#theosophy

The Position

I want to examine this question from a Shii perspective. First of all, in the hierarchy of Zaydi Shiism, the hierarchy goes as follows: Angels > Prophets > Saints > Imams. Unlike the Twelvers and Ismailis, Zaydi imams do not have an esoteric and cosmological role in theology. Ismailis clearly assert that no human is above the angels, but the spiritual station of the prophets and imams are so lofty that they may occupy a position above the angels.

Šayḵ Mufīd’s Awa'il Al Maqalat cited three types of opinions on the supremacy of the imams juxtaposed to that of the prophets:

1. With exception to the Seal of the Prophets, Muḥammad (S.A.), the Imams are greater.

2. Imams are greater than messenger-prophets and regular prophets, but beneath the arch-prophets (a.k.a. ʾŪlūʾl-ʿAzm).

3. All prophets are greater than the imams.

The Ismailis, on this matter, do not have a consensus. Twelver consensus varied depending on whether one is an Akhbari or an Usuli. One of the most common Ismaili positions, both Mustaali and Nizari, is that the imams are greater or equal to regular prophets, owing to that figures like Hārūn (Aaron) was both a regular prophet and an imam of Moses (S.A.). But many texts would also elevate the imami station above the prophetic one. My personal view is that these are all truths, but truths can change with time and situation.

Interestingly enough, Ayatollah Khomeini considered Fāṭimah (A.S.) to be greater than all of the regular prophets despite having no prophetic status herself.

Fāṭimah

There is no one term for the occupation of Maryam (A.S.) or Fāṭimah’s (A.S.) role in Islam. They are given titles, attributes, but their actual position is never clear. Mustaali Ismaili writers gave them a specific term for their relationship with the arch-prophet and imam respective of their times: ʾaṣl. They are the foundation in which the prophet is established and are the linkage between the prophet and imam.

To understand Fāṭimah (A.S.) better, we must look at what various sources say about her.

The light of Fāṭimah was created before the creation of the Heavens and the Earth.

Mohammad Baqer Majlesi (d. 1699 A.D.) on a prophetic account:

When God created Paradise, They (I use ‘They’ instead of ‘He’) it from the light of Their Face, then They took that light and cast it. A third of the light touched me, a third touched Fāṭimah, and a third touched ʿAlī and his household…

It was quite common in Twelver narrations and even in the ʾUmm ʾal-Kitāb for Fāṭimah’s (A.S.) soul to be created before Adam, the first man, right after her father the Prophet Muḥammad (S.A.), even before her husband ʿAlī (A.S.). Her illumination in Shii sources is described as equal to that of the Moon and the Stars—the way her face lit the world as the full moon does, and her radiance unfurl from the firmament as the stars—brilliant, but underestimated in their greatness due to their distance and unattainability.

In the ʾUmm ʾal-Kitāb, she is no longer just ʾaz-Zahrāʾ (“the Radiant”), but explicitly entitled as ʾal-Fāṭirah (“the Creator/Originator”). Out of the five spirits (hearing, sight, smelling, speaking, taste), she is equally important as represented by the olfactory spirit.

ʿAbd ʾAllāh ʾaṣ-Ṣabbāḥ, receiving the visions of the ʾAhl ʾal-Bayt, saw the Prophet Muḥammad (S.A.) in godly essence, perfect and without attributes. He beheld ʿAlī (A.S.) as the being of glory that all created things praise. He witnessed Fāṭimah (A.S.) as the Creator/Originator of All. Ḥasan (A.S.) is the beautiful attributes of God, and Ḥusayn the saviour and deliverer who represent the totality of the ʾAhl ʾal-Bayt. From the light of Fāṭimah (A.S.) is a lion, and the face of the Soul of Souls is Fāṭimah (A.S.).

The five organs are the temperament of infinity of Muḥammad. The divine breath is ʿAlī. The image of the creator is Fāṭimah. The brightness of the Sun is Ḥasan. The divine reunion is Ḥusayn.

On Fāṭimah (A.S.):

There is no God beside me, neither in divinity nor humanity, neither in the Heavens nor on Earth, outside of me, who am Fāṭimah the Creator, it is I who created the spirit of the True Believers.

