olimpicos-sellos

The Seal of Secrets of the World Adventures in Astral Magic By Soror ZSD23

 All  All the gods, all al l the hells, all the heavens are within you. That god is i s within you. It I t is not   something that happened somewhere else a long time ago. It’s in i n you.  —Joseph Campbell Campbell

edrawn image of Seal of Secrets appearing in Turner’s 17 th century English English translation t ranslation supplied  supplied  courtesy Stephen Murtaugh (Fra. Mea Fides In Sapientia). Copyright © 2013 Denise Marie Rapposelli All rights rights reserved. re served. Pri Pr inted in the the United United States Sta tes of America. No part of this this eboo e book k may be used use d or reprod re produced uced without without written permission permission of the author. Address all inquiries to [email protected]

Part 1 The Arbatel Working

I

Introduction A. E. Waite Weighing in on the A  Arbatel  rbatel 

II

How I Began

III III

 Nomenclatu  Nom enclature: re: On th the Names Names of the the Olym Olympic pic Spirits Spiri ts

IV

A Meditative Rapport with the Olympic Spirits

V

A Group Working: The Arbatel Cohort

VI

Decoding the Seal of Secrets of the World The Key to the the Geometry The Auri Auricc Egg Egg and the the Terrestri Terr estrial al Sphere

VII

More Decoding Dec oding of the the A  Arbatel  rbatel 

VIII

Orphic Influence   Persephone The Pythagor Pythagorean ean Pentacle Pentacl e

IX

Stealing Fire from Heaven

X

Correspondences   Complementarities Virtu ir tues es and Vices ice s

XI

A Birthday Present

XII XII

Postscript

Part 2 But I Digress: Essays on Related Topics

Part 1 The Arbatel Working I Introduction A. E. Waite Weighing in on the  Arbatel   Arbatel 

There is another way which is more common that secrets also may be revealed onto thee when

thou art unwitting unwitting thereof, either eit her by god or by spirits that t hat have secrets in their t heir power; or by dreams or by strong imaginations and impressions; or else by the constellation of a nativity by From aphorism aphoris m 26, fourth septenary sep tenary of the the Arbatel  celestial knowledge.—  knowledge.— From  Arbatel  The The Seal of Secrets of the the World is i s a diagram described descri bed in i n a medieval medieval magical book called cal led the  is a simple book about magic that seems to be an introduction to a rbatel . At first glance the Arbatel   Arbatel  is more robust text that does not exist or does not exist anymore. The Arbatel says that it is made of nine  books or chapters. chapters. Each chapter chapter is supposed s upposed to to have 7 parts (totaling (totaling 49 parts in all). The very first sentence of the text says that the first book of the Arbatel is an overview that consists of 49 aphorisms, which are presented as nine chapters, each with seven parts. Each chapter seems to be a  brief overview overvi ew about a corresponding (but missin issi ng) book. book. Except for the suspicion that it was written by an Italian mage, the author and original date that pen as put to paper are unknown. What we have of the Arbatel was commercially published as part of  an anthology in 1575 in Basel, Switzerland, on one of the world’s first printing presses. Of all the illust ill ustrious rious historical people named named in i n the the Arbatel   Arbatel , the most recent is the alchemist, mystic, and ancestor of moder modern n pharmacol pharmacology ogy Phil Philippus ippus Aureo Aureolus lus Theophrastus Bombastus Bombastus von v on Hohenheim Hohenheim,, also al so known as Paracelsus (1493-1541). This suggests that the  Arbatel   may have been written within a few  Arbatel  may years to a decade or so of its publication. The Arbatel   can be freely accessed at ht http://w tp://www ww.esotericar .esotericarchives.com chives.com/sol /solom omon/Arbat on/Arbatel.ht el.htm m thanks  Arbatel  can to Joseph H. Peterson who provides a side-by-side annotated version of the original Latin text and a mid 17th  century (1655) English translation by the 17th  century Cambridge University scholar Robert Turner.1 The Arbatel   is a medieval treatise on how to live in harmony, ease, and intimacy with the energies of   Arbatel  is the Multiverse. Behind the Christian piety is a more antique, Pythagoric, and Neoplatonic spiritual  paradigm  paradi gm that that views the world as a multilayered multilayered place plac e full full of spiritu spiri tual al beings: some some elemental, elemental, some some celestial, some angelic, and some demi-godlike, archonic, or patriarchal. The author of the  Arbatel   Arbatel  assures us that they all must submit to the will of God whether they like or not ( nolens volens willingly or not—as the Arbatel   puts it).  — willingly  Arbatel  puts Medieval European European (Western) (Western) Occultism can be described descri bed as heretical heretical in relation rela tion to to the Christian Christian  paradigm  paradi gm it developed on the the fringes fringes of, but but it’s all relative. rel ative. It is what w hat it is and labeled as it i t is by a system that it shared commonalities with and rivaled in a way (and, thus, threatened). Although it dropped the ball in a flight of exceptional cluelessness about what post-modern occultism is at the end, the documentary Secrets of the Occult - Episode 1: The Magicians (accessible through YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7WRVqAoUS8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7WRVqAoUS8)) presents a very good overview of what Western Occultism is, which is not the spooky, subversive oogah-boogah that pedestrian Muggles have been programmed to think it is (apologies to all the veteran occultists I know for disclosing that little bit of secret knowledge about the  Art  ).  Art ). Traditional Hermetic Western Occultism is chock full of angelic, daemonic, demonic, elemental, and  planetary entities entities that that are to be evoked, evoked, or conjured, conjured, and are given certain them themes es and roles in relation to how the Universe works. But medieval magic presents a flawed step-down from earlier models.

Many of the angels and demons mentioned in medieval magical treatises are composite words, straightforward, or else garbled names of pagan deities, or else the stuff of glossolalia/trance reverie.2 Western Occultism is the vestige of the Heliopolitan (Greco-Egyptian) Hermetic, Gnostic, and Platonic/Neoplatonic trends that, in part, were emerging at the same time that Christianity was during the first to third centuries or so of the Common Era. Whereas the Western spiritual traditions are, generally, dualistic (that is, “God” is one thing and creation is another, and the World is divided into “good” and “evil” and good guys and bad guys), the Arbatel,  for one, presents a concept that can be defined as “qualified dualism.” This is a perspective that all things have their source and existence ithin (as part of) rather than in relation to God. 3 The concept is suggested in aphorism 13 of the 2nd septenary of the Arbatel:

The lord lives and all things that live do so in him. Arthur E. Waite (1857-1942) discusses the Arbatel  in Chapter 2 of the Book of Ceremonial Magic , found at http://www.sacred-texts.com/grim/bcm/bcm08.htm. Of it, he says (bracketed parentheses mine):

 s regards its origin, its authorship, and even its scope, there is . . . considerable mystery. . . . ack-dating and imputed authorship are the two crying bibliographical sins of Grimoires and  magical handbooks, and the antiquity of the Arbatel rests under a certain suspicion on account of  its literary connections; at the same time it would require the knowledge of an expert in typography to pronounce certainly on the reliability of the date indicated. The text is in Latin, but  there is a slender possibility in favour of its being the work of an Italian. It makes a reference to Theophrastic Magic, which indicates the influence of Paracelsus, and, although it is difficult to  speak with any certainty, seems to hint at an early period of that influence, the period, in fact, of  enedictus Figulus [alchemist; 1567-1619], slightly antedating Rosicrucian enthusiasm, and thus accounting for the omission of all Rosicrucian references, which, in view both of matter and  manner, might have been irresistibly expected had the work been posterior to the year 1610. Simply put, Waite is acknowledging that the dates, histories, and sources of lot of grimoire and esoteric tracts, especially those surfacing at the turn of the 20 th century, are bogus. A number of  documents are made to appear to be much older or more illustrious than they actually are. For  example, The Secret Grimoire of Turiel , which is suspected of being penned during the late 19 th century, was said to be transcribed from a 16th century artifact by someone going by the alias Marius Malchus. (See Part 2 for more on my dabbling with The Secret Grimoire of Turiel .) In his comments about Paracelsus and Figulus, Waite seems more or less content that the Arbatel’s dating is authentic. Peterson, in the Introduction to his presentation of the Arbatel,  reports that the title is a variation of  the Hebrew term ARBOThIM AL, found in the Greek Magical Papyri as “Arbath Jao.”1,4 It translates as “fourfold God,” presumably referring to the Tetragrammaton: Yod-Heh-Vau-Heh.1,4 These are Hebrew letter/sound vibrations of mystical importance that were morphed into the words we use for  “God” in Judeo-Christendom: “Yahweh” and “Jehovah.”5 Of the name, Waite writes:

t is probably not an assumed name, but indicative of an instructing or revealing Angel. The use of  this Hebrew term is, however, peculiar in connection with the fact that the references to the Old  Testament are few and unimportant, while the sayings of Christ, and the New Testament narrative enerally, are subjects of continual citation. Solomon, moreover, is not mentioned in the frequent  enumerations of adepts and wise men. In addition, Waite observes that the Arbatel  has no connection with the Keys of Solomon or  Solomonic magic. He categorizes the Arbatel  as “Transcendental Magic” not to be confused with “true mysticism,” the goal of which, he says, is to unite with the Divine. However, higher mystical elements, influenced by Pythagorean/Orphic, Neoplatonic, classical Hermetic, and Greco-Roman mysticism, may be buried in the text. This will be explored in the following pages. As mentioned earlier, the Arbatel  appears to be an introduction to a much larger text that does not exist. It begins by saying that it “Is made of nine Tomes and seven septenaries of Aphorisms,” but the only known, existing tome (“book” or “volume,” that is) of the Arbatel , is the first, the Isagoge, which the author explains means “Book of the Institutions of Magic” and consists of “the most general  precepts of the whole Art.” The other eight books are supposed to delve into: ● Microcosmic magic, which is described as being about how a person may gain wisdom and insight about purpose through contact with the “spirit and genius addicted to him from his nativity” (that is, an augoiedes, which is a Greek term used by the Neoplatonist Porphyry (circa 233-305) to refer to something similar to what we now call a “divine ideal,” “higher self,” or “guardian angel”). ● Olympic magic, which presumably delves deeper into how to work with the Olympic Spirits than hat is presented in septenary 3 of the Isagoge, and, thus, relates to planetary or astral magic. ● “Hesiodic and Homeric” magic, which claims to be about working with spiritual allies and  benefactors, using the Greek term calodaemones (good genii), which is a synonym for eudaemones, and more or less refers to the idea of “guardian angels” and’ bears similarity to the term augoiedes. ● “Romanic or Sibylline” magic, which, we are told, is about working with the tutelary spirits (referring to kinds of calodaemones) and lords that tend and govern planet Earth. The author of the Arbatel tells us that Romanic/Sibylline magic is similar to Druidic magic. Sibylline magic is, however, about the reading of omens by looking to various signs in the natural world or reading  portents in various materials, such as animal entrails. ● Pythagoric magic, which relates to the sciences of physics, medicine, mathematics, alchemy, and other arts, we are told. ● Magic related to the work of the Neopythagorean Apollonius of Tyana (circa first century—a legendary person whose birth and miracle-working were suspiciously similar to that of another, far  more popular legendary figure: Jesus of Nazareth). The magic referred to would be thaumatergy (miracle-working). The author of the Arbatel  also notes that Apollonian magic is Microcosmic (about the individual self) but also gives a person powers over hostile spirits (presumably a reference to exorcism). ● Theurgic magic, described as “Egyptian magic” and “divine magic.” ● Prophetic magic, which is said to be “wisdom that solely depends on the word of God” and, given the jargon, may be a reference to Cabala, the medieval Christian variant of Kabala that was, ultimately, wholly absorbed into Western Occultism instead of Christianity.

In the third chapter of the Isagoge, material about “Olympic Spirits” is introduced. The spirits are described as Governors associated with the seven classical planets named after Roman deities: Luna, Venus, Mercury, Sol, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. It is this aspect of the  Arbatel  that modern and postmodern–era occultists focus on, somewhat overlooking a more pervasive, underlying message about orking with tutelary spiritual entities and also about the role of the Olympic Spirits as rulers of   psychodynamic processes and fate. Of the Olympic Spirits, Waite says

The powers possessed by these Intelligences are very curiously set forth. They rule naturally over  certain departments and operations of the material world, but outside these departments they erform the same operations magically. Thus Och [Sol], the prince of Solar things, presides over  the preparation or development of gold naturally in the veins of the earth—that is to say, he is the ineralogist in Chief of Nature; he presides also over the quicker preparation of the same metal  by means of chemical art—that is, he is the Prince of Alchemists; and, finally, he makes gold in a moment by Magic. It is in this way that Ceremonial Magic connects with while it assumes to transcend Hermetic Art. I believe, however, that a more sophisticated message may be within the comments and number  symbolism assigned to the Olympic Spirits. Of importance, and observed by Waite, is that the  Arbatel , “in opposition to much of the traditional doctrine of Magic,” affirms that no entity or name (or pronunciation of any name or formula) has any  power except if God wills it. Also, he notes the passage in the Arbatel  that cautions that the names of  the Olympic Spirits are not names but roles. Says the Arbatel , the Olympic Spirits give more  personalized names to those mages they deem fit to receive them but that the effectiveness of the use of these names has an expiration date:

The names, moreover, are not definite, final or real names, whence they differ with different  writers accordingly as these have received them. The only effectual names are those which are delivered to an operator by the Spirits themselves, and even then their efficacy seldom endures beyond forty years [ sic,  Turner’s English translation says 40 years, but the original Latin version says 140]. It is, therefore, better for the student, says the Arbatel, to work only by the offices of the Spirits, without their names; should he be pre-ordained to attain the Art of Magic, the other parts of that Art will offer themselves of their own accord. The passage Waite refers to—Aphorism 18—says this:

There are other names of the Olympic spirits delivered by others; but they only are effective that  are delivered to anyone by the revealing Spirit, visible or invisible, and they are delivered to everyone according to predestination. Therefore, they are called constellations and rarely have efficacy for more than 140 years. Therefore, it is safer for young practitioners of the Art to work  by the offices of the Spirits alone without their names. If they are preordained to attain the Art of  agia, the other aspects of the art will offer themselves [to those practitioners] . . . The passage suggests that the Olympic Spirits are archons (overlords or governors), like the Vedic manes, or “cosmic patriarchs.” Like the Vedic manes and devas (“gods”), they are not static entities  but are roles that different “beings” or “energies” both newly assume and retire from just like people

change jobs or, mystically speaking, reincarnate into new roles and forms. More simply put, one day in some eon far in the future when you are not of this world anymore, you might be assigned a great ob as Hagith, the Intelligence of Venus “who ruleth over venereal things.” Or maybe you will get to be Vishnu or Avalokitshesvara or Archangel Michael or something like that. The passage also suggests that energies represented by the planets and constellations have fateful influences on persons, as in astrology. This may refer to the idea, found in Hermetic and other antique forms of Western mysticism, that the planets or heavenly bodies have correspondences within the human body, similar to Eastern “chakra” lore. That is, the planetary energies, esoterically speaking, are levels of consciousness. They are vortices of psychodynamic issues (neuroses and subconscious  blocks) that need to be worked through in the quest for spiritual liberation. As mentioned, the Arbatel  tells us that the Spirits 1. Are known by different names in different circles or traditions, and 2. May uniquely reveal themselves by certain names to the practitioner working ith them. This view rings of universalism and also acknowledges the limitations of the human mind. That is, persons engaged in mystical psychonautic experimentation do not experience the-thing-initself; they experience symbols, archetypes, transliterations, and interpretations that are limited by the human nervous system, including psychological programming. This acknowledgement in the Arbatel  is unique in relation to other grimoire of its era, with their focus on hackneyed formulae 3 and methodical conjuring and commanding of spirits. As for me, the Spirits did present themselves as distinctive energy signatures and characters and some gave me names that I understood were meant to be personal and not standards to be applied by others. Specifically, they presented themselves using Greco-Roman and Egyptian godforms and names. I did not jump to the conclusion that Greco-Roman or Egyptian deities were actually presenting themselves to me but, rather that something mysterious was filtering itself through interpretive and archetypal reference points in my consciousness to make insight and “rapport” feasible. Other persons who have evoked the Olympic Spirits and, like me, have publically recorded their  operations, have had their own unique experiences and interpretations colored by the paradigms they hold dear. Some References 1. Peterson JH, ed, trans. Arbatel De magia veterum Arbatel: Of the Magic of the Ancients . http://www.esotericarchives.com/solomon/arbatel.htm. Accessed July 4, 2013. 2. Porreca D. Divine Names A Cross-Cultural Comparison.  Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft. 2010;5(1):17-29. 3. Chatterjee S, Datta D. An Introduction to Indian Philosophy 8th  ed. Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1984. 4. Bächtold-Stäubli, Hanns, eds. Handwörterbuch des deutschen aberglaubens, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co., Berlin und Leipzig, 1927, Band 1, pp. 568. 5. Goodwin J. The Mystery of the Seven Vowels in Theory and Practice. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Phanes Press, 1991. II

How I Began

My long-time background before becoming interested in Western Occultism was Eastern mysticism. This included the Vedanta, Kashmir Shaivism, Classical and Tantric Yogas, and Buddhism. I was especially well-versed in Advaita Vedanta. I had gotten to a phase, though, where my study materials ere reduced to wordiness. They were, as they in fact caution they are, fingers pointing to a place that, once glimpsed is markedly distinct from the preconceived expectations one treasures while going through the hoops and paces to get there. Thus, for a time, I lingered in the thought that the  purpose of life was just to be alive and to trust in that and not give too much weight to artificial  paradigms, belief structures, and the behaviors they promote. Perhaps it was a proverbial “Just Be” experience but there was no spacious, elated puppy-dogs-andrainbows feel attached to it. I felt resigned. A little bitter. A bit disempowered and maybe bored. I felt like Peggy Lee in that tune: “Is that all there is?” I was just a little bit of life being alive—a gear  in a mechanism recognizing itself as an automation—or in Eastern jargon, an interdependently arising aggregate of karmic momentum barreling through time-space-causation. That was it. (See Part 2, Liber 821 for more on this.) I later learned, through connections and dialoging on chat boards and such, that this is not that uncommon an experience. It pushed me to explore the potential of consciousness from a different angle—if only to pass the time doing something interesting while I was Just Being Alive. I began to look to the West and explore aspects of folk, high, and post-modern magic, Hermeticism, Paganism, etcetera. I took interest in the Arbatel  in the spring of 2010 after stumbling upon an article by Nick Farrell in the spring issue of the Journal of the Western Mystery Tradition .1 The article was titled Olympic Spirits: The Hidden Gods. It can be accessed online at http://www.jwmt.org/v2n18/olympic.html. Like Farrell and others who have explored the  Arbatel , many questions arose about its meaning and application. My background in Eastern spirituality plus an interest in a post-modern school of occultism dubbed Chaos Magic, influenced how I approached the Arbatel , which was openly, with an understanding that what I was attempting to access “out there” was an intimate part of myself or vice versa. So I dispensed with the more elaborate traditional ceremonial formalities regarding evocation and  planetary magic derived from Solomonic and Late Modern-era Hermetic paradigms that others have applied when working with the document. See the Everything Arbatel  Digest of Internet Links at http://seethingamongthesuits.wordpress.com/2009/10/12/everything-arbatel-digest-of-internet-links/ for an index of what is available about the Arbatel  on the Web. I began what was to become the first phase of the work on Monday March 22, 2010, which serendipitously was the eve of that month’s new moon. This first phase of the project continued through to Sunday April 18. It consisted of daily evocation and meditation on one or another Olympic Spirit.

I made incenses for each Spirit based on whim and performed meditations every morning without giving attention to formalities related to planetary hours. Although the Arbatel  says nothing about exorcism, props, or circle casting, I did go through the motions of circle casting using either the Cabalist Cross and the Lesser Rite of the Banishing Pentagram or syncretic circle-casting adaptations. For readers unfamiliar with occult ritual rigmarole outside of what they see in Hollywood movies, let’s just say that I performed a standard ritual to create atmosphere and feel safe and in the refuge of  a Higher Power before I went onto to try to talk to otherworldly spiritual entities. Having cast the circle, I would face the quarter of space (North, South, East, or West) that I though as appropriate to the Olympic Spirit of the day, gaze at the sigil of that Olympic Spirit, request communion with it as detailed in the Arbatel , and record my impressions. I posted the first month of my experiences on a blog. The posts garnered some interest, and I found myself being invited to join three other people in a group magical working related to the  Arbatel . The first phase of this Working took place in May and the second in July 2010. The Cohort, as we came to call ourselves, was led by the author of the aforementioned Everything rbatel  Web digest and goes by the name of The Scribbler. The two other members of the Cohort ere the professional artist Susanne Iles ( see http://www.susanneiles.com) and the ceremonial magician and teacher of Hermetic persuasion, Frater Rufus Opus—or “RO” (see http://headforred.blogspot.com). My cohorts were much more familiar with planetary magic, theurgy, and the stuff of medieval grimoire than I was. Their focus was a part of the  Arbatel  that I had initially overlooked: The Seal of Secrets of the World described in aphorism 27, fourth septenary:

ake a circle, with A at the center, which is BCDE. At the East of the square is BC. At the North CD. At the West DE . At the South EB. Divide each of these quadrants into 7 parts so that there may be 28 parts total. Then divide each into 4 so that there will be 112 parts of the circle, as so many are the true secrets to be revealed. This circle divided in this manner is the Seal of Secrets of the world. Projecting from the center A, this is the invisible God in the entire creature. The  Prince of the Eastern secrets is in the middle [of the Eastern quadrant] and has 6 Nobles, 3 on each side. Each of them, including the Prince, has 4 Nobles under him. In the same way, the [other] Princes and Nobles have their quadrants of secrets, with their four secrets.

The diagram here is my version. A diagram also appears in Turner’s version of the Arbatel  but not the original Latin version. In Turner’s diagram, “D” and “E” are transposed, and the letters do not match the directions given in the text but still, the image, like my rendition here, portrays the schematic described: a circle within a square that is divided into 4 parts with each part divided into 7 sections that are each, in turn, divided into 4 sections. Here is a nice, crisp redrawn image of The Seal of Secrets as given in Turner’s 17th century English translation, graciously supplied by researcher Stephen Murtaugh.

 Now, if “the Seal of the Secrets of the World” doesn’t sound like a nifty device from a magical fantasy novel, I don’t know what does. But it is not the stuff of fantasy; it is a real remnant of  medieval magic and an underappreciated aspect of Western culture: magical spirituality. My cohorts pointed out that the 28 parts that each quarter of the Seal of Secrets is cut up to correspond with the mansions of the moon, which is another nifty antique device that is all but forgotten except among astrology buffs and hardcore Hermetic magicians and alchemists. The mansions of the moon are the daily moon phases that ancient wizard-types across cultures were very much attuned to. Each phase of the moon, day-by-day in a 28-day cycle, carried with it a certain mood and theme that was thought to have a fateful effect on people’s lives. Activities had to be deftly synchronized with daily—and even hourly—planetary and lunar events. The early medieval Arabic magical book known as the Picatrix covers this in detail. My cohorts and I feverishly pondered the Seal of Secrets and mansions of the moon hoping to alight on a grand revelation. Because The Scribbler had long been dedicated to dream work, we decided to gain insight by contacting the entities associated with the moon mansions (not only the Olympic Spirits, but angels assigned to each mansion2) through this method. Thinking contacting the angels associated with the mansions too ambitious or risky, we opted to begin by focusing on the associated  planetary rulers/Olympic Spirits.

