Member Article: “Desire”

The Spirit Link: A desire that you hold that is stronger than the desire for Gnosis (the ultimate knowledge that allows you to escape the material realm).

Satanic Spirit Link: A desire that you would be willing to sacrifice this life for to attain in the next life.

The key to Gnosis is understanding desire. The Buddhists had it more or less correct when they declared that all suffering is rooted in desire. Gnostic teaching says a very similar thing: pure souls from higher spiritual realms were lured into the physical realm through their desire to experience the pleasures and pains of the flesh.

These souls did not understand that this realm is all about desire, and indeed it is our desire to stay in the physical realm that keeps us here. Once souls were lured into the physical plane, they remained until they truly desired to leave. Our desires drive us. It is our desires that shape our lives as our collective desires shape the Universe, since we are free causal beings acting in accordance to our own free will.

The Satanic Spirit Link is any desire that is strong enough to make you willing to sacrifice your current life for something else in the next life is precisely the main cause of keeping souls trapped in the endless cycle of birth, death, rebirth of reincarnation. The Abrahamic faiths are all about the Satanic Spirit link: they make you give up and sacrifice your current life for some reward in the next life. This guarantees that you stay locked in the physical realm, the realm that the Gnostics regarded as hell.

This Spirit Link is the chord that binds you to the world of the flesh. And, why should that be so? Simply because your strongest desire must be to ESCAPE the physical realm in order to do so. If you hold any other desire that is stronger than this then you will keep reincarnating. Period. As expounded earlier, the physical realm is all about desire, and you must truly desire to leave over anything else that the physical realm has to offer you in order to escape. If not, you will remain here and experience all the pleasures and pain, the triumphs and the horrors. Seductive, isn’t it?

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Sin for Salvation vs Renunciation : The Left-Hand Path vs. The Right-Hand Path

While reading The Book of the Law by Aleister Crowley, I was struck by a startling realization: The Deities of the New Aeon of Horus are our way to free ourselves from the attachments and desires that bind us to the physical realm.

“Come forth, o children, under the stars, & take your fill of love! I am above you and in you. My ecstasy is in yours. My joy is to see your joy.”

Offer your indulgences and guilty pleasures to Nuit when you partake of them. You will carry out the physical act and Nuit will take all the attachment and spirit linking effects. She is the Goddess of Sin for Salvation. As you sin and wallow in the dirt and darkness of Malkuth (the physical realm), Nuit cleanses you and rejoices in your joy.

“Be goodly therefore: dress ye all in fine apparel; eat rich foods and drink sweet wines and wines that foam! Also, take your fill and will of love as ye will, when, where and with whom ye will! But always unto me.”

Nuit here is telling us the key to Gnosis is the management of desire and its spirit linking effects. In this Aeon we should let go of our attachment to the physical plane by fulfilling all of our desires until we are sated and sick of them; we should offer up our vices and dedicate them to Nuit – perform them in her honor, invoking her name. She will take your attachment from these offerings, thus freeing you from their chains.

In the prior Aeon of Osiris – The Dying God – the formula was all about renunciation of desire as being the means of attaining to heaven. However, this method rarely succeeds because the ascetic still inwardly yearns and desires that which he has renounced (whether that desire is conscious or unconscious). This is why most on the Right-Hand Path fail; they are not honest enough with themselves to admit a simple truth: just because you have renounced something doesn’t mean that you no longer desire it.

Here we see another parallel to the concept of “hell” in the Aeon of Osiris (The Epoch of Abrahamism): Being an ascetic renunciate is living in hell. This much is obvious. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, it is said that over 97% of all souls go to hell. This simply means that over 97% of those on the path of renunciation fail because they still consciously or unconsciously desire that which they have renounced (Spirit Link) or, they have signed up to sacrifice their current life for a better life in the next (Satanic Spirit Link – Abrahamism’s concept of heaven in the afterlife for being a good slave in this one)

Abrahamists are guaranteed to suffer in “eternal hell” because in each life they keep reincarnating as renunciates and ascetics over and over again and keep failing on the Right-Hand Path because they do not understand that it is their desire that keeps them trapped in hell.

