Magic and the romance of adventure

Recently i did reflect much on what i have experienced throughout my last seven years as student of the hermetic sciences.
It did this not on purpose, rather it came naturally, like many things that fit to the actual level of attainment.

Apart from many insights on my own psychic make-up, by seeing how i relate to and function in the world, sometimes coming even as superb soberings and disentchantments when detecting my own weaknesses, signs of low self-esteem and inferiority complexes and the like, i found out that there were innumerous highlights in my practise that spurred me on on my path. Even highlights that had some very funny aspects.

For example, i remember coming to my working place, a bookshop, one day after one of my first invocations of elemental Earth, being a fresh-baked Juniorus.
The first thing my boss did when he saw me on that day was giving me a package of incense sticks a guy from india had left in the bookshop for me the day before.
Till now i dont know who this guy was, and in all the 9 years working at this place i also cant remember anyone leaving me incense sticks for a present.
But i will never forget that these incense sticks had "Lily of the Valley"-scent!

Or then there was this impressive revelation when i did pathworking once as a Neophyte, a specific variation that my Hierophant had taught me.
I was travelling to Gimel, the High Priestess, and completely out of a sudden, in the twinkling of an eye, i had a vision of my Holy Guardian Angel.
Words cannot describe the bliss and ecstasy i bathed in, after seeing Him clothed as our planet Earth, suddenly catching Fire.
When i look at this special event now...i tend to think that this could have been the moment when the holy trouble started LOL.

I will also not forget the skrying into the plane of Earth when i was working for 2 weeks in Munich, under limited conditions in a foreign place.
There, when travelling in the Spirit Vision, i found out that the Watchtowers do really exist, at the far corners of the elemental plane. I saw a huge tower of stone on a vast and deserted, rocky plane. The atmosphere was full of sulphurous fumes and heaviness. I think i met an Angel that shaped himself out of the bricks of the Tower, and i realized that every brick or stone of this Tower is an Angel.

One of the strangest memories i have was when i was Theoricus, travelling to Tunisia on my own. From the beginning, i had planned this trip to be some sort of magical retirement, and like always, magic did not fail to impress me.
I love doing magic under foreign circumstances and limited conditions.
This always adds a special flair of adventure and romance.
I remember invoking Libra for the first time in my hotel room, at a time when Libra was rising in the East, being aspected very good, and i think i caught the tattvic tide of Air as well.
I had a one to one meter space between my bed and the commode, which served as the altar.
The Sun was nearly setting over the balcony, and i could see the sea.
After having traced the second pentagram in the south, i could see the room around me transform in a few seconds, like when you put a filter over a movie that only highlights green and red colours, also a lot of soft focus lens, and my aestethic sense was trembling in bliss.
To be short: it was a psychedelic experience, something i thought the mind always be able to produce without the aid of any substance, just by magical exaltation!
After the ritual i went down to the hotel foyer to meet with an older woman i had learned to know at the breakfast table a few days before. I had spent long walks and good conversation with her along the beach and now we wanted to take a last drink, letting the day settle.
After an hour she freaked out on me completely and out of no logical reasons!
She blamed me being frightening in my black clothes and pale skin, and she made no use of flattery when she said that i look like a living corpse, and went on to question my ethics
by considering what i had told her about my plan for life. We departed with really strange faces, and the rest of the week i would not sit with her at the breakfast table anymore, only seeing her throwing mischievious glances at me from the other corner of the room.
By the way, she was Libra. And i have Uranus in Libra, together with Pluto in Scorpio in my seventh house!

