Alien Gurus and The Mother of the Soul: On the Etymology of the Tibetan Word Lama and Why More Occultists Should Learn to read Tibetan

I’ve written about LAM, the according-to-some extraterrestrial entity which English ritual magician Aleister Crowley is supposed to have contacted, in an earlier article about ‘Tibetan aliens’ which I shared on this blog before. The term LAM is synonymous with a specific drawing which Crowley produced, and which some occultists say is a portrait of a specific spiritual/alien entity. Now, occultists have many different opinions about who or what LAM is or was, about whether this picture is even a picture of an entity at all, and about the extent to which whatever entity or spiritual principle the image may represent is important or interesting. Some claim the image of LAM is Crowley’s spiritual self-portrait, others that it is a picture of Crowley’s Guru or Holy Guardian Angel. Some say it a portrait of Lao Tzu or another Taoist sage, of a disincarnate Tibetan lama, or the likeness of some other sort of priest or sorcerer. Others argue it is a stylized representation of penis-in-vagina (ritual?) intercourse, while yet others claim that it is one of the earliest representations of the now stereotypical ‘grey alien’ extraterrestrial (this last position seems to have gone especially viral online in the late 90s and 2000s).

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‘His Weight in Gold’: Women of Power in Game of Thrones and Tibetan Buddhism (*SPOILERS!)

melisandre

FOR THE INTERNET IS DARK AND FULL OF SPOILERS! GAME OF THRONES AND TIBETAN BUDDDHIST SPOILERS AHEAD FOR THOSE WHO HAVE NOT WATCHED THE MOST RECENT EPISODE OF THE SERIES OR HAVE NOT ACHIEVED ENLIGHTENMENT!

Last week’s episode of Game of Thrones, the second in this current season, saw fans’ questions about whether we’d be seeing more of a moving version of the Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch Jon Snow put to rest. Continue reading

Secrets of the Sex Magic Space Lamas Revealed! Tibetan Buddhist Aliens and Religious Syncretism

tibetan aliens

This was probably my favourite of the four October essays to write, probably because it involved so many things that I love to think and talk about, but was also something I never, ever imagined I’d be writing for an anthropological audience, or maybe at all.

Years ago I was warned by a lovely acting HoD in an anthropology department to be careful of pursuing the study of esotericism Continue reading