Welcome to the Ebon Spire!

This list will serve as the online manifestation of a LHP magickal order-Nothing is set in stone yet, I hope to collaborate with members in the order's development. Thanks to Lilly, Geifodd and Tamara for getting the ball rolling with intros. Suppose I should do the same: My name is Cort Williams, 24 year-old from Iowa(midwest USA). I am rather eclectic in my magickal style, work with chaos sorcery techniques, runes, qabalah, classical myth, I especially enjoy works by kenneth grant, stephen flowers. Consider myself Left-Hand path in my approach, but I think the LHP/RHP distinction doesn't have to take the center stage. In addition to magickal pursuits, have a passion for gangster movies, sci-fi, and enjoying various creature comforts. Forming this group is something I've been thinking of doing for a while. While I have had the opportunity to have some quality occult discussions on-line, I have been looking forward to some magikcal collaboration as well. Did a bit of brainstorming for possible projects, feel more than welcome to add a few of your own ;) Magickal entity design Qliphothic sorcery Demonic evocation/invocation Mythology and Number in magick Infernally yours, Cort aka Cor Scorpii Welcome Aegipan, Su, Myrk. It looks like we have a nice mix of interests here, which is good I think. In other notes, I've added Liber Qliphoth to the files section, now sitting alongside a few things I picked out earlier. Feel free to add files or links relating to your magickal interests, if you like. It looks like some of our membership comes from a chaos background, so I decided to toss out my favorite Hakim Bey quote: "Chaos comes before all principles of order and entropy, it's neither a god nor a maggot, its idiotic desires encompass and define every possible choreograph, all meaningless aethers and phlogistons, its masks are crystallizations of its own facelessness, like clouds...Chaos never died"-Hakim Bey Cort Hello group I would like to take this time to introduce my self. I go by the name Aegipan, I am 31 yrs of age and I live in a small town called Temple in the state of Georgia. I have been studying occult science

for 11 yrs now, I am a solitary magician, who is quite introverted. I haven't been apart of many magical groups, there was a time I affiliated myself with the OTO, but departed after I started to lean more towards the studies of Kenneth Grant and Austin Spare. Most of my practices revolve around the Qliphoth, Enochian, working with God heads, Cthulhu mythos, and the system that interested me the most when I first got in to magic, the Goetia. I plan on one day evoking all 72 of these critters and with there help one day write a book about my experience with these Spirits. So far my experiences have been good, one of these spirits became a good familiar and gave me a different sigil (not like the one that's in the old manuscripts) to use to conjure him up again. I would like to thank Cort for inviting me to this group and I look forward to seeing what this group has to offer, along with what I have offer. PS: I looked over what I had wrote for my introduction and I see that I did use first person a lot using the word (I). But this is ok, because I do love myself. Being a solitary magician as I am, that's all there is (I). Some of you may have seen this before, apologies if I subjected you to this twice ;) HEPHAESTUS HOD AND THE AUTOSEXUAL CURRENT The marriage of Hephaestus and Aphrodite always seemed like a bit of a joke-The lame, ugly Hephaestus married to the goddess of love and beauty. Hephaestus never slept with her, and she was usually off having an affair with Ares. Maybe there is more to this than meets the eye. According to An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Traditional Symbols by J.C. Cooper, lameness symbolizes impotence. So, we have an impotent god married to the goddess of erotic love. Often in mythology, the physical imperfections of gods indicate a related sphere of influence. For instance, Odin gave up his eye for a different sort of supernatural "sight". Tyr sacrificed his hand to make his word binding(literally). Hephaestus is impotent-He lacks the traditional means of procreation. Yet, Hephaestus is the craftsmangod, inherently creative. His sexual creative power is sublimated into a different form of creative power. The craftsman is associated with the logos(i.e., the creative power of the word). The Logos is associated with 8, the number of Hod. Eight is also the number of the auto-sexual current, which again is the power of the craftsman, the ability to create without the necessity of a sexual partner. Therefore, I equate Hephaestus with

