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Real Angels aren't faggots

EmperorofIceCream

Join Date 09/2004

Real Angels aren't faggots

and they don't do tricks

I recently became aware of the 'Left Behind' series of books and movies, set in the days after the Rapture when all the true believers get to go home with Jesus. I thought it was a reasonably interesting take on the topic - if abominably written (and acted), cardboard characters drooling sentimentality at every turn and a theology that wasn't so much faithful to its source but a parody of it instead.

Christianity has been rendered devoid of mystery and terror. It can be seen in the ease with such anodine pap can be accepted as a portrayal of an event which, were it to take place, would be the antithesis of the accepted rationality of our times. Such an event would the triumph of the anti-real over Reason.

And now it's the basis of a soap-opera.

You can see the same de-mystification of things in the inversion of the word 'awesome' in popular usage. The word derives from the Old English egefull, meaning dreadful - as in to inspire dread, terror, and the awareness of imminent and unavoidable destruction. Now it means something liked or desired, something particularly appreciated or satisfactory. It means a particularly effective detergent; the most recent technotoy, the ride you get in your new car.

Say to someone now "My God is High and Awesome" and he'll think you mean stoned and, like, the PS2.

And then there's what's happened to the portrayal of Angels in Christian culture. Go read Exodus, where God's chief killer (and a child killer at that) is an Angel. Go read Ezekiel, where the Angels are more freakish than anything dreamed up in Hollywood, where the mere vision of them leaves the prophet stunned and helpless for a week after. Then walk into a store selling Christian literature and imagery. Go look at the pretty blonde boys in bedsheets; or go watch such feeble nonsense as 'Highway to Heaven' and 'Touched by an Angel'. You've only to do these things in order to see what it is that has taken the place of the Celestial Killers and Monsters the prophets knew, an iconography that has been emasculated - castrated in favour of the depiction of an effette whitebread jesus and a host of heavenly faggots.

Fortunately, the real Angels don't give a fuck what we think about them. And they haven't changed from Ezekiel's day.

You might wonder how I know. Those few of you who've read what I write here know that I am a Ritual Magickian. Those fewer still who have read and paid attention will also know that I am a Chaote deriving inspiration from the tradition of Thelemic Ritual. One aspect of that tradition that has inspired me from the beginning is its injunction to attain to the 'knowledge and conversation of ones Holy Guardian Angel'.

But since I am a Chaote, and since Chaos knows no morality, on first encountering this injunction it occurred to me to ask, "What would my Holy Guardian Angel look like if divested of the pious spunsugar crap that the common Christian cocoons his Angels in?"

If Chaos knows no morality, it knows a fractal symmetry and order. Which is to say, "As above, so below". And since that's so, Hell can never have been more (or less) than Heaven reversed in all its relations, and the Demonic no more than the Love of Angels for Men revealed in all its cruelty.

When Metatron, Angel of Death and God's Choirmaster, killed the firstborn sons of Egypt he had a smile for every killing, and a frown for every jew-brat he had to spare. In case you aren't aware let me tell you the truth of it - Angels don't like us, the second-born raised above the first and given command over them.

They may not like us but they lust after us and they're easily seduced: especially if one foregoes command and chooses obedience. Oh, not to the will of the Angel, but to the will of the Thing that produced Angels and Magickians both.

The Angel I know I described here (Link) though I called him by another Name. Not that the Name isn't his, I just hadn't quite come to terms with the fractal nature of the Divine (dualism is hard to erase from the mind).

As I said - I am a Chaote deriving inspiration from Thelema. The Angel I sought was a Killer and a Monster, with ten thousand eyes in each of its six wings and the head of a Bull, a Lion and a Man combined. I found him, of course - because whatever is truly sought after Magickally is always found. And I learned that the Demonic and the Angelic are as close to each other as breath and the body that breathes it, and each are equally innocent.

Innocent, because whatever obeys the law of its nature is in accord with the principle of perfect Justice through which God first created the possibility of Being, and then the actuality of Being - not merely its foundational principles but its unfolding into every actual sphere of life. That which accords with justice has committed no crime and therefore cannot be condemned. What cannot be condemned is innocent. Angels, Demons, Men - we all embody this principle, which is no more than this: you can't fight what you are, without twisting what you are into something perverse and corrupt.

To be innocent in this way, innocent because expressing perfectly the unfettered actuality of what one is, is a perspective and a way of life that can't be supported by the common man's Christianity. Daddy-god is supposed to save me from my sinful heart (if my heart is sinful) not give me a means to perfectly express it. Angels are meant to keep us on the straight and narrow, not be complicit in the service of our lusts. Demons are not meant to guide, to inspire, to bring about self-knowledge and self-control. Yet if you look at the origin of the word, the Greek Daimon, from which the Christian Demon derives, did exactly those things.

And the iconography of contemporary Christianity has no image which can in any way express the existential terror, the awareness of dissolution, embodied in the confrontation with a Being that knows itself absolutely, which serves a purpose entirely Other to anything we know as a purpose of our own.

