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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Gordon White
Read between
June 12 - June 17, 2020
Consider Nagarjuna’s description of reality as Indra’s net; an infinite web of diamonds where each individual stone contains and reflects an image of every other stone.
each microcosmic consciousness contains in miniature a version of the macrocosmic mind of God.
Firstly, lean into optionality rather than charging off after lofty goals from a standing start. Take single steps rather than multiple steps to maximise your starting probability. At each step on the way to your goal, maximising optionality also maximises the probability of a preferred outcome for the next step. Make peace with the cognitive reality that you both probably do not really know what you want and definitely do not know the correct way to achieve it from the outset, so re-examine your options at each step and be open to the hitherto-unanticipated route.
“whatever we build in the imagination will accomplish itself in the circumstances of our lives.”
There is no greater defence against the grim, uncompromising wasteland of the late capitalist world than the unshakeable awareness that it will end and you will not.
Becoming invincible is the process of immunising yourself against the monoculture.
The spirit world is certainly holy, but that does not mean it is nice.
Preparation: Headless Rite
Expect the most unbelievably remote coincidences to begin manifesting. Also expect that any attempt to explain how amazing these coincidences are will fall on deaf or unsympathetic ears.
The simplest way to begin with the spirits of the dead is to buy an Anima Sola/Lonely Soul statue or card, light a white candle before it and offer them spring water to quench their/his/her thirst. (Spring water makes the best offering for the spirits of the dead because it comes from under the ground.) Incidentally, this simple practice is also an effective way to “cool” minor poltergeist or spirit phenomena in a house or business.
The Rite of Saint Nicholas
Consciousness Beyond Life:
Emerging from the sometimes-literally psychedelic period of Greco-Egyptian syncretism, Hermanubis is a hybrid form of the Egyptian funerary god, Anubis, and the Greek messenger-trickster, Hermes.
decans—mighty spirits that hold sway over sections of the night sky.
Erathoath (Hermes-Thoth)
Apherou, meaning “way-opener.”
Working with Hermanubis
The spell indicates the invocation should be repeated seven times.
Here is the part where Hermanubis becomes extremely useful and directional when it comes to speak with specific groups of the dead.
Err on the side of caution with offerings for other spirits and leave them at crossroads, in graveyards, or other between-spaces not located on your property.
Another Offering Rite
The combination of knowing that you survive death, along with your ancestors and the heroic dead, is an immovable backstop that provides you with the courage to move forward in all fields of life.
The Devil at the Crossroads
theoi.com
Mystical Origins of the Tarot,
Forecasting
Susan Miller’s astrologyzone.com,
Cartomancy
Calibration
Interleaving or interleaved practice is a method of studying used as a memory recall booster. Rather than cramming, recall is higher in instances where there are gaps in study or memorisation.
Nested Divination
Cartomantic Ritual
Consecration
Enchant long for positive outcomes and divine short to avoid negative ones.
divine for the pitfalls and shoal sigils to nudge for beneficial probabilistic outcomes that avoid or
skirt around them.
Sigil Activation
A defining characteristic of the most prominent magicians of fiction and reality is that they meddle. Dee, Crowley, Merlin, Gandalf, Morgan Le Fay, Bruno. Whatever the weather, they went out to remake the universe in a way that suited them better. We must do the same. Whatever the macroeconomic conditions, the magician must always heed the advice of Firefly’s Captain Mal Reynolds: aim to misbehave.
What you can instead calculate is fragility. An object or person can be defined as fragile if it responds negatively to volatility.
The goal of the magician, particularly the chaos magician, is to position his or her life so that it responds positively to volatility rather than negatively.
By refusing to adjust your strategy from the recommended life offered to the baby boomers forty years ago, what you are saying is that you have every confidence in the system; the current challenges are just temporary, and someone will come and sort it all out for us.
Bravery, when combined with alertness, manifests in the highly desirable state of being “lucky.”
Particularly for those with creative aspirations, doing only what you love is terrible advice as it exposes you to much, much more downside from risk than there is upside.
Trial and error is the intelligence of chaos.
Trial and error is the intelligence of chaos because your mistakes are information.
Optionality is applying the intelligence of chaos.
If you want to be rich, move to where people get rich and then do not get into debt. If you want something different for your life, the same unemotional examination is required.
Buying coffee on the street instead of in a Starbucks is the poor man’s way to get rich. In other words, you will never get rich by scratching out ten cents from your dollar. People save 10 cents on a coffee and then … .overpay $100,000 for a house and then do reconstruction on it. Or they save 10 cents on a book and then … buy a college degree that they never use for $200,000.66
The solution to the erosion of the middle class lifestyle is to destroy debt and other fixed costs and eliminate self-sabotaging discretionary consumption that cripples the household’s ability to accumulate capital that generates income.
Like being lucky, it lives entirely in a singular mindset: do not worry about being good at something. Focus instead on getting better at it. The rest is upside.
