Gods in Exile

Esoteric chronicles tell of a Golden Age and of a very complex and evolved human being: they speak of giants, of long-lived beings with bodies which are much more ethereal than ours of today. Ideally our incarnation should happen in a dimensional state between the Absolute and the material world. Instead we have fallen down into a level of reality which is a long way away from the source.

Leaving aside all the non-esoteric theories that sustain we are the result of a system of hybridization on the part of gods/cosmic aliens; on theoretical, eschatological and ontological planes, we have to admit that we have truly ‘fallen’ into the third dimension. Whether it is part of the original plan or the consequence of errors or difficulties encountered along the road matters very little. The fact is, this is the condition we are in. We live in a restricted and illusory reality that our mind is continuously redefining. A conventional reality reprocessed by our brain, totally fictitious and without purpose, springing from reduced, incomplete mental and sensorial perceptions. It is extremely restricted, manipulated and limited in respect to our status, which in some way or other or for some reason we have lost. However, it is this experience that we have been called upon to live and it is from this that we have to re-emerge.

Using a simile, we could compare our present relationship with the Real to the movement of an octopus which, with its tentacles, explores the rocks and the depths of the sea. Each tentacle is one of our ‘incarnations’ (our many lives) and as human beings we are conscious of our unity, that is, of being the octopus that towers over everything. Now, imagine that the octopus loses that awareness of itself and identifies only with one tentacle at a time (what we consider to be our present identity, seen as the incarnation we are aware of now, as our ‘life’), and that particular tentacle clinging to the rocks turns to stone: having penetrated so far into the rock it totally identifies with it. The meaning of the comparison is precisely this: we have forgotten that we are the whole octopus and above all we are ‘mineralized’ or petrified – according to alchemical jargon - in matter, in the world of materialism.

We are petrified from a mental, psychic and physical point of view because materialism, or the loss of natural sensitivity, stops us perceiving and feeling and therefore of elaborating and understanding. The monks initiated into the Hermetic Tradition, knew how to see a living consciousness in everything that exists.

Mario Balocco – La Magia nei Monasteri

Our present Consciousness only allows us a limited vision of reality, like that of a child raised by monkeys or amidst the horrors of war, but which is nevertheless seen as ‘normal’.

The ‘real fall’ therefore does not rest so much in the incarnation as in the successive loss of identity and degeneration into the material.

Our identity should already be, as it were, in Tipheret but instead we are ‘monkeys’, unfledged bipeds and confused hominids.

On the Kabbalistic Tree of Life we could illustrate the situation with the image shown on the next page.

Applying the terms of the Kabbalah to this hypothesis we can therefore suppose that our role as a bridge-Form, because of its nature, should already position us in Tipheret, instead however, we have ‘fallen’ through the veil of illusion (Yesod), into Malkuth, by identifying with the material world and becoming dense and corporeal. In practice mineralizing ourselves inside the material world rather than conserving our spiritual position. From here that ‘derived creation’, that surrogate of reality which is our current pseudo- existence is not dissimilar to that of Golem: a foolish automaton (as defined by Hasidic Judaism). In this scenario we should also consider the history or perhaps half-history that is related by ancient and modern esoteric chronicles. They describe the current earth-being as the result of a sort of ‘derived creation’ on the part of ultra-dimensional alien races, interested in generating or manipulating living beings in order to exploit them for their labour; farm them as psychic nourishment or else perform ‘genetic’ or bio-spiritual experiments on them[1].

Whether our fall is of a spiritual origin, which means it has always been part of the same game, or has become part of a cosmic game beyond the expectations of eventual alien or divine creators, in both cases our present condition derives from tremendous confusion about ‘who we are’ and therefore, what are or have become, the aims of our existence. This is why the first objective of any esoteric school should be to enter into contact with the true Self and reposition the barycentre of our identity in it. In Tipheret to be precise.

