it. we should study his works and literature and not his private life.
Another of your concise, informed and informative videos. I like the way you put into context the late 19th Century and early 20th century efforts by many-James and Crowley among them-to bring a rational but not opposing point of view to the nature of religious experience. Similarly, with Crowley's writings I have found that I must bring to my reading of him complementary perspectives, since I'm not by nature inclined to trust him completely. 100 years later, some have considerable first hand experience with long established esoteric traditions from the East which Crowley, James and Jung and other 19th Century occultists didn't have. Nor did they have access to living shamanic traditions (though Jung did later on.) In the 21st Century it now seems to me the challenge is to take into account the facts of the quantum universe(s) when using mind to beyond mind: Gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate, bodhi, svaha! Grazie, Angela per la sua lavoro importante!
I think the mechanism of action of magic occultism yoga and even religion is all psychological there may perhaps be some sociological phenomenon happening that we don't understand yet based on the fact we don't totally understand consciousness
By my spiritual practices I came to the theory that our mind acts as a prism, the entities pass through it and manifest according to the characteristics of this medium. In the same way that a video will appear different depending on the device that plays it. Non physical entities have an independent ego, but will take on an appearance dependent on our mental structure and need to be compatible with it
@@drangelapuca Taking inspiration from your conversation on Satanism.... (and Prince's Black Album..lol) I have constructed a poem in His honor... Let's call this one "Lucifer" shall we? .. forgive the awkward way I have to hyphenate here using numbers so as not to make a complete mess.... 1. Call me Darkness. 2. Call me Sin. 3. Call me Virtue, 4. Born within. 5. Call me Angel, 6. Cloth'd in might, 7. Son of Glory, 8 Prince of Light... 9. Blood redeeming, 10. You've been dreaming ; 11. Sign above the Door... 12. Brother Caan and Sister Lily; 13. Chaff upon the Floor. 14. Alone, Whose power draws the sword 15. Of Michael's perfect praise ... 16. Call me Dawn's sweet Interum; 17. Palaios Hemeron!
Fascinating. I noticed some human behaviors that have entity influence. I feel somewhat modern psychology wanted to give the person a practical way to help their problems tangibly. I do feel like both psychology and spiritual healing have value, however not for some specific personalities.
Interesting idea. The absence of sexual vitality induces the presence of vital gullibility. Has anyone done a study of Crowley and Wilhelm Reich, comparing the two?
Different mystic practices will produce different results. The partner based post-coital is better performing at getting into the psyche of the user without actually "shortcircuiting" parts of the brain like DMT. It can act to replace the sense of consciousness with a sense of dying also referred to classically as "the little death", particularly associated with orgasm in females, and results in a percieved connectiveness to those that have died, particularly the recently dead. The problem with the technique is that it can be too effective and lead to the delusion of divinity and a capacity to force forward visions of the dead. Suggestion can be a powerful motif. The visions are not longlived, possibly as long as 30 minutes maybe longer. But with patners, confirmation bias slips in, and at some point one of the partners must ask the other what was their vision, in the discussion followed by additional experiences each is focused toward a narrowing set of visions. If one imagines over multiple sessions, each time individuals rule in or out certain visions, eventually they will semirandomly gravitate toward a limited set of choices, still over longer time one. Opinion. While this technique is exceptionally useful for training mystics, it tends also to be exceptional for producing delusions. Mystics should avoid such practices and instead practice meditation techniques that infrequently produce epiphanies. Partners are undesirous.
If it make you feel better, CZcams tells me when you videos are posted. Not so much others, but they let me know about everything you post, even those ticktoks or short videos. 😁
I can't really agree with him that these entities are merely portions of the human brain which have been stimulated. After everything I have experienced, I was acutely (and painfully!) aware that they existed outside of my own perceptions and beyond my own faculties. Still, interesting conclusions on his part. Certainly many practitioners followed after him and began to see these entities even relegated to mere myth.
@@TheAtheopaganismChannel It has occurred to me. I know the difference between a "brain glitch" and a spirit manifestation, thanks. Has it occurred to you that not everyone who claims spiritual experiences is as crazy as you think they are?
