READERS QUESTIONS (DL4)

1. Fascinating mag, can’t you make it larger – or the print smaller so you can cram more in? And what about some illustrations?

More pages puts up the cost; smaller print – well, what do you think of it? We have had enough complaints about “having to read DL with the dictionary at hand”, now do you expect the wicked Satanists to give their readers eyestrain, particularly when none of us has shares in an optician. It is really only justifiable for exchange ads, which are almost the same every issue. Regarding illustrations, we will include them if they are need to illuminate a theme, but it would have to be a very special picture that has sufficient merit on its own account to take up space which could otherwise be used for an article. Any artists out there who will accept the challenge?

2. You say that ritual is not necessary, but many Occultists have found it useful on many occasions, have actually seen the aspect of the deity which they invoked, and are therefore convinced of the existence of external powers. Why is your system different from all the others?

Your subconscious can create a hologram so that you see the god. Looking outside of yourself for everything is like the caveman being afraid of everything that he cannot hit with his club.

In genetics, you only need one cell to create the godform. One aspect of your personality to create the god-form. Things which you might not know about come to the surface. Easier to trigger than to stop. You have taken a little bit of you that identifies with the god-form; from one cell you can clone the whole thing. In ritual, that god-form has got to exist alongside your own. There is no-one out there to summon; it is a part of you. Waking it up is easy; the problem is putting it away again, because your subconscious remembers the freedom and the power it had. That bit of your subconscious has to be put back in the box and it will not like that because it finds a full life-form rather a tasty proposition. So you may have a case of schizophrenia with identifiable traits. This is not possession; possession does not exist because there is no separate thing to possess you. Whatever personality traits you identify in the god and reinforce with your own subconscious and those aspects of your personality, you have two personalities and the subconscious will decide that the god can behave in such a way; it will remember the things you have read about the god.

Lengthy preparations for ritual require will-power to stick at it, but the will-power is really needed after the event, to put everything back into its place. The kind of control, required for lengthy preparations has an affect on your mind.

There is one cell in your subconscious from which you can clone whatever you are seeking. After two or three attempts, you will know where that cell is and you no longer need ritual to get at it. If you are using ritual because you like it, that is good enough. If you are using it because you think it is essential, that is wrong.

Driving a car is a ritual; if you get any of the actions in the wrong order, the car will not work. No matter how complex ritual, if you have not got the equivalent of the ignition key, you cannot make it work. The key is yourself.

3. In what way does the LHP differ from the RHP?

It doesn’t except in the ways that do not matter.

4. Can one alter the future or is it predetermined?

The future is fluid. Actions begin to solidify it.

5. Are there limits on the knowledge which can be achieved on the Earthly plane? Can one go further when discarnate?

What is knowable depends on your limitations or how far you agree to be bound by what are considered limitations. Once you know how to do it, what people would consider the age of the universe is quite easily within reach. If you can hear from the other side of the universe, the things that happen in this world today do not seem very much.

6. When almost every other Occult mag that I subscribe to (quite a number) expends a lot of pages per issue slanging other Occultists, DL does not follow the pattern. How far does this saintly forbearance go? What if someone launches a personal attack on DL? Or sets up another LHP mag in competition?

There have been verbal attacks on DL. You haven’t noticed? Of course you haven’t – because we didn’t notice. Simple isn’t it? As for “competition”, this does not exist because Occult magazines are not commercial undertakings, and this is a great benefit to the readers. These mags are not launched by people seeking to make money from the venture; they are launched because the editors/writers have something to say and they are maintained because the readers find that that something is of interest and/or use. It would be better for everyone if there was a much wider choice of mags available – at least another couple of hundred. Of course we would all lose subscribers, but the people who relate to what a magazine is saying would stay with it, and they are the only people for whom that magazine is produced. Incidentally, DL will lose a lot of subscribers after the fourth or fifth issue, when those who sent annual subs under the impression that they would be reading about black masses and other sensationalism have realised that that is not what we are about. At that stage we shall be better able to estimate reader reaction.

Anonymous article taken from the Dark Lily Journal No 4, Society of Dark Lily (London 1988).