First of all, what an interesting thread. Special thanks for @
silke for that video, I cried like a fool watching it. So goddamn fucking beautiful.
I am the IEI mentioned in the opening post. Just to clear this up, I am neither a satanist, nor Luciferian. I would describe my approach to spirituality and religion as eclectic, methodological mysticism, and my current practices are a mixture of Hermetic Qabalah, Thelema, Zen & Theravada Buddhism and some yogic&tantric practices.
The way I see things is that there are certain underlying principles – located in Atziluth, the archetypal tier, or the "morphogenetic" plane of reality – that remain as they are, regardless of our individual beliefs. Think of them as the basic building blocks of reality, or in more technical terms (eww, I gonna sound like an ILI here :D :D), the hardware of reality. This tier of reality is simplified and mechanical, the fountain of all phenomena arising from it.
However, as physical beings, we usually perceive life from a completely different plane of reality. Between the underlying, archetypal principles and the material world, there are planes of creation and formation which determine the way things appear in the active/material plane.
Archetypes cannot be observed, for they have no form – and once they take a form, they are no longer purely archetypal, but representations of an archetype. Here is where all these different philosophies, religions and models of reality stem from. Now, while I do think those underlying principles remain somewhat untouched by our interpretations and beliefs (although there are exception to this, but let us forget about it for now), I am not by any means saying that our interpretations didn't play an extremely important part on the other planes.
Think of the archetypal plane as an empty apartment. While the apartment's there, the way you place furniture in it determines how it's going to serve you as a home. Different people are going to place the couch in different corners of the living room. My mom went to a professional interior designer and sticks with what they did to her house. I've let mine form over the years based on what seems to work for me in different phases of my life. One of my friends hates furniture altogether. He only has a thin matress he sleeps on in an otherwise empty apartment. To each their own, I guess… All these apartments will serve different needs. My mom's apartment looks grander than mine, but there's less room for change, and even less for creativity. And I wouldn't feel safe wrestling in my living room, whereas my friend certainly would in his. Similarly, the way we interpret these basic structures of reality will affect the way reality serves us in our lives.
So yeah, here's the big catch: I don't really believe one interpretation is more correct than another. At most, some interpretations serve as better maps for navigating in the territory. They will either provide more understandable or more detailed explanations of the place itself, or change the way I approach these surroundings into something better. I feel like realizing this has freed me on another level, a sort of meta level, because it also lets me re-evaluate not just
which maps I use, but
how I want to look at them, and combine them together. Shrug. Collages work for me.
DJA mentioned that
Here, I'd like to correct that I have simply decided to adapt the Thelemic view of a Holy Guardian Angel because I feel it offers me a wider range of tools to work my way straight into the core. I do however recognize that the phenomenon I describe as the "HGA" has also been called Tipharet, the Heart Chakra, the Mental Body, the Higher Self, Lucifer, or Jesus Christ. And while all these forms have the same basic structure, there are subtle differences in the way they operate.
Similarly, what I call Choronzon or The Dweller due to my Thelemic tendencies, might also be called Satan, or the Jungian Shadow, if you will. Here we can observe the way out interpretation affects our lives in a very concrete fashion – your average Christian will probably think of Satan as the deceitful enemy and never integrate it in his life whereas someone more familiar with Jung's explanations of this phenomenon would more probably attempt to integrate the shadow in himself rather than denying it as a part of himself. These two approaches will produce different results. I will leave it up to the reader to decide which one would more probably work out better.
(No, what the fuck, no I won't. Personally, I have never once for a second regretted integrating the shadow.)
I am rambling. Why.
DJA says he thinks I'm thinking about this a bit too much. In my opinion, he's the one doing too much loopy thinking here. ;) My brain isn't exploding here. Hahahaha. At the end of the day I'll quit talking about it and start doing it instead. I got sick of people who just talk and talk and talk about spirituality but never do anything about it quite a while ago! I have a very practical approach to my spiritual practices. Sit the fuck down. The pieces of the puzzle will sink in with time. Meanwhile, just enjoy the ride because you're there already anyway.
Love is the Law, Love under Will.