Before retiring, we would acknowledge the moon mansion of the day and its corresponding ruling  planet/Olympic Spirit and perform whatever preparatory ritual we each saw fit to do. Then, as we ere drifting into sleep, we would visualize the sigil of the appropriate Olympic Spirit in the locus o the throat. This was referred to as sigil incubation. It was a practice that The Scribbler picked up from the work of modern alchemist Mark Stavish. This practice was meant to encourage lucid dreaming. A similar exercise, meant to encourage lucid or meditative dream sleep is found in Tibetan Buddhism in which a person visualizes a lotus with a candle in it while focusing on the area of the throat. Interestingly, a reference to a practice like this came to me before any contact with the  Arbatel  Cohort during the first phase of my working, to be described later in this text. We kept a group dream log on a secure, on-line site and also kept a lively discussion going through a now discontinued Google Wave application. The first month of this activity was dynamic and aweinspiring. We took a month off and tried a second session, which was less fruitful. The Scribbler, Frater RO, and I all had difficulty generating dream content such that my contribution was sparse and RO’s even more marginal although The Scribbler’s ability began to perk up toward the end of the month-long session. On the final day of the second phase of the group working, The Scribbler and artist Susanne Iles had virtually the same dream. They each (separately) reported that a female entity, identifying herself as Hagith, appeared to them. The entity related comforting ideas about the preciousness and  belongingness of souls and also that no ceremonious formalities are required to be in relationship ith the Olympic Spirits. Especially, creating artificial ideas about their appointed days or attributes as just that, artificial. I learned that Susanne Iles and The Scribbler went on to conduct another  round, but the group then seemed to drift back to their own personal endeavors. I documented my experiences while working with this group and throughout the ensuing year and then some.

Some References 1. Farrell N. Olympic Spirits: The Hidden Gods. Journal of the Western Mystery Tradition. 2010;18(2). Available at http://www.jwmt.org/v2n18/olympic.html. Accessed July 4, 2013. 2. Agrippa AC. Of the twenty eight Mansions of the Moon, and their vertues in Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa: Of Occult Philosophy, Book II. (part 1) (digital edition provided by Joseph H. Peterson). Available at http://www.esotericarchives.com/agrippa/agripp2c.htm#chap33 Accessed July 5, 2013.

III Nomenclature: On the Names of the Olympic Spirits

The Olympic Spirits refer to the seven classical planets named after Roman deities. They are, however, given special names and are described as the Intelligences  or Governors of the planets: Phul = Luna/Moon Ophiel = Mercury Hagith = Venus Och = Sol/Sun Phaleg = Mars Bethor = Jupiter  Aratron = Saturn Where did these alternative names come from? They may be cryptic clues about the Spirits. They  point to other references and also are combinations of Latin, Hebrew, Greek, and even Sanskrit ords. It was common, during the medieval Hermetic revival, to name angels and otherworldly entities by creating “mash-ups” of words from different cultures.

 Phul, the Material World and Sensorial Sphere The name Phul, given as the Olympic Spirit or Governor of the Moon, may be a cryptic crossreference. Phul  is the Sanskrit word for “flower.” The word for “moon” in Sanskrit is  soma, which happens to be the Latin word for body. In this way, Phul is associated with the material world, the  body, physical self, the realm of sensorial experience, and the elements.

Ophiel, the Serpent Power and Ladder of the Spheres The name Ophiel, given as the Olympic Spirit of Mercury, is a mash-up of Greek and Hebrew terms. Ophis means serpent in Greek and El  means God in Hebrew, suggesting that Ophiel means Serpent of  God, a reference to the caduceus and Hermes and perhaps an early esoteric system or two that venerated the serpent as a wisdom entity or that were “in” on the idea of the “secret fire” or   spereima —that is; the Western esoteric version of Kundalini Shakti way before the early 20th  century Theosophists and late 20th century New Agers mangled up the concept..

agith, the Morning Star and Her Son Hagith, the name for the Olympic Spirit of Venus, is a variant of the Hebrew name, Haggith, meaning “festive.” Haggith is the fourth wife of King David. Her son is Adonijah, which means “beautiful,”  but the story of Adonijah is rather tragic: he tries to usurp the throne, which David gave his other son Solomon. Solomon forgives Adonijah but then gets pissed off and has him killed when Adonijah has Haggith ask Solomon’s mother, Bathsheba, if he could borrow one of his dad’s (King David’s) concubines. I am wondering whether a veiled allusion to the rebellion and fall of Lucifer exists in this story and is the rationale for referring to Venus as Hagith. The alternative Latin name for Venus in ancient Rome was Lucifer, a bright morning star that preceded the break of dawn. The dawn, thus, metaphorically speaking, was the morning star’s son.

Och, The All Pervading Light  Och, the name for the Olympic Spirit of the Sun, may come from the Greek ochros, meaning pale yellow. I am also reminded of the Latin root for the number 8, octa, suggesting pervasiveness in filling the 8 directions of space.

 Phaleg, The Balance Between Opposing Forces Phaleg, the name for the Olympic Spirit of Mars, may be derived from the name Peleg, a character in the Old Testament who is said to be the ancestor of Abraham. Peleg means split or divide. That Phaleg is called the Prince of Peace in Aphorism 27 may be a reference to the Pythagorean Tetractys, a triangle made of 10 points, in which the second tier of the triangle, composed of 2 points, represents strife and the third tier, composed of 3 points, the harmony or balance between opposing forces. Peace in the sphere of the martial is in diplomacy and so, although Phaleg is associated with Mars, its deity may be more associated with diplomacy and strategy in warcraft than violent conquest.

ethor, House of the Sun King  Bethor, the name for the Olympic Spirit of Jupiter, may be a mash-up of the Hebrew word for house, beth and the Latin variant of aurum, the word or, which means gold, i.e, House of Gold. I believe that the name implies kingliness and perhaps a link between Jupiter and Sol.

ratron, The Divine Ground  Aratron, the name for the Olympic Spirit of Saturn may be a mash-up of the Latin word for altar ara and the Greek word for instrumental (meaning, useful in making something happen), tron, suggesting that Aratron represents the “Ground of Being” of Cosmic or Provisional Reality. That the Arbatel extols Aratron suggests that the author of the Arbatel valued Neoplatonic rather than Gnostic or Gnostic-influenced Hermetic alchemical thought about the so-called ladder of the planets. The former exalts Saturn as Divine Consciousness. Notes Plotinus (204-270), the father of   Neoplatonism, in the 4th passage of 1st  tractate of his 5th  Ennead2:

That archetypal world is the true Golden Age—the age of Kronos—who is the Intellectual Principle, being the offspring or exuberance of God. All that is immortal is in this. Nothing is here but the Divine Mind; all is God. This is the place of every soul. Here is rest unbroken. For, how can change be sought in which all is well? What needs to be aspired to by that which holds all  within itself? What more can be desired for that in which everything is utterly achieved? All its content, thus, is perfect such that it may be wholly perfect, possessing nothing that is less than divine and intellective. Its knowing is not by search but by possession; its blessedness is inherent, not acquired. . . . this is pure being in eternal actuality. Nowhere is there any future, for every then is a now; nor is there any past, for nothing there has ever ceased to be.” ( Adapted from a

translation by Stephen MacKenna of a passage within a tract called “The Three Initial Hypostases”  by Plotinus.) In contrast, the Gnostics thought of Saturn as the host of materiality, mortality, and transitory existence. Saturn was the treacherous serpent guarding the gate that separated Earth (which was considered to be like a mere upper crust of hell to the ancients) from Paradise Lost. Saturn was the ouroboros that bound one into the dog-eat-dog sphere of worldly existence. One had to die physically or metaphorically and rise through the spheres with the proper know-how to achieve transcendence of  the planetary archons. An illustrative example of this is a mandala that appears in the 12th plate of a medieval Hermetic book called the Rosarium Philosophorum in which 7 stages of the alchemical  process are paired with the classical planets. Saturn, representing death and putrefaction, resides at the base of the cycle as the starting point. (See Part 2 The Azoth Mandala for a little more information on this.)

Selected Bibliography 1. Porreca D. Divine Names A Cross-Cultural Comparison.  Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft. 2010;5(1):17-29. 2. MacKenna Stephen (trans.) Plotinus The Enneads. London: Penguin Books. 1991.

IV A Meditative Rapport with the Olympic Spirits

The first phase of the work began on Monday March 22, 2010, which coincidently was the eve of that month’s new moon and continued to Sunday April 18. The “work” consisted of daily evocation and meditation on the Olympic Spirit assigned to that day: Phul (Luna/Moon): Monday Phaleg (Mars): Tuesday Ophiel (Mercury): Wednesday Bethor (Jupiter): Thursday Hagith (Venus): Friday Aratron (Saturn): Saturday Och (Sol/Sun): Sunday I went into working with the Arbatel  in a wholly naïve way, giving no relevance to most of the text and focusing only on a portion that instructs the reader to focus on the sigil of the Olympic Spirit on the morning of the appropriate day, evoke the Spirit, and communicate with it. Some would interpret “morning” as the first hour of the day according to planetary- and lunar-hour grids that mark what  planet, with all its correspondences, is ruling at any given moment. This is in fact stated in the rbatel . It would put conducting the meditations in the dark hours before dawn. I did not do this;

rather, I performed my meditations, with regularity, at about midmorning. Out of habit and for the sake of convention, I would go through the motions of casting a magic circle. The paces might include the Cabalistic Cross and Lesser Rite of the Banishing Pentagram (LRBP) but more often they consisted of a more personalized template based on the LRBP. Because I was dealing ith entities derived from Roman deities and was somewhat “into” recon Religio Romana at the time, I made offerings of roasted spelt, salt, and incense to Jupiter in the manner of Roman household daily orship in which a Roman version of nyasa was performed. Nyasa is a practice in Eastern spirituality in which parts of the body are touched while saying a mantra or prayer to honor, bless,  purify, and dedicate oneself in preparation for ritual observance or devotion. Roman nyasa involved touching one’s head, eyes, ears, mouth, chest, and spreading out one’s hands while uttering something like, “May my thoughts be pure, may my sight be pure, . . . hearing . . . speech . . . heart . . . actions . . . .” This activity was followed by acknowledgement of Vesta, the ancestors and guardian angels of the family, Janus, and Jupiter. Then I would sit and recite a personal, adapted version of an opening prayer that appears in the rbatel  and focus on the sigil of the Olympic Spirit of the day. I would assume a quasi-meditative condition and record the mental imagery that would arise. I would end the procedure with a closing  prayer adapted from the Arbatel  and dissolve the circle. The actual opening prayer from Aphorism 21 of the third septenary of the Arbatel  is:

Omnipotent and eternal God, who has ordained the whole creation for your praise and glory, and  or the salvation of man, I beseech you to send your Spirit ___ of the solar order, who shall inform and teach me those things that I shall ask of him; or, that he may bring me medicine against the dropsie, etc. Nevertheless not my will be done, but yours, through Jesus Christ your only begotten Son, our Lord . Amen. The opening I used went something like:

n that One who alone exists, who is our sole, eternal support, I seek refuge, the self-dependent   Lord, the vessel of safety in the ocean of existence  [from the last stanza of the  Pancharatna, a  prayer to Brahman found within the Mahanirvana Tantra]. Through that One, may I commune with  ___ that he may tell me those things I seek to know for my own wellbeing and the wellbeing of  others. The closing prayer from the Arbatel  (also from Aphorism 21 of the third septenary) is:

 For as much as you came in peace, and quietly, and have answered my petitions; I give thanks to God, in whose Name you came. Now you may depart in peace to your orders. Return to me again when I shall call you by your name, order, or office, which is granted from the Creator . Amen. A key aspect of magical work is to engage the imagination. There are plenty of spiritual or magical  practitioners out there who regard their imaginative, visionary, and overall “kataphatic” experiences

as grand, Divine messages to be either sold or imposed on others for their greater good. Such magical or “spiritual” practitioners may believe—and have the capacity to convince others to believe—that they have a special “in” with otherworldly beings because of their seemingly unique and supernatural experiences. I am not one of those persons. Mystical experiences and insights are metaphorical and interpretive only. I am aware that my own visionary impressions and experiences occur in an imaginative, archetypal, “astral,” “psychonautic” space of my personal consciousness and not in an alternate Reality that I expect others to embrace. In sharing my experiences and insights, may I inspire you to have your own. Also note that the type of meditative work I engaged in while working with the Arbatel , although  being basic to Western esotericism and occultism, was counterintuitive to my Vedantist and Buddhist training. A primary reason for meditation practice is to purge the mind of rogue thought forms and subconscious Fluffernutter and to see the phantasmagoria of the thought-stream and attendant emotions and reactions as bytes that drive the program that an individual human being haplessly is. It is not, as in the Western esoteric tradition, to build complex astral spheres full of more thoughts, symbols, and  paradigms; nor is it to grasp at, collect, and extrapolate from experiences that naturally tend to arise in meditation during certain stages of the process and are, essentially, the welling up of unconscious complexes that are to be neutralized, not transformed into new complexes. (See Part 2 for a comprehensive discussion on meditation East and West.) When I began working with the Arbatel , I tempered my reactions and interpretations of magical and spiritual experiences by remembering that they were expressions and interpretations of mind and that they had value if only for the sake of experience. They didn’t need to be made into something otherworldly and grander. However, the more I became absorbed in the  Arbatel , especially while orking with the Cohort, the more I did indeed wonder whether I was actually in communion with higher, otherworldly intelligences and energies. During the first week of the Working, I was met with a great deal of imagery in which associations ith “godforms,” narratives, and dialoging, and also terms that I had to follow up on were experienced. The imagery and messages were mostly reinforced during the second week but were less dynamic. The godforms seemed reluctant in the third week but yet there was as strong reemphasis of their core messages. In an article published in 2007 in the Journal of the Western Mystery Tradition (available at: http://jwmt.org/v2n13/book.html ) and titled The Little Book of Black Venus – Part Two Olympic Spirits, the Cult of the Dark Goddess, and the Seal of Ameth, authors Vincent Bridges and Teresa Burns offer hypotheses about how the sigils of the Olympic Spirits may have their origins in cave art of deep antiquity.1 My own notes below about the images that each sigil represents are wholly my own and mostly personal and speculative.

Phul The image of the moon. Core message: “There is no contrivance in joy.”

oy is a pervading, core principle. A living thing is the ephemeral measurement and relationship through which joy can be experienced. Experience the bliss and potency of the moment. The sigil suggests the 4 major moon phases (new, waxing, full, and waning). I worked with Phul each Monday morning from March 22, 2010 to April 12, 2010. During this time, I received archetypal images and impressions of nymphs, fairies, night, earth and the smell of the spring or summer earth in the night, insect-like buzzing of tiny elemental beings, and joy in the moment. The theme was pristine oy and playfulness, and I had a particular recurring impression of a very fair, lithe, silvery-whitish female entity—something from a Victorian picture book, but it was a human sized, resembling a young oman of 18 to 25 years. What could she be but a  fata,  a fairy of Italian folklore. I would envision her gently seated on a silver-white sphere. I also commonly had the impression of a large silvery sphere in my lower abdomen, which could be interpreted as a visualization of the svadisthana chakra. The svadisthana chakra is associated with the water element, the sense of taste, the etheric realm, and sensory impulse and satisfaction issues, as well as the lower abdominal nerve plexus and the gonads. The first fairy tales recorded came from Italy, where fairies were thought to be mostly beneficent feminine creatures associated with Diana and Hekate.2 They were depicted as full-sized, elegant, goddess-like women who would protect and do favors for you if they took a liking to you. They were related to the Fates (Roman, Parcae; Greek, Moirae; Teutonic, Norns), who spun, wove, and cut the thread of life, to whom even the gods bowed, and who were forerunners of the idea of the triple goddess. The energy signature of the entity I accessed was virginal, feminine, and fiercely independent; that is, Dianic. She was a concentrated and sublimated feminine sexual energy—very potent but not expressed or felt in erotic impulse. Interestingly, very many months later when I was practicing a Luna evocation with two young friends, I again had these impressions as did the young woman I was  practicing with, whereas the young man came back with impressions of a fierce, overbearing, and

unwelcoming feminine force. I was trying to wrap my head around the joy idea during the Working because it was as if those experiencing it in my imagery were like lightening bugs—full of joy in the summer night but having lives lasting mere hours. Are they joyful up until their end? Do they experience fright, pain, and surprise at that time? I reasoned that the joy experienced was an enveloping principle and that a living thing was the measurement and relationship through which joy could be experienced. Existential experience, after all, is euphemistically referred to as ananda —joy—in Hindu spiritual philosophy. Human beings put qualifiers on their experiences but these qualifiers (judgments regarding pleasure and pain) are said to obscure a higher Reality and approach to existential experience. In my meditations, I recalled that the moon’s light is not its own but a reflection. It represents duality and relationship: the seer and the seen, which are actually the same. The moon’s light is illusory  because it is the sun “looking at” itself as something other. But the projection gives form (measure and limitation—the literal meaning of Maya) to what is formless.

Phaleg

The image of victory. Core message “Have a single focus and drive it through.”

n intention must be decisive and unmixed and then directed like a fiery spear or arrow into the heart of its target. I worked with Phaleg every Tuesday from March 23 to April 13. Its message was about defining desire and engaging the will in its pursuit. My first impressions were of cold, steely dark forms. They eren’t frightening but, rather, very matter-of-fact: steeliness and pure focused action. Images of  spears and spear-like weapons arose in my mind. The image of a man in full armor became very  prominent. His character was very steely and unemotional. I felt him very close early on and in a sly, no-nonsense voice he said, “So, tell me what you want.” I didn’t know how or whether to reply. There was the idea that I should know what I wanted and that I didn’t reflected poorly on me.

The overall feeling of the entity upon introduction was of purely motivational, focused energy toward a target. It was off-putting, and upon acknowledging this, a different entity emerged; I became absorbed in the impression of the Roman goddess Minerva. I had not heretofore ever contemplated this particular godform, but the imagery and presence was very strong and toggled between evocation and invocation. That is, I would strongly “see” “Minerva” crouching before me in imaginal space and speaking rather emphatically or else, I would “feel” myself in armor and carrying a spear-like eapon. It was very strong imagery that persisted while working with Phaleg. I will add that this experience of shifting between “that” and “this” (meaning myself) comes rather easily for me in these types of contemplative practices, which I attribute to my Vedantist and Buddhist training. (See Part 2: The Chosen Ideal for further discussion about this.) Introducing herself by name, “Minerva” said upon first appearing to me, “Invoke me in this sign!” That is, the sigil of Phaleg, otherwise associated with Mars. Images of her connection to Jupiter, her  ith eagle and a spear, and the idea of intense righteousness were prominent going forward when orking with Phaleg. She told me to “have a single focus and drive it through” as if it were a weapon. The Egyptian goddess Heka, the power or efficacy of magic and daughter of the Egyptian Godhead Re, and the Celtic goddess Brigid appeared to me as Minerva’s cognates (that is, equivalents within other  cultures). At that time, I interpreted the message as a teaching that a spell or intention should be like eapon cast into a clearly defined target. Later, I entertained the idea that it was a message about clearly establishing one’s will, sense of self, and self-defined purpose.

Ophiel The image of a scholar. Core message: “What do you

want to know?” Observation and careful listening are keys to persuade and confound to accomplish an intention. Single-minded focus, poise, and integration need to be cultivated. I worked with Ophiel on Wednesday mornings from March 24, 2010 to April 14, 2010. The energy of 

this spirit was one of self-interested persuasion—that is, it was about how to be a good observer to  persuade and even undermine other people to accomplish one’s own goals. On the first day of working with Ophiel, I immediately fell into a very deep meditation and, in fact, felt “spacey.” It was a bit alarming, and I wondered whether there was something sedating or  intoxicating in the incense mix I had prepared that day. At the same time, a cadre of leaf blowers reved up outside, so I was meditating in roaring noise. When it subsided, the fire alarm from the  building across the way began to sound. These noises—the leaf blowers and the fire alarm resounded each in turn during my meditation. I was aware but not perturbed by the sounds. I also was aware of  the wind, which was blustery that day, and many other external noises. In addition, I was very aware of my pulse and how it subtlety rocked my body. When the noises subsided, I received the impression of a tall, very thin, dark figure of a man. The name Thoth struck my mind, as if the figure were introducing himself. Again, I had not much “got into” or otherwise contemplated the idea of Thoth until that moment. The image took on the form of an attractive albino man in a black suit. “What do you want to know?” he asked me in a sly but much more interested and compassionate tone than the armored Phaleg character did the day before. He showed me a staff and said that the staff was not like the spear that I got teaching about the day  before. It was for establishing not hurling or striking and was like a line of concentration that pierces or carves out will in space. Then I reflected on the idea that the path of the secret fire (shushumna, caduceus, or esoteric spine) is like this. It is a rod through which consciousness is to be concentrated and directed in a single-focused line. I felt prodded to ask for a gift. The image of a lotus with a black jewel in the center immediately appeared in my mind’s eye. In visionary consciousness, it was placed “in” my head at the brow. I then received an image of a pink lotus on water with a white candle in the center. I reasoned that the imagery represented all the elements and the self and their integration and aspiration from form to light and space. Interestingly, visualization of a lotus with a candle within in it at the throat center is a Buddhist meditative practice to cultivate lucid dreaming and conscious sleep. I didn’t learn of this until more than a month after having this initial experience. In addition, this was virtually the exercise I would be practicing with the Arbatel  Cohort a month after having had this vision. When this imagery resolved, the outdoor noise started up loudly again, but I sat for a while in deep, imageless meditation. The jocular, tall, thin, suave, white-haired presence continued to emerge as a character of   persuasiveness, command, and healing during subsequent Ophiel evocations/meditations. Images of a stylized, bird-like form, which I took to be an ibis—the zoomorphic form of Thoth—also were prominent.

Bethor

The image of a king Core message: “What do you

want to happen?”  For manifestation to occur, the infinite potential must be funneled into a point of definition and  unction. I worked with Bethor on Thursday mornings from March 25, 2010 to April 15, 2010. Working with this Spirit became quite involved and included lots of allusions and also images of geometric forms that became important clues later while working with the Cohort in trying to understand the Olympic Spirits and the Seal of Secrets of the World. Bethor let it be known that it was clearly associated with Roman Jupiter. The first impression I received from Bethor was of muscles and sheer commanding strength. This machismo would alternate ith a jolly, expansive, almost manic character like something out of a Currier and Ives Old St. Nick   painting. In all, the energy signature was one of reassurance, love, and tenderness by something that as very powerful and masculine that, on occasion, seemed to want to remind or impress me about his power and masculinity. The word “Tetractys” came to me early on, accompanied by visualization of a triangle. It was one of  many unfamiliar terms that would come to me during these meditations. The Tetractys is a Western antra, a mystical, geometric diagram. It is a triangle made of 10 points. It is a mnemonic (memory  prodding) diagram for key concepts in Pythagorean mysticism related to perfection and structure.