@brightbite I don't think you're crazy. I think you're human. And like all humans, you just can't tell the difference between a brain glitch and a "spirit manifestation". Your conclusion would make sense if there were such a thing as spirits, but the overwhelming evidence is that there is not.
I'm not sure that Crowleys views can really be said to be inconsistent. Remember we're talking about magicians here, people with an inherently idealist (reality is shaped by mind) worldview. Viewed in this light there is little to no separation for them between psychological-subjective and materialist-objective, hence entities can be both personal and universal, much like Jung's collective unconscious and the Archetypes. This view is better expressed within the works of Spare rather than Crowley who tends towards erudition and ritual rather than the shamanistic but the same worldview shapes both. PS I'm also not convinced that Crowley's rationale for the dismissal of Spiritualism as flim flam can be applied to his own practices.. Like many before him (and after) criticism of the old, outdated and hackneyed is often a pretext for renovation, a way to distance the 'new' from the old and cringe-worthy rather than a considered and logical expression of an internally consistent view, As such I'd argue that it's better seen as an exercise in rhetoric and politics than in philosophy or rationality.
57th to like! Thank you for the illuminating lecture Dr. Puca! Some thoughts inspired by the discussion. The body is a dynamic control system and as such is a record of the wells of attraction both personal and ancestral that have worked to get you here. This likely means that consciousness could be distributed not only by extension into the environment (like how going into a new room can 'wipe' your mind, e.g., the threshold effect and other phenomena like memory palaces) but also distributed epigenetically. Conscious thought is in some sense always after the fact, as in the process of thought is initiated before we become conscious of our choices etc. and the initialising data and routines, i.e., information [structured data] from the wells of attraction encoded in our bodies, are uploaded from our bodies just as much as from the central nervous system and brain. The apparent autonomy of ritual entities might be reducible to emergent epigenetic informational structures and matrices produced in our imagination: visions. (Why matrices? the gaps in structure of a matrix allow for interpolation and extrapolation accounting for the variety of mystical experiences while retaining the overall structural similarity) And since cognition at this level (and every level tbh) is socially distributed, the autonomy apparent in ritual action could be understood as emergent structure from interactions of epigenetic structures between multiple participants, especially with sex likely being involved in such cases. All order is an emergent structure supervening on random fluctuations in a field of chaos. Any purported ritual entity is at least a sort of [complex] psychological structure after all and drawing boundaries between entities in a social and temporal context is fraught, c.f., the Ship of Theseus. So the autonomy is real: an intersubjective truth of states of altered consciousness instead of an objective sort. but the idea of objective reality is incoherent or inconsistent anyways. And is it not better grounded in reality to understand such entities as [structured] truths of how our bodies are embedded in the world of action? Much love!
Abuldiz, i had not heard of this entity. evidently he and Crowely did not get along at all. Abuldiz did not care for Crowley's tone of questioning and Crowley did not care fore Abuldiz vagueness and lack of full co operation so not much came from the meeting .
I have heard of this before in passing but honestly, never understood Crowley as such a naturalist. Admittedly, I also never bothered to check. This video is so clear and succinct, backed by citations and as always, makes me want to know more! 👍
Or… occultizing of psychological concepts? It’s interesting to note the history of psychology, and keep in mind that while psychology may be a “social science”, and in the best forms makes use of science/experimental methods, psychology is not a science.
Of course, then there is the experience of Jung where what at first appears psychical can show up in the physical. There is no real boundary between the two as one can treat subatomic interactions as semiotic rather than mechanical and all semiotic processes are minds. "Atoms in the laboratory are weird stuff, behaving like active agents rather than inert substances. They make unpredictable choices between alternative possibilities according to the laws of quantum mechanics. It appears that mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent inherent in every atom."-- physicist Freeman Dyson. Choice is a function of freewill which is fundamental to all reality. It is neither determined nor random, but unpredictable and acausal (i.e., it breaks causal chains). Thaumaturgic phenomena are acausal.
Personally i think the genius of AC's work is that interacting with these powers we call spirits gods etc. is in the nature of knowing one's own nature and powers. To realise phenomenologically experientially the gods are powers of your being, but then what being is man? If AC's is read as ideas only, none of this makes any sense.
