It was an honor to speak with Lon. He is a kind brilliant life long occultist who has written 19 books and shares his knowledge on the Qabalah, Magic and more in this rare interview.
About Lon Milo DuQuette
Singer-songwriter, recording artist, and humorist, Lon Milo DuQuette is also the author of 19 critically acclaimed books (translated in 12 languages) on Magick and the Occult. Critics have called him one of the most respected and entertaining writers and lecturers in the field of the Western Mystery Traditions.
Since 1975 DuQuette been a national and international governing officer of Ordo Templi Orientis, one of the most influential magical societies of the 20th and 21st Centuries. He is currently the Order's United States Deputy Grand Master. He is an internationally recognized authority on tarot, ceremonial magick, and esoteric Freemasonry. Although he takes these subjects very seriously, he tries not to take himself too seriously. This rare combination of scholarship and humor has earned him in the last 30 years a unique and respected position in American spiritual and esoteric literature.
DuQuette appears occasionally on television and radio as a guest expert on subjects involving the occult. He is a contributor to the Magical Egypt DVD series' and a host on the new series, The Great Work.
He is a faculty member of the Omega Institute in Reinbeck New York, and Robert Anton Wilson's Maybe Logic Academy.
He lives in Costa Mesa, California with his wife of 52 years, Constance.
His books:
https://www.amazon.com/Lon-Milo-DuQuette/e/B000APMYTA?ref_=dbs_p_ebk_r00_abau_000000
Lon Milo DuQuette
Everything Imaginable Podcast
Everything Imaginable 00:03
Welcome to Everything Imaginable,
00:05
the podcast for
Everything Imaginable 00:06
curious minds on KGRA radio. Welcome everyone to another episode of Everything Imaginable. My name is Gary Cocciolillo, your host, and today we have a special guest. Lon, Milo DuQuette. Thank you for being on the show.
Lon Milo DuQuette 00:32
Well, thanks for inviting me to Gary.
Everything Imaginable 00:36
So you have quite a background. In the occult, especially. I know you've written 19 books. I know I first started reading you and I was looking for books on Enochian, your your books on the Enochian magic were the only ones that I could kind of understand.
Lon Milo DuQuette 00:59
Well, I guess that's flattering.
Everything Imaginable 01:02
It is. Because some of the other stuff is just, Oh, it just went over my head, I guess we could say. And I know that you've written some books about Qabbalah. And that's why I asked you to come on. I've probably read probably maybe 10 books, 10 different books on Qabbalah my life. And I have to say I'm still confused.
Lon Milo DuQuette 01:29
Well, well, good, because you really have to be suspect of somebody that brags that they understand. Come on.
Everything Imaginable 01:43
But would you be able to maybe explain the basic tenets of Qabbalah to my listeners?
Lon Milo DuQuette 01:49
Well, there's a couple of generic kind of definitions of it. And, and the first one is its esoteric Judaism, or the esoteric or the mystic side to the Jewish traditions in the Jewish Jewish religion. So that that's the Qabbalah that you usually see written about, spelled with a K and to b’s, that kind of Qabbalah, so it's like the mystical side of every exoteric religion, like mystic Christianity, or mystic Judaism or mystic Islam over the years, and over the centuries, it drops in and out of, of Orthodox favor, favor about every other couple 100 years, it's, it seems heretical, and about every other cycle, it seems like the mystical heart and soul of the religion.
Everything Imaginable 03:16
Is it in favor or out of favor right now?
Lon Milo DuQuette 03:19
There you go, just like Well, you see the same thing in certain Christian orders to that. Every once in a while, they completely drop out of favor and are considered heretical and satanic. And then 20, 20 years later, they're, you know, they're the heart and soul of the, of the faith. So, so that's the first sort of generic thing, but Qabbalah itself as, as a technique as a meditative technique, as a technique for self-transformation. It's not a religion, and it's not a belief system. It's, it's a way of organizing one's thoughts and sort of organizing the universe in such a way as, as you eventually find your own place in it. And I like to draw the parallel or the contrast between Eastern mystics. Like Yogis in Zen Meditation type of people, Hindu mystics, is they go inwardly they quiet everything. And they go inwardly and kind of systematically strip away all the things that they're not, you know. I'm, well, I'm not really my body and if I really get thinking about it, I'm not really my mind either. And everyone, I really get thinking about it. I'm not my emotions. And when I, you know, and they, they systematically strip away everything they're not.
Everything Imaginable 05:16
Little happens. There's nothing left.
Lon Milo DuQuette 05:18
Yeah, there's nothing left and that nothing is what we are. And that's, that's where the light bulb, you know, really goes off over their heads and they go, Oh, wow, that's what I am. That's what God is. That's what, that's what reality is. And so that's the eastern approach. And for more or less for the eastern temperament, I don't want to just generalize too awfully much here. But for the eastern temperament, they're sort of hardwired to be at ease with that approach. But in the West with the West, we're not okay; we seek externally. Everything, okay. And so, it's not that the external and the internals aren't the same thing. Because they are from the big mystical point of view. In a sense, there is no outside of ourselves because everything that we perceive that's outside of ourselves, we have to process that information inside. So we may as well see the outside is inside. And, but in the West, we we’re really uncomfortable with closing our eyes and going inside because it's so damn big. So we like to take all of these inner things and make symbols on the outside of ourselves, to symbolize to represent these inner qualities. And so the western mystic, instead of stripping everything away, until we find out everything that we're not, and then we discover who we are. The Western mystics just love outside things, and we like to connect everything in the universe with everything else. And basically, that's kind of the qabalistic technique, that qabalists, qabalists systematically go about connecting everything in the universe with everything else until there is nothing left to connect. And, and they hit this divine fullness. And in that divine fullness, you know, everything's transcended, the body's transcended, the minds transcended, the emotions are transcended, and they hit the exact same spot that the eastern mystic hits by going inwardly and stripping away all the things they’re not. Does that make sense?
