Getting into Western Esotericism back in 2018, I looked for (readily) applicable information. A source that quickly became a favorite was David Shoemaker’s Living Thelema podcast and book. What fascinated me the most was utilizing Qabalistic Psychology as a self-help device, thoroughly covered in his new book, The Way of the Will.
The Way of the Will tells us that in our world of uncertainty and change, following our Life Purpose, or True Will, i.e., our existence’s fundamental nature, is essential for survival.
Intrigued by that in this piece, I’ll discuss a few favorite parts, as the book is jam-packed with information. Before that, The Way of the Will was not sent to me by Weiser/RedWheel Publishing. I bought it with my own money, like Living Thelema, which I reviewed a while ago. And for both, I have zero regrets.
Practicality
The Way of the Will is best utilized alongside Living Thelema. This becomes apparent when it introduces the Tree Diagram. Rather than as vague abstractions, Shoemaker explains the Sephiroth as actual sets of forces operating in your life. The key is:
- utilizing them properly and
- identifying your excesses.
Whatever they are, don’t label them as ‘bad.’ Acknowledge and channel them productively, essentially transmuting them. Another option is balancing by emphasizing their opposites, as outlined in Living Thelema, which, based on my research, is an approach invented by Phyllis Seckler, the author’s teacher.
From its very start, The Way of the Will teaches practicality. This includes:
- Learning the basics of each sephirah;
- Recognizing how they apply to your life and;
- Utilizing a crafted-by-the-author meditation to understand each.
As far as the latter, you can (actually) do it guided by the podcast episode: ‘Advice From the Tree of Life.’
Reasons for Qabalah
Many answer the question of why use Qabalistic Psychology. Based on what I’ve seen, David Shoemaker provides one of the best answers next to those in Dion Fortune’s Mystical Qabalah and Israel Regardie’s The Middle Pillar, which (actually) got him on the path.
“(…) the processes described in Qabalistic psychology and the nuances of the system allow us to understand and work with our inner lives at a higher degree of specificity than almost any other system (…) — even the more depth psychology approaches taught in schools of psychotherapy such as those of Freud and Jung.”
“With Qabalistic psychology, we have a system that encompasses the entirety of the human psychospiritual constitution, but because it can be overlaid on the intricate paths and sephiroth on the Tree of Life, (…), we can build this psychological self-knowledge right into our path of spiritual attainment(…).”
“Furthermore, the Qabalistic psychological model gives us insight into the nature of the True Will; it gives us an opportunity to understand the functioning of the True Will as it manifests at all levels of our psyche: unconsciously, consciously, and superconsciously.”
— The Way of the Will
In terms of Jungian psychoanalysis, Shoemaker views that as an “appropriate jump-off” platform to understanding Qabalistic psychology.
Saturn
Speaking of practicality, two sections I enjoyed (thoroughly) discuss the influences of Saturn and Jupiter. While the first may feel restrictive and limiting, as Saturn sets limitations and boundaries, increasing mindfulness of them lets us live more fully. And apparently time and death are the most apparent of those limitations.
“One way that Chronos, (…) “Father Time,” restricts us is the Saturnian enforcement of a timeline on our existence. We live in a finite world, on having a certain amount of freedom before death claims us (Saturn, like the Grim Reaper, is often pictured with a scythe). Our human boundaries must live within the boundaries of time.”
— The Way of the Will
IMHO, a way of using that to your advantage could be adopting Memento Mori. Celebrated by ancient Stoics, this enables us to make the most out of the now, cherishing every moment by aligning with time and death.
Examples of people advocating Mememento Mori are Ryan Holiday and, Tim Ferris, who marked it on his first book. As far as I know, that is a small skull, symbolizing Ferris’s mortality.
Concentration
“Another practical expression of Saturn is the act of concentration. In order to concentrate on something, you must restrict your focus. To accomplish anything in life, you must maintain focus on that thing long enough (…).”
“This might involve stilling the mind as in formal meditation, or it might express itself as a creative process where we purposefully restrict ourselves to a task or a timeline.”
