Dragontree Network 3
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Issue 3; Dog Days, July 2011
"The Divine Feminine"
1. Russian Genetic Genealogy Journal
2. Dragon Heritage Notes, by Nicholas de Vere
3. Abraxas, Jung & Gnosticism
4. The Alchemical Sophia
5. Anima Mundi
6. The Divine Feminine Returns
7. Lunar Consciousness
8. Great Mother / Virgin Goddess
9. Gender Reunion
10.The Underground Stream
11. Women's Mysteries
Walter Bruneel
Portrait of an archetypal beauty fully realizing and acknowledging her Dragon Consciousness;
more than just being in touch with this consciousness,
it's about knowing your multidimensional Self and Dragon Being,
by Walter Bruneel, Spain: Enjoy, more on : www.walterbruneel.com
more than just being in touch with this consciousness,
it's about knowing your multidimensional Self and Dragon Being,
by Walter Bruneel, Spain: Enjoy, more on : www.walterbruneel.com
The Dragoness Returns
One Blood; One Life; One Love
1. Russian Genetic Genealogy Journal:
http://www.lulu.com/items/volume_67/8540000/8540374/1/print/8540374.pdf
2. Dragon Heritage Notes, by Nicholas de Vere
A Closed Fraternity
When the Imperial and Royal Dragon Court was reconstituted by King Sigismund in 1408 as the Societas Draconis, it was based upon an ancient bloodline tradition which Sigismund assumed that he had inherited from his presumed Egyptian and Scythian ancestors through the Pictish, Dragon Princess Maelasanu of Northumbria and the Ancient and Original Angevin Royal House of Vere of Anjou, the Imperial Dukes of Angiers.
This line had descended through the Tuatha de Danaan (the Dragon Kings of Anu) on the one hand, and the Egyptian Dragon Dynasty of Sobek on the other. The latter strain included the bloodline of the Davidic House of Judah who married into the descent of the Merovingian Kings of the Franks.
Human Vanities
Emperor Sigismund (as he was styled from 1410) was a son of the House of Luxembourg - dynasts who flagrantly altered their genealogy in order to be able to claim a fraudulent descent from this Dragon Dynasty of Maelasanu and Anjou. It is from this descent - from Maelasanu or Melusine - and upon her British, later Angiers-Angevin, Dragon Court, that Sigismund claimed the right to base Societas Draconis as a bloodline continuation of this ancient, prehistoric, anti-Christian, pre-Catholic, British Elven Institution.
One of the most famous members of Sigismund’s misappropriated organization was Vlad Basarrab or Draculea, the son of Vlad Drakul.
After Draculea’s death, his son Michael wrote that his father proudly claimed a linear descent from the Priests of the Dragon Court of Queen Sobekh Nefru of Egypt, whose predecessor Amenhemet had built the Dragon Labyrinth of Fayyum - dedicated to Sobekh - which was later copied in Crete as the Labyrinth of the Minotaur.
Dynastic Deceptions
The genealogy of the House of Drakul, Dracula or Basarrab is well known and widely documented. Descending from Attila the Hun, this family was established in Central Europe by the sons of Ghengis Khan. No bloodline with which the House of Basarrab was associated or allied in marriage at that time had any affiliation with any extraction that was remotely related with the dynasties of Egypt.
It is obvious, therefore, that Draculea or Dracula must have been claiming an apostolic succession, a spiritual priestly lineage deferring to the Egyptian Dragon Court of Sobekh Nefru through Sigismund’s assumed descent from Melusine. Her ancestry actually can be traced back to the Scythian Dragon Princess Scota, Queen Sobekh Nefru and the Egyptian Cult of the Dragon.
Undoubtedly Dracula assumed erroneously that he had received this ancient mystical honour during his investiture into Sigismund’s Societas Draconis, and by virtue of Sigismund’s supposed descent from Melusine and the ancient Angevin House of Vere. In his own right, Dracula can claim no relationship to any early Angevins, nor to the later second Anjou House of Plantagenet, except via an eight link marital bridge which has no alliances that relate him by blood to Anjou.
Sigismund assumed a personal entitlement to this legacy in 1397, the date upon which he sought to reconstitute Princess Melusine’s Dragon Court - as Societas Draconis - in a manner that he deemed the most suitable to enhance his power base and establish his royal claims. Following its subsequent formal inception in 1408, the Court recruited members from a number of prominent royal and noble houses. Historians have noted that these were not particularly known for their religious orthodoxy, including the later House of Vere in England, as one authority on Sigismund’s Dragon Court has asserted.
Today, however, the Imperial and Royal Dragon Court itself exists as a closed fraternity, a collective of individuals, comprising those who, unlike Sigismund, can trace their ancestry and affiliations back to the ancient, pre-Christian Elven, Grail and Dragon families via Anjou. The Court retains the traditional three tier degree system that Sigismund borrowed and to which he appended three separate representations of the alchemical Ouroboros emblem for the distinct ranks of the Court. A fourth emblem, configured in the form of the Egyptian Ankh or Albigensian Cross, was used by the family officers of the Inner Temple.
The tripartite system was peculiar to the Scythians and Celts, whose Druids incorporated a similar structure within their orders and colleges. It later found expression within the Cathar fraternity of Languedoc and also with the Witches.
It was developed within the Hierarchical Rule of the Knights Templars with whom the Court had a strong historical connection.
Blood Relationship
The Inner Temple is presided over by the Vere Grand Masters, who are currently resident in Britain and Europe. Being essentially an organization which emphasizes the crucial links between Dragon families, the rank system within the Court takes second place to the sense of blood relationship and the natural bond of co-operation engendered by that relationship.
Service, mutual support and respect supersede those types of ambition and advancement which prevail in other bodies which might, on the face of it, resemble the Dragon Court model in some ways. Within such orders, sights are firmly set towards material gain through supporting establishments which themselves breed division and inequity.
The tenets of the Grail and Dragon traditions are implicit in defining that we should be at one with the earth, and cannot, therefore, presume dominion over it. Unlike those who wish to profit unjustifiably from dubious Merovingian descent.
This philosophy is embedded in the concept of individual gnosis, and lies at the very heart of the Draconian culture. It is evident in all aspects of life itself.
Emanating from the ancient lore of the Elven Lords and Ladies of the Forest, this ancestral legacy forms the bedrock upon which this and all legitimately related Dragon Courts were originally founded.
The Tinker Kings
It is no secret that, through a process of calculated indoctrination, our individual decisions are often prompted by fears of non-conformity or insecurity. As a result we are conditioned to purchase a variety of hyped goods and services in order to redress personal inadequacies that do not, in fact, exist. In reality, the prevalent forms of fear-based merchandising are little different from straightforward protection rackets, and yet they are sanctioned and encouraged by our governing establishments.
For centuries, western state authorities and their Churches have enjoyed continued power over a subordinate majority, by presenting a facade of sacrosanct jurisdiction which has seemed inextricably linked to some form of royalty, nobility, or government by divine sanction. By virtue of this, it is not surprising that so many people now consider royalty, nobility and western religion to be archaic components of a system of class and privilege which has no place in the modern age.
What few recognize, however, is that for centuries the perceived representation of royalty and nobility has, to a large extent, been a fraud perpetuated by a dressed up merchant class elite who have no real entitlement to their positions. This farce, with its inherent tyranny and social abuse, has been endured through the ages, while the true bloodline families have been suppressed and supplanted by traders and brokers disguised in crowns and mitres.
In practice, there is nothing noble about these tinker kings, since the word ‘noble’ relates to gnosis or wisdom. However, they have long been defined as ‘aristocrats’ (meaning ’best rulers’), and have thereby retained gratuitous stations of power and influence in a self proclaimed higher echelon of society.
These tinker kings and their emissaries have plagued the western scene for generations, leaving all to wonder how it is that our supposed guardians and ambassadors are so often an embarrassment, and are rarely representative of community requirement.
They refer to all and sundry as ‘subjects’, ‘commoners’ and ‘flocks’ using such patronizing terminology as ‘the ordinary people’ or ‘the man in the street’, as if they had some predestined right of supremacy.
In reality, the fact is that the individual establishments of these said aristocrats (be they state heads, provincial overlords or clerical governors) are frequently very questionable, and their personal roots are often more ordinary than most.
Mother Earth
Prior to these distortions, the nature of kingship was entirely different. There was no requirement for Church sanction through coronation by parvenu popes or archbishops. Kingship was founded upon the ideal that all people were adherents of the earth, and that the earth bestowed sovereignty upon its first born people, the Elven Tribes. They were represented by a Dragon Queen, and she empowered the Grail King, who could not be a king without her.
In this environment, the right to kingship emanated from the female, since Mother Earth was herself deemed to be female. The overriding function of a king and queen was to maintain a spiritually transcendent intelligence within the realm, thereby enabling the organism (the kingdom) to function and develop in symbiosis with its surrounding environment.
If a change of governmental practice is deemed necessary, then there is nothing to gain by swapping the merchant class nobles for lawyer class presidents. There is, however, much to be gained by considering the advantages of properly defined Grail kingship and the Messianic code of princely service within a socially orientated constitutional framework.
This is the most logical route towards ensuring that true democracy prevails for ’Democracy’ and is correctly defined as ’Government for the people by the people’, as opposed to the all too familiar and oppressive ’Government of the people’.
Opportunists and Orators
As a result of a general disenchantment, many now suggest that royalty and nobility should be marginalized in favor of republican style government. Some determine that such changes replace privilege with a more acceptable form of merit advantage. However, this perception is equally untenable in practice.
All that happens is that headstrong merchant class opportunists are replaced by polished lawyer class orators, thereby creating an unwarranted new elite, with the same destructive hold on society.
Government of the majority by an exclusive clique, which uses intimidating tactics to manipulate a consumer based economy, has nothing whatever to do with the time honored spirit of Grail kingship and the Dragon blood. Any shift from monarchy to republicanism is simply a matter of different packaging. In the event, we are still captive consumers enveloped within faiths of fear. Our legacy from all this is an inbred contempt for anything which does not conform to a system of venerated sale values.
This leads to the loss of our relationship with the ecosphere upon which all species truly depend.
The Grail
The practical application of the Grail Code of service and guardianship was geared to the hermetic principle, ’As above, so below’. It recognized that no sane mind would, for the sake of short-term profit, disenfranchise the body upon which it depends.
From medieval times, however, this is precisely what has happened, with the Church installing dealers and merchants as puppet kings, traders who had no knowledge of kingship, but who have spawned dynasties which, in turn, have appointed their own colleagues as hereditary puppet nobles.
The Church and its appointees (be they monarchs, bishops or pseudo nobles) have proclaimed the Messianic legacy to be heresy.
By doing this they have underwritten and promulgated tyrannical systems of elitism, separatism and environmental domination to the detriment of the many.
Out of Egypt
The Dragon Court can first be identified in Egypt under the patronage of the priest prince Ankhfn Khonsu in about 2170 BC. It was subsequently established more formally as a pharaonic institution by the twelfth dynasty Queen Sobekh Nefru (c.1785 BC).
The Court pursued the teachings of Thoth, which had prevailed from the time of Nimrod’s grandson King Raneb, a pharaoh of the second dynasty. He reigned c. 2852 BC, about three centuries before the Gizeh pyramids are considered to have been built.
In those far off times, the priests and temples were not associated with religion as were their later successors in other lands, but rather more with the duties of preserving and teaching the old wisdom. The temples incorporated al-khame workshops. It was the obligation of the priests to maintain the spiritual welfare of the pharaohs, while ensuring the purity of a continuing royal bloodline which progressed through the Dragon Queens of the matrilinear Grail succession.
Dragon sovereignty had evolved in Egypt from old Mesopotamia and its tradition was vested in Sobek, the sacred crocodile (the messeh or mus-hus). It was from the practice of kingly anointing with the fat of the messeh that the Hebrew verb ’mashiach’ (to anoint) derived, and the Dragon dynasts became known as Messiahs (anointed ones).
In 525 BC Egypt was conquered by the Persians, whose kings were subsequently ousted by Alexander the Great’s Macedonian army in 332 BC. This led to the Greek dynasty of the Ptolemies and the well-known Queen Cleopatra VII. Her liaison with the Roman general Mark Antony caused the final downfall of the pharaohs, and Egypt was subjugated by Imperial Rome shortly before the time of Jesus.
At length, as the Roman Empire collapsed, Egypt fell to Byzantine governors and then, after AD 641, to the sway of Islam.
The PenDragons
By that time, the Grail Dynasty from David and Solomon had progressed into the West, notably to the Merovingian kings of Gaul, while related branches established kingdoms in Ireland and Celtic Britain. These lines were linked through marriage to parallel Dragon strains from Ham, Japhet and Tubal Cain (which had survived as the royal houses of Scythia and Anatolia). The families had forged their own marital links with the early princesses of the Egyptian succession.
The first PenDragon (Head Dragon) of the Britannic Isle (Pen Draco Insularis). From this stock was King Cymbeline of the House of Camu, who was installed in about AD 10. The Celtic PenDragons were not father to son successors in a particular descent, but were individually elected from reigning family branches, by a Druidic council of elders, to be the overall Kings of Kings. The last PenDragon was Cadwaladr of Gwynedd, who died in AD 664. At around that time much of Britain fell to the Germanic influence of the invading Anglo Saxons and Angle land (England) was born, as distinct from Scotland and Wales.
This coincided with Byzantium’s loss of Egypt to the Caliphs and following the last Roman Emperor in AD 476, a completely new governmental structure evolved in the West. Its ultimate overlords were the Popes, and outside the preserved Celtic domains they appointed kings not by any right of heritage, but to suit the political motives of the bishops and the fast growing Roman Church. It appeared that the days of the Dragon heritage were over.
However, the true dynasts of the original Grail stock always upheld their positions and the spirit of the Dragon Court continued in influential circles throughout Europe and the Near East.
The Dragon and the Grail
As the generations passed, the ideal of dynastic kingship spread through the Mediterranean lands into the Balkans, the Black Sea regions and Europe. But, in the course of this, the crucial essence of the old wisdom was lost, and this gave rise to dynasties that were not of the true kingly race. Instead, many were unrelated warrior chiefs who gained their thrones by might of the sword.
The sacred culture of the ancients was, nevertheless, retained in the Messianic line of King David of Judah (c.1008 BC), whose significance was not in his generally portrayed descent from Abraham and the Shemite strain, but in his Pharaonic heritage.
It was through this particular Dragon inheritance that Solomon the Wise, some eight centuries after Queen Sobeknefru, was enabled to recreate the Royal Temple project in Jerusalem. This led to a Holy Land revival of the pharaonic Rosi Crucis (dew cup) movement at a time when Egypt was beset by foreign influences, first from Libya, Nubia and Kush, and then from further afield.
As a result, the traditional marriage arrangements of the pharaohs and princesses gave way to diplomatic alliances. The symbol of the Rosi Crucis had identified the Grail succession from beyond 3000 BC, and its graphic representation was a red cross within a circle.
Societas Draconis
In 1408 (when Britain was in her Plantagenet era), the Dragon Court was formally reconstituted as a sovereign body at a time of wars and general political turmoil. As we have seen, the Court’s dubious re-emergence was instigated by Sigismund von Luxembourg, King of Hungary. Having presumptuously and erroneously assumed to have inherited the bloodline legacy in 1397, he drew up a pact with twenty-three royals and nobles who swore to observe ’true and pure fraternity’ within the Societas Draconis, a style subsequently misidentified as the Ordo Draconis (Hungarian: Sarkany Rend).
Although the original Court was by no means an Order in the recognized chivalric sense, the misnomer was strategically retained for the purposes of identification.
Along with Sigismund and the twenty-three nobles, Sigismund’s second wife, Barbara Cille (daughter of the Austrian Duke Hermann of Styria), was joint sovereign. Barbara was a Vampire who was taught by Ibrahim Eleazar, the keeper of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage, and it is she who is the model for the beautiful Countess Carmilla Karnstein in Le Fanus novel of the same name.
Sigismund’s daughter Elizabeth was also a member of the Court, and the inclusion of the entire family thereby achieved the traditional overall standard of twenty six members or two magical circles of thirteen. Others prominent in the Societas Draconis were the Kings of Poland and Aragon, the Duke of Lithuania and the unrepentant heretic, the Duke of Split.
The founding document of the Court confirmed that members might wear the insignia of a Dragon incurved into a circle, with a red cross, the original emblem of the Rosi Crucis, which had identified the Grail succession from before 3000 BC. Members were required to wear black attire on Friday - the day ruled by Venus - and to all intents and purposes they were to hold property in common.
The Society had no patron saint, it had no chapel or chapter house and observed no feast or holy days. Members were expected to have been ennobled prior to entry and were only elevated within the Society in recognition of their contributions to the welfare of the Crown. Sigismund never knighted anyone into the Society. This ignored completely all the expected rituals and affectations of chivalry prevalent at the time. At least the Luxemburgundian got that right.
When the Imperial and Royal Dragon Court was reconstituted by King Sigismund in 1408 as the Societas Draconis, it was based upon an ancient bloodline tradition which Sigismund assumed that he had inherited from his presumed Egyptian and Scythian ancestors through the Pictish, Dragon Princess Maelasanu of Northumbria and the Ancient and Original Angevin Royal House of Vere of Anjou, the Imperial Dukes of Angiers.
This line had descended through the Tuatha de Danaan (the Dragon Kings of Anu) on the one hand, and the Egyptian Dragon Dynasty of Sobek on the other. The latter strain included the bloodline of the Davidic House of Judah who married into the descent of the Merovingian Kings of the Franks.
Human Vanities
Emperor Sigismund (as he was styled from 1410) was a son of the House of Luxembourg - dynasts who flagrantly altered their genealogy in order to be able to claim a fraudulent descent from this Dragon Dynasty of Maelasanu and Anjou. It is from this descent - from Maelasanu or Melusine - and upon her British, later Angiers-Angevin, Dragon Court, that Sigismund claimed the right to base Societas Draconis as a bloodline continuation of this ancient, prehistoric, anti-Christian, pre-Catholic, British Elven Institution.
One of the most famous members of Sigismund’s misappropriated organization was Vlad Basarrab or Draculea, the son of Vlad Drakul.
After Draculea’s death, his son Michael wrote that his father proudly claimed a linear descent from the Priests of the Dragon Court of Queen Sobekh Nefru of Egypt, whose predecessor Amenhemet had built the Dragon Labyrinth of Fayyum - dedicated to Sobekh - which was later copied in Crete as the Labyrinth of the Minotaur.
Dynastic Deceptions
The genealogy of the House of Drakul, Dracula or Basarrab is well known and widely documented. Descending from Attila the Hun, this family was established in Central Europe by the sons of Ghengis Khan. No bloodline with which the House of Basarrab was associated or allied in marriage at that time had any affiliation with any extraction that was remotely related with the dynasties of Egypt.
It is obvious, therefore, that Draculea or Dracula must have been claiming an apostolic succession, a spiritual priestly lineage deferring to the Egyptian Dragon Court of Sobekh Nefru through Sigismund’s assumed descent from Melusine. Her ancestry actually can be traced back to the Scythian Dragon Princess Scota, Queen Sobekh Nefru and the Egyptian Cult of the Dragon.
Undoubtedly Dracula assumed erroneously that he had received this ancient mystical honour during his investiture into Sigismund’s Societas Draconis, and by virtue of Sigismund’s supposed descent from Melusine and the ancient Angevin House of Vere. In his own right, Dracula can claim no relationship to any early Angevins, nor to the later second Anjou House of Plantagenet, except via an eight link marital bridge which has no alliances that relate him by blood to Anjou.
Sigismund assumed a personal entitlement to this legacy in 1397, the date upon which he sought to reconstitute Princess Melusine’s Dragon Court - as Societas Draconis - in a manner that he deemed the most suitable to enhance his power base and establish his royal claims. Following its subsequent formal inception in 1408, the Court recruited members from a number of prominent royal and noble houses. Historians have noted that these were not particularly known for their religious orthodoxy, including the later House of Vere in England, as one authority on Sigismund’s Dragon Court has asserted.
Today, however, the Imperial and Royal Dragon Court itself exists as a closed fraternity, a collective of individuals, comprising those who, unlike Sigismund, can trace their ancestry and affiliations back to the ancient, pre-Christian Elven, Grail and Dragon families via Anjou. The Court retains the traditional three tier degree system that Sigismund borrowed and to which he appended three separate representations of the alchemical Ouroboros emblem for the distinct ranks of the Court. A fourth emblem, configured in the form of the Egyptian Ankh or Albigensian Cross, was used by the family officers of the Inner Temple.
The tripartite system was peculiar to the Scythians and Celts, whose Druids incorporated a similar structure within their orders and colleges. It later found expression within the Cathar fraternity of Languedoc and also with the Witches.
It was developed within the Hierarchical Rule of the Knights Templars with whom the Court had a strong historical connection.
Blood Relationship
The Inner Temple is presided over by the Vere Grand Masters, who are currently resident in Britain and Europe. Being essentially an organization which emphasizes the crucial links between Dragon families, the rank system within the Court takes second place to the sense of blood relationship and the natural bond of co-operation engendered by that relationship.
Service, mutual support and respect supersede those types of ambition and advancement which prevail in other bodies which might, on the face of it, resemble the Dragon Court model in some ways. Within such orders, sights are firmly set towards material gain through supporting establishments which themselves breed division and inequity.
The tenets of the Grail and Dragon traditions are implicit in defining that we should be at one with the earth, and cannot, therefore, presume dominion over it. Unlike those who wish to profit unjustifiably from dubious Merovingian descent.
This philosophy is embedded in the concept of individual gnosis, and lies at the very heart of the Draconian culture. It is evident in all aspects of life itself.
Emanating from the ancient lore of the Elven Lords and Ladies of the Forest, this ancestral legacy forms the bedrock upon which this and all legitimately related Dragon Courts were originally founded.
The Tinker Kings
It is no secret that, through a process of calculated indoctrination, our individual decisions are often prompted by fears of non-conformity or insecurity. As a result we are conditioned to purchase a variety of hyped goods and services in order to redress personal inadequacies that do not, in fact, exist. In reality, the prevalent forms of fear-based merchandising are little different from straightforward protection rackets, and yet they are sanctioned and encouraged by our governing establishments.
For centuries, western state authorities and their Churches have enjoyed continued power over a subordinate majority, by presenting a facade of sacrosanct jurisdiction which has seemed inextricably linked to some form of royalty, nobility, or government by divine sanction. By virtue of this, it is not surprising that so many people now consider royalty, nobility and western religion to be archaic components of a system of class and privilege which has no place in the modern age.
What few recognize, however, is that for centuries the perceived representation of royalty and nobility has, to a large extent, been a fraud perpetuated by a dressed up merchant class elite who have no real entitlement to their positions. This farce, with its inherent tyranny and social abuse, has been endured through the ages, while the true bloodline families have been suppressed and supplanted by traders and brokers disguised in crowns and mitres.
In practice, there is nothing noble about these tinker kings, since the word ‘noble’ relates to gnosis or wisdom. However, they have long been defined as ‘aristocrats’ (meaning ’best rulers’), and have thereby retained gratuitous stations of power and influence in a self proclaimed higher echelon of society.
These tinker kings and their emissaries have plagued the western scene for generations, leaving all to wonder how it is that our supposed guardians and ambassadors are so often an embarrassment, and are rarely representative of community requirement.
They refer to all and sundry as ‘subjects’, ‘commoners’ and ‘flocks’ using such patronizing terminology as ‘the ordinary people’ or ‘the man in the street’, as if they had some predestined right of supremacy.
In reality, the fact is that the individual establishments of these said aristocrats (be they state heads, provincial overlords or clerical governors) are frequently very questionable, and their personal roots are often more ordinary than most.
Mother Earth
Prior to these distortions, the nature of kingship was entirely different. There was no requirement for Church sanction through coronation by parvenu popes or archbishops. Kingship was founded upon the ideal that all people were adherents of the earth, and that the earth bestowed sovereignty upon its first born people, the Elven Tribes. They were represented by a Dragon Queen, and she empowered the Grail King, who could not be a king without her.
In this environment, the right to kingship emanated from the female, since Mother Earth was herself deemed to be female. The overriding function of a king and queen was to maintain a spiritually transcendent intelligence within the realm, thereby enabling the organism (the kingdom) to function and develop in symbiosis with its surrounding environment.
If a change of governmental practice is deemed necessary, then there is nothing to gain by swapping the merchant class nobles for lawyer class presidents. There is, however, much to be gained by considering the advantages of properly defined Grail kingship and the Messianic code of princely service within a socially orientated constitutional framework.
This is the most logical route towards ensuring that true democracy prevails for ’Democracy’ and is correctly defined as ’Government for the people by the people’, as opposed to the all too familiar and oppressive ’Government of the people’.
Opportunists and Orators
As a result of a general disenchantment, many now suggest that royalty and nobility should be marginalized in favor of republican style government. Some determine that such changes replace privilege with a more acceptable form of merit advantage. However, this perception is equally untenable in practice.
All that happens is that headstrong merchant class opportunists are replaced by polished lawyer class orators, thereby creating an unwarranted new elite, with the same destructive hold on society.
Government of the majority by an exclusive clique, which uses intimidating tactics to manipulate a consumer based economy, has nothing whatever to do with the time honored spirit of Grail kingship and the Dragon blood. Any shift from monarchy to republicanism is simply a matter of different packaging. In the event, we are still captive consumers enveloped within faiths of fear. Our legacy from all this is an inbred contempt for anything which does not conform to a system of venerated sale values.