eight and Hod. Hod is paired with Netzach on the tree of life. According to Crowley etc., Netzach corresponds with Aphrodite/Venus, Hephaestus' wife. I also suspect there is a mythological correspondence to this situation in Egyptian myth-The dwarf craftsman god Ptah is married to Sekhmet, who is sometimes equated with Venus. Going back to the affair between Ares/Mars and Aphrodite/Venus for a moment-Consider the traditional symbols for Mars or a man. The symbol of Mars is a circle with an arrow pointing in a upwards-diagonal direction(a not-so-subtle phallic symbol). This represents the unidirectionality of the sexual drive-All energy directed in a single direction towards the goal of procreation. With Hephaestus, this force is frustrated, the outlet is not the same. So perhaps a more fitting symbol for Hephaestus would be the eight-directional chaos star-The frustrated energy extending in all directions from the self, manifesting itself as Art. Cort HELL.0 umadise and List ... I my.self have never read this before but I must say that it opens a most interesting prospect into thee meaning ov thee Chaos.Sphere ... Much similiar to what I was saying before as to Death.postures and Sex.Magik ... If one keeps thier Will focused and there possibilities Boundless than much may be acomplished that was unforseen ... Lust For No Result is perhapse thee key.phrase here ... Brilliant umadise!!! ... Thanxxx ... YRZZZ MyR. i've read alot recently about the concept of 'lameness'- in some branches of english craft it is veiwed as a sign of power( see 'light from the shadows'-gwyn-cappal bann). Chumbley's Azoetia talks about 'the formulae of the lame god' in connection with the 14th letter- 'meir-krus'. The lame person/god/entity can be seen as existing in both worlds (physical/astral) in much the same way that Janus looks bakwards AND forwards. LUMI (who was gonna post more on this-but is in a rush!) Thank you, Myrk. Good point, I do see a connection with the death posture/sex magic ideas-The link between sexual desire and the creative impulse. That's sort of what I was getting at when I mentioned "Will, Imagination, and Desire" in the group description. The desire of Hephaestus inflames his imagination, the imagination is manifested by his will as Art/Magick.

LUMI writes: > i've read alot recently about the concept of 'lameness'- in some > branches of english craft it is veiwed as a sign of power( see 'light > from the shadows'-gwyn-cappal bann). Chumbley's Azoetia talks > about 'the formulae of the lame god' in connection with the 14th > letter- 'meir-krus'. > The lame person/god/entity can be seen as existing in both worlds > (physical/astral) in much the same way that Janus looks bakwards AND > forwards. > > LUMI > (who was gonna post more on this-but is in a rush!) Interesting-Love to hear more when you have time. In addition to impotence, lameness is sometimes a diabolical attribute-Satan is often depicted with a limp. Hephaestus' lameness came as a result of being thrown from the heavens by his father or mother-Rather reminescent of lucifer's fall, also similar to the story of the germanic story of Volund the smith. It doesn't surprise me that Hephaestus carries some typically demonized attributes, as a craftsman god associated with fiery volcanoes(volcano itself a symbol of submerged desire, imo). Seems like craftsmen deities are sometimes viewed as diabolical, especially if they share their knowledge with humans. Cort Ave and Hail to Cort and members.. This is quite a 'potential gradient'-'EbonSpire' I am glad to see your reproach as actuator. You of many and certainly, 'unusual as wise' perception's and energyutilized as to what 'I will to' presume to be..a group in establishing the 'Vector Equilbrium Matrix'!{bifurcation} This mind/matter interface is also what I presume again, the article; Hephaestus Hod-the Auto Sexual Current to divulge as well as the 'cosmic trinity'- chaos, matter and attraction. The Greek archetype 'psyche'. My fondness for Nietzsche, "Nea, Verily, I say unto you, A man must have chaos yet within him to birth a dancing star" For that matter at hand, as Nuit declared in the first section of the Book of the Law, "Every man and every woman is a Star" To the revelative of self- My path is that of the 'Black Art'. I ensoul Satanism to its fullest. The Draconian bloodline. My interest and practice is vampyrism. My pre-occupancy, molecular shapeshifting. As a conscious observer the path has been long.,

