Paul Rovelli reviews The Golden Flower (pt. 3)

“The first chapter of Part One is ‘Fearless’ and reads like a surreal parable in the Koyote’s personal dream story. One senses a mythological journey evolving through his poetically imaginative experiences. The work on one’s inner attitude towards death is consistent with soem of the work of Liber HHH. The Koyote takes the work one step further in direct confrontation with death. With his push to be creative and use the imagination, he not only gets to the heart of magickal praxis, but quickly introduces the Vedantic perspective of the Silent Self that observes the dream.

The next chapter ‘On Lucidity of Apperception’ gives specific practical instructions for approaching lucid dreaming. And the Koyote shows how this is consisten with trances one can swork with in waking life, i.e. scrying and evocation techniques, being similar, as described in the next chapter: ‘The Four Regions of the Dreaming.’

In the next chapter: ‘Waking Dreaming,” the Koyte asserts that we are always dreaming (24/7); right at the outset, which resonates perfectly with Jungian teaching on the subject. The dream then is a primal consciousness. And the Koyte gives practical instrucions for skrying and visualization. The concept of the Dream Avatar is introduced in ‘Dreamings Gate’ and the ‘second attention’ is described, as being the unconscious with then, the first attention being waking consciousness.

And in the final chapter of part One: ‘The Key of Dreams’ describes perfectly, a practical approach to balancing the psyche. This is essentially, the Great Work done with the Avatar or Holy Guardian Angel. It is as concisely lucid a statement, as any I’ve seen on the subject.

Part Two is titled: And the Flower Unfolds; Petals of Light. The first chapter, Across the Borders of Dreaming both relates a personal experience; being initiated into dreaming as a child and a technical lesson, “You can always find what you see.”

The second chapter, The Yoga of Dreaming presents the alchemical notion that describes the two states of consciousness (waking & dreaming) that can be congealed to work together to serve that higher purpose, which is called the ‘essential self.’

In the third chapter, The Organic Bluprint of a Soul, the difference between waking and dreaming is presented as being simply two environments that the brain has constructed for itself, as a result of evaluating and delimiting the enormous amount of internal and external sensory input into the mind. This is very much in line with Jungian notions on the formation of identity.

The Etheric Body, the fourth chapter opens by describing what essentially is the Kantian a-priori. “This, your actual experience right now as you are reading this page, is the brain perceiving the brain.” We as human beings are described as being individual packets of energy that each contain a Universe that we call this world. The Etheric Body is referred to as the “Tonal”–a Toltec term; known to most through the writings of Carlos Castaneda. It is described as being a body of energy that exists between pure consciousness and the physical body; as apt a description as I’ve ever read. And a simple and natural exercise is presented to help the dreamer focus on the Etheric Body as being behind the physical body.

The fifth chapter, How to Construct an Astral Body shows how to apprehend the Universe in that quantum packet of energy that is the complex of the physical body and the human mind by using one’s imagination and visualization of the aggregate material that the mind has held onto in its active memory.

Again, a simple and natural exercise is given to create this body that can travel into this imaginary visualization of one’s self-created Universe.

And finally, in the sixth chapter of this section, it is proposed that the imagination is the only limit. The dreaming Shaman can assume non-human forms and travel to un-human worlds. In praxis, one’s daily experience is consistently developmental and experimental. The Kyote gives tips on how to broaden the scope of the imagination to find all these possibilities.” — Paul Joseph Rovelli, director of the Gnostic Church of LVX

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Paul Joseph Rovelli reviews The Golden Flower (Part 2)

“The last chapter of the book: “Kabbalistic Analsysis of the Dreaming” is a brilliant manual in itself, on the praxis of sexual magick. Koyote the Blind explains in qabalistic terms, how consciousness in its use of intent, generated from an attitude of prayer carries a seed that meets with a droplet of amrit from the Divine.

This follows from a description of this bestowal of grace (Gnosis) from the Divine, as a necessary pre-requisite for the proper attitude by which to approach the magick.

Clearly implied in Koyote’s interpretation of the New Testament parable of the rich man and the eye of the needle, is Crowley’s dictum: All magick not for the Knowledge & Conversation of the H.G.A. is Black Magick.

But ultimately, Koyote the Blind sums up the whole of his thought in the yogic practices of Yama & Niyama and how the dreeaming works with this. It’s concisely stated when he says: It is through the flow of images and information from the subconscious that the artist, scientist, and innovator of any field draws the material that results in the works of genius that have the thumbprint of destiny.” –Paul Rovelli, director of the Gnostic Church of LVX

Check out the Golden Flower here.

Paul Joseph Rovelli reviews The Golden Flower

The director of the Gnostic Church of LVX is writing a wonderful review of my book, The Golden Flower. Here is part one:

“I just got and have already started reading Ricardo Flores’ (Koyote Ciego) new book release: The Golden Flower. So far, I’ve read all the preliminary writing (About the Author, Acknowledgements, Preface and Introduction). The Acknowledgements alone should wet your appetite for the book. The wonderful people he’s studied and trained with and the heart-warming remembrance he brings to them shows a man with great depth. And I know enough about him personally, to know what a fabulously interesting life he’s led and the fine character he’s forged.

Reading as jazz, improvisational musician, I’ve already found in the Introduction, much that correlates with what I’ve experienced in heightened states of inspiration. So that I can tell that dreaming has a much broader meaning than what the approaching reader might assume and indeed, it encompasses the whole of your being and your whole life.

From there, I’ve skipped to the last chapter on the Qabalistic analysis of the Golden Flower. But last night, my reading time expired about the second page into this. Yet, already, Flores is right on the money in regards to the nature of the Will and in a way that it seems almost no Thelemite understands anymore.

On page xxiv the aphorism in bold print states: “You are the totality of all. You are the hidden source of all experience, the experiencer, and the environment we call the dreaming.” First mystically, it’s two compact sentences; one, that we are the totality of the ALL. We each are the one God in its totality, as we are also and simultaneously, the holographic individuation of all ITs parts. This is then compactly but fully expanded in the following sentence; we each, truly are a trinity of beings; the experiencer and the source of that experience, as well as the environment in which the experience takes place. And we reflect the ineffable being in its totality.

It becomes plain to see that all experience and everything connected to experience is in one big holographic whole. This is what the Koyote Ciego calls the dreaming. And his aphorisms are build on this fundamental principle.

Overall the intensity of the Koyote Ciego puts into his aphorisms is combined with a beautiful expression of words that could approach as much as what a jazz improvisor would come to see, as a means for devloping an improvisation. Think of that improvisation, as an experience created by the experiencer and revealing elements of mind and soul that is the divine muse.

So the dream is really the dream of life and the Introduction has really wet my appetite for more. This weekend, I’m skipping to the last chapter on the Qabalah of Dreaming…can’t wait!”

(More to come from Paul Joseph Rovelli)