This leads to the loss of our relationship with the ecosphere upon which all species truly depend.
The Grail
The practical application of the Grail Code of service and guardianship was geared to the hermetic principle, ’As above, so below’. It recognized that no sane mind would, for the sake of short-term profit, disenfranchise the body upon which it depends.
From medieval times, however, this is precisely what has happened, with the Church installing dealers and merchants as puppet kings, traders who had no knowledge of kingship, but who have spawned dynasties which, in turn, have appointed their own colleagues as hereditary puppet nobles.
The Church and its appointees (be they monarchs, bishops or pseudo nobles) have proclaimed the Messianic legacy to be heresy.
By doing this they have underwritten and promulgated tyrannical systems of elitism, separatism and environmental domination to the detriment of the many.
Out of Egypt
The Dragon Court can first be identified in Egypt under the patronage of the priest prince Ankhfn Khonsu in about 2170 BC. It was subsequently established more formally as a pharaonic institution by the twelfth dynasty Queen Sobekh Nefru (c.1785 BC).
The Court pursued the teachings of Thoth, which had prevailed from the time of Nimrod’s grandson King Raneb, a pharaoh of the second dynasty. He reigned c. 2852 BC, about three centuries before the Gizeh pyramids are considered to have been built.
In those far off times, the priests and temples were not associated with religion as were their later successors in other lands, but rather more with the duties of preserving and teaching the old wisdom. The temples incorporated al-khame workshops. It was the obligation of the priests to maintain the spiritual welfare of the pharaohs, while ensuring the purity of a continuing royal bloodline which progressed through the Dragon Queens of the matrilinear Grail succession.
Dragon sovereignty had evolved in Egypt from old Mesopotamia and its tradition was vested in Sobek, the sacred crocodile (the messeh or mus-hus). It was from the practice of kingly anointing with the fat of the messeh that the Hebrew verb ’mashiach’ (to anoint) derived, and the Dragon dynasts became known as Messiahs (anointed ones).
In 525 BC Egypt was conquered by the Persians, whose kings were subsequently ousted by Alexander the Great’s Macedonian army in 332 BC. This led to the Greek dynasty of the Ptolemies and the well-known Queen Cleopatra VII. Her liaison with the Roman general Mark Antony caused the final downfall of the pharaohs, and Egypt was subjugated by Imperial Rome shortly before the time of Jesus.
At length, as the Roman Empire collapsed, Egypt fell to Byzantine governors and then, after AD 641, to the sway of Islam.
The PenDragons
By that time, the Grail Dynasty from David and Solomon had progressed into the West, notably to the Merovingian kings of Gaul, while related branches established kingdoms in Ireland and Celtic Britain. These lines were linked through marriage to parallel Dragon strains from Ham, Japhet and Tubal Cain (which had survived as the royal houses of Scythia and Anatolia). The families had forged their own marital links with the early princesses of the Egyptian succession.
The first PenDragon (Head Dragon) of the Britannic Isle (Pen Draco Insularis). From this stock was King Cymbeline of the House of Camu, who was installed in about AD 10. The Celtic PenDragons were not father to son successors in a particular descent, but were individually elected from reigning family branches, by a Druidic council of elders, to be the overall Kings of Kings. The last PenDragon was Cadwaladr of Gwynedd, who died in AD 664. At around that time much of Britain fell to the Germanic influence of the invading Anglo Saxons and Angle land (England) was born, as distinct from Scotland and Wales.
This coincided with Byzantium’s loss of Egypt to the Caliphs and following the last Roman Emperor in AD 476, a completely new governmental structure evolved in the West. Its ultimate overlords were the Popes, and outside the preserved Celtic domains they appointed kings not by any right of heritage, but to suit the political motives of the bishops and the fast growing Roman Church. It appeared that the days of the Dragon heritage were over.
However, the true dynasts of the original Grail stock always upheld their positions and the spirit of the Dragon Court continued in influential circles throughout Europe and the Near East.
The Dragon and the Grail
As the generations passed, the ideal of dynastic kingship spread through the Mediterranean lands into the Balkans, the Black Sea regions and Europe. But, in the course of this, the crucial essence of the old wisdom was lost, and this gave rise to dynasties that were not of the true kingly race. Instead, many were unrelated warrior chiefs who gained their thrones by might of the sword.
The sacred culture of the ancients was, nevertheless, retained in the Messianic line of King David of Judah (c.1008 BC), whose significance was not in his generally portrayed descent from Abraham and the Shemite strain, but in his Pharaonic heritage.
It was through this particular Dragon inheritance that Solomon the Wise, some eight centuries after Queen Sobeknefru, was enabled to recreate the Royal Temple project in Jerusalem. This led to a Holy Land revival of the pharaonic Rosi Crucis (dew cup) movement at a time when Egypt was beset by foreign influences, first from Libya, Nubia and Kush, and then from further afield.
As a result, the traditional marriage arrangements of the pharaohs and princesses gave way to diplomatic alliances. The symbol of the Rosi Crucis had identified the Grail succession from beyond 3000 BC, and its graphic representation was a red cross within a circle.
Societas Draconis
In 1408 (when Britain was in her Plantagenet era), the Dragon Court was formally reconstituted as a sovereign body at a time of wars and general political turmoil. As we have seen, the Court’s dubious re-emergence was instigated by Sigismund von Luxembourg, King of Hungary. Having presumptuously and erroneously assumed to have inherited the bloodline legacy in 1397, he drew up a pact with twenty-three royals and nobles who swore to observe ’true and pure fraternity’ within the Societas Draconis, a style subsequently misidentified as the Ordo Draconis (Hungarian: Sarkany Rend).
Although the original Court was by no means an Order in the recognized chivalric sense, the misnomer was strategically retained for the purposes of identification.
Along with Sigismund and the twenty-three nobles, Sigismund’s second wife, Barbara Cille (daughter of the Austrian Duke Hermann of Styria), was joint sovereign. Barbara was a Vampire who was taught by Ibrahim Eleazar, the keeper of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage, and it is she who is the model for the beautiful Countess Carmilla Karnstein in Le Fanus novel of the same name.
Sigismund’s daughter Elizabeth was also a member of the Court, and the inclusion of the entire family thereby achieved the traditional overall standard of twenty six members or two magical circles of thirteen. Others prominent in the Societas Draconis were the Kings of Poland and Aragon, the Duke of Lithuania and the unrepentant heretic, the Duke of Split.
The founding document of the Court confirmed that members might wear the insignia of a Dragon incurved into a circle, with a red cross, the original emblem of the Rosi Crucis, which had identified the Grail succession from before 3000 BC. Members were required to wear black attire on Friday - the day ruled by Venus - and to all intents and purposes they were to hold property in common.
The Society had no patron saint, it had no chapel or chapter house and observed no feast or holy days. Members were expected to have been ennobled prior to entry and were only elevated within the Society in recognition of their contributions to the welfare of the Crown. Sigismund never knighted anyone into the Society. This ignored completely all the expected rituals and affectations of chivalry prevalent at the time. At least the Luxemburgundian got that right.
3. Abraxas, Jung & Gnosticism
Harken, I begin with nothingness. Nothingness is the same as fullness. In eternity full is no better than empty. Nothingness is both empty and full. As well might ye say anything else of nothingness, so for instance, white is it, or black, or again, it is not, or it is. A thing that is infinite and eternal hath no qualities, since it hath all qualities. This nothingness or fullness we name the PLEROMA. Therein both thinking and being cease, since the external and infinite possess no qualities. In it no being is, for he then would be distinct from the pleroma, and would possess qualities which would distinguish him as something distinct from the pleroma. (Jung, Seven Sermons to the Dead)
Abraxas is a primordial Gnostic creator god, later demonized by the Roman Catholics. He is depicted with the Head of a rooster, a man's body, and serpentine legs, holding an oval shield and a flail or club. He who in the monotheistic world is worshipped as God is really a false God, more akin to the Devil. According to the Gnostics, at some ancient date Abraxas pushed the Good God out and now rules the roost, thus explaining wars, famines, evil, cruelty and sickness. But really we worship more the side of us that is Abraxas as this is considered strong, realistic and human. We don’t worship goodness.
"Abraxas, the Anguipede" or serpent-footed deity, dates back to at least the earliest days of Christianity, and was particularly popular among the Gnostics. This ancient configuration of the daimonic bears some similarities in function to the Christian figure Lucifer. But above all, Abraxas is a myth, which like "the daimonic," surpasses the polarities of most of our accepted, dualistic ideas of the divine, and defies formulas. As Pistorius professes in Demian: Abraxas ... is God and Satan and he contains both the luminous and the dark world.
Like the Greek hero Perseus--whom the goddess Athena helped to behead the Gorgon, Medusa, by handing him a shiny shield to safely mirror her horrific image--we will always require some means of consciously reflecting on the reality of evil and making sense of it; this is the main function of enduring myths and symbols like Abraxas, or the devil, or the daimonic. Without such pragmatic intellectual props--which really are divine gifts--we could not live very long in a world so thoroughly riddled with evil. For we cannot too long "gaze into the face of absolute evil" unaided by some mythological, theological, or philosophical filter, or reflective, cognitive mechanism. Myths and symbols serve such protective purposes for the vulnerable human psyche; they buffer and deflect the devastating impact of radical evil, and imbue it with meaning.But this important theme of "mirroring" and "reflection" in the myth of Perseus and Medusa contains an additional clue for more clearly apprehending evil.
Much of the evil we see "out there" in the world, and in others, is in some measure a reflection of ourselves: our own human potential for, and unavoidable participation in evil. The myth counsels that the only meaningful--and ultimately, viable--way of comprehending and combating evil is to understand it as a mirroring of the daimonic elements eternally present in nature and in all humanity. We are the primary progenitors of evil: we not only define it, but, as we shall see, we wittingly or unwittingly create and perpetuate it. Therefore, it is we who are responsible for much of the evil in the world; and we are each morally required to accept rather than project that ponderous responsibility--lest we prefer instead to wallow in a perennial state of powerless, frustrated, furious victimhood.
For what one possesses the power to bring about, one has also the power to limit, mitigate, counteract, or transmute. Recall that as a result of Perseus' courageous encounter with Medusa, Pegasus, that magnificent, winged, white steed, arose from her vital lifeblood; and the now reenergized Perseus rode on triumphantly to conquer more monstrous demons, and marry the beautiful maiden, Andromeda. Good can come from defiantly facing evil. But evil, alas, will always find another face.
"The bird is struggling out of the egg. The egg is the world. Whoever wants to be born must first destroy a world. The bird is flying to God. The name of the God is called Abraxas."
http://abraxas365i.blogspot.com/2011/06/abraxas-365th.html
Perhaps our reality is not the accidental, random result of some universal particle/anti-particle annihilation as science would have us believe, but is being creatively evolved over time through the infinite numbers of distinctions being made by life forms from among the effects that living particles have upon one another. To compound this, modern cosmology (Goldsmith, 2000) shows that space is in a process of infinite acceleration from every 'point' in spacetime, and most of the gravitational force of the universe comes from non-luminous 'dark matter,' and 'dark energy' of whose nature we know virtually nothing.
The universe is speeding up, suggesting some sort of powerful anti-gravity force at work, separating galaxies. The seemingly empty vacuum of space is seething with this strange dark energy. Again, we are reminded of Jung's gnostic language, and the battle of opposites in gnosticism between forces of light and dark.
The Creative Evolution of Evolutionary Creation
We must deal with the problem of where original life energy came from if it is true that pleromal non-life is the infinitely natural order of things. Jung (1961) called life and all of its many elemental energy pattern manifestations "creatura", which he equated with a state of distinctiveness. In other words, he implied that "to be" is to exist as a state distinct from all other states. Given this as a truth, Shakespeare's "To be or not to be, that is the question," was amazingly astute.
Taken to its logical extreme, it should seem as though the pleromal state would, of necessity, require an opposite state in order to comprise a paradox perfectly completed within its own paradox. If perfect, complete "not-being" were its only possible state, there would be no potential for a "being" state. This is embodied in the vacuum potential gradient inherent in the groundstate of the virtual vacuum.
Virtual photons 'boil' into existence because they can, therefore they must; they also evaporate back into the primordial non-being. Thus is the inactive realm which generates activity. The pleromal state has to have some way it can remain in complete union with its perfect self, yet manifest simultaneously in another distinctively opposite state. It expresses in one in which its opposites are simultaneously free to imperfectly exist as conflicting paradoxes.
These paradoxes are also free to creatively merge into wholeness states, and then re-emerge into their divided states, evolving all the while into increasingly complex combinations and divisions of paradoxical states. For example, at our current apex of intellectual evolutionary process, it is mathematically estimated that each individual human brain is capable of "more possible mental states than there are atoms in the known universe" (Sagan, 1977; Rossi, 1993).
Therefore, we can operationally define pleroma as the state of all possible dimensions of reality states, including (but not limited to) those infinite dimensions of reality which exist beyond the limitations of our spacetime continuum as supraliminal (faster-than-light) energy, and those subliminal energy states which exist as "the invisible dark matter and energy" of the universe. Based upon this definition, we also suggest that it is possible that in some manner, and at some non-time in non-space, the pleroma "impregnated" itself with its own paradoxical energy "child" whose destiny it has been to grow and develop within the womb of life, which we know as our own timespace continuum. We might call this the "Om-niverse."
In other words, within the speed-of-light limits presented by our four-dimensional reality zone, perfect supraliminal energy is effectively "slowed" to an imperfect temporal state where, like a newly fertilized ovum, it becomes separated into two paradoxical, incomplete halves of its whole self. Or, as Jung put it: "The pleroma is rent in us." The first new life states created from the division of the pleroma within our reality Jung (1961) named "Abraxas," or the ultimate energy-state he called "god" and from which all other subsequent god-states have since been created.
As described, this god seems to have characteristics very reminiscent of the virtual energy state which both encompasses and divides finitude and infinity: Had the pleroma a being, Abraxas would be its manifestation. ...Abraxas is effect...it is a force, duration, change...it is improbable probability, unreal reality...Abraxas is the world, its becoming and its passing....It is the appearance and the shadow of man. It is illusory reality. (pp. 383-385)
As such, Abraxas seems to represent that aspect of our reality which is always just beyond the reach of our comprehension, our life force, itself. It is that which makes us more than the sum of our parts. It seems to be that which at once separates us from and unites us with our infinite states. Pleroma seems to be that energy field which contains both our life and our death states and everything that exists in between those two states. It is a metaphor of the creative edge of creation.
In effect, Abraxas seems to represent the source of all possible states of being, or interactional energy patterns, that life energy can create. As such, it is the collective soul, or psyche, or consciousness from which all other souls, or psyches, or consciousness in the form of god-as-man have evolved. Dividing themselves out from the energy field called Abraxas were the two lesser, opposing -- but equally effective -- energy states which are called god and devil. These energy patterns are less distinct than man, but more distinct than Abraxas. Therefore, they represent a state of energy somewhere between the ultimate god and man, symbolically comparable, for example, to Christ and Satan in the Christian Bible.
This new god is described as that state which promotes fullness and generation of life; the devil is characterized as that state which ultimately diminishes, or uses up life energy. Thus, it is the job of the negative force to keep the machinery of embodiment and death (disembodiment) in motion. From this perspective, Jung seemed to be subtly implicating these oppositional good-versus-evil states as the origins of all possible combinations of energy patterns, or archetypal states, that could be existentially made distinct within our divided reality state.
These fundamental god-devil archetypal energy states are given form, and thus made distinct, via the living effects through which they are made manifest within our existential domain. Jung's Sermons name these effective states Eros and The Tree of Life. These two states are described, respectively, as that "flame" which "giveth light because it consumeth energy, thereby diminishing the fullness of life, and that "Tree" which "in growing it heapeth up living stuff" (p. 185). These dynamics sound a lot like the quantum "something-for-nothing" that is gained from life's virtual energy exchanges within infinity -- which hold all of life together as the electromagnetic force.
Jung even states that "Good and evil are united in the flame" [of their paradoxical, life-sustaining ("effective") roles within our reality dimension] (p. 385). From that point, it is implied that divisions and redivisions occur in the energy field of our reality until "[i]nnumerable as the host of stars is the number of gods and devils....The multiplicity of the gods corresponds to the multiplicity of man....Numberless gods await the human state" (p. 384-385). In other words, returning to our quantum metaphor, the number of probable (and improbable) energy patterns, or particle-wave formations, available for interaction with one another within our reality state, is immeasurably immense.
The pleroma, or quantum foam is beyond the statistical probability of quantum mechanics, and is an example of complex dynamics, or Chaos. In terms of human consciousness, this Chaos is manifest as the intangibility of the collective consciousness. The concept of Abraxas as collective consciousness can be operationally metaphormed as the evolution of quantum energy states from their pleromal-Abraxas state to their human-being state and back again, within a continuous re-cycling of finite-infinite energy oscillation patterns. These patterns would simultaneously represent, or convey information about, all of the distinctive particle states and the distinct energy wave interference patterns which had been created from these states during the creative act of finitely distinguishing their existence.
This universal consciousness state, or creatura psyche, would necessarily, then, be composed of the creative energies of all of its life forms, including the reified forms assigned to its gods and devils (Jung, 1961). Perhaps running this concept through Zukav's (1979) virtual energy metaphor in yet another way can help to illustrate how this universal consciousness might function as a unitive force: When a finite, pleroma-reflecting life-energy state eventually merges with its own infinitely reflected image, both become completed in one another and "disappear" over the infinity horizon in a burst of virtual life energy. They are "united in the flame" (Jung, 1961) created from their own unity. But just as quickly, they reappear in our timespace zone.
Thus, it seems that it is during the infinitely brief amount of time (from our limited perspective) that man's virtual energy "rests" in its pleromal state that his collective-Abraxas energy-state micro-momentarily becomes infinitely perfected. And likewise, it follows that during the overlapping of these virtual energy exchanges between particle states, pleromal-Abraxas for a fraction of a millisecond (eternity, from its perspective) becomes completed in man.
As Zukav's (1979) virtual energy-exchanges show, it can also be assumed that during all of these transactions, new particle-wave patterns are being re-created as virtual-energy "vapor-trails", instantaneously recycled into other energy fields, -- the eventual material manifestations of which our entire observable and experiential universe is composed.
Thus, Sermons concludes, somewhat paradoxically:
"In this world is man Abraxas, the creator and the destroyer of his own world" (Jung, 1961, p. 189).
http://tao-of-resilience.iwarp.com/rich_text_3.html
Abraxas is a primordial Gnostic creator god, later demonized by the Roman Catholics. He is depicted with the Head of a rooster, a man's body, and serpentine legs, holding an oval shield and a flail or club. He who in the monotheistic world is worshipped as God is really a false God, more akin to the Devil. According to the Gnostics, at some ancient date Abraxas pushed the Good God out and now rules the roost, thus explaining wars, famines, evil, cruelty and sickness. But really we worship more the side of us that is Abraxas as this is considered strong, realistic and human. We don’t worship goodness.
"Abraxas, the Anguipede" or serpent-footed deity, dates back to at least the earliest days of Christianity, and was particularly popular among the Gnostics. This ancient configuration of the daimonic bears some similarities in function to the Christian figure Lucifer. But above all, Abraxas is a myth, which like "the daimonic," surpasses the polarities of most of our accepted, dualistic ideas of the divine, and defies formulas. As Pistorius professes in Demian: Abraxas ... is God and Satan and he contains both the luminous and the dark world.
Like the Greek hero Perseus--whom the goddess Athena helped to behead the Gorgon, Medusa, by handing him a shiny shield to safely mirror her horrific image--we will always require some means of consciously reflecting on the reality of evil and making sense of it; this is the main function of enduring myths and symbols like Abraxas, or the devil, or the daimonic. Without such pragmatic intellectual props--which really are divine gifts--we could not live very long in a world so thoroughly riddled with evil. For we cannot too long "gaze into the face of absolute evil" unaided by some mythological, theological, or philosophical filter, or reflective, cognitive mechanism. Myths and symbols serve such protective purposes for the vulnerable human psyche; they buffer and deflect the devastating impact of radical evil, and imbue it with meaning.But this important theme of "mirroring" and "reflection" in the myth of Perseus and Medusa contains an additional clue for more clearly apprehending evil.
Much of the evil we see "out there" in the world, and in others, is in some measure a reflection of ourselves: our own human potential for, and unavoidable participation in evil. The myth counsels that the only meaningful--and ultimately, viable--way of comprehending and combating evil is to understand it as a mirroring of the daimonic elements eternally present in nature and in all humanity. We are the primary progenitors of evil: we not only define it, but, as we shall see, we wittingly or unwittingly create and perpetuate it. Therefore, it is we who are responsible for much of the evil in the world; and we are each morally required to accept rather than project that ponderous responsibility--lest we prefer instead to wallow in a perennial state of powerless, frustrated, furious victimhood.
For what one possesses the power to bring about, one has also the power to limit, mitigate, counteract, or transmute. Recall that as a result of Perseus' courageous encounter with Medusa, Pegasus, that magnificent, winged, white steed, arose from her vital lifeblood; and the now reenergized Perseus rode on triumphantly to conquer more monstrous demons, and marry the beautiful maiden, Andromeda. Good can come from defiantly facing evil. But evil, alas, will always find another face.
"The bird is struggling out of the egg. The egg is the world. Whoever wants to be born must first destroy a world. The bird is flying to God. The name of the God is called Abraxas."
http://abraxas365i.blogspot.com/2011/06/abraxas-365th.html
Perhaps our reality is not the accidental, random result of some universal particle/anti-particle annihilation as science would have us believe, but is being creatively evolved over time through the infinite numbers of distinctions being made by life forms from among the effects that living particles have upon one another. To compound this, modern cosmology (Goldsmith, 2000) shows that space is in a process of infinite acceleration from every 'point' in spacetime, and most of the gravitational force of the universe comes from non-luminous 'dark matter,' and 'dark energy' of whose nature we know virtually nothing.
The universe is speeding up, suggesting some sort of powerful anti-gravity force at work, separating galaxies. The seemingly empty vacuum of space is seething with this strange dark energy. Again, we are reminded of Jung's gnostic language, and the battle of opposites in gnosticism between forces of light and dark.
The Creative Evolution of Evolutionary Creation
We must deal with the problem of where original life energy came from if it is true that pleromal non-life is the infinitely natural order of things. Jung (1961) called life and all of its many elemental energy pattern manifestations "creatura", which he equated with a state of distinctiveness. In other words, he implied that "to be" is to exist as a state distinct from all other states. Given this as a truth, Shakespeare's "To be or not to be, that is the question," was amazingly astute.
Taken to its logical extreme, it should seem as though the pleromal state would, of necessity, require an opposite state in order to comprise a paradox perfectly completed within its own paradox. If perfect, complete "not-being" were its only possible state, there would be no potential for a "being" state. This is embodied in the vacuum potential gradient inherent in the groundstate of the virtual vacuum.
Virtual photons 'boil' into existence because they can, therefore they must; they also evaporate back into the primordial non-being. Thus is the inactive realm which generates activity. The pleromal state has to have some way it can remain in complete union with its perfect self, yet manifest simultaneously in another distinctively opposite state. It expresses in one in which its opposites are simultaneously free to imperfectly exist as conflicting paradoxes.
These paradoxes are also free to creatively merge into wholeness states, and then re-emerge into their divided states, evolving all the while into increasingly complex combinations and divisions of paradoxical states. For example, at our current apex of intellectual evolutionary process, it is mathematically estimated that each individual human brain is capable of "more possible mental states than there are atoms in the known universe" (Sagan, 1977; Rossi, 1993).
Therefore, we can operationally define pleroma as the state of all possible dimensions of reality states, including (but not limited to) those infinite dimensions of reality which exist beyond the limitations of our spacetime continuum as supraliminal (faster-than-light) energy, and those subliminal energy states which exist as "the invisible dark matter and energy" of the universe. Based upon this definition, we also suggest that it is possible that in some manner, and at some non-time in non-space, the pleroma "impregnated" itself with its own paradoxical energy "child" whose destiny it has been to grow and develop within the womb of life, which we know as our own timespace continuum. We might call this the "Om-niverse."
In other words, within the speed-of-light limits presented by our four-dimensional reality zone, perfect supraliminal energy is effectively "slowed" to an imperfect temporal state where, like a newly fertilized ovum, it becomes separated into two paradoxical, incomplete halves of its whole self. Or, as Jung put it: "The pleroma is rent in us." The first new life states created from the division of the pleroma within our reality Jung (1961) named "Abraxas," or the ultimate energy-state he called "god" and from which all other subsequent god-states have since been created.
As described, this god seems to have characteristics very reminiscent of the virtual energy state which both encompasses and divides finitude and infinity: Had the pleroma a being, Abraxas would be its manifestation. ...Abraxas is effect...it is a force, duration, change...it is improbable probability, unreal reality...Abraxas is the world, its becoming and its passing....It is the appearance and the shadow of man. It is illusory reality. (pp. 383-385)
As such, Abraxas seems to represent that aspect of our reality which is always just beyond the reach of our comprehension, our life force, itself. It is that which makes us more than the sum of our parts. It seems to be that which at once separates us from and unites us with our infinite states. Pleroma seems to be that energy field which contains both our life and our death states and everything that exists in between those two states. It is a metaphor of the creative edge of creation.
