The tools here are most useful under pressure. First, because they stop us from only reacting. They bring focus. They help us resist the takeover of the lizard brain. They remind us what sets us apart: We think. Lastly, they’ve been tested in a variety of environments with a variety of people. With varying levels of complexity. Different situations, different people, different needs. Bottom line: They work.
John Braddock, A Spy’s Guide to Thinking
Hermetic Library fellow Beth Kimbell posts about the lack of sources and difficulty finding specialty crafted esoteric items of a serious nature on her blog at “Retail Frustration“.
“I have been thinking a lot lately about what I find frustrating in live or web occult retailers. Everywhere I go in this country I see white light, glittery fairy stuff, and not, say, the tools I need to call angels and demons, or walk the planes or carve out a small patch of sacred space.”
“Why can’t I get a statue of a licentious murder goddess carved by hand during the appropriate hours of the day or night on a specific day of the week during the chosen phase of the moon? What makes them think I want a resin cast of my gods when I can have their corresponding stone or wood, hand-crafted with love not mass produced? Why settle for print outs of the enochian tablets?” [via]
The Deeper Symbolism of Freemasonry from The Meaning of Masonry by Walter Leslie Wilmshurst.
“It has always been the custom for Trade Guilds, and even for modern Friendly Societies, to spiritualize their trades, and to make the tools of their trade point some simple moral. No trade, perhaps, lends itself more readily to such treatment than the builder’s trade; but wherever a great industry has flourished, there you will find traces of that industry becoming allegorized, and of the allegory being employed for the simple moral instruction of those who were operative members of the industry.” [via]