Evolution should imply above all the re-appropriation of our original nature, a recovery from handicap and a return to what we are (teshuvà), so that we can finally evolve ourselves and reality to not only a level of major awareness but also of greater energy and psycho-physical power.

Instead, Man behaves like a diver who has fainted in his diving suit, one that is decidedly rusty and in a bad way with several portholes (senses) closed or out of focus, casually wandering around in a clumsy way, swayed by the currents of a reality that he has lost consciousness of and no longer controls.

Today, the rather inflated concept of enlightenment has to separate itself from the purely mental, ethereal and spiritual definition of the idea – which is just as abstract as the Western mind – and recover the original meaning of metamorphosis and transfiguration, or transubstantiation, above all in its material sense. It is most of all a physical process: an ontological mutation of the human Form. In the end it is not the soul that has to be conquered but the body. It is not the Absolute that we have to understand but this reality.

I definitely agree with Thomas Moore who insisted on saying that if spiritual masters and the community were to seriously consider this point, spirituality would lose its sentimental idealism and appeal to intelligent people... Nobody imagines that spirituality is the way to become an ordinary person, one who confronts banal problems and consequently lives an ordinary life. Many people attracted by the spirit find it difficult to be simple human beings, and renounce practical intelligence in the name of idealistic visions. This ‘inflated’ behaviour can take over people and daze them.

In order to do this, first of all we have to recalibrate all our sensorial and mental filters: we live in a reality deformed by flawed lenses. Although it is here (and from here) that we have to process reality, without making a fuss about being gods again and wanting to perform miracles: in the end we have come here to conquest this ‘reality’.

The ‘work’ that needs to be done is primarily on ourselves: on the lenses of our consciousness and our psycho-bio-physical vehicle. To achieve what does not need theoretical reasoning, ideas and mentalism as its reference, nor the fashions of the New Age. We need instead to practice observation, attention, and consciously relate to life, events, people and things without worrying too much about notions of enlightenment.

We have to start with ourselves: it is from here, from this material and mental molasses that all real evolution blooms. The Angels, the Masters and the Gods need us much more than we will ever need them!

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[1] Theses which I take note, of but which I personally do not feel it is necessary to take a position on.

Ritual, Dream and Ecstasy

In the film The Thirteenth Floor (by Josef Rusnak, 1999) a multi-level reality is presented: every lower universe is a presented as a sort of three-dimensional video game – that nevertheless possesses its own autonomy and therefore its own relative ‘intelligent’ reality – in which the people of a higher universe play and have created through the dominion of avatars. In the film the ‘first reality’ is also shown, the one that created the first simulation in which certain ‘people’ created a second simulation and so on. All the ‘people’ of each simulation – at every level – are ‘alive’, intelligent, sentient: they are perfectly programmed software. However, some of them begin to understand and rebel. One of them, the protagonist, who is living in an intermediate reality and plays with successive simulations, certainly does not think he is living in or is in turn a simulation impossessed from time to time by a player of a higher level. In a spectacular manner, a little like The Truman Show, he discovers the truth about his ‘world’ and his conditions and achieves the impossible feat: his ‘mind’ manages to scale the preceding levels to impossess the controller of the first reality.

He manages to ascend not from the level of reality he belongs to but by paradoxically going down into the lower simulations to then trigger a process of return by ‘launching’ himself not to the height of his own reality but into the preceding ones to arrive at the first, the true original one.

This movie, which is based on a science-fiction novel, is of great interest because it is one of the first that explicitly presents the model of virtual realities (… yes, Plato had already done it with his ‘myth of the cave’).

The film makes one think that our return towards true reality, which in fact we do not actually know, might not necessarily happen by aiming directly for it but could happen as the result of an ‘elastic’ effect achieved by launching into the depths of ourselves, perhaps into the depths of our own illusion and its under-programming. Consciously.