The point at the apex of the triangle signifies the divine source. It is associated with the virtue of  isdom. The two points of the second row of the Tetractys denote the duality and the play of  complementary forces. It is associated with Strife, which is related to the virtues of movement and impulse, which, in turn, are associated with courage and strength. The third row of three connecting  points represents Harmony, which is said to be the union of beauty (order in design) and mental  poise. The four points in the fourth row represent the four humors/elements: earth, air, fire and water  from which the material universe comes into being. Pythagorean prayer to the Tetractys:

less us, divine number, you that generated gods and men! Oh holy, holy Tetractys, you that  contain the root and source of the eternally flowing creation! The divine number begins with the rofound, pure unity until it become the holy four through which it produces the mother of all, the all-pervading, all-defining, the first-born, unmovable, the persistent holy 10, the key-holder of all. I am here reminded of a lucid dream I had many years ago while deeply immersed in Buddhist and Vedantist studies. I was looking at a watch or some kind of numerical gadget. A male voice said, “Look at this and watch how God becomes the world.” I was looking at a digit, which was 1. Zeros  began to duplicate on either side of the 1 until I was looking at something like 00000100000. Reality  —and the impression of the many—resolve back to the 1. As the Bengali Saint Sri Ramakrishna was known to say, “God is real, the world is illusory.” Or as photos of the Earth from space reveal—you, in all your self-involved glory, are still a very tiny, very finite fragment of another much larger and impersonal organism. The initial greeting that emerged in my mind while working with Bethor was “What do you want to happen?” There was a sense of a carry-over from the work with Phaleg and Ophiel about being decisive and focused. Rather than focusing on the expansive quality of this Spirit, I was instructed to narrow the focus to one-pointed intention. I was told to imagine my intention like a flaming arrow that is shot through something like a funnel to a single-pointed target. The target is like a picture or   projection gleaned from the immensity of potentiality where everything is happening all at once.

Hagith

The image of a chalice Core message: “I am the Cosmos and Beauty of

Being.” There is a tender, loving, giving, refreshing, purifying, and enveloping Principle. Meditate on and  invoke that Principle for encouragement and solace and to become a source of encouragement and   solace for others. I worked with Hagith on Fridays from March 26 to April 16. The general impression was of a great motherly protector. Grace, Blessing, Beneficence, Grand Giving. It differed from the Jupiterian Intelligence, whose sense of “giving” was marked by manic joviality—as if he were an ostentatiously “big tipper.” The Hagith signature was more tender, loving, giving, and embracing. The Jovian giving as more self-aggrandizing. The initial message was “I am the Cosmos and Beauty of Being.” I contemplated an issue that had  been vexing me and ultimately received a practice. It was similar to a Buddhist Vajrasattva practice that I had been initiated into about 10 years prior while involved in a Nygmapa Buddhist sangha. In the practice given by Hagith, I was to imagine clear, light-infused, lime-green water flushing through me, imagining this over and again as well as being filled with warm, lustrous, lime green light. From there, I received imagery that was Christian-like—the descent of the dove, the equating of Venus with Sophia, Isis, Nuit, and the Virgin Mary—all ideas of feminine light and beneficence. I expected to get imagery that was erotic or some impression having to do with sexuality when I worked with Hagith,  but there was none of that, only the message of motherly love, grace, dignity, and beauty.

Aratron

The image of a fortress Core message: “He who is the Intelligible Principle in Whom All Things Rest.”

There is a large, mighty, thoughtful, loving, protective, possessive, and righteous Principle. anifestation, personhood, and personal power are predicated on concentrating time and space into boundaries and form. I worked with Aratron on Saturdays from March 27 to April 17. The Spirit immediately introduced itself as a mighty, dark, impelling, muscular, masculine, mature, bearded being. It resembled Michelangelo’s fresco of God touching Adam. It was very overreaching and strong but different from the Jupiter character. It was more serious and characterized by thoughtfulness and elements of control, command, and order. It was very strong but not exactly cold or stern. It was patriarchal. I felt enveloped in a great fatherly protection from a very mighty, thoughtful and jealously protective and righteous, large being: a great, potent, protective power. Significant geometric shapes, including  pentacle shapes, also presented themselves while working with this Spirit, and the message, again, as about the narrowing of focus and creating boundaries to establish form. I did a lot of contemplating of beings that seemed to be parallels or cognates of Saturn: ● Shiva, one of whose yantras is a pentagram and refers, in part, to association with the five elements and manifesting powers (shaktis): earth/will (ichchhashakti), water/ experience (anandashakti), fire/action (kriyashakti), air/knowledge (jnanashakti), space/consciousness (chidshakti) ● Mahakala—Great Time (a form of Shiva and also a divine concept within Tibetan Buddhism) ● Mahamaya (“Great Measurement/Limiting Power” or “Grand Illusion”) ● Yahweh (El, which was associated with the planet Saturn in very ancient times, likely in relation to other Semitic cultures (eg, Babylonian and Chaldean) ● Babylonian Ea (Capricornus) ● Ancient Persian Zurvan who was the great lord of Time and Timelessness I also recalled Baphomet (which I consider to be an invention of Eliphas Levi [alias of Alphonse

Louis Constant, 1810 –1875]) and the dark and wrathful goddesses of Hinduism, such as Kali, who symbolize the life/death cycle, realities of nature and natural life, and also challenges and fears about transformation. The phrase, “It is the monster of time and space that you cling to for existence and to hich you are in bondage” came to me. I reasoned that this principle has two sides: time and timelessness, space and spaciousness. In its time/space aspect, it guards and sustains and also blocks and binds. We are attracted to it because we ant to preserve our ego-personality in this structure, but this structure binds us to the wheel of desire and misery. If we approach it, we must do so to conquer the limitations, but we become something else entirely then. God may actually be the paradigm that oppresses us and yet it is the way beyond itself. We find these kinds of sentiments about deity, actually, in contemplations of the Goddess in Hinduism:

 Mahamaya is the mystic slumber of Vishnu, the World Soul. Through her, the World is deluded. She, the Sovereign Lady, forcibly grips the minds of even the wise and throws them into delusion. She creates this entire universe of moving and unmoving things. When  gracious, however, she grants boons to human beings so that they may achieve spiritual  liberation. She is the Supreme Knowledge, the cause of final liberation from the wheel of  birth and death, and she is Eternal. She is the cause of bondage and transmigration of   souls and she is the sovereign ruler over all lords.  —Devi Mahatmyam, Chapter 1, lines 6468

Och

The image of a dove Core message: “There is no entity; there is only Self,” and “I am complete openness.”

e illuminated in selflessness. I worked with Och every Sunday from March 28 to April 18. I think the image is meant to represent the 3 stations of the sun (sunrise, noon, and sunset) plus its disappearance with the night, but I see a dove-like glyph in the image. As I meditated on this Spirit, I had impressions of Apollo but he would

reference dying and resurrecting deities. The themes of the meditations were sacrifice, hubris, atonement, self-integration, and self-transcendence. The message was not something groovy about enlightenment or self-actualization but about burning up, being torn up, repentance, and selfeffacement. It was something Orphically Dionysian. I reflected on the Gnostic godforms of Christ and Sophia. It seemed that Och/Sol was associated with something painful and transformational. There was an aloneness in it. I began to think of the sun as something bare or turned inside out. Its flame was uncontained like a fruit that had been peeled and was now exposed. I also reflected on Time and the ephemeral and that what needs to be known or accomplished is precious and elusive because mortal time is limited. The second Sunday of this Working fell on Easter, April 4, 2010. During the meditation, I reflected on the idea of baptism and of clear light-imbued water symbolically washing away the illusion of self. The light of the logos both makes and breaks the illusion. It is the light of this life of experience and it is the light behind the illusion, the light beyond the darkness, the occult light. I thought about why I didn’t feel presence of Spirit on that day and the message received was “There is no entity; there is only Self.”

A Practical Practice

At the end of the month, the overriding message about how to work with the Olympic Spirits going forward was quite different from that of others who have worked with the Arbatel . The typical approach is to evoke the Olympic Spirits through complex ceremonial rituals established by late Modern Era ceremonial magicians based on their appropriation of Solomonic, Rosicrucian, and Enochian artifacts. Upon successful evocation, the mage then exerts a request upon the Olympic Spirit evoked. The Arbatel  does suggest that the Olympic Spirits can be evoked and petitioned but seems to suggest that the approach is much simpler than that dictated by what we think of as traditional ceremonial magic. It also stresses that there are different levels of magical attitudes, some more lofty than others. So, yes, you can petition or command Och to make you rich and kingly and long-lived or  else to lead you from “the unreal to the real, from darkness to light, and from death to immortality.” In any case, the more I worked with The Arbatel  and the Seal of Secrets, the more I came to the believe that the Arbatel ’s passages, particularly those about the Olympic Spirits, are a “cover text” for  something of greater mystical depth. The take home message for me was that a preferable approach to interaction with the Olympic Spirits is to meditate on the energy signatures they each impart, integrate them, and express these characteristics as needs see fit in one’s daily interactions. That is, a person is not meant to petition,  bribe, or compel Venus or Mercury or Saturn to make something magically happen; rather, she is to embody the higher-order energy signature of the Spirit and act from it. As the Orphics and alchemical Hermeticists suggest, the philosophical planets, which are equated with Olympic deities, are  psychodynamic processes within oneself that must be visited, journeyed across, deconstructed, and mastered.

The Olympic spirits are not separate from you. They are archetypes out which human existence arises. You are within them and they are within you. I again reiterate a particular quote of the mythologist Joseph Campbell (1904-1987):

 All the gods, all the hells, all the heavens are within you. That god is within you. It is not   something that happened somewhere else a long time ago. It’s in you. What is the practice? Respectfully approach the Olympic Spirits as living realities and, through contemplation, simply identify their energy signatures, which will be both archetypal and unique to you. Mark what thoughts, images, and feelings arise. Become intimate with them. Experience the Spirit that appears to you in visionary consciousness as a friend and benefactor. Feel it within yourself during practice and express and apply the energy in daily life. In this way, you will master at least certain levels of wisdoms of the planetary realms within yourself. You may also regain the lost and secret wisdom of the Western mages and Gnostics in this way without having to join one or  another Occult Lodge™ to be indoctrinated into many mysterious intricacies that, in the end if you get that far, will reveal themselves to be mere static cling.

V A Group Working: The  Arbatel  Cohort

When I first approached the Arbatel , I did so naively—as a person who had little experience with grimoire or planetary magic. The text seemed to be pious and also superstitious medieval Christian rhetoric within which crypto-pagan meandering about the classical planets was interjected. In orking with the three other persons—the Arbatel  Project Cohort—I concluded that the document had depth and complexity—or it and my interaction with the Cohort opened up something in my thought  processes. Curiously, the material I received during phase 1, particularly the visualizations of  geometric shapes, was relevant to understanding the diagram referred to as the Seal of Secrets of the World described in aphorism 27, fourth septenary, of the text. Overtly, the Seal is to be used like a calendar to help a mage know which elemental, planetary, and angelic entities to communicate with each day to be in accord with the Universe. Occultly—or at least as I see it—the Seal is a mandala or yantra  that reveals the esoteric truths or insights about the spiritual structure of the Macrocosm. A mandala is a circular, often symmetrically designed piece of art that may or may not be bounded in a square. It is common not only in Hindu and Buddhist art, but also medieval Christian and Western esoteric art, and native/indigenous shamanic art, like the sand paintings of the Navajo, Hopi, and other Native American tribes. A mandala often represents and communicates a message about sacred space. By sacred space, I mean a special place in consciousness where we find higher, grander  meaning and communicate with extraordinary beings such as gods, guides, and angelic and mythic entities. A mandala, in being a representation or map of sacred space, depicts the spiritual world and one’s relationship to it. As a meditational device, it is a psychonautic map that the eyes, mind, and  perhaps the soul journey across.

Representational images often appear in mandalas. The images typically are deities surrounded by their retinues and/or scenes about their story or else about the spiritual structure of a world where the deity presides as its center and Reality. A yantra  is similar to a mandala but is a geometric diagram. It originates in Hindu Tantric tradition, ith some yantras being used for purely spiritual purposes and others—most in fact—for what we ould call spell casting, although a person using a yantra for such a reason might deny practicing “magic” even if his or her aim was to seduce a love interest, acquire wealth, or take revenge on someone. Devices similar to yantras, called seals or pentacles (although they do not necessarily include  pentagrams), or sigils, exist in the Western esoteric/occult tradition. The planes, lines, shapes, and geometry are thought to have a special vibratory power and are, thus, associated with “words of   power”: mantra in the East and equivalent spells and “godnames” in the West. The yantra or Seal or  sigil is like an energy vortex. It is the signature or calling card and extension of a potent spiritual energy embodied in sacred geometry. A yantra is also a psychonautic map. Each line, shape, and plane has a specific meaning that may refer to a location and a being within sacred space. A person needs to know how to read the map to make full use of it and find and integrate the treasures embedded within it. In the Eastern Tantric traditions, this might be through strenuous preparatory work and then a series of initiations through an adept who has mastered and integrated the spiritual secrets of the yantra. A familiar parallel to this in the Western tradition might be the Cabalist Tree of Life, but that said, the Western Esoteric and Occult traditions are chock full of esoteric mandalas and yantras, and it is a shame that this rich tradition within Western culture continues to be seen as fringe or quaint if not perverse or diabolical and has been overtaken by Eastern imports in the minds of many Western spiritual seekers. So, the Seal of Secrets is like a yantra. It is a symmetrical diagram of circles, squares, and lines that one follows from the center outward, in a clockwise revolution, and also possibly multidimensionally. It represents the Cosmos, the wheel of time, and has a host of spiritual beings (symbolically) living within it that one may visit and commune with—and this is stated in aphorism 27 of the Arbatel :

The use of this seal of secrets is that, through it, you may know when the spirits or angels are roduced that may teach you secrets they receive from God. . . . The Cohort had an international distribution, with two members, myself and Frater RO, residing in  North and Mid-Atlantic territories of the United States, respectively, and two others, The Scribbler  and artist Susanne Iles, residing across “the pond” in Europe in Hungary and Ireland, respectively. We were committed to visualizing the same sigils before retiring for sleep in the evening with the intention of influencing dream content, which was then shared and compared. The sigil to be contemplated was defined by the ruling planet of the day’s moon mansion. I believe we initially had an intention of interacting with the tutelary spirits of the moon mansions but did not get that far. Although we put great emphasis on noting the moon mansions and their correspondences at the outset,

the primary focus was the ruling planet and its corresponding Olympic Spirit. Up until late my late 40s, I had been a florid and occasionally lucid dreamer who also endured hypnogogic and hypnopompic phenomena, including frequent sleep paralysis episodes. Hypnogogia and hypnopompia are neuropsychiatric jargon for states of consciousness that occur at the threshold o sleep but are between waking and sleeping. Various kinds of hallucinations and visionary experiences—pleasant and unpleasant—may occur during these states. Although the experiences may seem supernatural and spooky, they have more to do with the neurochemistry of sleep/wake mechanics that can often get out of synch. Fortunately, sleep paralysis episodes significantly lessened as I aged. In fact, I entered a period in hich I tended to sleep soundly with little dream recall. The pre-sleep meditation that was key to the Cohort’s group exercise, however, had the effect of inducing hypnogogic effects. I would be aroused from the brink of sleep by images and messages several times a night. The most pertinent information I received did not come during dream sequences but from these threshold states of consciousness or else in periods of recollection and contemplation during the day. The information “downloaded” from the astral ethers was often related to the number codes within the Arbatel  and the geometric shapes that I had been envisioning the month before. Messages related to Pythagorean and Orphic mysticism also were prominent. The revelations received made me feel that something remarkable and transpersonal was occurring. The focus on numbers was particularly curious because I otherwise have something of a learning disability when it comes to mathematics. Losing dream recall was a particular frustration. There were several instances in which each member  of the Cohort had an experience of “having it all revealed,” only to forget everything shortly after  fully waking except for the vague memory that it had happened. My solace is that the message is  buried deep in our respective reservoirs of consciousness. Writing down notes about dreams in the middle of the night had its challenges, too. I would be writing my notes in the dark, feeling confident that I was writing carefully enough for the words to be legible and also that I would remember the gist of any symbol or short hand that I had recorded. I often woke up forgetful of what I had experienced in the night and unable to decipher the scribbles I had set down on paper hours before. In respect for the others, I am not at liberty to go into detail about dream content of the group, but a companion text to this one in which we might each contribute our experiences and thoughts is on my ish list . . . I will relate some generalities about the group members’ experiences: Recurrent themes for me had to do with properly sorting items—like cards or tiles—that represented the Olympic Spirits, visualizing parts of the Seal of Secrets as if I were stationed at certain sections of it, and “being” the Seal as if it represented my body. I also received clues that the Seal was a tool that had to be adjusted and also a calendar. I often dreamed that I was talking to people about the Seal. Susanne had similar dreams although, in them, she would be receiving teaching about the Seal from entities. Children and familiars also played a significant role in her dreams, as they did in The Scribbler’s, for whom snakes also were a recurring element. RO tended to have wildly action-packed

dreams in which he—and sometimes all four of us—battled “the forces of evil.” He also had revelatory dreams about the correlations between the Olympic Spirits and body movements, whereas I would have dreams about my body as or in relation to the Seal of Secrets.

VI Decoding the Se al of Secrets of the World

The first official night of the dream work project was Sunday, May 9, 2010. The waning moon was in the 1st  mansion at 0 degrees Aries (the mansion of the moon called Alnath in the Picatrix), and its ruler was Sol. Thus, the group focused on the sigil of Och, the Intelligence of Sol, while falling asleep.

To that One whose light-producing eye sees all that is within oneself and in creation beneath the heavens, whose hair is shining gold, whose oracles are sure, whose omens reveal the good, and  whose precepts are pure: Hear us entreating for all beings; hear, be present and kind. You pervade the blessed space of every part of Earth, Your light overcomes the gloom and silence of night. Beyond the dark, starry-eyed night, you establish the light of life. By you this world  lourishes. All the musical sounds of nature are from you. To you we owe the music and color of  the changing seasons that play the great round of life, ascending and descending like the chords o the lyre. Thus, all things spring like musical notes in holy seeds of vibration from which all forms on Earth manifest.  –Prayer adapted from Orphic Hymn to Apollo The Key to the Geometry On the first night of the Working, I slept soundly without dream recall and woke at 5 AM  feeling relaxed and peaceful. I lie there, intending to fall back to sleep and dream. I began to think of the numbers assigned to the Olympic Spirits. I also began to think of the Seal as if it were 3D. I imagined myself in the center of a 3D Seal of Secrets and recalled aphorism 16, which says:

There are seven different governments of Spirits of Olympus to whom God has appointed the overnance of the whole entire world. Their visible stars are Aratron, Bethor, Phaleg, Och, agith, Ophiel, and Phul, after Olympic speech. Every one of these has under him a mighty militia in the firmament. Aratron rules 49 visible provinces; Bethor, 42; Phaleg, 35; Och, 28; Hagith, 21; Ophiel, 14; Phul, 7. So, there are 196 Olympic Provinces in the whole universe in which seven overnors exercise their power . . . . In thinking about the numbers, I began to see them as shapes or planes that make up different parts of  the Seal. I imagined that Phul was at the very center. I then recalled the geometric shapes that I had  been visualizing the month before. I matched the shapes I had been seeing with each Olympic Spirit and also paired them with polygons related to their number symbolism. I learned months later that, although the geometric pairings weren’t exactly the same, the idea, as it were, was similar to concepts in Pythagorean mysticism in which the archonic planets were associated with interpenetrating

 polygonal shapes.

I set about making a color-coded image of the Seal of Secrets in which these different shapes and  planes were represented. The cohort jokingly likened this endeavor to the mound-building scene in Close Encounters of the Third Kind  in which Richard Dreyfus digs up his front yard and hauls the dirt into his living room to create a model of his vision—the UFO landing site. I did feel like Dreyfus’ character in that movie though; I as compelled toward expression and suspended in curious awe by a vision.

If you are viewing a color-version of this text, you will see the Seal of Secrets superimposed on a color-coded diagram. In this digitally rendered diagram, which is a cleaner version of the painting I originally made, the little blue point in the center represents Phul. Eight rays emerge from the point and shoot into all directions of space. This represents Ophiel. The central green circle on the borders of which stand the princes of the quarters (the small hexagrams) with their retinues represents Hagith. The red squares dividing space represent Phaleg. The large blue circle represents Bethor pervading space. The yellow corona of that blue circle represents Och. Finally, the purple square represents Aratron. More on this will be presented further along in the text.

The Auric Egg and the Terrestrial Sphere

In the early hours of the morning of Sunday May 23, I dreamed that I was looking at a diagram or  schematic. It was a colored circle, like the diagram I had made. In the dream, the diagram showed the different roles of the Spirits. The sense—or what I was being told—was that the names and roles are  precisely plotted and have value but ultimately the roles and partitioning of spheres of activity of the Spirits as defined in the diagram do not matter; the Spirits act as a unit and also independently and are

not confined by the rules applied to the diagram or our concepts about them. In light dream sleep, I kept hearing the word “Terra.” Seeing the number 21, I was told that 21 = 10 +1 and that the 10 is a circle and the 1 is a point within that circle—but the point was not a bull’s eye, it was a “station” within the circle. This echoes a statement attributed to Empedocles (circa 495-435 BCE) and many others, including Vedantist sages, that God is “a circle, the center of which is everywhere, the circumference of which is nowhere.” As for the equation, it made perfect sense to me that 21=10+1 but I didn’t remember the whole gist of  hy. I wrote the word Venus in my dream diary because the Arbatel  associates Venus with the number 21. Two days after dreaming that 21=10+1, Susanne reported having a dream in which a teacher was explaining the structure of the Universe in relation to the Olympic Spirits and working with a springlike gadget (she had been having impressive recurring dreams on this theme). She asked the teacher  hether he told me that 10+1= 21. He replied that 10+1=11, which represents one-dimensional reality. But he went on to say that 10+1=21, which represents the world made manifest and that 10+1 also equals 31, and 41, etc. and that these numbers represent expanding dimensions of ascent that are  part and parcel of each other, all (“10”) in the one. In the section on Cabala in Manly P. Hall’s book The Secret Teachings of All Ages, 1 Hall explains that 1 equals the human auric egg in which the whole archetypal Cosmos and its Intelligences are an interpenetrating extension. Or vice versa, the whole archetypal Cosmos and its Intelligences are funneled into a concentrated point, which is the auric egg. This is the person or ego personality. This “1,” therefore, is not unlike the “station in the circle” or the metaphor of the funnel or information about the Tetractys received during my April meditations on Bethor. In this way, the ego or personal consciousness is the point of concentration of the Intelligible Cosmos. Hall goes on to summarize the six orders of the 50 gates of Hermetic Cabalist lore, as related in Athanasius Kircher’s (1602-1680) Aedipus Aegyptiacus. With the exception of the sixth order, which contains only one final gate (that to Ain Soph, the Divine Splendor and return to the Source), orders 1 through 5, which are hierarchical, each contain 10 gates. The first 10 gates make up the Elemental order of matter: the prima material before formation (10+1=11). The second 10 gates make up the Evolutionary order: namely the world of mineral, vegetable, and animal: the terrestrial  sphere (10+1=21). The third make up the order of Humanity through the gates of which man identifies with God (10+1=31). The fourth make up the order of the celestial Spheres—the heavens of the planets, the Firmament, the Constellations ( Primum mobile ), and the Empyrean (the highest heaven of fiery splendor; 10+1=41) The fifth make up the hierarchy of  the choirs of angels (10+1=51). This episode is an example of how unfamiliar but otherwise “on-file” esoteric information would spontaneously alight on members of the group while working with the Seal of Secrets and also how members of the group began to “share” mindscapes and be involved in other members’ dreams.

