WIXLIB

IpsissimusIPSISS.-.sE.A. KOE1TING2

E.A. KoettingTable of ContentsForeword. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Page 4Introduction.Page 7Part 1: Fastening the Wings.Page I 0Chapter One: Feathers to Fly.Page 12Chapter Two: Immutable Wax.Page 31Chapter Three: The Silver Hamess.Page 38Part II: Taking Flight. .Page 50Chapter Four: The First Tier.Page 51Chapter Five: The Second Tier.Page 74Chapter Six: The Third Tier.Page 80Part Ill: Convergence.Page 84Chapter Seven: Commanding Convergence.Page 91Chapter Eight: Omnipotence.Page I 00Chapter Nine: Omnipresence.Page I 08Chapter Ten: Omniscience.Page 113Chapter Eleven: A Light Shining in the Darkness .Page 116Chapter Twelve: The Inevitable Fall.Page 127Chapter Thirteen: The Anti-transmigratory Experience .Page 1343

sideredacceptable and sane even in the insane world of the occult,author, adventurer, metaphysician, mystic, yogi, and ritualmagician Aleister Crowley became pariah not only to politicaland religious factions but also to his own brotherhood of occultpractitioners, being ousted from the very groups that he hadhelped bring to power, namely the Hermetic Order of theGolden Dawn, the vivification of which he was a central figure.In the early 1900s, Crowley formed new groups andlodges wherein he could continue not only to teach that whichhe had learned in his occult career, but also to continue in hisown process of Ascent.One such order, the Ordo AstrumArgentum, the Order of the Silver Star, bore his deepest andmost ascendant teachings with the greatest clarity.4

E.A. KoettingWhile the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn wouldtake on the task of teaching the secrets of the esoteric arts to itsadherents, the A.:.A.:. assumed that those in its ranks wouldalready possess the knowledge and faculties necessary for thehigher spiritual rmetic Order of the Golden Dawn and Crowley's ownfraternal society of the Ordo Templi Orientis, held very fewgroup rituals, the guidelines and instructions for the variousinitiations passed from mentor to apprentice alone. In a periodwhen all that was once clandestine was being risen to eye level, the A.:.A.:. remained a true secret A.:.," held eleven degrees of initiation, progressing from aProbationer, to the highest degree of spiritual attainment:Ipsissimus.In his legendary work, Magick in Theory and Practice,Crowley writes, regarding this highest rank:"Ipsissimus. --- Is beyond all this and beyond allcomprehension."Here it is only said this: The Ipsissimus is wholly freefrom all limitations soever, existing in the nature of allthings without discriminations of quantity or qualitybetween them. He has identified Being and not-Beingand Becoming, action and non-action and tendency toaction, with all other such triplicities, not distinguishingbetween them in respect of any conditions, or betweenany one thing and any other thing as to whether it iswith or without conditions."The Ipsissimus has no relation as such with any Being:He has no will in any direction, and no Consciousnessofany kind involving duality,1accomplished."5for in Him all is

lpsissimusThe whole of Crowley's work and teachings, from theopening of the Aethyrs to the Knowledge and Conversation ofthe Holy Guardian Angel, had the single aim of the attainmentof this state, of embodying Ipsissimus. Indeed, this is theunspoken and unwritten aim of every spiritual path.While neither this book nor this author adheres in theslightest measures to the teachings of Aleister Crowley or theA.:.A.:., no term could quite summarize the final goal ofAscent as succinctly as lpsissimus.And again from Crowley's comments on this, the mostmysterious grade of the A.:.A.:., from Magick in Theory andPractice, "He is sworn to accept this Grade in the presence of awitness, and to express its nature in word and deed, but towithdraw Himself at once within the veils of his naturalmanifestation as a man, and to keep silence during his humanlife as to the fact of his attainment, even to the other membersof the Order."6

E.A. KoettingIntroductionMy father didn't help me build my wings. In fact, heconsidered that the entire feat and even my consideration of itI should instead be focused onwas a waste of time.economics, academics, on finding something stable, somethingearthy onto which my mind should be fixed. My motherconsidered the task of rising higher through such a flight thaneven Babel could offer to be a demonic task, an inception notof my own genius, but of the minds of conspiring cultists whohad obviously led me astray.But the Sun was there, beyond the sky. Not the solarorb that gives light to the flora and the fauna and the critterscrawling the crevices of the crusted earth, but a sun that only Iseemed to see, a center of Light and Glory, whose rays7

Ipsissimuscondensed as energy and matter and thought and feeling, intoall of the worlds below. It was to this Sun, this Eternal Source,that I intended to fly.Simply fastening waxen wings with harnesses aroundmy torso would not accomplish the outrageous task at hand.No, I would have to construct a mechanism which wouldendure heat and wind and rain and the obvious pressure of theflight itself.My body, the very same and original organism of myphysical construction, would become my wings. I strengthenedthis organism through a dialectic discipline, starving it toensure that it would prevail through hunger, letting it sit in thecold through the nights unprotected as to ensure its durabilitythrough hardship, exposing it to desert heats without clothingto condition it to withstand such solar devastation, and thenworking it under heavy loads so that it would not crumble atthe critical moment of the flight.The day arrived for me to fly, to soar towards that sun.It was not a day that I had pre-determined. I had not marked iton a calendar. I had not scheduled it in my planner. But thesun called to me on that day, and told me to come, whisperingthat all of the doorways and windows were opened. And so Iharnessed my body onto myself, as my wings, and I stood onthe rocky earth beneath me, the granulates of desert sanditching between my toes, and I began to lift, slowly at first, butonce the motion had begun, there was nothing I could do toslow it.Wind whipped through the feathers on my back andstung my eyes as the invisible current pulled tears across myface. The buildings that were once so high above me passedbelow like a simple model of a thing to be constructed, the carsand boats and even the airplanes beneath me being recognizedin their sheer primitiveness, as I, .unaided by any othermechanism than my body, soared above it all, towards the sun,becoming blinded by its glory, sweat streaking down myreddening skin.