We exist in this Reality not to live in a state of perfection, to be divine and perform miracles but to be ‘humans’ and manoeuvre ourselves more or less convulsively, in this very contradictory, complex and at times difficult, if not bizarre, environment.

The investigation of the self, or if we prefer religion, spirituality, mysticism, magic, uses instruments that do not, in effect, aim at the higher destination but instead increase the illusion into which we have fallen. They create further under-programmes in which, having once recognized our status and re-awoken, we can re-qualify not only for the level we started out from but if we are ready to do so, for a higher reality.

The state of consciousness that allows each one of us to release ourselves from our present reality and throw ourselves into the depths - through abstinence or excess – to then produce the counter effect of becoming aware of a higher and perhaps more definitive consciousness, can be realized through ‘The three doors of magic’ or, ritual, dream and ecstasy.

The Kabbalistic tree illustrated on the opposite page, simplifies this mechanism.

We can investigate, fantasize and imagine ritual, dream and ecstasy, using the traditions and practices which are chiefly employed by each ‘door’, those which have worked leaving one particular aspect to take priority over others, or have been used to open others.

For example all the Western mystery traditions turn to ritual because it is a symbolic-archetypical psycho-drama suitable for activating certain states of consciousness and evoking symbolic correspondences: characters, energies and profound faculties in relation to transcendent planes upon which heroes, gods and hosts of angels can be projected, to satisfy or dominate.

Shamanism however exalts the dimensions of dream to explore the self and unknown faculties and realities, just as the use of psycho-active substances, or meditation, the stimulation of the Kundalini and more specifically, mysticism and Tantrism (much closer to each other than you might imagine) explore ecstasy as a door to higher worlds.

Thoughts on Alchemy

Voarchadumia, ars distincta ab Archimia et Sophia is the title of a work published by Giovanni Agostino Pantheo in 1530 in which the author attempts to create some order amongst various interpretations of the methods and aims of Alchemy. In 1518, Pantheo published Ars transmutationis metallicae and he was perhaps the first to relate the Alchemical Work (Cabalisticum archimicae artis magisterium) to the Kabbalah, by introducing the Hebrew names of the Tetragrammaton and Gematria into his treatises. With the term Voarchadumia he firmly specifies the difference between Alchemy, a term which refers to the ignorant and fraudulent and Archemy (from archè = principle and mia = one, therefore ‘the principle of unity’) namely, the True Art of the Transmutation of Metals and the Elixir of Life.

This treatise on ‘spiritual ‘metallurgy which inspired the greatest Hermeticists and alchemists of the epoch, narrates that Voarchadumia was also a Hermetic and Rosicrucian Society (probably of Portuguese origin though its most important general quarter was to be found in Venice). Custodian not only of esoteric mysteries and scientific knowledge (then heretical) but also practices of an alchemical, magic and tantric nature, it interwove occult relationships between Hermeticists and Scientists. It was often forced to remain hidden, along with the powerful of the time, in order to preserve and develop knowledge because of the obscurantism of the Church and the narrow mindedness of Aristotelian thinkers. Certainly the Jesuits, just as in the case of the Illuminati of Bavaria[1], sought, in every way possible, to obstruct these forms of spiritual search, free experimentation and circulation of knowledge. They even went so far as to produce counterfeit documents and certificates, many of which today, for example, are waved around as proof of the existence of a connection between the Bavarian Illuminati and the ‘Illuminati’ of conspiracy theorists, or those of the New World Order and its mysterious and powerful elite, behind which hide notorious alien hierarchies and ancestral families of hybrid terrestrials.

Without negating the existence of large scale political-economical influence, we need to neatly distance ourselves from conspiracy theories as they are presented today (most of all those with a disputable historical basis, which in turn trigger likewise disputable ‘Evemeristic’ reconstructions[2] of myths and human archetypes). Unfortunately, today the term Illuminati is now mostly used to definitively indicate this true or purportedly true global elite.

