V.4

Various Commentaries

 

 

DESIRE IN MAGIC

One point in Abraxa’s article on “Ritual Magic” (chap. I.3 of this volume) may seem, to some, to contradict the principle that we have repeatedly emphasized: Desire kills magical possibilities. That article mentioned “a deep savage violence of desire” as that which in primitive peoples, unlike civilized ones, animates the rituals and often enables them to act magically. It said that in general, the ritual is a prolongation of this impulse toward self-expression and translation into action, possessed by the images connected to an emotion or a violent desire.

The truth is that when speaking of Hermetic complementarity (see Introduction to Magic, vol. I, III.2),¹ we have said enough to avoid such an apparent contradiction. But since clarifications are always useful in this field, we return to it.

Barring reference to the exceptional type of the Adept, who alone has an absolute superiority of action, desire is a necessary element in magic, though only as an instrument directed by Art, without which it leads to nothing. The center of every operation of high magic resides, rather, in that projective intellectuality which we normally designate as .

Desire can serve for the exaltation that leads to ecstasy, for the “excess” needed to make contact with the “astral Light”—but the act in that ecstasy, given that it must be magical, is done by .

The principle that “desire kills magical possibilities” is to be understood precisely with reference to , because the solar and dry nature of is the opposite of the lunar and watery nature of desire. All the same, the presence of both these contraries—the most vehement power of desire exactly balanced by an equally high virtue of domination by the principle—is the Hermetic complementarity, the key to any high magic.

If the operator is incapable of a moment of absolute domination—of detachment—through which he can command desire and use it as an entity as the Art requires—he will certainly have no success at all.

MEANING OF THE RITUAL

We call attention to Abraxa’s notes again, because they contain elements leading to the gradual comprehension of the symbolic bases of ritual in general.

It is to the East, where the physical sun rises, that the operator also turns when evoking the metaphysical Light. Likewise, the use of ablutions and bathing in the course of inner purification; precise correspondence with the purity of the new moon, or with the start of the winter or spring season, for the rites that unveil “Diana,” for operations attuned to the individual (winter) or to a co-gnisance² of the universal (summer). When the mind is concentrated on the invisible, the hood ritually hides the face. For the same analogical reason, the underground chamber in certain temples devoted to the Mysteries, and other correspondences dictating their orientation, their division into rooms, their architectural form and proportions. From the “ritual positions” of which Abraxa speaks, we pass to ceremonies in the proper sense, to the sacred spectacles of the Mysteries, to the imitation of the physical death, burial, and resurrection of the person led to rebirth. One could go on to give precise analogical reasons for the clothing, colors, ornaments, metals, objects, etc., prescribed in magical and hieratic traditions.

The goal, therefore, is to render the real symbolic and the symbolic real: to render the intention objectively, to associate various series of rhythms so as to unite them in a single node, and to produce those points of unity and sympathy that bring about awakening—of Light or of Power. Every ritual has simultaneously a symbolic, analogical, and magical meaning—both ideal and real, as intention (of signification) and as realization (pragmatic).

FEELING AND REALIZATION

In the practical domain of initiation it is important to distinguish between feeling and that which is realization and communication.

Feeling is a subjective, emotional resonance of the individual, conditioned by his sensitivity, by his more or less defined tendencies, by his temperament. In itself, it is a perturbation of the soul, which does no more for knowledge than stirring up water helps one to see the depths. In feeling, a man does not look at things themselves, but only looks at himself and at the impression felt by his soul.

Even when feeling becomes aesthetic or “poetic”—as in art—the basis though sublimated remains the same: it is still a human world, excluded from the order of Reality. It is typical of the level of modern civilization that “aesthetic” emotions are often mistaken for spirituality; one thinks one is having some kind of “cosmic” experience when caught up in the pathos of Beethoven or Wagner, for example.

To reach genuine realization, on the contrary, it is necessary for feeling to be silenced.³ It needs a neutrality, a state of complete inner equilibrium where nothing in the soul’s being is expectant, joyful or fearful. One must realize an inner detachment, a freedom and an “emptiness” like that of air. Then the impressions that come from beings and things are no longer caught and turned into emotions by subjective feeling: they enter in their pure state. The I begins to feel something other than its own resonance, and to perceive subtle states that are contacts, apperceptions, actual communications with “reality.” These perceptions—like flickerings of light on still water—have an indescribable character of reality, simplicity, lightness, and self-evidence: they introduce new qualities, they open paths. Someone who has had the experience knows very well that this sensibility has nothing to do with the perturbation that belongs to feelings and emotions.

One must be careful to remain firm even when experiencing these states of soul: let nothing be added to them, nothing that can appropriate them on behalf of the I. It is enough to accept them without looking, as though one were standing in profile, which would instantly vanish if one gave in to the temptation to look at one’s own shadow.