Twelver and Ismaili theologies are firmly apophatic, albeit in Ismailism it is elevated another level. God’s attributes cannot be described, be contained, be envisioned, so the Imamate is the cataphatic presentation of God’s attributes. This makes Fāṭimah (A.S.) impossible to grasp, for her being the representation of the Creator limits us from envisioning her at all. The Imam united the exoteric manifestation of God’s commands through the Prophet with the esoteric function of the Imamate, but esotericism ultimately takes supremacy over the exoteric, despite both being inseparable from the deen. Fāṭimah (A.S.) in this case is the esoteric of the esoteric. She and Maryam (A.S.) do not teach us, the believers, for that is the function of the prophethood and the Imamate; on the other hand, it is they who teach the Prophet and the Imam directly from God. The holy women of Shia Islam are talked not as often but still in the highest terms, for a shroud of mystery has unfurled around them, rendering us speechless about who they are.

Creativeness is not just limited to the Shiite traditions. ʾIbn ʿArabī and Rūmī prescribed the Maker (Ḵāliqah)—a attribute not given to any creation typically, but only God—to women. Ḥasan ʾal-Baṣrī, upon meeting Rābiʿah ʾal-ʿAdawiyyah, saw neither male or female in her—she had transcended both. Sufis talked and contemplates heavily on the beauty and feminine attributes of God, but in such a patriarchal and puritanical society, seeked male lovers with feminine attributes to realise that divinity. God’s two greatest attributes in Islam: Raḥmān and Raḥīm, are etymologically tied to motherhood.

The patriarchy also impact Ismaili views. The Universal Soul, which is grammatically feminine and represent the Ḥujjah (or “Proof”), second in command in the Imamate, is imperfect and feminine; it needs to seek the Universal Intellect. Though both are integral to one another, assigning femininity to the Universal Soul has denigrated the supremacy of the Divine Feminine. I cannot argue for conflating the Ḥujjah with the Universal Soul.

But Ḥasan ʾal-ʿAskarī, eleventh of the Twelver imams, broke this silence:

We are the Ḥujjah of God upon Creation. But our grandmother, Fāṭimah, is the Ḥujjah of God over us.

Scholar Henry Corbin saw that Fāṭimah’s (A.S.) role transcended majesty and beauty, exoteric and esoteric, temporal and eternal. It is her who bore those to the world in the first place, for she is the repository of divinity.

O Muḥammad! if it were not for you, I would not have created the stars. [And] if it were not for ʿAlī, I would not have created you. [And] if it were not for Fāṭimah, I would not have created either of you.

He who truly understands the Night of Power, then he has truly understood Fāṭimah. Yet she is named Fāṭimah (lit. “abstained, weaned”) because Creation has been weaned from knowing her.

'Abd al-Hakeem Carney asserted: “…she is not associated with any Sophia like figure. There is not really an analogy to Sophia as a Bride of God or as an archetype of divine wisdom in Islam. What we have instead is a feminine figure who is seen, above all else, as a creatrix and a manifestation of the Divine to the remaining members of the spiritual hierarchy.”

More Paths Through the Magical Landscape: A Sequel

Part 1 : https://www.tumblr.com/chatsintowolves/816913588605337600/six-varieties-of-magick-and-how-they-work

The first six paths—Enochian, Golden Dawn, Wicca, Druidry, Satanism, and Chaos Magick—mapped a territory largely defined by the Western esoteric lodge, the nature religion revival, and the adversarial reaction to both. But the map is larger than that. Here are six more systems, each with its own metaphysical engine, its own cultural origin, and its own answer to the fundamental question: what is magic, and how do you do it?

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1. Vodou (Haitian Vodou)

The most publicly recognized and wildly misunderstood Afro-diasporic magical religion in the English-speaking world. Beneath the Hollywood caricature of zombie masters and voodoo dolls lies a rigorous, initiatory, possession-based tradition with a complex spirit taxonomy and a powerful magical technology.

· Core Philosophy: A religion of reciprocal relationship with the Lwa—sentient, powerful, and distinct spirit intelligences who govern the forces of life, death, love, justice, and the crossroads. Bondye, the remote creator God, is approached through the Lwa, who are served, fed, and honored in exchange for protection, healing, and practical assistance. The temple (hounfo) and the lineage-based priesthood (houngan and mambo) structure community life. The Lwa are organized into nations (nanchons), each with its own temperament, drum rhythms, songs, and sacred colors. The Rada spirits are cool, benevolent, and associated with the African homeland. The Petro spirits are hot, fierce, and born of the revolutionary colonial experience.