Everything Imaginable 08:11
It does make sense. I've never really thought of it that way. Because I've practiced both myself and definitely like, like, you know, Buddhism and meditation are what sort of always clicked with me. But prior to that, when I was younger, you know, I had started reading tarot cards when I was a kid. And I had a book, the last chapter of the book was on Qabbalah, and I remember reading it and kind of, it's like, Wow, that's really interesting because everything is coming and going from the same source. This is like a bunch of different reflections, and I guess it would be. And.
Lon Milo DuQuette 08:49
Yeah, you hit the nail on the head when you said reflections because that's, that's the big qabalistic thing. They, they set out by recognizing that everything in heaven and earth is connected to everything in heaven and earth and that everything is the reflection of everything in heaven on earth. And that, that everything in heaven and earth sets the pattern for everything else in heaven and earth, just like you know, you could theoretically have a piano that has a billion keys going almost infinitely high and infinitely low, but we still only have seven major notes to play with. And 12
09:38
you know, we got octaves to play with.
Lon Milo DuQuette 09:42
And so those octaves are repeating patterns. And so it's not until recently that people have really been enamored with this concept called fractals, which is elegant mathematical repeating patterns. And then you can actually sort of graphically display those in beautiful, beautiful artwork with all the sort of Paisley repeating, repeating patterns that just go on infinitely outward and inwardly. Well, that is total Qabbalah right there. And the ancient capitalists, when I say ancient, let's say because the Greeks were playing with it even before the Jews were playing with it, although they will argue with you about that.
10:59
They,
Lon Milo DuQuette 11:01
they immediately grasp the fact that all of this could be displayed and considered in mathematical terms. I mean, simple mathematical terms. The, and so the Greeks were the first to really get behind assigning numbers, number values to letters, letters of the alphabet. And then along about the first century or first or second century, I think BC the Hebrew alphabet was starting to form along the same lines, the Hebrew alphabet as we know it, today, which is relative, a relatively young concept actually. But the idea is that part of these patterns and part of these vibratory patterns that keep repeating and replicating and reflecting each other are most easily seen in mathematics. And when applied to an alphabet, that means every word you say has the same potential creative energy going for it, creative vibratory note if you will. That's basically holding the cosmos together. That's what the big fascination in Genesis was with the word and you know, in the beginning, was the word well that that word is that primal, primal vibratory frequency that is responsible for holding, creating, holding together, and developing the universe.
Everything Imaginable 13:09
Would that be the same as the like Om in the Hindu tradition?
Lon Milo DuQuette 13:15
There you go. Absolutely. That's, that's the big Om and you. Like, like most everything associated with Hindu mysticism, they get really scientific and anal-retentive about how they dissect and analyze things. But the Hebrew alphabet is, is breathtakingly elegantly and simply awesome. In the way, it's developed in and, and utilized. And so, with keeping that theory that if you look hard enough at anything, you'll eventually see everything, okay? Which is so Buddhist. But they said, Well, if you can look hard enough at anything, you'll eventually see everything. You know, the Buddhists say, you know, if you look hard enough at five pounds of flax or, or even, you know, dog excrement, you'll be able, you'll see God in it, you know, eventually. And so the ancient qabalist says, Well, if that's true, then if we look hard enough at our main scriptures, the Pentateuch, the five books of Moses, if we just look hard enough there we’ll eventually see everything. And so they, they applied this alphanumeric, the section of the letters that went into making the words that went into making the sentences in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy. And they just peel back the layers of the universe is, in awesome ways, now they could have been doing it with a phone book. Okay, but they didn't, they did it with something that they already held in mystical awe, but the technique of doing that is universal. And it is not necessarily connected with any faith, or religious doctrine, or dogma, or tradition. And that same, those same qabalistic techniques can be applied to literally everything.
16:01
of the
Lon Milo DuQuette 16:03
pre to Renaissance time period. The Europeans that fancy themselves Christian mystics started to pick up on that. And those are the same people that were applying those kabbalistic techniques of mind expansion; I guess we could say that they were applying those techniques of mind expansion to other forms of psychodramas to, to further their, their own enlightenment. And one of those techniques of psychodrama was ceremonial magic.
Everything Imaginable 16:47
So that's where all the secret handshakes and mantras, and all that stuff kind of comes from, different body positions.