Reference 1. Hall MP. The Secret Teachings of All Ages. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin; 2003. [Available online here http://www.sacred-texts.com/eso/sta/index.htm Accessed July 5, 2013.]

VII More Decoding of the  Arbatel 

On Monday May 24 (17th mansion, ruled by Mars), I had been dreaming that I was looking at and  being told about the circular diagram, which was in colors. I also was looking at something like a grid with overlapping colored lines plotted on it, which were supposed to be the sigils of the Olympic Spirits. It was as if the grid and circle were two different ways of illustrating the same concept about the Spirits. The circle showed “everyone’s” role. In my notes, I wrote “everyone” but, upon reviewing my notes in the morning, it was unclear whether “everyone” meant the Spirits, the Cohort, or “everyone.” I then rote that the Intelligences were like roles that can be assigned a day to be commemorated; however, the roles are happening all the time all together and not really confined to a day, but they are commemorated in that way. I awoke in the morning feeling peaceful, confident, and, as if I had realized something significant although I did not consciously know what. I remembered that, in half-sleep, I got a message about equations. The episode led me to write a tract about the numbers and other content that mostly are  presented in Aphorisms 16, 17, and 27 of the Arbatel . In these sections of the Arbatel,  each of the Olympic Spirits is introduced and information is given such as how many “legions” the Spirit  presides over or years that it rules. Part of Aphorism 16 is repeated here:

There are seven different governments of Spirits of Olympus to whom God has appointed the overnance of the whole entire world. Their visible stars are Aratron, Bethor, Phaleg, Och, agith, Ophiel, and Phul, after Olympic speech. Every one of these has under him a mighty militia in the firmament. Aratron rules 49 visible provinces; Bethor, 42; Phaleg, 35; Och, 28; Hagith, 21; Ophiel, 14; Phul, 7. So, there are 196 Olympic Provinces in the whole universe in which seven governors exercise their  ower . . . . The remaining sentences of aphorism 16 declare that the Olympic Spirits can best be communicated ith in the first hour of their appointed day; that is at the moment of sunrise on Sunday for Och (Sol), on Monday for Phul (Luna), Tuesday for Phaleg (Mars), etc. It goes on to say that each Olympic Spirit is the dominate ruler of an age, which lasts 490 years and that it all started with the age of Bethor, commencing 60 years before the birth of Christ. However, if the cycle commenced with Aratron, it

ould put the start of the preceding age of Aratron at about the middle of the 6 th century BCE, about the time when Pythagoras flourished (circa 570-490 BCE). The age of Bethor lasted to about 430 CE hen Phaleg took over until 920, followed by Och until circa 1410 when Hagith took over until about 1900 when the reins were passed to Ophiel. Thus, Hagith was the ruling Olympic Spirit when the  was written and when such personages as John Dee, Robert Fludd, Cornelius Agrippa, rbatel  was Giordano Bruno, etc. were practicing the “Art.” This may be why Venus is exalted in Dee’s material that was later developed into Enochian Magic. The Enochian letter tables used for construction of  lamens and what-not also appear to be formulated for the age of Venus. That said, we are currently living in an age ruled by Ophiel, which will last until the about 2390 when Phul will step to the plate. Aphorism 17 says:

agically, in the time, day, and hour hour that they rule visibly or invisibly, i nvisibly, the princes of the t he seven overnments are simply called by the names and offices that God gave them according to their  character. The characteristics and the sigil of each Olympic Spirit are then given. Aphorism 27 begins with giving instructions for drawing the Seal of Secrets and then says:

The Prince of the Eastern secrets is in the middle [of the Eastern quadrant] and has 6 Nobles, 3 on each side. Each of them, including the Prince, has 4 Nobles under him. In the same way, the [other] Princes and Nobles have their quadrants of secrets, with their four secrets. But the astern secret is the study of all wisdom. The West is of strength. The South, of cultivation. The orth of a more rigid life . . . . The use of this seal of secrets is that, through it, you may know when the spirits or angels are produced that may teach you secrets they receive from God. . . . The aphorism then discusses the different types of angels or spirits that it refers to—namely referencing the archangels who are otherwise the four horsemen of the apocalypse:

One has the power of the sword , another of pestilence , and another of inflicting famine upon the eople, according to the will of God. Some are destroyers of cities , as those two [Michael and Gabriel, according to lore] were who were sent se nt to overthrow Sodom and Gomorrah Gomorrah and the places pl aces [powe rs and dominion dominions] s]; others are the keepers adjacent to them . . . Some watch over Kingdoms [powers of private persons [tutelary and guardian angels] If the Seal of Secrets is thought of as a schematic of the Archetypal Cosmos, the number codes in Aphorisms 16, 17, and 27 define its anatomy. The Olympic Spirits are the organs of the Arbatel  ’s  Arbatel ’s Seal of Secrets. They exist multidimensionally and “interpenetratingly,” and—as set forth in Hermetic  philosophy—th  philosophy—thee microcos microcosm m of the the individual individual self sel f is holographically holographically related to the the Macrocos Macrocosm m. The The repetition rep etition of the num number 7, in i n which num numbers ber s are a re multiplied ultipli ed by 7, sug s uggests gests expanding, expanding, and multidimensional relationships of the Olympic Spirits, as does the multiplying of numbers by either  100 or 1000. In Aphorism Aphorism 16, there there are said to be a total total “196 “ 196 provinces pro vinces in the the whole w hole Universe.” Universe.” This could be the 7 planetary spheres times the 28 mansions of the moon. Further, 196 reduces to 7, suggesting The All in the One.

Phul Phul (Lun ( Luna) a)

“Seventhly the [wisdom of the] Pigmies pertains to the lowest place, including they who inhabit  the elements and things related to them.”  –from Aphorism 9 (note that Turner’s translation incorrectly reads “the “the Pig Pi gmies do not  possess  possess the lowest place.” Phul is said to rule 7 Provinces. This translates into the equation 7 x 1, making its value 1. Its geometric form is the point and its placement is the center of the Seal. The dimensionless point (or  “infinite “infinite sphere, which is “God”), according accordi ng to Empedocles Empedocles,, is “the “the circle, ci rcle, the the center of which is everywhere, the circumference nowhere.” Remember that in the instructions for drawing the Seal of  Secrets it says of point A:

 Projecting  Projecti ng from the center, this t his is the t he invisible invisi ble God in the entire entir e creature. The Arbatel   suggests that, in addition to representing the Divine Ground, the center of the Seal/yantra  Arbatel  suggests  —where Phu Phul resides–r res ides–represents epresents the the body, body, element elemental al beings, and and the the microcos microcosm m, which is the the reflection of the macrocosm. It is the auric egg or, at least, its yolk.  No inform information ation is given about about Phu Phul’s “legions” “ legions” in Aphorism Aphorism 17, althoug although h the the num number 8 plays a significant role in deciphering the numbers related to legions and how this relates to the lines and  planes in the the Seal Seal of Secrets, which is discussed di scussed furth further er along in th this essay. ess ay. Phul is said to (obviously) rule lunar things. The term “Pygmies” refers to elemental beings: gnomes, fairies, and other nature spirits that embody and have a hand in Nature and man’s interaction with it. The passage “makes men to live 300 years” may be a blind for saying that mastery of Phul consciousness consci ousness makes makes one a master of the the element e lemental al sphere—Natu sphere— Nature, re, including hum human an nature nature with wi thin in the terrestrial sphere (governed by Hagith). Three hundred resolves to 3, a number associated with Hagith (3 x 7=21), drawing a relationship between the elemental and terrestrial spheres.

Ophiel (Mercury)

Sixthly [is the wisdom of] the ministers of punishments in Hell and also those who are obedient to God. –from Aphorism 9 Ophiel is said to rule 14 Provinces. This translates into the equation 7 x 2, making its value 2. Its geometric form is the line, indicative of time and space as it relates to structure and cohesion. I  believe  beli eve it is represent repr esented ed in the the Seal Seal of Secrets as the the lines radiatin radi ating g from from the the center, center, particular those those that partition the Seal into eighths. It is depicted in my color diagram as 8 yellow-orange rays emerging from the center. I believe that the number 8 is key to deciphering how each Olympic Spirit pervades an area of space, described in the text (Aphorism 17) as a “legion.” In the section on Ophiel in Aphorism 17, it states: “His spirits spi rits are ar e 100,000 legion l egions.” s.” 100,000 = (8 x 12.5) x 1000. 12.5 represe r epresen nts an eighth eighth of the the Seal; that is, 14 of the 28 mansions of the moon that fill each quadrant and also 3 Nobles and half a Prince of each quadrant. The term “100,000 legions” also may mean that Ophiel extends from the center into and perhaps  beyond  beyond the the Multiverse Multiverse,, embodyin embodying g the the Pyt Pythag hagoric oric mysteries mysteries of the the 1 and 10. To To equate equate Ophiel Ophiel with w ith the “wisdom of the ministers of punishments in Hell and also whose are obedient to God” may refer  to the angelic realms—from the depths to the heights. (Indeed, there is a question about whether  Ophiel—that is Mercury—is associated with Lucifer. For a discussion on this, see Bridges & Burns. The Little Book of Black Venus – Part Two Olympic Spirits, the Cult of the Dark Goddess, and the Seal of Ameth in the  Journal of the Western Mystery Mys tery Tradition, Tradit ion,  2007, volume 13, number 1, available at: http://jwmt.org/v2n13/book.html http://jwmt.org/v2n13/book.html)) In that the Olympic Spirits are said to rule destiny and that destiny can be mastered by coming into relationship with the Olympic Spirits, they are likened to the Eastern idea of chakras, which are  planes of consciousness—or consciousness—or complexes complexes within consciousness consciousness that that must must be deconstructed deconstructed in the the goal toward “liberation.” As mentioned, the Arbatel   also seems to suggest that the Olympic Spirits are  Arbatel  also  planes of consciousness, consciousness, which are self-lim sel f-limiting iting complexes complexes that that need need to be transcended. transcended. Mercury, Mercury, in Hermetic philosophical alchemy, is associated with the path of the secret fire, the Western equivalent of the Eastern idea of Kundalini shakti and, thus, is the link between the microcosm and macrocosm.

(For more on the the parallels paralle ls between be tween chakras chakras and philos philosophical ophical plan pla nets, see Part Par t 2 The Ladder of the Spheres.)

Hagith (Ven (Ve nus)

 fter a long interval there follows fol lows [the wisdom of] the rebellious rebell ious spirits spir its that t hat are reserved reser ved for the  Last Judgment. –from Aphorism 9 Hagith is said to rule 21 Provinces. This translates into the equation 7 x 3, making its value 3. Its geometric geometric form is the the 2 dimension dimensional al plane. It is represent repres ented ed as the the sm s maller alle r cent c entral ral circle, circ le, divided into into quadrants in the Seal of Secrets. It is colored-code green in my color diagram of the Seal. It represent repres entss the terrestrial sphere. The The quarters represent re present the the 4 elements. elements. The The “rebelli “re bellious ous spirits spiri ts reserv res erved ed for the the Last Judgment” Judgment” may may refer to us —hum  —human an beings beings subject subject to the the rigors rigors secondary to to the the fall of Adam. Hagith is said to rule 4000 legions. This translates as 4 x 1000. Four here may refer to the 4 elemental quarters, which extend out into the multiverse (1000) and are each ruled by a “Prince and 6 nobles.” This is suggested in the statement regarding Hagith in Aphorism 17: “. . . over every thousand, he ordains Kings for their appointed season.”

Och (Sol) “Fourthly [is the wisdom] in Nature and natural things.” –from Aphorism 9

Sol is said to rule 28 Provinces. This translates into the equation 7 x 4, making its value 4. Its geometric form is the tetrahedron. The equation 2 + 8 = 10 reduces to 1, again reiterating ideas about the Empedoclean dimensionless point. It is represented by the larger circle in the Seal of Secrets ithin which the mansions of the moon are plotted and depicted in my color diagram as a golden outer circle. Och is said to have 36,536 legions; that is, 365 and  36. The number 365 refers to the solar year. At one time in the late classical era (about the 3 rd or 4th century) it was associated with Abraxas, a Gnostic deity that personified the solar year. I initially reasoned that 36 could be an allusion to Ophiel (8 rays) + the mansions of the moon (28). It suggested that Och pervades and rules the Cosmos, which was the role of Abraxas, whose sacred number was 365. Plutarch (circa 46-120), however, equates the number 36 with the Tetractys and also with the World because it represents Totality. He arrives at this rationale and number by pythagorically adding together the first four odd and even numbers: 1+3+5+7+2+4+6+8=36. Och is said to “to give 600 years.” I believe that 600 years suggests the hexagram and here represents the celestial sphere. Thus, achieving Och consciousness makes one master of the celestial sphere.

Phaleg (Mars)

[The third type of wisdom] is in corporeal creatures . –from Aphorism 9 Phaleg is said to rule 35 Provinces. This translates into the equation 7 x 5, making its value 5. Its geometric form is the pentahedron. It is depicted in the Seal as lines and rectangles that divide the Seal in two either horizontally or vertically. It is represented in my color diagram as the red squares. Phaleg divides space as if ruling over duality. It is about halves, not quarters. Minimal information is given about Phaleg in Aphorism 17 except that it is referred to as the Prince of Peace and the Intelligence ruling martial affairs. This suggests that the Intelligence manages strife and diplomacy. Strife in Pythagorean Tetractys doctrine are represented by 2 points, denoting duality and complementarities—polar opposites that evolve into 3 points, suggesting equilibrium and harmony.

Bethor (Jupiter)

[The] next [wisdom before the chiefest] is that which is spiritual.  –from Aphorism 9 Bethor is said to rule 42 Provinces. This translates into the equation 7 x 6, making its value 6. Its geometric form is the hexahedron. It is depicted in my diagram as the blue lines and blue accents in the circle. Bethor is said to have 29,000 legions. 8 x 3.5 = 29 x 1000. 8 refers to the pervasion of space; 3.5 refers to 3 Nobles and half a Prince that preside over an elemental quadrant. . Bethor is said to have 42 Kings, 35 Princes, 28 Dukes, 21 Counselors, 14 Ministers, and 7 Messengers, which I believe means that Bethor rules all of space that is within Aratron. He is said to “prolong life to 700 years if God wills.” This may suggest that he who masters Bethor consciousness gains mastery over the planetary sphere.

Aratron (Saturn)

That is the chiefest wisdom, which is from God.  –from Aphorism 9

Aratron is said to rule 49 Provinces. This translates into the equation 7 x 7, making its value 7. Its geometric form is the heptahedron. It is depicted in the Seal and my color diagram as the whole square. Aratron is said to have 36,000 legions. 36, as mentioned, is a reference to the Whole—the World. It can also be said that 8 + 28 = 36 x 1000. Eight refers to the 8 directions of space. Twenty-eight refers to the mansions of the moon. Aratron, which is the boundary of cosmic time and space is about the extended quarters of space. Aratron is said to have 49 Kings, 42 Princes, 5 Presidents, 28 Dukes, 12 Ministers, 14 Familiars, and 7 Messengers, suggesting that Aratron pervades all of and is the limit of  cosmic space.

VIII Orphic Influence?

“How do we mold ourselves into spiritual powers? For this reason, ask Persephone.” am the child of earth and of starry Heaven. This you yourselves also know. I am dry with thirst  and am perishing. Come, give me at once cold water flowing forth from the Lake of Memory.  —  Orphic prayer to be recited upon encountering Mnemosyne in the Afterlife.

Persephone

have flown out of the Circle of Heavy Grief and stepped swift-footed onto the Circle of Joy. I  have made straight for the Breast of the Mistress, the Queen of the Underworld. And now I come as a supplicant to Holy Persephone, that by Her Grace, She sends me to the Seats of the Hallowed. [Saying,] “Happy and Blessed One, you shall be god instead of mortal.”  —Bacchic/Orphic gold tablets, Thurii, Southern Italy, 4th century BCE Allusions to Persephone arose for me during the group Working. In retrospect while reviewing my notes, I wondered whether the Eleusinian and Orphic mysteries of Persephone and Dionysus, lost to time but no doubt reverberating in archetypal consciousness, could be elicited through working with the Arbatel . I was not alone in receiving cryptic content about Persephone. Susanne Iles also received hints. I learned that she had long drawn great inspiration from the Persephone myth in her work as a  professional artist and folklorist. On the night of Wednesday May 12, 2010 (4th mansion of the moon EST, called Aldebaran in the  Picatrix, ruled by Mercury), I recorded that, although I did not experience a narrative dream, I kept envisioning a sphere-like shape made of 8 orange radials—a shape and color that I associated with Ophiel. Images of the ibis, the zoomorphic form of Egyptian Thoth, also recurred. The relevancy here

is that during my previous solo Arbatel  Working in April, I made contact with an entity during my first Ophiel evocation who introduced himself as Thoth and sometimes appeared thereafter as an ibis. That Wednesday night, in the period in which I get to the brink of sleep, I was startled back into full consciousness by this message: “How do we mold ourselves into spiritual powers?” (And the answer:) “For this reason, ask  Persephone.” On the very night that I received this message, Susanne had a dream, recorded the following morning in our group dream diary, in which two old men were sadly reminiscing and gazing in anxiety at a large brown satchel that had belonged to a woman they once knew. As Susanne explained it, the two men were both in love with the woman, who distanced herself from both of them so as not to ruin their friendship. The men were trying to trick each other into opening the satchel. Finally, one of the men addressed the other, saying, “Why are we torturing ourselves like this. Why don’t we make her  open it. She has the key.” At which, he pointed directly at Susanne (LOL). This got me thinking about material I came across months previously while researching an article that included discussion about the pentagram. I stumbled upon information about the doctrine of the  Pentemychos, a philosophy told as creation mythology and attributed to the 6th  century BCE  presocratic philosopher Pherecydes of Syros, the legendary teacher of Pythagoras. (See the brief  Pherecydes of Syros. http://pediaview.com/openpedia/Pherecydes_of_Syros#Creation_of_the_world and the chapter on the Heptamychos in the book Ancilla to the Pre-Socratics  by Kathleen Freeman here http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/app/app09.htm ). [Both sites were accessed and active as of  July 5, 2013.] In the Pentemychos, the interplay between prototypic deities Chronos (pre-ordered Time), Zas (Life force, Eros), and Chthonie (“That Which Underlies the Earth”) results in the creation of the Cosmos. Chronos as pre-Cosmic Time (i.e., Time and Timelessness) is related to Kronos (ordered Time), ho is the Hellenic version of Roman Saturn. Zas is a prototype of Zeus (Roman Jupiter) as the Life Principle. Chthonie is the prima materia that becomes Gaia (Earth) through union with Zas. Note that Gaia and Demeter, among other goddesses such as Rhea and Hekate—and also Isis and the Phrygian Cybele (Magna Mater) —were regarded as cognates (the same goddess under different names and forms) and that a name for Demeter is Chthonia. In some mythology, Demeter and her brother, Zeus, are paired, and their child is Persephone. In brief, a structure made of five recesses (a pente-mychos), which may be or be in Chthonie, is inseminated by Chronos, who provides the semen/seed, and by Zas, who represents the activity and  potency of insemination. This activity gives rise to the “offspring of the gods.” This event, however, occurs in the midst of an archetypal drama that pits light and dark and order and chaos against each other. The agents of chaos are ultimately overcome and cast down into Tartarus, the lowest and most dismal plane of existence, a Hell lower than Hades. Although most of the doctrine of the Pentemychos is lost, it is thought that within it were wisdoms about the nature of life, enlightenment, reincarnation, and the afterlife.

When I read Susanne’s dream record for the night of May 12, 2010, I imagined that the two men were Kronos and Zeus sadly and anxiously pondering what had become of the world fashioned from their  liaison with their beloved but lost Chthonie (a large brown leather satchel, being a mychos —a recess or receptacle—and indicative of earth). Curiously, when I was doing solitary Arbatel  work before engagement with the Cohort, I had an odd lucid dream that included a large brown leather satchel. In this dream, I found myself in a recording studio that had bright orange walls. A certain very famous rock musician who was known to identify himself with the philosophical planet Saturn was one of the people milling about this studio. He told me that he had some business to attend to but that he would like to spend some time with me. I was to meet him at a beachfront. The beachfront happened to be a shabby beachfront arcade that was part of  a recurring dream I had had for years. These recurring dreams usually had to do with me searching for  a different vast, scenic, and serene tropical beach—like Horseshoe Bay, Bermuda, sans tourists—that I had once visited (in dream) but could not find again. Instead, I would end up on a crowded, dingy, gravelly beachfront before a bustling but equally shabby arcade where I would run into relatives and (on occasion) apocalyptic tidal waves. Thus, I was to meet the rock icon/Saturn at the yucky beach and, with him, finally go find the really nice beach. I found myself sitting and patiently waiting in a gazebo in the environs of the arcade. I had a large,  brown leather satchel in my lap. The rock icon finally called to me from the beach area, which was fenced in. As I approached, caught in the lucidity of the dream, I was breathless with excitement about here life had taken me. And then, it being a lucid dream but not exactly a conscious one, I decided that I had to take a detour to the ladies room before joining the celebrity. Off I went into the dingy arcade at which the dream drastically changed into a grotesque kind of birth trauma nightmare that included filthy, ripped-out toilets and a crazy, bloodied, screaming girl wrapped in a plastic-wrap fetal caul. That would not be the last time, though, that the rock icon would show up in my dreams—and specifically show up as Saturn on nights in which Saturn was the ruling planet of a the day’s lunar  mansion. Although these types of dreams were relatively enjoyable and made me feel as if something safe and special were happening, the ensuing years after the initial  Arbatel  working were difficult and coincidentally marked by inauspicious astrological Saturn transits in my horoscope. On one occasion, after I had gone through a year of a Saturn square Saturn transit and was in the midst of less calamitous but just as onerous and as lengthy Saturn square Sun transit, I found myself sitting in a conference room that I had to sit in every Monday morning for a weekly editorial staff meeting at a ob that had been particularly hellish but that I was lucky to have during the economic downturn years of 2010 through 2012. I realized that the walls of the conference room were the exact same orange color as the recording studio in the dream I had had about a year before. Then, the second part of the dream—the nightmare—made sense. I was in a long, caustic, and resistant transition. As for the Persephone theme, in addition to the message received on May 12, 2010, the theme also leaked into the nocturnal communications of May 13 th , which coincided with the fifth mansion of the moon, ruled by Bethor (Jupiter).

