The Moment Being

Jami, in the Law'ih, summarises the doctrine of the Moment (or "interior Time") according to Ibnu'l-'Arabi: "the universe consists of accidents pertaining to a single substance, which is the Reality underlying all existences. This universe is changed and renewed unceasingly at every moment and every breath. Every instant one universe is annihilated and another resembling it takes its place... In consequence of this rapid succession, the spectator is deceived into the belief that the universe is a permanent existence...

The being of the world's a wave, it lasts

One moment, and the next it has to go...

In the world, men of insight may discern

A stream whose currents swirl and surge and churn,

And from the force that works within the stream

The hidden working of the Truth may learn...

Thus, it never happens that the Very Being is revealed for two successive moments under the guise of the same phenomenon".

From:      Ananda K. Coomarasway, Time and Eternity, Artibus Asiae. Supplementum, Vol. 8, Time and Eternity, (1947), pp.98-100

New Births

It is only the full realization of our shared self-destructive behaviour, whether of Eastern or Western bloc, northern or southern hemisphere, which can adequately move us to change. I have called this change a time to bloom.

   Beyond the mainstream of global social and economic disintegration, this change appears to be already happening. A vibrant minority is engaged in birthing a new social order, one which will be sustainable into the foreseeable future and one which will more equitably distribute wealth, power, knowledge and services within the human community.

   This book deals with the death-throes of the constricting nation-state society and provides motivation for allowing the new and more fruitful human phase to unfold and come to birth. The present national constraints to life and growth in the developing world - hunger, poverty and repression - and those in the developed world - unemployment, cancer and nuclear threat – are clearly interrelated.

   The present dangers to the foetal stage of  the new social structure are extreme. Yet we find hope and joy in the growing global consensus among ordinary people that war is as anachronistic as cannibalism, slavery and colonialism. New international relationships based on justice and law must be forged. A new technology in harmony with life and earth, and a new social order which assures a secure future for the world's children must be developed.

   Although I can point the way and identify the promising directions, I cannot spell out the nature of this new social order. A mother cannot sketch a picture of her child-to-be-born. We do not plan a flower. It is our part to nourish the good growth and to provide a welcoming environment. We must neither give birth in fear nor abort through cowardice. It is necessary to trust the creativity and vitality of the life process itself.

Rosalie Bertell, from her book 'No Immediate Danger', The Women's Press, London, 1985, p.ix:

 

 

The Magic Mountain

 I recently re-read Thomas Mann's 'Death in Venice'  - a great Platonic masterpiece - especially the Dionysian dream. And at the same time, read his 'Tristan' which is loaded with the most superb layerings of meaning. Then, I found this small piece and share it here with you.

Thomas Mann wrote: 

"The seeker of the Grail, before he arrives at the Sacred Castle, has to undergo various frightful and mysterious ordeals in a wayside chapel called the Atre Périlleux. Probably these ordeals were originally rites of initiation, conditions of the permission to approach the esoteric mystery; the idea of knowledge, wisdom is always bound up with the "other world," with night and death.

In The Magic Mountain there is a great deal said of an alchemistic, hermetic pedagogy, of transubstantiation. And I, myself a guileless fool, was guided by a mysterious tradition, for it is those very words that are used in connection with the mysteries of the Grail. Not for nothing do Freemasonry and its rites play a role in The Magic Mountain, for Freemasonry is the direct descendant of initiatory rites. In a word, the magic mountain is a variant of the shrine of the initiatory rites, a place of adventurous investigation into the mystery of life. " 

From: Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain, Seker & Warburg, London, 1980, p. 728. The author’s note on "The Making of The Magic Mountain" first appeared in the Atlantic, January 1953.

 

 

Historical Tarot Decks

The Cary-Yale Visconti Tarot Deck

Perhaps the first Tarot deck, this hand painted deck from Italy has an unusual structure, containing 6 court cards per suit and the additional Virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity.

The Visconti-Sforza Tarot Deck

The most complete 15th Century Tarot deck. The deck has 74 of the assumed original 78 cards, the missing cards are The Devil, The Tower, three of swords and knight of coins.

