Despite the fact that I have a great deal of analytical ground to cover, the thing to really bear in mind throughout this entire site is that this is first and foremost a manifesto regarding practical applications and there is not a single mirror presented on this site which does not have applications as a scrying tool directly. The Lo Shu must absolutely not be underestimated for the profoundly potent scryng tool it truly represents. The Lo Shu is preeminently the Lamp of Lamps, the Guide of Guides, Counselor of Counselors, and there is no other quite like it in this or any other world. We may come to know this both logically and magically with proper attention to detail. You have to understand that the entire physical universe is tucked neatly within its parameters to such a profound extent that the human mind cannot contain it all, and this is no exaggeration. You could easily spend your entire life working with this one magickal tool alone and your life would not have been wasted by half. Thus the Hermetic Alchemist proceeds along various fronts at once when approaching such profound intelligence and power. On the one hand we are looking to perfect "right thinking" insofar as it may be possible to achieve this while on the other we are especially interested in physical synthesis, extraction and assimilation with the emphasis placed very much on the word "physical".

 

There are at least a few especially good ways of approaching this but by far the most direct and least cumbersome methodology of all is "leyline engineering"...a term you will not find bandied about at any other place that I know of and yet this is a sad state of affairs considering what a powerful thing it really is. This is the essential methodology I need to return to the world at large, which appears to have lost its memory of such simple and powerful practices save only in the most austere fragments of its own collective consciousness. Leyline Engineering is at once a simple and an acutely sensitive matter of ascertaining those inherent lines of force within a given symbolism of any kind that most effectively draw out its character and make it possible to assume that character alongside everything this might entail. In some cases this may involve engaging archetypes for instance while in others it may be more a matter of restoring whole regions of mind itself along a universal scale. It can be looked upon as a way of connecting to that "knowledge and conversation" that exists between the worlds, in essence, allowing higher consciousness a means of filtering into and gradually raising up the lower. In truth this kind of work is being constantly undone by the world itself so that we ultimately require such means as can allow us a dynamic sort of give and take that finally culminates in gaining more than we lose back to the pressures of day-to-day survival. Not just any means will do. We are always looking for the most potent lines available to us.

 

One of the most powerful ways of assimilating the Lo Shu itself is to employ the Unicursal Ogdoad, or an eight-pointed star that can be effectively created using a single continuous leyline, running in both ascending and descending directions either clockwise or counter-clockwise at will. In the glyphs above I have laid out the basic grid that makes this possible but I have omitted in this instance to identify a mantric word of power that can be applied to this operation. In part, this is simply because I have not discussed this yet and it is a discussion so easily misapprehended. I will address it in a moment but the first thing you will want to examine is the yantric, or visual leyline strategy itself.

 

You will note that the eight pointed star above can be neatly divided in half, yielding an asymmetrical pentagram ascending laid in over its exact reverse descending. It is technically possible to run this operation starting and ending from multiple points, but as a matter of simplification, let us focus mainly upon starting from either the left hand side or the right. It is typically better form to work counter-clockwise (ascending aspiration) operations to begin with and close with clockwise (descending aspiration) operations so that we conclude whole cycles on the downbeat as much as possible, since this is called the direction of invocation and is in almost all instances preferable to the inverse. What we want to do in this case is to begin our visualization from the left-hand point of the ascending pentagram, drawing down to the right-hand foot, then up to apex, down to the left-hand foot, upwards to the right-hand point and back to the left-hand point to complete the ascending pentagram. But we are not stopping here...now we want to construct the descending pentagram and we can do it without breaking our line at all by shooting upwards to the inverse right-hand foot, down to the inverse apex, upwards to the inverse left-hand foot, downwards to the inverse right-hand point and back to the inverse left-hand point, thus completing the inverse pentagram and one entire 8-pointed star via two unicursal pentagrammal sweeps.

 

It is essential at this point to center and ground our action, though this only need to come at the very end of however many rotations we might choose to run. I personally always use the Circle and Triangle formulas found in the examples entitled "First Circle" and First Triangle" below, but you have to be aware of the fact that these are direction-sensitive operations. If you are running a counter-clockwise sweep, you should always center and ground in a counter-clockwise direction as well. You are free to run as many sweeps as you like and of course you can always do whatever else you might happen to prefer as well but in this immediate discourse I am addressing only those actions I have worked with extensively myself and am thus intimately aware of performance-wise.

 

Returning to our mantric word then we will obviously need a five-point word applicable in all directions to make this work, with a letter stationed at every point along the grid. For this operation I prefer to work with a variation of IAO that Aleister Crowley discovered which I happen to have tested extensively and can recommend from my own experience. This formula is well known to those familiar with his work and is the formula VIAOV, which then runs I-A-O to vertical triangles (pronounced ee - ah - oh) with V-V at arms (pronounced oh - oh). There are a number of technical reasons that this formula is perfect for our immediate applications but I will leave this type of discussion for another place and time. It is possible to work with ANY five-point formula you prefer, so once again I am only recommending those that I have extensive first-hand experience with.

 

m1thr0s