Working with Tiphareth
and The Winged Bull
Number of meditations: 8 + Ritual
Possible time frame: 2–3 months
As before, use the preparatory exercises, and before beginning this sequence perform again the meditation on Lilith, the guide and psychopomp. Let her advise you as to how to begin this stage and build it on the work of Malkuth and Yesod. Be prepared to sit with her and do not be concerned with explicit instructions: connect to a feeling of beauty, harmony, and the wider life, and trust your instincts and intuition.
When you feel ready to embark, you will repeat the first part of the Lilith meditation before every meditation:
You form and step into the body of light and connect to the ancient city of London, walking along the banks of the Thames on a misty evening.
Feel the rhythm of walking into the mist, into mystery and silence … A little way ahead of you, become aware of the figure of a woman with a broad-brimmed hat and a black cloak.
Let yourself follow her—your rhythm matching hers as she leads you onwards, across a bridge to the other side of the river …
Meditation 1: Ted Wandering in London—
Malkuth of Tiphareth
Follow Lilith across the bridge and find yourself wandering around London with Ted Murchison, down at heel, hungry and chilly in the dusk. Feel his restlessness and absence of place. Contemplate his brother and sister-in-law, the moralistic vicar, and the censorious vicar’s wife. Be aware of the strength and energy of his body and the absence of any direction: feel his rage and resentment.
Let the image and felt experience of Ted in his discomfort of body and mind bring you to the similar places in your own life as you become the wingless, chained bull. Maintain a detached awareness in your body of light as you ask yourself, what frustrates you and makes you feel helpless in the world? From the distance of this safe internal place, allow that image to embody in you and notice the response of your deeper nature. Be aware that, by simply identifying and noticing, you are starting a process of personal change that will free you from the accumulated resentments of your present life.
Let the image of Ted fade, and as you turn and walk back across the bridge, find yourself sitting robed and hooded in the body of light and contemplate the resonances in your body and through your life. When you are ready, consciously let those feelings sink deep within. Allow the presence of your physical self to reestablish its supremacy and rejoin your normal life. Through your awareness, the process of integration has begun.
This meditation need not take long, but it should be pursued for about a week, and with each repetition you will feel a shift that gradually prepares you for the next stage.
Meditation 2: The Underworld Way—
Malkuth to Yesod
The Journey to the British Museum
From the bridge, walk in your vision through the misty streets of London, feeling the chained and restless bull within you. Surrender to its energy and let it lead the way past leafy squares and along a row of tall, black railings dripping with fog dew, until you turn into a large gateway. … Find yourself in the huge expanse of the courtyard of the British Museum, seeing its frontage like a Grecian temple with pillars and portico. Let the mist embrace you and watch as it swirls around the pillars. You feel in limbo.
Stepping forward with a sudden resolution, you walk through the pillars. Notice how the mist comes with you into the museum. Feel the dim warmth, and, through the wreathing mist find yourself suddenly encountering the winged bull of Babylon, guardian and gatekeeper of the temple. Feel how the chained bull within you responds as you gaze up at his stern, kind face.
Let the images fade and sit in the body of light, feeling the weight of the pendant over your heart. Contemplate the journey and the challenge, before concluding in the usual way.
Meditation 3: The British Museum—
The Temple of Yesod
After the usual preliminary exercises, your accustomed walk over the bridge leads you back into the British Museum, where you have reached an understanding with the gatekeeper, the winged bull. Something in you has answered his challenge, and with a nod of recognition you pass him. You are free to explore, here in the treasure house of images: wander slowly through the galleries, through the pantheons, through Greek and Roman, Celtic, Meso-American, Pacific Islands, Mesopotamian, and Egyptian. You study the gods and as you do so, it is as if they come to life and study you. As they do, you touch the reflection of them within you. You find the quickness of Hermes, the sexuality and beauty of Aphrodite, the potency of Zeus. You come across one section where the gods seem misshapen and unformed, and here too you find reflections of your nature.