The falling-to-sleep message was the number 169, which resolves to 7—the number of the classical  planets. The number can also be interpreted to be an allusion to the central pillar of the Cabalist Tree of Life: Kether (1)-Tiphareth (6)-Yeshod (9). Shortly after this, an image of bright, vivid flames and the words (a man’s voice speaking), “She is my sister!” startled me awake. The brother of Persephone would be Dionysus, who was also her son (by a liaison with her father/uncle, Zeus), according to Orphic mythology. Although artifacts and sound bytes of the Eleusian and Orphic mysteries exist, what exactly was really going on and why during them is unclear, most especially what the big transformational and initiatic experience was. Professors Fritz Graf and Sarah Iles Johnston tell us in  Ritual Texts for the Afterlife Orpheus and the acchic Gold Tablets that the gist of the program may have been how to get a pass out of Hades and into Heaven through proper ritual observance, ritual reenactment of myth, and subjection to an initiatic episode that included shamanic-type practices (use of intoxicants, ecstatic dance and rhythm, and other mind-altering practices that could get dicey for the initiate).1 My thoughts were that the messages I received referred to processes related to the so-called secret fire, also known as Kundalini in Yoga lore and, in little-known ancient Heliopolitan Greek  mysticism, as the spereima (that is, the serpent power , which is also a euphemism for Kundalini shakti). In Cabala, the name of God: Yod Heh Vau Heh, we are told, signifies Father-Mother-Son-Daughter  and the sefiroh Chokmah (2), Binah (3), Tiphareth (6), and Malkuth (10). Chokmah and Binah (Wisdom and Understanding) are Father-Mother through whose emanation duality and the manifest universe emerge. Tiphareth and Malkuth (Beauty and Kingdom) are Son and Daughter, the reflection of the Macrocosm in the Microcosm, with the Son being the intermediary in the path of return. The  placement of these sefiroh forms a Tau cross.

Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) equates the Son with the Holy Guardian Angel (HGA), a construct discussed in the 14th century grimoire The Book of Abramelin and earlier defined and called the Augoeides by the Neoplatonist Porphyry, who was a student Plotinus (who was said to be a student o Pherecydes of Syros). According to Crowley, the Father refers to the highest spiritual attainment

(union with the divine principle, equated with the sphere of Kether in the Cabalist Tree of Life); the Son—also called the Younger Brother—refers to the HGA, which is the ideal Self. The union of the HGA with the natural soul—the Daughter—self-actualizes the soul so that it realizes its divine nature,  becoming the Mother that joins with the Father.2,3 The idea is that the natural soul is transformed through a spiritual spark or intercessor—sometimes also called the secret fire or serpent power—so that it overcomes its animal nature and realizes its spiritual nature and all its benefits. [See Part 2 On Perseus and Andromeda and the Transformation of Soul to Spirit for more on this topic.] On the night of July 11th (9th mansion of the moon, Algebha, ruled by Luna), during the second phase of the group Working, I awoke sometime around 5 AM  to record a dream and fell back into a light sleep. I heard this message: “In some more common traditions, the Prince is as it is in the  Arbatel , but She is the personification of death and anger, which must be thrown off.” The sense was that when death and anger are thrown off, “Her” real nature (which is our real nature) is known. My immediate thought was to go back to the subject of Persephone, who represents Death (Persephone means She Who Destroys [perse]  the Light [phone] ) and whose mother Demeter  represents anger under the epithet Erynis [“furious”], described in the Persephone-Demeter myth as reaking havoc in enraged response to what Zeus, Hades, and the other gods did regarding the abduction of her daughter). That this message should emerge on an evening ruled by Phul is also meaningful because Demeter, whose name means Divine Mother, is the personification of Mother  Earth. Rather than an Eden, though, earthly material existence is brutal. It is the realm of the eater and the eaten: ferocity and death. Spirituality has been an “out” that human beings have created to cope ith and get beyond this predicament. I was also thinking about the parallels between Demeter and the Hindu goddess Durga, who is called Chandi –Ferocious, Angry—because she ferociously slays demons, which are, in actuality, one’s faults, vices, and neurotic conditioning: Mahahanu Great Deception Parivarita Aimlessness Bidala Hypocrisy Kruddha Anger  Ugrasya Savagery Durdhara Given to temptation Chanda Viciousness Munda Stupidity Shumbha Conceit  Nishumbha Self-deprecation A dark form of Durga is Kali. Kali is a named derived from a word that means both black and Time. Thus, Kali’s name is said to translate as “She Who Turns All Forms to Ashes.” In this way, Kali  perhaps bears some similarity to Persephone in that both goddesses have an edge and their  contemplation holds the key to understanding and transcending the brutality of life and the wheel of 

fate. Whereas much of ceremonial magic is focused on taking refuge in the angel Princes that are envisioned guarding the quarters of space against plague-like bugaboos, and although it is fashionable to get all sappy about a nurturing, wish-fulfilling, or sexually availing goddess-figure, what do we really need to understand about the Divine Mother ( De-meter ) of the Universe? She is not only the nurturing Mother, she is Furious Nature and the root the World of Formation and the ladder of the spheres. Her child (whether it be Persephone or the dozen dying and resurrecting male deities, including Dionysus and Christ) is the key to liberation.

The Pythagorean Pentacle

On the nights of Friday May 28 (21 st  mansion, ruled by Saturn) and Tuesday night, June 1, 2010 (25th mansion ruled by Mercury) I dreamed that I was performing a banishing ritual with a sword. I was ielding a jewel-covered, silver short sword that I drew from a black leather sheath. The jewels ere like cabochons assembled to represent the chakras. I was standing in my living room, facing  North. During the dream on May 28th , I heard myself shout a banishing spell very sincerely and forcefully, and I stabbed at space with such emphasis that my real right hand twitched, and I startled awake. After waking from the same banishing dream on June 1 st , I fell back to sleep and had a dream in hich I equated the Seal of Secrets with the Pythagorean pentagram. I was told that the pentagram was not like the “Goat of Mendes” (i.e., Satanic) pentagram. I was to superimpose the Pythagorean pentagram on the Seal of Secrets and study it. I heard the word “Rubedo,” and the idea was that the Seal of Secrets, or whatever was happening that evening, was is related to the Rubedo phase of alchemy. Four stages of The Great Work: Nigredo, blackening: dissolution, individuation. Albedo, whitening: purification, purging; the moon, female. Citrinitas, yellowing: spiritualization, enlightenment; the sun, male. Rubedo, reddening: unification of man with god, unification of the limited with the unlimited.

One of the earliest ideas about the pentagram emerged within Pythagoreanism in which the pentagram as called the Hygeia in reverence of the Goddess Hygeia. It symbolized wholeness. The letters υ γ ε ι α –hygeia—were written around the circumference of Greek pentacle amulets and the word SALVS (“health”) were written around the Latin versions. For medieval neopythagoreans, υγεια was a mnemonic for the 5 elements: hudor (water), gaia (earth), heile, (heat/fire), Hieron (idea “a divine thing”), and aer (air). The association of the pentagram and pentacle with wholeness and health persisted long into the Middle Ages and mid-modern period. The pentagram or pentacle (regardless of whether it was

drawn “inverted” or not) was a symbol of and talisman for health and protection, including among Christians for whom it represented the Star of  Bethlehem and the five wounds of Christ. In the late modern period, it began to be exclusively equated with heretical and diabolical spirituality (much to the credit of Eliphas Levi’s revisionism) and currently is nearly exclusively equated with Wicca/modern Paganism and (inverted) Satanism.

Well, I played with the Seal and pentagram for quite some time, and this is what I came up with, orienting the Seal according to the compass points, as if the top of the Seal were oriented toward the north:

Compare with Agrippa’s microcosmic pentagram:

In brief, “That thou Art” and “As Above, so Below.” I suppose that was why I kept dreaming that I as “on” the Seal or that it was my body. References 1. Graf F, Iles Johnston S. Ritual Texts for the Afterlife Orpheus and the Bacchic Gold Tablets. New York: Taylor and Francis, 2007. 2 Crowley A. Liber CDXVIII  The Vision and the Voice. Available at http://hermetic.com/crowley/libers/Liber418.pdf . Accessed July 5, 2013. 3. Crowley A, Desti M, Waddell L. Book 4 Liber ABA. Available at http://hermetic.com/crowley/book-4/ . Accessed July 5, 2013.

IX Stealing Fire from Heaven “You might feel sick and call in sick.”

At the end of the month-long working during May 2010, there was a feeling among the four members of the Arbatel  Cohort of a lack of definition about the information being received. We were enthralled about the dynamic we had happened upon, but we couldn’t really get it together. Hints, teases, and diversions beset us, and we never figured out what was really so important about the mansions of the moon nor did we get to play together with the angels associated with them going forward. It seemed that the Olympic Spirits were just as exasperated with our thickness—an early-on in the game, too. On Sunday May 16, 2010, 5 AM  (new moon in Gemini, 7 th  lunar mansion called Aldhira in the Picatrix, ruled by Saturn), I dreamed that I was tagging along behind a couple who were strolling

through a park. The man was Aratron. He was tall, lean, and debonair. The woman, who appeared to  be his wife, was short, plumb and dowdy—very “earthy,” that is—Phul perhaps. She had short straight brown hair and thick, feral, bucked teeth with a space in the middle of them In the dream, I was walking a few steps behind Aratron and Phul. Phul then turned to me while Aratron continued walking, as if dismissive of my presence. The feeling was that he and Phul meant to walk on ahead to talk in confidence about what do about me and the others in the cohort. I was supposed to scram and leave them to commiserate. Phul simply said, “We have to go figure something out. Bye” and turned on her heels to catch up with Aratron. But we were maybe stealing fire from heaven—and there is always a fallout for that. Volatile events overtook us during the month and going forward. RO acquired an illness that included death-defying spiking fevers, complete with hallucinations. His malady sent him to the hospital for a while. Susanne also was beset with a debilitating febrile illness, and The Scribbler reported uncharacteristic mood changes. I myself went into full-throttle menopause in the first week of May and also acquired a  painful musculoskeletal condition that persisted for more than a year and was separately interpreted  by about five mostly unrelated acquaintances living in different parts of the world—including Susanne—as an energy vacuum laid on me by a person I had been close to for a short while. (It was a  bit creepy, considering that people who did not know each other or each other’s story about me were using terms like “talons,” “tethers,” and “tangles” to describe what was going on in the left side of my  back.) After slightly more than year of unemployment during the economic downturn that hit the skids toward the end of 2008, I had acquired a full-time job. The new job began June 1, 2010, which was immediately after the Cohort finished its first group working. Acquiring a job seemed like a great  blessing—as a steady income is—but, as previously intimated, the position was characterized by a  particularly toxic office environment, and my sojourn there was one of the more oppressive life situations I have had to endure. Two months into the job, when the cohort was attempting a second round of dream work, I was involved in a head-on car crash. Although my car was totaled, my injuries were mild. However, between the job and what gets diagnosed as “mild traumatic brain injury,” in the ER setting, I was in a rather jittery, dazed, and pathetic condition for a while. It was shortly before this accident, while the group was involved in its second working, that one of  the hypnogogic messages that descended upon me was “Getting adjusted, you may feel sick and call in sick.” And this was how we Cohort members were feeling and continued to feel for a while.  Now, we all have trials, and we wonder why “bad things happen to good people.” “Bad things” aren’t happening, though; things are just happening and one person’s (or sentient being’s) pleasure is often gotten at the expense of another’s. If you don’t believe me, think about the quality of life that the creature you are consuming had before being “processed” the next time you bite into a chicken tender. Or read the labels about where most of your clothes were made until you alight on the vision of a scrawny child chained to sewing machine on an assembly line 24/7 for the reward of about 2 cents a day, or, of course, just pick up a newspaper and read the tales of abject desperation between the fluff  about the high-life of coddled celebrities.

Things just happen in the realm of material existence, which the early Upanishads refer to as the realm of the Eater and the Eaten. It is the ouroboros swallowing its tail in the perennial act of selfconsumption. It bites, which why people turn to spirituality in one form or another (including magia) for solace. In that context, trials and misfortunes are sometimes interpreted as the gateways to insight and transformation. There is also talk of fate, destiny, karma, and merit and demerit. All of these issues are tied into what some Western esotericists referred to as the ladder of the spheres (the  philosophical planets reflected in the human person) and some Eastern mystics referred to as the

chakras. Correspondences between the seven classical planets and the sefiroh of the Kabalist Tree of Life and also the stages of alchemical processes have been made in Western Occultism. Although the Hermetic mystics believed that the philosophical planets were reflected in esoteric human anatomy—like “chakras”—I don’t think the planets can be exactly paired with chakras, although it has been done. The major chakras correspond with endocrine glands and major nerve plexuses and, esoterically speaking, they are part and parcel of Indic philosophical ideas about the doctrine of emanation. Doctrines on emanation exist in the Samkhya philosophy of India, which influences Tantra and Yoga; Kabala, Valentinian Gnosticism; Hermetic alchemy; presocratic philosophy; and other mystical systems. In a nutshell, the doctrines explain how something inscrutable, spacious, and transcendental  becomes, through a series of stages, the material world. Spiritual practice is, thus, an attempt to ascend back up through the planes of emanation away from the material to the etheric and then transcendent. (See the essay The Ladder of the Spheres in Part 2 of this book for a little more about this.) On another, more familiar and pedestrian level, the chakras are mind states that reflect your  developmental conditioning. In this way, they are also your neuroses and subconscious blocks—the “things” that make your feel, act, and behave in a certain way for better or worse and for reasons that you often do not allow yourself to know. There are forms of meditation related to chakra-work that are meant to lift out, deconstruct, and discard this static cling and irascible imprinting on consciousness that makes you a robot instead of a willful, lucid person. In fact, much of meditation  practice is this. It is to get back to the Garden, so to speak where you can recover your original mind. The classical planets had a history of being the celestial representations of archonic deities. The Western Hermetic philosophical alchemists viewed them in a way similar to how Eastern yogis regard the chakras. They represented conditioned, imprinted psychodynamic mind states that influenced behavior and circumstance. The laboratory chemical processes of “purifying” metals associated with the planets and of moving through the stages of the alchemical process in general ere metaphor and ritual toward self-actualization. In yoga, this self-actualization is called attaining the vajra sharira, the “diamond body.” In alchemy, it is called finding The Philosopher’s Stone and achieving the Opus Magnum, the Great Work. I would like to think that some of the trying times I—and others in the Cohort—experienced after the group working were exercises in character-building. After all, deeper awareness of self, motive, and volition leading to paradigmatic shifts often come from being jarred, shaken up, traumatized. Any serious student of Tantric or alchemical disciplines knows this. The disciplines undertaken in these

systems are often meant to instigate a catharsis of consciousness—an overhaul, a cleanup, a reordering of perspective and priorities. X Correspondences

In the interim between the Arbatel  Cohort’s working in May and July 2010, I attempted to go back to meditational/visionary work and continue the dream work as well. The theme of dreams and other   procedures at that time had to do proofreading, correcting, and sorting documents that had to do with the Olympic Spirits and also about pairing up the Olympic Spirits. I think the information I received as meant to further elucidate how the Olympic Spirits operate as psychodynamic processes and, thus, why I often dreamed that the Seal of Secrets was something related to my body or something I as superimposed on. Complementarities

On the nights of July 1 and 2, I kept waking in half sleep to messages about pairing the Olympic Spirits into couples. On the first of these 2 nights, I kept seeing a square that was cut up into 8 parts. The parts were supposed to be male-female pairs of the Olympic Spirits. Earth was an additional sphere. During the day, I placed the planets in a diagram similar to the Tree of Life, with Saturn at the apex, and paired them up. 7-0 Aratron + Earth (Kronos-Rhea/Saturn Ops) husband/wife 6-5 Bethor + Phaleg (Zeus-Athena/Jupiter-Minerva) father/daughter (or if Phaleg were better thought to represent Ares/Mars, the dynamic would be father/son) 4-1 Och + Phul (Apollo-Artemis/Apollo-Diana) brother/sister  3-2 Hagith and Ophiel (Hermes-Aphrodite/Mercury-Venus) priest/priestess Meditations on these relationships and pathworking through mnemonic diagrams based on them may  be useful endeavors.

Virtues and Vices

Besides this sequence, I otherwise dreamed about lists and papers that had information about the Spirits and the Seal that had to be compared, studied, proofread, and revised. On the one hand, I was getting instruction about the Seal being a mnemonic device, on the other, my work-a-day life as a medical editor was perhaps leeching into my dream content. On July 14 (13 th mansion, ruled by Jupiter), for example, I woke up at about 2 AM  after about 2½ hours sleep. I had been dreaming about individual sections of information on a page. As in other dreams that I had been having, I was looking at a white piece of paper or booklet that had lines on it that were supposed to be the information. I did not see words, just blocks of lines that began with paragraph indentations. I also had a series of  cryptic messages about a person’s orientation to the Seal that I roused myself from liminal consciousness to record. Included in this sequence was the aforementioned message, “Getting adjusted, you may feel sick and call in sick.” During this sequence, I was told that the person working with the  Arbatel  is “challenged” by the “shape” and is mostly working with Saturn. In addition, I was told that there is a distinction or  division between old and new information and that younger persons (younger in regards to both age and lack of experience) are more affected by the content or effects of the Seal than more mature (more experienced) persons. In brief, perhaps the message was that people who are more spiritually and  philosophically developed and who have their priorities straight in relation to the Grand Scheme of  Things have an easier time navigating the morass called Life. Of interest is that the neologism SALGI was “heard,” which I took as a reference to the term SALIGIA, the Latin mnemonic for the 7 deadly sins: Superbia (pride), Avaritia (greed), Luxuria (extravagance, lust), Ira (wrath, anger), Gula (gluttony), Invidia (envy), and Acedia (sloth).

 Now, according to Gnostic doctrine that influenced philosophical alchemy, the soul is sullied as it descends through the planetary spheres of emanation to material embodiment. Indeed, the 7 deadly sins were paired with the planetary archons, but these vices also have corresponding virtues.

Planet Saturn Jupiter Mars Sol Venus Mercury Luna

Vice Sloth Acedia Gluttony Gula Anger Ira Conceit Superbia Lust Luxuria Envy Invidiia Avarice Avarita

Virtue Diligence Temperance Patience Humility Chastity Kindness Charity

And so, the messages received on July 14 were about the relationship between individual mortal  persons and the archonic planets as states of consciousness and conditioning that are meant to be recognized and transformed. Finally, on July 16, (15th mansion, ruled by Sol), in continuing to dream about examining written information, I was looking at or working with three sets or blocks—or phases—of a single body of  information. One part dealt with universal generalities or the environment, another with the body or  interpersonal interactions, and the last, which was the most important and particular, with the self and its relationship to the Self. The details are lost to me but the sense is certainly that one should not sweat the small stuff and should maintain the right perspective on place and meaning in the Grand Scheme of Things.

XI A Birthday Present

After deciding what the Olympic Spirits were in relation to the Seal of Secrets, I began to think, “Well, all that is great and grand, but what has it got to do with my puny, miserable life?” In the wee hours of the morning of January 17th, 2011—my birthday, on which I was born at about 4:30 AM  51 years previously, I dreamed that I had received a communication about Mercury. The number 373 as given to me. Upon waking, I reasoned that this number referred to the Princes in the quarters of  the Seal of Secrets. The quarters were composed of 7 compartments consisting of a prince flanked by three nobles. I also had a vision in half-sleep of hills or ziggurat-like structures on which the Princes resided—and so my mind was harkening to the idea of the quarters: the Princes in the Seal of Secrets stand at the quarters of the elemental sphere at the border of the geometry of Hagith and Phaleg I heard the words in my early morning liminal daze about this: “the guardians of the gates of the ‘Gonees.’” I first thought to look up this term “gonees,” but then I knew the word-form was a hypnogogic neologism related to the Sanskrit word ganas and the Latin goetia . The Sanskrit term ganas refers to

elemental beings. The Greco-Roman germ goetia means “sorcery,” referring to a specific kind of  sorcery that involved conjuring spirits of one or another kind. I concluded that the Seal of Secrets of the World is a mnemonic, calendar-like device in which a  person can place him or herself in a certain 23-hour or so time span (i.e., mansion of the moon) in a  particular part of a week, month, astrological sign, and season and then reflect on, accommodate, or  use all of the tutelary entities associated with that particular time frame. Aphorism 27 includes the following information, including mention of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, also imagined as ill winds in medieval mandalas.

ut they have names taken from their offices and powers, according to the gift that God has given to each one. One has the power of the sword [war; red horse], another of pestilence [death; pale horse], and another of inflicting famine upon the people [black horse], according to the will of  God. Some are destroyers of cities [conquest; white horse], as those two [Michael and Gabriel, according to lore]  were who were sent to overthrow Sodom and Gomorrah and the places adjacent  to them . . . Some watch over Kingdoms [dominions, powers]; others are the keepers of private ersons [tutelary and guardian angels] Thus, the Arbatel  is telling us that each quarter in the Seal of Secrets, which refers to a direction, season, and chunk of the Multiverse, is overseen by an angelic prince and flanked by six other angelic entities, three on each side (seven angels; the seventh in the center flanked by three on each side = 373). In addition to these entities, any given day is influenced by the angel of the corresponding moon mansion, moon phase, day of the week, month, and astrological sign. A person who has all this information can place herself at a point in the wheel of the Seal of Secrets and get some idea of the flavor of the day. To fully appreciate and use the “geography” of the Seal of Secrets, we might need to know which  particular archangels and angels of the various groupings cited by medieval esotericists were recognized by the original students of the Arbatel.  The Arbatel  does not provide names of any angels specifically associated with particular portions of Seal. Different sources vary on the names of these archangels.The lineup of  Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim (1486–1535) was Michael (Who is Like God?; Sol), Gabriel (Strength of God, Luna), Camael (Sight of God; Mars), Raphael (Healer of God; Mercury), Sachiel (Covering of God, Jupiter), Anael (Joy of God, Venus), and Cassiel (Speed of God; Saturn). The classical guardians of the four quarters are Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel, based on Hebrew Merkabah mysticism but often arranged differently in Hermetic magical traditions than in Jewish mysticism. In a number of medieval mandala, Michael is associated with the East and the element of fire; Uriel with the South and the element earth; Raphael with the West and the element air; and Gabriel with the North and the element of water. The beginning of Aphorism 27, which discusses the nature of the Princes of the quarters is repeated here:

The Prince of the Eastern secrets is in the middle [of the Eastern quadrant] and has 6 Nobles, 3 on each side. Each of them, including the Prince, has 4 Nobles under him. In the same way, the [other] Princes and Nobles have their quadrants of secrets, with their four secrets. But the astern secret is the study of all wisdom. The West is of strength. The South, of cultivation. The orth of a more rigid life . . . . The use of this seal of secrets is that, through it, you may know when the spirits or angels are produced that may teach you secrets they receive from God. . . . For the author of the Arbatel— who may have been influenced by Roman and Orphic spirituality despite the sincerely pious Christian gloss throughout the text— the Eastern quarter might have been assigned to an angel associated with Jupiter (wisdom), the South with angel associated with Saturn (cultivation), the West with an angel associated with Sol (strength), and the North with an angel associated with Luna (the material world). Again, my message regarding the princes received on July 11, 2010 is worth repeating: “In some more common traditions, the Prince is as it is in the  Arbatel,  but She is the personification of death and anger, which must be thrown off.” That is, angelic princes guard the quarters of space on the  borders of the material world according to an established paradigm, but the goal of the human organism, regardless, is to transcend that sphere. Aphorism 27 says that persons and cultures have their own names for various angels—and also stresses elsewhere in the text—that spiritual entities, including the Olympic Spirits, are named after  their offices and roles but may give more personal names and energy signatures to the people who enter into communication with them. Also, the take home message for me—and for others in the Cohort, which was stressed in our psychonautic dealings with the Olympic Spirits—is that all this stuff about assignment of roles, the identification and naming of governing spiritual entities, and the  partitioning and theming of esoteric time and space is all well and fine but is provisional and, ultimately, arbitrary. The all is in the one and the one is in the all, and it is all intimate and interdependent. The higher magic of the Arbatel is to acquire a transcendental, wisdom-seeking approach to one’s embodiment and experience one’s place in the Multiverse and not necessarily divine whether tomorrow might be a good day to sell a cow or marry a widow based on portents ascribed to one or another lunar mansion and ruling angels of the hour, day, month, and season. Finally, the author states that all that is needed to address an angelic or tutelary entity is to believe

. . . seriously, with a great mental desire, faith, constancy, and without doubt that what he asks he  shall receive from God, the father of all Spirits. This faith surmounts all seals and brings them into subjection of the will of man. Calling angels through their characters follows this faith, which depends on divine revelation . . . .