Crowley definitely knew a variety of idealist philosophies, and when you realize we are all in the mind of the oneness, psychology becomes magick, and magick becomes lucid dreaming for the one
It would be interesting to find out how Crowley verified that the entities he met were real and also not evil (while those of others were imagined). I personally think that the entities that Crowley encountered (like the one who gave him 'The Book of the Law') seem rather evil and best avoided by humans.
Whether or not these entities are good or evil is in the eye of the beholder. When we die, we will encounter entities that we perceive as dragging us to hell or beckoning us to heaven. How one dies (and how one lives) is dependent on the perceiver.
"Evil" is a very subjective term. Much like how many Christians view the Serpent as an "Evil" Entity, while certain sect of Gnostics view it as the forebearer of Knowledge and is praised. I've always seen it as your "Meat-Brain" is the Hardware, like a Computer, and MIND is the O.S. The DIVINE MIND is like the Internet that our MIND connects to and downloads information. Those "Entities" are like Programs or Applications, that exist Outside of us as Thoughtforms, or Energies, of the DIVINE MIND, as well as Inside of us, like Fractal, that are parts of our own Psyche. They are both As Above, as well as Below. And as Magicians, we learn how to read this software coding so we can reprogram these Applications (Entities) to further our own Will. Usually that means just the Magican themselves are 'Updated'. Evil only exists, as far as Entities go, as long as you Allow them to.
BECOME MY PATRON! www.patreon.com/angelapuca
ONE-OFF DONATIONS paypal.me/angelasymposium
JOIN MEMBERSHIPS czcams.com/channels/PSbip_LX2AxbGeAQfLp-Ig.htmljoin
FOLLOW ME: Facebook (Angela's Symposium), Instagram (angela_symposium), Twitter (@angelapuca11), TikTok (Angela's Symposium).
I would like you to do is show exploring Aleksandr Dugin and Michael A. Aquinos work grooming the world to summon egregores. We can also talk about how Jordan B Peterson help assist them in their profiling work.
I would argue the most important passage Crowley wrote on the subject is...
"It is immaterial whether these exist or not. By doing certain things certain results will follow; students are most earnestly warned against attributing objective reality or philosophic validity to any of them."
- Liber O vel Manus et Sagittae, chapter I, paragraph 2
Came here to say this. You beat me to it. =)
Well stated!
@@MarcoVisconti Are we still friends, Marco?
@@architeuthis3476 I don’t think I know you?
@@MarcoVisconti Don't remember mee? I'm on the other side of the pond, but we have about 93 friends in common
...or we used to. Last I heard, yoo don't consider any of us friends anymore.
I'm down for being cool with yoo if yor down for being cool with mee.
The psychological model has always struck me as one which seeks primarily to earn the validation of materialists, in that sense it is the very opposite of 'radical'.
I would suggest that it is the spiritists, the practitioners who believe in the literal existence of the entities they evoke, who are the true radicals, especially in our contemporary age of performative scepticism.
it is a simple business model tried and proven. take an old concept that works.... let's go with breathwork for example. forget calling it fire breath or some other nonsense. we cant quantify fire very well anyhow. now lets add a bunch of words and rename it. don't forget to slap your name on the project. now add in psychology or quantum to the name and wallah! aether= quantum field. posession= religously induced command oral and verbal hallucination. woman= not sure I've only had a bachelors in bio so far.
During the years I've followed both the believer perspective and the psychological perspective, and I've found that neither of them explain everything and are still ultimately in the realm of beliefs
Trying to use a model to analyse a model will do that. Psychology is a model that focuses on results, whereas Cowley and other ceremonial magicians are focused on magick as a process, as an art than a science.
Well, the delusional religious brain that exists outside of the parameters of logic and reason will do that. Materialistic naturalism is all that there can be and all there ever will be since it is materialistic naturalism, there may be para-normal (not common) but there can never be super-natural, because for a non invention phenomenon to be outside of nature is impossible.
@@BigHenFor
Process inherently requires methodology.
