What soul isn’t in default?

What soul isn’t in default?

Can you afford not to make the magical study which happiness is?

Do you hear the cock when he crows?

Do you  know the charge, that you shall have no envy, that your life has its orders, that the seasons seize you too, that no body and soul are one if they are not wrought in this retort?

That otherwise efforts are efforts?

And that the hour of your flight will be the hour of your death

Charles Olson, from Variations done for Gerald van de Wiele

Retinue of Wisdom

Feminine forms are dancing

Beneath the red-robed figure in the sky,

Who walks with a retinue of wisdom.

From the wedding of water with fire

Breath takes the air of inspiration,

Watery fire fills with life,

Vivifying the dark Earth station;

Bringing from the deep space light.

Philosophy of a Lunatic

I feel so close to God, so inspired by His Spirit that in a sense I am God. I see the future, plan the Universe, save mankind; I am utterly and completely immortal; I am even male and female. The whole Universe, animate and inanimate, past, present and future, is within me. All nature and life, all spirits, are co-operating and connected with me; all things are possible. I am in a sense identical with all spirits from God to Satan. I reconcile Good and Evil and create light, darkness, worlds, universes.

John Custance, Wisdom, Madness and Folly: the Philosophy of a Lunatic

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He who has found and awakened to the Soul that has entered this conglomerate whole – he is the maker of everything, for he is the creator of all; the world is his: indeed, he is the world itself.

Brhadaranyaka Upanishad

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Spiritual megalomania is as old as the world. Its origin is found well beyond the terrestrial world, according to the millennial-old tradition concerning the fall of Lucifer. The prophet Ezekiel gives a most moving description of this:

You were the signet of perfection, you were full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God; You were covered with every kind of precious stone: Sardonyx, topaz, and diamond, chrysolite, onyx and jasper, sapphire, carbuncle, emerald, and gold, with which you were adorned, and which were prepared for you on the day that you were created. You were a guardian Cherubim, with outspread wings; I placed you, and you were, on the holy mountain of God; You walked in the midst of stones of fire…Your heart was proud because of your beauty, You corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendour. I cast you to the ground, I exposed you before kings, to feast their eyes on you…..

Ezekiel, xxviii, 12-17

Here is the higher (ie, celestial) origin of inflation, superiority complex and megalomania. And since ‘that which is below is as that which is above’, it is repeated below in human earthly life from century to century and generation to generation. It is repeated above all in the lives of those human beings who are detached from the ordinary earthly setting and the state of consciousness belonging to it, and who transcend it, be it in the sense of height, in the sense of breadth, or, lastly, in the sense of depth.

Unknown author, Meditations on the Tarot, Letter VII, The Chariot

Hymns to the Night

Have courage, for life is striding
To endless life along;
Stretched by inner fire,
Our sense becomes transfigured.
One day the stars above
Shall flow in golden wine,
We will enjoy it all,
And as stars we will shine.

The love is given freely,
And Separation is no more.
The whole life heaves and surges
Like a sea without a shore.
Just one night of bliss —
One everlasting poem —
And the sun we all share
Is the face of God.

Novalis, Hymns to the Night

The Challenge

Thus, the voices reached a clamour –
Each had made his case with vigour –
Each revealed his spirit’s armour,
Each declared his god(s) the bigger.

So the Shaman stepped amongst them:
“Let us settle this forever,
Lest in man is made a schism,
Then in woman, child and creature.”

On his drum he rolled a rhythm,
Challenged all to meet his maker,
Clear of conscience visit heaven
Then return, not less, nor greater.

As the beat rolled on, relentless,
Nine – the listeners – reach inside them,
Sought to find their soul-connection,
Straight unto the gate’s of Heaven.

First to fly, the Sufi mystic –
With his coat of many colours –
Made a spiral of his spirit,
Through his dance amazed the others.

Where he went was then a secret.
“Who’ll rise next?” the Shaman wondered.
So the Rabbi brought his deepest
Spark to life and upward wandered.