In effect, Abraxas seems to represent the source of all possible states of being, or interactional energy patterns, that life energy can create. As such, it is the collective soul, or psyche, or consciousness from which all other souls, or psyches, or consciousness in the form of god-as-man have evolved. Dividing themselves out from the energy field called Abraxas were the two lesser, opposing -- but equally effective -- energy states which are called god and devil. These energy patterns are less distinct than man, but more distinct than Abraxas. Therefore, they represent a state of energy somewhere between the ultimate god and man, symbolically comparable, for example, to Christ and Satan in the Christian Bible.
This new god is described as that state which promotes fullness and generation of life; the devil is characterized as that state which ultimately diminishes, or uses up life energy. Thus, it is the job of the negative force to keep the machinery of embodiment and death (disembodiment) in motion. From this perspective, Jung seemed to be subtly implicating these oppositional good-versus-evil states as the origins of all possible combinations of energy patterns, or archetypal states, that could be existentially made distinct within our divided reality state.
These fundamental god-devil archetypal energy states are given form, and thus made distinct, via the living effects through which they are made manifest within our existential domain. Jung's Sermons name these effective states Eros and The Tree of Life. These two states are described, respectively, as that "flame" which "giveth light because it consumeth energy, thereby diminishing the fullness of life, and that "Tree" which "in growing it heapeth up living stuff" (p. 185). These dynamics sound a lot like the quantum "something-for-nothing" that is gained from life's virtual energy exchanges within infinity -- which hold all of life together as the electromagnetic force.
Jung even states that "Good and evil are united in the flame" [of their paradoxical, life-sustaining ("effective") roles within our reality dimension] (p. 385). From that point, it is implied that divisions and redivisions occur in the energy field of our reality until "[i]nnumerable as the host of stars is the number of gods and devils....The multiplicity of the gods corresponds to the multiplicity of man....Numberless gods await the human state" (p. 384-385). In other words, returning to our quantum metaphor, the number of probable (and improbable) energy patterns, or particle-wave formations, available for interaction with one another within our reality state, is immeasurably immense.
The pleroma, or quantum foam is beyond the statistical probability of quantum mechanics, and is an example of complex dynamics, or Chaos. In terms of human consciousness, this Chaos is manifest as the intangibility of the collective consciousness. The concept of Abraxas as collective consciousness can be operationally metaphormed as the evolution of quantum energy states from their pleromal-Abraxas state to their human-being state and back again, within a continuous re-cycling of finite-infinite energy oscillation patterns. These patterns would simultaneously represent, or convey information about, all of the distinctive particle states and the distinct energy wave interference patterns which had been created from these states during the creative act of finitely distinguishing their existence.
This universal consciousness state, or creatura psyche, would necessarily, then, be composed of the creative energies of all of its life forms, including the reified forms assigned to its gods and devils (Jung, 1961). Perhaps running this concept through Zukav's (1979) virtual energy metaphor in yet another way can help to illustrate how this universal consciousness might function as a unitive force: When a finite, pleroma-reflecting life-energy state eventually merges with its own infinitely reflected image, both become completed in one another and "disappear" over the infinity horizon in a burst of virtual life energy. They are "united in the flame" (Jung, 1961) created from their own unity. But just as quickly, they reappear in our timespace zone.
Thus, it seems that it is during the infinitely brief amount of time (from our limited perspective) that man's virtual energy "rests" in its pleromal state that his collective-Abraxas energy-state micro-momentarily becomes infinitely perfected. And likewise, it follows that during the overlapping of these virtual energy exchanges between particle states, pleromal-Abraxas for a fraction of a millisecond (eternity, from its perspective) becomes completed in man.
As Zukav's (1979) virtual energy-exchanges show, it can also be assumed that during all of these transactions, new particle-wave patterns are being re-created as virtual-energy "vapor-trails", instantaneously recycled into other energy fields, -- the eventual material manifestations of which our entire observable and experiential universe is composed.
Thus, Sermons concludes, somewhat paradoxically:
"In this world is man Abraxas, the creator and the destroyer of his own world" (Jung, 1961, p. 189).
http://tao-of-resilience.iwarp.com/rich_text_3.html
4. The Alchemical Sophia
Sophia As a Tree of Learning
The Alchemical Sophia
Jung's two greatest works on Alchemy are Psychology and Alchemy and Mysterium Coniunctionis, the latter representing his final summing up of the implications of his long preoccupation with alchemy. In this last summary of his insights on the subject, influenced in part by his collaboration with the Nobel Prize winning physicist Wolfgang Pauli, the old Jung envisions a great psycho-physical mystery to which the alchemists of old gave the name of unus mundus (one world). At the root of all being, so he intimates, there is a state wherein physicality and spirituality meet in a transgressive union.
Synchronistic phenomena, and many more as yet unexplained mysteries of physical and psychological nature, appear to proceed from this unitive condition. It is more than likely that this mysterious condition is the true home of the archetypes as such, which merely project themselves into the realm of the psyche, but in reality abide elsewhere. While the tensional relationship of the opposites remains the great operational mechanism of manifest life and of transformation, this relationship exists within the context of a unitary world-model wherein matter and spirit, King and Queen, appear as aspects of a psychoid realm of reality.
The ever-repeated charge of radical dualism leveled against Gnostics and their alchemical kin is thus reduced to a misunderstanding by this last, and perhaps greatest, insight of Jung. The workings of the cosmos, both physical
and psychic, are characterized by duality, but this principle is relative to the underlying reality of the unus mundus. Dualism and monism are thus revealed not as mutually contradictory and exclusive but as complimentary aspects of reality. It is a curious paradox that this revolutionary insight, impressively portrayed by Jung in Mysterium Coniunctionis, has received relatively little attention from psychologists and metaphysicians alike.
Alchemical interest and perception permeate many of Jung's numerous writings in addition to those devoted primarily to the subject. His workPsychology and Religion: West and East, as well as numerous lectures delivered at the
Eranos conferences, all utilize the alchemical model as a matrix for his teachings. Time and again he pointed out the affinities and contrasts between alchemical figures and those of Christianity, demonstrating a sort of mirror-like analogy not only between the stone of the philosophers and the image of Christ, but between alchemy and Christianity themselves. Alchemy, said Jung, stands in a compensatory relationship to mainstream Christianity, rather like a dream does to the conscious attitudes of the dreamer. The Stone of alchemy is in many respects the stone rejected by the
builders of Christian culture, demanding recognition and reincorporation into the building itself.
It is here that some of the considerations outlined at the outset of our present study appear once more. Alchemy is not a phenomenon sui generis, but rather a phenomenon of attempted assimilation proceeding from Gnosticism - or at least so Jung believed. Even the chief sacrament of Christendom, the Holy Eucharist or Mass, was regarded by Jung as an alchemical work connected with a Third Century Gnostic alchemist Zosimos of Panopolis, in whom he placed the historical point of the convergence of Gnosticism and alchemy. (These considerations were explained by Jung in his Transformation Symbolism in the Mass, first published in the Eranos Yearbook 1944/45, and later included in Psychology and Western Religion, Princeton University Press, 1984.) Years later, one of Jung's academic associates, Prof. Gilles Quispel, came to coin a phrase reflecting Jung's point of view. "Alchemy," the Dutch scholar said, "is the Yoga of the Gnostics."
Perhaps one of the most significant contributions along these lines was given to us by Jung's singularly insightful disciple Marie-Louise von Franz, who devoted herself to the translation and explanation of a treatise first discovered by Jung entitled Aurora Consurgens and attributed to St. Thomas Aquinas. This renowned saint, so the legend states, had a vision of the Sophia of God after meditating on the Song of Songs of Solomon and, following the command received in the vision, wrote this alchemical treatise. The Aurora differs from most other alchemical works inasmuch as its format is predominantly religious and filled with biblical references, and even more importantly, because it represents the alchemical opus as a process whereby the feminine wisdom Sophia must be liberated. Written in seven poetic but scholarly chapters, the treatise traces the liberation ofSophia from confinement by way of the alchemical phases of transformation.
It is thus through the agency of a brilliant woman disciple that the great project envisioned by Jung in 1912 came to a renewed emphasis. Led by the rediscovered words of the "angelic doctor" Aquinas, contemporary students of
religion and psychology were confronted once again with the Gnostic task of alchemy. Published in German in 1957 and in English in 1966, Marie-Louise von Franz's work brought Jung's gnostic-alchemical vision in to full view once more. While at the individual level alchemy may assuredly be concerned with the redemption of the Lumen Naturae concealed in the psycho-physiologica l recesses of the human personality, the Aurora and also Jung's Answer to Job appear to point to a yet larger and more universal opus.
Crying from the depths of the chaos of this world, the wisdom-woman Sophia calls out to the alchemists of our age. Depth-psychology has indeed served as one of the principal avenues through which this redemptive project has
been made known. The time may be approaching, and may in fact have come already, when potential alchemists in various disciplines and spiritual traditions may address themselves to this universal task of alchemical liberation. In 1950 Jung was greatly encouraged when Pope Pius XII used several manifestly alchemical allusions, such as "heavenly marriage", in Apostolic Constitution, "Munificentissimus Deus", the official document declaring the dogma of the assumption of the Virgin Mary, (the Catholic Sophia). In our time alchemy has come into its own, and beginning with the
most recent two decades Gnosticism has begun its return journey also. The stone that the builders rejected is moving ever closer to the structure of Western culture.
In the garden of Jung's country home in Bollingen stands a large cube-shaped stone inscribed by his own hand with magical and alchemical symbols. In his last revelatory dream prior to his death, Jung saw a huge round stone
engraved with the words "And this shall be a sign unto you of Wholeness and Oneness". Perhaps these signs of the wondrous stone of the great work will serve to remind the many whose lives and souls were touched by the Swiss
Wizard, of the great work to be done, the great miracle to be accomplished. It is to be hoped that such an awakening of mindfulness will please Carl Gustav Jung in the far land to which he journeyed, and that it will assist those who are still in this sub-lunar world in their search for the quintessence, the stone of the philosophers and the supreme good.
The Alchemical Sophia
Jung's two greatest works on Alchemy are Psychology and Alchemy and Mysterium Coniunctionis, the latter representing his final summing up of the implications of his long preoccupation with alchemy. In this last summary of his insights on the subject, influenced in part by his collaboration with the Nobel Prize winning physicist Wolfgang Pauli, the old Jung envisions a great psycho-physical mystery to which the alchemists of old gave the name of unus mundus (one world). At the root of all being, so he intimates, there is a state wherein physicality and spirituality meet in a transgressive union.
Synchronistic phenomena, and many more as yet unexplained mysteries of physical and psychological nature, appear to proceed from this unitive condition. It is more than likely that this mysterious condition is the true home of the archetypes as such, which merely project themselves into the realm of the psyche, but in reality abide elsewhere. While the tensional relationship of the opposites remains the great operational mechanism of manifest life and of transformation, this relationship exists within the context of a unitary world-model wherein matter and spirit, King and Queen, appear as aspects of a psychoid realm of reality.
The ever-repeated charge of radical dualism leveled against Gnostics and their alchemical kin is thus reduced to a misunderstanding by this last, and perhaps greatest, insight of Jung. The workings of the cosmos, both physical
and psychic, are characterized by duality, but this principle is relative to the underlying reality of the unus mundus. Dualism and monism are thus revealed not as mutually contradictory and exclusive but as complimentary aspects of reality. It is a curious paradox that this revolutionary insight, impressively portrayed by Jung in Mysterium Coniunctionis, has received relatively little attention from psychologists and metaphysicians alike.
Alchemical interest and perception permeate many of Jung's numerous writings in addition to those devoted primarily to the subject. His workPsychology and Religion: West and East, as well as numerous lectures delivered at the
Eranos conferences, all utilize the alchemical model as a matrix for his teachings. Time and again he pointed out the affinities and contrasts between alchemical figures and those of Christianity, demonstrating a sort of mirror-like analogy not only between the stone of the philosophers and the image of Christ, but between alchemy and Christianity themselves. Alchemy, said Jung, stands in a compensatory relationship to mainstream Christianity, rather like a dream does to the conscious attitudes of the dreamer. The Stone of alchemy is in many respects the stone rejected by the
builders of Christian culture, demanding recognition and reincorporation into the building itself.
It is here that some of the considerations outlined at the outset of our present study appear once more. Alchemy is not a phenomenon sui generis, but rather a phenomenon of attempted assimilation proceeding from Gnosticism - or at least so Jung believed. Even the chief sacrament of Christendom, the Holy Eucharist or Mass, was regarded by Jung as an alchemical work connected with a Third Century Gnostic alchemist Zosimos of Panopolis, in whom he placed the historical point of the convergence of Gnosticism and alchemy. (These considerations were explained by Jung in his Transformation Symbolism in the Mass, first published in the Eranos Yearbook 1944/45, and later included in Psychology and Western Religion, Princeton University Press, 1984.) Years later, one of Jung's academic associates, Prof. Gilles Quispel, came to coin a phrase reflecting Jung's point of view. "Alchemy," the Dutch scholar said, "is the Yoga of the Gnostics."
Perhaps one of the most significant contributions along these lines was given to us by Jung's singularly insightful disciple Marie-Louise von Franz, who devoted herself to the translation and explanation of a treatise first discovered by Jung entitled Aurora Consurgens and attributed to St. Thomas Aquinas. This renowned saint, so the legend states, had a vision of the Sophia of God after meditating on the Song of Songs of Solomon and, following the command received in the vision, wrote this alchemical treatise. The Aurora differs from most other alchemical works inasmuch as its format is predominantly religious and filled with biblical references, and even more importantly, because it represents the alchemical opus as a process whereby the feminine wisdom Sophia must be liberated. Written in seven poetic but scholarly chapters, the treatise traces the liberation ofSophia from confinement by way of the alchemical phases of transformation.
It is thus through the agency of a brilliant woman disciple that the great project envisioned by Jung in 1912 came to a renewed emphasis. Led by the rediscovered words of the "angelic doctor" Aquinas, contemporary students of
religion and psychology were confronted once again with the Gnostic task of alchemy. Published in German in 1957 and in English in 1966, Marie-Louise von Franz's work brought Jung's gnostic-alchemical vision in to full view once more. While at the individual level alchemy may assuredly be concerned with the redemption of the Lumen Naturae concealed in the psycho-physiologica l recesses of the human personality, the Aurora and also Jung's Answer to Job appear to point to a yet larger and more universal opus.
Crying from the depths of the chaos of this world, the wisdom-woman Sophia calls out to the alchemists of our age. Depth-psychology has indeed served as one of the principal avenues through which this redemptive project has
been made known. The time may be approaching, and may in fact have come already, when potential alchemists in various disciplines and spiritual traditions may address themselves to this universal task of alchemical liberation. In 1950 Jung was greatly encouraged when Pope Pius XII used several manifestly alchemical allusions, such as "heavenly marriage", in Apostolic Constitution, "Munificentissimus Deus", the official document declaring the dogma of the assumption of the Virgin Mary, (the Catholic Sophia). In our time alchemy has come into its own, and beginning with the
most recent two decades Gnosticism has begun its return journey also. The stone that the builders rejected is moving ever closer to the structure of Western culture.
In the garden of Jung's country home in Bollingen stands a large cube-shaped stone inscribed by his own hand with magical and alchemical symbols. In his last revelatory dream prior to his death, Jung saw a huge round stone
engraved with the words "And this shall be a sign unto you of Wholeness and Oneness". Perhaps these signs of the wondrous stone of the great work will serve to remind the many whose lives and souls were touched by the Swiss
Wizard, of the great work to be done, the great miracle to be accomplished. It is to be hoped that such an awakening of mindfulness will please Carl Gustav Jung in the far land to which he journeyed, and that it will assist those who are still in this sub-lunar world in their search for the quintessence, the stone of the philosophers and the supreme good.
DRAGONESS: Sacred Feminine, Sophia, Gnosis, Shakti, Shekinah, Babalon, Nuit, the Grail, the matrix of manifestation.
5. ANIMA MUNDI
Anima Mundi, 24x36, by Iona Miller from Psychogenesis
Global emphasis on urgent ecological awareness implies a reflowering of the Neo-Platonic and alchemical notion of ANIMA MUNDI the Soul of the World. Anima Mundi is not an archetype, but an archetypal way of seeing -- seeing through the world. Our narcissistic tendency is self-absorption, over-valuing individual subjectivity at the expense of the real problems of the world. The language of Anima Mundi includes beauty, aesthetics, depth, inner life and political activity -- psychological practices of larger groups.
We are all engaged in making the world soul even as she shapes us. We have a drive to love the world, even an erotic desire for anima mundi. She invites us into a relationship of intimacy with the world and its objects and processes. The psychic reality of the world soul is available to all in images and imagination. We cannot separate our souls from the souls of others and the environment.
Care of the soul doesn't mean isolating ourselves from the reality of the world and its phenomena -- experiences, substance and objects. Soul makes images that add a depth dimension to concrete life, that go beyond literalness to psychological metaphysics that expresses our legitimate need to go further, even beyond mythical fictions through imagination to speculative freedom.
Thus, anima mundi is the field of infinite meanings, created from metaphors of different places, points of view, and narratives. New understandings arrive with new images at the surprising edge of things, new expressive forms that arise of their own accord.
"ANIMA MUNDI: Soul-Filled World"
By Iona Miller
“God redeems humanity, but nature needs to be redeemed by human alchemists, who are able to induce the process of transformation, which alone is capable of liberating the light imprisoned in physical creation.” ~Stephan Hoeller, Sufi Journal, Issue 67, Autumn 2005
"Let us imagine the anima mundi neither above the world encircling it as a divine and remote emanation of spirit, a world of powers, archetypes, and principles transcendent to things, nor within the material world as its unifying panpsychic life-principle. Rather let us imagine the anima mundi as that particular soul-spark, the seminal image, which offers itself through each thing in its visible form. Then anima mundi indicates the animated possibilities presented by each event, as it is, its sensuous presentation as face bespeaking its interior image--in short, its availability to imagination, its presence as a psychic reality. Not only animals and plants ensouled as in the Romantic vision, but soul is given with each thing; God-given things of nature and man-made things of the street." ~James Hillman, “Anima Mundi,” Spring, 1982
NUMINOUS & LUMINOUS PSYCHE
Anima Mundi, the feminine principle or mode of Being was historically considered the "soul of the world," the fertility of human, animal and plant life. Renaissance philosopher Giordano Bruno said the World Soul “illumines the universe and directs nature in producing her species in the right way.” She is the magical world of creative mystery.
Our geocentric understanding of ourselves has expanded to the realization that we are an intrinsic part of Cosmos. The Universe is also literally within us. No longer limited merely to our planet, Anima Mundi is the personification of the whole natural world – the Universe. This light, the dynamic reality of the energy field, is within us as within everything. Embodied nature is the link between the archetypal and formative worlds, the hyperdimensional matrix of eternal patterns with sacred proportions and unique manifestations. She is also infinite potential, the possibility of bringing creative ideas to birth, to manifestation.
In the deepest sense, she is the universal wave function, the unmanifest ground of our being, spacetime and the radiant light of virtual photon fluctuation, which underlies all matter and manifestation. Kabbalist Azriel of Gerona claimed "faith" meant entering into a relationship with one's "nothingness" and the "unknown" of the infinite, the ultimate ‘yin’ of non-existence that is the mother of all form.
In ancient times Anima Mundi declared her impenetrable mystery by reiterating that "I am Isis; no man has lifted my veil." This Muse of superconsciousness is bathed in the Light and concealed by it. Thus she alludes to herself as dazzling Solitaire in her virgin nature, that sense of wholeness within oneself, which is the Feminine source of wisdom, magic and meaning.
The natural light of the soul is illumination, embodied in the pineal light of the “spirit molecule,” DMT. Likewise, alchemists seek the divine spark, the light hidden in matter. To work creatively in the world, the Light of Nature needs to be released through inner alchemy. Our own light or divine spark is part of the light of the World Soul, so we can understand the mysteries of creation and the secrets of nature. The tools of inner transformation help Anima Mundi reveal her divine light.
Whether called Isis, Shakti, Maya, Shekinah, Sophia, Demeter/Persephone, Mary, Great Mother, White Goddess or any cultural variant, Anima Mundi is the universal animating principle, the upwelling spring of the creative Imagination, the dynamic flow of imagery, pattern, and form. She is personified internally as a soul guide or Initiatrix and externally embodied as the Soror Mystica. Glimpsing inspiring inner workings of our soul helps us realign our lives, our hopes and our dreams.
ANCIENT & CONTEMPORARY MODELS
Spiritual alchemy has long been informed by depth psychology. Carl Jung’s work in this area is well-known. Less known is that of the main proponent of archetypal psychology, James Hillman who places Anima Mundi as center of his psychological theory. This archetype of the psyche is inherent in the prima materia. It fosters the return of psychological subjectivity to the outer.
Alchemy works in just this projective, animated manner with a deeper level of participation. Phenomenology is the art of dissolution, a natural alchemy, learning how to see again, a way of being in the world between thinking and perceiving. In this aesthetic paradigm, Hillman asserts that images derive autonomy and operate according to their own will, similar to gods.
Gods and goddesses are an intrinsic part of Hillman's archetypal psychology, as they are in alchemy. In mythical perception, gods, metals, plants, minerals, animals, scents, colors, planets and more correspond with one another through the Doctrine of Signatures. Different forms share the same essential nature.
The symbolic nature of metals is the skeleton of spiritual alchemy. The word ‘metal’ means ‘search,’ strongly suggesting the nature of our alchemical work. We don’t seek a natural metal but the virtual metal, it’s essence. The lunar metal of Anima is silver and the white earth (albedo). Jung said, “Earth and moon coincide in the albedo.” (CW14, para. 154)
Silver is washed into veins in faultlines in the earth, and we can take advantage of the analogous process in our psyche. It takes place in that egoic illusion called “mine.” We can mine our own psychic faultlines. Silver is found in lead-silver vein mineralizations, sometimes with gold and zinc. Silver, the seed of the moon in the earth, is refined from the dross of lead-silver concentrate into the silvered mirror of the mind. Solutions emerge from our puzzlement. Reflection gives shape to the imaginal.
MINING THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON
Insights can tarnish, losing their shiny clarity. Just as silver is prone to blackening, this phase of the Great Work can be derailed by Saturn’s depression, the destructive illusion of separation. But the depression is the mine. Albedo emerges from blackness, transpersonal release, and emotional relief from the nigredo of personal identity. But the urge to white is not an escape from black – a whitewash -- since there is no soul without body.
Each object or body is also an imaginal image. We can extract silver moments from our leaden body – motions and emotions that regulate the neurochemistry of the body. Alchemical silver can be mined for many rich metaphorical associations (aha moments), just as silver requires polishing for reflection. Friction leads to clarified reflection. Shame is washed away.
Without shadow, whiteness becomes blankness. Shadow that is built into psyche’s body becomes transparent. Shadow is built into the nature of whiteness, as all colors unite disappearing into white. The world becomes an alchemical dream – the terra alba of anima inspiration.
Imaging itself is a mode of mining silver, psychical facts and essences, sometimes by speculation, resonance and artful listening. We may temporarily become a bit of a “lunatic” in the transmutative process The mysterium coniunctionis is moon-madness combined with solar brilliance.
It takes intense heat, intense introspection in the depths, to refine our inert nature. Then the luminous consciousness of the worked on soul arises. Dissolved by desire from its old ground for fusion in the dissolution of gender, anima no longer is exclusively feminine. Passive fantasy becomes transcendent active imagination, revealing the images within nature, the secret heart of nature.
IT IS BUT IT ISN’T
Virtual places, phenomena, and experiences can be just as “real” as material perceptions. The brain responds to the virtuality as if there is no neurological difference between imaginal and externally stimulated imagery. In this sense, imagination is reality. We perceive the sensate world through the non-linear imaginal world, its enfolded imaginal potential.
Anima Mundi embodies the pandemonium of all forms in external and internal perceptions. She bridges our perceptions of the world by stimulating the imaginative faculty. Yet, being attached to materialistic images is not the same as being attached to Mater, matter and earth.
As alchemists, we have to build a relationship with the very essence of the world. Being in soul is a continuous intentional process. The Astral Light is synonymous with the alchemical Anima Mundi. Jung’s idea of the Collective Unconscious as the treasure house of fluctuating imagery is a modern description. This light represents the immanence of the world-soul. She dwells in us and we are enlivened by her Being.
Aristotle conceptualized soul as the form, or essence of any living thing, not a distinct substance from the body it inhabits. Only possession of soul (of a specific kind) makes an organism an organism. The notion of a body without a soul, or of a soul in the wrong kind of body, is completely unintelligible. Soul mediates between mind and body, idea and matter, actualities and the Beyond.
James Hillman (1975) observes that soul, “refers to the deepening of events into experiences; second the significance of soul, whether in love or religious concern, derives from its special relationship with death. And third…the imaginative possibility in our natures, the experiencing through reflective speculation, dream, image, fantasy—that mode which recognizes all realities as primarily symbolic or metaphorical.”
Paracelsus thought the soul was beyond the individual, beyond our control. Plotinus saw all individuals as one soul. Gerhard Dorn said the third degree of the alchemical coniunctio, the most mature phase of individuation, is the personal realization of communion with an original unitary reality. Grounded intuition of a centered sphere of soul opens a microcosm that mirrors the Cosmic macrocosm: "As Above, So Below.”
PSYCHOLOGICAL FAITH
We need a new cultural proving ground, a new paradigm for the energetic potential of the bodymind and the culture for which it is the ground. In our culture, the body and our fantasies about it have come to represent the lost Feminine element of deep interior processes.
We have lost touch with our primal femininity, the animating principle (nature, body, instinct). We have become estranged from the body through the mechanistic mind/body split, which is also non-relativistic. We talk a good game about 'wholeness' but don't really connect as much as nostalgically yearn for it.