ANTICIPATIONS OF PHYSICAL ALCHEMY

Concerning what Iagla says, not specifically about the “corrosive waters” as generally about how physical substances can be made to act on the organism, thus setting in motion the process leading to inner realizations, we have come across a short work by a contemporary Hindu alchemist, C. S. Narayānaswami Aiyar, that mentions things of this kind.⁴ We will extract a passage from it, having to do with a reintegration that involves the actual regeneration of the physical body, not only through internal action but with the help of special physicochemical processes, thus with alchemy in the true sense.⁵

[M]an’s frail frame, as without which, Soul in him cannot exist, after dissipated and waning life of Grahasthāśrama had to be resuscitated and rejuvenated and the matter-side of man has to be replenished with such chemico-metallurgical medicines, made and manufactured by himself to become absorbed and assimilated in the very cells and tissues, to fossilise his physique and turn out into a mercurial body, to resist the attacks of age and time. This was called the Kāyasiddhi-process,⁶ without which one cannot attain either Jñāna or Moksa-Siddhis, an exceedingly costly course of 12 years, within which time, the Prānā-yama practice has to be practised incessantly, until the internal concentric vision becomes a refulgent centre, ever self-acting with no effort, and co-existing, which is called the Ānandamaya-stage of a Jīvan-Mukta. (p. 598)

 

The elaborate course of Kāya-siddhi (Kāya means body and siddhi means making sure) has to be undergone by an ambitious soul for 12 years or 2 cycles of 6 years each, within which period not only the tissues with which we are born from the mothers’ wombs is being changed but also the very nerves are transformed tendinous and the bones converted and fossilised like ivory . . . for which or within which time the human frame is turned out into mercurial bodies by the chemico-metallurgical medicines, indestructible by the five Bhūtas of Earth water, etc., as a finis (p. 606).

The practice has a twofold character, because it does not concern only the physicochemical properties of the substances. This is evident from the continuation of the quoted passage:

To attain all these potential powers with the double-fold object as said below, they have taken mercury which is a thing of the mineral kingdom called otherwise rasa, the essence or Hara-bindu which is the essence or the semen of Hara, who is the presiding deity among the Trinity of functionary deities of the universe, which was taken to be of the order of male procreative agency, treated the same, changed the inherent nature in it (p. 606)

Special processes follow which allow it to be assmilated by the tissues, just as salt can penetrate and permeate the human cellular system. More precise information will be given in a future chapter.⁷

ON SHAMANIC INITIATION

In De Martino’s book, treated by Arvo in chapter V.2, there are some data about initiation among the shamans which we think will be interesting to offer, together with references to another work on the same subject: Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy.

The aspirant to initiation uses an interesting formula in requesting it: “I come to you beause I want to see.” The preliminary ritual is called “removal of obstacles”; whatever prevents the aspirant from becoming a good shaman has to be removed from his soul and body. More concretely, it is said that this operation, performed by the initiator, frees the novice’s soul “from the eyes, the brain, and the viscera,” whose symbolic significance is obvious. That is the negative side of the ritual; the positive side is the transfusion into the soul thus freed of the so-called qaumenq, meaning luminosity or illumination. It is “a mysterious light that the shaman suddenly feels inside his head or brain, an inexplicable light that makes perception possible, a luminous fire that enables him to see in the dark, both literally and metaphorically,⁸ because the shaman can now see in the dark even with his eyes closed, and perceive things and events that are in the future, or hidden from others, and also know others’ secrets.” It is also mentioned that the first time the neophyte has such an experience of light, he has the sense of himself and his surroundings suddenly levitating.⁹

Initiation, however, is not yet complete. It becomes so by virtue of contact with further “influences,” conceived of as assisting spirits which must be united with the neophyte’s soul. It is not in his power to choose such spirits; they come on their own initiative once he has submitted to certain long and severe disciplines, in a solitary place and in touch with nature. In this respect it is a matter of acquiring, through effort and mental concentration, a new and inexplicable power: being able to see oneself as a skeleton. This is understood as sloughing off the material flesh and blood, so that all that remains is the bones, which the new initiate can see and name, not in usual language but in the sacred shamanic language learned from his instructor. The same language is used for his final consecration. In this context we recall that in esoteric doctrine the human skeleton corresponds to his primordial form, in the same way that the kingdom of nature to which it belongs (the mineral) is anterior to all the others. These facts about shamanic initiation have been taken from K. Rasmussen, “Intellectual Culture of the Iglutik Eskimos” (Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition, 1921–1924, VII, no. 1 [Copenhagen], 111–14).

We also report some testimony referring to an initiation obtained through the so-called wàiyuwen. This is conceived of as the force which was incarnated in a now dead initiate, and which, in the state of deep trance, takes the place of the initiate’s normal personality, manifesting as exceptional powers of which he gradually takes command. One of these powers is called yauategn: it is a faculty of active or commanding vision. It consists of supernormal knowledge of some object or being, even far away, through a force imagined as an eye. This “eye” leaves one’s own body and travels in a straight line toward the chosen goal, with the power of modifying what it sees, as it wishes, more or less profoundly. This causes a telepathic alteration of the image, which is translated into corresponding physical or psychic reality. In these reports, which refer to the shamans of Tierra del Fuego (De Martino, pp. 83–85), we readily recognize the scheme of visualization techniques often used in various magical operations.