The so-called 'Oath of the Abyss', is a corrosive encounter with Choronzonic forces inside the personality. It is not something to be undertaken lightly and I'd suggest many years of magical practice before attempting anything as stupid and as glamorous as destroying your carefully-established SELF. The rewards of a successful crossing of the Abyss are many but a failed attempt can leave the magician broken inside, consumed by doubt, fear, and insecurity and quite useless to his or her community...

• choronzon
• magick
• personality
• self
• death
• abyss
• fear
• ritual
• rites
• doubt
• community

Listen,' Drake said with sudden emotion. 'We're both lying. It's not all this philosophical or cosmic. The simple fact is that I couldn't sleep nights, and nothing I tried in conventional 'cures' could help me, until I began to help myself by systematically rebelling against everything that seemed stronger than me.' \r\n\r\n\r\n'I know. I didn't know it was insomnia. It might have been nightmares or dizzy spells or sexual impotence. But there was some way that the scenes you saw in Chateau-Thierry lived on and goaded you to wake out of the dream of the sleepwalkers on the streets. You are waking: You stand on the abyss.' She pointed to the Fool and the dog who barks at his heels. 'And I am the noisy little bitch barking to warn you that you can still choose the right-hand path.

• tarot
• awakening
• consciousness
• magick
• fear
• rebellion
• struggle
• the fourth way
• emotion
• sleep
• lying
• abyss

Evil, no matter by what cultural canon it be judged, is a necessary constituent of individuality as its egoism, its readiness to defend itself or to attack, and lastly, as its capacity to mark itself off from the collective and to maintain its 'otherness' in face of the leveling demands of the community.  The shadow roots the personality in the subsoil of the unconscious, and this shadowy link with the archetype of the antagonist, i.e., the devil, is in the deepest sense part of the creative abyss of every living personality.  That is why in myths the shadow often appears as a twin, for he is not just the 'hostile brother,' but the companion and friend, and it is sometimes difficult to tell whether this twin is the shadow or the self, the deathless 'other.

• collective
• evil
• self
• shadow
• the devil
• unconscious
• cultural canon
• personality
• abyss
• community
• other
• matter

If we knew how to greet each moment as the manifestation of the divine will, we would find in it all the heart could desire...The present moment is always filled with infinite treasures: it contains more than you are capable of receiving...The divine will is an abyss, of which the present moment is the entrance; plunge fearlessly therein and you will find it more boundless than your desire.

• caussade
• eternal present
• flag
• desire
• will
• how to
• abyss