The Voarchadumia also seems to be linked with the so called ‘Hungarian Lodge’ (in its turn linked to the ‘Himalayan Lodge’) as well as a mysterious Secret Society operating in the XVI and XVII centuries in Europe, also noted in 1470 as ‘The Fog’ or the ‘Angelic Society’.

Such derivations lead back to more archaic fraternities like that of the (mythical) Naacal, however we must also bear in mind that all initiate societies seek to trace their origins back in time, sometimes alleging outlandish pseudo-historic concatenations to ancient Egypt, Atlantis and so on, rather than to Chaldean priests. Even though their historical attempts may prove to be inadequate, it is important to consider the symbolic and archetypical connections they have with such values at a spiritual level of elective affinities and magic revival.

The myth arising around this Rosicrucian Order with its bizarre name, talks of a document known as the Protocol of the Elders of Caldeirão, of Atlantean origins which is kept in the pyramids of Giza. The writings supposedly hand down the traditions of Agartha, a kingdom inside the Earth’s core governed by a ‘King of the World’, whose access is guarded by ethereal hyperborean guardians in strict alliance with the grand Masters such as: Hermes Trismegistus, John Dee, Nicolas Flamel, Cagliostro, Saint-Germain and therefore M.me Blavatsky etc. Members of the Voarchadumia, included many artists, philosophers, scientists and Renaissance alchemists, the same John Dee (the Order widely used the method of evocation outlined in the ‘Keys of Enoch’), Giordano Bruno, Giorgione, Francesco Colonna and perhaps Galileo.

There exists an Alchemy of Living Forces, an Alchemy of Spent Forces and a series of successive classifications (Tantra, Alchemy of Characters, Alchemy of the People, Alchemy of Metals, Genetic Alchemy, Spagyrical, Temporal and so on).

In the Horusian tradition, the term ‘Spent Forces’ is used to describe the energies closed inside minerals, in the Earth, Air, Water and Fire - even though the latter possesses peculiar characteristics that distinguish it from other ‘spent’ elements. –

If material Form is individuated into basic elements (although this is described in very different terms in Eastern Alchemy), the distinctive parameters for all planes of existence are:

·        The number of dimensions

·        The level of density

·        The temporal direction

It is clear how, at a certain level, Alchemy fuses with Esoteric Physics and the latter with Magic and therefore mysticism: the distinctions  between such disciplines however, should only be seen as purely conventional and didactically useful.

All the forces that derive from life are ‘Living Forces’, those that originate from living, human, animal and vegetable Form, or of a subtle or divine nature.

‘Living Forces’ contain vital essence, the intrinsic quality of living Form, the emotional element, the function or specific ability, or else the particular state of consciousness expressed in a given moment, represented and supported by a simulacrum (witness) that can also be – but not necessarily – an animal, a plant or its parts.

The fundamental precepts of Alchemy are: To Know - To Dare - To Want -To Be Silent.

The Alchemist investigates and evolves him/herself by means of the world; investigates and evolves the world by means of him/herself. The true aim of Alchemy is in fact to realize the Complete Human Being or to reassemble the Primordial Androgen. The whole of the alchemical process is a ritual and it is necessary to be ‘initiated’: The Esoteric Order is in its turn an alchemical Atanor (crucible) of Living Forces.

The interdisciplinary investigation into the extraordinary relationship between alchemical allegory and the psychology of the inner self can be found in the admirable work of Carl. G. Jung. On this occasion it is important to know that in every pure alchemical element, expediently dealt with and conserved, precise equilibriums and priorities of derivative laws are combined in a fixed and immutable composition.

Knowing the specific dominances, in every element, the alchemist is able to indirectly manipulate the fundamental laws of our world by using alchemical elements, rather than operating directly on the time matrices which is the goal of Magic - although at a higher level – be it alchemical or magic/realizational. This relationship with reality is searched for inside the self, where the functions of the world are recognized as expressions of one’s own working Consciousness.

