Kimberly, having watched your excellent video on the Sphere of Protection, and attempted the SoP consistently over the course of several months, I am perplexed about this practice.
Why? Aside from the major challenge of conjuring & sustaining visualization of the many requisite images with sufficient focus, vividness & clarity, there are a couple of key ingredients I have been struggling with. JMG has been dismissive (YMMV), so I turn to you in hopes you may have some helpful insights thru your experience.
1. Vibration. According to JMG: "Vibrated? That's a way of pronouncing words used by ceremonial magicians. To learn how to do it, try chanting a simple vowel sound like "aaaah," changing the way you hold your mouth and throat until you feel a buzzing or tingling feeling somewhere in your body. With practice, you can focus the vibration wherever you want, inside your body or outside of it, and it becomes a potent magical method. For now, do your best, and see how steady you can get the buzzing or tingling sensation."
Am genuinely curious how many people attempting the SoP have actually achieved the level of vibration & control JMG claims is possible (and indeed essential?). "Focusing vibration [at all seems a tall order, but:] wherever you want" -- really??As you are an experienced voice/song/music instructor, I imagine you may be better qualified than most to speak to the technical possibilities here.
2.a "imagine as intensely as possible the deep places of the Earth and the immense powers that dwell there. Engage all your senses, so that you smell and feel and hear as well as see the imagery."
What? How? Are folks just glossing over the impossibility of this? What imagery, exactly? Am I'm just lacking imagination?
2.b "imagine as intensely as possible the realms of outer space far above you and the immense powers that dwell there. Engage all your senses, so that you smell and feel and hear as well as see the imagery. (What does space smell like? According to astronauts, it smells a little like a scorched barbecue grill -- hot metal with an odd hint of meat.)"
Smell, feel and hear... "outer space". Wait, what? smh How? Again, is the answer just: sorry, you lack imagination?
I want to believe the SoP is not just some sort of massive trolling exercise ala "The Druid's New Clothes." Thanks for providing this open post & to you & anyone who can provide data points to help provide clarity.
The SoP is a tall order! It took me a couple of years to have any confidence in doing it. Even at the time I made that video, there were many hiccups to work out.
As far as asking JMG to help with the SoP, what's funny is that it's like asking J.S. Bach to teach a remedial music class for highly-caffeinated 9 year olds. It's hard for him to come down to their level. Not so tough for me, because "highly-caffeinated 9 year old" is one of my dominant personalities, plus my magical expertise is limited to the remedial at this point, so it's not as difficult for me to talk about basics.
I hope it helps you. Notice that the humming sound has the "color" of an accordion note. It can take a long time to make that color but once you get it in head voice/falsetto, you will be well on your way.
2.a Yeah, I remember reading that and thinking "LOL whut?" Nobody has ever been to the center of the Earth, so what that would smell like is beyond comprehension. Personally, I have never been caving or spelunking, so I don't know what those "deep places" are like at all.
As far as the imaginary component of the SoP, do you ever look at a photo/video of a place and imagine what it would be like to live or travel there? For instance, this site recommended by Princess Cutekitten is especially good for "transporting" your imagination outside of your immediate circumstances: https://www.window-swap.com/Window
For the Gate of Air, I often imagine a birch forest at sunrise in the early spring when frost is on the ground. I imagine what it would be like to be Agafya Lykova, waking up on a spring morning alone in the Russian taiga:
For the Gate of Fire, this morning I imagined my own neighborhood on a hot summer day. I imagined watching people go into Dairy Delite from my sweltering car (I don't have working air conditioning).
For the Gate of Water, I imagined a beautiful mountain-surrounded lake in Colorado in Autumn. This one was easy because it actually is Autumn right now where I live.
For the Gate of Earth, I imagined my parent's house on December 31, 1968. They had just moved in at that point. The house used to be a khaki green color, so that was part of my visualization. Sometimes I imagine a snowy landscape further north than Illinois. It all depends, once again.
When we get to the Earth/Spirit Below Gate, I recommend rubbing your hands together vigorously, touching the ground, and then putting your hands on your naked belly. Imagine some healing spirits from the Earth coming up to to help heal your gut and to bring pragmatism and good sense of the "I don't let perfect be the enemy of done" variety into your heart.
When you get to the Purple Gate/Spirit Above, raise your hands to the sky and imagine light beaming down and being surrounded by the All-Fathers like this scene from The Dark Crystal:
Thank you so much! Your gracious & detailed response is a breath of fresh air in these otherwise often perilously toxic online realms. Your blog being one of the exceptions to the rule, of course. :)
I will obviously have to try harder & get back to you in ... many moons, likely... ;) This just leaves me wondering one more thing: Is there anything Kimberly can't do?
As a highly caffeinated 8-year-old, I wish to register a %!#%#ing protest against these darn profanity bans all over the Internet. How else are we 8-year-olds supposed to express ourselves? It’s not like we get taught etiquette these days.
The way I understand it, this is about training the mind to enter realms outside of direct sense impressions: the fact that it's impossible to have sensory input from those places is precisely the point of the exercise.
It's not about finding the 'right' answer, as there is no way of knowing what that answer might be.
One note: while visualization is a very powerful component of magical workings, it's not strictly necessary. Some magicians can't visualize worth a hill of beans. I'm not great at it myself.
Once thing I've read and can somewhat confirm from experience: it's more important to get the right "feeling" or "sense" from the visualization than to get the details exactly the right. In some sense the visuals might simply be a way to evoke the right feeling: the intensity of fire, the vastness of space, etc.
So if you can't visualize, for example, the spheres quite right, maybe take some time to work through the imagery as best you can outside of the ritual space, try to get a sense of what it would feel like if you really could get the spheres all going at once, and then imagine that feeling when you do it.
It will probably take longer to get to where you're getting comparable effects as those who can do the full visualizations easily, but you should in theory get there eventually. By many theories, magic involves using parts of your soul (the parts on the upper astral and even the mental) that aren't fully conscious yet.
Growing up, I developed a social anxiety and a reservedness based on being bullied by other children. Over the years I have done a lot to calm that anxiety and for several years felt as though I'd made a good run at recovery.
However, the era of cancel mobs and struggle sessions, of social exile and reputation assassination has brought this anxiety back such that I feel once again socially crippled. Particularly tough given that I moved to a left coast city in the early 2000s before things went totally insane and have been forced to watch my new home become even more fundamentalist and more vindictive than the bible belt I left behind. All the more troubling given the attachment to career success I attained far beyond what I was ever raised to believe I could obtain.
I still have no idea how I'm supposed to resolve this issue, given the combination of this new culture as well as belonging to all of the inborn identity groups that one is rewarded to mistreat and discriminate against in modern society.
One of my major challenges in this incarnation was to stop giving a crap what other people thought of me. Having a husband for whom such an attitude came naturally helped me to get over my own hangups about being looked down upon. As for the people who think being black, Asian, Hispanic, Indian, half-Indian, Aboriginal, etc. makes them somehow better or more entitled to basic human rights than a white person, that's racism. They don't get to use not being white as an excuse.
Keep in mind that we are in a world-phase of materialism and astral trash called the Kali Yuga. Our era was so dreaded by ancient peoples that some of them (notably the Incans) actively tried to keep themselves from reincarnating during it. The only thing you can do in an age of trash is to try to ignore most of the trashiness and let it do its own thing while using it as much as possible as motivation to rise above it. And of course to do that, you must make use of what you have.
Kimberly. The last essay on meat eaters got me thinking about the vegans I know and know about. It seems most all of them are childless. I was wondering if you have seen this as well. I really don’t know too many vegans so maybe my sample size is skewed in one direction. If you have seen this what accounts for it.
Most of my vegan ex-friends have kids and statistically 60% of vegans have children, so I'm really not sure if that's higher or lower than any given group. There are a lot of gay vegans too, and gays, especially gay men, tend not to have as many children. Gay women seem more likely to have children, and the gay vegan women I used to pal around with usually had one or more children. Childfree people (people who don't have children by choice and are quite adamant about it) tend to be vegan because of the belief that it is less harmful to the planet, so there's that. Most of the vegan population is female -- I believe the statistic is somewhere around 80%. Unfortunately, I think this may have been why the vegan population was so vulnerable to the luxury communist agenda put forth by Davos and the WHO. Toxic femininity attracts and breeds toxic femininity.
After 1 year, my employer is slowly beginning to relent on the ridiculous mandates but not nearly quickly enough for my taste. They still insist on a jab mandate that I've skated past by not being called into the office for a year. However, they are making their exemption "accomodation" less blatantly discriminatory and punitive. More tellingly they went mask-optional, in a solid far leftist cesspit, and while otherwise supporting all the other modern leftist cesspit causes du jours.
Ugh, never have I been so glad to work for myself despite the constant worry of not being able to make various payments, credit card debt, and weeks of beans and rice because the price of a $10 sandwich is too dear. These people are responsible both indirectly and directly for some of the worst human suffering in the last 500 years, and that's impressive. I can only guess what their karma is for quaxxing up like good little automatons. Dozens of reincarnations as egg-laying hens? Sojourns in an office hell maze like this one? The one thing that seems certain is an onerous price tag on any prosperity temporarily gained for compliance. That's why I was willing to die a violent death rather than take the quax. I would rather die once here on Earth than a thousand times in hell.
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SoP questions
(Anonymous) 2022-10-05 06:35 pm (UTC)(link)having watched your excellent video on the Sphere of Protection, and attempted the SoP consistently over the course of several months, I am perplexed about this practice.
Why? Aside from the major challenge of conjuring & sustaining visualization of the many requisite images with sufficient focus, vividness & clarity, there are a couple of key ingredients I have been struggling with.
JMG has been dismissive (YMMV), so I turn to you in hopes you may have some helpful insights thru your experience.
1. Vibration. According to JMG:
"Vibrated? That's a way of pronouncing words used by ceremonial magicians. To learn how to do it, try chanting a simple vowel sound like "aaaah," changing the way you hold your mouth and throat until you feel a buzzing or tingling feeling somewhere in your body. With practice, you can focus the vibration wherever you want, inside your body or outside of it, and it becomes a potent magical method. For now, do your best, and see how steady you can get the buzzing or tingling sensation."
Am genuinely curious how many people attempting the SoP have actually achieved the level of vibration & control JMG claims is possible (and indeed essential?). "Focusing vibration [at all seems a tall order, but:] wherever you want" -- really??As you are an experienced voice/song/music instructor, I imagine you may be better qualified than most to speak to the technical possibilities here.
2.a
"imagine as intensely as possible the deep places of the Earth and the immense powers that dwell there. Engage all your senses, so that you smell and feel and hear as well as see the imagery."
What? How? Are folks just glossing over the impossibility of this? What imagery, exactly? Am I'm just lacking imagination?
2.b
"imagine as intensely as possible the realms of outer space far above you and the immense powers that dwell there. Engage all your senses, so that you smell and feel and hear as well as see the imagery. (What does space smell like? According to astronauts, it smells a little like a scorched barbecue grill -- hot metal with an odd hint of meat.)"
Smell, feel and hear... "outer space". Wait, what? smh
How? Again, is the answer just: sorry, you lack imagination?
I want to believe the SoP is not just some sort of massive trolling exercise ala "The Druid's New Clothes."
Thanks for providing this open post & to you & anyone who can provide data points to help provide clarity.
Re: SoP questions
As far as asking JMG to help with the SoP, what's funny is that it's like asking J.S. Bach to teach a remedial music class for highly-caffeinated 9 year olds. It's hard for him to come down to their level. Not so tough for me, because "highly-caffeinated 9 year old" is one of my dominant personalities, plus my magical expertise is limited to the remedial at this point, so it's not as difficult for me to talk about basics.
For vibrating a sound, I made a video about that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7hOUkJzcCM
I hope it helps you. Notice that the humming sound has the "color" of an accordion note. It can take a long time to make that color but once you get it in head voice/falsetto, you will be well on your way.
2.a Yeah, I remember reading that and thinking "LOL whut?" Nobody has ever been to the center of the Earth, so what that would smell like is beyond comprehension. Personally, I have never been caving or spelunking, so I don't know what those "deep places" are like at all.
As far as the imaginary component of the SoP, do you ever look at a photo/video of a place and imagine what it would be like to live or travel there? For instance, this site recommended by Princess Cutekitten is especially good for "transporting" your imagination outside of your immediate
circumstances: https://www.window-swap.com/Window
For the Gate of Air, I often imagine a birch forest at sunrise in the early spring when frost is on the ground. I imagine what it would be like to be Agafya Lykova, waking up on a spring morning alone in the Russian taiga:
https://siberiantimes.com/other/others/news/russias-loneliest-woman-hermit-agafya-lykova-to-get-new-home-in-the-wild/ Of course I imagine other scenes for the Gate of Air. It all depends.
For the Gate of Fire, this morning I imagined my own neighborhood on a hot summer day. I imagined watching people go into Dairy Delite from my sweltering car (I don't have working air conditioning).
For the Gate of Water, I imagined a beautiful mountain-surrounded lake in Colorado in Autumn. This one was easy because it actually is Autumn right now where I live.
For the Gate of Earth, I imagined my parent's house on December 31, 1968. They had just moved in at that point. The house used to be a khaki green color, so that was part of my visualization. Sometimes I imagine a snowy landscape further north than Illinois. It all depends, once again.
When we get to the Earth/Spirit Below Gate, I recommend rubbing your hands together vigorously, touching the ground, and then putting your hands on your naked belly. Imagine some healing spirits from the Earth coming up to to help heal your gut and to bring pragmatism and good sense of the "I don't let perfect be the enemy of done" variety into your heart.
When you get to the Purple Gate/Spirit Above, raise your hands to the sky and imagine light beaming down and being surrounded by the All-Fathers like this scene from The Dark Crystal:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAHhpMJbfxQ
I assure you, it's not a trolling exercise! I sincerely hope this helps.
Re: SoP questions
(Anonymous) 2022-10-07 10:44 pm (UTC)(link)I will obviously have to try harder & get back to you in ... many moons, likely... ;)
This just leaves me wondering one more thing: Is there anything Kimberly can't do?
Re: SoP questions
(Anonymous) 2022-10-09 02:13 am (UTC)(link)—Princess Cutekitten
Re: SoP questions
(Anonymous) 2022-10-07 04:50 am (UTC)(link)The way I understand it, this is about training the mind to enter realms outside of direct sense impressions: the fact that it's impossible to have sensory input from those places is precisely the point of the exercise.
It's not about finding the 'right' answer, as there is no way of knowing what that answer might be.
LC
Re: SoP questions
Once thing I've read and can somewhat confirm from experience: it's more important to get the right "feeling" or "sense" from the visualization than to get the details exactly the right. In some sense the visuals might simply be a way to evoke the right feeling: the intensity of fire, the vastness of space, etc.
So if you can't visualize, for example, the spheres quite right, maybe take some time to work through the imagery as best you can outside of the ritual space, try to get a sense of what it would feel like if you really could get the spheres all going at once, and then imagine that feeling when you do it.
It will probably take longer to get to where you're getting comparable effects as those who can do the full visualizations easily, but you should in theory get there eventually. By many theories, magic involves using parts of your soul (the parts on the upper astral and even the mental) that aren't fully conscious yet.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2022-10-05 07:52 pm (UTC)(link)However, the era of cancel mobs and struggle sessions, of social exile and reputation assassination has brought this anxiety back such that I feel once again socially crippled. Particularly tough given that I moved to a left coast city in the early 2000s before things went totally insane and have been forced to watch my new home become even more fundamentalist and more vindictive than the bible belt I left behind. All the more troubling given the attachment to career success I attained far beyond what I was ever raised to believe I could obtain.
I still have no idea how I'm supposed to resolve this issue, given the combination of this new culture as well as belonging to all of the inborn identity groups that one is rewarded to mistreat and discriminate against in modern society.
no subject
Keep in mind that we are in a world-phase of materialism and astral trash called the Kali Yuga. Our era was so dreaded by ancient peoples that some of them (notably the Incans) actively tried to keep themselves from reincarnating during it. The only thing you can do in an age of trash is to try to ignore most of the trashiness and let it do its own thing while using it as much as possible as motivation to rise above it. And of course to do that, you must make use of what you have.
Vegans and kids
(Anonymous) 2022-10-06 12:56 am (UTC)(link)Thanks for the good work
Will O
Re: Vegans and kids
no subject
(Anonymous) 2022-10-07 07:26 pm (UTC)(link)no subject