thirty some years invested in the studies of magick, mostly Hermetic. As an 'urban practitioner'from n.y.c. residing now in the fingerlakes region of n.y.~ enduring the repercussions of displacement, and cellular re-alignment,.. {what not an opportune time then the summer.} Sacred magick and necromancy have been my most prevalent path's. As with all persuits there is the time to do, and then the reversal, which I am trying to recall now and honor. My departure from the mainstream,'the life'..realms of darkness in city dwellings, is that of a Sabbatical nature. Having worked intensive in the fashion and fetish sub-cultural scenes, modeling and choreographing as well as writting playrights from off bdwy- off off bdwy. The computer has broadend the avenues, though somewhat of a novice I look towards the advancments. Thank you for the extension of invitation. With regard to the photo in the groups discription, I sense it as unstatic, animated and moveing, such as the groups collective ~chioa Re: referring to I see polarity as a necessary process in the manifestation of the cosmos. As soon as there is a subject:"I", there is also an oject:"thou". From the interaction of the two opposites can come a third option, and from there the possibility of growth and change. A true unity is static and incapable of self-definition, requires the development of a subject/object relationship to become intelligible. Kenneth Grant describes this concept in Cults of the Shadow, when discussing the meaning of the equation 0=2:"Where naught symbolizes the negative unmanifest potential of creation, and two the polarities involved in its realization..." This can be seen in the multitude of primordial pairs of deities: Ouranos and Ge, Apsu and Tiamat, likewise in less anthopomorphized forms: Yin and Yang, Fire and Ice, etc-The interaction of two polarized extremes form the basis for the synthesis of other forms. Here are a couple of quotes that touch on the subject: "Everything is Dual; everything has poles; everything has its pair of opposites; like and unlike are the same; opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree; extremes meet; all truths are but half-truths; all paradoxes may be reconciled." -- The Kybalion. "Duality. The profound and necessarily total change of unity into symmetry and polarity (and its symbolic representations: Horus and Set, Yang and Yin, etc.) The "orderer of the planes and angles' is Yog- Sothoth, who is, as the shaper of energy and matter, described as the author of Earth in its matter/energy/evolutionary configuration. Note that in pure duality there is no room for judgment between the two; there is only one or the other. In duality

geometry creates a single extension (a line)." --Michael Aquino, from "Commentary on the Seal of the Nine Angles" -Cort Thanks for the invite to this group. For those of you who don't know me I'm Josh, aka Fra. Ratatosk, an Adept in the IOT, I've been practicing chaos magick now for about 13 years, written a book ("The Paradigmal Pirate"), and you can find some of my writing online at: http://iota.goetia.net/ under the articles portion of the website. I'm currently working on my 2nd book which is due out in 2005, while I'm busy with Temple work here, IOT Administration, writing and personal magick work I do hope to contribute when I can to topics which interest me. Re: referring to And from finding the possibility of options and going the distance, in magical terms, eventually the limitation of "I" and "I am" gets left behind ... Now then, the psychonaut or intranaut can really fly ... Su Hmm...The distinction between I and not I is maintained, rather than dissolved, in many forms of LHP ideology. This separation is the source of the black flame of isolate consciousness, the gift/curse of Prometheus-Set. There are as many miles of distance between "I" and "not I" as there are points on a one inch line. Everything we see and touch is shaped by the lens of our perception, thus to find something truly unknown, truly other, is to run endlessly towards the horizon. While we can run the distance, magically speaking, even here we are traveling through space on roads of our own will and creation. But, by running, the flame of desire ignites the imagination, which reaches towards the horizon and creates its own vision of the unknown. Thus, a synthesis between I and not I is created, both self and not self, an endless process leading towards that deceptively distant "not I". Just my two cents ;) Cort