Awake in the Starlight

You've probably all heard the saying "As above, so below; as below, so above." There are several variations of this saying. One of the more interesting ones for me is "As within, so without; as without, so within." This is true in multiple ways. If you want to get a sense of its meaning through experience, try the following exercise. De-clutter your room, and if possible, your house. Also, if you are able to, de-clutter your office and any other environment you are in for significant portions of your day. Then, practice thought-observation and compare how cluttered your mind is with how cluttered your mind used to be before you de-cluttered your environment. There's a good chance you'll find that when you spend lots of time in a cluttered environment, your mind will also be more cluttered; and, when you de-clutter your environment, your mind will become de-cluttered as well. When a society is possessed by a consumer culture, the society's group m...

We all know that the presence of arrogance in someone's personality is a glaring indication that said person is not very far along the magical path. The purpose of this post isn't to state that this is the case, but to shed some light on why this is the case. The simple reason is that how far along the magical path you are depends largely on how balanced you are, and arrogance is a major imbalance. There are other ways of looking at the issue though. Bardon tells us that four qualities are needed for success in magic - knowledge, courage, volition, and silence. He calls these the four pillars of Solomon's temple, which represents the fully developed and realized magician. Arrogance is a sign that a person lacks at least two of those qualities - knowledge and courage. An arrogant person does not know his shortcomings, flaws, vices, and negative traits. Furthermore, an arrogant person does not have the courage to analyze himself, because somewhere in the back of his mind ...

If you follow Tanya on Facebook, you've probably learned by now that the second edition of The Spirit of Magic: Rediscovering the Heart of Our Sacred Art (TSOM) is coming out soon. The first edition was published under a Createspace ISBN, which limits our options when it comes to distributing copies. Creating a second edition gives us the opportunity to publish under a Falcon Books Publishing ISBN, which gives us greater freedom in a variety of ways, including exploring multiple formats and offering discounts on special occasions. With that said, the second edition does differ from the first edition in more than just its ISBN number. From what I've heard, a number of people are having trouble deciding whether to buy the second edition if they already have the first edition. In this blog post, I want to give my thoughts on the matter. First off, when trying to decide whether to buy any book, the first thing to realize is that unless the book is IIH, you don't need it. Som...

Self-destruction is a major theme in Annihilation. In the movie, self-destruction refers not just to the destruction of aspects of yourself, but also of aspects of your life. This includes things like your career, your relationships, your family, etc. For reasons that will become clear later on, self-destruction is also a concept that Bardonists should reflect on. In fact, the very first astral exercise of IIH has you making a list of all your negative self-destructive tendencies. Before I discuss negative self-destruction, I want to point out that self-destruction is not always negative. Sometimes it is positive. When we "destroy" detrimental aspects of ourselves (e.g. bad habits or addictions) or destroy toxic aspects of our lives (e.g. toxic relationships), we are doing ourselves a favor. Note that I put the word "destroy" in quotes. Rawn would probably find this word problematic, preferring instead to use words like "transform" or "transmute....

One of the principles that's given me a lot of useful guidance in my life is that quality is more important than quantity. For example, if you practice the exercises of IIH for many hours each day but the quality of your practice is bad because you are unserious and absent-minded during those hours, then you won't make much progress. But if you practice the exercises of IIH for just one hour each day but the quality of your practice is good because you are focused during that hour, then you will advance rapidly. I've been learning a lot about writing lately. I've read a few books about prose style and have taken an online course on professional writing. Since I plan to continue writing books, I want to become as proficient in the craft of writing as possible. Over the past few months, I've definitely gotten better. The quality of my writing has improved. There are a few more books I want to write, after all, writing is a hobby I enjoy greatly. I have interests i...

The second mental exercise in Step 1 of IIH is to hold a thought in your mind. I was asked today for suggestions regarding thoughts to hold in one's mind when practicing this exercise. Here's a thought I like to use. "I am a mirror reflecting the perfect, infinite, and unconditional love of God."  If you are ever angry at someone and wish to get a grip on yourself, it's helpful to remember the assertion contained in this thought and to experience its validity by centering yourself and sensing the deeper and higher part of yourself that is indeed a mirror reflecting the perfect, infinite, and unconditional love of God. 

Warning: This post contains spoilers for the movie Annihilation, directed by Alex Garland and starring Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson, Tuva Novotny, and Oscar Isaac.  I saw Annihilation yesterday. I usually go see any film with Natalie Portman in it shortly after it comes out, but since my life has been so hectic lately, it was a while before I finally got around to watching this one. If you've watched it, you're probably curious about how I interpreted the ending. I'll make another post later this week about what I think happened at the end, but that's not what I want to talk about in this post. In this post, I just want to note some of the things running through my mind as I reflect back on the movie as a whole. I do think there are many magical themes throughout this book. One of them is transformation. I wrote a book about self-transformation. As you can guess, self-transformation, and the transformation of people in gen...