What's the purpose to explain something? To satisfy someone in particular, or to a group of people? The first and most important thing is to acknowledge that everyone is free to believe or not, and that's all right, i.e. no one should start pretending to be the owner of the one and only truth, just by calling it Truth. Individually, the body is involved. So are senses and the brain. Anything can be a satisfactory explanation for any individual experience as long as the individual is convinced. Is more difficult to get a common agreement for a bunch of people, depending on the conditions they share for a satisfactory one. Science for example, requires the disbelief in its actual explanations, that's why research is so important there. Knowing the Truth would mean the end of Science. And just maybe, the end of History.
@@juanjoseescanellas3798 all truths are but half truths so even the truthful bits of our fabricated history are 50% bs at best. did history start with the gregorian calendar or is that the exact moment it was deleted?
i don't know why we are so hell bent on explaining everything. but we seem to work like drones for some unseen queen, classifying everything. as if anything could be new under the sun. gotta love how researchers autograph body structures or diseases, how new age rebrand hermetics, or how psychology uses the same old shit with a different word.
Hello Belinda Crowley is here!!!!!yes I'm related to a listed through my marriage!!! When the family gets together we talk of his many adventures!
Although I didn't know much about Crowley, I was surprised by his intro psychologizing demons when I picked up a translation of the Goetia. The fact he was inconsistent in espousing this belief, leaves me wondering whether (as you discussed) this was perhaps a transitive stage in Crowley's thinking or even a disingenuous apology meant to legitimize the practice for a materialist audience.
Interesting video for a complex figure. I would like to add that Jungs idea of the unconscious doesn't imply fabrication, the collective unconscious in particular allows for the existence of independent, autonomous beings.
An alternative view to a potential appeal to secularism is Crowley's interest in Yoga and Tantra (and syncretism) esp. the various chakra/nadi systems having bodily locations and correspondences. Goetia- Yoga-Psych perhaps all being woven together.
Israel Regardie further ran with this, interpreting Goetia and Magick largely along more Jungian lines than Jamesian.
Footnote: For those looking to complete the circle James Hillman then returned Jungian factors back into a more animistic and entity based formulation.
It's very comforting to know that I'm not the only person dealing with spirits/deities and alternately talking about the experience as a psychological one and an objectively real one.
Crowley is very interesting, Great work Angela.
I think Crowley like most practitioners probably went back and forth on it a great deal. I have no problem saying that I don't have a clue how it works haha. Maybe it involves the brain but there could be components outside it too. It's very difficult to tease out with certainty.
Wooo!!! Always excited for a new video 😁
I can’t wait for new research to be done. Now with string theory the possibility of something existing in the same space we exist in, but not being able to see it has the potential to be more than psychological.
I have always wondered if frequency had something to do with “spirit” type experiences. Humans can’t see ultraviolet like bees or hear what dogs can hear. Those frequencies are out of our range. We know of it now because someone believed, then explored, etc and now technology can show us something. All so fascinating.
Love how this video ties into the short the other day!😂❤
Don’t we only see 1% of the color spectrum or something crazy like that? Love this comment!
I am very skeptical of the Psychologized reductionism perspective representing/explaining older practices as it feels largely like an attempt to cede some ground with modernity. It feels like a radical departure from the "enchanted" qualitative intuitive perspective premodern Occultists operated under and a transition towards the standard which demands quantification, measurement and existence within pure materiality. I doubt very seriously that any Occultists before this trend were operating under those kind of mindsets and much of it reads more like Crowley and company reading what they desire to out of the older texts. There were older traditions that did operate with a kind of naturalism or living universe in both the material and immaterial sense, but the way in which those concepts are approached in modernity is quite different conceptually.
The assumption that there is even a need to cede ground to quantitative modern standards of truth and materialist empiricism is in of itself something that should be subjected to some scrutiny.
well obviously you fail to understand that newer is better, old is dumb, and teletubies were prophets. there is no way in hell people had better tech and spirituality than we do! now excuse me while i take a simple concept known for thousands of years, rebrand it as psychology or quantum something, and add 4 or 5 words to make it sound fancy.
That's just the sign of the times I suppose!