Spontaneous imagery soulfully joins spirit and body. It doesn’t solve our troubles (pathologies) nor "save" our souls. Direct engagement, meditatio, with images for soul-making deepens us through personal experience.
No longer divided against thinking, imagination becomes the ground of certainty. Direct knowledge, gnosis, is demanded by the silvered mind so the soul can understand itself. Conjunctions come when we no longer focus on opposites or meaningful coincidences or conjunction. Imagination is as elusive as the goal of the alchemical process itself.
Through illumined senses we can see through the nature of apparent reality for ourselves, if we but try. Things become transparent, shine and speak. Signs echo within us. Then we develop our own philosophy, apart from consensus. When it comes to questions of speculation on the unknown, we can either accept what others have said, or look for ourselves, perhaps even into delusional lunacy.
The wounded-healer typically passes through a period of madness. Is it avoidable? Perhaps only by educating the psyche with alchemical training, giving it a silvered voice and attentive ear to avoid clinical literalism, paranoid delusion, vitrification, and dissociation. Even then, there is no guarantee lunacy can be avoided.
POESIS
Anima Mundi is NowHere…the very spirit of life, the ethereal angel of our destiny, the animated archetypal ground and individually the radiant subtle body. More than just the life-spirit, the sacred field body is a natural force, the cosmic energic principle of primordial Consciousness, implicate order – the essence of being and sacred embodiment.
Primordial mankind saw everything as saturated with meaning, both human and cosmic. We, too, can see ourselves as full participants with the interior life of the natural world and cosmos. Not only signs and symbols can be read in the multidimensional environment, the metaphorical nature of symptoms – ours and the world’s – can be discerned. Fantasies open to one another in resonance, recognition, insight, and astonishment.
Alchemy is a poetry-science whose language and experimentation has a naturally therapeutic value. This poetic art and science of experientially reclaiming this relationship and worldview raises conscious recognition of anima mundi. Let the images come into your body. Tuned responses receptively embrace the image. This art is not separate from life, but is infused with life. The substance of the insubstantial is what makes psyche matter. And it is an intrinsic part of alchemical method.
Ancient philosophers proclaimed the world soul, a pure ethereal spirit, is diffused throughout all nature. The notion of soul as imaginative possibility, in relation to the archai or root metaphors, is what Hillman has termed the “poetic basis of mind.” Whitening into psychic reality is embodiment of spirit and inspiriting of body, eliminating oppositional tension.
One of the most original religious creations of the Hellenistic period is the personification of wisdom as the Shekinah. In Greek form, Sophia as a divine and personfied entity appears comparatively late in the Hermetic writings. This feminine counterpart of God plays a major role in the metaphors of polar dynamics in the Tree of Life.
In Proverbs, Shekinah declares that Yahweh created her before the oldest of his works, that she was firmly set from the beginning, before earth came into being. This echoes the notion of a virtual state prior to and underlying physical manifestation, a virtual matrix of formation.. Wisdom emerged from the Lord's mouth. Among the realm of Jewish-inspired "intermediate beings" between man and God, Shekinah was elevated to supreme authority, the mediatrix. She is divine immanence.
Kabbalalists speak of this light during ecstatic entry into Pardes, the "orchard" of the Garden of Pomegranates, the self-luminous spheres of the Tree of Life. This metaphysical experience of the "Light of the Shekinah," the feminine aspect of the Divine, is associated with qabalistic ascent up the Middle Pillar. In this state the soul remains covered or adorned, and one cleaves to the Light, gazing at the awesome radiance of God (Tzvi ha Shekinah) in rapt mystic Union.
According to Kabbalist Idel, the grace of "sweet radiance" has erotic overtones. It also implies mystical death, separated from all concerns with the mundane world. The Divine Light attracts the light of the soul, "which is weak in relation to the Divine Light." The metaphor is one of magnetic attraction. The Kabbalists tried to reach the pre-fall state of the Primordial Man, to reenter the radiance of the Shekinah, a mystically erotic relationship with the Divine Presence which creates a reflective “glow.”
Entrance of the philosopher or mystic into the Pardes affects only the human soul. But in the Theosophical paradigm it does have affects on the non-human realms, the system of divine powers, influencing the relationships between them. In the Theurgic paradigm there is also an influence on, or struggle with, the demonic realm, which seeks to hold the soul back from union.
PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESONANCE
In alchemy, Anima Mundi acts as the soul-guide to our heights and depths. Beauty is simply manifestation, the display of phenomena, the appearance of the anima mundi. Union with her is consciousness of our primal existential self, and our deepest ecological self, right down to the virtuality of the Void – the primordial field.
Beneath the alienation from nature, which our culture has created, lies a deep resource we can tap which is fundamental wisdom about the unity of life. We are embedded within that seamless fabric of Cosmos, the Feminine source of wisdom. The importance of the present depends on its effect in the realization of a specific future. An experience is important if it suggests or fulfills visionary sight.
Anima Mundi is the secret powers of nature. We need those powers to heal and transform. The intentional use of imagination and image building is a foundation of mysticism. This wisdom is deep ecology, which reveals the way of living in balance through intuition. She is the dark of the Void and the natural Light of the Soul--illumination. She bridges our perceptions of the world by stimulating the imaginative faculty.
Alchemy is a meditation science and art that purposefully cultivates a human relationship with Anima Mundi. To experience psychic reality means to be in soul, in the realm of the imagination, as if interacting with its inhabitants and locales. Inner visionary experience, be it wrathful or beatific, is an expression of soul. Through images the unconscious affects our worldview, health and relationships. Imagination not only conditions our reality, it is our reality. Soul is the middle world between gross materiality and the spiritual world.
This is a psychological approach to art and life--giving voice to soul, living life as art. It means the return of a subjective feminine eye on reality. It means the enlivening of our bodies and the world of nature with imagination. When we see soul as the background of all phenomena, we become aware of the animating principle and direct relationship with Her. The point is not to dissect her soul, but celebrate her body.
LIGHT OF THE SOUL
The soul generates images unceasingly, purposefully ordering our lives. Artists are able to capture and express some of that ceaseless flow. The soul lives on images and metaphor, especially epistemological metaphors--how we know what we know. These images form the basis of our consciousness. All we can know comes through images, through our multi-sensory perceptions. So, this soul always stays close to the body, close to corporeality, to what "matters."
Physical reality becomes psychic and psyche becomes real. It "matters." The difference between soul and external things no longer matters. Inner and Outer worlds are real. They are One World. Image, metaphor and symbol bridge the abyss between matter and spirit. They are integrated with feeling, mind, and imagination through wonder and awe. We can see soul in all natural objects. We can notice our fantasies constantly conditioning our experience of reality.
When spirit as energy and matter as form are in balance, the body becomes the living "Temple of the Spirit." A sense of immortality deepens the sacred dimension of life. Soul’s immortality is sensed in direct experience of non-spatial, non-temporal, nonlocal, four-dimensional reality. Real alchemical work is for the sake of the whole of which we are a microcosm.
REFERENCES
Hillman J. (1977). Re-Visioning Psychology. New York: Harper Perennial.
Hillman, James (1980). “Silver and the White Earth, Part I.” Spring, 1980, 21-48.
Hillman, J. (1981). “Silver and the White Earth, Part II.” Spring, 1981, 21-66.
Hillman J. (1982). “Anima Mundi: The Return of the Soul to the World.” Spring, 1982, 71-93.
Hillman, J. (1985). Anima: An Anatomy of a Personified Notion. Dallas: Spring Publications.
Jung, C. G. (1963). Mysterium Coniunctionis. Collected Works, Vol. 14. Princeton N. J.: Princeton University Press.
Jung, C.G. (1968) Psychology and Alchemy. Collected Works, Vol. 12. Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press.
Global emphasis on urgent ecological awareness implies a reflowering of the Neo-Platonic and alchemical notion of ANIMA MUNDI the Soul of the World. Anima Mundi is not an archetype, but an archetypal way of seeing -- seeing through the world. Our narcissistic tendency is self-absorption, over-valuing individual subjectivity at the expense of the real problems of the world. The language of Anima Mundi includes beauty, aesthetics, depth, inner life and political activity -- psychological practices of larger groups.
We are all engaged in making the world soul even as she shapes us. We have a drive to love the world, even an erotic desire for anima mundi. She invites us into a relationship of intimacy with the world and its objects and processes. The psychic reality of the world soul is available to all in images and imagination. We cannot separate our souls from the souls of others and the environment.
Care of the soul doesn't mean isolating ourselves from the reality of the world and its phenomena -- experiences, substance and objects. Soul makes images that add a depth dimension to concrete life, that go beyond literalness to psychological metaphysics that expresses our legitimate need to go further, even beyond mythical fictions through imagination to speculative freedom.
Thus, anima mundi is the field of infinite meanings, created from metaphors of different places, points of view, and narratives. New understandings arrive with new images at the surprising edge of things, new expressive forms that arise of their own accord.
"ANIMA MUNDI: Soul-Filled World"
By Iona Miller
“God redeems humanity, but nature needs to be redeemed by human alchemists, who are able to induce the process of transformation, which alone is capable of liberating the light imprisoned in physical creation.” ~Stephan Hoeller, Sufi Journal, Issue 67, Autumn 2005
"Let us imagine the anima mundi neither above the world encircling it as a divine and remote emanation of spirit, a world of powers, archetypes, and principles transcendent to things, nor within the material world as its unifying panpsychic life-principle. Rather let us imagine the anima mundi as that particular soul-spark, the seminal image, which offers itself through each thing in its visible form. Then anima mundi indicates the animated possibilities presented by each event, as it is, its sensuous presentation as face bespeaking its interior image--in short, its availability to imagination, its presence as a psychic reality. Not only animals and plants ensouled as in the Romantic vision, but soul is given with each thing; God-given things of nature and man-made things of the street." ~James Hillman, “Anima Mundi,” Spring, 1982
NUMINOUS & LUMINOUS PSYCHE
Anima Mundi, the feminine principle or mode of Being was historically considered the "soul of the world," the fertility of human, animal and plant life. Renaissance philosopher Giordano Bruno said the World Soul “illumines the universe and directs nature in producing her species in the right way.” She is the magical world of creative mystery.
Our geocentric understanding of ourselves has expanded to the realization that we are an intrinsic part of Cosmos. The Universe is also literally within us. No longer limited merely to our planet, Anima Mundi is the personification of the whole natural world – the Universe. This light, the dynamic reality of the energy field, is within us as within everything. Embodied nature is the link between the archetypal and formative worlds, the hyperdimensional matrix of eternal patterns with sacred proportions and unique manifestations. She is also infinite potential, the possibility of bringing creative ideas to birth, to manifestation.
In the deepest sense, she is the universal wave function, the unmanifest ground of our being, spacetime and the radiant light of virtual photon fluctuation, which underlies all matter and manifestation. Kabbalist Azriel of Gerona claimed "faith" meant entering into a relationship with one's "nothingness" and the "unknown" of the infinite, the ultimate ‘yin’ of non-existence that is the mother of all form.
In ancient times Anima Mundi declared her impenetrable mystery by reiterating that "I am Isis; no man has lifted my veil." This Muse of superconsciousness is bathed in the Light and concealed by it. Thus she alludes to herself as dazzling Solitaire in her virgin nature, that sense of wholeness within oneself, which is the Feminine source of wisdom, magic and meaning.
The natural light of the soul is illumination, embodied in the pineal light of the “spirit molecule,” DMT. Likewise, alchemists seek the divine spark, the light hidden in matter. To work creatively in the world, the Light of Nature needs to be released through inner alchemy. Our own light or divine spark is part of the light of the World Soul, so we can understand the mysteries of creation and the secrets of nature. The tools of inner transformation help Anima Mundi reveal her divine light.
Whether called Isis, Shakti, Maya, Shekinah, Sophia, Demeter/Persephone, Mary, Great Mother, White Goddess or any cultural variant, Anima Mundi is the universal animating principle, the upwelling spring of the creative Imagination, the dynamic flow of imagery, pattern, and form. She is personified internally as a soul guide or Initiatrix and externally embodied as the Soror Mystica. Glimpsing inspiring inner workings of our soul helps us realign our lives, our hopes and our dreams.
ANCIENT & CONTEMPORARY MODELS
Spiritual alchemy has long been informed by depth psychology. Carl Jung’s work in this area is well-known. Less known is that of the main proponent of archetypal psychology, James Hillman who places Anima Mundi as center of his psychological theory. This archetype of the psyche is inherent in the prima materia. It fosters the return of psychological subjectivity to the outer.
Alchemy works in just this projective, animated manner with a deeper level of participation. Phenomenology is the art of dissolution, a natural alchemy, learning how to see again, a way of being in the world between thinking and perceiving. In this aesthetic paradigm, Hillman asserts that images derive autonomy and operate according to their own will, similar to gods.
Gods and goddesses are an intrinsic part of Hillman's archetypal psychology, as they are in alchemy. In mythical perception, gods, metals, plants, minerals, animals, scents, colors, planets and more correspond with one another through the Doctrine of Signatures. Different forms share the same essential nature.
The symbolic nature of metals is the skeleton of spiritual alchemy. The word ‘metal’ means ‘search,’ strongly suggesting the nature of our alchemical work. We don’t seek a natural metal but the virtual metal, it’s essence. The lunar metal of Anima is silver and the white earth (albedo). Jung said, “Earth and moon coincide in the albedo.” (CW14, para. 154)
Silver is washed into veins in faultlines in the earth, and we can take advantage of the analogous process in our psyche. It takes place in that egoic illusion called “mine.” We can mine our own psychic faultlines. Silver is found in lead-silver vein mineralizations, sometimes with gold and zinc. Silver, the seed of the moon in the earth, is refined from the dross of lead-silver concentrate into the silvered mirror of the mind. Solutions emerge from our puzzlement. Reflection gives shape to the imaginal.
MINING THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON
Insights can tarnish, losing their shiny clarity. Just as silver is prone to blackening, this phase of the Great Work can be derailed by Saturn’s depression, the destructive illusion of separation. But the depression is the mine. Albedo emerges from blackness, transpersonal release, and emotional relief from the nigredo of personal identity. But the urge to white is not an escape from black – a whitewash -- since there is no soul without body.
Each object or body is also an imaginal image. We can extract silver moments from our leaden body – motions and emotions that regulate the neurochemistry of the body. Alchemical silver can be mined for many rich metaphorical associations (aha moments), just as silver requires polishing for reflection. Friction leads to clarified reflection. Shame is washed away.
Without shadow, whiteness becomes blankness. Shadow that is built into psyche’s body becomes transparent. Shadow is built into the nature of whiteness, as all colors unite disappearing into white. The world becomes an alchemical dream – the terra alba of anima inspiration.
Imaging itself is a mode of mining silver, psychical facts and essences, sometimes by speculation, resonance and artful listening. We may temporarily become a bit of a “lunatic” in the transmutative process The mysterium coniunctionis is moon-madness combined with solar brilliance.
It takes intense heat, intense introspection in the depths, to refine our inert nature. Then the luminous consciousness of the worked on soul arises. Dissolved by desire from its old ground for fusion in the dissolution of gender, anima no longer is exclusively feminine. Passive fantasy becomes transcendent active imagination, revealing the images within nature, the secret heart of nature.
IT IS BUT IT ISN’T
Virtual places, phenomena, and experiences can be just as “real” as material perceptions. The brain responds to the virtuality as if there is no neurological difference between imaginal and externally stimulated imagery. In this sense, imagination is reality. We perceive the sensate world through the non-linear imaginal world, its enfolded imaginal potential.
Anima Mundi embodies the pandemonium of all forms in external and internal perceptions. She bridges our perceptions of the world by stimulating the imaginative faculty. Yet, being attached to materialistic images is not the same as being attached to Mater, matter and earth.
As alchemists, we have to build a relationship with the very essence of the world. Being in soul is a continuous intentional process. The Astral Light is synonymous with the alchemical Anima Mundi. Jung’s idea of the Collective Unconscious as the treasure house of fluctuating imagery is a modern description. This light represents the immanence of the world-soul. She dwells in us and we are enlivened by her Being.
Aristotle conceptualized soul as the form, or essence of any living thing, not a distinct substance from the body it inhabits. Only possession of soul (of a specific kind) makes an organism an organism. The notion of a body without a soul, or of a soul in the wrong kind of body, is completely unintelligible. Soul mediates between mind and body, idea and matter, actualities and the Beyond.
James Hillman (1975) observes that soul, “refers to the deepening of events into experiences; second the significance of soul, whether in love or religious concern, derives from its special relationship with death. And third…the imaginative possibility in our natures, the experiencing through reflective speculation, dream, image, fantasy—that mode which recognizes all realities as primarily symbolic or metaphorical.”
Paracelsus thought the soul was beyond the individual, beyond our control. Plotinus saw all individuals as one soul. Gerhard Dorn said the third degree of the alchemical coniunctio, the most mature phase of individuation, is the personal realization of communion with an original unitary reality. Grounded intuition of a centered sphere of soul opens a microcosm that mirrors the Cosmic macrocosm: "As Above, So Below.”
PSYCHOLOGICAL FAITH
We need a new cultural proving ground, a new paradigm for the energetic potential of the bodymind and the culture for which it is the ground. In our culture, the body and our fantasies about it have come to represent the lost Feminine element of deep interior processes.
We have lost touch with our primal femininity, the animating principle (nature, body, instinct). We have become estranged from the body through the mechanistic mind/body split, which is also non-relativistic. We talk a good game about 'wholeness' but don't really connect as much as nostalgically yearn for it.
Spontaneous imagery soulfully joins spirit and body. It doesn’t solve our troubles (pathologies) nor "save" our souls. Direct engagement, meditatio, with images for soul-making deepens us through personal experience.
No longer divided against thinking, imagination becomes the ground of certainty. Direct knowledge, gnosis, is demanded by the silvered mind so the soul can understand itself. Conjunctions come when we no longer focus on opposites or meaningful coincidences or conjunction. Imagination is as elusive as the goal of the alchemical process itself.
Through illumined senses we can see through the nature of apparent reality for ourselves, if we but try. Things become transparent, shine and speak. Signs echo within us. Then we develop our own philosophy, apart from consensus. When it comes to questions of speculation on the unknown, we can either accept what others have said, or look for ourselves, perhaps even into delusional lunacy.
The wounded-healer typically passes through a period of madness. Is it avoidable? Perhaps only by educating the psyche with alchemical training, giving it a silvered voice and attentive ear to avoid clinical literalism, paranoid delusion, vitrification, and dissociation. Even then, there is no guarantee lunacy can be avoided.
POESIS
Anima Mundi is NowHere…the very spirit of life, the ethereal angel of our destiny, the animated archetypal ground and individually the radiant subtle body. More than just the life-spirit, the sacred field body is a natural force, the cosmic energic principle of primordial Consciousness, implicate order – the essence of being and sacred embodiment.
Primordial mankind saw everything as saturated with meaning, both human and cosmic. We, too, can see ourselves as full participants with the interior life of the natural world and cosmos. Not only signs and symbols can be read in the multidimensional environment, the metaphorical nature of symptoms – ours and the world’s – can be discerned. Fantasies open to one another in resonance, recognition, insight, and astonishment.
Alchemy is a poetry-science whose language and experimentation has a naturally therapeutic value. This poetic art and science of experientially reclaiming this relationship and worldview raises conscious recognition of anima mundi. Let the images come into your body. Tuned responses receptively embrace the image. This art is not separate from life, but is infused with life. The substance of the insubstantial is what makes psyche matter. And it is an intrinsic part of alchemical method.
Ancient philosophers proclaimed the world soul, a pure ethereal spirit, is diffused throughout all nature. The notion of soul as imaginative possibility, in relation to the archai or root metaphors, is what Hillman has termed the “poetic basis of mind.” Whitening into psychic reality is embodiment of spirit and inspiriting of body, eliminating oppositional tension.
One of the most original religious creations of the Hellenistic period is the personification of wisdom as the Shekinah. In Greek form, Sophia as a divine and personfied entity appears comparatively late in the Hermetic writings. This feminine counterpart of God plays a major role in the metaphors of polar dynamics in the Tree of Life.
In Proverbs, Shekinah declares that Yahweh created her before the oldest of his works, that she was firmly set from the beginning, before earth came into being. This echoes the notion of a virtual state prior to and underlying physical manifestation, a virtual matrix of formation.. Wisdom emerged from the Lord's mouth. Among the realm of Jewish-inspired "intermediate beings" between man and God, Shekinah was elevated to supreme authority, the mediatrix. She is divine immanence.
Kabbalalists speak of this light during ecstatic entry into Pardes, the "orchard" of the Garden of Pomegranates, the self-luminous spheres of the Tree of Life. This metaphysical experience of the "Light of the Shekinah," the feminine aspect of the Divine, is associated with qabalistic ascent up the Middle Pillar. In this state the soul remains covered or adorned, and one cleaves to the Light, gazing at the awesome radiance of God (Tzvi ha Shekinah) in rapt mystic Union.
According to Kabbalist Idel, the grace of "sweet radiance" has erotic overtones. It also implies mystical death, separated from all concerns with the mundane world. The Divine Light attracts the light of the soul, "which is weak in relation to the Divine Light." The metaphor is one of magnetic attraction. The Kabbalists tried to reach the pre-fall state of the Primordial Man, to reenter the radiance of the Shekinah, a mystically erotic relationship with the Divine Presence which creates a reflective “glow.”
Entrance of the philosopher or mystic into the Pardes affects only the human soul. But in the Theosophical paradigm it does have affects on the non-human realms, the system of divine powers, influencing the relationships between them. In the Theurgic paradigm there is also an influence on, or struggle with, the demonic realm, which seeks to hold the soul back from union.
PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESONANCE
In alchemy, Anima Mundi acts as the soul-guide to our heights and depths. Beauty is simply manifestation, the display of phenomena, the appearance of the anima mundi. Union with her is consciousness of our primal existential self, and our deepest ecological self, right down to the virtuality of the Void – the primordial field.
Beneath the alienation from nature, which our culture has created, lies a deep resource we can tap which is fundamental wisdom about the unity of life. We are embedded within that seamless fabric of Cosmos, the Feminine source of wisdom. The importance of the present depends on its effect in the realization of a specific future. An experience is important if it suggests or fulfills visionary sight.
Anima Mundi is the secret powers of nature. We need those powers to heal and transform. The intentional use of imagination and image building is a foundation of mysticism. This wisdom is deep ecology, which reveals the way of living in balance through intuition. She is the dark of the Void and the natural Light of the Soul--illumination. She bridges our perceptions of the world by stimulating the imaginative faculty.
Alchemy is a meditation science and art that purposefully cultivates a human relationship with Anima Mundi. To experience psychic reality means to be in soul, in the realm of the imagination, as if interacting with its inhabitants and locales. Inner visionary experience, be it wrathful or beatific, is an expression of soul. Through images the unconscious affects our worldview, health and relationships. Imagination not only conditions our reality, it is our reality. Soul is the middle world between gross materiality and the spiritual world.
This is a psychological approach to art and life--giving voice to soul, living life as art. It means the return of a subjective feminine eye on reality. It means the enlivening of our bodies and the world of nature with imagination. When we see soul as the background of all phenomena, we become aware of the animating principle and direct relationship with Her. The point is not to dissect her soul, but celebrate her body.
LIGHT OF THE SOUL
The soul generates images unceasingly, purposefully ordering our lives. Artists are able to capture and express some of that ceaseless flow. The soul lives on images and metaphor, especially epistemological metaphors--how we know what we know. These images form the basis of our consciousness. All we can know comes through images, through our multi-sensory perceptions. So, this soul always stays close to the body, close to corporeality, to what "matters."
Physical reality becomes psychic and psyche becomes real. It "matters." The difference between soul and external things no longer matters. Inner and Outer worlds are real. They are One World. Image, metaphor and symbol bridge the abyss between matter and spirit. They are integrated with feeling, mind, and imagination through wonder and awe. We can see soul in all natural objects. We can notice our fantasies constantly conditioning our experience of reality.
When spirit as energy and matter as form are in balance, the body becomes the living "Temple of the Spirit." A sense of immortality deepens the sacred dimension of life. Soul’s immortality is sensed in direct experience of non-spatial, non-temporal, nonlocal, four-dimensional reality. Real alchemical work is for the sake of the whole of which we are a microcosm.
REFERENCES
Hillman J. (1977). Re-Visioning Psychology. New York: Harper Perennial.
Hillman, James (1980). “Silver and the White Earth, Part I.” Spring, 1980, 21-48.
Hillman, J. (1981). “Silver and the White Earth, Part II.” Spring, 1981, 21-66.
Hillman J. (1982). “Anima Mundi: The Return of the Soul to the World.” Spring, 1982, 71-93.
Hillman, J. (1985). Anima: An Anatomy of a Personified Notion. Dallas: Spring Publications.
Jung, C. G. (1963). Mysterium Coniunctionis. Collected Works, Vol. 14. Princeton N. J.: Princeton University Press.
Jung, C.G. (1968) Psychology and Alchemy. Collected Works, Vol. 12. Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press.
7. Lunar Consciousness
Lunar (or Feminine) Consciousness
What constitutes awareness? The day-world of ego-consciousness has been called Solar conscious and considered masculine in nature. Nevertheless, even without this rational mode of solar-consciousness, we experience the primordial, diffuse awareness of Lunar (or Feminine) consciousness. This is our basic psychic reality, from which the ego-consciousness later emerges.
