Some days I struggle with the supremacy of magical systems. Other days, I struggle with reheating the chicken legs or the spaghetti for my late-night snack.

Tonight it was spaghetti.

But I wanted to take a little more time to address the East West thing. My downfall in my attempt to prove the supremacy of the West was my ignorance. My biggest pet peeve with Western Magicians is ignorance. What ticked me off in the first place was the ignorant statement that the East blows away the West. What I loathe more than anything in the world is ignorance.

Especially my own though. I went into this knowing the West can get me anything I wanted. I went in knowing that the idea that the East was more advanced was bullshit. But I let the comment piss me off. I took it personally, because I didn’t like the idea that someone could so nonchalantly dismiss what I do, denigrate it so willfully and … ignorantly.

But whatever. I shouldn’t have taken it personally. Systems are what they are. Westerners are taught from birth that there are no monsters, fairies, gnomes, witches, or magical fat elves that deliver presents once a year to commemorate the gifts of the Magi. Who weren’t really magical, just primitive scientists. We’re trained in ignorance, trained to disregard the primitive and embrace the new-fangled, because it’s easier, faster, and somehow better.

Most of the new really is better and faster. And niftier. I love the internet. I’m totally getting an iPhone.

Anyway, I’m getting tired, and I haven’t even gotten to the point. We’re ignorant, in the West, ignorant of our traditions, ignorant of what “Hermetic” means, ignorant of the ways our cultural predecessors practiced magic. There are no monasteries where the teachings of Hermes are practiced. There are few magicians willing to teach or record their experiences.There are even fewer qualified. The palpable ignorance of western magicians is so extreme that idiots like myself who have scratched the surface of the potential of our heritage seem advanced. News flash, folks, I got K&CHGA three or four years ago. A couple months later I knew more than most occultists, so I thought I had what it takes to teach, or at least inspire.

Hopefully I do, at least inspire.

But I spent a while looking at the Eastern traditions. To the folks that think it’s better, I say this: you’re ignorant. Better for you, maybe, I’ll concede. But the systems of the East are simply being used. That’s all. The representatives of the East that have “supernatural” abilities have all spent years focusing on specific teachings. None of them have it easier than us. Spend five years doing nothing but communing with the HGA or a Goetic spirit, for that matter, and see what you walk away with.You want to say the Eastern systems have more to teach in their writings? Meditate on the Corpus Hermeticum the way they meditate on their teachings. You think their gurus can pass on initiations in ways that we can’t? Spend a week with me.

In a year or so, anyway.

The key is practice, that’s all. Just practice. Conjure a spirit. Conjure it again. Listen and apply its teachings. Develop under its tutelege. Get the attunements they offer. Pass them on to people to advance their progress. All the Easterners with their systems have on us is that they know where to look to learn.

Here’s where to look if you’re interested in getting the full power of the Western traditions:

http://www.esotericarchives.com/ – read everything there. Meditate on the things that resonate with you. Implement the processes.
The Sacred Texts – The same.

That’s it. That’s all there is to it. Do it to the exclusion of all else, devote a lifetime to it, and at the end of your life focus your power into picking up where you left off in your next incarnation. That’s all they do that we don’t. And hell, there are those of us doing that in their own way to varying degrees right now. Find them and talk to them. And don’t be afraid of your ignorance, or let it beat you down like I did. It’s a distraction, something to overcome.

I think Jason’s right. And so are the folks commenting on the blog and sending me emails offlist.

The comments about the Eastern systems blowing away the systems of the West came into my life at a time when I was also trying to help people understand how to do stuff in the Western systems. Much of the Hermetic Tradition is misunderstood, and the idea that the East is superior to the West annoyed me.

As I delved deeper though, what I found was what Jason (and others) said, the systems aren’t that different when you get into the details. The differences lie in the vocabulary. It is hard in the West to pursue magic. I’d like to make it easier. It’s equally hard in the Eastern cultures. I can’t address that. It is alien to me.

So for now, I’m going to back off the whole East vs. West thing, and get back to what I’m most interested in, expanding my understanding and the effectiveness of my magical system. I’ve had to re-evaluate how I look at things like the Golden Dawn, Theosophy, and Eastern systems of magic in general over the past couple of days, and I like what I’ve seen. I’m more confident now than ever that the “Western” systems of magic are as effective as the “Eastern” systems. I have more detailed things to pursue in my Work as a result. I have specific paths to tread that I didn’t know were there before, specific questions to ask spirits, and specific rituals to perform with my HGA as a result of some of the shallow reserch I did on Dzogchen.

Most of what I found was tempest in a teapot stuff. Making mountains out of mole hills. Exaggerating the importance of what I was thinking because I didn’t understand what I was seeing. A little knowledge cann be a dangerous thing.

Jason and I were talking this weekend about some stuff. Basically, someone said the West has nothing on the Eastern systems when it comes to certain things. I objected because there’s nothing that I could desire that I haven’t seen something for in the Western systems of ceremonial magic. So Jason gave me some examples, and mentioned the differentiators between what he’s seen in the West, and what he’s seen in the East.

After talking to him, I was bummed. He’s witnessed stuff that I haven’t done. Not only that, he pointed out that in the East, the person does the magic, s/he doesn’t call on a spirit. The effects they manifest in the eastern traditions come from physical, mental, and spiritual exercises that result in the ability to pool and direct the basic fundamental “energy” (specifically the stuff referred to as “Tao” in the Tao Te Ching, or as dang, rolpa, and tsal in Dzogchen, per Wikipedia) of existence into specific manifestations.