· Ritual Technology: The danse is the central act: drum rhythms, call-and-response songs, and the drawing of vèvè—ritual floor diagrams traced in cornmeal that serve as astral beacons calling each Lwa—invite the spirits into the heads of initiated serviteurs through possession trance. Initiation (kanzo) is a profound, life-altering sacrament involving seclusion, instruction, and the seating of the Lwa in the head. Magical work includes paket kongò (spirit bundles wrapped in fabric and feather, fed and activated for specific purposes), lamp work, and spiritual baths, all conducted within the logic of service and exchange, not command. The Lwa are not compelled; they are petitioned, fed, and honored. The relationship is familial and lifelong.

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2. Heathenry (Germanic/Norse Paganism and Rune Magic)

The most prominent non-Wiccan Pagan revival in the English-speaking world. It is a distinct magical religion with its own cosmology, its own operative technology, and a significant public presence. It also carries the unique and serious burden of Nazi co-option, making its inclusion culturally necessary: any informed discussion of modern magic must reckon with the rune problem.

· Core Philosophy: The gifting cycle is the fundamental logic of divine-human interaction. Gods (Odin, Thor, Freyja, Frigg, and the rest of the Æsir and Vanir), ancestors, and land-spirits (wights) are approached through reciprocal offering (blót). A gift demands a gift. The universe is shaped by Wyrd, the evolving web of fate laid by the Norns at the roots of Yggdrasil, which the practitioner learns to read and influence through ritual action. The soul is not a single thing but a complex of subtle bodies: the hamr (shape-shifting form), the hugr (mind-will), the fylgja (attendant spirit, often appearing as an animal or woman), and the hamingja (personal luck-force that passes through family lines).

· Ritual Technology: Rune magic is the hallmark. The 24 runes of the Elder Futhark are not an alphabet but cosmic principles accessed through carving, chanting (galdr), blood-reddening, and talismanic inscription. Each rune is a sound, a glyph, and a law of reality simultaneously. Seiðr is the reconstructed shamanic trance technology, often modeled on the figure of the vǫlva (staff-wielding seeress), involving a high-seat journey, a chanting chorus, and oracular divination (spá) to perceive and manipulate the threads of Wyrd. Symbel is ritualized toasting over a horn of mead, weaving community luck and fate through spoken boasts and oaths. The Nazi problem must be named directly: the runes were systematically appropriated by the völkisch movement and the Third Reich. Symbols like the Sowilo rune became the SS insignia. The Othala rune is used by neo-Nazi groups today. The overwhelming majority of modern Heathens are explicitly anti-racist and inclusive, but any seeker must navigate this toxic legacy with open eyes.

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3. Neo-Shamanism and the Global Shamanic Revival

Shamanism is the oldest stratum of human magical practice, a worldwide family of techniques that exploded back into Western consciousness through the Castaneda books, the psychedelic revolution, the ayahuasca boom, and the workshops of Michael Harner. Its streams are diverse, but they share a recognizable core.

· Core Philosophy: The world is alive and ensouled—every rock, river, tree, animal, and ancestor possesses spirit. Spirits are not metaphors; they are persons with agency and the capacity for relationship. The principle of correspondence governs this cosmos: what happens in the spirit world affects the physical world. Sickness is often soul loss, an intrusion, or an offended spirit, and must be treated on that level. The shaman is defined by the journey out and the return. They travel to the other side—the underworld, the upper world, the forest of the dead—and bring something back: a lost soul part, a diagnosis, a healing, a prophecy. Their authority rests solely on demonstrated success.

· Ritual Technology: Altered states are the door, induced through drumming (205-220 beats per minute), dancing, fasting, ordeal, or entheogenic plants. The shaman's tools are living vessels of spirit alliance: the drum is a horse to the other world, the rattle a voice that calls the spirits, the staff and mask and plant brew each a relationship made tangible. A power object is a spirit with a handle. In many Asian traditions, the shaman's body becomes the vessel itself. The Korean mudang performs the kut, an exhausting ritual of dance, chant, and blade-walking in which gods and ancestors are summoned and dispatched through possession trance. Japanese miko and itako traditions involve spirit mediumship and communication with the dead. But they share the core shamanic logic: the world is alive, spirits are real, altered states open the door, the journey is the method, and the proof is the healing brought back.