Psyche (Greek) or Anima (Latin) means soul. So anima-consciousness or soul-consciousness indicated an awareness that perceives fantasy creating reality. Anima-consciousness comes through images. It brings awareness that fantasies are everywhere. They are not separate from reality, but fundamental to our notions about reality. Jung says, "image is psyche." Anima (or soul personified) combines the innocent virginity of the soul's unsullied pristine state with the sophisticated worldliness of the fertile Great Mother (White Goddess). She is the embodiment of the Woman's Mysteries.
Anima, as the archetype of psychic consciousness makes us aware of our areas of unconsciousness. Soul, in its relationship with spirit constantly invades the day-world consciousness with images, fears, moods, and mystery. It is elusive, paradoxical, and ambiguous. This mode of perception is conscious of its unconsciousness and can recognize the potential latent in the unknown aspect. It could be characterized as "illumined lunacy." Anima-consciousness is that mode which is appropriate to experience in the astral plane and astral body.
The realm of imagination is psychic reality. Anima-consciousness is a multi-centered polytheistic perspective (thus a pagan orientation is appropriate to Lunar Magic). Its concern is being-in-soul not becoming. It is perceived as a coincidence of processes. All phases of the eternal cycles are present at once, enfolded in any part of the whole. It is experienced as a series of superimposed images. It is reflective and concerned with inter-relationship rather than analysis. It is diffused, not focused awareness. Anima mediates the unknown, or unconsciousness. It forms a bride to the day-world consciousness.
The Anima serves as a mediatrix for consciousness. She mediates between the personal and collective, balancing the actualities of daily life with the realities of the beyond. She bridges the individual conscious horizon and the primordial realm of the imagination. The feeling developed through this soul-making process is more impersonal than personal. As the Great Goddess, Anima or Psyche represents the archetypal containing vessel. In current psychological thought, consciousness itself is seen as more appropriately based upon anima than upon ego. The ego and its developmental fantasies never were the foundation for consciousness.
Consciousness refers to a process having more to do with images than will. It is reflection rather than control, with a reflective insight. Therefore, consciousness arising from soul derives from images and can be called imaginal. It looks to myth as it manifests in dreams, fantasies, and life patterns. "Becoming conscious" now takes on new meaning. It means becoming aware of one's fantasies and recognition of them everywhere. They are not merely in a a 'fantasy world' separate from 'reality'. The aspirant can analyze by means of fantasies and then translate reality back into fantasy images. Personifying is an effect of the anima archetype. Libido (psychic energy or prana, life force) can only be apprehended in a definite form. It is identical with the fantasy images.
The Holy Guardian Angel's individuation into a distinct personality is precisely what soul-making is about. If you personify the Soul in the form of the Great Goddess, Anima, or Psyche she will act as a soul-guide on the inner planes. Anima consciousness now means seeing, listening, attending all shift from the gross attachments of the material plane to the shining and transparent resonance of subtle astral forms. This meeting of soul with Soul is what the astral plane is all about.
'Psychology' is composed of psyche and logos. It is an interaction between anima and psychological intellect. The logos, or spirit principle, gives speech to psyche. Psychology is the speech of the soul, which combines both lunar and solar components. It would seem that the airy quality of Yesod and the building of an "astral body" are not irrelevant in psychology. The secret and key of psychological work requires the airy imagination of soul, that is, the capacity of imagining events "outside" of the natural bodily perspective of empirical and material literalism but in regard to a subtle or fantasy body of psychic reality.
Being-in-soul requires being in a body too, but this body is built of soul stuff; it is a "breath body." Fantasy images are this stuff, this "subtle body." The key to the entire psychological opus...is body-building via imagination. (8) This body building is a creative act of fantasy. Within it, the many do not become one but become psychic material. An example of this process is memory (also an attribute of Yesod). Anima and matter unite when psychic experiences (9) are encoded in the brain cells of the physical body. Lunar consciousness runs the cyclic gamut from the bright diffuse light of full moon through the half-darkness, to the blackened nature of the dark of the moon. Its nocturnal quality and lower luminosity don't make it any less powerful than the solar influence. Excerpt, Holistic Qabalah, Iona Miller
What constitutes awareness? The day-world of ego-consciousness has been called Solar conscious and considered masculine in nature. Nevertheless, even without this rational mode of solar-consciousness, we experience the primordial, diffuse awareness of Lunar (or Feminine) consciousness. This is our basic psychic reality, from which the ego-consciousness later emerges.
Psyche (Greek) or Anima (Latin) means soul. So anima-consciousness or soul-consciousness indicated an awareness that perceives fantasy creating reality. Anima-consciousness comes through images. It brings awareness that fantasies are everywhere. They are not separate from reality, but fundamental to our notions about reality. Jung says, "image is psyche." Anima (or soul personified) combines the innocent virginity of the soul's unsullied pristine state with the sophisticated worldliness of the fertile Great Mother (White Goddess). She is the embodiment of the Woman's Mysteries.
Anima, as the archetype of psychic consciousness makes us aware of our areas of unconsciousness. Soul, in its relationship with spirit constantly invades the day-world consciousness with images, fears, moods, and mystery. It is elusive, paradoxical, and ambiguous. This mode of perception is conscious of its unconsciousness and can recognize the potential latent in the unknown aspect. It could be characterized as "illumined lunacy." Anima-consciousness is that mode which is appropriate to experience in the astral plane and astral body.
The realm of imagination is psychic reality. Anima-consciousness is a multi-centered polytheistic perspective (thus a pagan orientation is appropriate to Lunar Magic). Its concern is being-in-soul not becoming. It is perceived as a coincidence of processes. All phases of the eternal cycles are present at once, enfolded in any part of the whole. It is experienced as a series of superimposed images. It is reflective and concerned with inter-relationship rather than analysis. It is diffused, not focused awareness. Anima mediates the unknown, or unconsciousness. It forms a bride to the day-world consciousness.
The Anima serves as a mediatrix for consciousness. She mediates between the personal and collective, balancing the actualities of daily life with the realities of the beyond. She bridges the individual conscious horizon and the primordial realm of the imagination. The feeling developed through this soul-making process is more impersonal than personal. As the Great Goddess, Anima or Psyche represents the archetypal containing vessel. In current psychological thought, consciousness itself is seen as more appropriately based upon anima than upon ego. The ego and its developmental fantasies never were the foundation for consciousness.
Consciousness refers to a process having more to do with images than will. It is reflection rather than control, with a reflective insight. Therefore, consciousness arising from soul derives from images and can be called imaginal. It looks to myth as it manifests in dreams, fantasies, and life patterns. "Becoming conscious" now takes on new meaning. It means becoming aware of one's fantasies and recognition of them everywhere. They are not merely in a a 'fantasy world' separate from 'reality'. The aspirant can analyze by means of fantasies and then translate reality back into fantasy images. Personifying is an effect of the anima archetype. Libido (psychic energy or prana, life force) can only be apprehended in a definite form. It is identical with the fantasy images.
The Holy Guardian Angel's individuation into a distinct personality is precisely what soul-making is about. If you personify the Soul in the form of the Great Goddess, Anima, or Psyche she will act as a soul-guide on the inner planes. Anima consciousness now means seeing, listening, attending all shift from the gross attachments of the material plane to the shining and transparent resonance of subtle astral forms. This meeting of soul with Soul is what the astral plane is all about.
'Psychology' is composed of psyche and logos. It is an interaction between anima and psychological intellect. The logos, or spirit principle, gives speech to psyche. Psychology is the speech of the soul, which combines both lunar and solar components. It would seem that the airy quality of Yesod and the building of an "astral body" are not irrelevant in psychology. The secret and key of psychological work requires the airy imagination of soul, that is, the capacity of imagining events "outside" of the natural bodily perspective of empirical and material literalism but in regard to a subtle or fantasy body of psychic reality.
Being-in-soul requires being in a body too, but this body is built of soul stuff; it is a "breath body." Fantasy images are this stuff, this "subtle body." The key to the entire psychological opus...is body-building via imagination. (8) This body building is a creative act of fantasy. Within it, the many do not become one but become psychic material. An example of this process is memory (also an attribute of Yesod). Anima and matter unite when psychic experiences (9) are encoded in the brain cells of the physical body. Lunar consciousness runs the cyclic gamut from the bright diffuse light of full moon through the half-darkness, to the blackened nature of the dark of the moon. Its nocturnal quality and lower luminosity don't make it any less powerful than the solar influence. Excerpt, Holistic Qabalah, Iona Miller
Iona Miller, 1993
8. Great Mother / Virgin Goddess
Whether she is known as the White Goddess, Great Mother, or Virgin Isis the Great Goddess is the symbol of the archetypal Feminine. Her image is inexorably linked to the Moon and the death-rebirth cycle. The worship of the Great Goddess was common in the matriarchal agricultural groups of the Mediterranean and Near East. All the later goddesses of the Greek pantheon are contained in this universal symbol of the Earth Mother.
The Goddess is associated with the vegetarian cycle and the processes of agricultural life. She rules the domestic area of life as well as nature. Her primary characteristic is fertility. This fertility extends to the fecundity of imagination. This feminine goddess is single in essence, but displays many forms. To the Egyptians, this Great Goddess was known as Isis and her worship continued into the period of rulership by Imperial Rome. At this point the religion became a mystery cult.
This cult is described in detail in The Golden Ass of Apuleius, which includes the tale Eros and Psyche which describes the psychological development of feminine consciousness. The initiation procedures of this mystery cult involved a voluntary ritual death and revival. The Isis Mysteries were the same as the Eleusian Mysteries in honor of Demeter/Persephone.
They celebrate the immortality of the mother/daughter relationship. Isis embodies all contrasts. Like the moon, she is light and dark, life and death, beginning and end. This Great Mother is the matrix of all manifestation perceivable by man. The whole life of man is governed by the goddess, Mother of all-that-exists. Isis worship even persists in the modern Christian world through the cult of the Virgin Mary. Even though matriarchal consciousness characterizes the spiritual nature of woman, it also exists in men who allow their anima consciousness to manifest. As she is the source of creative inspiration, the hunches of instinct and intuition, and the raw life energy itself, it is an advantage for men to establish a harmony with the moon power.
She counsels meditation, contemplation, waiting and watching, dreaming, and remembering. Matriarchal consciousness focuses around growth and transformation. In this mode understanding has the meaning of a "conception" and the metaphors of pregnancy and birth are common. The knowledge revealed by the goddess is not one of imparted truths but the personal experience of transformation. She encourages participation. When rational over-achieving ego-consciousness has run its course, quite, reflective lunar consciousness emerges to cool the fires of the spirit.
The feminine image holds the keys to experience of the inner planes for both men and women. This is shown in Qabalah by the fact that the two highest paths of the Middle Pillar correspond with the Moon. She rules the transformative mysteries of initiation. As initiatrix, the Goddess progressively educates the emotions of the aspirant. Magickal training of the image-making faculty is the beginning of a new way of using the mind.
One may become self-initiated into the Moon mysteries through careful attention to the stirring of subconscious memories. There is much to learn through psychology concerning the lunar aspects of the soul. However, the magickal working of Yesod brings a personal relationship to the Goddess which manifests far more than one could ever understand through psychology. The imaginal construction of the personified form of the soul enables a linking between your consciousness and the subtle matter of the Great MOTHER's Soul.
The dual nature of the Goddess is shown bu her two characters. Her elementary nature has both a positive (good) and negative (bad)! She is pictured either as all-embracing protectress, or alternately as the devouring Terrible Mother. Her transformative nature also carries good and bad imagery. She not only governs cyclic rebirth and inspiration, but also the mysteries of intoxification, madness, and death. The negative characteristics are symbolized by the Dark Moon, and the positive are symbolized by the bright Full Moon.
The Great Goddess appears in tandem with her Son-Lover. His death and rebirth are symbolic of the cycle of the seed in the ground and the masculine counterpart of divinity. She is soul. He is Spirit. The stages of the Feminine Mysteries remain valid psychological milestones in personal experience even in modern life. The worship of the Great Goddess involved a period of contemplation in her temple, religious prostitution with a man who represented "masculine divinity" in an impersonal ceremony designed so the woman experienced a surrender to her instincts.
This sexual union was considered a sacred marriage, but it was a wedding which resulted in the "death" of her former condition. But, miraculously, she is transformed into the pregnant Moon Mother, filled with the divine Spirit. This magickal child grows slowly in an organic process which had its initiation at the conception of the child. It is a process which takes place in the dark subconscious, far from the eyes of men. With the birth of the virgin-born child, the symbolism switches from that of sexuality to that of maternal solicitude.
This birth is the woman's spiritual rebirth of her hidden potentialities. Because of her dual nature, she does not remain exclusively compassionate, but turns fierce and intolerant when it comes time to sacrifice this child. What is sacrificed is her incestuous identification with him. Any man must touch upon the depths of his own emotional intensity, not continue to require this from his mortal mother. Each facing this emotional intensity is the second stage of initiation to the Goddess, the impersonal aspect of the Feminine.
The period of the Virgin's Pregnancy corresponds with Yesod. In this period she is One-In-Herself. As Virgin, she is represented by the crescent moon. She is a divine power in her own right. With the incorporation into her body of the masculine solar-seed, she embarks on Path 25, Art, which represents the harmonization of lunar and solar components of the psyche. This results in the birth of the magickal child, his divinity revealed, his demise immanent.
Child, King, and Sacrificed God are all symbols of Tiphareth, Sphere of the Resplendent Sun. Moving past Tiphareth on Path 13, The High Priestess, we are again the realm of the Virgin Goddess, but this time she confers the gifts of potential revealed as the Full Moon, knowledge of the unconscious as past and future. Entry into this timeless realm is the experience of immortality, the supreme inspiration of the medial Feminine. Here the priestess of the Moon appears as sibyl, or wise old woman. Moving further through the cycle of woman's ages, the waning crescent moon represents the old crone, full of arcane lore, elusive and sinister. Thus woman's cycle moves through organic biological changes from untouched virgin, to initiated sexually-active Virgin, to Mother, to wise old woman. This trinity was known in ancient Greece Goddess (Virgin, Mother, Hag). This divine being is the symbol of the Feminine Self, core of all being.
http://zero-point.tripod.com/holistic/sphere9.html#Archetypal%20Encounter
The Goddess is associated with the vegetarian cycle and the processes of agricultural life. She rules the domestic area of life as well as nature. Her primary characteristic is fertility. This fertility extends to the fecundity of imagination. This feminine goddess is single in essence, but displays many forms. To the Egyptians, this Great Goddess was known as Isis and her worship continued into the period of rulership by Imperial Rome. At this point the religion became a mystery cult.
This cult is described in detail in The Golden Ass of Apuleius, which includes the tale Eros and Psyche which describes the psychological development of feminine consciousness. The initiation procedures of this mystery cult involved a voluntary ritual death and revival. The Isis Mysteries were the same as the Eleusian Mysteries in honor of Demeter/Persephone.
They celebrate the immortality of the mother/daughter relationship. Isis embodies all contrasts. Like the moon, she is light and dark, life and death, beginning and end. This Great Mother is the matrix of all manifestation perceivable by man. The whole life of man is governed by the goddess, Mother of all-that-exists. Isis worship even persists in the modern Christian world through the cult of the Virgin Mary. Even though matriarchal consciousness characterizes the spiritual nature of woman, it also exists in men who allow their anima consciousness to manifest. As she is the source of creative inspiration, the hunches of instinct and intuition, and the raw life energy itself, it is an advantage for men to establish a harmony with the moon power.
She counsels meditation, contemplation, waiting and watching, dreaming, and remembering. Matriarchal consciousness focuses around growth and transformation. In this mode understanding has the meaning of a "conception" and the metaphors of pregnancy and birth are common. The knowledge revealed by the goddess is not one of imparted truths but the personal experience of transformation. She encourages participation. When rational over-achieving ego-consciousness has run its course, quite, reflective lunar consciousness emerges to cool the fires of the spirit.
The feminine image holds the keys to experience of the inner planes for both men and women. This is shown in Qabalah by the fact that the two highest paths of the Middle Pillar correspond with the Moon. She rules the transformative mysteries of initiation. As initiatrix, the Goddess progressively educates the emotions of the aspirant. Magickal training of the image-making faculty is the beginning of a new way of using the mind.
One may become self-initiated into the Moon mysteries through careful attention to the stirring of subconscious memories. There is much to learn through psychology concerning the lunar aspects of the soul. However, the magickal working of Yesod brings a personal relationship to the Goddess which manifests far more than one could ever understand through psychology. The imaginal construction of the personified form of the soul enables a linking between your consciousness and the subtle matter of the Great MOTHER's Soul.
The dual nature of the Goddess is shown bu her two characters. Her elementary nature has both a positive (good) and negative (bad)! She is pictured either as all-embracing protectress, or alternately as the devouring Terrible Mother. Her transformative nature also carries good and bad imagery. She not only governs cyclic rebirth and inspiration, but also the mysteries of intoxification, madness, and death. The negative characteristics are symbolized by the Dark Moon, and the positive are symbolized by the bright Full Moon.
The Great Goddess appears in tandem with her Son-Lover. His death and rebirth are symbolic of the cycle of the seed in the ground and the masculine counterpart of divinity. She is soul. He is Spirit. The stages of the Feminine Mysteries remain valid psychological milestones in personal experience even in modern life. The worship of the Great Goddess involved a period of contemplation in her temple, religious prostitution with a man who represented "masculine divinity" in an impersonal ceremony designed so the woman experienced a surrender to her instincts.
This sexual union was considered a sacred marriage, but it was a wedding which resulted in the "death" of her former condition. But, miraculously, she is transformed into the pregnant Moon Mother, filled with the divine Spirit. This magickal child grows slowly in an organic process which had its initiation at the conception of the child. It is a process which takes place in the dark subconscious, far from the eyes of men. With the birth of the virgin-born child, the symbolism switches from that of sexuality to that of maternal solicitude.
This birth is the woman's spiritual rebirth of her hidden potentialities. Because of her dual nature, she does not remain exclusively compassionate, but turns fierce and intolerant when it comes time to sacrifice this child. What is sacrificed is her incestuous identification with him. Any man must touch upon the depths of his own emotional intensity, not continue to require this from his mortal mother. Each facing this emotional intensity is the second stage of initiation to the Goddess, the impersonal aspect of the Feminine.
The period of the Virgin's Pregnancy corresponds with Yesod. In this period she is One-In-Herself. As Virgin, she is represented by the crescent moon. She is a divine power in her own right. With the incorporation into her body of the masculine solar-seed, she embarks on Path 25, Art, which represents the harmonization of lunar and solar components of the psyche. This results in the birth of the magickal child, his divinity revealed, his demise immanent.
Child, King, and Sacrificed God are all symbols of Tiphareth, Sphere of the Resplendent Sun. Moving past Tiphareth on Path 13, The High Priestess, we are again the realm of the Virgin Goddess, but this time she confers the gifts of potential revealed as the Full Moon, knowledge of the unconscious as past and future. Entry into this timeless realm is the experience of immortality, the supreme inspiration of the medial Feminine. Here the priestess of the Moon appears as sibyl, or wise old woman. Moving further through the cycle of woman's ages, the waning crescent moon represents the old crone, full of arcane lore, elusive and sinister. Thus woman's cycle moves through organic biological changes from untouched virgin, to initiated sexually-active Virgin, to Mother, to wise old woman. This trinity was known in ancient Greece Goddess (Virgin, Mother, Hag). This divine being is the symbol of the Feminine Self, core of all being.
http://zero-point.tripod.com/holistic/sphere9.html#Archetypal%20Encounter
9. GENDER REUNION - The Syzygy: Anima/Animus
http://zero-point.tripod.com/holistic/sphere9.html#Archetypal%20Encounter
In the creation myths of many cultures, Primordial Wholeness divides into polarized aspects. The Syzygy indicates this archetypal coupling where one aspect is never separated from the other. In the "impersonal" aspect of lunar experience, the Great Goddess is never separated from her masculine Son-Lover. One implies the other for wholeness. They exemplify the soul-spirit relationship.
On the "personal" level of lunar experience we find the tandem of anima/animus. They are the contrasexual component each human carries within. These soul figures embody our latent capacities for expression and realization of the traits normally reserved for the opposite sex. Thus, the animus leads a woman to the outer world and promotes her ability in focused, rational thinking; the anima guides a man through the inner worlds of relationship. This is the level of psychological "complex" where there is a blending of archetypal realities and individual experience.
Thus, the imagery of anima/us is based in archetypal symbolism and in childhood memories of "significant others" of the opposite sex. This includes parental attitudes and behavior, grandparent's influence, sibling, first love, and cultural expectations and norms. Anima/us determines our conceptualization of the ideal mate, and is responsible for such phenomena as "love at first sight," and "star-crossed lovers." It takes the elements of fate and destiny and combines them in a personal formula. Anima/us represents the balancing of masculine and feminine traits in the individual. This balancing is a form of coniunctio, or sacred marriage, a union which produces the magickal child which is the higher Self.
The animus is the masculine personification of the soul. He carries both a transcendent spiritual aspect and a personal aspect. He is shown in the magickal symbolism of Yesod: a beautiful, naked, muscular man. On the archetypal level anima/us is equivalent to the Taoist Yin-Yang concept, a system which embraces a non-combative play of opposites, a circulation of soul. Anima/us are potential guides to the depths of the unconscious, forming a bridge to daily life. They are factors which transcend consciousness, so in a relationship which seems to have everything going for it, there can be friction (or "animosity") produced by unconscious for ces operating below the surface.
Most of these troubles stem from projecting the anima/us image onto our loved ones and maneuvering them into fulfilling our expectations. Internal conflicts come from the split nature of anima/us we experience in modern life. This revolves mainly around the gulf between the Spiritual and Sensual aspects of the inner figure. A man experiences the split between holy Mother Mary and the erotic goddess of his dreams.
For example, the spiritual animus might be projected onto the figure of a wise old man, a ghostly lover to whom a woman goes in fantasy, or an idealized brother/sister relationship devoid of sexual options. The sensual animus might be imaged by darker gods of impersonal sexuality, phallic or obscene. In any event, the animus represents the woman's need for creative expression. The more fully she can manifest this trait, the better her inner relationship to the animus becomes. He provides her with inner light, not inspiration which is a function of her anima nature, core of her Self. Anima/us excite those feelings of longing, awe, fear of the unknown, and incomprehensibility. The transpersonal power of love can appear as a possession by another, against which rational thought has no protection. Yesod is the experience of this emotional-sexual level and its projections, coupled with the exercise of discrimination between archetypal and personal. Excerpt, Holistic Qabalah, Iona Miller
In the creation myths of many cultures, Primordial Wholeness divides into polarized aspects. The Syzygy indicates this archetypal coupling where one aspect is never separated from the other. In the "impersonal" aspect of lunar experience, the Great Goddess is never separated from her masculine Son-Lover. One implies the other for wholeness. They exemplify the soul-spirit relationship.
On the "personal" level of lunar experience we find the tandem of anima/animus. They are the contrasexual component each human carries within. These soul figures embody our latent capacities for expression and realization of the traits normally reserved for the opposite sex. Thus, the animus leads a woman to the outer world and promotes her ability in focused, rational thinking; the anima guides a man through the inner worlds of relationship. This is the level of psychological "complex" where there is a blending of archetypal realities and individual experience.
Thus, the imagery of anima/us is based in archetypal symbolism and in childhood memories of "significant others" of the opposite sex. This includes parental attitudes and behavior, grandparent's influence, sibling, first love, and cultural expectations and norms. Anima/us determines our conceptualization of the ideal mate, and is responsible for such phenomena as "love at first sight," and "star-crossed lovers." It takes the elements of fate and destiny and combines them in a personal formula. Anima/us represents the balancing of masculine and feminine traits in the individual. This balancing is a form of coniunctio, or sacred marriage, a union which produces the magickal child which is the higher Self.
The animus is the masculine personification of the soul. He carries both a transcendent spiritual aspect and a personal aspect. He is shown in the magickal symbolism of Yesod: a beautiful, naked, muscular man. On the archetypal level anima/us is equivalent to the Taoist Yin-Yang concept, a system which embraces a non-combative play of opposites, a circulation of soul. Anima/us are potential guides to the depths of the unconscious, forming a bridge to daily life. They are factors which transcend consciousness, so in a relationship which seems to have everything going for it, there can be friction (or "animosity") produced by unconscious for ces operating below the surface.
Most of these troubles stem from projecting the anima/us image onto our loved ones and maneuvering them into fulfilling our expectations. Internal conflicts come from the split nature of anima/us we experience in modern life. This revolves mainly around the gulf between the Spiritual and Sensual aspects of the inner figure. A man experiences the split between holy Mother Mary and the erotic goddess of his dreams.
