Knowledge of the Powers of the Netherworld

Since the time of Descartes, the brain has been considered the source of thought and feeling, but always some people have refused to accept this view. D H Lawrence expressed this reluctance as follows:

Man is a creature that thinks with his blood: the heart dwelling in a sea of blood that flows through the body always in two inverse tides is where chiefly lies what men call thought.

And to quote Norbert Wiener, one of the originators of cybernetics:

Messages which cause conditional or associative learning are carried by the slow but pervasive influence of the blood stream. The blood carries in it substances which alter nervous action directly or indirectly.

Compare now these ultramodern theories with the view expressed by a Memphite physician over 4,500 years ago.

The seeing of the eyes and the breathing of the nose bring messages to the heart. The seeing of the eyes and the hearing of the ears and the breathing of the nose bring messages to the heart. It is the heart which causes all decisions to be made, but it is the tongue which reports what the heart has thought. Thus is all action, whether simple or complex, carried out. The manipulation of the hands, the movement of the legs and the functioning of every limb. All is in accord with the command which the heart has devised and which has appeared on the tongue. Thus is determined the specific nature of everything.

These few ancient phrases summarise extraordinarily accurately the concept of mind-body relationship and its role in evolution which our contemporary behaviourist biologists are now struggling to formulate.

Egypt symbolised [the] vision of life energies driven by a symphonic celestial tuning in its well-known texts concerning the twelve divisions or hours of the day and night and of the Dwat, commonly called the Netherworld, or the world of transformations, in which transformations are depicted occurring everywhere – in food, flesh, energy, mind and spirit.

The Dwat is the inner region of transformation beneath or within appearances….The introductory text of the Book of What is in the Dwat, which is divided into twelve chapters, corresponding to the twelve hours of the night reads:

This is the knowledge of the powers of the Netherworld. This is the knowledge of their effects, knowledge of their sacred rhythms [or ritual]. To Re [the Solar Deity], carrier of the knowledge of the mysterious power [or unconscious drive], knowledge of what is contained in the hours as well as in their Gods…[concluding]…O Flesh, who belongest to Sky, but who liveth on earth, O Flesh, Glory to thee. Come Re in the form of the Living One, breath through me here in the Netherworld of the Hours…Transverse the field [or region], O Protector of the body. He shines, the great Light-giver Re drives away darkness.

Here we encounter a blending of physiology with cosmology, the transformative living field of the body expanded into a vision of cosmic transformation. Rhythms set forth in galactical space, passing through hereditary levels, are transmuted into rhythms of incarnate life and mind.

Robert Lawlor, Ancient Temple Architecture, Rediscovering Sacred Science, edited by Christoper Bamford

The Second Coming of Christ

To understand the magnitude of a divine incarnation, it is necessary to understand the source and nature of the consciousness that is incarnate in the avatar.

Jesus spoke of this consciousness when he proclaimed: “I and my Father are one.” (John 10:). Those who unite their consciousness to God know both the transcendent and the immanent nature of Spirit – the singularity of the ever-existing, ever-conscious, ever-new Bliss of the Uncreate Absolute, and the myriad manifestations of His Being as the infinitude of forms into which He variegates Himself in the panorama of Creation.

Within the creative Holy Ghost Intelligence are all the governing laws and principles that manifest, sustain, and dissolve every part and particle of the Lord’s universe. The Holy Ghost inherited from Spirit the independence to create and govern within the mandated vast scope of the manifesting powers endowed to it.

This Creative Power, which gives birth and nurture to creation, is referred to in Hindu scripture as Maha-Prakriti, Great Nature, the potentials of all becomings. When this power goes forth from Ishvara (God the Father of Creation) as Intelligent Creative Cosmic Vibration, it takes on a dual nature.

As Para-Prakriti (Pure Nature) it creates and expresses all good and beauty in harmony with the God-tuned immanent Kutastha Chaitanya (Christ Consciousness). Its divine nature is magnificently expressed in the causal and astral heavenly realms.

But as the Vibratory Power descends into material manifestation, it becomes conjointly a deviant Apara-Prakriti (Impure Nature), creating through the circumscriptive laws of gross matter and the uttermost density of delusion. These two aspects of Prakriti correspond to the Christian designations of Holy Ghost and Satan.

The Holy Ghost in tune with Christ Consciousness creates goodness and beauty and draws all manifestation towards a symbiotic harmony and an ultimate oneness with God.

Satan (from the Hebrew, literally “the adversary”) pulls outward from God into entanglement with the delusive world of matter, employing the mayic cosmic delusion to diffuse, confuse, blind, and bind.