Dr. Angela makes a great point here about the ambivalence of Crowley with respect to the emerging psychoanalytic trend and a separate "devil" such as the author of Descartes' cogito" of deception. Crowley specifically curses "Because" in his famous rant during his honeymoon in the pyramid (which was condemned by Regardie), strongly underscoring the point that the experience, not explanation is the goal, which is why the whole thing is a waste of time without "The Scarlet Woman." The things that Goetia, Ars-whatever, The Bride and so forth reveal is summed up his the conclusion that you find your own numbers in Gematria. In a way, it seems the philosophy behind it is to work atrophied groups of cognitive "muscles."
Since "cosmology" comes under the heading of the rejected Because (as an obstacle to Will), the existentialism of Kierkegaard (who never concluded conclusively for either materialism OR theology) seems to be the place that Mathers, James, Bergson and others landed with Crowley on the "Absolute" nature of the "substance" of anything "supernatural."
As far as Crowley ever losing interest in his own "vital" functions, it is only too obvious this DIDN'T happen. Perhaps his conclusion on the separateness of deity from psyche is a triune idea. such as the relationship between the the human, the divine, and the aggregate itself as its own entity. Crowley's Praise of Bertrand Russell indicates his partiality to paradoxical puzzles. Many people today will benefit from Angela's academic treatment of Crowley, even if they don't agree with his conclusions. Like the Roman Catholic Church itself, the questions Crowley raises are more important than any dogma harvested from the husks of his writing. Its his method for seeking he sought to communicate.
I think it's a very hard question to answer at this point, but I really disagree with those who say the answer doesn't matter. If it is all just psychological, mainstream psychology offers the same benefits more reliably, and magick ultimately provides no true transcendence. On the other hand, if it is able to connect with something outside the practitioner, it not only carries enormous metaphysical implications, it also offers a means to connect with a deeper reality. There's an enormous difference, regardless of if we are able to see it materially.
Looking forward to being re-enchanted when my "vital powers" wane later in life lol great video as always Dr. P
hahaha
@@drangelapuca can i write you an email
Thank you for such a clear, concise, and rich presentation of this profound subject.
Hi! Just to add another piece of information to your great video: in Magick Without Tears, the (as far as I know) last book written by Crowley, he seems to have left behind any form of psychologization of disembodied entities. Nonetheless, he proposes a distinction between entities which are non-autonomous pieces of the All (like elementals, angels etc) and entities that are a complete microcosm like human beings and thus are fully autonomous (like the Secret Chiefs and the Holy Guardian Angel). Just my 2 pieces!
Sent here from Dr. Justin Sledge @ Esoterica.
Love your works I’ve seen thus far!
Those entities have their own independent existence, I can quite assure you of that. By expanding our conscious awareness, we become aware of them.
I think they might be but also that they could have been created by anterior cults and practices what do you think? Everything is a Tulsa?
@@RalloR when i checked for Goatia spirits for instance you can see some spirits have origins you can find in Antiquity, but some others seems more like creations/servitors indeed.
It sounds like Crowley's psychological interpretation of entities was an earlier stage of his thinking that he abandoned as he gained more experience.
Your video presentations are always fascinating & informative. Thank you
I had no clue this tendency to psychologize spirits dates so long back! Thanks for telling the tell!
It's quite funny to discover that nowadays materialists scientists such as Robin Carhart Harris (psychedelic science), who are very much into the psychologizing of psychedelic experiences (including spirits encounters) kind of have Crowley as a sort of precursor!
Naturalistic understanding of--well, everything, but that includes "occult" experiences--is a core axiom of Atheopaganism, and I'm glad you made this video.
While some are resistant to the idea that there is no supernatural, these are usually people who simply do not understand how fallible our brains are, and how prone to mistakes. If we apply Occam's Razor, it is far more likely that such experiences are brain glitches/misperceptions than that they are actual supernatural beings, entities, or events.
Long time no see, at least on my feed. Love your videos.
Very informative. I tried getting into some of Crowley's oeuvre, but didn't know quite where to start when it came to parsing his candid speculation on the naturalistic perception of religious experiences. I've always been fascinated - though skeptical - with most matters of parapsychology. Frankly, I find REGULAR psychology to be an endlessly vexing field in itself!
