The Star of Hermeticism

It was neither the straw of the crib, nor the animals that were present, which guided and enabled the mages from the East to find the Child, but rather the “star” in heaven. Similarly, in Hermeticism one will find only straw and animals if one is not guided by its “star”, which exists only for intuition. Now, it is the nineteenth Arcanum of the Tarot, which invites us to occupy ourselves quite especially with the “star” of Hermeticism in the heaven of intuition. What is this “star?” The Zohar says:

“And God made the two great lights….originally, when the moon and sun were in intimate union, they shone with equal luminosity. The names JEHOVAH and ELOHIM were then associated as equals…and the two lights were dignified with the same name: MAZPAZ MAZPAZ….The two lights rose simultaneously and were of the same dignity. But….the moon humbled herself by diminishing her light, and renounced her place of higher rank. 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; for a woman enjoys no honour save in conjunction with her husband. The great light (the sun) has the name JEHOVAH and the lesser light (the moon) has the name ELOHIM, which is the last of the degrees and the close of thought. Originally she was inscribed above among the letters of the sacred name (YHVH), which are four in number; it was only after diminishing herself that she took the name ELOHIM.

But 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.

It is left to us only to cite another passage from an ancient source – from the eleventh book of Apuleius’ Transformations – in order to have all the elements necessary to grapple, sufficiently equipped, with the problem of the “star” of Hermeticism and “The Sun” of the nineteenth Arcanum of the Tarot. Apuleius summarised his great vigil at the temple of Isis – the “arcana of the sacred night” (noctis sacratae arcana) in the following way:

I approached the very gates of death and set one foot on Prosperine’s threshold, yet was permitted to return, rapt through all the elements. At midnight I saw the sun shining in its brilliant radiance; I entered the presence of the gods of the under-world and the gods of the upper-world, stood near and worshipped them.

Let us now seek for reality, having in view the above-cited passage from the Zohar and the statement made by Apuleius.

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

Le Maitre Philippe

For my reckoning I have, together with some compaions, done the rounds of esotericisms and explored all the crypts with the most fervent sincerity, with the most vivid hope of success. But none of the certainties that I eventually grasped appeared to me to be the Certainty.

Rabbis have communicated unknown manuscripts to me; alchemists have admitted me to their laboratories; Sufis, Buddhists and Taoists have lead me, during long late-night sessions, to the abodes of their gods; a Brahmin let me copy his tables of mantrams; a yogi gave the secrets of contemplation. But, one evening, after a certain meeting, all that these admirable men had taught me became for me like the soft haze which rises at dusk after an over-warm day.

Dr Philippe Encausse, Le Maitre Philippe de Lyon

Dark Light of the Soul

We often experience things that come up in the internal-external dialogue to be divided into opposites such as good and bad, God and the devil, us and them, confusion about moral stance and so forth.

The person may have thought that he or she knew exactly his or her standing in terms of ideologies, morals, the world, and religion. It becomes apparent, during this process, that what we thought we knew has been primarily according to our ego’s stannce. The opposites in dialogue may suddenly pull us into new territory where we experience tremendous indecision.

The now indecisive and floundering ego may become identified with both sides of the opposites, which creates quiet a confusion. Splitting, which entails some psychological part of dissociating from consciousness, may arise as a defense mechanism.

Beneath the splitting, dissociation and repression that can accompany creative depression is frequently a “core of madness” that must be uncovered. We feel “mad” owing to the degree of chaos and the loss of equilibrium that our ego is experiencing as its “known” perspectives are challenged.

In this dual identification, it is as if the ego decombusts. Everything is being canceled by its opposite in the dialogue, creating an indecisiveness that is one of the primary symptoms of the depressed condition. In this state of ambivalence, in wh ich everything is canceled out, one may feel like one has fallen into an abyss.

In this void or abyss, we feel as if we were dying, accompanied by bursts of intense anxiety around conflicting thoughts and values. We may feel we haev regressed back into the interpersonal field of parents and family. In the “black hole” of the abyssal experience, conflict can often take on a rather paranoid form. The clash of forces can feel as if one is in an ideological, spiritual, or cultural collision, not just with our former personal ideals and values, but with the entire collective consciousness.

Because dissociation may be occurring on a collective, cultural level, certain individuals may be depressed, not only because of developmental traumatic and intrapsychic factors, but also because of the sensitive and uncanny nature of some individuals to have a large psyche and soul that is more attuned than some of the rest of us to the collective unconcsious.

Certain persons have access to a depth of unconscious material and, with discernment, may find that their psychic imagery is running parallel to the dissociation or splitting of their culture. Crucially, there is an important cultural factor here. The healing nature of this phenomenon is an ego re-organised in relationship to the Self.

Any individual who evolves into a healthy ego Self relationship inevitably has the potential to contribute a great deal to culture and society. If our society pathologises such episodes only during which a reordering process is occurring within the individual, we miss the impact of the unconscious material not only upon the individual and his or her growth, but also the potential for this individual’s healing to have a positive ripple effect upon the immediate culture and community.