One must be subtle when dealing with Angels. It's always wise to remember that while they will always deal cunningly with the Desires of Men, and with the Magickians who invoke them for the satisfaction of those Desires, they will never be less than honest when dealing with the will of the God whose slaves they are. The Magickian who deals with Angels (or Demons if you prefer) must remember that while he has authority to command, he hasn't the wit to forsee every consequence of his command - and that the malice of the Angels will see to it that, in the end, every command returns upon him to his hurt.

I am a Magickian. I deal with Angels, for love of their terror, their horror, and their beauty, in desire of their wisdom and their power. I invoke them, I command them to appear, to shelter, protect and guide me. But not in my name. Not ever in my name, but in the Name of the Thing that made us both, whose Servant I am just as they are.

And that being so, they are friendly to me (as friendly as Angels ever get) and do my bidding. That, and the fact that I don't bother them with petty shit like making money, being happy, and getting laid.

If, in my dealings with Angels, I'd discovered a bunch of pretty faggots in white bedsheets who could do tricks I wouldn't be concerned about invoking them for personal wealth, health and general well-being - and I'd be living in Califoria channeling healing spirits and playing with crystals instead of conversing with creatures whose breath can wither the marrow, the brush of whose feathers destroys nations - I'd be a Wiccan, or a Satanist, or a Christian, instead of a Ritual Magickian.

That is what I am, however. When I invoke the Angelic Powers it's not because I need a job or a promotion, or because I'm dying of cancer, or because I want my neighbour's wife. It's in pursuit of those things I desire that pertain exclusively to what is revealed in the knowledge and conversation of my own Angel/Daimon.

I suppose you might want to know what such conversation sounds like, what might the substance of such knowledge be?

I won't tell you.

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You like Bonhoeffer, the same one who tried to overthrow the 3rd Reich by taking out the Furer. His prison chronicles are equal with John Bunyan. (also wrote in prison)... Nee, Wurmbrand, and Paul...I have expressed my feelings on this book by La Haye. These books are coming out of a very shallow root, I include 'Purpose Driven Life' and anything by 'Benny Hinn'...their has been a dumbing down of Biblical Doctrine over the last while or so. My only redemption...not in the theological sense...but in the mental sense is the candid and illuminating exposes by Al Dager from Media Spotlight, he just suffered and extreme operation and is writing for all the world to see what has happened. The once green pastures that inspired the works of Johan Sebastian Bach, and breathed down in the soul of William Shakespeare have gone. It has come about by mixing and over mixing hybrids of doctrine. The solid teaching that came out of John Bunyan's pen, have been watered down and the Gospel that saved many of us, is no more. I have taken myself a stand on this issue and am presently writing on the very subject. I hate superficiality, in myself and in what I read. I am learning to understand that in order to share this life, one needs to be loving an accepting that not everyone is at the same level as oneself, somethimes others are far higher than us. For example the following quote from a book written for JRR Tolkien by C.S.Lewis...which I believe addresses the issue which you are endeavouring to sideswipe.

'Two equal opposite errors of thought exist concerning devils. One is to disbelieve their existence. The other is to believe and to feel and excessive and unhealthy interest in them. Demons are themselves equally pleased by both errors and regard a skeptic or magician with the same delight.'

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You like Bonhoeffer, the same one who tried to overthrow the 3rd Reich by taking out the Furer.

Yes, although anyone who has studied is life knows of the deep conflict he had between his faith and his participation in the Abwehr, which worked to overthrow Hitler. He joined largely because, as a leader of the "Confessing church" (the churches that opposed Hitler), he was under scrutiny from the nazis, and his participation was to avoid conscription into the German military.

He was an amazing man, in difficult times

(sorry for the thread hijack, emp)

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Well.

I haven't written something to attract this much attention (and persistence) in a long time. I hardly know where to begin in replying. I shall make a couple of global responses before going on to the more interesting stuff. Nothing said so far by either preacherman or aeryk has offended me and they are both welcome here. The comments about Bonhoeffer were on topic, if tangentially.

'Two equal opposite errors of thought exist concerning devils. One is to disbelieve their existence. The other is to believe and to feel and excessive and unhealthy interest in them. Demons are themselves equally pleased by both errors and regard a skeptic or magician with the same delight.'

I particularly like 'Demons are themselves equally pleased by both errors and regard a skeptic or magician with the same delight' . It's meant as a warning, but I take it as an invitation - though 'incitement' is perhaps the better word to use. An incitement to go to the Outside of Everything, to the inversion of values. At the heart of everything said by both preacherman and aeryck is the threat of the loss of heaven and imminent damnation.

If the enticements of heaven don't work to save a soul (there's been very little mention of them, by the way) then all that's left is the threat of hell. My notion of heaven would correspond quite closely to the conception most have of hell. I believe in this way because the God I see at work in the world around me is so monstrously different and Other to anything I was ever taught about It, that the only way to approach It is through a Worship that embraces everything generally excluded: perversion, madness, terror and death.

Gentlemen, if your objective is to 'turn me back to Jesus' (as it appears to be) the threat of Hell is not going to do it.

If all it takes is a strong enough belief to make something, how powerful is unbelief in unmaking it?