Lon Milo DuQuette 17:07
Yes. Not only that, but then you know, I just don't want to keep throwing wild things into the mix here, but that my life is one nonstop series of throwing wild things into the mix. The Egyptian Book of the Dead set was a magical text. And it was a magical text that you could apply toward guiding a person who was peacefully dying, guiding them through the different phases of the death coma, and doing it in such a way as to ideally retain the consciousness of the continuity of their own existence, as they lost their body, as they lost their, their mind as they lost their emotions, and they lost all the things that they work, but it was a technique to hold on to what they really were. And the technique of that was to pass through different doors, systematically pass through different doors and memorize certain things to keep, keep the mind going is as long as possible. And each one of those doors required a secret password and you had to identify the name of the guardian of the door and everything else. In other words, it kept a dying person concentrated and focused on the process of passing through one barrier after another barrier after another and it kept them busy as they were dying. Now, most people just sort of lay back and groove out on the experience and more or less dissolve into the large energy matrix of the cup, okay. But people trained in this method actually, or theoretically, maintain their sense of individuality, their personality.They, they eventually identify with the consciousness of the continuity of their own existence. And, and the Mystery Schools of the that had their, their foundation in Babylon and, and the Sumerians, and most colorfully, the Egyptians, and the Greeks with their Eleusinian mysteries. And the Mystery Schools became the high-tech end, the high-tech strata of religious observances actually. And the Mystery Schools, the most visible today is the, the Freemasons, okay? Now, you can, you can laugh and say the Freemasons just drive these funny little cars around in parades and stuff. But, and most, I would say most Freemasons are touched in a positive way by the experience, but they could care less about the more esoteric aspects of what's happening to them and what they've done in, in such. But for someone that's interested in the historical aspects of Mystery Schools and magical initiation, recognize it in Masonic initiation rituals,a high level of initiatory technology that's going on. Now, I wouldn't be able to convince my dad that that's what was going on. And I don't need to, okay, I didn't need to hear along the way. But there's a thing with masonry they say masonry makes a good man better.And, you know, I agree with that because you can still be an asshole and be a Mason. Okay. But you'd be a much bigger asshole, I believe, if you weren't a Mason. I hope I can say that on here.
Everything Imaginable 22:19
Absolutely.
Lon Milo DuQuette 22:24
But anyway, that's what. That's why ceremonial magicians, especially those that sort of set their foot upon the path of the great 19th century initiatory magical orders like the Golden Dawn Ordo Templi Orientis and Crowley’s A∴A. Qabbalah, are more or less the language we can use to communicate to each other. We, we view the different frequencies of consciousness between our heads and Godhead. We view them like their landmarks on this qabalistic tree of life. So, it gives us a way to at least conduct conversations about what it is that we're doing. And so, Qabbalah becomes an almost indispensable tool for modern Western ceremonial magic.
Everything Imaginable 23:36
I think where it always confused me is when it came, like, once I understood like the other, there are 10 steps for us, and 22 paths connecting them. Then all of a sudden, like, there's all these other correspondences that get involved, like, you know, each path is assigned a different tarot card, and it just goes on and on, like forever. And then, then you go and read somebody else's book, and they completely change it all around.
Lon Milo DuQuette 24:12
Yeah, that's very helpful, isn't it?
Everything Imaginable 24:15
It drives me nuts.
Lon Milo DuQuette 24:21
Well, my, you know, I won't argue with you about that. But when it comes right down to it, we're dealing primarily with just those numbers. But look at it this way. There's a singularity. Well, quantum physicists are saying what mystics have said since prehistoric times, everything is consciousness, matter, energy, time, space, everything is an aspect of consciousness. Now you can personify that consciousness that the supreme totality of whatever that is, you can personify it. Because our brains, you know, cry out to personify stuff. You can personify it as God. And I'm comfortable using the term God because I really don't have an anthropomorphic. I'm not tied to an anthropomorphic or a sectarian view of what God is. To me, God is just the big, whatever it is.
Everything Imaginable 25:53
But you don't know exactly what it is. It's just some kind of consciousness that we can't really understand?
Lon Milo DuQuette 26:00
Well, it just imagines if you could just back up your camera to get a wide enough camera angle, where there is nothing else in the universe left. Okay. That, that one big, whatever it is, is God. It's the huge singularity beyond which there is nothing. And the capitalists have wonderful ways of talking about that nothing. But, But let's say the entire totality of existence and being, everything is all lumped up into one big thing, and there is no outside of that thing. Okay. Okay. And if we could somehow plug our machine in a meter into that machine, it's vibrating like one single note. It's beyond which there are no other notes. It's a big Om. And now we get back to that Om thing.
Everything Imaginable 27:15
One of the things I noticed in your book is in the beginning, you mentioned Yogananda, and in his autobiography, he describes God as a great cosmic dreamer.
Lon Milo DuQuette 27:33
Perfect. I love Yogananda, too.
Everything Imaginable 27:35
I do too.
Lon Milo DuQuette 27:36
Yeah. He was my gateway drug.
Everything Imaginable 27:42
That’s what started it all for you?
Lon Milo DuQuette 27:45
Pretty much so, him and Yogi Ramacharaka. I love that. Yeah. And I wouldn't have been introduced to either one of them had I not been introduced to a pretty big dose of LSD.
Everything Imaginable 27:58
You can't go wrong with that, either.
Lon Milo DuQuette 28:01
But anyway, oh, let's go with Yogananda is sitting there because it's perfect. But it does personify God. A little bit, but it's, it's charming.
Everything Imaginable 28:15
It is.
Lon Milo DuQuette 28:18
God is nice. God is a big dreamer. Okay. He doesn't have a roommate, or he doesn't have a roommate. Okay, there is no opposite to this big dreamer. Okay. So, there can't be a devil. There can't be the opposite. If the big dreamer is good, it's a good that is so big. There isn't an evil to oppose it. Does that make sense? A big g good.
28:52
Yeah.
Lon Milo DuQuette 28:55
The big dreamer. Okay. I don't know why. But let's, let's just go with this. For some reason. God says I'm kind of lonely. What if I fall asleep and dream? I go on a little adventure.
29:16
Okay.