— The Way of the Will
I think a great way to appreciate this aspect of Saturn is in Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow. Achieving flow states requires two things:
- Channeling psychic energy (or attention) to a single point of focus with no distractions and
- Operating under set rules and boundaries.
Besides having a goal, this means (really) locking in. And if you are playing a game, it would include its rules. Focusing on one thing requires eliminating distractions which is also Saturn. Nuit provides constraints through which Hadit, the life force, expresses itself. The same applies to Chokmah and Binah, the lower expressions of Nuit and Hadit.
Setting Boundaries
According to Mark Stavish, without Saturn, we won’t have traffic lights. Nor limits to the amount of material to learn when taking exams. Binah not only sets boundaries, it actually rules their fabric. Liking Saturn to a box, The Way of The Will adds another layer of understanding of this concept.
“We must have that “box” or form to contain the energies of life in order for them to truly exist. Another symbol of Binah is the archetypal Grail. (…) as a basic symbol, the Grail is simply a receptacle that gives form, just as any cup gives to the liquid it contains. This containment is one expression of Saturnian restriction in the sense that the liquid can’t flow anywhere; it is bound by the specific form of the cup.”
— The Way of the Will
Legendary musician Brian Eno values the necessity of limitation in the creative process, Shoemaker explains. Purposeful restrictions and pre-set confines often unleash:
- novel thinking and
- previously-unavailable Creativity;
This is (also) emphasized in Ric Rubin’s The Creative Act.
“When there are no material, time, and budget constraints, you have unlimited options. When you accept limitations, your range of choices is reduced. Whether imposed by design or by necessity, it’s helpful to see limitations as opportunities.”
“Think of this as setting a palette for each project. Within those constraints, the problem-solving aspects become more specific, and the most obvious solutions may not be available. This culling can help give new work its character and set it apart from past efforts, with the potential for groundbreaking results. Novel problems lead to original solutions.”
“The imposition of rules is most valuable for an artist who has already made some work. If you’re an established artist in a craft or field, temporary rules may be useful to break a pattern. They can challenge you to become better, to innovate, and to bring a new side of yourself or your work.”
— The Creative Act
Being on Time
Mentioning time and Creativity, Shoemaker points to the Greek ‘kairos.’ Besides ‘weather’ and time, this means ‘the right or critical moment.’
There might not be an ‘exact chronological time’ to do something. Yet there’s a particular, sacred time or moment when things come naturally. Aligning yourself with Saturn (also) implies allowing such phenomena. Said differently, go with your creative impulse whenever it strikes.
For instance, deciding to make a track at 06:00 pm may not work out. On the contrary, staying open-minded and playing with some chords when feeling like it might prove more effective for overcoming creative blockages.
Based on personal experience, you can actually increase the probability of kairos moments happening by simply showing up daily. As Nick Cave says:
“Most people wait for the muse to turn up. That’s terribly unreliable. I have to sit down and pursue the muse by attempting to work.”
— Nick Cave
Jupiter
Embracing whatever life throws at you is Saturn’s ultimate lesson. However, if you (really) do that mindlessly, you won’t achieve any growth beyond the randomness of life. To the rescue comes Jupiter Chessed, the sphere of expansion, development, growth, and Creativity. Hence, the practice of banishing Saturn and invoking Jupiter to overcome personal limitations and (perhaps) achieve what Maxwell Maltz calls self-image expansion.
Chessed, Jupiter‘s mystical aspect, represents the most evolved stage of individual consciousness. Often, Saturn is basically the entropy of whatever is there. Jupiter is the element of change, the 21st path, and the Fortune card. Shoemaker explains that aligning with Saturn is about thinking inside the box. Doing so with Jupiter is breaking free from it, as its infinite expansion is beyond any restriction.
“Consciously or not, most of us are constantly trying to balance the tension between Saturn and Jupiter—between restriction and expansion, restraint and impulsivity, order and spontanaety—in our lives.”
— The Way of the WillI believe it’s worth meditating on this alongside Dion Fortune‘s saying that Geburah, Jupiter‘s antagonist, breaks down forms, especially those no longer serving a purpose, as Saturn is also stagnation.