XII Postscript

Shortly before deciding to put my notes together and publish them, I took a passing interest in Enochia. I decided, for several reasons, that its study was not appropriate for me. However, in the meantime, I entered into a conversation about it with a young man, A. Harvey, who I met through meanderings on Web-based social media. Although he was more advanced in Enochian magic than I as, our experiences were similar. Our conversation quickly turned to discussion about the Olympic Spirits. He began working with them and reporting his experiences to me. Although his evocation experiences have been markedly different from my own, they are quite elegant and impressive. I will add that his evocation approach is much more traditional and in line with routines and paradigms established by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. He, too, received an impression of the Seal of Secrets as a multi-dimensional organism. His intention was to plot 112 points within it as a cubeof-space/polygonal star formation. After some brainstorming with me, he accomplished his goal. Below is a redrawn black and white image of A. Harvey’s Seal of Secrets in multidimensional space. The image contains 112 points in which the angels of the lunar mansions reside. The fellow now has an ambition of figuring out who “lives” where and what is supposed to be done about that once known . . . .

Another idea I would like to put out in this postscript is that the  Arbatel might not be an incomplete text but an example of medieval steganography, which includes the art of embedding encrypted messages—or ciphertexts—in straightforward documents. That is, the whole  Arbatel  might  be contained, in encrypted form, in the Isagoge. Besides the number riddles, a sign that this might be the case is the author’s sometimes arbitrary use of capitalizations. Further exploration of this might be undertaken by a person familiar with medieval Latin and steganography techniques. Part 2

But I Digress

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Dabbling with the Secret Grimoire of Turiel The Ladder of the Spheres East and West On Perseus and Andromeda and the Transformation of Soul to Spirit The Chosen Ideal Meditation and Its Effects The Azoth Mandala Liber 821 or How I Found the Goddess and What She Did to Me When I Found Her Message to the Reader

1 Dabbling with the Secret Grimoire of Turiel

After some bumbling about and misery through the fall of 2010, I decided to meditate on planetary “pentagrams” found in The Secret Grimoire of Turiel , a late 19th century document that falsely claims to be of more ancient origin and includes content about the Olympic Spirits. I also had gone through the Little Book of Black Venus and the Heptamaron of Dr. John Dee (1527–  1609). I deemed the operation in the  Little Book of Black Venus to be unfeasible although I do happen to have a bull’s horn hanging over my front door—an artifact from one of my great grandmother— meant to avert the malocchio. As for The Secret Grimoire of Turiel, I could find virtually no background about it or its  pseudonymous author Marius Malchus (Hebrew, “Bitter Angel”). I could write up a brief summary about the grimoire but this jocular tidbit of a review from the HERALD-TEPAPHONE A Quarterly  Publication of IAO Camp, Ordo Templi Orientis,  Summer Solstice, 1995 e.v., Volume One, Number  Two—a publication or document seemingly put out by Chaote-Discordian-Thelemite(s), might do. I found it here: http://www.luckymojo.com/esoteric/societies/thelemic/ordotempliorientis/htl/ht1-2.txt (Accessible as of July 5, 2013), but it can be found elsewhere on the Web:

The Secret Grimoire of Turiel, Being a System of Ceremonial Magic of the Sixteenth Century introduced and edited by Marius Malchus. Sure Fire Press, 1994, (42 pp., $6.00?). While visiting the Canary Islands in 1927, Mr. Malchus purchased from his tour guide an English translation of this grimoire (he was also offered the original Latin MS, dated 1518, but did not buy it). Later he recopied the grimoire and destroyed the original (for reasons which are apparently  supposed to be clear to the reader) so that his personal copy was—he believed—the only English

translation extant. The grimoire is a short little thing, very Catholic, that combines elements of the Greater and   Lesser Keys with the Olympic planetary spirits—nothing especially exciting. A couple of pages at  the end are plagiarized from A.E. Waite. This little book is of personal interest to me because I happen to know that Malchus's copy of the rimoire is not the only extant English translation. The fact is that the 1518 Latin MS made its way from the Canary Islands to Papua, New Guinea, where my father purchased it in 1943 from a native girl, under rather mysterious circumstances. Years later, I discovered it among my father's war memorabilia and prepared an English translation, after which, for reasons which should be clear to the reader, I destroyed the original sixteenth-century manuscript. —A. Quiller III  The introduction of the Teiton Press reprint of A Complete Book of Magic Science: Containing the ethod of Constraining and Exorcising Spirits,  allegedly transcribed from a 16th century artifact by Frederick Hockley (1809-1885) provides some clarity. The editor of the reprint, Dietrich Bergman, notes that similarities exist between A Complete Book of Magic Science  and The Secret Grimoire of  Turiel  and that evidence suggests that both are probably grimoire cobbled together during the late 19 th century and, like so much material generated at that time, given “histories.” [*] In any event, The Secret Grimoire of Turiel  sometimes comes up in discussions about the Arbatel   because it features sigils, seals, and evocations of the Olympic Spirits. Some of the seals are similar  to those that appear in the online version of P. Manly Hall’s The Secret Teachings of All Ages (http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/secret_teachings/sta24.htm). The source given for the images is a conveniently unpublished and otherwise unmentioned “mediaeval” book called the Book of Spirits. Unlike the Arbatel,  the operations given in The Secret Grimoire of Turiel  as well as the  Heptamaron are plain, stepwise, wing-of-bat, eye-of-newt, boil-and-bubble, toil-and-trouble Solomonic-type ritual instructions to conjure the Olympic Spirits to ask them to help you find gold, get over on a lawsuit, successfully seduce someone, or whatever.  Nevertheless, I began to conduct meditations on the planetary pentagrams found in The Secret  Grimoire of Turiel. During the first week of working with the pentagrams, I took some diligence in  banishing and circle casting—not in accordance with the instructions of the grimoire but nevertheless according to the basic template. I dropped much of the fanfare by the second week in relation to how the operation was evolving. The meditations were done in the mornings at about 7:30 or 8 AM . In the first week, the recurring impressions were the names of angels—not angels assigned to the respective planets and days exactly; rather, the same angels sometimes using variations of a name, ere presenting themselves so-to-speak. I had begun this operation on the 10th  of December, which was a Friday, and so the focus was on the  pentagram of Venus. The name Sachiel presented itself to me with the inner vision of a dark  “sapphire” blue entity. Sachiel is associated with Jupiter. Interestingly, the following evening, I visited an ailing friend and did some “energetic healing” on her. I found myself quietly evoking Sachiel. My friend told me several times that she was seeing “sapphire” blue stars before her eyes.

As the week went on, Tzadkiel (a variant of the term “Sachiel”) frequently presented itself. Variants of the angel Uriel also appeared nearly daily. On Saturday it presented itself as Ariel, on Sunday as Oriel, on Monday Oriphiel, on Tuesday as Ophaneal. Cassiel also showed up on Tuesday. On Thursday, I had an inner vision of Jupiter and of Tzadkiel and Iophiel, angels that are both associated ith Jupiter. The color of the angels changed as the week progressed, with Sachiel starting out, as mentioned,  being dark sapphire blue and Ariel bright red. The angels, however, quickly turned golden or bright hite and, as the week went on, the meditative images shifted from impressions of one or another  angel to the impression of myself being the angelic entity—golden or white and holding a flame or  finally, a dove. I struggled with accessing imagery as I went into the second week of this working. These were days  before a lunar eclipse/full moon/solstice. I felt drained, irritable, and wanted to (uncharacteristically) sleep in the middle of the day. During that first half of the week, I generally had mild impressions of the Greco-Roman deities I experienced while working with the Arbatel. Messages related to Orphic spirituality persisted, with content having to do with Apollo/Dionysius dichotomy on Sunday and Persephone on Monday. By Thursday and Friday, I had the impression in meditation of seeing a point of light in a vast darkness. The light could be approached and entered wherein was limitless expansion of golden light that had to do with the nature of Jupiter and Saturn. In the two weeks post-Christmas, regularity and time for meditation was lacking because of jobrelated and health factors. There was less focus on angel imagery and more on the planetary intelligences themselves and also on absorption in meditation rather than imagery or messages.  Names from Buddhist Mahayana spirituality also made their way into my mind. The first was Chenrezig, the Tibetan name for the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, who embodies compassion. The other was Amogasiddhi, an elemental Buddha associated with the northern quarter, the element of air, and the poisons of jealousy and fear and the contrasting enlightened state of all-accomplishing isdom (i.e., perfected action). I believe that these two Buddhist characters were meant to also, respectively, be expressions of the Jovian (Sachiel/Tzadkiel/Iophiel) and Saturnine (Uriel/Ariel, etc/Cassiel) energies that dominated the past month of meditations. It occurred to me that I had been relating to the planetary intelligences as “benefactors”—a technique used in Buddhist meditation in which a person imagines a “benefactor” who bestows sentiments of  armth and caring on the aspirant, with the idea that those sensations transform the aspirant who, in turn, extends those sentiments to others. The planetary intelligences, angels, gods, etc., are elements o the self and also forces that are much larger. They are psychodynamic energy vortices that have both dark, self-defeating and light, redeeming/enlightenment qualities. The discipline is not about commanding or supplicating them; but identifying with and expressing the energy signature. They are not “other,” but they are like the proverbial finger pointing to the moon. As the Vedantist sages have stressed, the Self alone is real.

2 The Ladder of the Spheres East and West

A number of mystical ideologies operate under the premise that existence as we know it was not created by a primordial, self-caused entity, popularly called God. Rather, they operate under the  premise that existence is an emanation in which the primordial First Cause (that is, “God”), although remaining unchanged also divides and transforms Itself through a series of progressively denser  stages until the physical world as we know it comes into being. This idea is found in Neoplatonic, Gnostic, Hermetic, Kabalist, Samkhyan, and Tantric systems to name only those I’m somewhat familiar with. Verse 35 from an esoteric Tantric meditation manual called the Saundarya-Lahari, which is the textaccompaniment of a famous Tantric image called Śri Chakra (also, Śri Yantra; the discipline itself is called Śri Vidya), explains it nicely:

You are the mind, you are space, and you also are fire. You are water and earth, too. When you have transformed yourself into the universe in this way, there is nothing that exists in relation to ou. To transform yourself into the universe, you assume the aspects of consciousness and bliss in the form of the power of Śiva. It is important to understand the idea of emanation because this is the rationale for chakra lore and for  its Western equivalents, specifically, the Kabalist Tree of Life and the alchemical/hermetic ladder of  the planets and similar antique concepts about the archons (planetary rulers discussed in some forms of Gnosticism and astral magic). In Hindu lore (Samkhyan and Tantric/Agamic systems), God becomes the world (macrocosm) and the human being (microcosm) through 24 (or 36) stages in which a series of “elements” ( tattvas) evolve from one another in a hierarchal manner. The last 7 elements in descending order are consciousness, intelligence, space, air, fire, water, and earth. These elements are the basis of name and form and are, thus, the basis of the senses and sense objects. Indeed, the idea is that the senses and sense objects (that is, the human or animal nervous system and the world it apprehends) come into being simultaneously and are interdependent. One is a reflection and extension of the other. The seven elements are depicted as psychodynamic centers within the body through which a person operates. These are the chakras (literally, “discs” or “wheels”).

The Internet and bookstores are inundated with information—most of which is parroting and  blather—about chakra lore, and so I will spare the reader from too much redundancy on the matter. The cause and essence of the chakras is personified in Hinduism as the Great Goddess. She represents the manifesting power (Śakti ) of “Divine Consciousness” (Śiva; The Beneficent One; i.e., “God”). This power residing in the human or other embodied being is called Kundalini, which means “She Who Is Coiled.” It is depicted as a snake curled in on itself to suggest that the creative power in

humans is inactive and waiting to be aroused. That is, after evolving the elements such that spirit has completely become matter, the manifesting power of God goes to sleep, hidden in a state of   potentiality. The result is that the person apprehends reality as duality, body-consciousness, and the  physical world. The person is in a state of imprisonment in the nervous system so-to-speak and understands reality only through it (and the programs that shape it). This process of emanation from spirit to matter is the path of descent. To meditate on it is to contemplate how God becomes the orld. In philosophical alchemy and in some forms of Western occultism, the seven classical planets are the equivalents of the chakras, although direct parallels cannot be drawn. The seven classical planets are those recognized by medieval scholars and are based on the antique medieval geocentric idea of the universe. They are in order from Earth to the outer rungs of the cosmos: Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Beyond these orbs are the fixed stars (the zodiac/constellations); beyond that, the “primum mobilis” and the angelic realms, and beyond that, God as the Divine Mind, or  Nous. An image of the Cosmos from the text Utrisque Cosmi, Volume 1, by 16th-17th century alchemist and mystic Robert Fludd (1574-1637) depicts circles or shells within shells—22 in all, representing the 22 levels of emanation, beginning with Nous, going through nine choirs of angels (Seraphim, Cherubim, Dominions, Thrones, Powers, Principalities, Virtues, Archangels, and Angels), followed  by the classical planets, and then the elements. The elements in descending order are Fire, Air, Water, and Earth. Fludd gives 22 emanations to correspond with the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet that, according to the Kabalist text Sefira Yetzirah, are the numinous seeds of phenomenological existence in much the same way that, in Hindu lore, the letters of the Sanskrit alphabet are thought to have  profound mystical meaning as the seed vibrations out of which creation is formed.

The latent power is called the Secret Fire in Hermeticism and the Divine Spark in Gnostic and magical Christianity (and the descent of the Holy Spirit in Charismatic and Pentecostal Christianity). The process is referred to in western esotericism as working with the Middle Pillar, a reference to the Kabalist Tree of Life. (Ancient Greek esotericists may have called it the spereima—which means serpent or serpent power—but there is scarce surviving information about it.) The spiritual quest is to awaken the latent power within and lead it back up through a path of ascent from form and limitation (and unbridled unconscious force) to spirit, true volition and creativity, knowledge, awareness, and transcendental liberation. In so doing, the elements, represented by the spheres and the psychodynamic limitations that they embody, must each be “resolved” into the element that hierarchically precedes them through an esoteric process of involution. Various meditation methods—some quite elaborate and occult—have been developed to “purify” the spheres and resolve them into the next higher on the rung of their hierarchical ladder. For example, in alchemy, the chemical metamorphosis occurring in the laboratory retort is a physical metaphor and contemplation of spiritual transformations taking place in the alchemist. The practitioner essentially goes through a psychological and neurologic transformation through meditation and either yogic or  ritual exercises and observances whereby subconscious complexes that result in artificial habits and conditioning are purged.

A primary difference between Eastern and Western treatment of the path of ascent and descent is that generally (but not exclusively), meditation on the spheres is performed starting at the base of the spine and proceeding to the “crown” in Eastern systems and from the crown to the base of the spine or  lower limbs in Western systems. In Eastern systems, the practitioner brings the essential spiritual energy within up into “higher” centers of consciousness, purging and breaking apart the  psychodynamic blocks that suppress its consolidation and its integration into full consciousness. In Western systems, power is brought down from its source in the spiritual realm into the human form to cause a transmutation of that form wherein identification between the human spirit and the divine spirit can be actualized. Both Eastern and Western systems refer to the symbol of the lightning bolt to describe this power. It is depicted and visualized in mediation as a jagged line following a simple map of the sefiroh of the Tree of Life and Western forms of occultism that draw on Kabala. In visualization, the line shoots in a zig-zag from the top pole to the root and then proceeds up in a straight line. In eastern Tantra, the core of the śushumna (the equivalent of the middle pillar and the esoteric spine) is likened to a lightning rod (vajra). Within it is said to be a scintillating hair-thin rod ( chitra) within which is a hollow that is the pathway ( Brahma-nadi ) of consolidated energy from the base to the brow and the periphery to the center. Both Tantric Hindu and alchemical systems also use the imagery of serpents to metaphorically refer to that power. The serpent often represents primal or latent power that must be harnessed and transformed. In the classic Kundalini-rising episode, which seems to have been experienced by such mystics as Jacob Bohme, Plotinus, and many others in the Western mystical and occult traditions, the mystical  pathways of ascent and descent become clear. A subjective sensation of heat and energy, originating at the base of the spine or solar plexus and ascending through the body, across the cervical spine, and “flowering” (or “exploding”) in the head, often occurs. (The loop actually occurs physiologically as a neuroelectrical jolt that shoots across the somatosensory cortex of the brain.) It culminates in a  profound spiritual reverie. This experience is markedly different from those suggestive of so-called “spiritual emergency crises,” which constitute a controversial topic for another essay. The Kundalini-rising (or Secret Fire) experience is typically self-limited. The activated energy seems to filter back down and the person goes back to ordinary life. After an episode (or after each episode, as the experience is repeatable), the person may have the impression that a change has taken place or  that an insight or initiation has spontaneously occurred. More interestingly, the quality of life and encounters in the days, weeks, and even months following more intensive episodes may be marked ith peculiar graciousness. This suggests that the experience itself, though coveted, is not the endgoal but is the epiphenomenon of an ongoing transformational process. Ultimately, the states of   profound, unobstructed clarity that occur during or in the aftermath of these episodes may become constant of the personality and the episodes themselves may become attenuated as the psychodynamic complexes that they are modifying become attenuated.

Selected bibliography: Bentov Itzhak. Micromotion of the Body as a Factor in the Development of the Nervous System. In:

Sannella Lee. The Kundalini Experience. Lower Lake, California: Integral Publishing, 1992. Chatterjee Satischandra, Datta Dhirendramohan. An Introduction to Indian Philosophy. Calcutta: The University of Calcutta. 1984. Churton Tobias. Gnostic Philosophy From Ancient Persia to Modern Times.  Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions. 2005. Hauck Dennis William. Sorcerer’s Stone A Beginners Guide to Alchemy. New York: Citadel Press. 2004. MacKenna Stephen (trans.) Plotinus The Enneads. London: Penguin Books. 1991. Roob Alexander. Alchemy and Mysticism. Koln, Germany: Taschen. 2006 Silburn Lilian. Kundalini Energy of the Depths. Albany, New York: State University of New York  Press. 1988. Singh Jaideva (trans.) Siva Sutras The Yoga of Supreme Identity. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. 1988 Stenring Knut (trans.) The Book of Formation or Sepher Yetzirah Attributed to Rabbi Akiba Ben Joseph. Berwick, Maine: Nicolas-Hays, Inc. 2004. Tapasyananda (translation and commentary). Saundarya Lahari of Sri Sankacharya. Mylapore, Chennai: Sri Ramakrishna Math. No publication date given. 3 On Perseus and Andromeda and the Transformation of Soul to Spirit

nd after him rushed the unapproachable and unspeakable Gorgones that longed to seize him. As they advanced upon the pale adamantine shield, the weapon rang sharp and clear with a loud  clanging. Two serpents with heads curved forward hung about the Gorgones’ waists. The Gorgones tongues were flickering, their teeth were furiously gnashing, and their eyes were iercely glaring. Upon the awful heads of the Gorgones, great Fear was quaking.  —From the Shield of Heracles. 216 ff by Hesiod, dated to the 8th or 7th century BCE (passage adapted from a [grammatically convoluted] translation by Evelyn-White). The mythology of Perseus fascinates me. Like the epic Hindu hero and avatar, Krishna, he may have  been a real person who live during a proto-historic era and became the stuff of fantastical legend. Both the Mahabharata, which stars Krishna, and the Perseus myth, relate how important dynasties came to flourish. The story of Perseus, however, has very many motifs that are repeated in other  estern myths and legends—including Biblical legends. More importantly, it is a classic tale about the journey of the hero. I think that elements within it can be interpreted as metaphors about  psychospiritual transformation in which chaotic energies are harnessed and integrated into power, isdom, and true creative force. In it, we have the hero (Perseus, whose name might mean “destroyer”) representing the solar hero (the son of Zeus and a mortal woman who was born, not through the carnal act but because the god “rained gold” upon Perseus’ mother Danae). He is sent on a contrived quest: to slay the gorgon Medusa, after  hich he uses the gorgon’s head to slay a sea monster and save the girl of his dreams, Andromeda,

ho is being sacrificed to it. After that, he goes about numerous other mercenary and political exploits (that include killing relatives in the quest to claim a throne—which was the way it was often done in the “old days” if you look into ancient middle eastern history). In any case, Perseus becomes a well-respected ruler with a beautiful queen by his side and a bunch of kids who further his lineage. In the portion of the Perseus myth in which Perseus encounters Medusa, we are told that of the three monstrous creatures called gorgones, Medusa (which means “guardian”), is mortal, which is why she is the target to be slain. She and her sisters were the offspring of sea creatures and thus are related to the sea—the primal waters representing the preconscious realm and chaotic primal energy that must  be transmuted into real creative force through the power of consciousness. Perseus is aided by several deities to overcome Medusa, namely Athena (logic) and Hermes (mercurial genius). Like other monstrous feminine sea creatures (such as the sirens), Medusa has qualities that are poisonous  —or perhaps too profound—for mortal men to experience: gazing upon her directly will turn the viewer to stone. By slaying Medusa (and having the wherewithal to observe her in reflection rather  than directly), Perseus conquers wild primal energetic force. From Medusa’s neck emerge her two otherwise trapped children (conceived through an affair with Poseidon), the winged horse, Pegasus (which means “spring”), and the kingly giant Chrysaor (which means “golden blade”). This has been interpreted to mean that Perseus brought about the end of a drought wherein Pegasus represents the renewed waters and Chrysaor represents grains of wheat. In examining it according to archetypal motifs, we also can interpret it to mean that a wondrous transformation occurred whereby the chaotic and latent primal energy of the hero is transformed into something of beauty, substance, and efficacy. After all, Pegasus flew up to Mount Olympus where it  became a pet of the gods, and Chrysaor became a beneficent king. Although later (Renaissance) illustrators of the myth show Perseus flying away on Pegasus, Perseus actually travelled around via winged sandals bestowed upon him by Hermes. He comes upon the damsel Andromeda (a name which means “queen of men”) who is chained to a rock as a sacrifice to the sea monster Cetus. Pegasus uses Medusa’s severed head to kill Cetus and saves and marries Andromeda. The severed head represents the transformed creative energy that Perseus has mastered, and the sea monster is another symbol of the primal chaotic energy that needs to be conquered. Just as Medusa and Athena might be thought of as two poles along a spectrum within the consciousness of Perseus in the earlier part of the myth, Cetus and Andromeda are also two aspects o the same thing—the soul in desperate need of rescue from the chaos it arises from. It is rescued by the light of higher consciousness, represented by Perseus. The monster, in a sense, becomes the damsel  by joining with the animating and integrating solar hero. Thus creative energy manifesting as the individual soul (represented as Andromeda) is redeemed by divine spirit (represented by Perseus). The soul in turn gives form to spirit so that it might participate in creative acts. As Aleister Crowley noted in Liber CDXVIII “. . . the Absolute is called the Crown, God is called the Father, the Pure Soul is called the Mother, the Holy Guardian Angel is called the Son, and the  Natural Soul is called the Daughter. The Son purifies the Daughter by wedding her; she thus becomes the Mother, the uniting of whom with the Father absorbs all into the Crown.”