As for me, I think it's important to emphasize Crowley's influences; the social, cultural, and academic zeitgeists of his time, I feel, should prove deeply salient in the scope of his literary corpus. As you mentioned, this was an era of burgeoning (though nascent) sociological and psychological theory. Unfortunately, many of these foundational pioneers in their respective disciplines - both within and beyond academia - weren't exactly proactive in terms of qualitative, empirical fieldwork. As such, I generally prefer a more anthropological approach to the study of religion, as I feel it renders a more complete picture of beliefs, experiences, and lifeways. To that end, though, I can't help but be intrigued by Crowley's take on the matter, recognizing many of my own sentiments in due course. Although I must admit that a totally naturalist perspective is somewhat reductionist (and, I would argue, ethnocentric at times, as it often superimposes Westernized idioms onto longstanding etiologies), it is ultimately important to understand that most people, in most scenarios, can recognize causality and contingency. The real rub is if/when we designate an intrinsic sanctity or profanity to these implications. It is this latter dichotomy which, from my experience, speaks volumes about a person's worldview and, in turn, their religion.
Thankyou Dr.Angela Puca for a wonderful talk about Aleister Crowley and spiritual entities. Alieister Crowley has left us a lot of knowledge and it is our choice to delve into it. we should study his works and literature and not his private life.
Thanks
thank you so much
I'm new here! I wanted to say thank you for all the helpful information!
Very insightful.
Another of your concise, informed and informative videos. I like the way you put into context the late 19th Century and early 20th century efforts by many-James and Crowley among them-to bring a rational but not opposing point of view to the nature of religious experience. Similarly, with Crowley's writings I have found that I must bring to my reading of him complementary perspectives, since I'm not by nature inclined to trust him completely. 100 years later, some have considerable first hand experience with long established esoteric traditions from the East which Crowley, James and Jung and other 19th Century occultists didn't have. Nor did they have access to living shamanic traditions (though Jung did later on.) In the 21st Century it now seems to me the challenge is to take into account the facts of the quantum universe(s) when using mind to beyond mind: Gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate, bodhi, svaha! Grazie, Angela per la sua lavoro importante!
Crowley's belief in the connection between credulity and libidinal energy is fascinating
it is
I think the mechanism of action of magic occultism yoga and even religion is all psychological there may perhaps be some sociological phenomenon happening that we don't understand yet based on the fact we don't totally understand consciousness
By my spiritual practices I came to the theory that our mind acts as a prism, the entities pass through it and manifest according to the characteristics of this medium. In the same way that a video will appear different depending on the device that plays it.
Non physical entities have an independent ego, but will take on an appearance dependent on our mental structure and need to be compatible with it
I had no idea Crowley was materialist in his take on spirituality. To me, animism is also not wuwu but science.
I wanted to upvote this video but the like button was already smashed from my last upvote of you.
Would love one on Helena Blavatsky.
Wonderful content. Thank you!
Glad you enjoyed it!
@@drangelapuca Taking inspiration from your conversation on Satanism.... (and Prince's Black Album..lol) I have constructed a poem in His honor... Let's call this one "Lucifer" shall we? .. forgive the awkward way I have to hyphenate here using numbers so as not to make a complete mess.... 1. Call me Darkness. 2. Call me Sin. 3. Call me Virtue, 4. Born within. 5. Call me Angel, 6. Cloth'd in might, 7. Son of Glory, 8 Prince of Light... 9. Blood redeeming, 10. You've been dreaming ; 11. Sign above the Door... 12. Brother Caan and Sister Lily; 13. Chaff upon the Floor. 14. Alone, Whose power draws the sword 15. Of Michael's perfect praise ... 16. Call me Dawn's sweet Interum; 17. Palaios Hemeron!
Crowley was a scholar!!! How could a true scholar not psychologize entities?
Fascinating. I noticed some human behaviors that have entity influence. I feel somewhat modern psychology wanted to give the person a practical way to help their problems tangibly. I do feel like both psychology and spiritual healing have value, however not for some specific personalities.
Interesting idea. The absence of sexual vitality induces the presence of vital gullibility. Has anyone done a study of Crowley and Wilhelm Reich, comparing the two?
I knew Grady MacMutry. He once told me Crowly called his sexual practices his Goetic Demons.