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4. Helena Blavatsky’s Theosophy

The grandmother of the modern Western esoteric revival and the New Age. Without Theosophy, there is no 20th-century occultism as we know it. Helena Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine (1888) synthesized Eastern concepts of reincarnation and karma, Western Hermeticism, and a fabricated "Mahatma" lineage into a grand cosmic narrative that shaped the Golden Dawn, Wicca, and virtually every alternative spirituality that followed. It is the ur-text of the "Ancient Wisdom" narrative.

· Core Philosophy: All religions are exoteric branches of a single, primordial Secret Doctrine, preserved by a hidden hierarchy of perfected Masters (the Mahatmas or Ascended Masters) residing in the remote Himalayas. The cosmos is cyclic, emanating from and reabsorbing into the Absolute over vast ages called Rounds and Races. Humanity evolves through reincarnation and karma toward eventual godhood, each lifetime a classroom. The human being is a sevenfold entity: physical body, etheric double, astral body, lower mind, higher mind, buddhic consciousness, and atman (the divine spark). The goal is conscious participation in cosmic evolution.

· Ritual Technology: Theosophy is more mystical and metaphysical than operatively magical, but its influence on magical systems is incalculable. It popularized the concepts of the astral plane, the aura, the chakras (in their Western, somewhat garbled interpretation), the Akashic Records, and the Ascended Masters. Its techniques include meditation, visualization, and the study of its vast, dense cosmology. Later offshoots—the Liberal Catholic Church, the "I AM" Activity of Guy Ballard, the Church Universal and Triumphant of Elizabeth Clare Prophet—added more ritual structure, decree-work, and apocalyptic urgency. Theosophy provided the metaphysical map that almost everyone else on these lists used, knowingly or not.

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5. Tantra (Hindu and Buddhist)

The most powerful non-Abrahamic magical-soteriological system to enter the Western consciousness. Severely misunderstood and reduced to spiritualized sex, authentic Tantra is a rigorous technology of deity identification, subtle-body manipulation, and the deliberate, transgressive use of conventional impurities to achieve liberation (moksha) and supernatural power (siddhis). Its vocabulary—chakra, kundalini, mantra, yantra—is now standard English. The "Left-Hand Path" and "Right-Hand Path" distinction in Western occultism originated here, imported by Helena Blavatsky.

· Core Philosophy: The universe is the dynamic play of Shakti (primordial energy, the feminine principle) and Shiva (pure consciousness, the masculine principle). Everything is a manifestation of their union. The human body is a microcosm containing channels (nadis), energy centers (chakras), and a dormant serpent power (Kundalini) coiled at the base of the spine. Awakening Kundalini and uniting her with Shiva at the crown results in liberation, bliss, and the attainment of siddhis—supernatural powers including clairvoyance, levitation, and the ability to shrink or expand the body at will. The "Right-Hand Path" (Dakshinachara) pursues this through asceticism and internal visualization. The "Left-Hand Path" (Vamachara) deliberately transgresses purity taboos to shatter dualistic consciousness, using the pañcamakāra (five Ms): madya (wine), mamsa (meat), matsya (fish), mudra (parched grain), and maithuna (ritual sexual union).

· Ritual Technology: Deity yoga is the core Buddhist Tantric method: the practitioner visualizes themselves dissolving into emptiness and re-arising in the complete form of a fully enlightened Buddha or fierce deity, with all attributes, colors, and symbols intact. This is not roleplay; it is an identity technology designed to bypass the ego and directly access enlightened mind. Hindu Tantra uses nyāsa (ritual placement of mantras on the body through touch, turning the body into a living yantra), yantra worship (geometric deity diagrams drawn on metal or in sand, activated through mantra), and elaborate mantra-science in which the sound is the deity. Advanced Tibetan practices include tummo (generation of inner heat, allowing yogis to dry wet sheets on their bare skin in freezing temperatures), dream yoga (maintaining lucid awareness through the sleep state), and phowa (consciousness transference, ejecting the mind through the crown at the moment of death). Tantra is not a casual practice. It requires initiation (diksha), a qualified guru, and years of preparatory work. The Western commodification of "Tantric sex" has almost nothing to do with it.

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6. Key of Solomon Demonology (Solomonic Grimoire Tradition)

The most influential and widely practiced grimoire tradition in Western magic. The Lesser Key of Solomon—particularly its first book, the Ars Goetia, with its 72 demon sigils, ranks, and offices—is arguably the single most worked grimoire in the modern occult underground. It represents a distinct magical technology: spirit-compulsion through Abrahamic divine authority. It is neither Golden Dawn ceremonialism nor Chaos Magick, though it influenced both. Working the Goetia directly is a popular and demanding path in its own right, with a massive contemporary literature and a thriving online community.

