Liber Resh

Pål R, modified 7 Years ago at 10/25/16 12:32 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 10/25/16 12:32 PM

Liber Resh

Posts: 115 Join Date: 8/3/16 Recent Posts
Has any of you performed it? For how long? What results did you observe? Where were you at the start and at the end in terms of nanas and/or initiatory grades?
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Westthings, modified 7 Years ago at 12/11/16 12:57 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 12/11/16 12:57 PM

RE: Liber Resh

Posts: 50 Join Date: 8/21/15 Recent Posts
I have not done this ritual but I have had a solar initiation which if you are a Gnostic you would eventurally get along with the other elements. This would be the practice to get the initiation.
Pål R, modified 7 Years ago at 12/11/16 11:48 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 12/11/16 11:48 PM

RE: Liber Resh

Posts: 115 Join Date: 8/3/16 Recent Posts
Gnosticism is probably an academic after construction, there probably was no coherent religion termed "gnosticism" back in pre-medieval times. Source: Karen King :3

*takes of the know-it-all glasses*

Awesome! Could you elaborate?
housecrow, modified 7 Years ago at 12/14/16 9:01 AM
Created 7 Years ago at 12/14/16 8:41 AM

RE: Liber Resh

Posts: 30 Join Date: 12/13/16 Recent Posts
It is also a little difficult to suspend one's disbelief with Crowley when his Greek is touch-and go and his Hebrew is comically off: grammar is all over the map, vocabulary clearly chosen via dictionary rather than familiarity with actual use via literature, etc. Example: the Qabalistic Cross. It is essentially one compounded mistake but just to take the first line:
    (i) Touching the forehead, say Ateh (unto thee).


1. There is no pronoun, or indeed any word in Hebrew, "Ateh." 2nd person masculine singular is Atah.
2. There is nothing prepositional about it at all (i.e. it has not been inflected to show a sense of "unto"). Atah combined with a forward-directional preposition comes out as "Lekha."

Now look at the Greek in Liber XXV: The Star Ruby:
...expelling forcibly thy breath, cry APO PANTOS KAKODAIMONOS

Presumably he means, " Away, all bad spirits!" But APO is one of those slippery Greek prepositions that has a nuance of meaning which does not predictably stack up with an English equivalent. It cannot be used as a verb in a banishing sense. In fact, using it in the above way even gives a bit of the opposite sense, the sense of being made of or belonging to the subsequent words. The best English equivalent I can think of is in a phrase like Straight out of Compton, meaning of Compton rather than emphasising distance from Compton. Similarly APO in this construction is used to mean FROM the following words or MADE BY the following words (like you might say of a suit that it is APO Versace).

Should have used a verb.

Imagine using Engrish as a ritual language. That is what it feels like to read Crowley to me... it is bereft of power, certainly of dignity.
Pål R, modified 7 Years ago at 12/14/16 12:51 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 12/14/16 12:51 PM

RE: Liber Resh

Posts: 115 Join Date: 8/3/16 Recent Posts
I'm pretty sure that for most people, linguistic correctness is of little to no importance in ritual magic.
housecrow, modified 7 Years ago at 12/14/16 1:46 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 12/14/16 1:46 PM

RE: Liber Resh

Posts: 30 Join Date: 12/13/16 Recent Posts
I get what you're saying, but we're not talking about Grammar Nazi nit-picking, we're talking about a scale of unintentional error which absolutely impedes clarity of expression. I don't use ritual magic, but if I did, I would want to be using rituals crafted by someone who cared enough to investigate a sufficient amount to articulate themselves well, or at the very least with basic competence. The inability or lack of desire to do so IMO reflects a lack of care towards the practitioner and shows a low estimation of their intelligence. I think this is shown too in Crowley's persistent interest in classifying people as superior or inferior.
Pål R, modified 7 Years ago at 12/14/16 1:59 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 12/14/16 1:59 PM

RE: Liber Resh

Posts: 115 Join Date: 8/3/16 Recent Posts
Maybe, but once a formula is incorporated in a powerful egregore, however awful the language is, I think it will still be more effective than a new formula with proper grammar, if that one isn't as "embedded in the system". For this I don't really have any convincing arguments other than a recommendation to practice and see.
Note that a lot of Crowleys rituals were based on the practices of the RR et AC (Golden Dawn inner order). 
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Supreme Maharishi Bhumi 1000, modified 7 Years ago at 1/10/17 7:47 AM
Created 7 Years ago at 12/14/16 4:03 PM

RE: Liber Resh

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Andrew B, modified 7 Years ago at 12/14/16 4:49 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 12/14/16 4:49 PM

RE: Liber Resh

Posts: 59 Join Date: 2/22/12 Recent Posts
To be fair, Crowley didn't invent the Qabalistic Cross, he got it from the Golden Dawn, and in their defence as to the pronunciation of Hebrew words (small a defense as it is -- there is plenty of valid criticism to be had of them), they tended to transliterate the letter Aleph with both the English A and E, and in reading a lot of late-19th/early-20th century magical literature you will tend to see plenty of variation in the spelling of Hebrew words. As far as practice goes, every time I've seen the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram performed, either in person or online, "Ateh" has been pronounced "Atah."