Lon Milo DuQuette 29:18
And because God's got it, God can do that. So, it falls asleep. And dreams. It has an opposite. It dreams of number two. And it has, it has sort of an adventure goes on like that. And it goes on. That dream goes on for, you know, a couple of billion years. And then he wakes up again and goes, Oh, that was kind of interesting. Okay, I got an idea. I'm going to, I'm going to fall asleep and dream that I'm number two again. And then it'll even be more fun if I fall asleep as number two and dream, I'm number three. And I'll go on an even longer dream. Yeah. But it takes, it takes longer. For number, the number three dreamer to wake up to realize it's, it's number two, just dreaming it's number three. And it takes a little while for number two to dream of waking up and realize it's number one. But it does. And then finally, after that, God says, That was very entertaining. Wow. Imagine all of the things I did when I was opposite myself. And then, when there was a synthesis, that was absolutely fun. I could be a mother and a father and all of that stuff. And then he said, God says, It would really be an adventure if I would just fall asleep and totally forget I'm God. And so it goes back into number two, goes back into number three, number three falls asleep. And all of a sudden, bop, bop, bop dreams, it's number four, number five, number six, number seven, number eight, number nine. And then finally, in number nine, it finally hits its head, the dream number nine, and has total amnesia, and, and lands in the dream within a dream within a dream within a dream within a dream of number 10. And that's where we are. That's you and me talking to ourselves right now. We are that number 10 dream. And the qabalists project that off on this diagram that they call the Tree of Life, which has these 10 Sephorah. And each of them is a deeper dream. A deeper layer of the dream. And the end goal of the qabalistic initiate, the goal of the ceremonial mad magician, is to wake up until you realize that your center of consciousness is in number nine and then wake up from number nine to realize your center of consciousness is number eight, and seven and six and five and four if that makes sense.
Everything Imaginable 32:48
Yes. You just keep waking up from one dream into the next dream. Until, until eventually, you wake up. Yeah, and your original dreamer, which is God.
Lon Milo DuQuette 33:02
That's right. And that's what Buddha said. Buddha said, Hey, you know you anybody can do this? I didn't do anything; I just woke up. And that's, and that's that. So remember when I said the qabalists were really anal retentive and, and love to, dissect and re-dissect things. They connected these 10 levels. And this is all set out in the most primary little, tiny, little kabbalistic book called the Sefer Yetzirah, which is the oldest qabalistic text, is really small, you can put it in the bathroom and read into both the, these 10 layers. They created the deck and the numbers one through 10. After that, they just start repeating. But these 10 Sephiroth or emanations, or dream layers are connected by 22 paths. And these paths are like electrical wiring. And they do. They run an alternating current. there's a, and there's a wire running from 10 to nine. And it steps up is they’re like little train transformers of your toy train transformer. They see their step up the frequency of consciousness as they move from the lower set for us to the, to a higher one, or step down the consciousness frequency going from nine to 10 and there's 22 of those and those are applied to the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and each of those little paths, those little transformer connecting paths represents this specific aspect of intelligence. And they've got these aspects of intelligence or are referred to in all sorts of ways that just, it's really hard for you to make scintillating intelligence, creating intelligence. And you really got to put on your thinking cap and get out of your meat brain enough to sort of intuiting exactly what, why they are labeled as such. So, So to help you do that, those Hebrew letters and those paths are also assigned an image that, that you, that you can look at in the right hemisphere of your brain sort of gets the information through colors and forms and, and such in those images are the 22 tarot cards of the Greater Arcana of the Tarot.
Everything Imaginable 36:19
Yes, that's how I became originally familiar with all of this.
Lon Milo DuQuette 36:25
Yeah, that's how most people do and, and whether you know it or not, all those years that you spent getting, getting familiar with it, you were also without you knowing it consciously. You also were programming the tree of life within yourself. That is the reflection of this big, whatever it is, tree of life. Because we are a reflection of this. So, you didn't waste one minute in your qabalistic studies. Every moment that you spent in your qabalistic studies was like squirting wd 40 into your rusted machinery qabalist zeros soul.
Everything Imaginable 37:21
I still feel pretty rusty, though.
Lon Milo DuQuette 37:24
Oh, yeah, you feel rusty until you remember how rusty you were two years ago?
Everything Imaginable 37:33
Is it like when people when you extend the tree of life, like try to get go through these different dream layers to have to follow each specific path? Or can you take a shortcut straight up the middle?
Lon Milo DuQuette 37:48
You can take a shortcut straight up the middle. It's like, How, How hard can you wake up? Okay. Sometimes you have, you have a dream, you're deeply asleep at night, and you have a dream. And usually, in this case, you might be having an unpleasant dream. But you're deeply asleep. Maybe you've eaten too much quiche that night. Just hear your body's just exhausted trying to digest that quiche.
Everything Imaginable 38:24
Quiche gets me every time.
Lon Milo DuQuette 38:27
And but you're, you're just miserable in this dream. And, and somehow or other, you get yourself to wake up from that dream. But without you knowing it, you're still in a dream. But you had woken up from the really bad one. little bit
Everything Imaginable 38:53
To something a little bit better.
Lon Milo DuQuette 38:54
Yeah. This one’s a little bit better. You know, I'm only late to catch a plane.
39:02
But
39:03
the
Lon Milo DuQuette 39:06
Still, you wake up again to finally find yourself laying in bed. That's just sort of an analogy of what all of this is. So, if you could imagine waking completely up from your terrible, terrible dream and just skip all the middle dreams in between, you can do it. Absolutely. You can do it as a matter of fact. As a matter of fact, because ultimately, there is no time. When you do finally wake up, it feels like that's the way it happened.
Everything Imaginable 40:01
One of the books that I've read is Israel Regardie’s, Middle Pillar. Is that kind of like a shortcut?
Lon Milo DuQuette 40:11
Well, it's, it's, it's the use the, of the middle pillar, but it uses the dynamics of the two pillars on each side of it. So, it's a high-technology ritual, and it really does use that.
Everything Imaginable 40:33
I tried it once, and I couldn't sleep for two days.
Lon Milo DuQuette 40:38
Well, be like me and get some writing done at night.
Everything Imaginable 40:47
Is that how you write all your books.