You are deeply aware of the chained and wingless bull and the absence of direction. You wander into the Egyptian gallery and your attention is drawn to a fragment. It is a vast, clenched hand of rose-red granite—a hand of power, which you feel emerging out of the mist of the beginning times. In that moment it holds all that you lack, and for a moment the bull within you has wings and feels held in that hand.
Do this for seven days; contemplate the gods and witness them coming to life and contemplating you, and deepen your contact with the hand of power, returning each time in the usual way, back across the bridge, and concluding and grounding.
Meditation 4: The Straight Way to the House
of the Sun—Yesod to Tiphareth
After the preliminary exercises and river walk, follow Lilith across the bridge and find yourself again before the hand of power. As you study the huge, ancient red granite, it is as if something ignites within and you hurriedly retrace your steps, through all the corridors, through the great door and down the steps. You step out of the museum straight into a deep and impenetrable fog and stride until you are no longer sure of your bearings. You feel the presence of the winged bull and you spontaneously ask him to open the door to the inner worlds. The darkness ripples, and you feel the winged bull emerging behind you and the presence of the great rose-red arm stretching out and opening the way. You cry, “Rushing with your bull foot come: Evoe, Iacchus! Io Pan, Pan! Io Pan!”
There is a moment of great stillness and then a voice out of the darkness says, “Who is this who calls upon the Great God Pan?”
Respond in whatever way your heart prompts you.
As you do so, the fog thins, and walking towards you is the figure of a man, though for a moment behind him you see the image of a woman wearing a winged-bull pendant. He cannot be seen clearly but comes and offers to guide you through the city to a place where you can rest. Let yourself relax into his guidance, following him from the known places to the unknown, feeling his familiarity and strangeness, for at times he seems to shift into the image of a dark-haired woman. You come at last to a shabby, terraced house with peeling paintwork and dirty windows; above the door is a small niche with a statue of the winged bull. On the threshold your companion turns to you and you see for a moment a man and a woman standing on either side of the door. They invite you to enter.
Pause on the threshold and contemplate the journey before returning to the everyday world in the usual way, writing your report and grounding yourself.
Do this for seven days.
Meditation 5: The House of the Sun—
Tiphareth
This meditation is in two parts. You might like to reread the descriptions in chapter 2 of The Winged Bull before this work.
Part 1
Follow Lilith across the bridge; the river scene fades as you find yourself again on the threshold. Contemplate the man, the woman, and the winged bull and step through the door. Find yourself in a place of great beauty, bigger inside than outside, a place of clean lines, of books, pictures, and statues; it feels like a meeting place between mundane life and the inner work of a temple space. Take the time to explore it thoroughly.
You realise that you are in the presence of the dark-haired woman who wears a long white robe and carries a lamp. She guides you to a room where you may sleep and rest. As you do so, you have many dreams and learn many things. Do not try to hold on to them, to rationalise or interpret them; maintain an awareness that these dreams are sorting the dissociated, frustrated parts of your psyche, joining and bringing them into harmony with the greater whole. By allowing, the work can happen.
Perform this meditation for seven days and note any progression or shift of feelings in your journal.
Part 2
Your usual walk across the bridge leads straight to your withdrawn sleeping place, where you wake from your sleep. Don a robe of cloth of gold, descend the stairs and find yourself in a circular golden room with an eternal light and a vase of sunflowers on the central altar. There are two thrones, one on either side. The dark-haired woman, now robed in green, sits in one, and you sit in the other. As you take your seat, you feel again the bull within you acquiring wings and purpose, and feel a current of power between you and the woman. She seems like the woods in spring, full of green life, and you feel within you the burning power of the sun. You hear a voice say, “Hekas, hekas, este bebeloi!” and you both rise and step forward to the altar as if obeying the same signal. You drink wine from the same cup, break bread and salt together, and then hold each other’s wrists across the altar for a moment. You feel at one with her. This expands into an experience of the sun-power and the earth’s green fire and the radiance of the rainbow.