Their Spirit Links are stronger than their desire to escape and achieve Gnosis. They are stuck in the cycle of reincarnation and then thrown into another life – probably one that has the same strategy of renunciation! It is plain to see that this endless cycle of ascetic lives is indeed “hell” and why over 97% of souls fail to see this trap – and thus spend eternity in hell.

The Soul Trap

This trap is devilishly ingenious in design and particularly difficult to defeat precisely because it is so difficult to see. The Buddhists got perhaps one of the best intuitive glimpses at the nature of the trap when they declared that desire is the root of all suffering. They did not however, have the mathematical, philosophical, or psychological understanding to defeat the trap and escape from the physical plane. Buddhism took the Right-Hand Path of renunciation just like the Abrahamists, believing that renunciation would eliminate desire. On the contrary, renunciation only inflames desire and makes attachment stronger, particularly when the things renounced are pleasures of the flesh: sex, food, drink, drunkenness etc.

Nuit has come to free us from this trap that keeps us in the physical realm by showing us the nature of the trap, and offering us a way out that does not involve renunciation and a 97% failure rate. We “worship” Nuit by indulging our desires in the full knowledge that we do so to free ourselves from them ultimately. We MUST sate ourselves completely of this world before we can leave it. See attached graph.

“I give unimaginable joys on earth: certainty, not faith, while in life, upon death; peace unutterable, rest, ecstasy; nor do I demand aught in sacrifice.”

When we leave the physical realm as conscious beings via Gnosis we become a god. In the Book of the Law, Nuit gives us an incredible clue as to the truth of this:

“My number is 11, as all their numbers who are of us. The Five Pointed Star, with a Circle in the Middle, & The Circle is Red. My color is black to the blind, but the blue & gold are seen of the seeing. Also, I have a secret glory for them that love me.”

With her reference to the Five Pointed Star and The Circle the allusion to ritual and ceremonial magick is clear. Here we see the Great Work reflected in her words. Initiation degrees in ceremonial magick have always stood for levels of progress in The Great Work. The highest degree is that of 11, Ipsissimus, which means “own very self” in Latin – meaning that the Magickian has attained perfection by uniting with their Higher Self, their Holy Guardian Angel, and completing The Great Work.

Nuit tells us that she is one such being to have attained godhood. She is an exemplar to our species and our guiding star.

“Also, I have a secret glory for them that love me.”

The Great Work is not for everyone. Gnosis and The Truth will always be the preserve of the meritorious.

Send your attachment to the pleasures of the flesh to Nuit as you take your fill of them! Nuit will take the bond of attachment and desire from you; you get to experience that which you crave.

Nuit is a goddess outside time and space, and yet she still wants the emotional thrill of your enjoyment, but she does not want to enter the physical realm again to experience it herself. There is a kind of mutually beneficial relationship between us humans and Nuit: we free ourselves of our attachments by indulging our desires; we offer up the desire itself to Nuit so that she may partake of our joy. She gets to experience our qualia of indulgences of our desires, and we get to relinquish the bonds and spirit linking effects of these desires to Nuit. This gives a situation where the Goddess experiences our joys and we get closer to Gnosis by shedding our desires before her. The offering that we give to Nuit is our desires after we have well and truly sated them.

“Nor do I demand aught in sacrifice.”

On the Altar of Nuit we lay our desires freely given because we no longer have need for them (by virtue of being sated). This is the opposite of sacrifice, where something truly needed is forsaken for some matter of irrational faith or belief (As in the Abrahamic model). In this New Aeon of Horus the idea of sacrifice is completely and utterly done away with:

“Abrogate are all rituals, all ordeals, all words and signs. Ra-Hoor-Khuit hath taken his seat in the East at the Equinox of the Gods.”

– Justin Wu