In practice, Jupiter provides “the ease of circumstances.” Shoemaker notes that in daily life, this can refer to “an abundance mindset.” I.e., embracing the ecstasies and opportunities while having your needs met.
Jupiter is expansiveness and the element of luck. This can be:
- career-wise;
- moving into a bigger city or
- anything making you spread beyond your current circumstances.
Shoemaker offers several tactics to align with its principles:
- strive for growth;
- appreciate your pleasures and benefits;
- Be mindful of life’s richness and abundance.
The last can include food, health, success, or beautiful nature and art. Whatever the case, they all align you with Jupiter. As the author says:
“Any time you expand awareness of those sensory inputs and the richness of the abundance of life, you are reveling in Jupiter’s presence.”
— The Way of the Will
Creativity
As a creator, I was thrilled to go through the chapter on Creativity. Little did I know, I marked it almost entirely.
Like The Creative Act, The Way of the Will emphasizes that Creativity isn’t only for people of art. It’s a fundamental human trait. According to Shoemaker:
“Even if you don’t think of yourself as a creative artist (…), my assertion is that the creative act is something we engage in every day as we live our lives. It is the translation of whatever is going on in our inner life into manifest results.”
“The efficiency with which we can tap into that inner world, (…), and in turn into tangible results in the outer world (whether in a creative form or just in life itself), is to a great extent directly proportional to our level of inward initiation.”
— The Way of the Will
Similarly, Rubin echoes this idea in The Creative Act:
“Everyone is a creator. Creativity is a fundamental aspect of being human. It’s our birthright. And it’s for all of us. Creativity doesn’t exclusively relate to making art. We all engage in this act on a daily basis(…)”
“Through the ordinary state of being we are already experiencing, we’re already creators in the most profound way, creating our experience of reality and composing the world we perceive. (…)”
“The outside universe we perceive doesn’t exist as such. Through a series of electrical and chemical reactions, we generate a reality internally.”
“Attuned choice by attuned choice, your entire life is a form of self-expression. You exist as a creative being in a creative universe. A singular work of art.”
— The Creative Act
All art involves ‘transmutation of the ineffable into manifest.’ Creatives often experience a drastic increase in their work after obtaining knowledge and experience. Shoemaker notes this is due to the increasing engagement with superconsciousness.
While some practitioners might be encouraged to pursue a particular career path, for creatives, that’s their craft in and of itself.
The author expounds that for many great artists, including William Blake, their HGA’s voice is the very source of their art. For such holy people, this voice doesn’t manifest in the world through complex rituals or engagement in organizations. It does through their work.
Rituals and art are intrinsically identical, Shoemaker explains, both requiring falling in love with the object of the work. Rather than lusting for results, the esotericist identifies a goal perfectly aligned with their life purpose.
Similarly, the artist falls in love with the ideal they try to express through ecstatic union, which is the work itself.
Yearned for as a basic need, the result is the expression of the Universal Will for which the individual becomes a vessel.
“The artist is entranced with the process of engaging with the material. Indeed, they are compelled to do so — it seems a necessary step in life, every bit as much as eating or sleeping(…).”
“The creative material that is coming through wants to be expressed(…), and we are the vessel of that expression. This is precisely analogous to the expression of the true universal will through the totality of a human’s life when rightly and mindfully enacted…”
— The Way of the Will
Surrender
Following that on Creativity, there’s a chapter on worshipping Nuit, the totality of experiences and potentialities. The chapter teaches the power of ‘surrender’ and ‘acceptance.’ Now, this doesn’t imply mindlessly surrendering to life’s entropy and not striving to improve. The Way of the Will offers three mind shifts to (actually) do it properly:
- Accepting Reality;
- Letting Go of Fears and ego-based desires;
- Surrendering to Mental Uncertainty
The first uses acceptance as a starting point. This lets you divert attention from what bothers you but cannot be changed to that which could. IMHO, it can be viewed as a starting point for changing your mind about things, which, according to many great thinkers, is the way to (actually) change them.
“Men are not troubled by things themselves, but by their thoughts about them.”
— Epictetus“If you change the way you look at things the things you look at change.”