If every believer in the God Jesus (as destinct from Jesus the Christ and Jesus the man) stopped believing in Him at the same moment then He would vanish in that moment. Gods die when no one believes in them. The God Jove is dead, Isis is dead, the Queen of Heaven is dead - no one believes in them, no one worships them.

But what actually happens is that Gods mutate as the faith of their believers mutates. Jove becomes YAHWEH who becomes 'God the Father' and so on, ad infinitum, ad nauseam.

Contrary to popular belief, and in much the same way that lightning stikes up and not down, faith makes and unmakes the Gods we believe in. And the proof of this is something very simple. It's found in the fact that the enirety of contemporary Christianity, all its doctrines, its theologies, are based on a typo - on misunderstanding what happens when you place the vowels for the Hebrew word 'adonai' around the Tetragrammaton (YHVH). You get gibberish, is what happens.

Jesus the Christ, Son of YAHWEH, Savior of the World - is what happens. A myth turns into an egregor which becomes a God-Form. And while God-Forms have power, a God-Form is not God.

And that in essence is why I turned my back on the Jesus aeryck and preacherman profess to know.

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Gentlemen, if your objective is to 'turn me back to Jesus' (as it appears to be) the threat of Hell is not going to do it.

emporor, Christ purpose was not judgement, but salvation...

I am come a light unto the world, that whosoever believeth on me should not abide in darkness, and if any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not: for I come not to judge the world but to save the world.

And that in essence is why I turned my back on the Jesus aeryck and preacherman profess to know.

You can turn your back on Him emporor, but everyone will one day bow the knee, of things in heaven and thing in earth and things under the earth. My knee, your knee, whip's knee and aeryck's knee.

preacherman

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I will certainly agree with you, preacherman, that one day every knee will bow and every neck be bent - but not in homage to Jesus the Christ, who is a figment, a fantasy, a delusion, born out of a simple misunderstanding of Hebrew grammar. The Jesus of your theology does not exist, has never existed and never will exist. He did not exist even in that time when I was a fervent devotee, busy alienating friends, family and possible converts alike with my zealous bigotry.

This thread however didn't start its life as a debate about the divinity of Jesus Christ. It began as a simple comment on the state of contemporary Christian iconography and especially the depiction of Angels. It was also a confession - a confession to myself, but still a confession. Consider it the testimony of a soul before its intellect, an acknowledgement of the greater role, and increasing importance, assumed in my life by one particular expression of God, that expression having the form of an Angel.

I suppose I've allowed the debate that's occurred here to assume the shape it has because I was interested in seeing if any of those who responded would move beyond the cliches of contemporary Christian thought to a wider consideration of what salvation might look like.

And that, of course, has not happened.

That being so, this thread is at an end and is now closed to further comment.

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I changed my mind. Out of contention (even feeble contention) comes illumination.

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Your kindness is quite touching.

that one day every knee will bow and every neck be bent

A slight mis-quote "that at the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow and every TONGUE shall confess that Jesus is the Lord to the Glory of God the Father"

emperor, it is not too late. If one believes with his heart and confesses with his mouth (TONGUE)... there one will find salvation. But it is imperative, today is the day of salvation. It will be much better to confess with the tongue of salvation than to wait until that day, and be forced in judgement.

Thanks for opening the thread back up.

preacherman

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I will certainly agree with you, preacherman, that one day every knee will bow and every neck be bent

On further consideration I will not agree with you, preacherman. One reason I've kept this going is that it provokes new reflection on old themes. I find I have abandoned in its entirety my old faith.

Since I now believe that God was never here in the first place (that is, did not walk here as a man, does not place us at the center of the universe, and has no more interest in the ultimate fate of humanity than I have in the ultimate fate of whatever it is that causes the common cold) there is no reason to believe any longer

that one day every knee will bow and every neck be bent

This is yet another of the ideas that I entertained during the time I was a Christian, one more thing to evaporate when given proper consideration.

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This is yet another of the ideas that I entertained during the time I was a Christian

emperor, you don't just fall in and out of Christianity. Except a man be born again.

When a man is born he can not be unborn. It is not only true in the physcial, it is true in the spiritual. When an individual becomes a child of God, he/she does not unbecome by unbelieving. Granted he/she will sometime not act the way God (their Heavenly Father) would like, but they never discontinue being born again or His child.

If you have tried Christianity and found you did not like it or it's teaching,, you saw it no more than another religion. Christianity is not a religion, it is the life of Christ, being lived out in a sinner, just like me and you, and yes little_whip.

I find I have abandoned in its entirety my old faith.

Like a dog returning to it's own vomit? emperor we can forsake the sin of the flesh through the power of God's Spirit and freedom from sin & death.

preacherman

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preacherman:

once more my reply turned into an epic - though this time it's not bullshit. I shall post it as a short article and provide a link here when I do, as I don't know what to call it yet.

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preacher man:

Here is the link. Link

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To little_whip:

My Angel is prettier than your Angel

neener neener

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To little_whip:

My Angel will kick your Angels asses - and they know it too:)

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