Different mystic practices will produce different results. The partner based post-coital is better performing at getting into the psyche of the user without actually "shortcircuiting" parts of the brain like DMT. It can act to replace the sense of consciousness with a sense of dying also referred to classically as "the little death", particularly associated with orgasm in females, and results in a percieved connectiveness to those that have died, particularly the recently dead.
The problem with the technique is that it can be too effective and lead to the delusion of divinity and a capacity to force forward visions of the dead. Suggestion can be a powerful motif. The visions are not longlived, possibly as long as 30 minutes maybe longer. But with patners, confirmation bias slips in, and at some point one of the partners must ask the other what was their vision, in the discussion followed by additional experiences each is focused toward a narrowing set of visions. If one imagines over multiple sessions, each time individuals rule in or out certain visions, eventually they will semirandomly gravitate toward a limited set of choices, still over longer time one.
Opinion. While this technique is exceptionally useful for training mystics, it tends also to be exceptional for producing delusions. Mystics should avoid such practices and instead practice meditation techniques that infrequently produce epiphanies. Partners are undesirous.
If it make you feel better, CZcams tells me when you videos are posted. Not so much others, but they let me know about everything you post, even those ticktoks or short videos. 😁
I can't really agree with him that these entities are merely portions of the human brain which have been stimulated. After everything I have experienced, I was acutely (and painfully!) aware that they existed outside of my own perceptions and beyond my own faculties. Still, interesting conclusions on his part. Certainly many practitioners followed after him and began to see these entities even relegated to mere myth.
Has it occurred to you that you can't trust your own experiences? The brain glitches all the time.
@@TheAtheopaganismChannel It has occurred to me. I know the difference between a "brain glitch" and a spirit manifestation, thanks. Has it occurred to you that not everyone who claims spiritual experiences is as crazy as you think they are?
@brightbite I don't think you're crazy. I think you're human. And like all humans, you just can't tell the difference between a brain glitch and a "spirit manifestation". Your conclusion would make sense if there were such a thing as spirits, but the overwhelming evidence is that there is not.
@@TheAtheopaganismChannel You are in for a rude awakening, my friend. That is all I will say.
@@brightbite I look forward to it. Good luck to you.
I'm not sure that Crowleys views can really be said to be inconsistent.
Remember we're talking about magicians here, people with an inherently idealist (reality is shaped by mind) worldview.
Viewed in this light there is little to no separation for them between psychological-subjective and materialist-objective, hence entities can be both personal and universal, much like Jung's collective unconscious and the Archetypes. This view is better expressed within the works of Spare rather than Crowley who tends towards erudition and ritual rather than the shamanistic but the same worldview shapes both.
PS
I'm also not convinced that Crowley's rationale for the dismissal of Spiritualism as flim flam can be applied to his own practices.. Like many before him (and after) criticism of the old, outdated and hackneyed is often a pretext for renovation, a way to distance the 'new' from the old and cringe-worthy rather than a considered and logical expression of an internally consistent view, As such I'd argue that it's better seen as an exercise in rhetoric and politics than in philosophy or rationality.
57th to like! Thank you for the illuminating lecture Dr. Puca! Some thoughts inspired by the discussion. The body is a dynamic control system and as such is a record of the wells of attraction both personal and ancestral that have worked to get you here. This likely means that consciousness could be distributed not only by extension into the environment (like how going into a new room can 'wipe' your mind, e.g., the threshold effect and other phenomena like memory palaces) but also distributed epigenetically. Conscious thought is in some sense always after the fact, as in the process of thought is initiated before we become conscious of our choices etc. and the initialising data and routines, i.e., information [structured data] from the wells of attraction encoded in our bodies, are uploaded from our bodies just as much as from the central nervous system and brain. The apparent autonomy of ritual entities might be reducible to emergent epigenetic informational structures and matrices produced in our imagination: visions. (Why matrices? the gaps in structure of a matrix allow for interpolation and extrapolation accounting for the variety of mystical experiences while retaining the overall structural similarity) And since cognition at this level (and every level tbh) is socially distributed, the autonomy apparent in ritual action could be understood as emergent structure from interactions of epigenetic structures between multiple participants, especially with sex likely being involved in such cases. All order is an emergent structure supervening on random fluctuations in a field of chaos. Any purported ritual entity is at least a sort of [complex] psychological structure after all and drawing boundaries between entities in a social and temporal context is fraught, c.f., the Ship of Theseus. So the autonomy is real: an intersubjective truth of states of altered consciousness instead of an objective sort. but the idea of objective reality is incoherent or inconsistent anyways. And is it not better grounded in reality to understand such entities as [structured] truths of how our bodies are embedded in the world of action? Much love!