For example, the spiritual animus might be projected onto the figure of a wise old man, a ghostly lover to whom a woman goes in fantasy, or an idealized brother/sister relationship devoid of sexual options. The sensual animus might be imaged by darker gods of impersonal sexuality, phallic or obscene. In any event, the animus represents the woman's need for creative expression. The more fully she can manifest this trait, the better her inner relationship to the animus becomes. He provides her with inner light, not inspiration which is a function of her anima nature, core of her Self. Anima/us excite those feelings of longing, awe, fear of the unknown, and incomprehensibility. The transpersonal power of love can appear as a possession by another, against which rational thought has no protection. Yesod is the experience of this emotional-sexual level and its projections, coupled with the exercise of discrimination between archetypal and personal. Excerpt, Holistic Qabalah, Iona Miller
10. The Real Meaning of "Et In Arcadia Ego" & the Underground Stream
Guercino
By Tracy R. Twyman
Originally written for Dagobert’s Revenge Magazine, (c) 2000
(Does not necessarily represent author’s current viewpoint.)
http://quintessentialpublications.com/twyman/?page_id=30
“Et in Arcadia Ego …” — These words may have first appeared in a painting by Il Guercino (c.1618) of the same name. Throughout the Renaissance, this phrase was used as a sort of code word for “the underground stream,” an invisible college of kindred souls who secretly shared their esoteric knowledge with one another, passing it around Europe via a network of secret societies and mystery schools, often utilizing its arcane symbolism in works of art and literature. Such symbolism shows up, for instance, in the works of Rene d’Anjou, Giordano Bruno, Leonardo da Vinci, Nicholas Poussin, and many others. The authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail (Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln) describe thusly the symbolism of the underground stream:
… the motif of an underground stream seems to have been extremely rich in symbolic and allegorical resonances. Among other things, it would appear to connote the ‘underground’ esoteric tradition of Pythagorean, Gnostic, Cabalistic, and Hermetic thought. But it might also connote something more than a general corpus of teachings, perhaps some very specific factual information — ‘secret’ of some sort transmitted in clandestine fashion from generation to generation. And it might connote an unacknowledged and thus ‘subterranean’ bloodline.
The phrase “Et in Arcadia Ego” is normally translated from the Latin, “And I am in Arcadia,” or “I am even in Arcadia.” The “I” is supposed to be death, and since Arcadia is the Greek conception of Paradise, it is presumed to mean that death is everywhere, even in Paradise. The reason for this is that in the art and literature of the period in which the phrase “Et in Arcadia Ego” was used or referenced in some way, it was almost always associated with a tomb of some sort, and usually with a skull as well. For example, a skull can be found in Guercino’s Et in Arcadia Ego bearing a mysterious hole on its left side. (1) The phrase was inscribed, in code, on the gravestone of Marie de Blanchefort, whose grave at the church at Rennes-le-Chateau Berenger Sauniere is believed to have successfully plundered of some treasure.
Nicholas Poussin, who’s painting The Shepherds of Arcadia is so central to the mystery of Rennes-le-Chateau and, therefore, Dagobert’s Revenge, depicted in that painting a group of shepherds pointing to a tomb that was inscribed with the phrase “Et in Arcadia Ego.” This was believed by Henry Lincoln to depict a tomb that, until recently, still existed in the region of Rennes-le-Chateau. But the authors of The Tomb of God: The Body of Jesus and the Solution to a 2000-Year-Old Mystery (Richard Andrews and Paul Schellenberger) think that the real tomb which Poussin was alluding to is not the one that Henry Lincoln found, but one that they say is buried between the twin peaks of nearby Mt. Cardou, which they believe to be the tomb of the one and only Jesus Christ. Their interpretation of the word “Arcadia” – specifically in the context of that phrase – is reached by breaking the word down phonetically, and then translating, not just the letters, but the sounds from the Latin, thereby arriving at the result, “the tomb of God.” They write:
“It is not too difficult to imagine how Arcadia (arcar-deear – the contemporary pronunciation, not the modern one) could be identified with the sound of Arca Dei (arcar-dayee), thus suggesting an anagram. Arca Dei would mean “˜Ark of God’… This, combined with the quite excessive emphasis of the idea of “˜tomb’… convinces us that were are to interpret “˜ARCA’ as “˜tomb’; this would be another legitimate translation of the word.”
Using similar methods, they translate the entire phrase, “Et in Arcadia Ego” into an anagram which phonetically means, in Latin, “I touch the Tomb of God.” By adding the Latin word “Sum” at the end, which they believe to be implied by the sentence, then creating another anagram, they further render it, “I touch the tomb of God, Jesus.”
By Tracy R. Twyman
Originally written for Dagobert’s Revenge Magazine, (c) 2000
(Does not necessarily represent author’s current viewpoint.)
http://quintessentialpublications.com/twyman/?page_id=30
“Et in Arcadia Ego …” — These words may have first appeared in a painting by Il Guercino (c.1618) of the same name. Throughout the Renaissance, this phrase was used as a sort of code word for “the underground stream,” an invisible college of kindred souls who secretly shared their esoteric knowledge with one another, passing it around Europe via a network of secret societies and mystery schools, often utilizing its arcane symbolism in works of art and literature. Such symbolism shows up, for instance, in the works of Rene d’Anjou, Giordano Bruno, Leonardo da Vinci, Nicholas Poussin, and many others. The authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail (Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln) describe thusly the symbolism of the underground stream:
… the motif of an underground stream seems to have been extremely rich in symbolic and allegorical resonances. Among other things, it would appear to connote the ‘underground’ esoteric tradition of Pythagorean, Gnostic, Cabalistic, and Hermetic thought. But it might also connote something more than a general corpus of teachings, perhaps some very specific factual information — ‘secret’ of some sort transmitted in clandestine fashion from generation to generation. And it might connote an unacknowledged and thus ‘subterranean’ bloodline.
The phrase “Et in Arcadia Ego” is normally translated from the Latin, “And I am in Arcadia,” or “I am even in Arcadia.” The “I” is supposed to be death, and since Arcadia is the Greek conception of Paradise, it is presumed to mean that death is everywhere, even in Paradise. The reason for this is that in the art and literature of the period in which the phrase “Et in Arcadia Ego” was used or referenced in some way, it was almost always associated with a tomb of some sort, and usually with a skull as well. For example, a skull can be found in Guercino’s Et in Arcadia Ego bearing a mysterious hole on its left side. (1) The phrase was inscribed, in code, on the gravestone of Marie de Blanchefort, whose grave at the church at Rennes-le-Chateau Berenger Sauniere is believed to have successfully plundered of some treasure.
Nicholas Poussin, who’s painting The Shepherds of Arcadia is so central to the mystery of Rennes-le-Chateau and, therefore, Dagobert’s Revenge, depicted in that painting a group of shepherds pointing to a tomb that was inscribed with the phrase “Et in Arcadia Ego.” This was believed by Henry Lincoln to depict a tomb that, until recently, still existed in the region of Rennes-le-Chateau. But the authors of The Tomb of God: The Body of Jesus and the Solution to a 2000-Year-Old Mystery (Richard Andrews and Paul Schellenberger) think that the real tomb which Poussin was alluding to is not the one that Henry Lincoln found, but one that they say is buried between the twin peaks of nearby Mt. Cardou, which they believe to be the tomb of the one and only Jesus Christ. Their interpretation of the word “Arcadia” – specifically in the context of that phrase – is reached by breaking the word down phonetically, and then translating, not just the letters, but the sounds from the Latin, thereby arriving at the result, “the tomb of God.” They write:
“It is not too difficult to imagine how Arcadia (arcar-deear – the contemporary pronunciation, not the modern one) could be identified with the sound of Arca Dei (arcar-dayee), thus suggesting an anagram. Arca Dei would mean “˜Ark of God’… This, combined with the quite excessive emphasis of the idea of “˜tomb’… convinces us that were are to interpret “˜ARCA’ as “˜tomb’; this would be another legitimate translation of the word.”
Using similar methods, they translate the entire phrase, “Et in Arcadia Ego” into an anagram which phonetically means, in Latin, “I touch the Tomb of God.” By adding the Latin word “Sum” at the end, which they believe to be implied by the sentence, then creating another anagram, they further render it, “I touch the tomb of God, Jesus.”
Shepherds of Arcadia, Poussin
But is it really the tomb of Jesus, a Jewish priest-king de jure who failed in his bid for the throne, that kings, popes, and other men of renown (most of them religious heretics) have dedicated their lives to, and on occasion, given their lives for? Is this the secret which has been preserved by some of the world’s most elite and powerful secret societies for millennia? The mystery of Rennes-le-Chateau, and for that matter, the roots of Southern France’s esoteric tradition would appear in fact to be much older than 2000 years.
References to Jesus and his presumed wife, Mary Magdalene, are almost always coupled or superimposed over images of another, far more ancient divine couple, known to the Egyptians as Isis and Osiris. Their presence is Rennes-le-Chateau is repeatedly symbolized by the appearances of the pentagram and the hexagram in the landscape of the area, and the decor in Sauniere’s church. The most well-known pentagram is formed quite exactly by the perfect formation of five mountains within the area. The odds of this perfect formation occurring naturally are infinitesimal, and indicate that an intelligent being or group of beings must have been involved.
As author Colin Wilson has pointed out in The Atlantis Blueprint, the uppermost point of the pentagram points directly at where the North Pole was 100,000 years ago. This implies great antiquity for the treasure of Rennes-le-Chateau, dating it back to a period when no human civilization is supposed to have existed, and it is debated whether or not humans existed at all. Certainly there was no historically acknowledged civilization at that time capable of the mathematical formulation necessary to create such a perfect pentagram, or the technology to move five huge mountains into place.
However, there is such a civilization acknowledged in legend, and that is the global kingdom of Atlantis, ruled over directly by the gods – Kronos or Saturn, the horned “fish-man-god” being one of them. In Sumeria, the oldest civilization recognized by historians, Kronos was known as “Enki,” and according to some experts, another name for Enki in Sumeria was “Ia,” the “Lord of the Deep Waters,” the father of the Atlantean dynasty of god-kings. These god-kings have been much talked about in recent Dagobert’s Revenge articles, for I believe this pre-diluvian dynasty to be the real root of the sacred Merovingian bloodline, and therefore, the bloodline of Jesus, the Grail bloodline. Such a decent from the kings of Atlantis is implied in the story of the Quinotaur (a sea-monster, synonymous mythologically with Kronos), who supposedly spawned the Merovingian race.
So this is the true significance of the blood: it comes directly from the god-kings of Atlantis, the beings who, according to legend, created us, then intermarried with us to create a hybrid race of partially human god-kings, passing onto these offspring the secret doctrine of their sacred knowledge. According to those same legends, they were cast down from heaven for this indiscretion, which was against the rules of the divine hierarchy, and were imprisoned in the underworld, in the bowels of the Earth.
Such a tradition is preserved in the Greek story of Kronos (obviously the prototype of the Biblical Satan) being cast down from Heaven and landing in the center of the Earth. This legend even exists in the East, where the “Lord of the Earth” (another title shared by Kronos, Ia, and Satan) is believed to be in a death-like sleep in a magical city in the center of the Earth. There is even scientific evidence that this story is rooted in the historical occurrence of a “falling star,” or meteorite that plunged into the Earth, cracking its crust and disfiguring its face, then buried itself deep within the center of the Earth where it remains as our planet’s inner core. This is, perhaps, the “12th Planet” that Zecharia Sitchin is always referring to. And it must also be the “stone that fell from Heaven,” supposedly chipped from Lucifer’s crown, which according to legend is called “the Grail.”
Recall, then, that the Grail is the treasure said to be buried at Rennes-le-Chateau. Also, rumors persist that Rennes-le-Chateau contains an entrance to the underworld. The event of this falling star may itself be commemorated by a symbol that was used at least as far back as ancient Sumeria, where it was known as the “Ar,” the Plough Sign. That sign is the pentagram, associated with both Satan and the planet Venus, as well as with Rennes-le-Chateau. In fact, the prefix in the word “Quinotaur” – Quin – means the number five in Latin, and some have suggested that the word is in fact a reference to the pentagram at Rennes-le-Chateau – that perhaps each man-made mountain conceals the “head” of some enormous subterranean sea monster which our ancestors considered to be their God, and in fact, their ancestor as well.
The “Ar” sign, in Sumeria, usually just referred to as “the Plough Sign,” actually has two very specific definitions. One explains the translation of “plough,” and it literally means “to cause dirt to go up,” something that would certainly occur during the meteoric impact described above. Yet “Ar” has another meaning in Sumerian – one that is very pertinent to or examination, and that is “to shackle, to imprison,” which is exactly what was done to Kronos when he fell to Earth and was imprisoned in the underworld. Esoteric legend states that Kronos was shackled and bound to the underworld by just such a pentagram. This would seem to indicate that the pentagram at Rennes-le-Chateau acts as a prison or shackle as well, perhaps for Kronos himself.
In this context, it is interesting to examine the prefix “arc” in Latin. In the Latin dictionary, the first word we encounter in the “arc” family is “arca,” which Andrews & Schellenberger have translated as “tomb.” It does indeed mean that, but it also means “A chest box, esp. a money coffer,” and “a cell for close imprisonment”! This is amazing! Not only do we have a reference to a prison and a tomb, as it would have been for Kronos (which explains how we get the word “arcane,” as in buried or concealed, from the Latin “arceo,” meaning “to protect, keep safe,” or “to hinder, prevent”). It is also possible for an “ark” to hold money, something that the treasure at Rennes-le-Chateau is believed to consist of in part.
In fact, it has often been assumed that the treasure at Rennes-le-Chateau is the same treasure that the Templars stole from Solomon’s Stables, said to include gold, jewels, and the most precious of Jewish relics, the Ark of the Covenant. But Solomon’s Stables were also the burial place for Judah’s upper crust, and embalmed corpses are further said to have been part of the treasure of the Templars, especially a head or skull that they worshipped under the name of Baphomet, said to represent a hermaphroditic goat-horned figure from which our modern conception of the Devil comes. Could the “Ark of the Covenant,” or the “Ark of God” also have been, literally, the tomb of God? Jehovah, or Jah is often referred to in the scriptures as literally being inside the Ark.
Perhaps the Ark contained the remains of someone that they believed to be their god. But the traditionally accepted contents of the Ark, the Tablets of Moses, have long been regarded in esoteric circles as having been made from some radioactive substance, like a meteorite. Likewise the Tablets inside the ark have long been speculated to have actually been the Emerald Tablets of Hermes, which bear instructions on how to create the Philosopher’s Stone, or the Holy Grail. And the Ark of the Covenant has long been associated with the Holy Grail also. Could they then have been the remains of this meteorite, which plunged to Earth as a meteorite and was buried in the underworld, later becoming known to occultists as the Grail? And could this meteoric fall have been the inspiration for the legend of Saturn or Kronos, the Atlantean priest-king from which the Grail bloodline sprung, whose life-story included a similar meteoric fall from heavenly grace?
Interestingly the word Jah (the name of the Jewish god inside the Ark of the Covenant) comes from the name Ia, the Lord of the Earth and Lord of the Deep Waters in Sumeria on which the Hebrew god Jehovah’s character is partially based. (2) The symbols of the god-king’s tomb and throne would appear to be related to certain depictions of Jehovah. As I have already mentioned, Ia is believed by many experts to be the same as Enki, Saturn or Kronos, and therefore, the Quinotaur, as well as, ironically, Satan. Enki, as a king of Atlantis, was often referred to under the title that all Atlantean world-monarchs were given. That title was “Kad,” depicted by a hieroglyph of an uplifted hand with the fingers erect. This title was also used by the kings of Sumeria, Egypt and Phoenicia, and it meant literally, “be strong, protect, save,” which is noteworthy, considering that the word “arceo” has a similar meaning in Latin. Titularly, this term, when applied to a monarch, meant “King of the Four Corners of the Earth.” (3) Ia was sometimes pronounced “A-ha,” and written as a pair of hieroglyphs featuring a squiggly line and an upstanding fish. Obviously, just from looking at it, one can tell that this symbol is the basis for the “Ichthys” fish sign that is now used to symbolize Christ.
Knowing what we now know, it becomes possible to write out the word “Arcadia” in cuneiform, or Sumerian hieroglyphs, and to interpret its meaning there from. There are three possible ways of writing out the symbol for “kad,” and therefore different ways to write (and interpret) the phrase. (See the chart below.) “Arcadia” could mean, for instance, “prison of the Lord of the Earth, Ia,” or “tomb of King Ia.” The phrase “Et in Arcadia Ego” could then be rendered as a combination of Latin and, oddly, Sumerian, and read as: “I am the Tomb of King Ia.” Also, bearing in mind that “arceo” means “to protect, save, or conceal” in Latin, and “kad” means the same thing in Sumerian, it could also be read, “I conceal (or protect) the tomb of Ia.” This is remarkable, considering the famous anagram of “Et in Arcadia Ego’ that was suggested in Holy Blood, Holy Grail: “I Tego Arcana Dei,” which means: “Begone, I conceal the secrets of God.” That god, it would seem, was Ia, or Kronos, the Atlantean king and “Lord of the Earth” – progenitor, perhaps, of a human line of kings from which the Merovingians, and Jesus Christ as well, believed themselves to come from.
References to Jesus and his presumed wife, Mary Magdalene, are almost always coupled or superimposed over images of another, far more ancient divine couple, known to the Egyptians as Isis and Osiris. Their presence is Rennes-le-Chateau is repeatedly symbolized by the appearances of the pentagram and the hexagram in the landscape of the area, and the decor in Sauniere’s church. The most well-known pentagram is formed quite exactly by the perfect formation of five mountains within the area. The odds of this perfect formation occurring naturally are infinitesimal, and indicate that an intelligent being or group of beings must have been involved.
As author Colin Wilson has pointed out in The Atlantis Blueprint, the uppermost point of the pentagram points directly at where the North Pole was 100,000 years ago. This implies great antiquity for the treasure of Rennes-le-Chateau, dating it back to a period when no human civilization is supposed to have existed, and it is debated whether or not humans existed at all. Certainly there was no historically acknowledged civilization at that time capable of the mathematical formulation necessary to create such a perfect pentagram, or the technology to move five huge mountains into place.
However, there is such a civilization acknowledged in legend, and that is the global kingdom of Atlantis, ruled over directly by the gods – Kronos or Saturn, the horned “fish-man-god” being one of them. In Sumeria, the oldest civilization recognized by historians, Kronos was known as “Enki,” and according to some experts, another name for Enki in Sumeria was “Ia,” the “Lord of the Deep Waters,” the father of the Atlantean dynasty of god-kings. These god-kings have been much talked about in recent Dagobert’s Revenge articles, for I believe this pre-diluvian dynasty to be the real root of the sacred Merovingian bloodline, and therefore, the bloodline of Jesus, the Grail bloodline. Such a decent from the kings of Atlantis is implied in the story of the Quinotaur (a sea-monster, synonymous mythologically with Kronos), who supposedly spawned the Merovingian race.
So this is the true significance of the blood: it comes directly from the god-kings of Atlantis, the beings who, according to legend, created us, then intermarried with us to create a hybrid race of partially human god-kings, passing onto these offspring the secret doctrine of their sacred knowledge. According to those same legends, they were cast down from heaven for this indiscretion, which was against the rules of the divine hierarchy, and were imprisoned in the underworld, in the bowels of the Earth.
Such a tradition is preserved in the Greek story of Kronos (obviously the prototype of the Biblical Satan) being cast down from Heaven and landing in the center of the Earth. This legend even exists in the East, where the “Lord of the Earth” (another title shared by Kronos, Ia, and Satan) is believed to be in a death-like sleep in a magical city in the center of the Earth. There is even scientific evidence that this story is rooted in the historical occurrence of a “falling star,” or meteorite that plunged into the Earth, cracking its crust and disfiguring its face, then buried itself deep within the center of the Earth where it remains as our planet’s inner core. This is, perhaps, the “12th Planet” that Zecharia Sitchin is always referring to. And it must also be the “stone that fell from Heaven,” supposedly chipped from Lucifer’s crown, which according to legend is called “the Grail.”
Recall, then, that the Grail is the treasure said to be buried at Rennes-le-Chateau. Also, rumors persist that Rennes-le-Chateau contains an entrance to the underworld. The event of this falling star may itself be commemorated by a symbol that was used at least as far back as ancient Sumeria, where it was known as the “Ar,” the Plough Sign. That sign is the pentagram, associated with both Satan and the planet Venus, as well as with Rennes-le-Chateau. In fact, the prefix in the word “Quinotaur” – Quin – means the number five in Latin, and some have suggested that the word is in fact a reference to the pentagram at Rennes-le-Chateau – that perhaps each man-made mountain conceals the “head” of some enormous subterranean sea monster which our ancestors considered to be their God, and in fact, their ancestor as well.
The “Ar” sign, in Sumeria, usually just referred to as “the Plough Sign,” actually has two very specific definitions. One explains the translation of “plough,” and it literally means “to cause dirt to go up,” something that would certainly occur during the meteoric impact described above. Yet “Ar” has another meaning in Sumerian – one that is very pertinent to or examination, and that is “to shackle, to imprison,” which is exactly what was done to Kronos when he fell to Earth and was imprisoned in the underworld. Esoteric legend states that Kronos was shackled and bound to the underworld by just such a pentagram. This would seem to indicate that the pentagram at Rennes-le-Chateau acts as a prison or shackle as well, perhaps for Kronos himself.
In this context, it is interesting to examine the prefix “arc” in Latin. In the Latin dictionary, the first word we encounter in the “arc” family is “arca,” which Andrews & Schellenberger have translated as “tomb.” It does indeed mean that, but it also means “A chest box, esp. a money coffer,” and “a cell for close imprisonment”! This is amazing! Not only do we have a reference to a prison and a tomb, as it would have been for Kronos (which explains how we get the word “arcane,” as in buried or concealed, from the Latin “arceo,” meaning “to protect, keep safe,” or “to hinder, prevent”). It is also possible for an “ark” to hold money, something that the treasure at Rennes-le-Chateau is believed to consist of in part.
In fact, it has often been assumed that the treasure at Rennes-le-Chateau is the same treasure that the Templars stole from Solomon’s Stables, said to include gold, jewels, and the most precious of Jewish relics, the Ark of the Covenant. But Solomon’s Stables were also the burial place for Judah’s upper crust, and embalmed corpses are further said to have been part of the treasure of the Templars, especially a head or skull that they worshipped under the name of Baphomet, said to represent a hermaphroditic goat-horned figure from which our modern conception of the Devil comes. Could the “Ark of the Covenant,” or the “Ark of God” also have been, literally, the tomb of God? Jehovah, or Jah is often referred to in the scriptures as literally being inside the Ark.
Perhaps the Ark contained the remains of someone that they believed to be their god. But the traditionally accepted contents of the Ark, the Tablets of Moses, have long been regarded in esoteric circles as having been made from some radioactive substance, like a meteorite. Likewise the Tablets inside the ark have long been speculated to have actually been the Emerald Tablets of Hermes, which bear instructions on how to create the Philosopher’s Stone, or the Holy Grail. And the Ark of the Covenant has long been associated with the Holy Grail also. Could they then have been the remains of this meteorite, which plunged to Earth as a meteorite and was buried in the underworld, later becoming known to occultists as the Grail? And could this meteoric fall have been the inspiration for the legend of Saturn or Kronos, the Atlantean priest-king from which the Grail bloodline sprung, whose life-story included a similar meteoric fall from heavenly grace?
Interestingly the word Jah (the name of the Jewish god inside the Ark of the Covenant) comes from the name Ia, the Lord of the Earth and Lord of the Deep Waters in Sumeria on which the Hebrew god Jehovah’s character is partially based. (2) The symbols of the god-king’s tomb and throne would appear to be related to certain depictions of Jehovah. As I have already mentioned, Ia is believed by many experts to be the same as Enki, Saturn or Kronos, and therefore, the Quinotaur, as well as, ironically, Satan. Enki, as a king of Atlantis, was often referred to under the title that all Atlantean world-monarchs were given. That title was “Kad,” depicted by a hieroglyph of an uplifted hand with the fingers erect. This title was also used by the kings of Sumeria, Egypt and Phoenicia, and it meant literally, “be strong, protect, save,” which is noteworthy, considering that the word “arceo” has a similar meaning in Latin. Titularly, this term, when applied to a monarch, meant “King of the Four Corners of the Earth.” (3) Ia was sometimes pronounced “A-ha,” and written as a pair of hieroglyphs featuring a squiggly line and an upstanding fish. Obviously, just from looking at it, one can tell that this symbol is the basis for the “Ichthys” fish sign that is now used to symbolize Christ.
Knowing what we now know, it becomes possible to write out the word “Arcadia” in cuneiform, or Sumerian hieroglyphs, and to interpret its meaning there from. There are three possible ways of writing out the symbol for “kad,” and therefore different ways to write (and interpret) the phrase. (See the chart below.) “Arcadia” could mean, for instance, “prison of the Lord of the Earth, Ia,” or “tomb of King Ia.” The phrase “Et in Arcadia Ego” could then be rendered as a combination of Latin and, oddly, Sumerian, and read as: “I am the Tomb of King Ia.” Also, bearing in mind that “arceo” means “to protect, save, or conceal” in Latin, and “kad” means the same thing in Sumerian, it could also be read, “I conceal (or protect) the tomb of Ia.” This is remarkable, considering the famous anagram of “Et in Arcadia Ego’ that was suggested in Holy Blood, Holy Grail: “I Tego Arcana Dei,” which means: “Begone, I conceal the secrets of God.” That god, it would seem, was Ia, or Kronos, the Atlantean king and “Lord of the Earth” – progenitor, perhaps, of a human line of kings from which the Merovingians, and Jesus Christ as well, believed themselves to come from.
Alternate spellings of Arkadia in old Sumerian hieroglyphs
The word “Ia” consists of the letters “I” and “A”. The letter “I,” phonetically, is the same as the word “eye,” and therefore, in occult parlance, implies the same. The letter “A,” as I pointed out in the very first issue of Dagobert’s Revenge in 1996, suggests the shape of the Great Pyramid with its missing capstone returned, and on the dollar bill, this pyramid is shown with an eye inside the capstone.