Lon Milo DuQuette 40:53
To tell you the truth, I don't know how I write all my books.
Everything Imaginable 41:03
So, have you ever met any members of the Golden Dawn like Israel Regardie or Dion Fortune, or Aleister Crowley?
Lon Milo DuQuette 41:15
Well, Israel Regardie or Francis Regardie, I knew. I not only met, but we were pals. Because he's just down the street here, up the road, I guess, video city for a long time. And around 1978, I was introduced to him by Grady McMurtry and Phyllis Seckler of the OTO. And he was very supportive of our, of our Lodge, and donated books to our library. And, and when we first met, we discovered that we were both DeMolay. That's the young men's Masonic organization. And he was an old DeMolay. And I was young DeMolay. And we gave each other the secret handshake and all of that. But anyway, at the time, both of us because I was an OTO lodge master in Southern California. And because he was Israel Regardie, we both had letters from people that believed that they were the reincarnation of Aleister Crowley. And, as you can imagine, some of these were pretty funny. And some of them were just sad, you know. But he had a, he had a collection of them, and I had a collection of them. And we had started to compile them. And we were going to write a book together, and it would have been my first, first insignificant book. And we were going to call it LIBOR nuts.
43:18
And
Lon Milo DuQuette 43:20
from time to time, he would send me off on strange little book launches, and another Crowley incarnation was launching a book somewhere in Southern California. And he said, yo, you gotta go check this one out, it'll be for a book. And those were kind of fun. And he also sent me on other little, little errands that I write about in my book, My Life With the Spirits, because I, I'm, I guess you'd call me a wandering bishop. I have apostolic credentials that you know are recognized by anybody that recognizes apostolic credentials, including orthodox churches in the Roman church. You don't have to be a Roman Catholic to be recognized as an apostolic bishop. But anyway, he sent me on, one of his clients, her client, another. They're both psychiatrists, psychologists. Her client needed an exorcism. And he thought because I was a bishop, I was just the guy. Or, yes, I knew Regardie well. I'm very sad that He's gone. He died at 85. And but Crowley died months before I was born and I never met him. But my AA. Superior or my AA mentor was Phyllis Seckler, who is the student of Jane Wolfe, who lived with Crowley at the Abbey of Thelema in Sicily in the 1920s. And all my OTO initiations until he died was given by Grady McMurtry, who was made ninth degree and stayed with Crowley during World War Two in England, and another dear friend of the family. I couldn't say that she's my magical mentor, and I think it was Helen Parsons Smith, who was the widow of Jack Parsons, who the recent television series Strange Angel was about, her husband, Jack Parsons, the rocket scientist. And so, you know, I was lucky enough to just accidentally fall into the circle of the last, you know, surviving early contemporaries, I guess. And they were remarkable people, for sure. And I don't think, you know, I'd be into what I'm into without their influence.
Everything Imaginable 46:49
Oh, absolutely. There's always I think, like, I don't know what the furthest back. I mean, I've read Eliphas Levi’s books. And I think Crowley said he was a reincarnation of him, didn't he?
Lon Milo DuQuette 47:10
Oh, well. Yeah, they
47:15
Crowley
Lon Milo DuQuette 47:19
died, or Levy died before Crowley was born. But yet, we have to take these things and even Crowley, why shouldn't you take reincarnations? Sort of with, with a grain of salt in so much as you know, when you fall asleep, how time doesn't exist?. Okay. But when you're dead, time doesn't exist either. It could get really screwed up. So, I think you, I think I believe in reincarnation, don't get me wrong, but I don't think it is as linear. And as simple and cut and dried as people would prefer to think it is because when you pull time out of the equation, you're screwing with a whole bunch of things. So if you imagine that maybe you've lived 10,000 incarnations but also throw in the fact that they're all happening simultaneously, then you realize how complicated the situation can be.
Everything Imaginable 48:42
Oh, it's just having this conversation where it's like, it's a friend of mine.
Lon Milo DuQuette 48:46
Yeah, well, but yeah, Crawley also said that if you have a real good reason to think that you are continuing the work, if you're continuing the great work of a historical character, go ahead and just make it a reality in your mind that you're the reincarnation of that person. He said it's okay. Nobody can prove it any other way. If you think you're, you're continuing them the momentum set into motion by clip being Cleopatra, then go ahead and be Cleopatra, you know. Yeah. And so, Crowley said, Yeah, I am continuing the work of Eliphas Levi. I'm continuing the work of Edward Kelley. You know, and there's a whole bunch of other, other people that he said he's continuing the work of, and Levi actually took the concept of magic. He even redeemed the gate legitimacy to the art form, the spiritual art form, of magic. And he's one of my favorite, favorite writers. And one of my favorite art cultists, and I did. I absolutely adore Eliphaz Levi, and so did Crowley.
Everything Imaginable 50:37
Yeah, I definitely. When I read his book, I think it was Transcendental Magic and ritual. It just blew my mind. So much. Like how he knew what he knew before anybody else did.
Lon Milo DuQuette 50:53
Not only that, but when you read him, it's as if he's telling you something that you always knew was, was right, you know. And he does it so, so pleasantly, even in translation. You know, it was Aleister Crowley that did the translation of Transcendental Magic.
Everything Imaginable 51:15
Yeah. It's a great book.
Lon Milo DuQuette 51:20
And I think Levi died in 1875. And Crowley was born in 1875.
Everything Imaginable 51:29
And Levi, wasn’t he also like the first person to connect the Hebrew letters to the 22 tarot cards?
Lon Milo DuQuette 51:40
Yeah. Well, he's the first one that made that public.
