The Red Book (Liber Novus)
Sitting bored at work today, I was perusing Google News when I came across this article:
The Holy Grail of the Subconscious
It’s a lengthy read, but one that completely fascinated me. I’ve always been a fan of Carl Jung and his dream analysis, but I’d never heard of the “mythical” Red Book–an illuminated manuscript, bound in red leather, that he himself claimed was his greatest work. It has never been visible to the public at large and has never been studied by academia–it took a tremendous amount of diplomacy to convince the Jung family to retrieve the book from its secret location and allow high-res scanners to capture the elegant German writing and archetypal artistry of Jung while he explored the depths of his subconscious. The contents laid the groundwork for the Jungian method of psychoanalysis, but the family has been terrified that the never-before-published work would cast Jung as a madman, as its contents are creatively schizophrenic and at times disturbing. Jung did not hold back, and the Liber Novus (as he called the Red Book) captured all the gory details of his visions, dreams, and reveries.
I am going to try to procure a copy if at all possible–the first edition print run is only 5,000 copies, and each copy is already priced at over $100. Amazon has already sold out, and some other sites have started jacking up the prices… If this effort fails, I know what I’m going to request at Christmas.
Too Bad I Didn’t Know About This Before Naming The Blog…
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The ashen faggot (sometimes called ashton fagot) is an old English Christmas tradition from Devon and Somerset, similar to that of the Yule log and related to the wassail tradition. The wassail party passes around a bundle of ash sticks, twigs or branches—the ashen faggot—bound with green ash withies, which is then placed onto the fire. As each binding bursts, the watchers toast it with a drink. Some traditions had the unmarried women each choosing a withy, and the first one whose tie snapped would be married the next year.
When the bindings have all burst and the bundle has fallen loose, each person who plans to host the festivities next year takes one of the half-burned ash sticks and saves it until the following Christmas, when it will go in the centre of their own ashen faggot. The tradition endures (or has been resurrected) in many places; according to an article in the Winter 2005 issue of Devon Talk, the Harbour Inn in Axmouth annually builds an ashen faggot six feet high and three feet wide for their huge pub fireplace.
Some traditions held that not burning the ashen faggot in your house brought bad luck, or that having an ashen faggot in the house kept the Devil away. Ash was likely chosen because the ash tree has a long pedigree of magical associations: perhaps the most important is the Yggdrasil of Norse mythology, also known as the World Ash Tree.
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Happy holidays everyone!
Angelina as Mother Goddess
Oh, Angelina. I saw this and immediately thought of Jackie Sue. This picture looks like something straight out of the mythology or world religion textbooks.
A Book Worth Destroying, Pt. 2
At nine years of age, I was convinced that my father’s new girlfriend was a witch. There was something terrible about her that I couldn’t quite place, but that chilled me to the bone. She was my father’s second or third girlfriend following my parents’ divorce, and she was a strange one. Even to this day, I will not utter her name, but will refer to her as P.
P. had a perpetual beholden attitude that seemed like a fakey, saccharine, somewhat medicated demeanor. She went out of her way to try to ingratiate herself to me; her attention was unsettling, even back then. Frequently she would take me on her lap and ask me to read to her; generally this reading took the form of comic strips. I would read her a strip, and she would just laugh and laugh, even when the strip wasn’t that funny.
To me, this bizarre behavior was clearly evidence of occult leanings. That, along with her bizarre collection of books about ancient ruins and her incredibly unusual music collection consisting of unknown and mysterious musicians that I am unable to name to this day.
I remember on a particular evening, my father, P. and I went to town for dinner, and en route, P. looked out the window, saw the full moon, and exclaimed “Oh my God!”
“What?” we asked.
“I finally see it!” she said. “I finally see the man in the moon!”
She then proceeded to talk about how her grandmother always told her about the man in the moon, but that she’d never been able to see it… until now. She genuinely wept as she looked up at the moon and proceeded to describe the features she saw. From the back seat, I simply sighed and shook my head in disbelief.