This is the “All-Seeing Eye,” associated in the occult underworld with the god of light, Lucifer, (a.k.a. Satan, Kronos), and the Grail stone. The shape of the letter “A” can also be found within the shape of the pentagram, if two lines and two half-lines are removed. Recall also that one of the Sumerian symbols for “Kad” was an “A” turned on its side, a rough-looking “A” much in the likeness of the familiar “Anarchy” symbol. (4) The letter “A,” used as a coded reference to both the Great Pyramid and the pentagram, was found in the Sauniere parchments at Rennes-le-Chateau by the authors of The Tomb of God<, Andrews & Schellenberger.
For instance, at the bottom of the Parchment One, in between the upside-down letters that spell "SION," we see a weird squiggly arrow pointing to a lone, out of place and upside-down "A," seemingly for no reason. I have also found another conspicuous occurrence of the letter "A": on the tombstone of Marie de Blanchefort, where the words "Et in Arcadia Ego" are etched in code. There, the syllables "Arca" and "Dia" (in a mix of Greek and Latin letters) are separated on either side. Look at the illustration. In both instances, the letters are bunched together in the shape of a pyramid, each of which includes a Templar cross, and each of which contains the letter "A" at the top of the pyramid. Surely, some sort of statement is being made here. And in the pyramid on the right, the bottom row of letters is formed by an "I," a Templar cross, and a delta triangle. If we take the triangle as a code for the letter "A," and the Templar cross as a plus sign, then it would be "I" + "A" - in other words, "King Ia." In fact, on the entire gravestone there are five As, in addition to the "delta" triangle. Perhaps, underneath the five mountains that form the pentagram at Rennes-le-Chateau, we shall one day discover five artificially constructed pyramids acting as tombstones for the ancient deified king.
This is the “All-Seeing Eye,” associated in the occult underworld with the god of light, Lucifer, (a.k.a. Satan, Kronos), and the Grail stone. The shape of the letter “A” can also be found within the shape of the pentagram, if two lines and two half-lines are removed. Recall also that one of the Sumerian symbols for “Kad” was an “A” turned on its side, a rough-looking “A” much in the likeness of the familiar “Anarchy” symbol. (4) The letter “A,” used as a coded reference to both the Great Pyramid and the pentagram, was found in the Sauniere parchments at Rennes-le-Chateau by the authors of The Tomb of God<, Andrews & Schellenberger.
For instance, at the bottom of the Parchment One, in between the upside-down letters that spell "SION," we see a weird squiggly arrow pointing to a lone, out of place and upside-down "A," seemingly for no reason. I have also found another conspicuous occurrence of the letter "A": on the tombstone of Marie de Blanchefort, where the words "Et in Arcadia Ego" are etched in code. There, the syllables "Arca" and "Dia" (in a mix of Greek and Latin letters) are separated on either side. Look at the illustration. In both instances, the letters are bunched together in the shape of a pyramid, each of which includes a Templar cross, and each of which contains the letter "A" at the top of the pyramid. Surely, some sort of statement is being made here. And in the pyramid on the right, the bottom row of letters is formed by an "I," a Templar cross, and a delta triangle. If we take the triangle as a code for the letter "A," and the Templar cross as a plus sign, then it would be "I" + "A" - in other words, "King Ia." In fact, on the entire gravestone there are five As, in addition to the "delta" triangle. Perhaps, underneath the five mountains that form the pentagram at Rennes-le-Chateau, we shall one day discover five artificially constructed pyramids acting as tombstones for the ancient deified king.
Let us now re-evaluate the painting of Mary Magdalene that Berenger Sauniere himself created and placed on the altar of his church. That Sauniere would show Magdalene inside of a cave, next to a skull, kneeling in front of a cross that seems to be growing out of the ground like a tree indicates that the painting does indeed represent a tomb, perhaps the tomb of Christ, and perhaps Magdalene is there mourning for her companion. Then again, perhaps it indicates that she is buried there with him as well.
But maybe Jesus and Mary Magdalene are also being used as symbols to represent another, more ancient divine couple, Kronos and his consort. Let us not forget that Kronos was, according to some, also called “Atargatis,” except that Atargatis was a female sea-monster, thought to be synonymous with Kronos as well. Could we be dealing with a god that was perceived as both male and female, like the Baphomet which the Templars worshipped? The Grail, which is what the treasure of Rennes-le-Chateau is supposed to be, is associated with alchemy, and in the alchemical process, the achievement of the Grail, or the Philosopher’s Stone, is symbolized by the Hermaphrodite – the combination of male and female qualities in perfect harmonious balance.
But maybe Jesus and Mary Magdalene are also being used as symbols to represent another, more ancient divine couple, Kronos and his consort. Let us not forget that Kronos was, according to some, also called “Atargatis,” except that Atargatis was a female sea-monster, thought to be synonymous with Kronos as well. Could we be dealing with a god that was perceived as both male and female, like the Baphomet which the Templars worshipped? The Grail, which is what the treasure of Rennes-le-Chateau is supposed to be, is associated with alchemy, and in the alchemical process, the achievement of the Grail, or the Philosopher’s Stone, is symbolized by the Hermaphrodite – the combination of male and female qualities in perfect harmonious balance.
The Hermaphrodite was, of course, in Greek mythology, a combination of Hermes (a.k.a. Mercury) and Aphrodite (a.k.a. Venus.) Hermes was the trickster god who led folks along the alchemical path to enlightenment, and the souls of the dead to the underworld. He is the god of buried treasure, which is why St. Anthony the Hermit, who represents him, is the patron saint of the same. The Tablet of Hermes, believed to be the source of all alchemical knowledge, is said to have been found in Hermes’ tomb. Where was Hermes born? In a cave inside Mt. Cyllene in Arcadia. Guess where Hermes spent all of his childhood? In Arcadia. This is where the reverence for Hermes began.
Endnotes:
(1) This hole may be a cryptic reference to the strange rite of trepanation – drilling a hole in the skull of a dead person to let the soul escape – something that was practiced by our pagan forebears as well as the Knight’s Templar. Even the famous skull of Merovingian King Dagobert II bears the mark of trepanation.
(2) King Ia, “Lord of the Deep Waters,” was often depicted with water flowing from his throne. If this throne is now located in the center of the Earth, in the underworld, as legend tells us, then it is therefore also the source of an “underground stream.” Rene d’Anjou, in his illustrated book, Les Coeur d’Amours Espris (The Book of the Heart Possessed by Love), depicted the fountain of the underground stream actually flowing from what looks like a tombstone, and ironically, it flows out of a face on the side of the stone that is shaped like a black sun.
Endnotes:
(1) This hole may be a cryptic reference to the strange rite of trepanation – drilling a hole in the skull of a dead person to let the soul escape – something that was practiced by our pagan forebears as well as the Knight’s Templar. Even the famous skull of Merovingian King Dagobert II bears the mark of trepanation.
(2) King Ia, “Lord of the Deep Waters,” was often depicted with water flowing from his throne. If this throne is now located in the center of the Earth, in the underworld, as legend tells us, then it is therefore also the source of an “underground stream.” Rene d’Anjou, in his illustrated book, Les Coeur d’Amours Espris (The Book of the Heart Possessed by Love), depicted the fountain of the underground stream actually flowing from what looks like a tombstone, and ironically, it flows out of a face on the side of the stone that is shaped like a black sun.
(3) The word “Arche,” in Greek, means “originator.”
(4) The other symbol for Kad (or “Khat”), the double-barred cross, is identical to another symbol, the Cross of Lorraine, which was used by Rene d’Anjou and other members of the Priory of Sion to symbolize the Grail and the secret doctrine of the occult. It symbolizes the union of good and evil, one of the innermost secrets of the occult, and the Grail.
(5) Note that “Mer” syllable, meaning “water.” It is also worth mentioning that Hermes was famous for his “Caduceus.”
(4) The other symbol for Kad (or “Khat”), the double-barred cross, is identical to another symbol, the Cross of Lorraine, which was used by Rene d’Anjou and other members of the Priory of Sion to symbolize the Grail and the secret doctrine of the occult. It symbolizes the union of good and evil, one of the innermost secrets of the occult, and the Grail.
(5) Note that “Mer” syllable, meaning “water.” It is also worth mentioning that Hermes was famous for his “Caduceus.”
The Cross of Lorraine from the Angevin arms
11. Women's Mysteries
Goddess of the Moon; Ephesus
Queen and Huntress, chaste and fair,
Now the sun is laid to sleep,
Seated in thy silver chair
State in wonted manner keep:
Hesperus entreats thy light,
Goddess excellently bright.
Earth, let not thy envious shade
Dare itself to interpose;
Cynthia's shining orb was made
Heaven to clear when day did close:
Bless us then with wished sight,
Goddess excellently bright.
Lay thy bow of pearl apart,
And thy crystal-shining quiver;
Give unto the flying hart
Space to breathe, how short soever:
Thou that mak'st a day of night,
Goddess excellently bright.
--Jonson's Hymn to Cynthia (Diana) from Cynthia's Revels
Artemis is a form of the Great Mother, and has archaic characteristics. She was worshipped throughout the Mediterranean. Her name is Oriental in origin (Artimis). In Crete she was worshipped as Britomartis. Her other important cult sites included Arcadia and Ephesus. The Greek cult in Arcadia considered her a Kore, like Persephone, and she was even called a daughter of Demeter.
Her major cult site was in Asia Minor at Ephesus where she was worshipped as the fecund, many-breasted goddess. In this area, she was associated with the date palm. This symbolism is retained today in certain Tarot decks, where the High Priestess card, which corresponds with Artemis contains this tree. Even the advent of Christianity could not snuff out the old pagan cult. The cult of the Virgin Mary began in Ephesus and adapted much of the symbolism of the antique Artemis. Later, in Rome, she was known as Diana or Cynthia. Paradoxically, Artemis ruled over wild animals, childbirth and the young. She protected the young, including humans because she had originally been their mother. However, the chief attribute of Artemis is that she is Virgin and Mother, simultaneously. This attribute was especially prominent in Asia where the Olympian religion impressed on Greece through the Homeric Hymns was less effective in suppressing the ancient form of worship. Wherever she was worshipped, under any name, she is the All-Mother. In the earliest Greek religion, Artemis was an earth-goddess.
She may even have been parthenos, the Greek word which is usually translated "virgin". This could happen in more than one way. In the first place, there is some evidence that the word did not always nor of necessity have that meaning. It might mean no more than unmarried, not tied by any bonds to a male who must be acknowledged as master. There were priestesses as well as deities in pre-Greek and Oriental cults who lived like that, but without preserving their virginity. Indeed, to sacrifice her virginity might be part of a priestess's service, but she did not sacrifice her freedom to a male nor become his property, as marriage in early times would imply . . . It was quite commonly believed that virginity could be renewed periodically by a process of lustration . . . Later, as the more Hellenic notion of strict virginity prevailed, the attendant remained, but like Hippolytus, was vowed to chastity as was the goddess herself . . .At Ephesus her cult was carried on right through classical times in the old way. (10)
The Greeks adapted her paradoxical nature of dignity and abandon, uniting her character with their virgin huntress, who was also a goddess of nature and wild beasts. They could not ignore nor abolish the worship of the Great Mother with its matrilineal customs. Her cult was by far too powerful and deeply rooted in the Mediteranean psyche. If her agricultural rites, sexual emblems, and fertility aspects shocked them, they nevertheless felt it necessary to amalgamate this goddess into their pantheon. Whether chaste, or a goddess of fertility, Artemis is always Virgin, or one-in-herself. Obeisance to Artemis continues within the Catholic church under the auspices of the Virgin Mary. The feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary on the fifteenth of August is derived from the great festival to Hecate the moon goddess of Greece, and that of Diana, her descendant in Rome. Even the prayers for the preservation of the harvest from destruction by early rains are continued. Another major characteristic of Artemis is the cyclic lunar rhythm.
Rhythms such as chanting, dancing, or drum beats facilitates passage from one plane to the next. It creates an altered state of consciousness. Dances in honor of Artemis were orgiastic in character. Eliade cites the proverb: "Where has not Artemis danced?" as meaning that her cult was so wide spread there were honorary dances for her everywhere. Her connections with survivability are shown in her function as midwife. It is even legendary that Artemis was delivered from Leto first, and then helped her mother in the delivery of her twin, Apollo. Artemis is "the force that sustains our attraction to the primitive and the unknown.
She can teach us how to make contact with the unconscious and survive. Artemis is energy: death-bringing energy, psychic energy, abundant energy, excess energy." (11) Artemis is adventurous and represents the tendency for striking out on one's own. Sometimes this occurs in mid-life, when one seeks retreat from the city, home, and family in solitude. Artemis represents the continual renewal of "daughter-mother-grandmother." As Artemis-Hekate, she oversees magic. Artemis-Hekate and Apollo share a capacity for coming powerfully from afar. When invoked, they appear in their characteristic manner for their epiphany. An example of lunar magickal procedure is given in Aleister Crowley's excellent occult novel, Moonchild.
The magician Cyril has found a willing assistant in his efforts from a woman named Lisa. Her horoscope contains a powerful lunar influence, as his is mostly solar. A sister of the magickal order aids them both. She is a priestess of Artemis for some twenty years, and for ten of those has spoken to no man. Lisa takes her oath of dedication, and is admonished to be strong in her will and abolish unsuitable thoughts which would disturb the gestation of the moonchild. Her virginity is then renewed through a rite of lustration and the rituals begin.
He had set up a small triangular altar of silver; and it was upon this that Sister C. and her disciples came thrice nightly to make their incantations. The ritual of the moon might never be celebrated during daylight . . .Upon the evening of Monday, after the adoration of the setting sun, Lisa was led to the garden. There the hand-maidens unclothed her, and washed her from head to foot in the waters of the sacred spring. Then she put upon her a solemn oath that she would follow out the rules of the ritual, not speaking to any man except her chosen, not leaving the protection of the circle, not communicating with the outer and uninitiated world; but, on the other hand, devoting herself wholly to the invocation of the Moon. Then she clothed her in a specially prepared and consecrated garment; it was a loose vestment of pale blue covered with silver tissue; and the secret sigils of the moon were woven cunningly upon its hem. It was frail but of great volume; and the effect was that the wearer seemed to be wrapped in a mist of moonlight. What was the incantation like? We may well imagine it was one of fervor and madness of things chaste, remote, and inscrutable. "With the speed of a huntress the shape neared her, hid the moon from her, and she perceived the buskined Artemis, silver-sandaled, with her bright bow and quiver of light. Leaping behind her...
Artemis was worshipped as Luna in Heaven, and invoked in Tartarus as Hecate. She avoided the society of men, and retired to the woods accompanied by her nymphs. She was armed with her bow of light and carried a torch kindled by the lightening of Zeus, so she could pursue the swift stag. The high mountains were said to tremble at the twang of her bow, and the forests resounded with the panting of the wounded deer. After the chase, Artemis would hasten to Delphi, residence of her brother Apollo, where she would hang her bow and quiver upon his altar, and begin to dance. What does Artemis mean to a modern woman, and what are her psychological values which persist throughout time?
The chief characteristic of the goddess in her crescent phase is that she is virgin. Her instinct is not used to capture or possess the man whom she attracts. She does not reserve herself for the chosen man who must repay her by his devotion, nor is her instinct used to gain for herself the security of husband, home, and family. . .She is essentially one-in-herself. In the image of the Mother Goddess--ancient and powerful--women of olden times found the reflection of their own deepest feminine nature...Today, the goddess is no longer worshipped...But the law or power of which she was but the personification is unabated in its strength and life-giving potency. It is we who have changed. We have given our allegiance too exclusively to masculine forces.
Today, however, through a religious cult, not even with a conscious knowledge of what they are doing, but through a change in psychological attitude. For that principle, which in ancient and more naive days was projected into the form of a goddess, is no longer seen in the guise of a religious tenet but is now sensed as a psychological force arising from the unconscious, having, as had the Magna Dea of old, power to mold the destinies of mankind. (12) (4).
THE ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES (Demeter/Persephone, Isis, and Psyche)
The establishment of the Eleusinian Mysteries is related in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. After the abduction of her daughter Persephone, the mourning Demeter traveled to Eleusis (near Athens), and took refuge by the Well of the Maidens. She demanded that the local inhabitants build her a sanctuary there. After she was reunited with her daughter, she revealed her rites, and began teaching her Mysteries, including the cultivation of wheat. The early history of the cult reports two types of initiations. One was concerned with the reunion of the goddesses; the other concerned the possibility of man's immortalization.
The Great Goddess has always been considered able to grant immortality to humans, but early initiates to the Eleusinian Mysteries were not granted immortality, but experienced revelations which assured the soul a blissful existence after death. Eliade recounts how the symbolic death of Persephone had great consequences for mankind: "As the result of it, an Olympian and benevolent goddess temporarily inhabited the kingdom of the dead. She had annulled the unbridgeable distance between Hades and Olympus.
Mediatrix between the two divine worlds, she could thereafter intervene in the destiny of mortals." (13) Archaeologists established the colonization of Eleusis occurred in the fifteenth century. The Mysteries were celebrated for nearly 2,000 years. Because of social and cultural changes during this period, the Mysteries altered over time. The Lesser Mysteries were celebrated in the spring, and formed a preliminary probation period for the Greater Mysteries conducted in the Autumn (Sept.-Oct.). Initiation was open to both men and women, providing they spoke Greek, had killed no fellow man, and had passed through the Lesser Mysteries. The rites involved processions, sacrifices, dances, and songs.
There were also secret rites in the Greater Mysteries, which remain shrouded in darkness to this day. The revelations must have been profound, for no initiate ever revealed them. A third stage of initiation was open to those who had been initiates for a year. It culminated in a supreme vision, the nature of which we may only guess. Attempts at reconstructing the rites have been made, but only fragments are available. Included were ritual fasting and imbibing of the sacred drink, or kykeon. What is known is that, after a sacramental meal (which could represent a sacred marriage like communion), the final vision took place in a dazzling light, and included an invocation of Kore.
The Eleusinian Mysteries opened a new religious dimension for the Mediterranean world. Through them, the initiate perceived a continuity between life and death. It opened speculations concerning the underworld which were suppressed by the predominant Olympian religion. Demeter/Persephone became the most popular of Greek goddesses during this period, and initiation into her cult, guaranteed a sort of "adoption" by her. A major characteristic of the cult which became paradigmatic for most other Mystery cults was the strict emphasis on silence and secrecy. Thereafter, it became stylish for Masters to reveal their secrets only to their initiates.
The Egyptian Mysteries of Isis and Osiris: In the 3rd Century B.C. Ptolemy Soter sought to consolidate his rule through the acceptance of a supreme divinity by both Egyptians and Greeks. He exalted Sarapis (a derivative of Osiris) and Isis. Herodotus assimilated these gods into the Greek Mysteries, where Isis was identified with the Great Mother, Demeter, and Osiris was the initiated individual who attained "salvation."
For the Greeks, Osiris was also identified with Dionysus, who was also killed, dismembered, then resurrected. Qabalistically, a Great Goddess like Isis has many attributes which have various correspondences, depending on the level of involvement. Aleister Crowley has determined several of these: ...a goddess like Isis might be given to Zero as conterminous with Nature, to 3 as Mother, to 4 as Venus, to 6 as Harmony, to 7 as Love, to 9 as the Moon, to 10 as Virgin, to 13 again as the Moon, to 14 as Venus, to 15 as connected with the letter He, to 16 as the Sacred Cow, to 18 as the Goddess of Water, to 24 as Draco, to 28 as Giver of Rain, to 29 as the Moon, and to 32 as Lady of the Mysteries (Saturn, Binah). (14)
In the Hellenistic period, the Mysteries of Isis provided a ritual rebirth as its central purpose. The object was for the initiate to become Osiris, raised from the dead by the magical power of the goddess Isis. Accounts of these mysteries are found in both Plutarch's Isis and Osiris, and The Golden Ass of Apuleius. After fasting and meditation, the mystes took part in a mystery drama where he personified Set, or Typhon in the form of a red ass. He was tormented, and his lust and desirousness transformed through fully experiencing his instinctual nature. The deep religious intensity of the aspirant produces transformation and the identification with the dead Osiris. He journeys to Hades and sees the midnight Sun shining brightly, as well as the pantheon of Gods celestial and infernal. After this ritual death, he is raised by the power of Isis. Plutarch also identified Isis with Athena, in that the ever-changing veil of nature includes both growth and decay.
The Isis of Hellenistic times, as Nature and the Moon, was creator, mother, nurse, and destroyer, just like Demeter. She also embodied Wisdom, or Sophia; Osiris was Knowledge, Reason, and Logos. Through acceptance by Isis, the initiate caught in the instinctual level of passion and lust, is raised to a spiritual life. The initiate believed the goddess Isis could prolong life beyond the term fixed by Destiny, or fate. But this process involved a metamorphosis by undergoing a voluntary, ritual death in order to obtain one's spiritual birthday. Like the Eleusinian Mysteries, the first great public festival of Isis took place in Spring, when the Mediterranean navigation season opened. The second, the lamentation for and reanimation of Osiris took place October 29 to November 1.
The seeker Apuleius recounts his initiation, after abstaining from meat and wine for ten days: Thou wouldst peradventure demand, thou studious reader, what was said and done there: verily I would tell thee if it were lawful for me to tell: thou wouldst know if it were convenient for thee to hear . . . Howbeit I will not long torment thy mind, which peradventure is somewhat religious and given to some devotion; listen therefore and believe it to be true. Thou shalt understand that I approached near unto Hell, even to the gates of Proserpine, and after that I was ravished throughout all the elements, I returned to my proper place: about midnight I saw the sun brightly shine, I saw likewise the gods celestial and infernal, before whom I presented myself and worshipped them. (15)
In the Egyptian Mysteries of antiquity, the Pharaoh was identified with Osiris after his death. But, through these Hellenistic initiations, the living individual became "Divinized," through the powers of the Goddess. Isis and Osiris are exalted to the rank of universal divinities of the highest plane, covering psychic space from the underworld to ascent to celestial heights. This Hellenistic interpretation of the old Egyptian cults reflects a "monotheistic" universalism typical of other suffering gods, including Dionysus and Orpheus.
This Hellenistic mystery theology expresses the deepest Egyptian religious genius. In recounting the tale of his experiences as an initiate, Apuleius inserts the tale of Psyche and Eros into his personal story. An evaluation of the meaning of this tale in the development of his relationship to his anima brings out the psychological value of these initiatory sequences. In the tale, Eros represents the reproductive passion, which is transformed through its relationship with Psyche. Psyche is an incarnated form of Eros' mother, Venus. Since she is mortal, she represents that part of Eros' anima which is closer to consciousness. Venus was jealous of Psyche because mortals began worshipping her beauty, preferring her to an abstract Olympian goddess. In Amor und Psyche, the author Merkelbach points up an identification between Psyche and Isis, and Venus and Isis.
One might think that the goddess, then, fights against herself. In a sense, she does. She protests because of the narrowing of her potential in a mortal form. Therefore, if Psyche is Venus in diminutive form, Eros actually takes part in a sacred marriage with his mother-daughter-sister. This repeats the old Egyptian formula. Psyche is a form of Kore, the mother goddess in rejuvenated, human form. Therefore, the Eros and Psyche tale is a variation of the Demeter-Kore myth. For the female initiate, this myth represents the deepest experience of the female mysteries of the Self.
For the male initiate, it means a progressive integration of the anima which then leads to an experience of the Self. While he is still mother-complexed, all the forms of the goddess are compounded in the figure of the Great Mother, and he is her eternal lover. Venus is a synthetic term for feminine Deity, and includes aspects of Hestia, Demeter, Cybele, Isis, etc. The symbols overlap. This is because the life of woman is divisible into three primary forms: 1) Virginity, 2) Wife and Mother, and 3) Old Woman, or Hag.
The Goddess Hecate combined all these forms in a tripartate representation. She is shown as an amalgamation of three goddesses: Kore, Demeter, and Hecate the Witch. Hecate corresponds explicitly with the Moon and its cyclic phases. Phase 1 includes Artemis, Atlanta, Persephone, Hebe, Pallas Athena, and the virgin Sibyls. Phase 2 includes Venus, Demeter, and Cybele as well as Artemis of the Ephesians. Phase 3 expresses the dark, malignant nature of the moon. Marie Von Franz describes the meaning of Psyche in the process of individuation.
"If we look at it from man's unconscious and what it means to him, the figure of Psyche seems understandable. She is the anima which we call the derivative of the mother image. The anima image of a man is generally close to his mother's image and his anima always has some characteristics of his mother complex, and is closer to consciousness than the mother archetype, in which he can integrate his experience of the female within and outside himself. It is his pattern of behavior to the feminine." (16)
With a positive mother complex, a man is a puer eternus (eternal son) and a Don Juan-type lover of women. He lives in a strange fantasy of eternity, feeling someday he will be a great man, but never quite making it. With a negative mother-complex, the Don Juan can never deal with women as they really are since he is naive. He has not matured into the realization that there is a divine and banal side to love relationships.
This paradox must be accepted. Venus is the mother-anima; Psyche is the anima uncontaminated by one's maternal image. Venus, in her jealousy, sets several tasks for Psyche. The one which links her most closely to the Demeter/Persephone myth is her descent to Hades to get the box of beauty ointment for Venus. (Chapter 7, Tiphareth recounts the tale in more detail). Psyche is sent to Kore-Persephone who is a variation of Venus-Isis in her underworld aspect. She opens the box, and tries to secure the special "Beauty" for herself. This means the man's anima equates beauty with goodness, or he can't believe a beautiful woman is capable of wickedness. This is the old naiveté again, desiring a real woman to enact his anima projections. Psyche falls into a death-like sleep of unconsciousness...she is not "her-self." And Eros must come save her. But it is a transformed Eros who appears for her.
