Persona - A Magical Object as a Hindrance and as Aid

Rituals, spells, prayer, meditation and magical acts.
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Smaragd
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Persona - A Magical Object as a Hindrance and as Aid

Post by Smaragd »

It seems like persona is a kind of a bank where you can deposit your sense of self as it is seen through your fears and shadows, to petrify a subjective identity in to a form which you only have to observe through the interpretations read from the mirror of the world. Surficially we are safe from these shadows although they are constantly lurking below.

Here we can see how cultivating the outer persona can become a hindrance in the realization of one’s identity – or rather a union – with the formless Self. The binding in to form gives no room for the Higher Self, but on the otherhand it gives room to work with the shadow. Hanging on to forms of the persona can be like pouring one’s powers in to a magical object – a talisman, a dagger or whatever. Consequently the power within the object starts to reflect the shadows of the form our soul has given to it.

Most often we do the casting in unconscious ways which inevitably forces these engaged powers to manifest the shadows in nasty ways. I’d suggest a tantric or heuristic approach would cast the powers in to the forms of the persona consciously, carefully and with full intention to release these powers when the work is done. One would work with the magical object in the persona by realizing what sorts of shadows it reveals from within oneself. The chosen forms would not be arbitrary, but something that has been keeping its pull and something that seems to be happening anyway. When the shadow is revealed from the form, one can start and work with it. During this work with the shadow one would perhaps melt the form of persona to release the powers once again as the shadow integrated would suggest the object has become transparent, ethereal, potential and pure power once again.
"Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets”, Numbers 11:29 as echoed by William Blake
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Insanus
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Re: Persona - A Magical Object as a Hindrance and as Aid

Post by Insanus »

I think persona is a kind of a marker, showing where we have been able to go and where we are stuck because of our values, values here meaning simply what we actually truly care about. Indifference and death can be seen as forms of Venus (and only secondarily Saturn) here as they signify a release from current boundaries and a closer proximity to psychological liberation. At the risk of sounding super corny and feel-good: if the persona is just made out of shadows, the only work is to let the light in. (ugh) But this is a mystical approach, not so much one for a magician.

The question of control comes to my mind often when discussing these differences. If the focused attention is magician's way of revealing a hidden force, and - I want to say- vice versa for a mystic, I wonder if and or how this chosen(?) mode of interplay between self and other is a part of a personality or if it constitutes it from a more fundamental "core" or "plane".
Jumalan synnit ovat kourallinen hiekkaa ihmisen valtameressä
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Nefastos
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Re: Persona - A Magical Object as a Hindrance and as Aid

Post by Nefastos »

Insanus wrote: Mon Aug 22, 2022 5:43 pmIndifference and death can be seen as forms of Venus (and only secondarily Saturn) here as they signify a release from current boundaries and a closer proximity to psychological liberation.

I tend to think that swapping of the polarities in the Venus-Saturn -pair is one of the most obvious permutation point making difference between the colour aspects: Black, Red and White. Venus-manas as the Ego-source of personality, one's super-temperament so to say, will therefore dictate how we approach our instrumental self and where its tool of dark matter or mask (Saturn) is faced.

So, using only the axis of these two stars, we can see the temperamental stages:

Focus in Saturn: Black
Focus in Venus: White
Equal focus (or suspension of it) in both: Red

In all of these, there are sub-aspect colours depending on the stage of the work, and how the whole inner astrolabe is seen. For example:

When the work with the aspectual polarity advances, or gets extremely agitated, Venus swaps from the affection-life to indifference-death in the critical/esoteric phases where its inner core as an Egoic source is revealed. Similarly, the motherly sub-aspect of Saturn (~Kâli &c.) is seen. This is the point where the deities' sexes become interchanged, the point which is depicted in the archetype of hermafrodite and esoteric Lucifer.

Smaragd wrote: Fri Aug 19, 2022 1:39 pmI’d suggest a tantric or heuristic approach would cast the powers in to the forms of the persona consciously, carefully and with full intention to release these powers when the work is done.