4 The Chosen Ideal

The term Chosen Ideal is a popular translation of the Sanskrit word ishta devata, which basically means “favorite deity” or (your) “divine lord.” The chosen ideal is important in Hindu spiritual  practice (sadhana)  and is, at least in the nondualistic and qualified nondualistic forms of Hinduism, the personal representation of an impersonal and attributeless divinity. It is “God with form “or “God ith attributes” in a philosophical system that believes that all the gods are one god, that god is Reality itself, and that enlightenment is the realization and identification with that Reality. Ishta is related to the words Ishvara=Lord and Ishvari=Lady. In Hindu philosophy, Ishvara is the Supreme Being that becomes the world through self-sacrifice. Ishvari is the divine nature and energy of the universe. As mentioned, in certain forms of Hinduism, the highest idea of God is that God is indefinable and beyond any attribute. To relate and aspire to it, the human mind will naturally create a form—or forms—and then interact with the form. This form is the ishta devata or chosen ideal. If you want to understand what Ishvara/Ishvari are in the western neopagan sense, contemplate the Charge of the Goddess, which Gerald Gardner, the father of Wicca, and his erstwhile colleague Doreen Valiente adapted from a hymn in homage to the Egyptian goddess Nuit from Aleister  Crowley’s Gnostic Mass:

. . . She in the dust of whose feet are the hosts of heaven and whose body encircles the universe: "I who am the beauty of the green earth, and the white moon among the stars, and the mystery of  the waters, call unto thy soul: Arise, and come unto me. For I am the soul of nature, who gives life to the universe. From Me all things proceed, and unto Me all things must return; and before My ace, beloved of gods and of men, let thine innermost divine self be enfolded in the rapture of the infinite. . . . For behold, I have been with thee from the beginning; and I am that which is attained  at the end of desire. Compare this to a portion of the Narayani Stotram of the Devi Mahatmyam:

You are the sovereign goddess of all that is moving and unmoving. You are the sole substratum of  the universe, existing in the form of earth. In the form of water, you nourish the universe. You are the power of the All Pervading Lord and of limitless courage. You are the primordial seed of the Universe . . . All forms of knowledge are your aspects. All women in the world are endowed with our various attributes . . . Praise to you, Abode of Mankind, who abides as intelligence in all  beings and bestows enjoyment and liberation. . . . As the Self of the Universe, you support the Universe. . . Those who are devoted to you themselves become the refuge of the Universe. In these prayers, the goddess is not a sky fairy; she is Reality itself. Hindu prayers to other deities—  male and female—extol them in similar ways, though, using similar words. That is, any deity can be singularly associated with the supreme deity. We have a relationship with a transcendental idea of 

deity by relating to that deity as an entity with attributes that we are in relationship with. Furthermore, deities are composites of symbols. When you look at an image, it is not a statue; it is a story. Every aspect of the image is pregnant with symbolism meant for contemplation. The story told in an image about the deity, is about the deity, the nature of existence, and yourself. Yidam

In Tibetan Buddhism, the ishta devata is called a Yidam. It is a term that more strongly denotes the idea of self-integration with an ideal or truth. According to Sarah Harding, a Tibetan translator and lama in the Kagyü school of Vajrayana Buddhism: “The word is said to be a contraction of  yid kyi dam tshig, which essentially means to bind one’s mind (yid) by oath to a deity who embodies enlightened mind.” She explains: “Yidams may be sambhogkaya buddhas, tantric deities, bodhisattvas, dharma protectors or historical figures. In all cases, the yidam is the very manifestation of enlightenment . . . ” The sadhana that is applied is similar to that applied when working with the devotional ritual, especially when following Tantric ritual:

ishta devata in

“In visualizing the yidam deity, we use our creative imagination to shift our natural self-imaging tendency, using imagery that is ultimately more ‘real’ than our current conditioned rendition of reality. Thus, the re-visualized self is the yidam deity and the re-imagined world is the mandala of the yidam appearing to one's pure perception. During the process of the sadhana, one must relate with the yidam  both as an object of reverence and a source of blessing.” In Buddhism, depending on the lineage in which you are studying, your guru (lama) may assign a yidam to you to work with—and this will come with specific instructions and observances. A similar  course is taken with an ishta devata in certain forms of Hinduism. A mandala or yantra and mantra associated with the yidam may be used. A mandala is a symbolic field or world in which the yidam resides and is itself a complex tapestry of symbols for contemplation. A yantra is a design that is a geometric vibration of the deity that also acts as a map of a specific line of contemplation and realization about the nature of that deity and, by extension, of Reality itself. The person working with a deity is initiated into how to work with its associated mandala or yantra. The yidam or the devata also may be a god-form that you naturally have an affinity for or feel a natural calling to. You may work alone or with a teacher to explore this. Again, sometimes people have mystical experiences in which the deity presents itself to them in some way, and the bond and exploration begin there. Tutelary Deity

The equivalent of the chosen ideal in Christianity is the patron saint. In polytheistic systems, the chosen ideal is called the tutelary deity. A patron saint or tutelary deity might be a personal daimon or  genius—to use the antique Hellenist and Romano terms. Other terms are eudaimone, augoeides, and ever-popular Holy Guardian Angel (HGA).

In ceremonial magic, especially ceremonial magic since the turn of the 20th century, the chosen ideal in a guise similar to the oriental one is called the augoeides or HGA. The term augoeides means “luminous being” in Greek, which happens to be what the Sanskrit word deva literally means. (We get the Latin word Deus from the same root Proto-Indoeuropean language. The word Zeus is epistemologically related to the words deva and deus, from the Sanskrit word Dyaus, meaning “heavenly.” Dyaus Pitre means “Heavenly Father” in Sanskrit, which is what the Roman name Iupiter literally means.) The term augoeides was used by a Neoplatonist named Porphyry who lived during the 3 rd century and as the student of the father of Neoplatonism, Plotinus. Plotinus identified the augoeides as a  personal daimon in commentary on content from Plato (10th chapter of the Republic and the end of  Timaeus, also Phaedo). It is described as a perfect, divine idea of oneself to aspire to. Through it, a  person transcends the limitations of his incarnation and circumstance. This idea—the idea of recognizing, honoring, and working with one’s personal daimon or genius—is central to Pythagorean and Neoplatonic mysticism and also Greco-Roman spirituality in general. One as to identify with one’s ideal. Becoming divine and establishing refuge in a divine ideal, one could get a pass out of Hades and possibly even the wheel of rebirth and proceed to the realm of the divine. Kabala and Hermeticism figured into early medieval mysticism, and later Neoplatonism, which sort of disappeared with the ascendency of Christianity. It was rediscovered in about the 15 th century. In the 14th century, a book surfaced called The Book of Abramelin, thought to be the work a German Jewish Kabalist. It outlines material on ceremonial magic and specifically is a very long and involved magical operation to realize a “Holy Guardian Angel.” After attaining this, one is promised all kinds of magical powers not unlike siddhis  known in yoga (e.g., powers of magical flight, materialization, longevity, and other special abilities). At the turn of the 20th century (1897), The Book of Abramelin was partially and somewhat inaccurately translated by Samuel MacGregor Mathers, who was the founder of the Hermetic Order  of the Golden Dawn. He conflated the term with the Neoplatonic term augoiedes . Aleister Crowley, ho belonged to the Golden Dawn, began to do work with and write about the Holy Guardian Angel and developed his own ideas about what it was and rites about achieving it. You can find these rites online. The idea is more or less the same as in Hinduism and Buddhism—to become your divine ideal and become empowered by it. For Crowley, this was to realize your true self and True Will.

Spiritual Guides, Genii, Inner Plane Adepti, and Astral Lovers

Among magical practitioners, it is also not uncommon for them to relate to what you might call a spiritual guide or even an entity or projection that is experienced as a presence that acts as an astral lover, a mentor, or ideal to the point that it becomes a personal godform. These entities are not chosen or fabricated; they arise as presences to a person. Whether they are real spiritual entities or 

 projections or fragments of one’s own consciousness is a point that a person needs to decide for  himself. The caveat is that a person has to have a strong footing in reality when these entities arise  because similar phenomena happen to psychologically unstable persons who cannot distinguish  between the world of their mental or spiritual or mystical experience and functional reality. Invocation and the Chosen Ideal

In magic ritual and shamanism, there are practices in which a person becomes the deity. In the extreme, this takes the form of possession trances (being “ridden” by the deity). It is a feature within shamanic traditions. Loss of consciousness and/or disinhibition is common. In mystical, including magically mystical, and Tantric-based practices, when identification with the ideal is achieved, illuminated consciousness (not loss of consciousness) is experienced; the practitioner is poised in the  power and expression of the deity.

Selected Bibliography

S Chatterjee and D Data. The Vedanta Philosophy. In: An Introduction to Indian Philosophy. Calcutta: The University of Calcutta, 1984. Aleister Crowley. Liber VIII: The Ritual Proper for the Invocation of Augoeides ww.themagickalreview.org/classics/liber_0008php  Nevil Drury. Dictionary of Mysticism and the Occult. San Francisco. Harper & Row. 1985. Sarah Harding. Yidam. Buddhadharma The Practitioners Quarterly. ww.thebuddhadharma.com/issues/2005/spring/dharma_dictionary.html. Samuel MacGregor Mathers. Invocation of the Augoeides, The Luminous Self Being the Invocation of  Holy Guardian Angel / True Will http://home.earthlink.net/~xristos/GoldenDawn/augoeides.htm  Nikhilananda, trans. The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. Mylapore, Madras: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 1974. Plotinus. Our Tutelary Spirit. In: The Enneads. Translated by Stephan MacKenna. London: Penguin Books. 1991. 5 Meditation and Its Effects

You must keep the mind fixed on one object, like an unbroken stream of oil. The ordinary man’s mind is scattered on different objects, and at the time of meditation, too, the mind is at first apt to wander. But let any desire whatever arise in the mind, you must sit calmly and watch what sorts of  ideas are coming. By continuing to watch in that way, the mind becomes calm, and there are no more thought-waves.  —Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902)

Swami Vivekananda was a Vedantist monk and Hindu missionary who became a big celebrity in the US among the progressively spiritual and intellectual set at the turn of the 20th century. In the quote above, he is talking about Raja or “Royal” Yoga. Raja Yoga, also called Classical Yoga, has nothing to do with body work. It is an Indian spiritual philosophy that outlines how to transcend the mind and achieve enlightenment through meditation. The philosophy exists as a book called the Yoga Sutras of   Patanjali.  It was written sometime during third century. Certainly familiar to Yoga enthusiasts and Western adherents of Eastern spirituality, it is also relevant for the modern Western occultist. It was being translated from Sanskrit to English during the occult revival at the turn of the 20th century and was studied and adapted by Western esotericists and occultists, such as Madame Helena P. Blavatsky (1831 – 1891) and, most notably, “Uncle Al” Crowley. The first part of Book IV, which, in total, is meant to be a primer on Thelema, is instruction in Raja Yoga as Crowley understood it. See: http://www.hermetic.com/crowley/aba/aba1.html . Then forget it and read a good translation of a least the first half of the Yoga Sutras. I recommend a translation by the Hatha yoga expert BKS Iyengar simply because it is a good, easy-to-read transliteration with explanatory notes. If you like turn-of-the-20th century Victorian language, pick up a copy of Raja Yoga by Swami Vivekananda. He specifically wrote about Hindu spirituality for a Western audience. A good (free) online transliteration of the Yoga Sutras with Sanskrit-to-English annotations is at www.arlingtoncenter.org/Sanskrit-English.pdf. Other online translations are available but the wording sometimes is overstated or uses complex vocabulary or Sanskrit jargon. Mindful Mind

A key aspect of meditation practice is to watch your thoughts although this has too often been misunderstood to mean that a person should fight having thoughts. There are forms of meditation that aim to suppress thoughts through concentration and fixation techniques but, for Westerners and people in modern society who, paraphrasing a few lines from a Bob Dylan tune, have “a head full of ideas that are driving them insane,” mindfulness practices are probably more suitable at the outset. The  point is to know and deconstruct the mind; to recognize that you are both a heretofore hapless captive of and yet something other than the content of consciousness.

“The body together with the notions of heaven, hell, bondage, anger, and fear are mere illusions and have no relation to me. I am pure consciousness. Therefore, what do I really need to do?” - shtavakra Gita 2.20. A basic starting point for meditation is to watch spontaneously arising thoughts and feelings come and go without attachment, aversion or judgments. Subsequent meditation techniques that proceed from this enhance concentration and contemplation, which themselves are two different forms or stages of  meditation. Regular meditation practice first consists of watching the mind with detachment, then gradually concentrating and quieting the mind through mantra recitation and/or concentration on a mental or  visual image (such as a picture or other object) or a process (such as breathing or feeling your pulse or focusing on a certain part of the body).

When the mind is quieted and keenly focused through concentration, the sense of time and subject and object (i.e., yourself and the object of concentration) are overcome. An illuminated sense of “being” or presence arises. This is true meditation, as defined by Raja Yoga. The moment is experienced in its purity. It is not qualified by judgment, fantasy, or memory. Mental and emotional projection and karmic momentum stops. In deeper and deeper stages of meditation, the sense of duality becomes thinner and thinner until only a sense of pure awareness—not awareness of  any thing (including your sense-object–apprehending self)—remains. Adepts then say that even this is transcended by another kind of experience. Mind Stuff 

The mind is naturally noisy and much of it runs like static on a TV screen or random code that comes up on a computer screen. It is sometimes like white noise or background noise and sometimes like a  parrot or a little yapping dog. What you are watching when you watch your thoughts is the static and baggage of personal consciousness. You are watching the subconscious mind come to the surface like soap bubbles. Like soap bubbles, the images of the subconscious are colorful, like the rainbows that form on the skin of   bubbles before bursting into nothingness. If you suppress and filter these images and thoughts, which is what we do consciously and subconsciously at every moment, you merely drive them back into the sticky soapy goo of the subconscious where they intensify and evolve into subclinical and sometimes clinical neuroses. A lot of “stuff” may come up in meditation. Images that seem visionary or like astral travel may emerge at a certain point early on in meditation practice. Some people who meditate without guidance get caught up in this mental imagery instead of truly meditating. Although visualization, astral travel, and trance can be valuable methods of consciousness expansion, they need to be coupled with “mindfulness” meditation and engaged in skillfully for greatest benefit. It is important in meditational and in spiritual and occult practices to know where the content of the mind and subjective experiences are coming from. They are coming from you. Phenomena are not appearing before you or coming into you; they are coming out of you. This is not to say that the mind and senses may not be experiencing occult aspects of reality but whatever is being experienced is  being experienced through the limitations set by the body and mind. Thus, it is experienced as a reflection of one’s own mind and not as the thing in itself. But philosophically speaking, this is true of  all perception and experience. In any case, when visions, messages, and other phenomena present themselves, let them, but address the process with awareness and skill. Transformation of consciousness from a conditioned to a more authentic state through spiritual and occult practices can be like walking the proverbial razor’s edge. Examine what is coming up out of your consciousness, but do not become sidetracked and mesmerized by it. In the words of the well-known mythologist Joseph Campbell (1904-1987): “All the gods, all the

hells, all the heavens are within you. That god is within you. It is not something that happened somewhere else a long time ago. It’s in you.” In mindfulness meditation, when done correctly, the images and thoughts that waft through consciousness will subside or become somewhat distant, like white noise. You will feel calmer and more focused in daily life because you simply have more room in consciousness to be present and aware. In fact, physiological changes occur in the brain that have a neuroprotective effect and lead to enhanced thought processes. Preparing to Meditate

Simple stretching and movement of the joints and also deep breathing or some basic breathing exercises, done briefly, are recommended to prepare for meditation. Cover the body with a shawl or blanket to keep warm (body temperature goes down during meditation). Keep the back and neck aligned and straight. Sit comfortably, even if this means you are sitting on a stool or chair. The value of sitting in a cross-legged posture, particularly a full-lotus  posture, is that the circulation to the lower extremities is slowed down and the oxygenated blood is more consolidated in the torso and head. It is counterproductive, though, if uncomfortable or if  numbness in the lower extremities occurs for lack of circulation. Postpone meditation if you are hungry or full, sleepy, anxious, depressed, or otherwise impaired. Meditate in the same place at the same time. That is, make it a routine if you wish to achieve results. The best hours of the day are the morning and evening (sunrise and sunset). Although certain Buddhists have a taboo against it, other  recommended times are noon and midnight. Determine how much time you sit for meditation and keep to it even if you become drowsy or restless during that time. Observe rather than “fight” or be discouraged by sensations of noisiness, restlessness, boredom, or drowsiness. Meditation and Magic

As mentioned, when the mind becomes calm, you may want to focus on an ideal or an image or  mentally repeat a mantra (a meaningful sound or short prayer or name  or a spell) in rhythm with the  breath. For some (not all), this helps focus the mind. Mantra literally means “controlling the mind.” The rhythm and vibration of the spoken, whispered, or mentally recited sound establishes a rhythm in the body, and this can have beneficial effects on the nervous system. Focus on a mantra, affirmation, or ideal also elevates the meditator, who, through constant focus on an affirmation or ideal, assumes the qualities of that affirmation or ideal. Western New Age adherents  practice this through positive-thinking techniques, Creative Visualization, and the “Law of  Attraction.” Success, however, depends on the ability to lift out unconscious conflicts and programs that sabotage the achievement of your goal to cause change in accordance with Will. Therefore, although concentration practices meant to condition the mind and body toward a positive, contented orientation are very valuable, guilt about or invalidation, denial, or suppression of uncomfortable mind states is not such a great idea. Indeed, the mechanism of action, in the case of putting meditation  practices to use for manifestation of will, is a traumatic overhaul of consciousness—a paradigmatic shift. It takes a lot more to accomplish this than wistfully glaring at a “vision board.”

Meditation practices as described and also relaxation practices are considered essential and are advocated in magical training in Western occultism. Mental control and skill in psychological and  psychic techniques are essential in magical operations. In yoga disciplines this is done to become one with an ideal or achieve self-mastery, enlightenment, liberation, etc. In shamanic yoga, it is also done to gain special powers (siddhis)  and cause change according to Will, which is a core definition of magic. Magical primers recommend that aspiring magicians first practice deep relaxation techniques to lighten up the body and mind so that they become more receptive to energy and wider dimensions of  consciousness. Basic meditation and then concentration and visualization exercises are then advocated. Concentration exercises may take the form of:  Meditating on a symbol that represents one of the five elements to become “one with” that element to intentionally cause changes in one’s mood or energy field for mind-expanding or supernatural purposes.  Gazing into or past an object to cause a semi-trance in which clairvoyance, remote viewing, “channeling,” or other effects may occur.  Meditation on energy centers (chakras) or bioelectrophysical energy (i.e., meditating on the creation of a “psy-ball”). Concentration is often needed for visualization exercises, which may take the form of:  The Cabalist Cross, Ruby Star, Lesser Rite of the Banishing Pentagram or Greater Rite of the Hexagram, IAO Formula, etc. that visualize the descent and circulation of light in the  practitioner or the creation of ritual space in ceremonial magic. 

Creating a magical space for ritual, as is done when quarter-calling in Wicca.

 Projection of a symbol or imagery for the creation of thought-forms, evocations and invocations, or the manifestation of an intention. 

Guided meditation, neoshamanic journeying, or astral travel

Discursive Meditation

Guided meditation and neoshamanic/astral journeying is common to modern Western Occultism. Guided meditation is a way to encounter archetypes and archetypal forms and so-called spirit guides, elementals, ascended masters, inner adepti, etc. In these settings, a practitioner goes into suggested imagery to receive teaching and occasionally gets initiations and empowerments while in a semi-dream or entranced state of consciousness. This also has been called “discursive meditation” because you go into a story in your mind instead of quieting the mind or concentrating on a single idea or image. Ideally, it is another way of improving

concentration and of delineating between purpose-centered imaginal thinking and fantasizing. It is an aid in harnessing the energy and content of the subconscious and integrating it into consciousness. It is also very useful in intentionally modifying perception and behavior that then influences interactions and circumstance to cause change in accordance with will. The techniques are best practiced in a disciplined way as an adjunct to other forms of meditation and not as a substitute for them. Catharsis of Consciousness

Different types of concentration and meditation techniques have different effects. Some will help you  be calm, clear, and focused or more aligned with or devoted to an ideal. Some will eventually lead to startling insights about yourself, your interactions and purpose, the world-at-large, and Reality itself. These insights may not always be pleasant, entertaining, or fit typical or expected norms. Sometimes seemingly supernatural phenomena may occur or peculiar physical or perceptual symptoms may emerge. In rare instances, active or latent psychologic or neurologic diseases, such as depression,  psychosomatic disorders, psychosis, and seizures can be aggravated by meditation practices. With advancement in meditation and in certain states of consciousness, spontaneous movement may occur. This can take the form of speaking or singing “in tongues” (glossolalia), intoning or making other sounds; compulsive urges to move limbs, flex, thrash, or make dancing movements or hand gestures (kriya); or laughing or crying (pseudobulbar affect). Internally, the person may be in a detached witnessing state, ecstatically enraptured, or experiencing other intensified or luminous effects. In yoga traditions, this is regarded as catharsis or unblocking of energy and effluvium from the subconscious. It is sometimes considered to be an aspect of Kundalini arousal. It occurs in other  mystical, occult, and shamanic traditions, goes by different names, may have slightly different manifestations, and may have different explanations regarding what it is and why it occurs. Some spiritual lineages encourage practitioners to repress the phenomena if they do occur; others encourage participants to experience them as a meditative discipline. Clearer guidelines about how to ork with such states if they occur can be found in Eastern disciplines. Western occult traditions seem to treat them as shamanic, “psychonautic,” buyer-beware states. To benefit the most and avoid pitfalls from meditation practice:  Follow the guidelines about a particular meditation practice, including preparation for  meditation practice. 

Be disciplined, courageous, and patient.



Use meditation practice to enhance your daily life, not hide from it.



Familiarize yourself about what the experience, effects, and outcome typically are.

 Do not become attached or addicted to, obsessed with, judge, or over-interpret your  meditation experiences. 

Do not use meditation practices for thrill seeking.



Do not convince yourself that you’ve become “enlightened.”

 Seek advice and support of more experienced persons or mental health professionals if   peculiar phenomena or disturbing mood effects occur  Selected Bibliography Peter Carroll. Liber Null. San Francisco: Red Wheel/Weise; 1987. SC Chakravarty. Swamiji’s Message to a Disciple. Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama. 1964. Pema Chodren. Start Where You Are. Boston: Shambala. 1997 MD Epstein, J Lieff. Psychiatric complications of meditation practice.  Psychiatry. 1981;13:137-154.