The Second Coming of Christ, Paramahansa Yogananda, Discourse 1 (John 1:1-4) & 7 (Luke 4:1-2, 8)

The Book the Soul ate

Dear Unknown Friend

The preceding Arcanum – ‘The Moon’ – confronted us with the task of human intelligence to liberate itself from the magical enchantment which separates it from spontaneous wisdom, and to unite itself with the latter, ie, to arrive at intuition. The nineteenth Arcanum – “The Sun” – is that of the accomplished union of intelligence and spontaneous wisdom: the Arcanum of intuition.

“The children who are fraternising under the sun correspond all the better to Gemini because this zodiacal constellation berings in the longest days to us” says Oswald Wirth (Le Tarot des imagiers du moyen age), thus locating the nineteenth Arcanum in the zodiacal circle of twelve cosmic mysteries or, speaking in the language of C J Jung, in the circle of twelve archetypal force-images of the collective unconscious which work in the depths of every human soul.

For the zodiac is that which the human soul knows unconsciously; it is the book which the soul “ate” and which is present and active only in his “bowels” – in the depths of his being – from whence it renders him strong or weak, fertile or arid, fervent or tepid, according to whether he is in harmony or not with its teaching-impulse.

Now, the teaching impulse called “Gemini” can be expressed by paraphrasing a little the first statement of the Emerald Table of Hermes:

May that which is below be as that which is above, and may that which is above be as that which is below to accomplish the miracles of one thing.

This is the principle of analogy put into practice, taking its point of departure from the principle of cooperation.

One of the highest aspects of the principle of Gemini, the principle of cooperation, is that which is present in intuition: that of the cooperation between spontaneous wisdom and intelligence. Here it is a matter of a state of consciousnes where intelligence advances from formal knowledge to material knowledge, ie, from knowledge of the relationships of the things to knowledge of the things themselves.

Meditations on the Tarot, Letter XIX, The Sun

Cosmic Christ of faith; Omega Point of science

Under the combined influence of men’s thoughts and aspirations, the universe around us is seen to be knit together and convulsed by a vast movement of convergence.

Not only theoretically, but experientially, our modern cosmogony is taking the form of a cosmogenesis…at the term of which we can distinguish a supreme focus of personalising personality…Just suppose that we identify (at least in his ‘natural’ aspect) the cosmic Christ of faith with the Omega Point of science: then everything in our outlook is clarified and broadened, and falls into harmony.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Christianity and Evolution

Whatever hasn’t happened will happen

‘Truth never prevails’, said Planck, ‘but her adversaries always perish in the end.’ And Einstein: ‘I do not believe in education. Your only model ought to be yourself, however frightful that model may be.’ But the struggles these men were engaged in had nothing to do with the Earth and its history, or with day-to-day happenings.

They felt themselves responsible only to truth. And yet political events overtook them. Planck’s son was assassinated by the Gestapo, Einstein driven into exile. The present generation, everywhere and in all circumstances, is made aware that the scientist is closely connected with world affairs. Almost all useful knowledge is concentrated in his hands, and very soon all power will be too.

He is the key figure in the adventure on which humanity has embarked. Enmeshed by politics, harassed by the police and information services, supervised by the military, he has about an equal chance of ending his career with the Nobel Prize or facing a firing squad. At the same time his work leads him to scorn the trivialities of the individual and the particular, and enables him to think on a planetary, even cosmic level.

Between his own power and the powers that be there is a misunderstanding. Only an arrant coward could hesitate between the risk he runs himself and the risks to which he exposes the world. Kurchatov broke the seal of silence and revealed what he knew to British physicists at Harwell. Pontecorvo fled Russia to carry on his work there. Oppenheimer got into trouble with his Government.

The American atomic scientists took sides against the army and published their extraordinary bulletin: The cover drawing represented a clock whose hands move towards midnight every time some formidable experiment or discovery falls into the hands of the military.

‘This is my prediction for the future‘, wrote the British biologist J.B.S. Haldane: ‘whatever hasn’t happened will happen! And no one will be safe from it!‘

Matter liberates its energy, and the way to the planets is open. Events such as these seem to be unprecedented in history. ‘We are living at a time when history is holding its breath, and the present is detaching itself from the past like an iceberg that has broken away from its icy moorings to sail across the boundless ocean.’ (Arthur Clarke, The Children of Icarus).

The Morning of the Magicians, Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier

The Sun at Midnight

The Zohar tells us that the moon “renounced her place of higher rank” – that of equality with the sun – and that “from that time she has had no light of her own, but derives her light from the sun. Nevertheless, her real light is greater than that which she radiates here below.”