Everything Imaginable 51:45
So, so other people knew. He was the first one to let the cat out of the bag, basically.
Lon Milo DuQuette 51:50
He let the cat out of the bag, but he did it in a very fun way. Obviously, it had always been, or for maybe a couple of 100 years, it had been sort of a Hermetic and Rosicrucian secret, okay, that the Hebrew alphabet was attributed to the tarot cards. The Golden Dawn even kept it, kept it secret, and that was made, you know, 1888. But, and it might have been secret for all sorts of reasons, including the fact a great portion of the populace of Western Europe was anti-Semitic.
52:49
And
Lon Milo DuQuette 52:55
in any given political environment, in France, or Germany, or Bavaria, or Russia, playing too conspicuously with the Hebrew alphabet might bring you unwanted attention to the authorities, not because of the mysticalness of it, but just because of the anti-Semitic persecution. So yeah, but Eliphas Levi obviously was an initiate of one of these societies' qabalistic.
53:38
And
Lon Milo DuQuette 53:41
so he said, right out, yes, the Hebrew alphabet, and so did, so did the great American mystic, Albert Pike, the great Masonic mystic, said the qabalistic alphabet was the, was the tarot. But Levi did a couple of things. He made sure that you knew that all of the cards had their conspicuous association with the three primitive elements of air, water, and fire.
Everything Imaginable 54:25
Yes.
Lon Milo DuQuette 54:26
And he said that they had a conspicuous relationship to the seven planets of the ancients. And they had a conspicuous association with the 12 signs of the zodiac. And those are just how the Hebrew alphabet is split up into three other letters, seven double letters, and 12 simple letters. But then, after telling you how elegantly the tarot is set up along those lines, where you could actually just look at that Empress card and go, Oh, that's Venus, you know. And look at the Emperor and go, Oh, that's Aries and go look at the devil and go, Oh, that's Capricorn. Even though he set you up to just look at the cards and figure those things out for yourself, he, when he published things, he put certain Hebrew letters totally out of whack.
Everything Imaginable 55:30
And that's where things get really confusing.
Lon Milo DuQuette 55:34
Conspicuously out of whack from, from where are they, from where they are. And almost as if he said, Okay, I set you guys up to be great mystics and know this secret. But if you're actually going to earn this secret, you're going to have to figure, figure it out, because I'm going to screw with you by, by attributing nice things to it. And the Golden Dawn did a good, good job at mostly repairing that situation.
Everything Imaginable 56:15
Yeah, that's where I started to get confused. Because then also notice, like different schools of thought on what would where
Lon Milo DuQuette 56:24
Well, and, and, and there is, you know, and I'm not I wouldn't get into a bar fight with you over if Sati is the star or, or if, hey, is the Emperor or excuse me, it's not. Suppose you believe that you're right enough. There's no way I'm going to try to. In Qabbalah, infinite things can be simultaneously true.
Everything Imaginable 57:00
Right? I know that now. But I didn't know that as my early 20s when I first started reading this doc,
57:07
oh, no. What?
Lon Milo DuQuette 57:11
Me neither. And in my books, The Chicken Qabalah and Son of Chicken Qabbalah, I've more or less used the standard Western Golden Dawnish way of looking at how they interpret the Sefer Yetzirah. As far as the tarot cards and stuff are concerned, and I did it not so much to say that I, I want to preach that doctrine. But to do sort of what Eliphas Levi did, well, this is the information, this is the data, it's up to you to actually put make the data makes sense to you. But this is how most of the modern books now are, are handling it. And if you get another revelation as you, as you work, well, God bless you, you know, get your own revelation because you're never going to wake completely up by following somebody else's revelation.
Everything Imaginable 58:22
Right? Now, I've learned that as I've gotten older, you know, and reading lots and lots of books and trying different practices. But I have to say when I was first starting out. It was a real head-scratcher.
Lon Milo DuQuette 58:39
Yes, you just want to give up.
Everything Imaginable 58:41
Yeah. But when you look at the big picture, you know, it's not so much the accuracies. It's the meaning and the intent, I think.
Lon Milo DuQuette 58:54
All right. And you know, even if there wasn't a planet Mercury or a planetary sphere of mercury, even if there wasn't an element, one of the three primitive elements, even if there wasn't a sign of the zodiac, there would still be three. There would still be seven,
Everything Imaginable 59:26
Yes, still be 12.
Lon Milo DuQuette 59:29
And there would still be 12, and it's the three, seven and 12 that we have to get actually reprogrammed with. That's the ultimate wd 40. If we got our three shit together, if we got our seven shit together, if we got our 12 shit together, we've got the entire Hebrew alphabet programming together too.
Everything Imaginable 59:55
I guess this was easier for you because you're a musician: the seven, seven actual noses, 12 with the flats and sharps.
Lon Milo DuQuette 1:00:09
Yeah, not only that but colors.
Everything Imaginable 1:00:12
Yes.
Lon Milo DuQuette 1:00:15
It’s colors and everything else. And everything else falls neatly under one of these categories. Everything
Everything Imaginable 1:00:27
Do you think people can elevate their consciousness simply by using sound and color?
Lon Milo DuQuette 1:00:35
I hope so. I, there's all sorts of qabalistic exercises that we do in Son of Chicken Qabalah that require you to chant the right note, using the right color with the right vowel sound, using the right, right image. And it's done with full intent to lubricate your psyche.
Everything Imaginable 1:01:02
So, all we got to do is follow your instructions, and enlightenment here we come.
Lon Milo DuQuette 1:01:08
Oh, absolutely. We both wish. Yeah. No, you're gonna have to do all the work.
Everything Imaginable 1:01:18
All the work. Does Qabalah have not just ritualistic, you know, uses but how about things just like in everyday life?