By Alchemy we are talking about operating on ‘maya’, of finding the correspondences for moving – by means of the essences – the fundamental constituents of the forces of Nature, while with Alchemy and Magick – the term used by Crowley to distinguish this high level of Magic from its lower and more distorted expressions – we explore the reflections of our world/consciousness on the real and vice versa.

When dealing with Alchemy it is necessary to mention an important concept that is often neglected: the Shadow element.

In this world where we forget
We are shadows of who we are,
And the real actions we perform
In the other world, where we live as souls,
Are here wry grins and appearances.

                                                          Fernando Pessoa

The existence of ‘something’ is always preceded by the idea of its absence, or else by its non-existence. After all, in our daily lives is it not true to say that we only realize the value of something when it is missing?

When a universe is born a counter universe, is also born as compensation (0 = (+1) + (-1)): the shadow universe, or ‘universe B’. It has nothing to do with anti-matter and is a profound and complete antithesis: an immaterial universe.

In fact, from the processes of the cosmic creation, described in the first chapter, the manifestation of the universe of Form not only emanates at various levels and existential planes, but also its ‘shadow’: a counter-universe whose door of  access is represented on the Tree of Life, by the mysterious and controversial sphere of Daath. There we find the point of union (and separation) not between mass and energy, but between the Absolute and the Universe, between Empty and Full, between Creator and Creation, between Reality and Illusion, between Knowledge and the Abyss.

In the same way, when we ‘create’ an element in alchemical operations, we ‘extract’ it from the All and, as compensation, the corresponding counter-element is generated in the shadow universe.

For example, in Hebrew tradition, revived and re-elaborated by modern esoteric schools of thought, the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, with its Sephiroth, represents the universe as luminous and manifest. But another universe also exists, that of the shadowy and destructive Qliphoth: the dark side of that tradition.

The Alchemist has to manage both sides of reality harmoniously and elevate him/herself above duality and appearances.

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[1] The Illuminati or to be more precise the Order of the Illuminati, is the name of a secret Bavarian society of the XVIII century. The name has been associated, for the most part wrongly, with numerous secret societies of occult origin. The Order of the Illuminati was founded in Ingolstadt (Germany) in 1776 by Johann Adam Weishaupt (1748-1830). At the beginning its members were just university students, with the declared intent of promoting the works of ‘Lumi’ inside the state of Bavaria, which prohibited many such writings. In reality, the thought of Adam Weishaupt which was much more occult, sustained that “Every man is capable of finding the Inner Light inside of himself... becomes equal to Jesus, that is Man-King...”. The society was formed as an alternative to the newly born German Masonry, maintaining its character of secrecy and hierarchical divisions on the basis of initiation. According to the judicial deposition of Professor Renner during the legal proceedings in Bavaria: “The Order of the Illuminati should be clearly distinguished from that of the Freemasons. But this difference is not recognized by simple Freemasons, neither by new initiates of the Minervale Grade. The Illuminati no longer fear to be recognized by this name”. From the Middle Ages to modern times various organizations have defined themselves as the ‘Illuminati’ for example: the Confraternity of the Free Spirit, the Rosicrucians, the Alumbrados, the Illuminés, the Martinists and the Palladists.

From the 1800’s, especially in the field of conspiracy theories, a widespread socio-pathological phenomenon for a couple of centuries if not more, the term ‘Illuminati’ has been generally associated with followers of secret societies inspired by occult a/o globalist ideas, independent of whether they were in fact really correlated to the Order of the Illuminati: Skull & Bones, Round Table, Pilgrim Society, Fabian Society, Royal Institute of International Affairs, Council on Foreign Relations, Bohemian Club, Bilderberg Group, the Trilateral Commission, the Club of Rome, the Carnegie Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation etc.

[2] Evemerism was a position on the philosophy of religion held by Evemero, historian and philosopher of the Hellenistic age who sustained that the gods represent deified human subjects.