Great Shirt. Great video. Lovely.
Abuldiz, i had not heard of this entity. evidently he and Crowely did not get along at all. Abuldiz did not care for Crowley's tone of questioning and Crowley did not care fore Abuldiz vagueness and lack of full co operation so not much came from the meeting .
Scientific versions of Esoteric themes
Biofield of Biophysics/Aura
Cicadian cycle, Seasonal Biology, Seasonal Sociology/Astrology
Hyperdimensions/Astral plane
Quantum observer effect/Magick
Esoteric Chemistry/Alchemy
I have heard of this before in passing but honestly, never understood Crowley as such a naturalist. Admittedly, I also never bothered to check.
This video is so clear and succinct, backed by citations and as always, makes me want to know more! 👍
I have that exact shirt!
Or… occultizing of psychological concepts? It’s interesting to note the history of psychology, and keep in mind that while psychology may be a “social science”, and in the best forms makes use of science/experimental methods, psychology is not a science.
Dion Fortune talked about this a bit
Angela have you heard about Saint joseph of cupertino's manuscript about levitation is there translation research about it ?
Interesting!
Glad you think so!
Angela ...... Relax.
Of course, then there is the experience of Jung where what at first appears psychical can show up in the physical. There is no real boundary between the two as one can treat subatomic interactions as semiotic rather than mechanical and all semiotic processes are minds. "Atoms in the laboratory are weird stuff, behaving like active agents rather than inert substances. They make unpredictable choices between alternative possibilities according to the laws of quantum mechanics. It appears that mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent inherent in every atom."-- physicist Freeman Dyson. Choice is a function of freewill which is fundamental to all reality. It is neither determined nor random, but unpredictable and acausal (i.e., it breaks causal chains). Thaumaturgic phenomena are acausal.
Yaaaay new vidddd
Personally i think the genius of AC's work is that interacting with these powers we call spirits gods etc. is in the nature of knowing one's own nature and powers. To realise phenomenologically experientially the gods are powers of your being, but then what being is man?
If AC's is read as ideas only, none of this makes any sense.
So was this like a simulacra of archetypes induced from trance states? Or an actual contact from the stuff out there?
❤️❤️❤️
Crowley definitely knew a variety of idealist philosophies, and when you realize we are all in the mind of the oneness, psychology becomes magick, and magick becomes lucid dreaming for the one
Awesomeness!!! 93/93 /G\
As usual Crowley..sex.
Ha
Thanks for this Angela!
😍🫠
It would be interesting to find out how Crowley verified that the entities he met were real and also not evil (while those of others were imagined). I personally think that the entities that Crowley encountered (like the one who gave him 'The Book of the Law') seem rather evil and best avoided by humans.
Whether or not these entities are good or evil is in the eye of the beholder.
When we die, we will encounter entities that we perceive as dragging us to hell or beckoning us to heaven. How one dies (and how one lives) is dependent on the perceiver.
"Evil" is a very subjective term. Much like how many Christians view the Serpent as an "Evil" Entity, while certain sect of Gnostics view it as the forebearer of Knowledge and is praised.
I've always seen it as your "Meat-Brain" is the Hardware, like a Computer, and MIND is the O.S. The DIVINE MIND is like the Internet that our MIND connects to and downloads information. Those "Entities" are like Programs or Applications, that exist Outside of us as Thoughtforms, or Energies, of the DIVINE MIND, as well as Inside of us, like Fractal, that are parts of our own Psyche. They are both As Above, as well as Below. And as Magicians, we learn how to read this software coding so we can reprogram these Applications (Entities) to further our own Will. Usually that means just the Magican themselves are 'Updated'.
Evil only exists, as far as Entities go, as long as you Allow them to.
Hell no
All humans will come under my reign and my laws.