E.A. KoettingRather than burning me, however, the sun accepted meinto its grace as I neared it, all of the planets and the lights andthe stars fading into meaninglessness as the first tier of glorywas reached, the phantoms of the spirit dancing across myspotted vision.Just as the ancient gods embraced me, I sankdeeper into the sun, into the middle of it, into the second tier,my ears h umming with the knowledge of all things, time beingeradicated from my understanding, all events and ideas at alltimes converging in a choir of silence. And as the bodhisattvaswhispered to me, a door opened to the core of the sun, to thevery center of the whole thing.Image disappeared.Formdisappeared. Thought disappeared. I was no longer a visitor tothe sun, but I was the sun, the rays of my light streaming intothe blackness of space, lighting up the spheres circled aroundme. For a moment, I was God.As the rapture of that realization took me, and as Ismiled at the wonder of it, the bodhisattvas greeted me again,and then the phantoms, and then the sun drifted farther away. Iwasn't sure what was happening until I was already in theearth's relentless pull, my body soaring a million times fasterthan I had flown, not towards the sun, not towards my beautifulabsolution, but towards the dust, feathers whistling as the windripped them from my wings.My bloodied and burnt body slamme d to the ground,but I stood, near featherless wings still on my back, and Ilooked to the sky, towards that sun that I had become, towardsthat goal that I will never shake, towards my own recognitionof Limitlessness.9

lpsissimusPart IFastening the WingsA sure method must be elucidated on the matter of self godhood and its attainment. The trickeries of sorcery anddevotions of mysticism are but paths to the same palace, butritual and prayer must be set aside and a straight line must bedrawn from one point to another.From my journal of metaphysical experimentations, in aconversation with the Aeon of Ra: "Remember the words,'Hael Mah Tankel,' 'I Am the Path.' You are the Path, and thePalace at the end of the Path. You know all things, you simplyneed to remember them."You are the Path, and the Palace at the end of the Path.You are the seeker, and you are that which is sought, and youare the journey between the two.The years between my parting from the methods ofoccultism, especially its more sinister manifestations, and thepresent were spent largely in a grand experiment in my owngodhood. Guided by gurus, Spiritual Masters, and the spiritualentities that I was able to call upon, I learned a great manytruths about my nature as an Eternal being, a Limitless identity- a God. First among these is the solidity of that reality, the10

E.A. Koettingunwavering certainty that I am,justas all beings are, God.And that, as a conscious nexion, the individual is capable ofconsciously experiencing his own godhood.Not only is hecapable, but it is his ultimate destiny, it is the unwhisperedthing that drives him forward and upwards in his experiencesof incarnation. This truth, the understanding of this truth, doesnot come by study or by intellectual contemplation, or by faith"The1more you act as supreme architect, the more you become one."or acceptance of the unthinkable, but by experience.Conversely, the more often you become the supreme architect,the more you will act like one, and the greater your consciousexperience as such will become.All other realizations that I had, and that anyone canhave other than this primary one, constitute the method ofattaining a more concrete realization of the first, adding upon itin depth and girth. The surety of those methods is recognizedwhen the fruits that they offer are consistent, and their resultsare reproducible.All religions have struggled to teach what is herein soplainly laid out. All messiahs have tried and often died to shedlight on this simple guide.Every science, esoteric andmundane, has as their unspoken goal the very immortality andlimitless potency that these works unveil.None of this is new, however.forgotten.11It has simply been

IpsissimusChapter OneFeathers to FlyTucked eep inside the warmth of my mother's body,her safety keepmg me safe, her nourishment feeding me, Icould sense that she was powerless. She wanted with all of herwill to hold me, to love me, to raise me as best she could, butthe circumstances in her life would not relent. She waspowerless. And I felt it too, a crushing weight like the deepestwaters, suffocating and threatening to implode my frail body.Powerless.For months I felt it growing slowly, my descent into theoceanic abyss traveled by the inch, one inch every day formonths, compressing me with the monstrous force ofpowerlessness. Her fear kept me afraid. Her doubt made myconviction in the ability to surmount a tyrannical reality buckle.Her powerlessness became mine, inherited like her blond hairand hazel eyes, swallowed into my body as if fed through ourshared umbilical cord.Then I saw her, in the blinding light and blurred, wetcanvas of an open world, I saw her. Her love and pride, stillsensed although I was no longer inside of her, were drownedout by the sure and unrelenting knowledge that she could nottake on the mantle of the Mother. She tried, for months more,12