The Greeks corresponded Eros with Osiris, who taught men and women genuine mutual love. Eros is now a psychological symbol of the Self. But just at this point, Eros spirits Psyche off to Olympus, which means the initiate in THE GOLDEN ASS OF APULEIUS is not ready for the deep religious experience of the higher Self. Further transformations of the man's relationship with his anima are required before he can experience the final Isis initiations. In these, Osiris is the secret ruler of the underworld, or a personification of the collective unconscious. He is much more than a simple vegetation-god. When he is reborn as the Horus-child, he represents restored wholeness or totality. In QBL, Osiris is corresponded with Tiphareth, and he is the secret spiritual goal of the Isis Mysteries. Transformation from Yesod to Tiphareth occurs through the three initiations of the process. This passage from one psychic state to another produces a unification of the personality. It is produced through the image of one all-embracing Goddess. Isis is the symbol of the Self in feminine form. A religious experience must be accepted in its totality, and therefore is lived as a lifestyle, publicly. But this does not imply telling one's inner secrets to everyone, producing inflation. The Self counsels one on the hiding or exposing of secrets. The secret Self, Osiris, underwent various transformations becoming most important in the Hellenistic era. His conscious religious attributes increased and he became identified with the reborn human soul. The soul tends to fragment into several autonomous parts. Isis is the only divinity which keeps her unity. She is an emotional and feeling experience of totality which leads the way to conscious individuation. But one must become more than an intellectually interested philosopher, flirting with every system and mystical cult which comes one's way. This will not transform the divine inner nucleus. Isis is the guide to the experience of oneness. The psyche is the only reality known through immediate experience. Isis gives meaning to suffering, and initiates the healing process. Man's fate is similar to that of Osiris. The religious pattern revealed in the mysteries was that first comes the realization of the anima (Isis, Yesod) and then of the higher Self (Osiris, Tiphareth). A positive relationship to the goddess produced psychological transformation in earthly life, which produced immortality analogous to that of the philosopher's stone or "diamond body." The initiate Lucius-Apuleius returns to Rome, but has a dream which leads him to seek initiation into the mystery cult of Osiris. He is confused as he thinks he has already had this experience in the Isis Mysteries, but further transformations await him. In the Isis cult, he came to a realization of the anima or feminine principle. But the archetype of the Self has its own specific rites and principles, which he must experience and serve. The aloofness of the Olympian gods is transcended through personal experience.
FOOTNOTES 1. ontology: the branch of metaphysics dealing with the philosophical theory of reality, including consideration of the universal and necessary characteristics of all existence; also a particular theory of reality. 2. Miller, Webb, Dickson; The Holographic Concept of Reality, Gordon and Breach Pub., (1973). 3. Edward Sampson, Ego at the Threshold. 4. James Hillman, Re-Visioning Psychology. 5. Philo Stone, Re-Visioning Middle Pillar: the Torus/Twistor Model. 6. Israel Regardie, The Middle Pillar, Llewellyn 7. James Hillman, "Image-Sense," Spring, 1979. 8. James Hillman, "Anima II," Spring 1974, (Spring Publications, Dallas, 1974). 9. Psychic experiences encompass all the manifestations of the imaginal life: behavior fantasies, dreams, emotions, thoughts, convictions, etc. 10. , The Greeks and Their Gods, 11. Nor Hall, The Moon and the Virgin, Harper and Row, N.Y., 1980, p. 112. 12. M. Esther Harding, Woman's Mysteries, Ancient and Modern, Harper and Row, N.Y., 1971. 13. Mircea Eliade, A History of Religious Ideas, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Vol. I, 1978; "The Eleusinian Mysteries", p. 290-301. 14. Aleister Crowley, The Qabalah of Aleister Crowley, Samuel Weiser, N.Y. 1973, p.80 15. Eliade, A History of Religious Ideas, Chicago Univ. Press, Chicago, Vol. II, 1982, p292. 16. M.L. von Franz, A Psychological Interpretation of the Golden Ass of Apuleius, Spring Pub., Dallas, 1980, p. 76.
Queen and Huntress, chaste and fair,
Now the sun is laid to sleep,
Seated in thy silver chair
State in wonted manner keep:
Hesperus entreats thy light,
Goddess excellently bright.
Earth, let not thy envious shade
Dare itself to interpose;
Cynthia's shining orb was made
Heaven to clear when day did close:
Bless us then with wished sight,
Goddess excellently bright.
Lay thy bow of pearl apart,
And thy crystal-shining quiver;
Give unto the flying hart
Space to breathe, how short soever:
Thou that mak'st a day of night,
Goddess excellently bright.
--Jonson's Hymn to Cynthia (Diana) from Cynthia's Revels
Artemis is a form of the Great Mother, and has archaic characteristics. She was worshipped throughout the Mediterranean. Her name is Oriental in origin (Artimis). In Crete she was worshipped as Britomartis. Her other important cult sites included Arcadia and Ephesus. The Greek cult in Arcadia considered her a Kore, like Persephone, and she was even called a daughter of Demeter.
Her major cult site was in Asia Minor at Ephesus where she was worshipped as the fecund, many-breasted goddess. In this area, she was associated with the date palm. This symbolism is retained today in certain Tarot decks, where the High Priestess card, which corresponds with Artemis contains this tree. Even the advent of Christianity could not snuff out the old pagan cult. The cult of the Virgin Mary began in Ephesus and adapted much of the symbolism of the antique Artemis. Later, in Rome, she was known as Diana or Cynthia. Paradoxically, Artemis ruled over wild animals, childbirth and the young. She protected the young, including humans because she had originally been their mother. However, the chief attribute of Artemis is that she is Virgin and Mother, simultaneously. This attribute was especially prominent in Asia where the Olympian religion impressed on Greece through the Homeric Hymns was less effective in suppressing the ancient form of worship. Wherever she was worshipped, under any name, she is the All-Mother. In the earliest Greek religion, Artemis was an earth-goddess.
She may even have been parthenos, the Greek word which is usually translated "virgin". This could happen in more than one way. In the first place, there is some evidence that the word did not always nor of necessity have that meaning. It might mean no more than unmarried, not tied by any bonds to a male who must be acknowledged as master. There were priestesses as well as deities in pre-Greek and Oriental cults who lived like that, but without preserving their virginity. Indeed, to sacrifice her virginity might be part of a priestess's service, but she did not sacrifice her freedom to a male nor become his property, as marriage in early times would imply . . . It was quite commonly believed that virginity could be renewed periodically by a process of lustration . . . Later, as the more Hellenic notion of strict virginity prevailed, the attendant remained, but like Hippolytus, was vowed to chastity as was the goddess herself . . .At Ephesus her cult was carried on right through classical times in the old way. (10)
The Greeks adapted her paradoxical nature of dignity and abandon, uniting her character with their virgin huntress, who was also a goddess of nature and wild beasts. They could not ignore nor abolish the worship of the Great Mother with its matrilineal customs. Her cult was by far too powerful and deeply rooted in the Mediteranean psyche. If her agricultural rites, sexual emblems, and fertility aspects shocked them, they nevertheless felt it necessary to amalgamate this goddess into their pantheon. Whether chaste, or a goddess of fertility, Artemis is always Virgin, or one-in-herself. Obeisance to Artemis continues within the Catholic church under the auspices of the Virgin Mary. The feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary on the fifteenth of August is derived from the great festival to Hecate the moon goddess of Greece, and that of Diana, her descendant in Rome. Even the prayers for the preservation of the harvest from destruction by early rains are continued. Another major characteristic of Artemis is the cyclic lunar rhythm.
Rhythms such as chanting, dancing, or drum beats facilitates passage from one plane to the next. It creates an altered state of consciousness. Dances in honor of Artemis were orgiastic in character. Eliade cites the proverb: "Where has not Artemis danced?" as meaning that her cult was so wide spread there were honorary dances for her everywhere. Her connections with survivability are shown in her function as midwife. It is even legendary that Artemis was delivered from Leto first, and then helped her mother in the delivery of her twin, Apollo. Artemis is "the force that sustains our attraction to the primitive and the unknown.
She can teach us how to make contact with the unconscious and survive. Artemis is energy: death-bringing energy, psychic energy, abundant energy, excess energy." (11) Artemis is adventurous and represents the tendency for striking out on one's own. Sometimes this occurs in mid-life, when one seeks retreat from the city, home, and family in solitude. Artemis represents the continual renewal of "daughter-mother-grandmother." As Artemis-Hekate, she oversees magic. Artemis-Hekate and Apollo share a capacity for coming powerfully from afar. When invoked, they appear in their characteristic manner for their epiphany. An example of lunar magickal procedure is given in Aleister Crowley's excellent occult novel, Moonchild.
The magician Cyril has found a willing assistant in his efforts from a woman named Lisa. Her horoscope contains a powerful lunar influence, as his is mostly solar. A sister of the magickal order aids them both. She is a priestess of Artemis for some twenty years, and for ten of those has spoken to no man. Lisa takes her oath of dedication, and is admonished to be strong in her will and abolish unsuitable thoughts which would disturb the gestation of the moonchild. Her virginity is then renewed through a rite of lustration and the rituals begin.
He had set up a small triangular altar of silver; and it was upon this that Sister C. and her disciples came thrice nightly to make their incantations. The ritual of the moon might never be celebrated during daylight . . .Upon the evening of Monday, after the adoration of the setting sun, Lisa was led to the garden. There the hand-maidens unclothed her, and washed her from head to foot in the waters of the sacred spring. Then she put upon her a solemn oath that she would follow out the rules of the ritual, not speaking to any man except her chosen, not leaving the protection of the circle, not communicating with the outer and uninitiated world; but, on the other hand, devoting herself wholly to the invocation of the Moon. Then she clothed her in a specially prepared and consecrated garment; it was a loose vestment of pale blue covered with silver tissue; and the secret sigils of the moon were woven cunningly upon its hem. It was frail but of great volume; and the effect was that the wearer seemed to be wrapped in a mist of moonlight. What was the incantation like? We may well imagine it was one of fervor and madness of things chaste, remote, and inscrutable. "With the speed of a huntress the shape neared her, hid the moon from her, and she perceived the buskined Artemis, silver-sandaled, with her bright bow and quiver of light. Leaping behind her...
Artemis was worshipped as Luna in Heaven, and invoked in Tartarus as Hecate. She avoided the society of men, and retired to the woods accompanied by her nymphs. She was armed with her bow of light and carried a torch kindled by the lightening of Zeus, so she could pursue the swift stag. The high mountains were said to tremble at the twang of her bow, and the forests resounded with the panting of the wounded deer. After the chase, Artemis would hasten to Delphi, residence of her brother Apollo, where she would hang her bow and quiver upon his altar, and begin to dance. What does Artemis mean to a modern woman, and what are her psychological values which persist throughout time?
The chief characteristic of the goddess in her crescent phase is that she is virgin. Her instinct is not used to capture or possess the man whom she attracts. She does not reserve herself for the chosen man who must repay her by his devotion, nor is her instinct used to gain for herself the security of husband, home, and family. . .She is essentially one-in-herself. In the image of the Mother Goddess--ancient and powerful--women of olden times found the reflection of their own deepest feminine nature...Today, the goddess is no longer worshipped...But the law or power of which she was but the personification is unabated in its strength and life-giving potency. It is we who have changed. We have given our allegiance too exclusively to masculine forces.
Today, however, through a religious cult, not even with a conscious knowledge of what they are doing, but through a change in psychological attitude. For that principle, which in ancient and more naive days was projected into the form of a goddess, is no longer seen in the guise of a religious tenet but is now sensed as a psychological force arising from the unconscious, having, as had the Magna Dea of old, power to mold the destinies of mankind. (12) (4).
THE ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES (Demeter/Persephone, Isis, and Psyche)
The establishment of the Eleusinian Mysteries is related in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. After the abduction of her daughter Persephone, the mourning Demeter traveled to Eleusis (near Athens), and took refuge by the Well of the Maidens. She demanded that the local inhabitants build her a sanctuary there. After she was reunited with her daughter, she revealed her rites, and began teaching her Mysteries, including the cultivation of wheat. The early history of the cult reports two types of initiations. One was concerned with the reunion of the goddesses; the other concerned the possibility of man's immortalization.
The Great Goddess has always been considered able to grant immortality to humans, but early initiates to the Eleusinian Mysteries were not granted immortality, but experienced revelations which assured the soul a blissful existence after death. Eliade recounts how the symbolic death of Persephone had great consequences for mankind: "As the result of it, an Olympian and benevolent goddess temporarily inhabited the kingdom of the dead. She had annulled the unbridgeable distance between Hades and Olympus.
Mediatrix between the two divine worlds, she could thereafter intervene in the destiny of mortals." (13) Archaeologists established the colonization of Eleusis occurred in the fifteenth century. The Mysteries were celebrated for nearly 2,000 years. Because of social and cultural changes during this period, the Mysteries altered over time. The Lesser Mysteries were celebrated in the spring, and formed a preliminary probation period for the Greater Mysteries conducted in the Autumn (Sept.-Oct.). Initiation was open to both men and women, providing they spoke Greek, had killed no fellow man, and had passed through the Lesser Mysteries. The rites involved processions, sacrifices, dances, and songs.
There were also secret rites in the Greater Mysteries, which remain shrouded in darkness to this day. The revelations must have been profound, for no initiate ever revealed them. A third stage of initiation was open to those who had been initiates for a year. It culminated in a supreme vision, the nature of which we may only guess. Attempts at reconstructing the rites have been made, but only fragments are available. Included were ritual fasting and imbibing of the sacred drink, or kykeon. What is known is that, after a sacramental meal (which could represent a sacred marriage like communion), the final vision took place in a dazzling light, and included an invocation of Kore.
The Eleusinian Mysteries opened a new religious dimension for the Mediterranean world. Through them, the initiate perceived a continuity between life and death. It opened speculations concerning the underworld which were suppressed by the predominant Olympian religion. Demeter/Persephone became the most popular of Greek goddesses during this period, and initiation into her cult, guaranteed a sort of "adoption" by her. A major characteristic of the cult which became paradigmatic for most other Mystery cults was the strict emphasis on silence and secrecy. Thereafter, it became stylish for Masters to reveal their secrets only to their initiates.
The Egyptian Mysteries of Isis and Osiris: In the 3rd Century B.C. Ptolemy Soter sought to consolidate his rule through the acceptance of a supreme divinity by both Egyptians and Greeks. He exalted Sarapis (a derivative of Osiris) and Isis. Herodotus assimilated these gods into the Greek Mysteries, where Isis was identified with the Great Mother, Demeter, and Osiris was the initiated individual who attained "salvation."
For the Greeks, Osiris was also identified with Dionysus, who was also killed, dismembered, then resurrected. Qabalistically, a Great Goddess like Isis has many attributes which have various correspondences, depending on the level of involvement. Aleister Crowley has determined several of these: ...a goddess like Isis might be given to Zero as conterminous with Nature, to 3 as Mother, to 4 as Venus, to 6 as Harmony, to 7 as Love, to 9 as the Moon, to 10 as Virgin, to 13 again as the Moon, to 14 as Venus, to 15 as connected with the letter He, to 16 as the Sacred Cow, to 18 as the Goddess of Water, to 24 as Draco, to 28 as Giver of Rain, to 29 as the Moon, and to 32 as Lady of the Mysteries (Saturn, Binah). (14)
In the Hellenistic period, the Mysteries of Isis provided a ritual rebirth as its central purpose. The object was for the initiate to become Osiris, raised from the dead by the magical power of the goddess Isis. Accounts of these mysteries are found in both Plutarch's Isis and Osiris, and The Golden Ass of Apuleius. After fasting and meditation, the mystes took part in a mystery drama where he personified Set, or Typhon in the form of a red ass. He was tormented, and his lust and desirousness transformed through fully experiencing his instinctual nature. The deep religious intensity of the aspirant produces transformation and the identification with the dead Osiris. He journeys to Hades and sees the midnight Sun shining brightly, as well as the pantheon of Gods celestial and infernal. After this ritual death, he is raised by the power of Isis. Plutarch also identified Isis with Athena, in that the ever-changing veil of nature includes both growth and decay.
The Isis of Hellenistic times, as Nature and the Moon, was creator, mother, nurse, and destroyer, just like Demeter. She also embodied Wisdom, or Sophia; Osiris was Knowledge, Reason, and Logos. Through acceptance by Isis, the initiate caught in the instinctual level of passion and lust, is raised to a spiritual life. The initiate believed the goddess Isis could prolong life beyond the term fixed by Destiny, or fate. But this process involved a metamorphosis by undergoing a voluntary, ritual death in order to obtain one's spiritual birthday. Like the Eleusinian Mysteries, the first great public festival of Isis took place in Spring, when the Mediterranean navigation season opened. The second, the lamentation for and reanimation of Osiris took place October 29 to November 1.
The seeker Apuleius recounts his initiation, after abstaining from meat and wine for ten days: Thou wouldst peradventure demand, thou studious reader, what was said and done there: verily I would tell thee if it were lawful for me to tell: thou wouldst know if it were convenient for thee to hear . . . Howbeit I will not long torment thy mind, which peradventure is somewhat religious and given to some devotion; listen therefore and believe it to be true. Thou shalt understand that I approached near unto Hell, even to the gates of Proserpine, and after that I was ravished throughout all the elements, I returned to my proper place: about midnight I saw the sun brightly shine, I saw likewise the gods celestial and infernal, before whom I presented myself and worshipped them. (15)
In the Egyptian Mysteries of antiquity, the Pharaoh was identified with Osiris after his death. But, through these Hellenistic initiations, the living individual became "Divinized," through the powers of the Goddess. Isis and Osiris are exalted to the rank of universal divinities of the highest plane, covering psychic space from the underworld to ascent to celestial heights. This Hellenistic interpretation of the old Egyptian cults reflects a "monotheistic" universalism typical of other suffering gods, including Dionysus and Orpheus.
This Hellenistic mystery theology expresses the deepest Egyptian religious genius. In recounting the tale of his experiences as an initiate, Apuleius inserts the tale of Psyche and Eros into his personal story. An evaluation of the meaning of this tale in the development of his relationship to his anima brings out the psychological value of these initiatory sequences. In the tale, Eros represents the reproductive passion, which is transformed through its relationship with Psyche. Psyche is an incarnated form of Eros' mother, Venus. Since she is mortal, she represents that part of Eros' anima which is closer to consciousness. Venus was jealous of Psyche because mortals began worshipping her beauty, preferring her to an abstract Olympian goddess. In Amor und Psyche, the author Merkelbach points up an identification between Psyche and Isis, and Venus and Isis.
One might think that the goddess, then, fights against herself. In a sense, she does. She protests because of the narrowing of her potential in a mortal form. Therefore, if Psyche is Venus in diminutive form, Eros actually takes part in a sacred marriage with his mother-daughter-sister. This repeats the old Egyptian formula. Psyche is a form of Kore, the mother goddess in rejuvenated, human form. Therefore, the Eros and Psyche tale is a variation of the Demeter-Kore myth. For the female initiate, this myth represents the deepest experience of the female mysteries of the Self.
For the male initiate, it means a progressive integration of the anima which then leads to an experience of the Self. While he is still mother-complexed, all the forms of the goddess are compounded in the figure of the Great Mother, and he is her eternal lover. Venus is a synthetic term for feminine Deity, and includes aspects of Hestia, Demeter, Cybele, Isis, etc. The symbols overlap. This is because the life of woman is divisible into three primary forms: 1) Virginity, 2) Wife and Mother, and 3) Old Woman, or Hag.
The Goddess Hecate combined all these forms in a tripartate representation. She is shown as an amalgamation of three goddesses: Kore, Demeter, and Hecate the Witch. Hecate corresponds explicitly with the Moon and its cyclic phases. Phase 1 includes Artemis, Atlanta, Persephone, Hebe, Pallas Athena, and the virgin Sibyls. Phase 2 includes Venus, Demeter, and Cybele as well as Artemis of the Ephesians. Phase 3 expresses the dark, malignant nature of the moon. Marie Von Franz describes the meaning of Psyche in the process of individuation.
"If we look at it from man's unconscious and what it means to him, the figure of Psyche seems understandable. She is the anima which we call the derivative of the mother image. The anima image of a man is generally close to his mother's image and his anima always has some characteristics of his mother complex, and is closer to consciousness than the mother archetype, in which he can integrate his experience of the female within and outside himself. It is his pattern of behavior to the feminine." (16)
With a positive mother complex, a man is a puer eternus (eternal son) and a Don Juan-type lover of women. He lives in a strange fantasy of eternity, feeling someday he will be a great man, but never quite making it. With a negative mother-complex, the Don Juan can never deal with women as they really are since he is naive. He has not matured into the realization that there is a divine and banal side to love relationships.
This paradox must be accepted. Venus is the mother-anima; Psyche is the anima uncontaminated by one's maternal image. Venus, in her jealousy, sets several tasks for Psyche. The one which links her most closely to the Demeter/Persephone myth is her descent to Hades to get the box of beauty ointment for Venus. (Chapter 7, Tiphareth recounts the tale in more detail). Psyche is sent to Kore-Persephone who is a variation of Venus-Isis in her underworld aspect. She opens the box, and tries to secure the special "Beauty" for herself. This means the man's anima equates beauty with goodness, or he can't believe a beautiful woman is capable of wickedness. This is the old naiveté again, desiring a real woman to enact his anima projections. Psyche falls into a death-like sleep of unconsciousness...she is not "her-self." And Eros must come save her. But it is a transformed Eros who appears for her.
The Greeks corresponded Eros with Osiris, who taught men and women genuine mutual love. Eros is now a psychological symbol of the Self. But just at this point, Eros spirits Psyche off to Olympus, which means the initiate in THE GOLDEN ASS OF APULEIUS is not ready for the deep religious experience of the higher Self. Further transformations of the man's relationship with his anima are required before he can experience the final Isis initiations. In these, Osiris is the secret ruler of the underworld, or a personification of the collective unconscious. He is much more than a simple vegetation-god. When he is reborn as the Horus-child, he represents restored wholeness or totality. In QBL, Osiris is corresponded with Tiphareth, and he is the secret spiritual goal of the Isis Mysteries. Transformation from Yesod to Tiphareth occurs through the three initiations of the process. This passage from one psychic state to another produces a unification of the personality. It is produced through the image of one all-embracing Goddess. Isis is the symbol of the Self in feminine form. A religious experience must be accepted in its totality, and therefore is lived as a lifestyle, publicly. But this does not imply telling one's inner secrets to everyone, producing inflation. The Self counsels one on the hiding or exposing of secrets. The secret Self, Osiris, underwent various transformations becoming most important in the Hellenistic era. His conscious religious attributes increased and he became identified with the reborn human soul. The soul tends to fragment into several autonomous parts. Isis is the only divinity which keeps her unity. She is an emotional and feeling experience of totality which leads the way to conscious individuation. But one must become more than an intellectually interested philosopher, flirting with every system and mystical cult which comes one's way. This will not transform the divine inner nucleus. Isis is the guide to the experience of oneness. The psyche is the only reality known through immediate experience. Isis gives meaning to suffering, and initiates the healing process. Man's fate is similar to that of Osiris. The religious pattern revealed in the mysteries was that first comes the realization of the anima (Isis, Yesod) and then of the higher Self (Osiris, Tiphareth). A positive relationship to the goddess produced psychological transformation in earthly life, which produced immortality analogous to that of the philosopher's stone or "diamond body." The initiate Lucius-Apuleius returns to Rome, but has a dream which leads him to seek initiation into the mystery cult of Osiris. He is confused as he thinks he has already had this experience in the Isis Mysteries, but further transformations await him. In the Isis cult, he came to a realization of the anima or feminine principle. But the archetype of the Self has its own specific rites and principles, which he must experience and serve. The aloofness of the Olympian gods is transcended through personal experience.
FOOTNOTES 1. ontology: the branch of metaphysics dealing with the philosophical theory of reality, including consideration of the universal and necessary characteristics of all existence; also a particular theory of reality. 2. Miller, Webb, Dickson; The Holographic Concept of Reality, Gordon and Breach Pub., (1973). 3. Edward Sampson, Ego at the Threshold. 4. James Hillman, Re-Visioning Psychology. 5. Philo Stone, Re-Visioning Middle Pillar: the Torus/Twistor Model. 6. Israel Regardie, The Middle Pillar, Llewellyn 7. James Hillman, "Image-Sense," Spring, 1979. 8. James Hillman, "Anima II," Spring 1974, (Spring Publications, Dallas, 1974). 9. Psychic experiences encompass all the manifestations of the imaginal life: behavior fantasies, dreams, emotions, thoughts, convictions, etc. 10. , The Greeks and Their Gods, 11. Nor Hall, The Moon and the Virgin, Harper and Row, N.Y., 1980, p. 112. 12. M. Esther Harding, Woman's Mysteries, Ancient and Modern, Harper and Row, N.Y., 1971. 13. Mircea Eliade, A History of Religious Ideas, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Vol. I, 1978; "The Eleusinian Mysteries", p. 290-301. 14. Aleister Crowley, The Qabalah of Aleister Crowley, Samuel Weiser, N.Y. 1973, p.80 15. Eliade, A History of Religious Ideas, Chicago Univ. Press, Chicago, Vol. II, 1982, p292. 16. M.L. von Franz, A Psychological Interpretation of the Golden Ass of Apuleius, Spring Pub., Dallas, 1980, p. 76.