This woman somehow held my father captive with some kind of dark enchantment, that’s all there was to it. There was no fucking way that my father would fall for such a woman, who half the time seemed like she was just faking being batshit insane and the other half of the time seemed to be the genuine article.
Sometime during their brief time together, P. appeared at my father’s house one day with a thick yellow book in tow. She knelt down and presented it to me.
“Here is a thesaurus,” she said. “You are so smart Josh and are always using so many big words, you should like this.” I thanked her for the book and proceeded to completely forget about it. One must never accept gifts from witches, at least not willingly.
It was a few weeks after this that P.’s son, a fellow about six years my senior, sexually abused me.
The memories of that night haunted me well into my adulthood, confounding my sexuality and leading me to belive that I’d been broken permanently from the event. Every time I would look at a man, I would feel a tremendous sense of guilt and shame and blame the incident for why I felt the things I was feeling. Suddenly I was a child again in glow-in-the-dark Transformers pajamas, wondering what the hell was happening. I had been corrupted, I had been turned, I had been made into a sexual deviant… because of that fucking witch’s son. Without P.’s interference in the life of my father, the son would have never crossed my path, and it wouldn’t have taken me until the next millenium to sort out my issues and reconstruct a self I could live with.
And so now, nearly 20 years later, the book, the gift from the witch, has resurfaced and is once again in my possession. On the first page is an inscription that it was given to me “with love”, signed by P. and dated 1990.
The thesaurus shall be destroyed, and the destruction of each page will occur with the same “love” that was shown to me by my hellish benefactors.
A Book Worth Destroying, Pt. 1
A common theme in mythic and popular culture is the great man who is nigh impervious to corruption or destruction from the world except for a single, often inconspicuous weakness. In the ancient world, we have the examples of Balder and Achilles, and even in the present day, pop culture icons like Superman perpetuate the meme of the almost-invincible man.
This weekend I unknowingly found myself fulfilling this role in my own life. Though I am far from immune to the slings and arrows of the world, I am comfortable in my own identity and worldview, and with the reality that I am constructing. But all it took was a single object to rattle my foundations and take me back to the time in my life when all hope was lost, when I was filled with fear and self-loathing and every other conceivable negative emotion. Where Balder had his mistletoe, Achilles had his heel, and Superman had his kryptonite, I have a 20-year-old thesaurus.
It is a specific copy that I thought no longer existed… a copy that must be destroyed.
Molech, Mithras, and Dagon
Molech. “King”. The sun god of the Canaanites (Ammonites?) in old Palestine and sometimes associated with the Sumerian Baal, although Moloch (or Molekh) was entirely malevolent. In the 8th-6th century BCE, firstborn children were sacrificed to him by the Israelites in the Valleye of Hinnom, south-east of Jerusalem (see also Gehenna). These sacrifices to the sun god were made to renew the strength of the sun fire. This ritual was probably borrowed from surrounding nations, and was also popular in ancient Carthage.
Moloch was represented as a huge bronze statue with the head of a bull. The statue was hollow, and inside there burned a fire which colored the Moloch a glowing red. Children were placed on the hands of the statue. Through an ingenious system the hands were raised to the mouth (as if Moloch were eating) and the children fell into the fire where they were consumed by the flames. The people gathered before the Moloch were dancing on the sounds of flutes and tambourines to drown out the screams of the victims.
According to some sources, the Moloch in the Old Testament is not a god, but a specific form of sacrifice.
“Moloch.” Encyclopedia Mythica from Encyclopedia Mythica Online.
http://www.pantheon.org/articles/m/moloch.html
[Accessed August 23, 2007].
Mithras. Mithras was the nominal object of devotion in a Greco-Roman mystery religion of late antiquity. The cult, which was known as the Mysteries of Mithras and was reserved for male initiates only, developed in the eastern Mediterranean around the 1st century and continued to be practiced throughout the Roman Empire until about the 5th century.
