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To: thelema93-l@bitsy.hollyfeld.org
From: Josh Norton 
Subject: Perceiving astrological forces 
Date: Wed, 31 Jul 96 15:59 EDT

At 08:38 AM 7/31/96 -0500, Peggy wrote:
>
>Hi Josh,
>
Hi Peggy!

>>The biggest influence, outstripping all others except the enochian angels
>>themselves, isn't found in any book. It is the decade I spent learning to
>>perceive ambient astrological forces and understanding their effects. This
>>gave me a large body of experience with magickal forces independent of any
>>magickal or philosophical system. 
>
>Can you say more about this?
>

Glad to. It a long story, so sit back and relax...

A few years ago, the _Cincinnati Journal of Ceremonial Magick_ published a
somewhat over-cute description of the process in a paper called "The Book of
the Archer". There is a copy floating around the net somewhere, though I
couldn't tell you where. It is something I stumbled upon circa 1970 or
thereabouts.

The normal mode of magickal work is to take a symbol and, through
invocations, discover the nature of the magickal energy associated with it.
The "Archer" technique reverses this: one starts with the perceived effects
of magickal "energies" (the astrological powers of the planets) and works
backwards to perceive the energies directly, and to associate them with the
appropriate symbols.

The premises behind the technique are standard astrological assumptions:

First, that each human being is a microcosmic reflection of the state of the
universe at the moment of his/her birth, and that the major cosmic
influences at that moment (i.e., the planets, signs, and houses of the natal
chart) are reflected in the person's character and perceptions. Second, that
as the planets' continued real-time movements bring them into certain
angular relationships to the natal chart (called "transits") they produce
consistent, detectable effects on the person's perceptions, emotions,
thoughts, and behavior.

Given these premises, it should be possible for a person with basic
astrological knowledge (and a moderate talent for introspection) to learn to
sort out the astrological energies that are affecting him at any given moment. 

The actual development of the technique wasn't so straightforward. I had
really started with the fact that at certain times, my thoughts and feelings
were stimulated in ways that didn't have any connection with the situations
I was in, or with any obvious environmental factors. I had started
classifying these moments according to their content and general "feel" --
don't ask what I mean by that. :-)

At about the same time I had started taking a course in astrology at college
on a whim. Somewhere in the course of learning to do the calculations (this
was before personal computers and astrology software) I realized that a lot
of these odd overstimulations coincided in time with astrological transits. 

This in itself isn't terribly surprising. There is hardly a day that goes by
without at least two or three transits occurring to a person's chart; it
would be unusual if one was not in effect when a particular period of
personality stimulation occurred. But it was sufficient that I followed up
on it. Over the next year or two, I kept observing and classifying my own
feelings and thoughts, and found that certain of these classes of internal
events consistently happened during the transits of particular planets. 

As a simple example, every traffic ticket I ever got, and every auto
accident I had, occurred while Mars was transiting in a square aspect to my
natal Moon. The Moon was in the third house of my chart, governing short
trips. The Mars transit acted to make me more aggressive and less cautious
in my driving; thus, tickets and accidents.

Over time I learned to sort out those parts of such events that were due to
the elements of my natal chart, those that were due to non-astrological
factors, and those that were due to the transiting planet. The first and
last of these were the "pure" forces of the planets and signs, experienced
in real-time without the need for invocations or magickal systems of any sort.

(In case someone wants to argue that these "magickal forces" were entirely a
figment of my imagination, I should mention that after a while I was able to
reverse the process. That is, without looking at an ephemeris or doing any
calculations I could tell exactly what transits were in effect at a
particular moment, just by examining the state of my perceptions. I could do
this with about 85% accuracy, and most of the 15% error rate lay in not
recognizing all the transits occurring when more than one was in effect at
the moment in question.)

So by the time I became seriously involved with the cabala a couple of years
later, I already had a substantial accumulation of experience with the
fundamental magickal energies. I added to this steadily over the next
decade, until I had pretty much exhausted the possibilities of the method. 




------------------------
No matter what you say, or how you say it, there is someone, somewhere, who
would take offense.

Josh Norton -- browe@megalinx.net