“The masses look upon these words as mere play. They do not understand the struggle and strife it takes to make one's body an object. They are so driven by base instincts and unconscious drives that sculpting one's body or cutting out sugar seems to impossible to them. Their body, unlike the Ubermensch of history, is an idol for them. It matters so much to them that they become sensitive: unable to face the elements, constantly complaining, ever emotional. They do not have an afterlife, a Heaven, a Valhalla, so view the body as the be all and end all of existence. They ruminate, procrastinate, fornicate, and masturbate en masse. This destroys their honor and dignity and makes them an ignoble slave of the passions. The Sturm und Drang of existence has been denied, but to no good end.”

Ernst Jünger, on pain

A 1776 proposal for the seal of the United States of America.

Ultimately it just boils down to where you think personhood originates really.
The personalists would say that Brahman has an infinite number of auspicious attributes and that it possesses those attributes to an infinite degree.
Atman share those auspicious attributes but to a finite degree.
Personality is an inherent attribute of Atman which means that it is also an inherent quality of Brahman.
Think of Brahman as a roaring campfire and Atman as a small ember, the ember shares the same qualities as the campfire but to a lesser degree.
We cannot have a hot ember and a cold campfire.

This also is an interesting thing to look at from the logical framework within Platonism since that which is ontologically prior is meant to possess within itself the qualities of what comes after it in the chain of being.
So how can something that comes from the Absolute possess what the Absolute does not possess?

"Many people think they are performing great works by outward things such as fasting, going barefoot, or other such things which are called penance. But the true and best penance is that whereby one improves greatly and in the highest degree; and that is that a man should experience a complete and perfect turning away from what­ ever is not entirely God and divine in himself [...]
Let every man keep to his own good way and include all ways in it, and take up in his way all goodness and all ways. To change one's way makes for instability of mind as well as of way. Whatever you can get from one way you can also obtain from another if it is good and praiseworthy and mindful only of God: but not all men can follow one path. And so it is with imitating the austerities of such saints. You should love this way, and it may well appeal to you, even though you need not follow it."

- Meister Eckhart, Talks of Instruction

Let’s discuss Theurgy.

Theurgy is a system of ritual magic practiced by the Platonists, with the intention of invoking deities, with the goal of henosis (Union of the Self with the Divine) and attaining perfection.

This is the goal of all genuine Dharmic Religions.

We see the same in Hinduism for example - in the formula Atman=Brahman.

Various Yoga (translates to Union) are practiced towards these ends.

Yoga is not just asana - poses. Read the Bhagavad Gita and you’ll learn about many forms of Yoga - from breath work to sex magic to offering incense in prayer - all Yoga are Magical Rites.

Magic is not just puffs of smoke - Magic is the sacred art of the Soul. And it has as its goal, the aforementioned Union.

Theologically, this is an fairly easy thing to comprehend. The deepest essence of your Soul, is purely of the One, the Tao which cannot be named.

This God is not a being, as in Abrahamism. He is beyond that. He is the impersonal essence of all personality, the root of all the cosmos - simultaneously imminent & transcendent.

You can find the Divine at the heart of all things - Chaos & Order, Love & Hate, the Gods & the Stones.

Indeed, even the various Gods are like the infinite rays of light emitting from the sun.

However, all things are not equal. As we come closer to the ineffable source - we become more pure, more full of light. As we go further away, we become more dim - more lost.

So in magic, what is done, is to follow a ray of light back to the sun.

Indeed, our own Soul is a ray of that light - and we practice an alchemy of the Soul towards purity.

We turn lead into gold - lead being the unpurified soul, still entranced with the shadows in Plato’s cave. Gold being the purified soul - he who has been reborn, who has initiated into the great mystery, who no longer walks with men - but he who walks across the great waters in the company of heroes.

Towards those ends, we invoke deities, and we look to the stars.

These deities exist external to us, just as you exist external to me. But they are also completely & totally existing within our Soul - our Soul being, at its core, the One.

Therefore, the external ritual work we do, towards external deities - is necessary. But the real work that is happening occurs within the Soul.

Just as we can invoke deities, we can cleanse our ritual space of unwanted spirits & residual energies. Which - as you should now understand, is a cleansing of our Soul of the same.

Now you perhaps understand exorcism. When an unwanted spirit possesses a Soul, and rules it - it may be expelled via ritual magic.

Ritual magic is not a matter of belief, but of experience. Like all Yoga, you simply do the rite & you will achieve results.

The first stage of magic is the development of your spiritual organs of perception.

