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Maja will be a keynote speaker at this Year's Alchemy Conference in October.





Esotouric Adventures


Maja's Mysteries: Rapture & Release

MAJA'S MYSTERIES is a series of guided excursions to some of the city's most fascinating spiritual sites hosted by Maja D'Aoust, lecturer and librarian at the Philosophical Research Society in Los Feliz, in association with Kim Cooper and Richard Schave of Esotouric. Come join us on an Esotouric bus adventure into the hidden realms of Los Angeles spirituality, with stops at some of the most unique and compelling worship spaces in the Southland.


TOUR THEME

This tour explores the fundamental contradiction in the two primary paths to salvation: Grace or Karma. The concept of Grace sees salvation and the Messiah (rapture) as imminent and tangible.  Karma is predicated on reincarnation, the cycle of many, many lives lived through selflessness and right action as the soul strives to achieve release.

These two notions, while irreconcilable, both inspire real and profound relationships with God in Los Angeles, from the church basements where believers speak in tongues, or in brightly light congregation rooms praying over gigantic crystals.

Join Maja as we explore tantric Vedic practices, the Pentecostal rapture, the channeled Venusian stylings of an alien entity and other fascinating paths to salvation.

TOUR LOCATIONS

The Aetherius Society. A center for cosmic consciousness and healing founded in 1955 by UFO contactee Dr. George King, where we will hear actual recordings of an extraterrestrial voice conveying significant messages.

Krotona Apartments. A former Theosophical retreat founded in 1914, where we will have a rare opportunity to visit the central courtyard and view the Rosicrucian window of this now-private residence.

Parsonage of Sister Aimee Semple McPherson. On the northern edge of Echo Park lake is the rock upon which Sister Aimee Semple McPherson built her Foursquare Church. One of Los Angeles’ most charismatic characters, Sister Aimee spread her technologically-inspired Pentecostal gospel from the Angelus Temple, while enjoying quiet moments in her adjoining Parsonage home. Recently restored, the Parsonage is now a museum of her life and work, which to this day contains to ring clear to millions of believers worldwide.

The Vedanta Society of Southern California. Founded in 1930 to bring sacred Hindu philosophy to the West, where we will be given a presentation on the Society’s history and programming, and browse in its fine gift shop.

Maja's Mysteries: Rites and Realities

Los Angeles has always attracted spiritual seekers, some swimming down the mainstream of thought, others exploring esoteric tributaries.

MAJA'S MYSTERIES is a guided excursion to some of the city's most fascinating spiritual sites hosted by Maja D'Aoust, lecturer and librarian at the Philosophical Research Society in Los Feliz, in association with Kim Cooper and Richard Schave of Esotouric. The tour's theme is "Consciousness impacts objective reality," a jumping off point for explorations of the nature of reality itself.
Join Maja and Esotouric for a metaphysical journey into history, faith and magic in the Southland, with in-depth visits to some of the city's most compelling and seldom-seen spiritual sites.

The debut excursion of the tour also includes a magical interlude with professional magician Jeff Parker.

Tour stops include:

Downtown L.A.'s landmark 1927 Theosophy Hall, which is simultaneously an exquisite architectural time capsule and a thriving center for spiritual study where all are welcome to explore the wisdom of the ages in leaderless gatherings for which no payment is ever asked.

The local home of the Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O), the esoteric fraternal organization and religion that, under the leadership of Aleister Crowley in the early 20th Century, was rededicated to the Law of Thelema, with its twin directives “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law" and "Love is the law, love under will.” Discover the fascinating connections between the O.T.O. and manned spaceflight and how English ideas bloomed in the California sun.

Maja says, "The mystery of magic in all its forms lives and breathes in us from the depths of our blood to the tips of our souls. From the Shamans of old to the modern day quantum physicists, the effect of our sheer will on the material world makes up a large part of what defines us as a species. Impacting reality with our consciousness, and conversely, reality's impact upon our consciousness lies at the base of every kind of magic from sympathetic voodoo to thaumaturgy. Making things happen with your mind, whether bringing the rain, healing a disease, invoking a God or prestidigitating an illusion, the art of conscious change is the very heart of the magical mystery of living."

Join us on the MAJA'S MYSTERIES tour for a one-of-a-kind adventure through the looking glass, and beyond.

T.S. Eliot 
 
 Gerontion
 
 
             Thou hast nor youth nor age
But as it were an after dinner sleep
Dreaming of both.
 
 
HERE I am, an old man in a dry month,
Being read to by a boy, waiting for rain.
I was neither at the hot gates
Nor fought in the warm rain
Nor knee deep in the salt marsh, heaving a cutlass,        
Bitten by flies, fought.
My house is a decayed house,
And the jew squats on the window sill, the owner,
Spawned in some estaminet of Antwerp,
Blistered in Brussels, patched and peeled in London.        
The goat coughs at night in the field overhead;
Rocks, moss, stonecrop, iron, merds.
The woman keeps the kitchen, makes tea,
Sneezes at evening, poking the peevish gutter.
                    I an old man,        
A dull head among windy spaces.
 
Signs are taken for wonders. “We would see a sign!”
The word within a word, unable to speak a word,
Swaddled with darkness. In the juvescence of the year
Came Christ the tiger        
In depraved May, dogwood and chestnut, flowering judas,
To be eaten, to be divided, to be drunk
Among whispers; by Mr. Silvero
With caressing hands, at Limoges
Who walked all night in the next room;        
 
By Hakagawa, bowing among the Titians;
By Madame de Tornquist, in the dark room
Shifting the candles; Fräulein von Kulp
Who turned in the hall, one hand on the door. Vacant shuttles
Weave the wind. I have no ghosts,        
An old man in a draughty house
Under a windy knob.
 
After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now
History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors
And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,        
Guides us by vanities. Think now
She gives when our attention is distracted
And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions
That the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late
What’s not believed in, or if still believed,        
In memory only, reconsidered passion. Gives too soon
Into weak hands, what’s thought can be dispensed with
Till the refusal propagates a fear. Think
Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices
Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues        
Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes.
These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.
 
The tiger springs in the new year. Us he devours. Think at last
We have not reached conclusion, when I
Stiffen in a rented house. Think at last        
I have not made this show purposelessly
And it is not by any concitation
Of the backward devils
I would meet you upon this honestly.
I that was near your heart was removed therefrom        
To lose beauty in terror, terror in inquisition.
I have lost my passion: why should I need to keep it
Since what is kept must be adulterated?
I have lost my sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch:
How should I use them for your closer contact?        
These with a thousand small deliberations
Protract the profit of their chilled delirium,
Excite the membrane, when the sense has cooled,
With pungent sauces, multiply variety
In a wilderness of mirrors. What will the spider do,        
Suspend its operations, will the weevil
Delay? De Bailhache, Fresca, Mrs. Cammel, whirled
Beyond the circuit of the shuddering Bear
In fractured atoms. Gull against the wind, in the windy straits
Of Belle Isle, or running on the Horn,        
White feathers in the snow, the Gulf claims,
And an old man driven by the Trades
To a sleepy corner.
 
                    Tenants of the house,
Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season.        
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