Magical Disaster At The Sweat Lodge

כ"ג בתשרי תש"ע
Blodlessing 24

An interesting article from Beyond Growth, The Dark Side of The Secret: Reading James Arthur Ray’s Sweat Lodge Disaster through a Magickal Lens, looks at the recent sudden deaths at an Arizona sweat lodge "spiritual warrior" spiritual cleansing event gone horribly awry from the perspective of shamanic transformation magic and asks:

From the magickal perspective, it’s not that James A Ray has been bullshitting us about a mythical Law of Attraction, but that he is indeed a powerful magician who attracted some very powerful, albeit unwanted results. We’d want to ask, “how did he attract this experience?” and “how can we protect ourselves from attracting similar experiences?”

Author, philosopher and NLP Practitioner Duff McDuffee further writes on evoking the Warrior and the attempt to transform an archetype of violent war into one of spiritual honor:

One of the ultimate accomplishments of a magician is to be able to transform a demon into an ally. The Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage is a complex, 6-month long ritual designed to gain the “Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel,” and then using such an accomplishment to summon demons and transform them into allies.

Indeed, this magical task is not without danger:

One could think of a demon as a negative habit or unwanted emotion at the personal level, or a general negative tendency at the collective level. Attempts at such transformation are a dangerous business, much cautioned about in both stories of magic and actual grimoires. Through humiliating failures, magicians (that survive) can learn humility with respect to the gods or archetypes, eventually gaining more mastery with the magick of transformation, but always with the knowledge of one’s limitations.

Read the full insightful article at the link above and choose teachers wisely.