Lon Milo DuQuette > Quotes

“It's all in your head -- you just have no idea how big your head is.”
― Lon Milo DuQuette, The Chicken Qabalah of Rabbi Lamed Ben Clifford: Dilettante's Guide to What You Do and Do Not Need to Know to Become a Qabalist

“If we can’t wake up to the fact that deep down inside we are good, then we deserve to remain asleep dreaming we are evil.”
― Lon Milo DuQuette, The Key to Solomon's Key: Secrets of Magic and Masonry

“It is only by working the rituals, that any significant degree of understanding can develop. If you wait until you are positive you understand all aspects of the ceremony before beginning to work, you will never begin to work.”
― Lon Milo DuQuette, The Magick of Aleister Crowley: A Handbook of the Rituals of Thelema

“The whole crazy business seemed to pull out of my guts the very worst in me—my worst fears—the worst aspects of my character—my worst insecurities and feelings of shame and guilt. I didn't know it at the time, but that was exactly what was supposed to be happening. That's what Solomonic magick is all about. The worst in me was my problem. The worst in me was the demon. When it finally dawned on me that I had successfully evoked the demon, and I had the worst of me trapped in that magick Triangle, I had no alternative but to harness and redirect its monstrous power and give it new marching orders. From then on, that particular demon would be working for me rather than against me.”
― Lon Milo DuQuette, Low Magick: It's All In Your Head ... You Just Have No Idea How Big Your Head Is

“Do I think I'm a holy man? Sometimes.”
― Lon Milo DuQuette, My Life With the Spirits: The Adventures of a Modern Magician

“I want to make it perfectly clear that although I believe in the continuity of existence, I do not hold to the simplistic theory that upon death a vaporous ghost containing our soul floats out of our dead body and goes to some cosmic waiting room while a karmic committee tallies up our unfulfilled needs and desires and matches us up with two unsuspecting fools who deserve the hell that we will put them through as much as we deserve the hell they will put us through. I am very confident, however, in the cycles of nature, and I do not see any reason to believe that the same cyclic behavior we observe in the universe around us cannot apply to consciousness and the continuity of our existence. Perhaps, because of the fragile nature of time, we are living all our "incarnations" simultaneously.”
― Lon Milo DuQuette, My Life With the Spirits: The Adventures of a Modern Magician

“The whole secret may be summarized in these four words: “Inflame thyself in praying.” —ALEISTER CROWLEY38”
― Lon Milo DuQuette, Enochian Vision Magick: An Introduction and Practical Guide to the Magick of Mr. John Dee and Edward Kelley

“The O.T.O. is an initiatory order similar to freemasonry. It doesn't provide educational monographs or standardized tests. Rather, it offers members the opportunity to experience a series of dramatic and magical initiations artfully designed to awaken and unfold the candidates' spiritual potentialities. If a member did nothing else with the O.T.O. career but undergo these degree experiences, they would be immeasurably rewarded. Serious members know, however, that there is much more to the O.T.O.'s magick than a two-hour ceremony performed once or twice a year. So profound are the Order's inner mysteries that to penetrate them requires not only a rich magical and spiritual education, but also a high level of meditative attainment. Members who wish to truly affiliate at this level are expected to seize responsibility for their own magical education and eventually rend the veil of the Order's mysteries for themselves.”
― Lon Milo DuQuette, My Life With the Spirits: The Adventures of a Modern Magician

“I eat too much. I drink to much. A greedy selfish such-n-such. But when I wrap my turban on my mind is clear, I'm 'Baba Lon'.”
― Lon Milo DuQuette, Ask Baba Lon: Answers to Questions of Life and Magick

“It is now possible for humanity to awaken to the liberating fact that each of us is a star, as unique and self-radiant as our celestial counterparts. Instead of desperately trying to determine the will of God and then clumsily attempting to cooperate with it, each of us must now come to realize that our will, if properly understood and executed, is already in harmony with the divine will. In other words, in this age, the holy quest is to discover one's own way rather than trying to guess what a God wants for you and hope from moment to moment that you are guessing correctly.”
― Lon Milo DuQuette, Understanding Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot

“Of course the entire cast of characters in this fairytale are simply metaphors for levels of consciousness and the mechanics of our evolving identity with those levels of consciousness. But sleeping princesses and hunky princes and kings and queens and awaking kisses and weddings and babies are pretty damned good metaphors for this process; because the key that holds it all together… indeed, the key to the nature of consciousness itself, from iron and rocks to light and energy and godhead itself, is Love.”
― Lon Milo DuQuette, After the Angel

“In essence, there are not really twenty-two trumps, there is only one—the Fool. Al the other trumps live inside (and issue from) the Fool.”
― Lon Milo DuQuette, Understanding Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot

“Aeons change, not as the result of some war in heaven or astrological event. Rather they are simply the consequence of some improved modification in human consciousness. Obviously, such a mutation needs to be universal and fundamental: something most of us share with our fellows, something as simple as how we perceive our relationship with the Sun.”
― Lon Milo DuQuette, Understanding Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot

“I don’t fear Satan half as much as I fear those who fear him.”
― Lon Milo DuQuette, Low Magick: It's All In Your Head ... You Just Have No Idea How Big Your Head Is

“Teach me (O creator of all things) to have correct knowledge and understanding, for your wisdom is all that I desire. Speak your word in my ear (O creator of all things) and set your wisdom in my heart.”
― Lon Milo DuQuette, Enochian Vision Magick: An Introduction and Practical Guide to the Magick of Mr. John Dee and Edward Kelley

“Then there are the tables in Liber Loagaeth, at the end of which (Sloane MS. 3189) Dee has appended eight tables from “Aldaraia Sive Soyga,” the mathematical methods of which have been demonstrated by Jim Reeds. They appear even on the surface to be cryptographic tables, though no one to date has made a systematic study of their content, nor provided any translation or decryption or methodology. They remain the most hermetically sealed of all Dee and Kelley's documents.”
― Lon Milo DuQuette, Enochian Vision Magick: An Introduction and Practical Guide to the Magick of Mr. John Dee and Edward Kelley

“It is understandable that anyone with a Christian background would recoil in horror when he or she first encounters Crowley's shocking use of words and imagery, such as the Beast 666, Scarlet Woman, All-Father Chaos, Whore of Babylon, or blood of the saints. While these dark “blasphemies” effectively serve to screen out faint-hearted dabblers (and all who choose to remain self-blinded by superstition), they offer a radiant and altogether wholesome spiritual treasure for anyone bold and tenacious enough to do a little research (and a little meditation).”
― Lon Milo DuQuette, Understanding Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot

“The phrases, “on the level” and, “third degree” are familiar to us all, but few of us have stopped to think of their origins. They are, in fact, overt references to the Craft of Freemasonry. In fact, every time a judge or chairperson pounds his or her gavel; every time an unworthy job applicant is blackballed; every time we refer to a faithful friend as being true blue—even when we shake hands to seal a deal—we are echoing Masonic traditions. The”
― Lon Milo DuQuette, How Tamson Got the Third Degree: The Magical Antiquarian Curiosity Shoppe, A Weiser Books Collection

“For centuries, students and sages of Hebrew mysticism have developed a unique spiritual science called Qabalah.65 Qabalah is not a religion, philosophy, or doctrine. It is a way of thinking, a way of looking at the world, a convenient method by which we dissect, examine, and organize the universe and ourselves. It is a means by which we connect everything in the universe with everything else in the universe. Numbers are the basic working tools of this marvelous discipline, and some of the most important numbers in Qabalistic cosmology are precisely the same numbers upon which the tarot is”
― Lon Milo DuQuette, Understanding Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot

“Today’s quote of the day from B, “I haven’t got time for Demonic Presences; we’ve got packing to do”.”
― Lon Milo DuQuette, After the Angel