The Mysterious Cary Sheet

Housed in the Cary Collection at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, is a rare find... an uncut sheet of Tarot cards, probably produced in Milan, dating as far back as possibly the year 1500. This sheet has come to be known as the “Cary Sheet”. Is it the "missing link" between the hand-painted Italian decks and the Tarot of Marseilles?

Tarot Picture Page

The Archetypal Tarot

The Artwork of Modern Tarot Project

This site focuses on the artwork and symbolism found on modern tarot decks.

Gumpenberg Tarot, ca. 1810.

The Mind of the Magus ...The primary function of the magus in history, whether the exemplar is Hermes, Jesus Christ, Faust or Paracelsus, is to open a path between Heaven and Earth, and then lead worthy human souls along it, back to our origins in God...

History of Tarot

mundus imaginalis

It is not as though we escape into a passive state of fantasy, like drug addicts who cannot function in ordinary life. The past distills itself  into the mundus imaginalis, which surrounds us like the resources of our memory, deepening our responses, showing us myths and archetypes which give meaning and focus to our individual destinies. It also bestows a sensitivity to beauty, that quality most spurned by the century that is thankfully past. Children are naturally aware of this, and eager to absorb wisdom through mythology and the encounter with archetypes: hence the success of Disneyland. But we can offer something better than a commercialism aimed at the lowest common denominator. The creative wealth of the ages, the arts and music once reserved for an aristocratic elite, are now open to all who have the ears, eyes, and inclination. While the collectors and artists of the Renaissance seized at every fragment of classical antiquity, to weave it into their own being and their creations, we are infinitely richer in potential. In a stroll through a museum we can appropriate both classical antiquity and its Renaissance revival, nor do we have to reject the Middle Ages that came in between. We can contemplate the Christian myths as well as the pagan ones, and appreciate the values that each brought into the world. We are free to believe, or not to believe, in any of them. And this is to say nothing of the non-European cultures whose legacies are spread out before us. Yet in gratitude for this plenum, this superfluity of the past and the overwhelming superiority of its treasures, we may sometimes wonder what we will leave to our descendants, five hundred years from now. Are we creating anything of lasting value, or are we, for all our material success, mere spiritual parasites living off the capital of our ancestors? What is today’s equivalent of the pagan dream, what riches of the imaginal world are we revealing for the future delectation of our kind?

Joscelyn Godwin, The Pagan Dream of the Renaissance, Thames and Hudson, London, 2002. Chapter 11, p.260- 61.

Phoenix

Within the context of the Phoenix in the Harry Potter books, my own obsession with gathering material on the Phoenix – over the years, does not seem so strange.  The following superb articles surfaced today during my session at the University Library . . .  and may I add, that my Phoenix material, is generally indexed under FIRE SYMBOLISM, and of course also relates to Alchemical Imaginal Tradition, as well as having strong ancient Egyptian roots, thus locating the Phoenix, in the History of Religion of Africa. We seem [whoever the “we” may be] to forget that Ancient Egypt was African.  Then of course, there are the Pictures!  But then a Google of the word PHOENIX – will bring up a real can or worms . .   Here are today’s items . . 

Harrison, Thomas P., Bird of Paradise: Phoenix Redivivus, Isis, Vol. 51, No. 2 (Jun., 1960), pp. 173-180

McDonald, Mary Francis, Phoenix Redivivus, Phoenix, Vol. 14, No. 4 (Winter, 1960), pp. 187-206

Niehoff, M. R., The Phoenix in Rabbinic Literature, The Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 89, No. 3 (Jul., 1996), pp. 245-265

Priest, Alan, Phoenix in Fact and Fancy, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, New Series, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Oct., 1942), pp. 97-101

Suhr, Elmer G., The Phoenix, Folklore, Vol. 87, No. 1 (1976), pp. 29-37

There is also a more technical Phoenix Bibliography at:

Medieval Bestiary :  http://bestiary.ca/beasts/beastbiblio149.htm

And elsewhere - the resources are vast . .