Lon Milo DuQuette 1:01:37
Well, yes. Let's say you've, and you've got all of these correspondences and stuff running around in your brain since you're a teenager. I can't go in and out of a door without thinking about the Hebrew letter. And the empress and, and the sphere of Venus. And I know that the sphere of Venus is directly opposite the sphere of Jupiter in the cube, cube of space. And the elemental path of mem links those two together, okay, it becomes second nature. Okay, I head toward the door, I look out the window, which is hay and the hay is my eye and everything. I don't consciously need to think about any of those things anymore or connect those things anymore. I just function within them. It becomes your everyday universe. The outside world is the inside. I've got a tricycle that my Monday night class box for me, an old man tricycle. And I ride it around at night and I can't open the garage door without opening the mouth of Venus to pull my red Aries-like chariot, which is hit and he grew out of the garage door and down and down the street every night about five o'clock. I did it earlier tonight. I'd go nuts if my conscious rumaki and brain here was thinking door, dollar, done that it doesn't think that anymore because you only think about that stuff in an almost nightmarishly connected way to get over it. Okay, to rise above it. I sort of joke and Chicken Qabalah, and tell, tells you why. Why are you doing all of this? Because you can connect everything in the universe with everything else, just like a schizophrenic person. Out on the, out on the street, connecting everything with everything else. And in a way, qabalistic exercises are a socially acceptable and relatively harmless form of self-induced schizophrenia.
1:04:25
But,
Lon Milo DuQuette 1:04:28
it's not meant to enmesh you in connecting everything in the universe with everything else. It's meant for you to rise above, connecting everything in the universe with anything else. Your mind, your brain, your monkey chatter brain is something that needs, that you need to rise above and one of the surest techniques of rising above it or forcing yourself to rise above it is to engage it intensely on connecting everything in the universe with everything else, until you get so damn tired of the whole freaking mess that you go, surrender to the Neshima as the Hebrews would say.
Everything Imaginable 1:05:25
That reminds me of like I, one time, I went on a three-day silent meditation retreat. And at the beginning of the retreat, the retreat leader said, you know, but it probably by two or three days, your brain will just give up. And you’ll automatically, you know, have some higher viewpoint. It’s what kind of happens because your brain just wears itself down.
Lon Milo DuQuette 1:05:58
It wears itself down. And, and even if you, you rise above it just for a moment or a day or, you have succeeded in mutating yourself in a very good way.
Everything Imaginable 1:06:12
Absolutely. So, it's almost the same thing, but with using, you know, the symbols and numbers, the interconnectedness, like there's no way out of that interconnectedness except to tire yourself out and sort of extending it for a little bit.
Lon Milo DuQuette 1:06:29
Right. That's why my mythical rabbi, Rabbi Lamed Ben Clifford, who that's my pen name.
Everything Imaginable 1:06:36
Oh, you went missing, right?
Lon Milo DuQuette 1:06:38
Oh, he went missing that, hey found some of his goodies. That's why there's Son of Chicken Qabalah. That's why one of his mottos is, don't worry about it. Yeah. Don’t worry about it, and you’re a chicken qabalist. You know, don't worry about it. Yeah.
Everything Imaginable 1:07:01
I love the intro to your book about that.
Lon Milo DuQuette 1:07:05
Oh, I had so much fun with both those books.
Everything Imaginable 1:07:09
That's awesome. How about like the other forms of magic like Enochian? Can people use Enochian spirits to get something that they wished for in the material world?
Lon Milo DuQuette 1:07:26
Well, you know, getting stuff that you wish for in the material world is more appropriate to Solomonic magic, which actually deals with the heavy lifting things in the universe. And those, those spirits are, are, are they’re like the roughneck crew of angels or spirits or demons and they got this bad reputation. Well, because Solomonic magicians sometimes find it easy to go completely mad. But they've got a bad reputation. Because, unless they're actually controlled wisely. They're sort of like heavy construction machinery. A bulldozer can be very, very helpful. In, with a skilled operator, you can help construct buildings and, and build roads and, and you can do all sorts of constructive things with the bulldozer. But if you just jump in, turn it on. And, and not control it. You know, it'll run amok through the street.
Everything Imaginable
1:09:03
Yeah, the way I always understood is like, you really have to have a good rapport with your higher self before doing that.
Lon Milo DuQuette 1:09:11
Yes, you have to have a rapport with your higher self. And the idea being unless what it is that you're trying to achieve with the ceremony, unless it is truly, truly deep down inside your will to do it. Unless it's truly part of your karma, that it be done. That is part of your great work that it'd be done. And unless you have made a real solid connect, connection to that highest part of you, that actually, actually is in touch with what is and is not in your best interest. In other words, if you haven't, haven't connected to your big, whatever it is, to find out if this is truly what you want, then that heavy machinery is going to be turned loose and run along the path of least resistance in your ignorant mind and your ignorant life. But if it is part of your will, if it is part of your great what it is that's in your best interest, then that heavy machinery can be awesomely helpful. So it's, it's not the, it's not the bulldozer that's good or evil. It's the bulldozer driver. And, but for actually getting stuff done on a material plane, it nonetheless is probably the most appropriate technique. Enochian magic deals with intelligence as if there was an intelligence behind absolutely every force of nature, an intelligence behind every, every element, an intelligence put time, twice, behind every leaf.
Everything Imaginable 1:11:18
So, it's like consciousness, like a tree consciousness or rock consciousness.
