Check, Double Check and Triple Check
Quite often, finding or trying to find information about something spiritual, something magical, some specific information is quite difficult because of the number of authors, websites, blogs, YouTube channels and everything that is out there, so how do we test what’s correct and what’s not.
There are a few things to bear in mind:
Don’t believe anything that anybody says, including myself.
Go out, check, double check and triple check the information.
I say this because it came up as I was reading one of Michael W Ford’s books.
Michael W Ford is considered to be an authority in the LHP communities. I don’t particularly like Michael W Ford’s writings, I don’t like his books, but that’s just me and it’s my opinion.
A lot of people do, they find value in it, and they find it worthwhile, however, I did come across a few things, but one of the glaring obvious things or mistakes, was that in this book, he shows images of different kinds of circles that you can create.
In two of them, in the middle, is the evocation triangle, with the name Azazel in Hebrew, and in two of them, he got them correct. It reads as Azazel in Hebrew.
Then he talks specifically about the evocation triangle and gives an image of the evocation triangle, with the Hebrew letters, and states that it is the name of Azazel in Hebrew, and it’s not, it’s completely different. The letters in there have two lameds, Azazel only has one lamed. I don’t know what name he has put in there, but it definitely wasn’t Azazel.
This is why I want to bring this up.
It doesn’t matter how accomplished somebody is.
How authoritative they are, what position they hold in the community.
Check, double check and triple check the information.
Don’t just take it at face value because it doesn’t matter who it is, they’re going to make mistakes, we all make mistakes, we are only human, but if you have published and re-published a book several times, somewhere along the line you should have picked up a glaring mistake like that.
The spelling and other errors in the book is absolutely unbelievable.
Right through the book it’s supposed to say ‘acausal and causal’, but it gets written as ‘casual and acasual’.
There are a few things to bear in mind here.
There is UPG, which is unverified personal gnosis, and a lot of people have that, and they do write about it. It doesn’t mean that it’s wrong, it just means that it’s personal knowledge that they gained in their own practice. They may have been given particular knowledge or information, and all they are doing is talking about that.
At some point it could become a group collective, where a lot of people are experiencing the same thing, given the same information and then it becomes verified gnosis eventually.
When people do speak about UPG, they should rightly say this is the experience I had, or this is the knowledge I gained from a particular practice, and just state that it is UPG.
A lot of people don’t because they talk about a particular topic and then it just comes up somewhere and they just carry speak about it.
Even with UPG, UPG doesn’t mean that it’s wrong, in fact, in some cases it could be more accurate than something else, but just bear in mind that it hasn’t been verified. The knowledge has not been verified.
When you are reading this type of information, or hearing about this type of information, or whatever information or knowledge it is, take that knowledge, take that information and test it, and as I said, check, double check and triple check everything.
You have to do your homework, or else you will end up believing something somebody else does and just follow like a sheep and, especially on the left-hand path, that’s not the way to do it.
In fact, in that book of Michael W Ford’s, what I found quite disturbing was that he basically mentions that you should not ask questions.
If you had an experience, you should not ask another practitioner, and bounce it off them and try and get their perspective, because it makes you appear weak, and this is something we’re experiencing quite a lot in the communities.
People feel that they shouldn’t ask questions, because it makes them appear weak and that is very wrong. You should be asking questions.
If you are having experiences and you’re not sure what the experience is about, you need to ask people if they have had the same experience, and what their interpretation of it was and what they took away from it, so that you can verify your own experience.
At the end of the day, if you’re not asking the questions, if you are just blindly reading other people’s information without checking or double checking it, you’re going to just follow.
The left-hand path is about creating your own self, you own self-worth. You’ve got to ask questions in order to determine if what you experienced was actually something that you can take with you on that journey.
Something else to bear in mind when reading information, especially when it comes to mythology, well not mythology itself, but how people relate to the spirits, for instance.
One person may say that Satan and Lucifer are the same being, another person will say they are separate beings. One person will say that Lilith, Babalon and Hekate are the same being, another person will say they’re not, they’re all separate, they’re all individual.
Just remember that not everybody has the same viewpoint about these things and some people can be hard polytheistic and other people are soft polytheistic.
You have all of these different paths and traditions in the world.
In a lot of cases, they are following a similar pattern, but not quite the same. They’re kind of going parallel, sometimes they veer off completely, but we all have our different beliefs and our different understandings of the deities, of the universe, how things are created, how things are manipulated.
So, when you’re reading somebody else’s information, see what resonates for you and discard the things that don’t, but at the same time remember them, because at some point in your life you could come across a particular bit of information, which does resonate with you, which changes your entire perspective of what you believed in the past.
There is no harm in that, you shouldn’t think that there’s something wrong or that you were wrong or anything like that. It’s just a matter of your path developing and growing, and with growth comes change.
You could, at some point, veer off completely from what you’ve believed in the past and go in a new direction, and if you have all that knowledge gained from other people, you can go back and start pulling out what now resonates with your new journey.
So, read all of the stuff, but check, double check and triple check the information.
Do not take things on faith or blindly and also remember there is UPG, it doesn’t mean it’s wrong, doesn’t mean it’s right. It needs to be tested.
Also remember that everybody has their own beliefs, their own understandings, and how they came to these understandings in their own logical sense, and if it fits in with their path, and their beliefs, it doesn’t need to be your belief.
I have found a lot of people pick up a book of magick and that’s really the only experience they’ve had at that point, and that becomes their bible. This especially happens with a beginner, they pick up a book, it makes perfect sense to them, it helps them progress, move away from the path that they’re trying to move away from, for instance, and they feel a sense of responsibility.
It’s gratitude, and so they will then continue with that information and disregard all other information, and when somebody comes along and challenges that information they have, they kind of freak out and say “You’re wrong!”
Don’t do that, get as much information as you can.
If you’re studying one particular topic, study 10 different authors on that topic.
Find out where the overlaps are, find out which information is correct, and which is not. Compare, check, don’t go on blind faith.
I hope this helps in developing your own path and your own journey, just a little bit.
Please remember, it doesn’t matter who it is, it doesn’t matter what authority they have in any community, or on any particular topic. Check them, don’t go on blind faith, because, as I’ve said, I’ve found mistakes in people’s books who have written 20 plus books which tends to make them an authority. It doesn’t, it makes them human, they are still human and they will still make mistakes, but when they are glaring mistakes that they have not corrected over years, you’ve got to question that.