EGYPT & THE TAROT

There is no real sense in which we can call the Egyptian Tarot, Egyptian. Yet there is a lineage that can be followed, like the silver trail of a snail across a piece of black velvet. Besides this silver analogy, there is also the Golden Thread, or The Thread of Ariadne. Which can be traced through the ages, the millennia as an unbroken transmission, that still contains a message for us today, and most likely, a message for tomorrow. Why is the Tarot Egyptian, and how has it traced its lineage across time? Buried under the surfaces are other discourses. The outer form is exoteric . . .

For examples, Francis Yates writes:

"Giordano Bruno was to take the bolder course of maintaining that the magical Egyptian religion of the world was not only the most ancient but also the only true religion, which both Judaism and Christianity had obscured and corrupted."

Francis Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, p.11

An important book, recently published is:

Erik Hornung, The Secret Lore of Egypt: Its Impact on the West, translated by David Lorton, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2001, 229 pp., hardcover. Read a review Lee Irwin, of Religious Studies, College of Charleston HERE.

Also important for following the thread:

Dannenfeldt, Karl H., Egypt and Egyptian Antiquities in the Renaissance, Studies in the Renaissance, Vol. 6, (1959), pp. 7-27

Griffiths, J. Gwyn, Allegory in Greece and Egypt, The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Vol. 53, (Dec., 1967), pp. 79-102.

al-Suyūṭī, Jalāl al-Dīn, and Leon Nemoy, The Treatise on the Egyptian Pyramids (Tuḥfat al-kirām fī khabar al-ahrām), Isis, Vol. 30, No. 1, (Feb., 1939), pp. 17-37.

Ezra Pound - Some Gnostic Clues

In Canto LXXXV, Pound implies that each generation has an obligation to pass along the wisdom of the past to the next generation. The poet gives the Chinese ideogram for […]"teach, instruct," and next to that he gives his own made-up Germanic word, Sagetrieb, for "pass on the tradition" (Pound, Cantos 557; Terrell 478-9). Beneath these two commands, Pound places two Chinese ideograms, which translate as "It depends on us" (Pound, Cantos 557; Terrell 479). Finally, the poet writes: "We flop if we cannot maintain the awareness" (Pound, Cantos 557). All of these fragments combine with others in which Pound says in The Cantos that education is failing in modern times, and they work together to assert that the modern world is not meeting its obligation to pass on valuable knowledge about our cultural roots to our children.

At the same time that Pound paints a bleak picture of widespread ignorance, he also presents individuals he perceived to be intellectual heroes, some of whose actions exemplify or promote intellectual development. For example, Domencio Malatesta, brother of the 15th century ruler of Rimini, Fano, and Cesena (in what is Italy today), transported hundreds of ancient Greek manuscripts to the West during the fifteenth century. The risks involved in this effort are illustrated by Pound's mentioning in Canto XXIII that an entire cargo of books had to be chucked overboard during one trip to save the ship in a storm (Pound, Cantos 107). In spite of such setbacks and risks, Domencio founded a library at Cesena, making him one of the intellectual heroes of The Cantos without whose efforts many valuable classical writings about our cultural roots would not have made it to the West (Terrell 39 [see note 31]).

A contemporary of Domencio Malatesta serves as another worthy intellectual model in Canto VIII, Gemisthus Plethon. He was a Byzantine Neo-Platonist philosopher, who served as a representative of the Eastern Christian Church at the council that convened in Italy to attempt to heal the split between what were then the two major branches of the Christian Faith. The Emperor of the Byzantine Empire initiated this effort at reconciliation because he hoped ultimately to enlist European assistance in fighting the Turks, who were threatening the conquest of Constantinople (Terrell 39). Plethon, in spite of his connection with the Eastern Church, was so learned in the classics that he was passionately devoted to Greek mythology. His influence during his visit to the West resulted in the founding of the Platonic Academy of Florence. This institution became a center of the revival of ancient Greek culture in Europe, and Plethon becomes another one of Pound's heroes of learning (Terrell 39).