The Journal of Transpersonal 

Jan Fries.Visual Magick. Oxford: Mandrake, 1992. M Harris, S Rochlin. Sukhavati - Place of Bliss: A Mythic Journey with Joseph Campbell. Hither  Hills Productions and the Joseph Campbell Foundation. 2007 BKS Iyengar. Light on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. London: Thorsons. 1996. H Jaseja. Meditation is potentially capable of increasing susceptibility to epilepsy-a follow-up hypothesis. Medical Hypothesis. 2006;66:925-928. Donald Michael Kraig. Modern Magick. Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn. 2006. HJ Kuijpers, FM van der Heijden, S Tuinier, WM Verhoeven. Meditation-induced psychosis.  Psychopathology. 2007;40:461-464. EP Lansky, EK St Louis. Transcendental meditation: a double-edged sword in epilepsy?  Epilepsy and Behavior . 2006;9(3):394-400. SW Lazar, CE Kerr, RH Wasserman, et al. Meditation experience is associated with increased cortical thickness. Neuroreport.  2005;16(17):1893-1897. G Pagnoni, M Cekic. Age effects on gray matter volume and attentional performance in Zen meditation. Neurobiology and Aging.  2007;28(10):1623-1627. Sheng-yen. Complete Enlightenment. Boston: Shambala Press, 1997. Lilian Silburn. Kundalini Energy of the Depths. Albany, New York: State University of New York  Press. 1988.

6 The Azoth Mandala

Azoth is a term in philosophical alchemy that refers to latent, transformational energy. It has been equated with the life force and the “quintessence.” In effect, it is the key to Philosopher’s Stone—the  perfected product and end goal of alchemy. The word Azoth is derived from Middle English azoc, from Old French, from Arabic az-zā’uq, which translates as “the mercury” from the Persian (ie, Syriac) word for mercury: zīwag. The term also has

come to represent A to Z (an adaptation on the idea of Alpha-Omega). It is associated with the caduceus, which in turn is the symbol of the Roman deity Mercury (which is loosely associated with the Greek deity Hermes and Egyptian Thoth.) From the association with the caduceus, parallels with Kundalini lore are drawn. The caduceus, like the shushuma of yogic lore, represents the line of ascent and descent between the macrocosm and microcosm, the divine and the mundane, the sacred and profane, and the celestial and the terrestrial. The 2 snakes intertwined around the caduceus represent afferent and efferent energies (“solar” and “lunar” lines of force). The wings at the top of the caduceus represent the polarized unity  —the eclipse—of the solar and lunar forces, which results in numinous integration. Its parallel in the yogic traditions is the ajna chakra, which is depicted as an orb flanked by 2 lotus petals. An interesting mandala, which is highly searchable on the Web if you type “Azoth” into the search engine, is the twelfth in the series of 14 plates within a 17th century alchemical picture book called  zoth of the Philosophers.  Although traditionally attributed to one Basilius Valentinus, said to be a German monk and alchemist, it may be the product of some other mysterious character, considering that Valentinus might have been the invention of a late 16th century chemist named Johann Thölde (1565–1614)—or so is the suspicion among folk writing about this stuff, often san attribution, on the Web. The whole Azoth series can be found at the Web site of the noted modern-day alchemist and archivist of alchemical texts Adam McLean at www.levity.com/alchemy/amcl_val_azoth.html . The woodcut  print below, I believe, is from the Azoth, sive Aureliae Occultae Philosophorum attributed to Basile Valentinus, published in 1613.

The image is a mandala. The original presumably was a meditation on alchemical laboratory  processes as well as a meditation on the transmutation from death and decay to numinous perfection. Like eastern mandalas and yantras, every part of the Azoth mandala is symbolic. A person needs to know what the symbols mean in context to understand and meditate on the image. The image (like all mandalas and yantras) can be thought of as a kind of labyrinth—a twisting path leading to the spiritual center of both the cosmos and the self (that is, the macrocosm and the microcosm). The image consists of a 7-pointed star, representing the 7 planets known to the medieval world: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Sol, Mercury, and Luna. In Hermeticism, which is aligned with alchemy, the planets have symbolic themes that have correspondences with levels of human consciousness. Words that hint at themes of the journey through the spheres are Visita, Interiora, Terra, Rectificado, Invenies, Occultum, and Lapidum (the Visit, the Interiorization, Earth, Rectification, Discovery, the Secret, and the Stone), which have meaning in relation to alchemical laboratory processes as well as the journey toward self-transformation and perfection. Like chakras, the rays of the Azoth image and the planets they correspond with can be thought of as  planes to be ascended through. Ancient and medieval Hermeticists, (pagan) Gnostics, and mystics in general seemed to think that this is what people did in the course of their spiritual journey, and

regarded the planets as celestial deities or rulerships (archons) that, having a hold on man’s character  and fate, had to be psychodynamically worked through and atoned with in a path of return from matter  to spirit, perfection, and freedom. The triangle in the image depicts the alchemical trinity of sulfur, mercury, and salt. Sulfur  corresponds with the solar principle (the vivifying, inspirational consciousness), mercury with the lunar principle (the spiritual essence that aspires to integration with and is the link between matter  and the divine light of consciousness), and salt with matter and the body. Sulfur, mercury, and salt—  or consciousness/soul (anima), spirit /life essence (spiritus), and form/the body (corpus)—are what a human is and they are what he or she, as a spiritual adept, is trying integrate to become a fully realized, conscious, and free person, in the context of hermetic alchemy. In the image, the solar principle is symbolized by a king astride a lion in the lower left and also by the salamander in the upper left corner. The lower left quadrant of the mandala also represents the element earth (dryness, fixity; stability; crystallization, effect, and efficacy) and the upper quadrant represents the element fire (heat, activity, and transformation). The lunar principle is symbolized by a queen holding shafts of wheat and riding a sea monster. The lower right quadrant represents the element water (coldness, feeling, and generation) and the upper  right quadrant, in which an eagle appears, represents air (humidity, thought, and inspiration). The hand at left of the wheel holds a torch, the one on the right holds a fish’s bladder. The bird at the top of the mandala represents the “quintessence”—the fifth element and divine essence of things to which the alchemical adept aspires. It is, thus, the Azoth and the philosopher’s stone itself: perfect, enlightened, volitional, and empowered being. Who is the bearded man in the center of the image? It is your spiritual ideal and aspiration. Modernday alchemist Dennis William Hauck claims that medieval alchemists meditated on images like this mandala and that they sometimes placed a mirror in the center of the image. See ww.alchemylab.com/azoth.htm to read Hauck’s in depth discussion of the Azoth mandala. How Can You Work with the Azoth Mandala?

Of course, understanding the imagery in its original context is extremely valuable, but you can still find purpose in the Azoth mandala even if you don’t become an autodidact in medieval Hermetic alchemy. Being a mandala, the Azoth image is a journey from form to spirit. Each vertex (point) of its 7-pointed star is associated with one of the classical planets and a stage of the alchemical process—  hich is also a stage of self-transformation. Find a paradigm that works best for you and then, as a magical and mystical exercise, construct your own Azoth mandala and decide what lesson awaits on each rung of the planetary spiral staircase. Fill it with images of the solar and lunar (afferent and efferent) energies and symbols of the elements—which are the constituents of your own body. Put a small mirror in the center of your mandala to remind that you are the deity of the mandala and the revelation it reveals is your own. I created a mandala some years ago. It is by no means a masterful piece of art work, but I did use it as a meditation device for a while and now often use it as the table top for an altar for magical

orkings.

7 Liber 821 or How I Found the Goddess and What She Did to Me When I Found Her

 by Zoe-Sophia-Dione (= 821, “Babylon the Great” :-P)

Should you find that your own revelations of The Goddess become substantially different than the revelations of Mal-2, then perhaps The Goddess has plans for you as an Episkopos, and you might  consider creating your own sect from scratch, unhindered.  —from  Principia Discordia or How I Found the Goddess and What I Did to

Her When I 

 Found Her. I had been dedicated to the goddess Durga for very many years. I was not doing the “eclectic” neopagan thing of adopting a mishmash of foreign deities and making spiritual-practice stew out of  them. I was (and continue to be despite my immersion in Western occultism and contemporary Paganism) a long-time adherent of reformed Advaita Vedanta. I became dedicated to a certain important scripture dated to about the 3rd century called the Devi Mahatmyam, or “Glory of the Goddess.” It is a trilogy of mythologies in which the Goddess, personifying the combined power of  the gods, defeats various demons in battles and, thus, restores the order of the Universe. The full scripture, which takes more than an hour or three to recite, is chanted in the context of 

devotional ritual (puja) and is prefaced and followed by several auxiliary prayers, chants, mantra, and ritual gestures. I took to performing a much abbreviated version of the ritual, in accordance with guidelines given to me by a senior swami of the Ramakrishna Order of Vedanta. I performed the ritual once weekly for about a year after many years of working with the text. At this time, I also was immersed in disciplines related to Kundalini yoga and had recently removed myself from association ith a Nygmapa (Dzogchen) Buddhist sangha where I was being groomed to become a lama. The ritual and contemplation or chanting of the Devi Mahatmyam is generally done as a devotional as ell as protective exercise in which the Goddess is thought of as a beneficent entity who is being addressed for the sake of gaining favors and for protection from both supernatural evil and the nasty orld-at-large. I ultimately took a more Gnostic and literal approach. After all, Advaita Vedanta is nana yoga, the discipline of spiritual integration through gnosis. In addition, the translations of the names of the demons that the Goddess is battling in the Devi Mahatmyam include The Great Deceiver  (Mahahanu), The Aimless One (Parivarita), The Hypocrite (Bidala), Anger (Kruddha), The Savage (Ugrasya), He Who Gives Way to Temptation (Durdhara), The Vicious (Chanda), The Malicious (Munda), Conceit (Shumbha), and Self-deprecation (Nishumbha). And the most famous demon celebrated in the scripture is Mahishasura—the “Buffalo demon” of egoism, the depiction of the slaying of which is an important piece of Hindu iconography. So, these demons that The Goddess is protecting you from are not oogah-boogah things “out there”; they are negative qualities within yourself. How does The Goddess protect you from them? She rips you apart over and again with a barrage of weapons: the sword of discrimination, club of articulation,  bow of determination, arrow of penetration, pike of attention, rod of restraint, axe of right action, net of unity, trident of harmony, and discus of revolving time. Then she cuts off your head and totally obliterates you in a confounding mush of ego dissolution that you ideally recover from changed. So, a few years before I began to shift gears and look to Western occultism for empowerment and insight, and before I knew anything about Cabala or Crowley or the Abyss, I found myself returning to a particular difficult mind state in my meditation practices. What I would feel enveloped in would be a dark, abysmal space. In it, I would receive impressions of how I became who I am. I would receive visceral sensations and memories harkening back to earliest childhood. As a Tantric Buddhist and Yoga practitioner, I had been trained in how to maneuver such experiences. Nevertheless, and  perhaps aggravated by volatility in my personal life, I slipped over the edge and plummeted into the core of a chasm one morning.

looked and saw a great abyss and a dark funnel of whirling waters or fixed airs, wherein were cities and monsters and trees and atoms and mountains and little flames (being souls) and all the material of an universe. nd all are sucked down one by one, as necessity hath ordained. For below is a glittering jewelled  lobe of gold and azure, set in a World of Stars. nd there came a Voice from the Abyss, saying: "Thou seest the Current of Destiny! Canst thou change one atom in its path? I am Destiny. Dost thou think to control me? for who can move my course?" —From The Cry of the 29th Aethyr in The Vision the Voice, Aleister Crowley

I experienced profound ego-dissolution and it was no freaking way like the sunshine and moonbeams of an Eric Tolle New Age best seller. Whereas it was kind of like an “enlightenment” experience, it also was the antithesis of what I’ve ever read about such things. I realized in that moment in a way that cut far deeper than mere intellection that I was not a person. I as a mask, an automaton, a provisional being not of my own making. Unconscious and automated. I as a composite of experiences and perceptions, habits, and conditioning that were not necessarily my own. Mere non-conscious karmic momentum of an interdependently arising neurotic fiasco called nature and nurture that stretched back to beginningless Time.

 y spirit is no more; my soul is no more. My life leaps out into annihilation!  —From The Cry of  the 2nd Aethyr  In that moment, to borrow words from Kshemaraja’s commentary on the experience of enlightenment in the Spanda Karikas, “all my thought-constructs were split asunder by the recognition of [my] true essential nature.” The event indeed “surpassed common experience” but was anything but “replete ith unprecedented bliss.” My reaction was rage. Life appeared to be an oppressive lie foisted on me by others who themselves were utterly in the grip of the same lie. I was mostly angry because the ay I felt about myself for so long—the way I persistently operated and struggled—didn’t have to be as it was. Everything was mere fabrication born of a delusion about Reality that I was force fed from the doomed moment that I took my first breath. But what was worse than realizing the prosaic blather that Life Is but a Dream was the notion that the oppression of the illusion would continue to be suffered despite my new insight about it; I was not something other than this inexorable composite of karmic momentum. It was my ways of thought, my emotional responses, my personality, all the structures and nuances of my physiology. The Bengali mystic Sri Ramakrishna was known to say, “God is real; the world is illusory.” I understood what that meant in that moment of crisis because I experienced the profound difference  between myself as a personality construct and this organism called Reality. Herein no forms appear, and the vision of God face to face, that is transmuted in the Athanor called dissolution, or hammered into one forge of meditation, is in this place but a blasphemy and a mockery.

nd the Beatific Vision is no more, and the glory of the Most High is no more. There is no more knowledge. There is no more bliss. There is no more power. There is no more beauty. For this is the Palace of Understanding: for thou art one with the Primeval things . —From The Cry of the 14th Aethyr  Prior to this episode, I had been an “insufferable know-it-all.” In a moment, however, the value of all concepts shattered. It was all vain blather, “sound and fury signifying nothing.” I was “out-of-it” for several days, weeks perhaps. Humbled, humiliated, and feeling gyped and

screwed about life. But when the dust settled, I felt free. Relieved. Off the hook. Nothing was true; thus, everything was permitted. I became relaxed. I put away my beliefs, books, and allegiances. I also arrived at a new sense of compassion, having glimpsed the roots of happiness and suffering concerning the human condition. There was no place to put blame; the cause was an interdependently arising phenomenon that drove the World Machine.

Yea! verily this is the Truth, this is the Truth, this is the Truth. Unto thee shall be granted joy and  health and wealth and wisdom when thou art no longer thou. —  Liber Cheth vel Vallum Abiegni,  13; Aleister Crowley But, actually, life went on with its twists and turns, joys and disappointments, peak experiences and hard lessons. There have been other instances in my life in which the end result of fervent goddess work has been crisis: upheaval, pain, loss. Even though things turn out “all for the best” in the end, the pattern has made me skittish about working with goddess energy. So I wince at folks who look to the Goddess for  a kinder, gentler kind of spirituality, who look to the self-effacing, ever-doting mother or else the ever-accommodating and never-clinging lover. The contemptible idealized woman. The Goddess is not this. Rather, she is the maw and secret of creation, sustenance, dissolution, and transformation.

O Circle of Stars, Whereof our father is by the younger brother,  Marvel beyond imagination, soul of infinite space,  Before whom time is ashamed, the mind bewildered, and the understanding dark,  Not unto Thee may we attain unless Thine Image be Love. Therefore by seed and root, and stem and bud,  And leaf and flower and fruit do we invoke thee, O Queen of Space, O Jewel of Light, Continuous one of the heavens;  Let it be ever thus That men speak not of Thee as One, but as None;  And let them not speak of Thee at all, since Thou art continuous.  —From Liber XV  (Thelemic Gnostic Mass), Aleister Crowley  Numerous paeans from more ancient times exist that extol the Goddess. Apuleuis in The Golden Ass (11.25) says of Isis:

You rotate the globe. You give light to the Sun. You govern the world in time and space. You tread  down the powers of Hades. By You the seasons return, the Planets rejoice, the Elements serve. At  Your command the winds do blow, the clouds do gather, the seeds prosper, and the fruits prevail. The birds of the air, the beasts of the hill, the serpents of the den, and the fish of the sea, do tremble at Your majesty.

The Devi Mahatmyam is chock full of statements such as:

You are the sovereign Goddess of all that is moving and unmoving. You are the sole substratum of  the world, existing in the form of Earth. Existing in the form of water, the Universe is nourished. You are pure, limitless courage, the power of the All-Pervading Lord. You are the Manifesting and   Limiting Principle, the primordial seed of the Universe. Goddess you have created this living  dream that we mistake for Reality. Through your grace we are redeemed from it.  (11:3-5) We also find this passage within the very last piece of scrying work that Edward Kelley (1555 –  1597) did with John Dee (1527–1608): I am the daughter of Fortitude, and ravished every hour, from my youth. For behold, I am

Understanding, and Science dwelleth in me; and the heavens oppress me. They covet and desire me with infinite appetite; few or none that are earthly have embraced me, for I am shadowed with the Circle of the Stone, and covered with the morning Clouds. My feet are swifter than the winds, and my hands are sweeter than the morning dew. My garments are from the beginning, and my dwelling place is in my self. The Lion knoweth not where I walk, neither do the beasts of the field  understand me. I am deflowered, and yet a virgin; I sanctify, and am not sanctified. Happy is he that embraceth me: for in the night season I am sweet, and in the day full of pleasure. My company is a harmony of many Cymbals, and my lips sweeter than health itself. I am a harlot for such as ravish me, and a virgin with such as know me not: For Lo, I am loved of many, and I am a lover to many; and as many as come unto me as they should do, have entertainment. . . .—From A true & aithful relation of what passed for many years between Dr. John Dee and some spirits Dee, a mathematician and prodigious Renaissance man who was an advisor to Queen Elizabeth I, having become immersed in angelology and evocation magic, produced, with scryer-side-kick  Edward Kelley, the foundation for Enochian magic. By gazing into a shewstone/black mirror (akin to crystal-ball gazing), Kelley pulled out of the aethers a unique, “angelic” language and Dee and Kelley ere given elaborate instructions by presumed angelic entities about ritual set up for practices, coded, politically charged messages, and a method to “ascend” through angelic planes. But for all the glorious effort, neither Dee nor Kelley had very good luck in the aftermath of their workings. Did they  barge head-first through a door behind which was the Goddess practicing katas with her swinging saber? Immediately following this oft-quoted material (above) scryed by Kelley and Dee on May 23, 1587 (their very last scrying session by the way, occurring about a month after the archangel Uriel allegedly told the men to wife-swap), the Divine-Feminine entity evoked explains that “Wisdom is a  piercing beam, which is the center of the spiritual being of the Holy Spirit, touching from all parts from whence the Divinity sendeth it out . . .” It continues, saying that Wisdom is inherent in what is immortal, including the human soul, and not in things that have an end. This is standard Hermetic/Gnostic/Cabalist jargon in which Wisdom—the Sophia or Sapientia —transforms soul (psyche) to spirit (pneuma) via the path of the Secret Fire. Further, the patent medieval Hermetic content in the longer citation about the Daughter of Fortitude is rather conspicuous. The text then goes into doomsday jargon that either could be taken as a prediction about political

upheaval or else a veiled way for an affected Kelley to express how really fed up he was with the hole Kelley/Dee trip, as has been speculated by researchers and autodidacts on the subject such as the person who maintains this blog: http://myfavoritemonsters.blogspot.com/2009/07/john-deeedward-kelley-spirit-world-pt_28.html . The story goes that Kelley, acquiring fame and fortune as a celebrity alchemist, abandoned Dee and fell in and then out of favor with King Rudolph II (1552 –1612), who imprisoned him for not appropriately proving his prowess as an alchemist. Kelley ultimately died of injuries sustained during a prison breakout—a rather pathetic end to someone who “channeled” such profundity as what is quoted above. But one could suppose that this illustrates the “‘get it’ or get a kick in the head” and “don’t fuck with me” kind of tough love that The Goddess seems to be into. From here, my mind segues to veritable, no-joke rocket scientist Jack Parsons (1914 –1952) :

The catastrophic trend [the Age of Horus] is due to our lack of understanding of our own natures. The hidden lusts, fears, and hatreds resulting from the warping of the love urge, which underly the natures of all Western peoples, have taken a homicidal and suicidal direction. This impasse is broken by the incarnation of another sort of force, called BABALON. The nature of  this force relates to love, understanding, and dionysian freedom, and is the necessary counterbalance or correspondence to the manifestation of Horus.—from the Introduction of Liber  49, The Book of Babalon , by Jack Parsons Yes, but if I remember it correctly, Jack, even though you were incredibly eloquent, dedicated, waaay ahead of your time, and now are bestowed god-like reverence, almost everyone you knew, loved, revered, and trusted totally dissed and screwed you over. Then you got blown up moments before you ere going to run away and live happily ever after with your conjured Babalon-Incarnate Scarlet oman witchy-chick, artist/occultist Marjorie Cameron (1922 –1995).

Yet shalt thou not be therein, for thou shalt be forgotten, dust lost in dust. Nor shall the æon itself  avail thee in this; for from the dust shall a white ash be prepared by Hermes the Invisible. nd this is the wrath of God, that these things should be thus. And this is the grace of God, that  these things should be thus. —  Liber Cheth vel Vallum Abiegni , 15-18 But then one could point the finger at dozens of high-profile occultists, “crazy wisdom” teachers, saints, philosophers, and godmen/women through the ages who came to less than beatific endings.

This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper. —From The Hollow Men, T.S. Eliot One would say that their legacies and legendary statures compensate, but I say not. How can such things serve the dead? Such things are more bread and circuses for the rest of us and often the tool of  one or another aggrandizing opportunist. At best, they can be catalysts of insight and transformation for us. Or else, they can be blinds, glamours, and pretentions that complicate our ride through the

gastric tube of the Ouroboros. Both options are the purview of The Goddess. And in the end, the Mysterium Tremendum, for those who are interested, is not about pleasure or   pain, suffering in penance or atonement, redemption, the satiation of desire, or the assertion of will. It is about crossing over the Abyss and parting the veil between the Real and the Unreal.

This Mahamaya [“Grand Illusion”; “Great Measurement”] is the Yoganidra [power of stupor] of  Vishnu, the Lord of the World. It is by her the world is deluded. Verily she, the Sovereign Lady, orcibly draws the minds even of the wise into delusion. She creates this entire universe of both moving and unmoving things. When favorable, she proffers boons to human beings for their final  liberation. She is supreme knowledge, the cause of final liberation, and eternal; she is the cause o the bondage of transmigration and the sovereign over all lords. —  Devi Mahatmyam, I:54-58 But for my final word on all this Babalon and Goddess-mystique stuff, I quote Austin Osman Spare from the Anathema of Zos:

 s there nothing beyond entity? No purchase beyond sense and desire of God than this blasting  and devouring swarm ye are? Oh, ye favoured of your own excuses, guffaw between bites! Heaven is indifferent to your salvation or catastrophe. Your curveless crookedness maketh ye fallow for a queer fatality! What! I to aid  our self-deception, meliorate your decaying bodies, preserve your lamentable apotheosis of self? The sword-thrust not salve I bring!  —Soror ZSD23 23 (=Zos/life [ChiH]; Kia/joy [ChDVH])

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