“Ultimately, there are not fifty-six cards in the Minor Arcana of the tarot. There are only four—the four aces. The other fifty-two cards (the sixteen court cards and the thirty-six small cards), live inside the four aces. As we learned in chapter 8, if we look at the ace of any suit under a magic microscope, we first see the four court cards of that suit living comfortably inside. Let's not stop there. If we increase the magnification level of our microscope, we see that the nine small cards of the suit are nestled neatly inside in three rows of three cards. Isn't that tidy?”
― Lon Milo DuQuette, Understanding Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot

“Even though it is not pictured in the Death card, our snake-wrapped Orphic egg—the latent seed of life that we first saw in the Magus card, whose elements were married in the Lovers, and which then was fertilized by the Hermit—is now entering the last stage of development before hatching into new life.”
― Lon Milo DuQuette, Understanding Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot

“THEREFORE I SAY UNTO THEE: COME FORTH UNTO ME FROM THINE ABODE IN THE SILENCE, UNUTTERABLE WISDOM, ALL-LIGHT, ALL-POWER! THOTH, HERMES, MERCURY, ODIN, BY WHATEVER NAME I CALL THEE, THOU ART STILL UN-NAMED AND NAMELESS TO ETERNITY! COME THOU FORTH, I SAY, AND AID AND GUARD ME IN THIS WORK OF ART.”
― Lon Milo DuQuette, Understanding Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot

“To think, one is addressing a presence so bright that the whole world one knows – including all that inner world of apparent self , beliefs and values – is cast forever into shadow revealed as a poor imitation of the everlasting day. To think, one is inviting into one’s very life a guide which will faultlessly regard every action and measure it against a divine and holy agency.  To think this, and more, and then to go ahead and actually do it.”
― Lon Milo DuQuette, After the Angel

“Lady Harris's Fool is a cornucopia of sacred images, many of which reveal themselves only after long meditation (and the aid of a magnifying glass). He bursts into midair of existence from behind three swirling rings that issue from and return to his heart. These are the three veils of negativity (Ain, Ain Soph, and Ain Soph Aur)23 that Qabalists teach gave birth to the singularity of creation. His satchel is filled with the entire universe in the form of planetary and zodiacal coins. The Fool is the Holy Spirit itself. The dove, symbol of the Holy Spirit; the butterfly, symbol of transformation; winged globe, symbol of Mercurial air; and the Egyptian vulture-goddess Mauf24 pour from the Holy Grail in the Fool's right hand. Like the Virgin Mary, Maut became impregnated by the spirit (breath) of the wind. “The whole picture,” Crowley tells us, “is a glyph of the creative light.”
― Lon Milo DuQuette, Understanding Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot

“By doing our True Will, we have the inertia of the entire universe to assist us.”
― Lon Milo DuQuette, The Magick of Aleister Crowley: A Handbook of the Rituals of Thelema

“Speaking through one of his characters in the novel Foucault’s Pendulum, Umberto Eco makes the following alltoo-true observation: “For him, everything proves everything else. The Lunatic is all idée fixé, and whatever he comes across confirms his lunacy. You can tell him by the liberties he takes with common sense, by his flashes of inspiration, and by the fact that sooner or later he brings up the Templars.”
― Lon Milo DuQuette, The Key to Solomon's Key: Is This the Lost Symbol of Masonry?

“When you actually know the question, the answer is every­where, and you can see it in anything you observe.”
― Lon Milo DuQuette, Book Of Ordinary Oracles: Use Pocket Change, Popsicle Sticks, a TV Remote, this Book, and More to Predict the Future and Answer Your Questions

“dependent”
― Lon Milo DuQuette, The Magick of Aleister Crowley: A Handbook of the Rituals of Thelema

“Everything in Heaven and Earth is connected to everything in Heaven and Earth.”
― Lon Milo DuQuette, The Chicken Qabalah of Rabbi Lamed Ben Clifford: Dilettante's Guide to What You Do and Do Not Need to Know to Become a Qabalist