At one occassion, when i was Philosophus, i simply wanted to know it. It was a summer night, and i was sitting with friends in a backyard that a close friend of mine had turned into a little green paradise. We had made a fire in the midst of the place, and the 4 of us watched the play of the tongues of the flames in relative silence.
Then it came over me, and i did invoke astrally the forces of elemental Fire, by first banishing astrally around the place, using an improvised invocation of my Angel, and putting on the Godform of Horus, and tracing one pentagram and sigil and calling on the hierarchy. I especially called the salamanders to visible appearance, and i truly wanted it, out of curiosity and, well, fun.
Believe it or not, it was a matter of some two or three minutes and my friends did not notice anything at all. I just seemed to stare into the fire, saying nothing for some time.
Right after it, when collecting myself again in just being with my friends, i saw a small subtle and green shadow emerge out of the Fire, but thought it to be just an optical reaction.
We were talking about this and that till my friend N. suddenly prompted us all to look at the funny lizard in the fire.
I could hardly believe my eyes!
One of the biggest wooden logs in the metallic tub that served as fireplace had, with the help of Fire, transformed into a lizard of 20 centimeters length, with sparkling combs and gills, and a distinct, amphibian mouth out of which came a burst of fire in regular intervals!
Everbody saw it clearly and had to laugh, and i, secretly, thanked God and the forces of Fire and released them with banishings and blessings!

Iam sure i would have more like this on my mind, but its late now, and when being creative i usually dont have the patience to work on entries longer than at the first record, and, OH! this was a hot and long summer day, so.....

Khabs am Pekht,
L.e.N.e.

Solve et Coagula

Yesterday, after a long brooding over alchemical texts and these emblems, I came to the thought that the two modes of working in Alchemy that are described as "Solve et Coagula" could not only be understood as two successive phases of the Work, but instead as happening at the same time.
The King on this emblem is the consciousness of the Adept, and the sea in which it is drowning is a symbol for the unconsciousness and its dissolving powers or also for an alchemical agent that has great dissolving qualitites, but of which i do not know anything now.
This process of dissolution is the "Solve" part of the formula. It frees the consciousness from the bonds of the body, and may be a kind of philosophick death.

On this picture we see an Egg as the central symbol, next to a fireplace and a Man holding a sword in his hands.
The philosophick Egg is a symbol for the energetic body of the Adept.
With the use of fire one can boil the egg, and make it solid.
In our tradition we use magical energy, known as L.V.X., to feed the energetic bodies of the aspirant. The magician learns to generate and transmit ever more magical energy through his body, and this energy in turn helps to make the energetic bodies of the magician ever more solid and stable.
The source of L.V.X. is akin to a celestial, mighty Fire, that is our Sun, the giver and dispenser of Light and Life on our earth.
The sword is a symbol for Air, and to the magical element of Air belong all faculties of the reasoning mind.
All magic and energetic transformation happens with the use of our minds, as it is said by the Alchemists that the Work is done by the aid of Mercury alone, and Mercury is a symbol for self-consciousness and reasoning abilities.
So this emblem is a symbol for the "Coagula" part of the process. The volatile principles are made solid and fix, an energetic vessel is created, just like a potter who uses clay to form vessels.


When the perception is freed from its physical limitations, when the Adept experiences a philosophick Death, or when his Mercury begins to fly, the bonds that attach or fix the consciousness to the body are volatized, and at the other hand (and maybe at the same time, but i could easily be on the wrong track here), by the influx of celestial essences that Mercury carries with him on his flight back to the body, the energetic bodies of the Adept reach the highest maximum of solidity.
Besides the ability to maintain some sort of identity (a quality that is trained on the dream level i guess), the process of becoming freed from the physical limitations requires, as i understand it, a great deal of emotional control. I have read more than one time that at the moment of this separation (which is a union with the All-One) the greatest danger arises when the Adept is not able to constrain or control his feelings. He could be too easily carried away by a wave of divine ecstasy and put himself in risk to die.


L.e.N.e.

The Athanor

On the first emblem of Atalanta Fugiens you can see a human body with an infant in his belly.
The peculiar thing about this human body is that it generates fumes out of his head and hands.
Without an internal fire, there could be no fume.
The alchemical athanor is the human body, which produces the secret fire of the Work.
The foetus in the belly is a symbol for the infant Sulphur, the seed of Soul.