Me too, in the meaning that we must be ready to change our instrument or turn it to another direction when the old work is done. This is the change of one's aspect. The colours change when their challenges are met and realized, and advancement to a new psychological place is attained. Sadly our time of eager relinquishments from the first self-assumed roles is a shadow of this, its evil twin: one's colour is changed not because the former stage had been realized, but because one seeks to escape the challenge. The whole life becomes a series of escapes from self and its inner challenges, and all the change is forced outward.

Personality is not only one tool, it is our whole veritable Acme toolkit. Working with it is like working out a romantic relationship. Its working may well change, but since every detail changed influences also the others, it's delicate if wonderful work.
Faust: "Lo contempla. / Ei muove in tortuosa spire / e s'avvicina lento alla nostra volta. / Oh! se non erro, / orme di foco imprime al suol!"
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Smaragd
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Re: Persona - A Magical Object as a Hindrance and as Aid

Post by Smaragd »

Insanus wrote: Mon Aug 22, 2022 5:43 pm I think persona is a kind of a marker, showing where we have been able to go and where we are stuck because of our values, values here meaning simply what we actually truly care about. Indifference and death can be seen as forms of Venus (and only secondarily Saturn) here as they signify a release from current boundaries and a closer proximity to psychological liberation.
Nefastos wrote: Tue Aug 23, 2022 10:59 am
Sadly our time of eager relinquishments from the first self-assumed roles is a shadow of this, its evil twin: one's colour is changed not because the former stage had been realized, but because one seeks to escape the challenge. The whole life becomes a series of escapes from self and its inner challenges, and all the change is forced outward.
As much as I have agonized over the loss of well rooted values in our culture (which I know isn’t exactly what you meant by values in general), I have come to recognize with my left hand side the missing steps that I had not taken to get there myself. Or if I had gotten there quite well, then I might still had some attitude of hurry or something that delayed my true arrival. So, a great value still doesn’t quarantee success if it is not absorbed back*. Satan has surely showed me this. Although we may have glimbed quite far up, yet when we start to project something missing outside of ourselves (in this example the contemporary culture), it is usually just the Master trying to cast something before our eyes to recognize what to change within ourselves. In this example, following Insanus' idea, I see Lucifer-Venus as the falling light that is projected to the outer world. Something within me rebels and breaks through the current boundaries. But again, I should not go and rave about this unfortune in the world but rather observe it and see where this projection points within my own soul. This is another perspective to the attempt of trying to find more consciousness to this process of heuristic use of persona, in order to lessen suffering, to try and teach the lower self these laws so that it wouldn’t be fooled again and again, and so that it needed not to beat its head against the wall so often.

* Lucifer-Venus could be also seen here as this entity by the help of which one abolishes the heuristic ladders and distills it’s core idea and its beauty in to the hand of the Magician. In this way this distillation of power can be used without getting wholly petrified by the world (in the mythology forwarded by Tolkien the same idea is repeated by the notion of Gandalf being the sole wizard who did not forget the mission for which they were sent to the Middle Earth, the memory of Valinor being hazy in all of their minds). Here we come back to the tarot Star which I came to in the sibling topic regarding spiritual emphases: ”is it always a blind dive to the emphasis where one has to find back to the union, or can one keep the other leg on the dry land like the tarot number 17 - Star depicts?” To answer myself from the point of view of the persona: It seems to be a blind dive only when we are reaching to things we are yet to realize, but the adept doesn’t dive in completely blind for they have their other leg on a firm ground. The firm ground is ofcourse a symbol of the Star, the occult Self – our Master, and our Valinor if you will. But as the Theosophists noted, and what Tolkien repeated with the above: adepts can also make mistakes as they are can not uphold the connection to the Masters at all times.
Nefastos wrote: Tue Aug 23, 2022 10:59 am
Personality is not only one tool, it is our whole veritable Acme toolkit.
Hah, I agree! Before I started reading your responses I was reading the name of the topic with a critical eye and thought that I should have written the 'object' part in plural form and alter the name accordingly. But now I see it as a nice reminder of these things.
"Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets”, Numbers 11:29 as echoed by William Blake
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