The Importance of Cultural Learning in the Cantos of Ezra Pound

Alan Kelly (English Department, Millersville University)

http://www.inst.at/trans/15Nr/05_02/kelly15.htm

Ibn 'Arabi and the Tarot

The Occult Tradition of the Tarot in Tangency with Ibn 'Arabi's Life and Teachings

Jereer El-Moor

Most researchers today would probably agree that playing cards were introduced to Christian Europe as an importation from the Arab world, however, the details of this are not well-established. In the first part of this long article, the author reviews the known facts of the history of playing cards (and the related history of the Tarot). He sets out to present "a credible case for regarding the Tarot as of Near Eastern provenance", and gives a personal view of its interpretation through the centuries. In the second part he goes on to interpret one of the trumps in the light of Ibn 'Arabi's 'Anqa' mughrib. Both parts of this article are big pdf files of about 480kb, and each will take some time to download.

al Mandala

I found this interesting piece of evidence of the word mandala, in Arabic. David Pingree was such a great scholar. I wrote to him once, and he kindly answered. I was desperate to obtain a copy of an article that he was about to publish in the Journal of the Warburg Institute in London – but this did not take place, and the article has appeared in a very rare Journal – and I can only find ONE copy of it here in Italy in Venice . . . so I am sulking over this . . . but this article in MICROLOGOS . . . is also full or rich and fragrant fragments uncovering the hidden tradition . . .

"Finally, the three treatises at the end of the Florence manuscript are all representatives of Salomonic magic. The first two concern almandal of Salomon. This mandal is in shape and inscriptions completely conformable to an Indian mandala; it is remarkable to see the Sanskrit word transmitted so purely through Arabic, in which it is still used to refer to a magical object, to Latin. The figure is a square "wall" with a circle in the center and spokes pointing to the four cardinal directions (indicated by "gates") and to the four intermediate directions. On each of the four side walls are inscribed the names of angels. The whole al-mandal is engraved on a talismanic plate, which is suffumigated and ex­orcized. It then can be used for various magic acts including the ex­pulsion of demons from the possessed and four exorcisms of the jinn and the shaytān. Subsidiary sigils moulded from Toledan wax reveal the place where our versions of this text were concocted.

The first of these two versions is entitled Liber in figura almandal et eius opere; ^[1] it is perhaps the Almandal Salomonis of Albert, ^[2] and the al­mandal referred to by William. ^[3] The second book is the Liber de alman­dal which is called the table or altar of Salomon; this has the same incipit as Albert's De figura almandal. ^[4] Here the four exorcisms are attributed to Icmile (Ishmael) "Arhginemem". I have so far observed no mention of almandal by Michael Scot."

David Pingree, " Learned Magic in the time of Frederick II ", in Le Scienze alla corte di Federico II. Sciences at the Court of Frederick II. Micrologus, 2, 1994, p.48.

A basic introduction to the work of David Pingree is at WIKIPEDIA.

The Article mentioned above is published by:

International Journal of the Classical Tradition

David Pingree, "The Sabians of Harran and the Classical Tradition," IJCT 9 (2002-2003), pp. 8-35.

This article addresses questions concerning the characteristics of the paganism of Harran, its eclectic sources, and its development by examining the relationships — real, possible, and fictitious — of various personalities with the city of Harran from Assyrian times till the Mongol attack in 1271. It is suggested that the Sabians used Neoplatonism, which, if Tardieu's analysis is correct, they originally learned from Simplicius, to develop, explain, and justify their practise of astral magic, and that their interest in the Greek astronomy and astrology that astral magic required served to maintain the study and to preserve the texts of these sciences during the centuries in which they were ignored in Byzantium. It is further shown that the Greek philosophical and scientific material available to them was mingled with elements from ancient Mesopotamia, India, Iran, Judaism, and Egypt to form a syncretic system of belief that they could claim to be mankind's original and authentic religion.

---

1. F ff. 74V-77.

2. Speculum XI 25, though this is more likely to be the next, derivative treatise.

3. Thorndike, History, II, 351.

4. Speculum XI 80-81.

Self and Selflessness

“For realizing one's inner divinity, Lord Krishna states in the Bhagavad-Gita, "The Supreme Reality is revealed in the consciousness of those who have conquered themselves." Thus, one's spiritual quest begins with cultivating self-control, detachment, truthfulness and nonviolence, and culminates in realizing the ultimate reality within oneself and in all of existence.”