In any case, these sorts of rituals are actually pretty malleable. It's useful to take the basic template and play around with it as one sees fit. Crowley would sometimes play fast and loose with the spelling of a word for the sake of obtaining a particular numerical value of that word. (He butchers the Greek spelling of Titan somewhere in Magick in Theory and Practice for precisely this reason.) None of this stuff is really meant to be followed to the letter.
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Andrew B, modified 7 Years ago at 12/14/16 4:57 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 12/14/16 4:57 PM

RE: Liber Resh

Posts: 59 Join Date: 2/22/12 Recent Posts
I go through cycles of practicing daily Resh. I've fallen off of it this week, but should be getting back on track within the next.

I see it as less of a results-obtaining ritual and more of a "daily magical hygeine" sort of practice. The main benefit I have found is that it tends to ritually structure my day in a way that is conducive to practice.

For example, I wake up in the morning and I perform the Dawn Resh, facing East and hailing Ra. Afterward I sit down to meditate, then I go and do whatever else I mean to get done within my morning routine (shower, breakfast, a bit of writing) until noon, when I do the next Resh.

(When I was really practicing hard, I was trying to make a point to get a bit of meditation in after every Resh. I found that pretty valuable and really ought to give it another go.)

One thing I have noticed, just in general, is that I tend to practice Resh and study Magick more often when I am in a more positive and life-affirming mood cycle, and I get more straight up Buddhism and vipassana-oriented when I've on a downswing. I've been working on getting myself more balanced in this regard, combining my magical practice with my contemplative practice in a more even way, without so much emotional rollercoastering about.
Pål R, modified 7 Years ago at 12/15/16 1:59 AM
Created 7 Years ago at 12/15/16 1:59 AM

RE: Liber Resh

Posts: 115 Join Date: 8/3/16 Recent Posts
How long was your longest coherent streak of LR?  Did you notice any difference from the shorter ones? 
Pål R, modified 7 Years ago at 12/15/16 2:43 AM
Created 7 Years ago at 12/15/16 2:43 AM

RE: Liber Resh

Posts: 115 Join Date: 8/3/16 Recent Posts
I agree with the Maharishi. Also, my hypothesis is that since mispronouncing and misspellinh ancient words is traditional in western esotericism and thus in tune with more egregores, it is more effective in that context.
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Andrew B, modified 7 Years ago at 12/15/16 7:29 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 12/15/16 7:29 PM

RE: Liber Resh

Posts: 59 Join Date: 2/22/12 Recent Posts
Oh man, I couldn't give you an exact number. I mean, I guess I probably could, but it would involve leafing through months and months of journal entries, between multiple journals, to pin down when I was doing it for the longest and how long that was. What I will say though is that my Resh practice really benefitted when I started treating the ritual as sort of a mini-meditation, which in a lot of ways it sort of is. I stopped being lazy or half-assed with it, made a point to do it even when I wasn't really feeling it, made a point to do the visualizations and the adoration at the end, etc. It basically ends up being sort of like a two-minute deity meditation. The more I practiced like that, the more momentum I built up with it, the less rote and mechanical and the more personal and familiar it began to feel.
Pål R, modified 7 Years ago at 12/17/16 2:55 AM
Created 7 Years ago at 12/17/16 2:55 AM

RE: Liber Resh

Posts: 115 Join Date: 8/3/16 Recent Posts
That sounds like proper theurgy to me ✨
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Andrew B, modified 7 Years ago at 12/18/16 8:18 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 12/18/16 8:18 PM

RE: Liber Resh

Posts: 59 Join Date: 2/22/12 Recent Posts
Absolutely! I've read here and there that in Liber Resh, the "god" you're really addressing is not necessarily Ra, Hathor, Atum, Khephra, or whomever, but the Holy Guardian Angel or the True Self, albeit in a roundabout sort of way. Seems like a good way of approaching it to me!

I think it's also a pretty good practice simply for conditioning oneself to magical practice and integrating that practice into one's life in a continual sort of way.
Pål R, modified 7 Years ago at 12/20/16 6:07 PM
Created 7 Years ago at 12/20/16 6:07 PM

RE: Liber Resh

Posts: 115 Join Date: 8/3/16 Recent Posts
I don't know about roundabout, since solar dieties and the HGA both correspond to Tipharet, sun worship should be a good bridge to the KCHGA.