Lon Milo DuQuette 1:11:23
Correct. And, and, and Enochian magic is great when the magician desires to connect with specific layers of intelligence, and those are most easily personified as angels. So, angels are great to give you information about what they know everything about. And they're terrible about giving you information about something that they don't know anything about. And the whole thing about the Enochian system and the seeming, seeming complexity of it is you figure out which one of those angels should know everything about what you need to know. And then it gives you a great, simple and awesome technique to get in contact with that specific Angel.
Everything Imaginable 1:12:20
So say you kind of break it down from the watchtowers and the colors and all that kind of stuff.
Lon Milo DuQuette 1:12:27
Yeah, they help give you a nice roadmap to exactly what it is you're aiming for. But those, those angels are, are more like, they’re total geniuses about what they know something about, they know everything about something, but they don't know everything about everything. And the idea is that these are segments and then sub-segments and sub-sub sub-segments of intelligences. And the magic of Enochian magic comes from not having the equipment and stuff like that because the equipment's just, you know, wood and paper and stuff. It's the equipment all inside you.
Everything Imaginable 1:13:23
Mm hmm.
Lon Milo DuQuette 1:13:24
And it's you locating which specific aspect of, of your computer that has that. That bit of information
Everything Imaginable 1:13:37
Can a person do Enochianmagic without a table of practice? Because that table practice, a tough one to make.
Lon Milo DuQuette 1:13:47
Oh, yeah. The thing is, yeah, just like the Tree of Life is the roadmap, it's not the journey. The Enochian equipment is just, just the roadmap, but you pretty much need to be familiar with the roadmap before you, you know, you start your road trip.
Everything Imaginable 1:14:14
I wonder if they'll ever come out with an Enochian GPS.
Lon Milo DuQuette 1:14:21
You know, I got my ideas about that you know, the, in the tarot the aces and the princesses represent instead of quadrants of time like the, like the other three court cards pursuit and like the small cards, the 36 small cards, they all represent degrees of the zodiac. But the aces and the princesses represent quadrants of space.
1:14:55
And
Lon Milo DuQuette 1:14:57
it's roughly you go to the North Pole and helicopters and draw a line that runs right down the middle of the Giza complex. And everything to the, to the right of that is, it goes. So, there are tarot cards that act as, like a GPS. And that can be very helpful in tarot readings. Especially if people are saying, well, should I move to China? Or should I move to Berlin?
Everything Imaginable 1:15:35
Do you know? That's great. One last question. The Lesser ritual, the lesser ritual of the pentagram,
Lon Milo DuQuette 1:15:53
Yeah.
Everything Imaginable 1:15:54
How important is it? How important is that, the practice, like as a beginner?
Lon Milo DuQuette 1:16:03
Well as, as a beginner, it's a place to start.
1:16:09
If,
Lon Milo DuQuette 1:16:12
and it's a very, very little simple ritual, you know, you can do it in about five minutes, it takes.
1:16:22
But
Lon Milo DuQuette 1:16:25
what's really important about it, especially for the beginner, because you know, you're not likely to get into any trouble doing it, you're not going to go crazy, you're not going to evoke the devil you're not going to. But what it does do is teach you about 70 things all at once. And if it helps you visualize, it helps to get you comfortable in operating on the magical plane. And it doesn't matter if you don't understand the damn thing at first. Eventually, every time you draw a pentagram, you see it in the air, and you're creating it in the air. And, and you draw it in a specific way. And eventually, you'll find out why you're drawing it in that direction. But at first, you're just sort of doing it to memorize it in the same way as an actor would go through the basic blocking of a scene. But after a while, when, on the other side of that imaginary pentagram that you've just drawn, and you'll say before being Raphael, and, and you'll get used to visualizing an angel in those quarters. And you don't even know you don't need to know why you're even doing that. Okay, at first. But your imagination builds a vessel, builds a form, builds a thought-form. For after a while, when you start to actually realize the wondrous energy and forces that are represented by Raphael, then those forces have a body to pour themselves into. Does that make sense?
Everything Imaginable 1:18:36
Yes, yeah, like an astral body.
Lon Milo DuQuette 1:18:40
And so, what starts as a very, very simple ritual, turns into the original. You may never want to do any other. You may never need to do any other ritual besides just continuing to perfect a lesser banishing ritual of the pentagram. But once you've done that, then you realize, oh, not only can I clear my, my temple space here, I've just created a vacuum. I've created a magical vacuum. I've created a universe, a universe that is totally empty unless I want to put something in it. And then you learn how to invoke special things back into your universe, and then it becomes just awesomely cool.
Everything Imaginable 1:19:37
That's great.
1:19:39
That's the one. The one,
Everything Imaginable 1:19:42
the ritual that I'm actually familiar with, other than the middle pillar exercise.
Lon Milo DuQuette 1:19:46
Oh, well, it's a, it's a, it's a good one.
Everything Imaginable 1:19:51
Definitely. Thank you for being on my show and taking the time to talk with me.
Lon Milo DuQuette 1:19:57
Well, you bet. Thanks for inviting me on
1:20:02
Ah,
Lon Milo DuQuette 1:20:04
I told you I wouldn't be sensational. And I'm not a sexy guest.
Everything Imaginable 1:20:14
Yes, you are. You just don't think so.
1:20:17
You’re not.
Everything Imaginable 1:20:18
You're not feeling yourself from that higher realm.
Lon Milo DuQuette 1:20:24
If I was really awake, I'd know how sexy I was.
Everything Imaginable 1:20:31
That was great. I was really surprised to hear back from you. It was an honor speaking with you tonight.,
Lon Milo DuQuette 1:20:38
Well, the honor and pleasure were all mine, so good luck to you.
Everything Imaginable 1:20:44
You too, Thank you very much. Have a great evening, sir. Thank you. Bye, bye.