Methods in Magick VIII: Vehicle of Heathenism: Homoiosis Theo, Theion Ergon.
Extracting a pattern from the living universe in its magnificent form, taking it up and expressing it, turns a fragment of the world-soul into a phenomenal act manifested in the generative world of matter. Between the great divine and terrestrial labours there are manifold mediums that hold the Hecatean keys of perception, consciousness, and transformation of the animalistic human soul into an astralistic pneuma. Hierarchies and boundary points are merely a model of something complete to make it more tangible to human symbolic-systemic thought. Gods do not contradict nature, they make it their own. By invoking a power, an idea, a force, a god or goddess, we seek to lease their power to our ethos, our daimon, to impress upon our soul an ability, an idea, a potency. The only goal is to transform ourselves into something that agrees with the power we invoke. "What we eat is what we become", this refers to all kinds of food, aesthetic, intellectual, physical, soulful, magical, performative, artistic, political, social and so on.
To perform this operation, we need a point of reference, a coordinate system for events and insights, a guide for orientation and arete, clearly - we need a map that we have acquired through experience, knowledge and life. The map is a projection of our daimon and it sets the plan for our further development, it unfolds along the way. How are we to proceed without clues? How are we to transform without knowing what we want to become, except through automatisms that pull us into destinies and events like puppets on the strings of emotions, desires and rash decisions, directing our time and effort in the wrong quarter ? Sometimes I sketch schemes at various points in life to reevaluate my path, reflect on it, and recall long-forgotten memories, sensations, dreams, insights, visions, events, emotions, and feelings.
First, we need an object to inspire us, and like mystics, we make ourselves receptive to what it has to convey. Every object has its perspective, and as an Aghori knows, even faeces, blood, and decaying cadavers have something to teach us-to take an extreme example. This means that if we want to work with the solar energies, we must become the sun in trance, in performance, in meditation, in contemplation. When I close my eyes and stare at the sun for a brief moment (with my eyes closed, otherwise you will be blind for the rest of your life), I am exchanging perspective and intelligence with an object that physics considers a rather volatile but "inanimate" object. Its intelligence is hyperionic in hypostasis, that is, interpreted by the intelligible, intellectual apparatus of man, it is superbly alive, superbly divine, and supremely fierce and majestic, standing as a temple of truth and honesty. The reification of the sun in the figures of antiquity, be it Aion, Helios, Zervan-Akarana, is not naivety, but an attempt to allegorize the sun in order to bionize its high intellect in representative human form.
The iconoclasts hated the idea, they wanted a monotheistic, abstract God, and made short work of heathen symbols. They destroyed the balanced path between the supreme divine and a chain of mediums, symbols, forces, powers, masks of the divine in all their freedom, autonomy and unity. In Jungian terms, the introjection of the Divine as gods is wiser than a unified force, the step through the abyss is easier than with a gigantic void in front of us. Monotheism asserts that "here are men, there, beyond the void, is God." Symbolically speaking, the mediums of the multitudes, ordered in hermetic beauty, lead steadily to divinity, not just as symbols, but as living gods - do not make them demons or archetypes, as some have tried! Even if you want to go deep into the bowels of what they are made of - you will find a void of dharmas and exclude yourself from the process of participation.
We can exchange perspective with any object to approach its perspective, to rent its essence and acquire a part of it. This is an ad hoc scenario. But what if we want the intelligence of the planets to cooperate with us and shape our minds, hearts and souls? Please note that I use the term intelligencers for spiritual entities of a certain sphere, planetary and stellar, millions and millions of spirits are waiting! Somehow I have a faint, sad impression of human souls in chains, I dare to quote William Blake:
“The millions of spirits immortal were bound in the ruins
of sulphur heaven
To wander enslaved; black, depressed in dark ignorance,
kept in awe with the whip,
To worship terrors, bred from the blood of revenge and
breath of desire,
In beastial forms, or more terrible men, till the dawn
of our peaceful morning,
Till dawn, till morning, till the breaking of clouds,
and swelling of winds, and the universal voice,
Till man raise his darkened limbs out of the caves of night,
his eyes and his heart
Expand. Where is space? Where O sun is thy dwelling?
where thy tent, O faint slumberous Moon?
(…)”
-William Blake, French Revolution (1791)
Intelligencers polish, shape and carve in ethos, mind and soul, they shape us if we are willing to cooperate. The results are tremendously impressive in months, years. Work with the Saturn energies for seven years, and if you come through the great ordeal unscathed, you will attain a disciplined, systemic, cruel, deadly witty, versatile, somewhat vicious sense of humor, if not dead and ruined. Work another seven years, if you survive, and you will refine yourself into noble gold of great intrinsic value at best, or drown in mélancolie noire and obscene vulgarities at worst. Saturn is almost a sure way to the grave, with Mercury my inner trickster somehow begins to ask a question, "Will you survive or will I get rid of a competitor in the easiest way possible?" I leave it to others to come out with such notions and leave me far behind, I have to deal with the bitterness myself - that's my problem. But first you must learn to rise above yourself. I am a master upon myself and need no other after years of confrontations (although contested by swine that deal with their opinions or preferences, a grand "nay" to me, are like yesterday's farts upon the morose winds) and if you can find a mentor to guide you - all the better. But if in his arrogance he makes you a slave in a guru-like relationship, you should look elsewhere. Mastery goes with intellectual humility, arrogance with intolerance of fools, but the latter are never good teachers. Personally, I prefer to write because I know my limits of mischief. I would quickly become a charlatan if I extended myself to larger groups. Manipulative charlatans quickly forget their inner truth and follow ugly things. Remindeth thus, carry on!