The way of ignorance

Kate Georgall, Bird in Snow
Kate Georgall, Bird in Snow

I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope

For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love

For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith

But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting

Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:

So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.

The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,

The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy

Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony

Of death and birth.

You say I am repeating something I have said before. I shall say it again.

Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there,

To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,

You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.

In order to arrive at what you do not know

You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.

In order to possess what you do not possess

You must go by the way of dispossession.

In order to arrive at what you are not

You must go through the way in which you are not.

And what you do not know is the only thing you know

And what you own is what you do not own

And where you are is where you are not.

 

T.S. Eliot, East Coker, Four Quartets

Lake of Memory

“Have a drink on me,” says Chiron
“Trouble not your self with worry.
Stand I guard; the heart of darkness
Sits behind me, far beyond thee.

“Child of Earth and Starry Heaven –
Lake of Memory; shun the cypress!”
From the stream that’s clear as crystal
Drinks Orion, knows he’s timeless.

‘“If I’m made to stand here waiting –
Forced by ties which bind, eternal -”
Hale Orion roars in fury,
“My revenge shall wax infernal!

‘”Long for I the Winter solstice,
When the Sea Goat meets the Sun King.
On that day the horn of plenty
Brims. How long will this event be?

‘“Might of oceans, old Poseidon,
Let the fishes  swim beside me?
Lest you grant this one diversion,
I shall die of boredom, nightly.

“Tell me this, as well, oh wise one,
When does Hades mete out mercy,
When young Eros drinks the ocean,
Aphrodite reaches thirty?

‘”Hestia’s hearth is icy cold,
Or Hermes sighs and says, ‘I’m old;’
Hera gives her heart to Echo,
Atlas cries and lets the Earth go?”

Neptune’s Trident

‘From the swelling seas, un-silent,
Rising from the salt, through ether,
Neptune holds aloft his trident,
Cries: “The Spring has come; be patient!

As the centre of his offspring
Glows – outraged to so be lectured –
So much wisdom of the ages
Flows from father-ocean’s lectern:

‘“Take some good advice, Orion:
Watch and learn the way of heaven;
Time just moves around in circles,
From the fish becomes a turtle.”

“Onward then in time, a deluge
Caused a boar to swim the ocean;
Then the lion, Narasimha
Came before the dwarf Vamana.

“Then to life a noble hero
Sprang and rid the world of tyrants.
This made way for Rama’s charm,
Which came before the Bhagavad Gita.

“In this way the prince of paupers
Broke the wheel of earthly suffering;
Maybe, son, you’ll hear him teaching
In the realm of endless loving…”

‘“Thanks for nothing! Shouts Orion,
Show to me my loving mother.
She, at least, would save her scion.”
No; alas: She’s with his brother.’

‘Peering through the velvet darkness,
Seeks the Starman souls like-minded.
Souls who cry for freedom – ‘partners’ –
Ones to rend his endless bindings.

Mystery of the Cosmic Sacrifice

It is with his inner life that the practical occultist is most concerned….when it comes to dealing with the forces of his own inner life, he must work out his own methods and build his own instruments. This is the real secret veiled in the words describing the thirty-second path [‘Administrative’ or ‘Assisting Intelligence’].

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It must be remembered that subconsciousness works wholly by deduction. Give it a premise, and if the premise is false, it will work out so orderly a sequence of consequences from the initial false statement that only the keenest critics can detect the error.

On the other hand, subconsciousness is just as orderly in its development of the seeds of the right knowledge. Thus, invention ever follows close on the heels of observation. No sooner do we perceive, for example, that our thoughts, words and deeds are integrated with an inseparable from the whole cosmic process than subconsciousness begins to elaborate the consequences of this perception.

She does this in two ways: firstly by developing a philosophy of life; second, by helping us to invent means for better expression of our relation to the whole. These means include methods and instruments for dealing with the forces of our inner life, as well as for controlling the forces and conditions in our environment. It is with his inner life that the practical occultist is more concerned.

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Out of the fury and bondage of the Great Work, which has Time (Saturn) for its primary condition, shall come peace and rest.

The Fall into manifestation is to be followed by the Redemption from the misery that our misunderstanding now brings. The power that brought about the Fall is identical with that which is to bring about the Redemption.  This, in very truth, is the mystery of mysteries that Jesus revealed in his parable of the Prodigal Son.

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The fifteenth path begins in the sixth sphere of the Tree of Life, in the grade of Lesser Adept, for the Magus must be perfected in imagination, and must be able to make definite mental patterns. Yet when he does so, it is not of himself, as in the case of the Lesser Adept.

The Magus’ vision is the creative sight attributed to the letter Heh and The Emperor. He sees the world with God’s eyes, and sees it always, therefore, as proceeding in orderly sequence from the centre that is within himself.

The path of the letter Heh is said by Qabalists to be that of the Constituting Intelligence, “because it constitutes creation in the darkness of the world.” Qabalists also say that creation took place with the letter Heh.

The Secret Wisdom of Israel says that the fifteenth path bears the name MOMID, Ma’amiyd (Constituting), because it constitutes the substance of creation in pure darkness. A hint of similar import is in the Gospel of St John. “That which hath been made was life in Him (the Logos), and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in the darkness, and the darkness overcame it not.” (John 1:4,5)

The same L.V.X. (ie, light), appears in Bible symbology under the figure of the Lamb, borrowed from the Hindu symbol of Agni, god of fire. The Lamb refers to the mystery of the cosmic sacrifice. In one sense the wise have always regarded creation as a self-sacrifice of the Life Power.

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By traversing this fifteenth path, the aspirant to the grade of Magus associates himself mentally with the cosmic sacrifice. Thus, he unifies his being with the current cosmic, creative impulse. Levi says, you recall, that he who can master the currents of the Astral light becomes the depository, even of the power of God.

Paul Foster Case, The True and Invisible Rosicrucian Order, The Grade of Zelator and The Grade of Magus