Return in your usual way, withdrawing gently, and sit in stillness and contemplate the union of Ursula and Ted for a time. Then write your report and ground yourself.
Perform this meditation for seven days.
Meditation 6: The Desert Path—
Tiphareth to Daath
Once again cross the bridge, to find yourself unlocking the outer door, observed by the winged bull in the niche, and walk up the stairs … Find yourself in the temple of Tiphareth (Brangwyn’s house). You walk through the rooms looking for Ursula, but cannot find her. Out of the corner of your eye you seem to glimpse her in mirrors or pictures, but she is nowhere to be found. As you search the house you notice old, shadowy corners, disused rooms filled with junk, and you feel frustrated and disillusioned, helpless again. You come across an old cracked mirror leaning against a wall and look into the images in the fractured surface. Some express your longing for Ursula, the hidden priestess, but in others you see your rage and frustration, your pain and resentment.
You step into the mirror and find yourself in a confusing labyrinth of doors going from room to room, tableau to tableau, glimpsing Ursula in the distance but never finding her. Beside you is Hugo Astley whispering in your ear, trying to distract and pull you from your true search. You keep walking, eventually leaving him behind, and come to the threshold of a door, to find Ursula washing the doorstep.
Pause here and contemplate your journey, then let the images fade and sit with this in your heart. Return to your everyday state and contemplate the journey and the challenge before concluding in the usual way.
Do this for seven days.
Meditation 7: The Place beyond Duality—
Daath
Note that although the Christ-energy has always been important to the Western Mystery Tradition, and the Christian story underpins much of the culture of the West, the image of the sacrificed god is key in many ancient cultures. So although Astley’s original ritual intention in portraying the cross of crucifixion was specific and blasphemous to Christianity, we engage with it on a higher arc.
All the trappings become irrelevant to our connecting process of collaborating with the necessity for relevant sacrifice shown through all these ancient myths. To imagine ourselves in a cruciform position is to be at our most vulnerable and open—a state we rarely if ever reveal to anyone in the outside world, but a commitment to our wish for true authenticity in our inner state. With this in mind, we enact Ted’s cathartic experiences to take us deep into the mystery of mediating and harmonising our fractured self.
After the preliminary exercises, cross the bridge and find yourself confronting Ursula on the doorstep, and feel overwhelming compassion as she kneels there.
You reach out to her but she vanishes, leaving behind the cloth and the bucket, and you squat down and clean the doorstep until all dirt is gone. As you scrub and scrub, feel all your residual frustration flowing into the water, moving through layers of resistance and resentment until all is gone. You wring out the cloth, hang it over the bucket neatly, and step inwards.
The house is a mirror of Brangwyn’s house, but a shadow form. The pictures and books are distorted replicas of Brangwyns; pictures that disturb; books that conjure darkness. As you descend more deeply into the house, you come to the basement temple, with a table altar and a black cross.
Astley is waiting and binds you on the cross; there is a moment of dizziness and you descend into unconsciousness. When you emerge Ursula is lying on the table altar before you in a white robe and behind her are a throned billy goat and Astley robed in red and black and gold. There is incense and chanting and the invocation of the Bull without wings. Feel within you the anger and lust of the wingless bull seeking to push its way through. You feel the black cross holding you safely in place and the eyes of Ursula upon you. You hang there with the figures of the redeeming gods from all the ages with you; you are held upon the wheel, hung from the tree, tied upon the cross of matter.
The struggle within you builds to a crescendo until it changes and is released, as all is plunged into darkness. As you let go into that darkness, you feel the presence of Ursula releasing and leading you deeper inward, into a place of perfect stillness where you and she are one and safe. Focus on this place of safety; let it flood through you, relaxing and releasing, as the withdrawn priestess places her cloak around you, warming you.
Conclude as usual, coming back easily across the bridge to your everyday state of awareness: a relaxed, calm transition that allows time for recording the images, sensations, and feelings of witnessing and engaging with mystery. Ground yourself in the usual ways.
Meditation 8: Crowning
Cross the bridge and find yourself free and light, but still searching for Ursula, who once again cannot be found.
Travel the inner landscape of your life seeking the hidden Priestess, lightly and with your new sense of grace and the contained energy now freely available to you. You are drawn backwards in time and to the east, coming to an abandoned farmhouse broken down and decrepit. This is your time to spend repairing it, renewing it, placing within it the experiences of your quest. Tend the garden, clearing round the roses and planting primroses along the path.
And then, as you clear the ivy from the old walls, you find on either side of the door the images of a man and a woman, with a rainbow arch between them. At the keystone of the arch is the winged bull. You pass in through this door and find yourself in a large stone room with a fireplace and a great mirror. Lay and light the fire, clean the mirror, and wait: the priestess will come.
Return in the usual way, bringing back a profound sense of peace. Journal and ground yourself.
The Ritual of Tiphareth
Again, a simple ceremony that will not be overlong will take you deep within to complete this phase of the work. Through reaching down and beyond surface emotion, you connect to the spiritual source within, into the expansion of the contemplation of divine love and acceptance. Check that there will be no interruptions, having set aside time to prepare, work, journal, and gently return to the everyday world.
You Will Need:
• Space cleared in preparation and with awareness
• Comfortable seating
• A gold candle
• Low light in the room—sufficient to read easily
• A copy of The Winged Bull
• Optional: frankincense in a burner/a rose in a vase
Make yourself comfortable in a clear, clean space in front of the candle and with a token of the breath of love present—the scent of frankincense oil, a perfumed rose, or whatever seems right to you. Light the candle and sit with your spine straight, thinking of the middle sphere on the Tree of Life in your body: of how it joins and mediates between the higher and lower sephiroth, of how it connects the worlds of spirit and matter.
Summon the body of light so that it coincides with your physical body, formulate the intention to manifest Tiphareth, and around you sense a deep golden light, almost pulsating in its intensity, which spreads and surrounds you with an experience of loving awareness that transcends any physical emotion. Realise that, through consciously connecting to the source of love within, the veil has thinned, allowing you access to the house of the sun, and an understanding of the powerful and potent connectedness that goes beyond polarity and duality.
Keeping this awareness in your mind, gently browse the pages of The Winged Bull.
Remain aware of this imaginal space as you riffle through the pages. Read where you will as you pass through the book, with the winged bull present throughout and the characters travelling towards the joining of the animal, human, and spiritual aspects of themselves. Where have their lives and experiences touched yours? Allow that knowledge to blend into the heat of the golden light of beauty that suffuses your space.
Relax completely into the experience of magical reading, and as the scenes become more vivid, turn to the last chapter, and, behind you, build up the image of the man and woman sitting looking into the fire, at peace. Quietly read it aloud to yourself, an internal experience made more potent and real by your lips shaping the words.
As you finish reading, sink into silence with the characters, allowing the image of the winged bull to take flight effortlessly, dissolving your polarised attitudes and transmuting them into a loving acceptance of all that is. The evening sunshine through the windows and the glow of the fire combine to suffuse the room, surrounding you as you connect to both Ted and Ursula, and you feel the wings of spirit enabling your animal instincts and human intellect to soar into a realm of spiritual connection.
The three parts of your being connect, and behind you, the magical light of the room transmutes and you build an image of the rainbow and feel the winged bull soaring effortlessly. Let the presences radiate through you and bring the blessing of the winged bull to the world, for the benefit of all and for the evolutionary current.
As the feeling subsides, you feel the pull of the everyday world, and you return with the profound understanding of the power of beauty and love that connects all things. You allow the body of light to sink back into the physical body.
When you are ready, move on to contemplate Daath and the book Moon Magic.