Karen Wood Madden, Dark Light of the Soul

Don Juan

Don Juan is not purely and simply a blasphemous dissolute, he is rather a hierophant of this small god of great power known in antiquity under the name of Eros or Amor (Love). It is the magic of Eros that he represents, and it is the mysteries of Eros over which he presides in the capacity of a priest.

Don Juan was neither a blasphemous dissolute nor a false-hearted seducer, nor even a brutal adventurer, but rather an obedient and courageous servant of this childlike divinity who loves and commands elan, enthusiasm and ardour, and who detests and forbids the weighing, measuring and calculating of reason with its laws of utility and advantage, circumspection and respect for convention and, lastly, its priority of a cold head over a warm heart.

However, love has not only its right to exist, but also its transcendental metaphysics, philosophy and mysticism. Don Juan was more than a victim or dupe of love – this apparently capricious goddess. He embraced her philosophy and mysticism and was therefore her conscious collaborator, her hierophant initiated into her mysteries. And it is thus that he has become an archetype – the archetype of love for its own sake, the lover par excellence.

Don Juan lives through the energy of amorous influence for the energy of amorous influence – by nourishing it and maintaining it like a fire which should never be extinguished. This is because he is conscious of the value of this fire and of the mission that htis fire has in the world. In the eternal conflict that there is between law – of right, of reason, and of the divine – and love, he takes the side of love, for which courage is necessary.

And it is thus that Don Juan represents an idea, an archetype, an arcanum. He represents the young man on teh Card of the sixth Arcanum of the Tarot “The Lover”, who has chosen the fire of love as such and multiplicity instead of the unicity of the love of his eternal sister soul – since Babylon, the woman appointed to the mysteries of erotic magic, has convinced him.

Unknown Author, Meditations on the Tarot, Letter XXI, The Fool

Glimmer of Dewdrops

And on the first day of the week when the sounds of the temple bells sought their ears, one spoke and said: “Master, we hear much talk of God hereabout. What say you of God, and who is He in very truth?”

And he stood before them like a young tree, fearless of wind or tempest, and he answered saying: “Think now, my comrades and beloved, of a heart that contains all your hearts, a love that encompasses all your loves, a spirit that envelops all your spirits, a voice enfolding all your voices, and a silence deeper than all your silences, and timeless.

“Seek now to perceive in your self-fullness a beauty more enchanting than all things beautiful, a song more vast than the song of the sea and the forest, a majesty seated upon a throne for which Orion is but a footstool, holding a sceptre in which the Pleiades are naught save the glimmer of dewdrops.

“You have sought alawys only food and shelter, a garment and a staff; seek now One who is neither an aim for your arrows nor a stony cave to shield you from the elements.

“And if my words are a rock and a riddle, then seek, none the less, that your hearts may be broken, and that your questionings may bring you unto the love and the wisdom of the Most High, whom men call God.”

And they were silent, every one, and they were perplexed in their heart.

Kahlil Gibran, The Garden of the Prophet

Love

A man must have gazed long at the face of incarnate, crucified Love and pondered deeply on Love’s actions if, when it comes to the point, he can speak of his own failing love in thise terms: “love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all thigns.” (1 Cor 13.7).

In such love, however, contemplation comes to blossom in the truth of a human life; it shows whether he has really acted so as to allow God’s word to be paramount in his life, God’s truth and love to triumph over his untruth and egoism.

That is what is meant by worshipping in spirit and truth; it also involves renouncing “ultimate knowledge” for the sake of “ultimate love”. For as knowledge, it will pass away…but love never ends.” (1 Cor 13.8).

The love which “surpasses knowledge” can only be “known” (Eph 3.19) in something more-than knowledge, which is in fact love itself, a loving together with God and from God, just as God’s truth is one with his life of love which pours forth in a threefold stream.

Hans Urs von Balthasar, Prayer

The Phaedrus Charioteer

I might tell of many other noble deeds which have sprung from inspired madness. And therefore, let no one frighten or flutter us by saying that the temperate friend is to be chosen rather than the inspired, but let him further show that love is not sent by the gods for any good to lover or beloved; if he can do so we will allow him to carry off the palm. And we, on our part, will prove in answer to him that the madness of love is the greatest of heaven’s blessings, and the proof shall be one which the wise will receive, and the witling disbelieve. But first of all, let us view the affections and actions of the soul divine and human, and try to ascertain the truth about them:

The soul through all her being is immortal, for that which is ever in motion is immortal; but that which moves another and is moved by another, in ceasing to move ceases also to live. Only the self-moving, never leaving self, never ceases to move, and is the fountain and beginning of motion to all that moves besides.

Of the nature of the soul, though her true form be ever a theme of large and more than mortal discourse, let me speak briefly, and in a figure. And let the figure be composite-a pair of winged horses and a charioteer. Now the winged horses and the charioteers of the gods are all of them noble and of noble descent, but those of other races are mixed; the human charioteer drives his in a pair; and one of them is noble and of noble breed, and the other is ignoble and of ignoble breed; and the driving of them of necessity gives a great deal of trouble to him. I will endeavour to explain to you in what way the mortal differs from the immortal creature.