I started analyzing what they do and seeing if there were comparative things in the western grimoires. I was hasty, I admit it. I didn’t take the time to look up what they were really doing, I just jumped into the grims with my half-assed understanding of some of the things Jason had mentioned, and I found some things similar to what I was looking for.

I’ve done a little more research into what the Taoist magicians and the Dzogchen acolytes are doing. It’s all online stuff I’ve found, and mostly from Wikipedia, so I know it’s not like I have a complete knowledge or anything. However, please understand that in my youth I spent a long time studying and absorbing Taoism, and not just the stuff of the Tao te Ching, either. That’s social commentary on the side effects of the Tao, mostly. I’m not coming from a place of complete ignorance of the teachings of the Eastern mystics when I formulate my opinions and plans.

In the East, they have a series of practices and teachings that are performed and meditated upon for literally years. In the West, we have spirits that we call on to accomplish certain things. Most Westerners don’t know diddly crap about the framework of the Western Mystery Traditions that form the Grimoires. Most of us have a concept of Kabbalah. A few of us know about emanation.Acouple of us (relatively) perform evocation. Of those that practice actual conjuration of the spirits of the grimoires, hardly anyone has a clue of what role the spirits are supposed to play in the Great Work, the morphing of the human from ignorant man to Hero, from mundane to a Power of the 8th and 9th Spheres.

I’ve talked a little about how when you conjure a spirit, it makes adjustments to your personal sphere. Being in the presence of the Archangel Haniel, for example, will create a resonance between your sphere and his (some see him as a her; doesn’t matter, it’s got no genitals). You’ll feel more romantic love, more connection to growing things, and you’ll have a greater generative capacity than you had before. Things you touch will blossom, and you’ll initiate things in the world more easily.

The thing is, you likely won’t even notice.

I’ve done a lot of Work with Bune to get rich. It’s been moderately successful. I didn’t spend wisely, so I don’t have a lot to show for it, but each month I’m bringing in over $10K before taxes. I have a Spirit Pot in my office. We sit relatively close to one another.

Over the years we’ve worked together, he’s changed me. I’ve attained some of his abilities. I now have the ability to bring riches to people in the same way he brought riches to me. I inspire people to see opportunities for wealth in regular conversation. In the last couple of weeks, one of my co-workers got a promotion and determined what she wants to do to make a killing in this economy, and has started already; several others I interact with have received bonuses, promotions, and windfalls. The thing they have all had in common was meeting me and interacting with me. That “vibe” I picked up from Bune rubs off on other people.

Now, what I’m thinking is “missing” from the Western tradition is the basic understanding that the grimoires are starting points for developing spiritual attainment. They teach us how, in the West, to receive the empowerment, training, and information that the people of the East receive via various forms of transmission. They have unbroken lineages extending back through history to the early centuries BC, lineages handed down by people, information developed and refined in temples and retreats and in writings and oral traditions that we don’t have. They have mantras and yogas, yantras and whole vocabularies for spiritual experiences within their systems that we simply do not have.

But we have the spirits, a legacy of initiation extending back to the beginning of time itself. We have the spirits of the Goetia, allegedly limited to teaching things of the material realm (I haven’t seen any proof that would indicate they have more versatility than that yet, but I haven’t really tried very hard either). We have the “Angelic” class of spirits, who dwell within the unmanifest Spheres of the Seven Classical Planets, themselves simply emanation points, reference points that we can use to identify specific manifestations of what we call God. We have the Spirits of the Pleroma, the entities of the 8th Sphere who sing hymns in silence and point the way to the 9th. We have God himself and the Logos, actively seeking interaction with all of their emanated beings of Spirit, Mind, and Body.

I’ve experienced “supernatural” transformation of my self by working with the spirits. I know that the things we can do with the spirits are on par with what the denizens of the East are capable of manifesting using their systems. What we lack is a group of people that have done it and taught it to others. What we lack is understanding of our own cultural esoteric traditions. What we lack is devotion to Magic the way the practitioners of the East devote lifetimes to mastering one aspect of transforming the “Energy” of the universe into a manifestation of their “Will.”

And every time someone from the West goes into the East, they are taking with them a cultural resonance that will have to be overcome to get the most out of the Eastern traditions. People like Jason can manage it to some degree, but even he returns to the traditions of the West. I propose that the systems of magic of the West are superior to the systems of the East for Western Magicians. We are extensions of the philosophies of our culture, and they are less alien to us, I think, than the Eastern concepts. I aim to prove it.

I need some more people to Work with on this though. And I need time to develop some materials, some written lineage, and I need to get some more empowerment myself from the spirits. I should probably just work on myself to prove that it can be done, but I know I’m not perfect and will make mistakes that other occult researchers might not make. The more people working on discovering the power of the Western systems, the more people working on turning it into a living, breathing system of magic, the faster we’ll get anywhere.

So if you’re already doing stuff with the Western System, blog about it. Post your results. Educate people. If you’re not working the Grimoires or traditional astrology, if you’re not reading through the Corpus Hermeticum and Agrippa, then start. If you need help applying the lessons, I’ve got a few tricks I’ll gladly pass on. Most are in the archives of my blog, but it’s easier sometimes to just shoot me an email. Post comments below, and I’ll get back to you. Get into the R&D of your system, base it on the stuff that resonates with your upbringing, and develop something cool already.