— Wayne Dyer
Letting go of fears helps prevent attachments from hindering your progress. It finds utility in scenarios when you ‘think’ you won’t be enough unless obtaining something that doesn’t necessarily contribute to progress.
The third, embracing uncertainty, is commonly recommended in the solopreneur and creator world. This is embracing the unknown and embarking on the journey while knowing you’ll never have all the answers. Adopting such a mindset, Shoemaker explains, gives space for your superconsciousness to kick in and provide guidance. And when that happens, you find that (pretty much) everything is (actually) ‘figure-out-able.”
While they may seem perplexing, such mindset shifts can be incredibly liberating. They liberate you from the tricks of your ego and animal soul. The more you achieve that, the more new experiences unfold.
Supposedly, you can think of it as going to the gym as a fat newbie. First, the pain and shame are unbearable. Then you:
- Get used to it;
- Become addicted to the pump and the mental benefits’
- Build a head-turning physique, changing your inner and outer worlds entirely.
“Any reflexive moving toward or pushing away based on mere feeling is by definition a limiting action of the ruach or nephesh, and if you can interrupt that process just long enough to acknowledge that whathever is happening to you right now is a necessary aspect of your experience, and actively choose to embrace it as such, you can open a door into a more meaningful and transcendent experience of your world.”
Besides being an adoration of the star goddess, the mentioned mind shifts (basically) complement the Stoic Amor Fati. Let me know if you agree.
Physical Health
As a gym rat and a health nut, I was pleasantly surprised to see a chapter on physical health. Called ‘Healing,’ this emphasizes the latter’s utmost importance. While not having controlled studies, Shoemaker shares that based on cumulative anecdotal evidence, daily ‘banishings’ and ‘invocations’ can be health-promoting.
Additionally, any energy-circulating exercise has (potentially) healing properties. The provided example is a Middle Pillar variation, aiming (just) at that. Its modifications include:
- Vibrating only the Atziluth names 3 times;
- Moving from plain white to Queenscale and later to Kingscale to increase potency.
I believe this can also apply to my preferred Three Pillars technique, which I’ve been using with great success.
Whatever the case, in my humble opinion, the most critical this ‘healing’ chapter stresses is that:
- No spiritual practice can make up for a poor lifestyle or actual medical help when that’s needed.
- No medical or spiritual aid can replace a proper lifestyle, diet, and exercise.
“You cannot expect to use conventional medical means or magical means to heal yourself from an illness if you are not paying attention to basic daily common sense in terms of the upkeep of your body. Over the decades I’ve been involved with Thelema, I’ve watched many individuals utilize the practices in our systems of magick and yoga. Their efforts were clearly working—until they undermined them with detrimental behaviors such as excessive use of drugs or alcohol, or simply ignoring common sense in terms of nutrition and exercise. So perhaps they ended up about where they would have been without the magick!”
— The Way of the Will
The HGA
Last but not least, The Way of the Will shares reflections on the concept of K&C. It explains that all of your life holds potential tools for strengthening yours. This includes:
- biography,
- culture,
- birthplace,
- religion, and
- life experiences;
The chapter also has a Q&A section with plenty of insight. A question it answers is on landmarks that help determine your current stage.
For (actual) adepts, these are the order grades. For others, they can include periods of going through hardships yet (somehow) having deep assurance it will all turn out for the best. Also, moments of feeling fully alive and present, moving in the right direction. You are in the right place at the right time. And everything just clicks!
Another thing this section stresses is not dogmatizing your practices. They are just devices in your toolbox. Understand that there are so many of them, and what works for you may not work for others. Everyone has their own peculiar strengths and weaknesses. And the tool essential for all is skepticism toward any result you may or may not achieve.
Recap
Overall, The Way of the Will provides a compelling guide to understanding the principles of True Will and Qabalistic Psychology. It blends esoteric insights with practical applications. Shoemaker masterfully navigates complex themes like the interplay between restrictive (Saturn) and expansive (Jupiter) forces, helping you use them for personal growth.
Its biggest strength is this balance of mystical concepts and actionable advice. The same makes it an excellent resource for those seeking deeper self-understanding and alignment with their True Will.
But that’s just my opinion. Let me know your thoughts on the book and this review. And thank you for your time.