III.5
LUCE
Opus Magicum
The Diaphanous Body
Those who have followed the ritual practices described in earlier parts and gained from them new experiences and new capacities, new observations of the inner mechanism of their own lives and their own being, will have noticed certain states in which the single entity making up the individual seems to split into four forms of being, each with its special characteristics.
The doctrine of the fourfold body has been transmitted from deepest antiquity in the secret of initiations, and traces are readily found in the mysteriographers of every period. It teaches that man is composed of body, soul, spirit, and mind.
Avoiding any unnecessary logical elaboration, I will limit the explanation to some hints on practical realization and suggestions for direct experience.
Consciousness of the four human elements, or “bodies,” takes place in ritual silence.
In order to avoid misunderstandings, I must add that what we mean and express by the term “consciousness” has nothing to do with the common usage, which normally refers to brain activity and thinking. Our consciousness is not thought, nor any cerebral act; it is not the “intelligence” already mentioned (Introduction to Magic, vol. I, 41), nor should it be referred to other special functions of the diaphragm and solar plexus. It is the act of the free spirit that knows him who knows, absolutely autonomous and impossible to realize except in the condition mentioned: indefinable, inconceivable, undetermined, occult. There are some who, after completing the Ritual and having realized in it such a state of consciousness, think back and recall it in a way that is both lucid and vague, without being able to express it. That is exactly how it is.
After the first act, in which consciousness realizes the fourfold reality of being, there follows the Ritual, performed calmly and unhurriedly, with a “slow fire.” The gradual, more perfect and complete experience of the slow separation of each “body” from the others leads to the perception of four elements as absolutely distinct from one another, and each with its special function. At the same time, consciousness observes (and that term should be rightly understood) the various modalities of the body’s existence, and learns to recognize them.
The advice I have given here and elsewhere to “act slowly” should be normative in theurgical and magical practices (except in those circumstances where a lighting-like speed of projection or affirmation is vitally important). One of its main justifications is in the fact known to anyone with even a few experiences of this kind: that excessive haste causes a reversed reaction, immediately dispelling the state of the experience, disturbing the subtle equilibrium that permits it. The experimenter can even be flung back to the starting-point, in conditions that almost always block any immediate attempt to make good the loss by “rekindling”—unless he is permitted this by knowledge of the elements on which he is acting. The procedure, which by its nature is impossible to describe, will be known to each on completion of the Ritual, and also how to suceed in repeating it, so as to allow the state of consciousness, once achieved, to persist, and consequently its perfect recall.
The consciousness of the elements can be described in these words: the physical body is like a heavy and immobile mass that thoroughly realizes the element of Earth or stone; the soul, in relation to the diaphanous body, is like a mobile and diffused corporeality, milky, liquid = element of Water; the spirit is like an airy and vibrant luminosity = element of Air; the mind is like an incorporeal and unburning fire, subtle, invisible, but perceptible, identical, conscious = element of Fire.
Soul, astral body, diaphanous, translucent, magical agent, plastic medium: these terms are all equivalent, but note that each also has other meanings, determined by the degree of the operation and the measures of equilibrium.
I have mentioned some functions of the astral body. It should first be studied ritually, because on the one hand it is the primary, most immediate, and easiest to perceive and penetrate when the theurgist in Silence leaves the physical body, and on the other hand because of its decisive importance in every sort of operation.
First I will give the exact meaning of the equivalent terms listed above. Soul = sense of nature; astral = determined by the stars; diaphanous or translucid = allowing to be seen through; magical agent = means of projection (not he who acts); plastic medium = imagination. To avoid causing errors, I will omit the other almost innumerable meanings which vary from one writer to another, and often from one page to another of the same work.
The diaphanous body is realized first of all as the conscious medium of perception and sensation, understood in its deepest reality, not as the simple reaction of a physiological mechanism. Certain aspects of its activity will be noticed, manifesting as intellect, reason, imagination, and feeling, especially when one has achieved the permanence of higher consciousness in one’s everyday life.
The astral is essentially a motive force, and it is mobile in adapting the impulses it receives from outside, whether from the physical body or from the spirit. As a motive force it is reflexive and inert (lunar).
The astral functions can be listed as follows:
Experience will teach how the four elements that make up man are fused together and react together. But it is good to keep in mind and try to penetrate the essence of movement in each of them.
Movement is life; to understand movement is to understand life.
Nothing is in absolute quietude.
By quietude we simply mean the normal order of vibrations belonging to a body or an element. For example, when the body is still it is in a state of quietude, of “fixity,” but this does not mean that its motion has absolutely ceased: the whole being is still in movement. Even in death, the body has not reached absolute quietude, for transformation, however different, continues incessantly, and in death is at last realized the true, constant, and immortal LIFE.
Regarding the diaphanous body, what concerns us is to realize the following: motion is the universal manifestation of life; motion is the consequence of an active force; plurality of motion and plurality of forces. If any bodies in motion come into contact, one observes the motion of one influencing the other, depending on the density of the bodies, their elasticity, the form, volume, quality, and direction of the forces acting on them (friction being the dispersion of the motivity of bodies in contact); perception of the vibrations and their amplitude.
With gradual practice and observation, one achieves complete mastery over the way in which the diaphanous body acts, and also places it in relation to its universal form; a relation which, while remaining constant, is normally unnoticed and unknown. This needs to be organized, known, and controlled.
One should remember never to use force when one is beginning to observe something, not even when one is aware of a superior inner force that might bring faster results. Such a force should be restrained and never entirely loosed. The operator needs to maintain a state of active equilibrium, so as to exercise full and perfect control of the particular state of equilibrium of the forces he is working with, and the bodies they are working on, in order not to exhaust himself in the operative impulse, but to reserve energy for whatever action might be required by interferences that are unforeseen or caused by exterior agents.
You must do this so long as you are not a god, so long as you yourself do not perfectly possess the principle of the force. Remember that the action of the force is governed by equilibrium, obeying laws that have not been determined by the common man. He who is worthy of them may come to know and use them, combine them in various ways, realize, compel, and free them, but never destroy them.