OEITH #210 To Keep Silence

To know, to dare, to will, and to keep silence. We explore the magical virtues (specifically, “to keep silence”), known also as “The Powers of the Sphinx”, encountering along the way: the gift of dreams; how keeping silence still protects magicians; how silence can also harm magicians; why I am not silent about my experiences; an oddly pertinent dream; musicians playing music in silence as an analogy for how magicians stand in relationship to each other; the silent recognition of a shared link to the ineffable; the audible as different for everyone, but silence as the same to all; Éliphas Lévi on the Powers of the Sphinx; correspondences of the powers; why I find these unconvincing; Crowley’s take on the powers and their correspondences; Crowley’s added power, “to go”, as an equivalent to the tao or dharma; how the concept of the powers might be useful; the nature of human will; human experience considered as a straddling of realms and bodies; the physical and emotional bodies as “objective”; the mental body as “subjective”; imagining the objective mental body; machines versus angels; an answer to the question free will; the choice between free will and true will; humiliation as the human condition; the powers as ideals, indicating directions of growth and evolution; a less-than-perfect world; keeping silence as cultivating inner silence, and the silence of the divine; Anonymous and Crowley on the primary significance of silence; true will and silence; dreaming as an underrated practice.

Errata: What Nishida Kitaro actually wrote was this: “If we see God externally, it is merely magic” (p. 77).

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Anonymous (2002). Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism. New York: Tarcher.

Aleister Crowley (1943). Magick Without Tears. https://tinyurl.com/3yzx3644 (consciouslibrary.com). Accessed February 2022.

Aleister Crowley (1991). Little Essays Towards Truth. Scottsdale, AZ: New Falcon.

Éliphas Lévi (1896). Transcendental Magic: Its Doctrine and Ritual, translated by A.E. Waite. London: George Redway.

Nishida Kitaro (1987). Last Writings: Nothingness and the Religious Worldview, translated by David Dilworth. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii.