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I'm grateful for the chance to exchange these ideas with you here. The person who got me started in Golden Dawn Kabbalistic Magick had also studied Nyingma Vajrayana under Tarthang Tulku. He had our group practicing intricate magick visualizations with sound vibrations that were borrowed from the Golden Dawn's use of Egyptian deities like Isis and Osiris. He adapted the Vajrayana techniques to this purpose. We would visualize everything within a dark egg-shaped space. (The dark egg being a traditional Tantric symbol of akasha -- 'space'.)
"Surrounding you is so much empty space. Within you, the atoms that make you up are just bits of energy within a lot of empty space too.
Pay attention to the emptiness outside you.
Pay attention to the emptiness inside you.
Now pay attention to both emptinesses at once.
Notice how when it's all emptiness, boundaries disappear."
In this way the meditation very effectively annihilated one's sense of separate existence and cleared the space for anything one chose to manifest. It was an admirable application of the Buddhist doctrine of sunyata for magickal working.
I like how you said the Vajrayana is all magick, even if they don't want to admit it. I think they would prefer you concentrate first on the Buddhist basics like the Dhammapada before going on to the advanced subjects. The Dalai Lama is the head of the Gelugpa order, which is oriented more toward conventional Buddhist teachings like compassion and the cessation of attachment/suffering. These are definitely worthy foci, and I'm glad Mr. Gyatso is doing such a great, saintly job. But there will always be people whose natural aptitude is for mastery over the elements of existence (to serve a worthy purpose, like helping other beings), and for such talents we have Tantra... Shamanism... Magick... the "Craft."
Fascinating to draw the parallel between Vajrayana and Chaos Magick. I would like to learn more about this. I had dropped Magick about 20 years ago when I converted to Islam, and have only recently begun to relearn it. At work I had the opportunity to read many files on Magick, Wicca, Thelema, Chaos Magick, Discordianism, UFOs, etc. that were seized from al-Qa`idah in Afghanistan. I'm not at liberty to tell how I was able to access these, but someday it will make for amazing memoirs. I hadn't gotten around to learning about Chaos Magick the first time around, but what I have practiced of Vajrayana Magick showed me the power the comes from voiding out a space. Maybe that's what was meant. One thing I gathered was that Discordianism drew upon Chaos Magick, but made it fun instead of serious.
The Vajrayana mandala, which I first encountered reading The Tibetan Book of the Dead, is really very much the same device as the circle of the elements in Magick and Wicca. Instead of angels, totems, or kachinas at the four elements, we find bodhisattvas. And their female consorts with whom they are joined in Tantric yab-yum sexual congress. Including the explicitly feminine wisdom along with each bodhisattva rates highly in my appreciation. The female emanation of Avalokiteshvara is Tara,* beautiful loving goddess of compassion. She will always be very welcome in my heart.
The meanings and powers of the bodhisattvas of the 4 directions plus the fifth one in the center are all held in the great mantra
om ah hum vajra guru padma siddhi hum.
To have this vibration within you is to carry around your magick temple or circle wherever you go, and having it activated to draw upon the insight, wisdom, and help it contains. Practicing it can bring you to where the vajra, the guru, the lotus, the power, and the wisdom are all present within you. No wonder I loved Buddhism so much after studying Magick. Living in Colorado with the mountain energy while studying Tibet added to the experience. I remember one sunset meditation on Amitabha in the mountains that was just ineffably blissful.
*Sometimes I read about Green Tara as the emanation of Avalokiteshvara, bodhisattva of the dhyani buddha of the west, Amitabha. Sometimes I read about her as the consort of the bodhisattva of the north, Vishvapani/Amoghasiddhi. My memory has faded since I studied these topics many years ago, someone please help me out here.
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