Friday, March 2, 2012

Banishing Rituals and the Zero-State

from William G. Gray - Magical Ritual Methods

...Its object is to make the magician "come alive" in Inner Dimensions, establish his identity therein, and set up an operative consciousness on those levels. To do this, all else must be excluded or "banished" from the Cosmos created by the magician.
The Nil-concept must be established before any creation is possible. Therefore a Zero-state in relation to all other existence is essential. The principle involved is outlined by the ritual questioning;

"What is most important of all?"
"God."
"What is more important than God?"
"Nothing is more important than God."
"Therefore let Nothing come before God."

We can see now the esoteric significance of the injunction to: "have no other Gods before Me". That is not a command to abolish idols or other God-concepts than IHWH, but a positive instruction to start from the Nil or Zero point before any concept of Deity whatever. Our most direct way to the One God is via the Nil from whence Deity first emanated. Anyone reading a hint of atheism into this has utterly failed to grasp the slightest inkling of what is indicated, and had best re-zero themselves.

Most Mystery faiths or schools have their own zeroing procedure. In Masonry the Lodge is squared and tiled, in the Church there is a procession and exorcism with holy water, and in ritual Magic the Circle is cast and consecrated. Each practice has the same objective, to exclude the outer and open the Inner Dimensions for the participants, which means swinging the direction of consciousness through the Nil-point toward its changed focus of attention. This is only possible to a very limited degree with most human beings, because it means they must exclude every kind of thought directly connected with the outside world, and work with a completely changed consciousness in very different conditions than those of their mundane awareness. Few people can achieve this necessary detachment by their own efforts alone, and a major magical secret is that of complete detachment or absorption at will.

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