Here below, therefore, the moon reflects the light of the sun, whilst above – where her name is ELOHIM – “her power is manifest in all directions…EL being ‘the dominion of the day’, IM being ‘the dominion of the night and HE in the middle being the remainder of the forces (‘the stars), participating in both dominions.”

Now, the moon, in so far as she is the nocturnal luminary above, she shines with her own light, and it is the sun which reflects her. In other words, the moon is ‘solar’ above and ‘lunar here below, whilst the sun is ‘solar’ here below and ‘lunar’ above.

It is in this sense that EL, the radiant part of the moon’s name above, has the “dominion of the day”, ie, it is the visible sun – reflecting the invisible moon during the day. Similarly, the visible moon reflects the sun (become invisible) during the night. The spiritual moon is therefore the sun which shines at midnight. And it is the spiritual moon – or Isis – Sophia – that Apuleius “saw shining at midnight in its briliant radiance.” For the long vigil in the Isis temple resulted in a vision of the cosmic principle of Isis, ie, the spiritual moon or the “sun at midnight.”

All these things, although presented to us in mythological clothing, relate to the profound reality of the relationship of intelligence and wisdom, and their union – intuition. For intelligence corresponds to the moon, wisdom to the sun, and intuition to the restoration of the “intimate union” of the two luminaries.

Here below intelligence reflects wisdom – or, if it is eclipsed (see Letter XVIII, The Moon), it reflects the terrestrial world of external experience. But there is another intelligence above, a trancendental intelligence, whose “light is greater than that which it radiates here below”, and which – united intimately to wisdom – is “inscribed above among the letters of the sacred name (YHVH), which are four in number”, and which shines in the middle of the night “in its briliant radiance.”

This higher intelligence, this “sun at midnight”, which is the conjunction of the spiritual sun and spiritual moon – or, in other words, the intimate union of intelligence and wisdom – is the “star” of Hermeticism, and it is “The Sun” of the nineteenth Arcanum.

“The Sun” of the nineteenth Arcanum is the “sun at midnight”, ie, the sun that Apuleius “saw shining at midnight in its brilliant radiance,” and it is this “sun” which is the “star” of Hermeticism across the ages. It is the principle of intuition, or the intimate union of transcendental intelligence and wisdom.”

Unknown Author, Meditations on the Tarot, Letter XIX, The Sun

Hidden Stargates

Marked these words, the quill of Hermes:
Raise the green-lipped youth Adonis.
Listen well, as if to Eros,
See the truth within his promise.

Through the self, a solar system
Metes out time. The planets singing,
Seal in lines the great revision.
“Light!” The cosmic bells are ringing.

Truth reflects within the like minds,
As are scanned the skies sky for giants’
Astronomic temples; sun-signs
Trace the thread of ancient science.

There in orbit turn the star-lings,
Planets binding, suns inclining,
In such ways that whole dimensions
Fold inside the vaults of Heaven.

Angels watch the hidden stargates –
One from North, a second South-side –
East and West. The seal is six-faced.
Secret form – a cube, shaped inside.

Milky Star Way

‘Near, yet far, he spies another
In the spiral trap of Hera,
Milky star-way, whereupon is
Resting Perseus. Calls Orion:

‘”I have a plan to rout Olympus,
Woo the nymphs and plunder treasure,
Somehow try to storm Zakynthos,
Free the slaves and take my measure.”

‘“Maybe you – and then your brother –
Have some cause to join up forces?
Unified, we’d hold the weather,
This would bring immortals chaos?”

‘Half a sound is made by Perseus –
Just a calm, sub-sonic murmur –
Tone of one who’s done his duty:
‘Starman, you’re a cosmic learner’.

‘Peace is what we need in heaven –
This is all the wise are teaching –
Why not heed the words the water
Gave; why raise the fires against it?

Still the starman shuns his prison,
Rues the day his will was rendered
Helpless, though the sun has risen.
Never shall his soul surrender.

Future from the past; reflection

‘‘Forwards backwards, time is taking

Cosmic steps through every section.

Herein find the secret waiting:

Future from the past; reflection.’

‘Then Osiris, fully risen,

Calls to life, renews gestation,

Metes out Time with fate’s precision,

Orders: ‘Scribe, divine creation.’’

So is seen the mythic cycle,

Turning ever on its axis.

Each was placed upon its system,

Fixed was each by one, another.

One drew out another’s mystery,

So they grew to greater wisdom.

Set were they on points of psyche’s

Evolution, flowering moments.

When to heart and soul one listened,

Heard and wrought it for one’s vision,

Out of that which never dies;

Springs, eternal, the story of the sky.

Charlotte Cowell, The Myth

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’].

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.

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.

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.

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