In every Mithraic temple, the place of honor was occupied by a representation of Mithras killing a sacred bull which was associated with spring, called a tauroctony. In the depiction, Mithras, wearing a Phrygian cap and pants, slays the bull from above while (usually) looking away. A serpent that symbolizes the earth and a dog seems to drink from the bull’s open wound (which often spills blood but occasionally grain), and a scorpion (sign for autumn) attacks the bull’s testicles sapping the bull for strength. Sometimes, a raven or crow is also present, and sometimes also a goblet and small lion. Cautes and Cautopates, the celestial twins of light and darkness, are torch-bearers, standing on either side with their legs crossed, Cautes with his brand pointing up and Cautopates with his turned down. Above Mithras, the symbols for Sol and Luna are present in the starry night sky.
(from Wikipedia and other sources)
Dagon. Dagon was the god of the Philistines. This image shows that the idol was represented in the combination of both man and fish. The name “Dagon” is derived from “dag” which means “fish.” Although there was a deep affection from Dagon’s worshippers to their deity, the symbol of a fish in human form was really meant to represent fertility and the vivifying powers of nature and reproduction.
The Babylonians had a myth that a being emerged from the Erythraean Sea who was part man and part fish and thus adopted the deity into their culture in their earliest days in history. Their have also been discoveries of the fish-god in the sculptures found in Nineveh, Assyria.
… Next came one
Who mourned in earnest, when the captive ark
Maimed his brute image, head and hands lopt off,
In his own temple, on the grunsel-edge,
Where he fell flat and shamed his worshippers:
Dagon his name, sea-monster, upward man
And downward fish; yet had his temple high
Reared in Azotus, dreaded through the coast
Of Palestine, in Gath and Ascalon,
And Accaron and Gaza’s frontier bounds.
–John Milton, Paradise Lost
Koschei the Deathless
Koschei, the evil and gaunt figure from Russian folklore, could very well have been an inspiration for Azalin Rex. There might even be a bit of the old Lord Voldemort there, what with the whole splitting-off of the soul thing and all.
For some reason, I’ve always found it interesting to see the recycling of archetypes in contemporary media.
The V-Files: Esoterica
(Commentary: These articles encompass some of the more obscure metaphysical topics that interest me. I’ve always had more than a passing interest in the supernatural and in the creative representation of the mysteries of the world, especially across different cultures. My favorite place of all is the space where the unknown intersects with the imagination. The article “Gnosticism Redux” is a reworked combination of two articles on the subject, and the same is true of the “Excerpts on Tulpas” article. The last is unpublished but greatly inspired by various other articles I’ve written on the subject over the years.)
Eschatology and the Mayan Calendar
(Original Air Date: 09/10/05)
Gnosticism Redux
(Original Air Dates: 09/12/05, 12/23/05)
Theosophy and the Kali Yuga
(Original Air Date: 01/08/06)
Excerpts on Tulpas
(Original Air Date: 01/14/06)
The Ouroboros
(Original Air Date: Unaired)
~~~~~~~
Eschatology and the Mayan Calendar
In my experience, eschatology is one of those things that generally attracts two type of people: those evangelical Christians who believe that Apocalypse is at hand, or those antisocial miscreants who wish the world would hurry up and end. (I first approached the topic as the latter, before I “rediscovered my humanity,” as it were.) Man’s fascination for when the world will end is certainly not a new phenomenon, and over the years, various “prophets” and doomsday cults have gained prominence playing on people’s fear of the End (big E), only to be proven incorrect. Some, like the followers of William Miller, went on to adopt less apocalyptic religious trappings; others, like the followers of Marshall Applewhite, did not come to a happy end, to put it mildly.
If you do a search on Google for “eschatology,” you will come across many websites that will point to various supposedly apparent fulfillments of events in the Book of Revelation, along with stern admonishments to “prepare for the end of the world.” Some groups actively seek to bring about the end of the world by rolling up their sleeves and attempting to fulfill apocalyptic prophesies themselves. Many evangelical Christians are of this bent; I personally know of people attending fundraisers here in my small Tennessee hometown where the goal was to raise money so that such and such temple could be rebuilt, because it was prophesied that Christ would return only after said temple was rebuilt. These are many of the same people who voted for Bush; I heard these same people back in November 2004 making plentiful allusions to Iraq being the present-day site of Babylon, and the war was just more proof that “the end times are near.” I’m sure it would be fascinating and revealing to perform psychological studies on the minds of such people with an apocalyptic bent. It might help explain some of their motivations.
For those looking outside the realm of Christianity for clues about a possible end of the world, there are several places to research. Perhaps the most famous of these is the End of the Mayan Calendar. The Mayans, historically famous for their inexplicably accurate and detailed Calendar, mysteriously saw fit to end their calendar on December 21, 2012. While at first this seems like a random date, it actually corresponds to the Winter Solstice of that year. (See this well-researched article for more mundane explanations as to why the calendar might end on this date.) The traditional argument is that, if the Mayans were able to accurately chart a calendar hundreds of years into the future, why did they choose this date to end their Calendar? Did they simply lose interest, or did they see this as the literal End of Time? I’m inclined to take a skeptical view and say that they had to end their calendar somewhere, and they chose to end their Calendar on the last astronomically significant day of the year; namely, the Winter Solstice.
It should be pointed out, however, that space-age scholar, shaman, and guru Terence McKenna came up with his own theory about the end of world, which he dubs “Timewave Zero,” based on a series of calculations on the King Wen sequence of hexagrams in the traditional Chinese divination tool, the I Ching. Working through the sequence, and in ignorance of the Mayan calendar’s end date, McKenna calculated the date on which the structure of time collapsed to a single point to be December 21, 2012. When McKenna later learned the date corresponded to the end of Mayan calendar, he used this fact to lend credence to his calculations.
Personally, I remain skeptical that the world will end on 12/21/12. I won’t completely rule out some sort of calamity on that date, though, if only in the form of some believers taking it upon themselves to make it a self-fulfilling prophecy. Those who believe “something” will happen on that date do not necessarily believe that everything will end at that time, but that there may be a major paradigm shift, such as a visit with extraterrestrials, a terrible disaster (either natural or human in origin), or a monumentally important scientific discovery or breakthrough. Whatever the case may be, I’m planning on spending that day surrounded by loved ones and watching the news and the world around me. If it really is my last day of life as I know it, I want it to be a good one.
Gnosticism Redux
To me, gnosticism is one of the most fascinating subjects of religious study, because it fills my mind with all sorts of “what if?” scenarios and possibilities. I’ve not had a chance to fully explore the Nag Hammadi library yet, but I can wholeheartedly recommend the Gospel of Thomas to every person who recognizes the disparity between the teachings of Christ and the actions of his modern-day followers. Think there may be more to the story than King James’s biblical editors let on? My friend, you have no idea…
So what is gnosticism? Those of you familiar with the book The Da Vinci Code and/or the movie “Stigmata” have had a small taste of gnosticism and the Nag Hammadi already. Here is an excellent, tongue-in-cheek introduction to gnosticism from the Rotten Library, and of course there is always the Wikipedia article. For further reference, I also recommend this site. Those of you interested in exploring the possibilities suggested by The Da Vinci Code as well as the book Holy Blood, Holy Grail might find some essays to your interest here.
I would also like to point out something omitted from the article: the concept of gnosis also plays a big role in the writings of several “magicians”, most notably Austin Osman Spare, an associate of Crowley’s who incorporated gnosis as a key component (if not the key component) in his style of magical practice and direction of will.
As a demonstration of the real and practical application of this school of thought, I now present my recipe for gnostic cheese dip, which I always make around the holidays and which pleases even the most narrow-minded folks at my get-togethers. Note that if your guests are biased against porcine flesh, you may substitute ground beef, turkey, or even soy protein for the sausage. Also note that this may actually be your own recipe if you are a solipsist.
1 lb. sausage (mild or hot)
1 small onion, chopped (optional)
1 pkg. VelveetaTM
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1 can Ro-TelTM diced tomatoes with green chilies
1 copy of the Nag Hammadi library
Tortilla chips, crackers, pita bread, naan, etc.
-. In a crock pot, add the Velveeta, cream of mushroom soup, and tomatoes with chilies. Turn pot on low heat if you like, or high heat will do nicely as well. In an illusory world, the temperatures of crock pots are pretty insignificant.
-. In a saucepan, sautee the sausage with the onions until brown, using a wooden spoon to stir and chunk the sausage into small bits. (If using a substitute for sausage, this would be a good time to add whatever seasonings you like to the meat.) You can adjust the “chunkiness” of the meat to your personal preference here, based on an intuitive understanding of your innermost desires concerning cheese dip. (After all, the True God probably cares less about meat chunks and cheesy substances, so just go nuts here and chunk it how you like it.) Drain the meat when it is fully cooked.
-. Add the sauteed meat and onions to the crock pot and stir well. Put the lid on the crock pot and adjust the heat to whatever setting you prefer.
-. Go into the den, take off your shoes (if you are wearing any), get comfortable, and read selections from the Nag Hammadi library. Pause every 10-15 minutes or so and go back into the kitchen to stir the cheese dip so it doesn’t stick. The dip will be done in about an hour or so, though this really depends on what setting the crock pot is on.
-. When ready to serve, arrange chips, crackers, and/or bread pieces in a circle on a circular serving dish, to represent the infinity of the True God even while partaking in the illusory dips of this world. Ladle some of the cheese dip out into a serving dish that is decorated with an image of a serpent nailed to a cross, or the Merovingian bees, or a fleur-de-lis, any other such insignias. When your friends and family consume all the cheese dip and see the image in the dish, explain to them what it means.
-. If in the rare event there is any cheese dip left, it will keep for a couple of days. It’s good to use to make nachos, and also makes a good chili substitute for hot dogs. It can be messy though, so take care if you intend to eat it while reading any ancient texts.
Theosophy and the Kali Yuga
Theosophy, that great marriage of ecumenism and mysticism, would certainly be nothing if not for the work of Madame Blavatsky, whose work sought to isolate that portion of the truth that could be gleaned from all world religions. Her many articles on various world myths and faiths were widely distributed amongst members of her Theosophical Society, which had its heyday from the 1870s to the 1920s. Though Blavatsky is commonly (and perhaps, not incorrectly) labeled a fraud, a racist, and a hack, her works (and those of her pupils) still make for some interesting period reading. The following dialogue, found here, is about the Kali Yuga, the last of the four ages of existence in Hinduism, and the age whose zeitgeist is embodied by the destructive goddess Kali.
THE KALI YUGA – THE PRESENT AGE
A Theosophical Article by William Q. Judge
Student. – I am very much puzzled about the present age. Some theosophists seem to abhor it as if wishing to be taken away from it altogether, inveighing against modern inventions such as the telegraph, railways, machinery, and the like, and bewailing the disappearance of former civilizations. Others take a different view, insisting that this is a better time than any other, and hailing modern methods as the best. Tell me, please, which of these is right, or, if both are wrong, what ought we to know about the age we live in.
Sage. – The teachers of Truth know all about this age. But they do not mistake the present century for the whole cycle. The older times of European history, for example, when might was right and when darkness prevailed over Western nations, was as much a part of this age, from the standpoint of the Masters, as is the present hour, for the Yuga – to use a sanscrit [sic] word – in which we are now had begun many thousands of years before. And during that period of European darkness, although this Yuga had already begun, there was much light, learning, and civilization in India and China. The meaning of the words “present age” must therefore be extended over a far greater period than is at present assigned. In fact, modern science has reached no definite conclusion yet as to what should properly be called “an age,” and the truth of the Eastern doctrine is denied. Hence we find writers speaking of the “Golden Age,” the “Iron Age,” and so on, whereas they are only parts of the real age that began so far back that modern archaeologists deny it altogether.
Student. – What is the sanscrit [sic] name for this age, and what is its meaning?
Sage. – The sanscrit [sic] is “Kali,” which added to Yuga gives us “Kali-Yuga.” The meaning of it is “Dark Age.” Its approach was known to the ancients, its characteristics are described in the Indian poem “The Mahabharata.” As I said that it takes in an immense period of the glorious part of Indian history, there is no chance for anyone to be jealous and to say that we are comparing the present hour with that wonderful division of Indian development.
Student. – What are the characteristics to which you refer, by which Kali-Yuga may be known?
Sage. – As its name implies, darkness is the chief. This of course is not deducible by comparing today with 800 A.D., for this would be no comparison at all. The present century is certainly ahead of the middle ages, but as compared with the preceding Yuga it is dark. To the Occultist, material advancement is not of the quality of light, and he finds no proof of progress in merely mechanical contrivances that give comfort to a few of the human family while the many are in misery. For the darkness he would have to point but to one nation, even the great American Republic. Here he sees a mere extension of the habits and life of the Europe from which it sprang; here a great experiment with entirely new conditions and material was tried; here for many years very little poverty was known; but here today there is as much grinding poverty as anywhere, and as large a criminal class with corresponding prisons as in Europe, and more than in India. Again, the great thirst for riches and material betterment, while spiritual life is to a great extent ignored, is regarded by us as darkness. The great conflict already begun between the wealthy classes and the poorer is a sign of darkness. Were spiritual light prevalent, the rich and the poor would still be with us, for Karma cannot be blotted out, but the poor would know how to accept their lot and the rich how to improve the poor; now, on the contrary, the rich wonder why the poor do not go to the poorhouse, meanwhile seeking in the laws for cures for strikes and socialism, and the poor continually growl at fate and their supposed oppressors. All this is of the quality of spiritual darkness.
Student. – Is it wise to inquire as to the periods when the cycle changes, and to speculate on the great asronomical [sic] or other changes that herald a turn.
Sage. – It is not. There is an old saying that the gods are jealous about these things, not wishing mortals to know them. We may analyze the age, but it is better not to attempt to fix the hour of a change of cycle. Besides that, you will be unable to settle it, because a cycle does not begin on a day or year clear of any other cycle; they interblend, so that, although the wheel of one period is still turning, the initial point of another has already arrived.
Student. – Are these some of the reasons why Mr. Sinnett was not given certain definite periods of years about which he asked?
Sage. – Yes.
Student. – Has the age in which one lives any effect on the student; and what is it?
Sage. – It has effect on every one, but the student after passing along in his development feels the effect more than the ordinary man. Were it otherwise, the sincere and aspiring students all over the world would advance at once to those heights towards which they strive. It takes a very strong soul to hold back the age’s heavy hand, and it is all the more difficult because that influence, being a part of the student’s larger life, is not so well understood by him. It operates in the same way as a structural defect in a vessel. All the inner as well as the outer fibre of the man is the result of the long centuries of earthly lives lived here by his ancestors. These sow seeds of thought and physical tendencies in a way that you cannot comprehend. All those tendencies affect him. Many powers once possessed are hidden so deep as to be unseen, and he struggles against obstacles constructed ages ago. Further yet are the peculiar alterations brought about in the astral world. It, being at once a photographic plate, so to say, and also a reflector, has become the keeper of the mistakes of ages past which it continually reflects upon us from a plane to which most of us are strangers. In that sense therefore, free as we suppose ourselves, we are walking about completely hypnotized by the past, acting blindly under the suggestions thus cast upon us.
Student. – Was that why Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”?
Sage. – That was one meaning. In one aspect they acted blindly, impelled by the age, thinking they were right.
Regarding these astral alterations, you will remember how in the time of Julian the seers reported that they could see the gods, but they were decaying, some headless, others flaccid, others minus limbs, and all appearing weak. The reverence for these ideals was departing, and their astral pictures had already begun to fade.
Student. – What mitigation is there about this age? Is there nothing at all to relieve the picture?
Sage. – There is one thing peculiar to the present Kali-Yuga that may be used by the Student. All causes now bring about their effects much more rapidly than in any other or better age. A sincere lover of the race can accomplish more in three incarnations under Kali-Yuga’s reign than he could in a much greater number in any other age. Thus by bearing all the manifold troubles of this Age and steadily triumphing, the object of his efforts will be more quickly realized, for, while the obstacles seem great, the powers to be invoked can be reached more quickly.
Student. – Even if this is, spiritually considered, a Dark Age, is it not in part redeemed by the increasing triumphs of mind over matter, and by the effects of science in mitigating human ills, such as the causes of disease, disease itself, cruelty, intolerance, bad laws, etc.?
Sage. – Yes, these are mitigations of the darkness in just the same way that a lamp gives some light at night but does not restore daylight. In this age there are great triumphs of science, but they are nearly all directed to effects and do not take away the causes of the evils. Great strides have been made in the arts and in cure of diseases, but in the future, as the flower of our civilization unfolds, new diseases will arise and more strange disorders will be known, springing from causes that lie deep in the minds of men and which can only be eradicated by spiritual living.
Student. – Admitting all you say, are not we, as Theosophists, to welcome every discovery of truth in any field, especially such truth as lessens suffering or enlarges the moral sense?
Sage. – This is our duty. All truths discovered must be parts of the one Absolute Truth, and so much added to the sum of our outer knowledge. There will always be a large number of men who seek for these parts of truth, and others who try to alleviate present human misery. They each do a great and appointed work that no true Theosophist should ignore. And it is also the duty of the latter to make similar efforts when possible, for Theosophy is a dead thing if it is not turned into the life. At the same time, no one of us may be the judge of just how much or how little our brother is doing in that direction. If he does all that he can and knows how to do, he does his whole present duty.
Student. – I fear that a hostile attitude by Occult teachers towards the learning and philanthropy of the time may arouse prejudice against Theosophy and Occultism, and needlessly impede the spread of Truth. May it not be so?
Sage. – The real Occult Teachers have no hostile attitude toward these things. If some persons, who like theosophy and try to spread it, take such a position, they do not thereby alter the one assumed by the real Teachers who work with all classes of men and use every possible instrument for good. But at the same time we have found that an excess of the technical and special knowledge of the day very often acts to prevent men from apprehending the truth.
Student. – Are there any causes, other than the spread of Theosophy, which may operate to reverse the present drift towards materialism?
Sage. – The spread of the knowledge of the laws of Karma and Reincarnation and of a belief in the absolute spiritual unity of all beings will alone prevent this drift. The cycle must, however, run its course, and until that is ended all beneficial causes will of necessity act slowly and not to the extent they would in a brighter age. As each student lives a better life and by his example imprints upon the astral light the picture of a higher aspiration acted in the world, he thus aids souls of advanced development to descend from other spheres where the cycles are so dark that they can no longer stay there.
Student. – Accept my thanks for your instruction.
Sage. – May you reach the terrace of enlightenment.
Path, April, 1888
Excerpts on Tulpas
Below are two articles I found on tulpas. Also, at right is a picture of the tulpa that figured into the plot of the X-Files episode entitled “Arcadia”. I personally think tulpas would probably look rather less like men wearing plastic garbage bags and Halloween masks and more like ephemeral, ghost-like forms. But who the hell am I to say what a tulpa is supposed to look like, eh? Readers who enjoy these excerpts might do well to learn more about Alexandra David-Neel by clicking here.
When Alexandra David-Neel journeyed through Tibet, one of the many mystical techniques she studied was that of tulpa creation. A tulpa, according to traditional Tibetan doctrines, is an entity created by an act of imagination, rather like the fictional characters of a novelist, except that tulpas are not written down. David-Neel became so interested in the concept that she decided to try to create one.
The method involved was essentially intense concentration and visualization. David-Neel’s tulpa began its existence as a plump, benign little monk, similar to Friar Tuck. It was at first entirely subjective, but gradually, with practice, she was able to visualize the tulpa out there, like an imaginary ghost flitting about the real world.
In time the vision grew in clarity and substance until it was indistinguishable from physical reality-a sort of self-induced hallucination. But the day came when the hallucination slipped from her conscious control. She discovered that the monk would appear from time to time when she had not willed it. Furthermore her friendly little figure was slimming down and taking on a distinctly sinister aspect.
Eventually her companions, who where unaware of the mental disciplines she was practicing, began to ask about the “stranger” who had turned up in their camp-a clear indication that a creature which was no more that solidified imagination had definite objective reality.
At this point, David-Neel decided things had gone too far and applied different lamaist techniques to reabsorb the creature into her own mind. The tulpa proved very unwillling to face destruction in this way so that the process took several weeks and left its creator exhausted.
- Excerpt from “Body, Mind & Spirit – A Dictionary of New Age Ideas”
There are… apparations that make public appearances. Some of these are said to be the perceptible double–the etheric counterpart–of a living person who is undergoing an out-of-body experience. Even more mysterious are the externalized perceptible manifestations of something whose existence originated in the mind of its creator by virtue of that person’s incredible powers of concentration, visualization, and other, more occult efforts of mind. In Tibet, where such things are practiced, a ghost of this kind is called a tulpa.
A tulpa is usually produced by a skilled magician or yogi, although in some cases it is said to arise from the collective imagination of superstitious villagers, say, or of travelers passing through some sinister tract of country. A tulpa, the Tibetans claim, may sometimes be so vigorous as to produce its own secondary emanation, known as a yang-tul, and this may, in turn, produce an emanation of the third degree, a nying-tul. Adepts able to originate such multiple manifestations are rare and usually found among the Buddhist saints, or bodhisattvas. Some are able to produce 10 different kinds of tulpa. These include apparently animate beings–whether human, animal, or supernatural–and those emanations that appear in the dreams of whomever the bodhisattva intends to help…
- Excerpt from “Mind Creatures” in the 1982 Reader’s Digest anthology Mysteries of the Unexplained
The Ouroboros
The snake that eats its own tail is a mystical image that has appeared in occult literature, Gnostic texts, folklore, alchemy, and other places throughout the years, and in traditions that span the globe. From the Norse Jormungandr to the Hebrew Leviathan, Ouroboros shows up world cultures more often than not, and Carl Jung even suggested that it was one of the great archetypes of man’s subconscious.
The circular shape evokes the infinity of the ring, which is only achieved when the serpent devours itself. Indeed, the very symbol of infinity is commonly held to derive from the symbol of Ouroboros. The metaphor of the snake eating its tail has been interpreted many ways over the years, to represent things as varied as the eternal search for truth, renewal through self-destruction, preservation by relying upon oneself, and so on. The image has also been described as homoerotic in its overtones, and I’ve heard some argue that the symbol represents the fantasy shared by all men: autofellatio. Those of a spiritual bent ascribe to the symbol the “eternal return” of all life to its original state, where as those of a more rational worldview could see how ideas such as tautology and recursion could arise from the symbol.
I personally see it as both a positive and negative symbol, showing the permanent connection between life and death and a link between self-preservation and self-destruction. As such, it represents an understanding of the necessity of certain dualities in life, and an ideal balance of opposites, timeless and free of outside influences and intervention.
The Axis of Ostara
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The Old Popularity Index
