One of the things that makes my practice different is that I can exist in both the light and the dark comfortably, competently, and can switch in the same ritual. How does one achieve that? Well, partly through practicing both and practicing switching.
It’s pretty easy to choose left hand or right hand based strictly on spiritual or philosophical ideas and theories. This usually means current spiritual and philosophical ideas and theories and I think that this needs to be adjusted over time.
Now, why would I think that? Because too much of magic and the Occult are stuck in theoretical discussions – often based on authors of the same backgrounds or similar, with much less practical experience by the discussants with supposed know-how and understanding. Lacking any breadth of experience outside of those areas. I think this balance needs redressed. I think it needs to be more based on experience that challenges the theories and ideas, rather than the theories and ideas shaping the experience without stepping outside of those narrow bands of thought based on the weight of experiences of those that didn’t achieve much outside of it. In other words, Occultists are plagued by the SAME dogma that limits these discussions in, say, the Catholic church. OH! But it’s Different! No, you’re having mundane experiences because you’re expecting to or aren’t ready for other more substantial ones.
It validates nothing. 1 month, 10, 20 years…doesn’t matter if you don’t step out of that paradigm. If it makes you feel better, others are also hobbling themselves in the same manner, both you and them in your restrictive spheres, like self-licking ice-cream cones. Congrats. Until you meet someone that doesn’t live in your restrictive worlds and likely is more advanced for doing so.
I was giving a private class is a guest instructor and one of the individuals in that class was exceptionally clairvoyant – like through the roof clairvoyant – and this student picked up on the area around me which is full of all sorts of entities. What caught her attention was the Dead. How could I coexist with that much death energy in my area? There are a lot of answers for this but I want this focused on more than just that one little topic.
Most of the spirits that I work with have free run of my area – as long as they follow some simple rules. I state these rules to them or the spirits that bring them here state them to them and I expect them followed. But I largely do not restrict most of my space to either living quarters and ritual space and Other. It’s more that they follow those rules and they know I can uphold them as severely as needed. The most important of which here is that they cannot negatively impact my family or my pets. This is had some unintended consequences that were beneficial to me. It could be beneficial to you.
Most people that know of my practice and my philosophy know that I’m a big believer in attunement.I’ve spoken of it some here. It has a lot of really good uses. But what really is neutral? There are beneficial ways of using either path for offensive and defensive purposes. It also is beneficial for cultivating some of those energies within yourself, so that more beneficial energies (Light or Dark) can balance themselves out in the self or fnvironment.
If I had said that I planned on that happening, say, when I made that little patch that I called my “graveyard” and then tried to pretend that I had planned that this great attunement would happen – I would be lying. I have attuned to various types of Death energy (and they are different), but I had started doing that years before my little graveyard here. It wasn’t exactly planned that I would set aside a place for the Dead where they could come and go and I would have a place to make specific offerings that are of that current.
So what does this have to do with balance a lot of my cultivation now? It is a bit more on the lighter side sometimes. It’s solar energy sometimes it’s just young so what this means over time cultivating one and existing in another which would seem to be an opposite means that the balance that I naturally seek is occurring
I think most occultists think that you have to almost live in one world or the other – one side of the other. Maybe I don’t see that to be the case being someone who prioritizes and values Balance. It does mean that I have to expose myself to both sides on at least a regular basis and push that envelope for myself while returning to middle to ward off the negative consequences of either. For there are still consequences to staying in the light or the lighter sides. While those are more morally acceptable to those that lean more Right Hand – that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily beneficial. It’s just less obviously detrimental. There’s still psychosis (divine thinking based) and strife based on others not accepting this “obviously Divine” thinking that can split groups, even families, apart. It still happens and I posit that it happens just as much. It’s just more socially accepted and less obviously self-destructive than some of the symptoms on the Lighter path which aren’t much different in source, but in manifestation.
I think that Taoism presents a really good opportunity for a balanced way to balancing those two aspects that seem to conflict in a lot of people. Yet, they don’t conflict in me. Right now, we have been really given an opportunity to study magical Taoism with books, both electronic and physical, with practitioners that are pursuing it. We haven’t necessarily had this in the past without maybe knowing the right people. This seems like an opportunity to unite both halves – the light in the dark – not necessarily the right hand path and the left hand path. Uncapitalized on purpose. That’s a different thing to me, but it does give us an opportunity to help unite both of those sides of our Self(ves) in a magical, Occult way that is obviously lacking when one delves into the dark or into the light.
Balance may not be for everyone. That’s a choice they (each of us) have to make. Maybe it has to be made at the right time. maybe that right time is further down the road a decade or two. Maybe that right time is their next Life. That’s something that each Occultist has to make for themselves – when they’ve finally started to set aside some of the more negative experiences they’ve had regardless of path, to look at it a little bit more objectively.
I started seeking balance after Iraq. I needed a way to explore both sides of my nature which I could not deny anymore, infuse them into something functional for my daily life. Notice that I said nothing about magic or the Occult. Sometimes I did that balance better than others. It was going to those Tai chi classes with the several hours of the Tao Te Ching lessons afterwards that really started to heal part of my psyche and reduce the conflict I still felt despite doing both good and bad in the War and afterwards.
That impact still shows itself today. When I balance both my workings in the dark and my workings and the light (for even a light can burn and the darkness can take away), the only way you can really hope to achieve that balance that you need to work with both hands is by uniting them and not denying the other. We often speak about denying those darker aspects of ourselves locking them away and them rearing their ugly heads in unexpected ways in our personal lives. I would argue that the same exists for ignoring Light – the difference is that it’s more socially acceptable in the darker occult circles I’ve run in in the past to ignore it. Yet most of us, including me back in he day, weren’t cultivating the Light. Just being forced into worship. Those are never the same thing.
I hope that at some point others can also cultivate those parts of yourself in the Light and Dark to gain full ability – not just half. It’s a process – not an event. I would encourage you to go with the pace you need to for BOTH of the lessons. To be able to attune the healing and the destruction equally – when you come out the other side.
You will be an imbalanced, broken thing until you do. And, as I’ve said recently, but more on mundane matters, achieving balance and maintaining it more than not will give the finger to your adversaries – however wide the smile matches the Cheshire Cat.
Then leave them in the dust.