· Core Philosophy: King Solomon, by the grace of the God of Israel, bound demons to build the Temple in Jerusalem. The magician, purified through fasting, prayer, confession, and moral rectitude, wields the divine names and seals of God—Adonai, Elohim, Tetragrammaton, the names of the archangels—to summon, bind, and command spirits. The spirits are fallen angels, dangerous, amoral, and hostile to humanity, but subject to the authority of the Most High. The magician stands in that delegated authority. The ends are often practical: finding treasure, gaining knowledge of the arts and sciences, compelling love, discovering thieves, inflicting harm on enemies. The spirits are not evil in the sense of serving a devil opposed to God; they are functionaries of a cosmos in which everything, even the rebellious, serves the divine purpose.

· Ritual Technology: The grimoire is an instruction manual. The magician constructs a circle of protection inscribed with divine names, within which they stand. Outside the circle, facing a specific direction appropriate to the spirit, they place the Triangle of Art—a triangular boundary into which the spirit is conjured and constrained. The spirit's seal (sigil) is drawn on parchment or metal and placed within the triangle. The consecrated tools include the sword (authority), the wand (will), the pentacle of Solomon (protection), and the hazel rod. The conjurations are long, repetitive, and thunderous, filled with barbarous names of God and threats of divine wrath should the spirit disobey. The ritual is a high-stakes negotiation backed by cosmic authority. The spirit manifests visibly—or at least sensibly—within the triangle, is bound to the magician's will, answers questions, performs tasks, and is then licensed to depart to its proper place without harming anyone. This paradigm—the circle, the triangle, the sigil, the binding—is the DNA of Western evocation. Contemporary practitioners like Jake Stratton-Kent and Stephen Skinner have revitalized the tradition, stripping away Victorian accretions and returning to the original grimoiric sources, while a new generation of online practitioners debate technique, share results, and adapt the old conjurations to modern language.

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Summary: The Second Six

Vodou

Core Mechanism: Spirit possession and service

Metaphor: Dancing with the Lwa

Heathenry

Core Mechanism: Gifting cycle and rune-working

Metaphor: Weaving the Wyrd

Neo-Shamanism

Core Mechanism: Altered-state spirit journeying

Metaphor: Riding the Drum

Theosophy

Core Mechanism: Secret doctrine and cosmic evolution

Metaphor: Reading the Akashic Record

Tantra

Core Mechanism: Deity identification and energy awakening

Metaphor: Becoming the God

Solomonic Demonology

Core Mechanism: Spirit compulsion by divine authority

The peculiar thing about the Kamaloka period is that one relives one's life again, but now from back to front: one begins with the last life experience and goes back at triple speed to the time of childhood. While the memory of one's life in the etheric body [immediately after death] was without joy or pain, one now relives all the joys and pains of one's past life again, but in reverse, which means that one experiences everything one has done to others, the suffering and the joy, oneself. These memories remain as impressions in the astral body, to fulfill our karma in future incarnations, in which we are born with the same personalities to whom we have done good or evil in previous incarnations. Now [after the Kamaloka period] the astral body is released.

The fruits of life experiences are collected here in the causal body [the extract of the etheric and astral bodies] so that they can be transferred to the following incarnations. One looks back on many past incarnations and strives to incorporate one's life experiences into the life plan for future incarnations. The past and the future are illuminated for a moment in a bright light before the person descends again to a new incarnation.

There was a time when he was just a seeker… curious, searching, drawn toward hidden truths.

Before the name became легендary in occult history, before the controversy, before the rebellion— there was a journey shaped by mysticism, philosophy, and the unknown.

But something changed.

A shift. A break from the path. A transformation that turned curiosity into something far more powerful.

✨ A world of secret teachings 🔥 A mind that refused limits 👁️ A story that still echoes through time

This episode of Randomness Reloaded explores the transformation of Aleister Crowley—from early influences tied to spiritual movements like the Theosophical Society, to a path entirely his own.

Was it evolution… or something deeper?

The myth of Lucifer and Iblis are iterations of older ideas, and Abrahamic traditions inherited and reinterpreted older regional mythic themes, and every new iteration serves a purpose in the literature of those who have constructed it. People are very much still caught up in this myth of Lucifer, Antichrist and the Apocalypse. Every old theology is judged from the viewpoint of Christianity and…