L.e.N.e.

The First Matter

I had to think about this alchemical emblem from Michael Maiers "Atalanta Fugiens" lately.
I tried to interpret this on my own for many times, and knowing that although i do not yet possess the initiatic keys to unlock the mysteries of Alchemy in its whole, i think its nonetheless good to draw conclusions and to share them, even if i may be on the wrong track.

This emblem is connected with the saying that the Stone is everywhere, is omnipresent, its there for everyone, and many do dismiss it as worthless. Its also said that children play with it in the streets.
On this picture you can see cubical stones in the air, in the water, and on the earthen ground.
Therefore, the Stone must be something that is closely connected with the alchemical elements, and especially not with one element but the sum of them all.
Now, the first premise to work alchemy is the discovery of the First Matter.
Without having discovered the First Matter properly, an Alchemist is not able to get the Great Work started.
I believe that the First Matter in turn is closely connected to the Quintessence (which is another term for alchemical Spirit, Azoth or Akasha).
It is also said that the quintessence is not to be confused with the totality or synthesis of the elements, and their interplay and mixing, but rather its understood as generating the elements, as being the principal source of them.
This reminds me of the function of our apparatus of perception, of which our senses are the clients.
By studying the conclusions of modern brainresearch, we find out that reality as we perceive it, with material objects inclusive our bodies as being solid and the material world as something that does exist objectively outside ourselves, is just the interpretation of our perception apparatus, our brain. There is no objective universe as we perceive it.
Its just the brain that interprets the world around us as being a material universe with us as being separately functioning individuals in it.
There i see a close parallel to the nature of the Quintessence.
The quintessence is not the synthesis of the elements, but rather the quintessence is the generator and source of the elements.
Or to put it another way:
Our Quintessence (the nature of our mind) coagulates the impulses that flow through our senses into objective reality.
Reality in turn is perceived as something that exists outside of us, with us being its product, but in truth reality (the perception of a solid materiality) is born out of the Quintessence, our mind.
The perception of reality as we know it is due to the function of consciousness in our body.

I believe to discover the First Matter means to see and experience the world as it really is.
Here, the kabbalistic scheme is of great help to intellectually grasp this idea.
According to the kabbalistic dogma, the material Universe (Malkuth) is just the most condensed form of an all-pervading, omnipresent energy: Light.
The source of this Ain Soph Auor, this limitless ocean of Light, is God. God is the All-One, and as the Emerald Tablet of Hermes puts it: All things are from One, by the contemplation of One, so from this One Thing come all things by adaption.
So, a premise to discover the First Matter could be the realisation that our Quintessence is the generator of material reality and binds us to the perception of being separate from the One.
The actual discovery of the First Matter enables us to be freed from this perception, to clear the mind from the illusion that we are separate.
Would the mind be freed from its physical limitations, we would be able to perceive the Universe as it really is: an ocean of Light in varying degrees of vibration.

Therefore i think that the whole Outer Order process of the Golden Dawn enables the hermetic student to discover the First Matter, and therefore truly is a preparation for hermetic Alchemy, by practically studying and experiencing the effects of the alchemical elements, the planets and signs and the alchemical principles, which are different modes of vibrations of the One.
This leads to find out about the true nature of Spirit, which is the Quintessence, and often termed as Chaos and Emptiness at once.
I believe that the discovery of the First Matter to be not only an intellectual quest, but rather an impressing spiritual experience which may correspond to the Knowledge of the Holy Guardian Angel.
The Angel is the Divine Spark that is latent in every human being, and it is the link to the All-One or God, just like Jesus said that nobody reaches the Father than through him.
The Angel tears down the illusion of being separate from this Divine Core.
This may lead to the experience that the whole universe is truly born out of the One and that the One is our intrinsic nature, a fact that the Rose Cross (Spirit nailed to the cross of the elements) in the middle of the emblem hints at.


L.e.N.e.