Just as you can hear with your ears and see with your eyes, you need to develop what is commonly dubbed a “third eye”, that you may begin perceiving & knowing wavelengths of light that are of higher frequency, wavelengths that are brighter & closer to the aforementioned spiritual sun. The light you are able to see now, is a very narrow spectrum of reality, it is material.

There is far more than the material world to be perceived, you just have to do the work to be capable of receiving it.

The Modern Word had calcified these organs of perception. We no longer see the sprites of the field & the god of thunder. With magic, you leave this world & you enter a fantastic world full of extra-dimensional life.

"“The soul is surely not where it is, but where it loves”

- 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑳𝒆𝒕𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒔 𝒐𝒇 𝑺𝒄𝒉𝒆𝒍𝒍𝒊𝒏𝒈

For this “vision” takes place in the domain of essence transcending all substance; it is not a fusion, but an encounter in the domain of essence, in which the human personality (the consciousness of self) remains not only intact and without impediment, but also becomes “that which it is”, i.e. becomes truly itself—such as the Thought of God has conceived it for all eternity.
https://www.gornahoor.net/?p=11981

Therefore get up and prepare to fight. After conquering your enemies you will enjoy a flourishing kingdom. They are already put to death by My arrangement, and you, O Savyasacin, can be but an instrument in the fight.

Bhagavad Gita 11.33

Original NFTU Article:

https://notesfromtheungrund.substack.com/p/scholasticism-as-preparation-for?s=w

"In the first place, we should know that the wise man and wisdom, the true man and truth, the just man and justice, the good man and goodness are in correspondence and are related to each other as fol­lows: goodness is not created nor made nor begotten, it is procreative and begets the good; and the good man, in as far as he is good, is unmade and uncreated, and yet the begotten child and son of good­ ness. Goodness begets itself and all that it is in the good man, and the good man receives all his being, knowledge, love, and energy from the heart and inmost depth of goodness, and from that alone. The good man and goodness are nothing but one goodness, all in one, apart from the bearing and being born, and yet the bearing of good­ness and the being born in the good man is but one being and one life. All that belongs to the good man he gets from goodness and in goodness. Therein he is and lives and dwells. There he knows himself and all that he knows, and loves all that he loves, and works with goodness in goodness, and goodness does all her works with him and in him, just as it is written where the Son says, 'The Father remaining in me and dwelling in me performs the works' (John 14:10), 'The Father works until now and I work' (John 5:17), 'All that belongs to the Father is mine, and all that is mine and pertains to mine is the Father's: His in the giving and mine in the receiving' (John 17:10).
Further, we should know that when one says, 'good,' the name or word denotes and includes nothing else, neither more nor less than goodness pure and simple, which yet gives itself out. When we speak of a good man, we mean that his goodness has been given to him, infused, engendered by the unborn goodness. Hence the Gospel says, 'As the Father has life in Himself, so He has given to the Son to have the same life in himself' (John 5:26). He says, 'in himself' not 'of himself,' for the Father has given it to him.
All that I have said of the good man and goodness applies equally to the true man and truth, to the just man and justice, to the wise man and wisdom, to God's Son and God the Father, to every God­ begotten thing that has no father on earth, in which, too, nothing is born that is created which is not God, in which there is no image but God alone, naked and pure. For this is what St. John says in his Gospel: 'To all of them is given power and strength to become sons of God, who were not born of blood nor of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God and from God alone' (John 1:12-1 3). By the blood he means everything in man not subordinate to the human will. By the will of the flesh he means whatever in a man is subject to his will, but with resistance and reluctance, which inclines to the carnal appetites and is common to the body and the soul, not peculiar to the soul alone, in consequence of which the soul's powers become tired, feeble and old. By the will of man St. John means the highest powers of the soul, whose nature and work is unmixed with flesh, which reside in the pure nature of the soul, detached from time and space and from all that has any hankering or taste for the things of time and space, having nothing in common with anything, in which man is formed in the image of God, in which man is of God's lineage and God's kindred. And yet, since they are not God Himself but are in the soul and created with the soul, therefore they must lose their form and be transformed into God and be born in God and from God, with only God for Father, for thus they too become God's sons and God's only-begotten Son. For I am the son of all that which forms me after its own image and in itself, and bears me thus. Such a man, God's son, good the son of goodness, just the son of justice, insofar as he is her son, she (justice) is unborn-bearing, and her born son has the same single being as justice has and is, and is possessed of all that pertains to justice and truth."

- Meister Eckhart, The Book of Divine Comfort