The soul in her totality has the care of inanimate being everywhere, and traverses the whole heaven in divers forms appearing–when perfect and fully winged she soars upward, and orders the whole world; whereas the imperfect soul, losing her wings and drooping in her flight at last settles on the solid ground-there, finding a home, she receives an earthly frame which appears to be self-moved, but is really moved by her power; and this composition of soul and body is called a living and mortal creature. For immortal no such union can be reasonably believed to be; although fancy, not having seen nor surely known the nature of God, may imagine an immortal creature having both a body and also a soul which are united throughout all time. Let that, however, be as God wills, and be spoken of acceptably to him. And now let us ask the reason why the soul loses her wings!

Plato, Phaedrus

Renunciation of Higher Knowledge

My dear friends, we have reached an event in human history that is of the greatest imaginable importance. Human beings are making the resolve: We will renounce knowledge! It was in one of those simple gatherings of Rosicrucians that, on the occasion of a ritual arranged for the purpose – during the latter half of the fifteenth century – people’s knowledge of the stars was, in deeply solemn manner, offered up.

People stood before a kind of altar and said: “We resolve to feel ourselves at this moment responsible not for ourselves alone, nor for our community or our nation alone, not even for the people of our time alone; we resolve to feel ourselves responsible for all people who have ever lived on Earth, we resolve to feel ourselves belonging to the whole of humankind.

And we feel that what has really happened with human beings is that they have deserted the rank of the fourth hierarchy and have descended too deeply into matter. [ for the ‘Fall’ was understood in this sense.] And so that humanity may be able to return to the ran of the fourth hierarchy, may be able to find for itself of its own free will what in earlier times gods have tried to find for it and with it, let now the higher knowledge be offered up for a season.

And certain beings of the spiritual world, who are not of humankind, who do not come to Earth in human incarnation, accepted the sacrifice in order to fulfill therewith certain purposes of the spiritual world. Thereby was the impulse for freedom made possible for human beings.

Everything that takes place in the external life of the physical senses has its spiritual counterpart; we merely have to look for it in the right place. For it can happen that such a ritual, enacted – I will not say, in this instance, with full knowledge, but enacted by persons who stand in connection with the spiritual world, can have very deep meaning; from it can radiate impulses for a whole culture, for a whole stream of civilisation.

It is a fact that if we want to come to a clear knowledge of the fundamental colouring and tone of a particular epoch of history, we must look for the source in the spiritual; the spiritual spring whose forces stream through that epoch of time. Whatever, in the years that followed, showed itself to be of a truly spiritual nature was a kind of echo sounding on of this creative working out of unknown spiritual worlds. Side by side with external materialism that developed in the succeeding centuries, we can always find here and there individuals who are living under the influence of that renunciation of higher knowledge.

The Secret Stream, Rudolf Steiner

Key Words

abyss air apollo artemis

beauty blood dawn divine

earth fire future god

gold golden heart heaven

human light love magic

magical

meditations

tarot mind moon mystery

nature power prayer reason

sea secret silver sky

soul spirit spiritual star

sun time truth vision

water wind wisdom world

The Philosopher’s Stone

The process of induction (which ‘ascends from earth to heaven’) and that of deduction (which ‘descends to earth’), the process of prayer (which ‘ascends from earth to heaven’) and that of revelation (which ‘descends to earth’) – ie, human endeavour and the action of grace from above – unite and become a complete circle which contracts and concentrates to become a point where the ascent and descent are simultaneous and coincide.

And this point is the ‘philosopher’s stone’ – the principle of the identity of the human and divine, of humanism and prophetism, of intelligence and revelation, of intellectuality and spirituality. It is the solution of the problem posed by St Paul, or rather the accomplishment of the task given by him, when he wrote of the Cross being folly to the Greeks and a stumbling block to the Jews, but which ‘to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, is the power of God and the wisdom of God’. (I Corinthians 1, 22 – 24).

The historical and evolutionary mission of Hermeticism is to advance the progress of the alchemical work engaged in developing the ‘philosopher’s stone’ or the union of spirituality and intellectuality. It is called to be the crest of the wave of contemporary human effort aspiring to the fusion of spirituality and intellectuality. This effort and aspiration is larger than the group of Hermeticists, properly said, who are dispersed in the world. There are probably more people who are not avowed Hermeticists and who are engaged in this endeavour aiming at the fusion of spirituality and intellectuality than there are Hermeticists, properly said.

The Spirit blows where it will, but the task of the Hermetic tradition is to maintain – without pretension to a monopoly, God forbid! – the ancient ideal of ‘the thelema of the whole world…..which ascends from earth to heaven…..descends to earth, and uniteth in itself the force from things superior and inferior.’ Its task is that of guardian of the great spiritual work.

Meditations on the Tarot, Unknown Author, Letter XXI, The Fool