E. A. Koetting - staticfly.net

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
DARK ASCENT
Throughout this text the word·Ascent" has been repeatedly used,
unaccompanied by an exact definition or exact methodology to achieve
such a gossamer thing - until now.
Most spiritual views, even those of the Left Hand Path, declare
that in the White Light the Practitioner Ascends towards union with
the Divine, overcomes himself to become something greater, and
generally progresses to a state that is undeniably separate from human.
The Black Magician, however, is denigrated as being, at best, content
in his rank and position in the universe and is simply using the occult
as a means to lust and lucre while he is here; at worst, he is in the act of
spiritual descent, not growing stronger but weakening, not nearing
omnipotence but allowing himself to play pawn for the Powers of
Darkness; not rising but falling.
When the Dabbler attempts to decipher the words spelled out by
the witchboard's planchette, when the Practitioner lights candles and
calls out to the living night, as the Initiate gains an "insider's"
understanding of existence, and as the Black Magician takes full
responsibility for and control of the world around him, he is in Ascent.
It is not to some distant cloud or dimension that he travels, but it is into
the future - a future and a Destiny that he creates through his own
Power and Works. He is not seeking atonement, or even at-one-ment
with some archetypal father, but seeks through his action union with
those parts of himself that he barely comprehends.
Within the totality of his Being, the individual has caged a
sleeping Titan, locked by the mind and subdued by the psyche. The act
of ritual is in actuality the act of awakening the God inside. The process
of this awakening, which is Ascent, is catastrophic, the Powers of
Darkness flooding through the Black Magician and into the world with
a shadowed vengeance and ungodly wrath, reclaiming command over
all that once was lost. The final result is apocalyptic, laying to waste all
that was, removing the infected and dying world and replacing it with
one that can never die.
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