The problem here, as usual . . is that they think they have a ‘self’ to conquer – and note the word: conquer - as in the war against cancer, the fight against aids &c. Not to mention the crap about where or where not the Supreme Reality is to be found, as if when discovered, it can then be rubber stamped, or cut and pasted into yet another trap . . Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche gives a few fresh words on the subject:

“Even when we speak of selflessness, the mind goes to “me?’ We think, “I’m selfless:’ but everything is selfless. Saying “everything is selfless” is like calling that stone “dogless?’ It might give the impression that a dog was there at some point, but it never was. It was our idea of a dog that was there. Similarly, we say that everything is selfless, but the self was never there. There was only our idea of a self. When we realize that we have always been selfless, what is missing? The conceptual mind that centralizes into “me” and then projects a world out there that is solid and separate. Who we think we are and what we think of the world is a concept that we are creating with our mind. We create a concept in our mind and we believe that concept. Our belief in a self is the most obvious example of this fundamental ignorance.”

Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, The Mind of the Dragon, Shambhala Sun, November 2005, pp. 33 ff.

"No man from outside can make you free... No one holds the Key to the Kingdom of Happiness. No one has the authority to hold that key. That key is your own self, and in the development and the purification and in the incorruptibility of that self alone is the Kingdom of Eternity . . .".

-- J. Krishnamurti

Here it is again - the Self . . .yet from Aryadeva:

“Whatever arises by dependence

Can never be independent,

And as all are non-independent

The Self has no existence.” ^[1]

And back to Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche:

“We can start by contemplating what the Buddha said: the self we imagine to be solid and continuous is really just a gathering of ingredients—heaps. It is the conjunction of blood, bones, memories, emotions, thoughts, and perceptions. When we experience this conglomeration of elements, ignorance says, “I think I’ll call this ‘me.” We are creating an illusion and giving it a name. Not only is the illusion transparent and dreamlike, but the things we make it with are the same. It’s like watching clouds form into the shape of a dragon. We know it’s not a dragon. We know the clouds themselves are not really solid. But when we see that form, we give it a name—something recognizable.” ^[2]

One of the best lessons I have learnt in being a Buddhist is “Do not take your self too seriously.” But being a human being, or being sentient, is a serious business. But Life is not a business as yet. On the downward plunge into the material condition, we gather the seriousness, similar, as I always say, to dropping a lead anvil on a butterfly.

I think that this quote by Charles Asher decidedly adds to the discourse that I am trying to amplify - i.e. a deconstruction of views of the self - and it is interesting to see this happening within the Jungian matrix, albeit the James Hillman facet thereof.

"The theological foundations of Jung's self concept are sick unto death. I would hasten their death." [^[3]]

Like James Hillman, and his "Psyche as Big as the Earth' - [anima mundi] - Asher posits a "communitarian self":

"A communitarian self has important implications for psychotherapy, and more broadly for education and our life together. The social, communal images of our life together become worthy of cultivation and attention. I find such a vision critical to our survival as well as to the possibilities for our common life." ^[4]

Asher ends his discourse with a quote from Jung [no reference is given]:

"The phenomenology of the psyche," said Jung, "is so colorful, so variegated in form and meaning, we cannot possibly reflect all its riches in one mirror."

This quotation fulfills for me, a clear pointer to the new nature of our appreciation of consciousness. We do not want definitions of the self, the ego - the de-finite-imprisonings. We have had enough of those calcifications. The image of the mirror, with its Mercurial associations, the quicksilver, is in itself Hermetic. The Mind. Mind. Consciousness. Chit.

Samten

---

^[1] Aryadeva in the Catuhsataka-sastra-karika.^[2] Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, The Mind of the Dragon, Shambhala Sun, November 2005, pp. 33 ff. ^[3] Asher, Charles, The Communitarian Self as (God) Ultimate Reality, Spring 54, a Journal of Archetype and Culture, June 1993, ^[4] Asher, Charles, The Communitarian Self as (God) Ultimate Reality, Spring 54, a Journal of Archetype and Culture, June 1993, p.97.

Two Illuminations

CHAPLIN ON FATH –

“As I grow older I am becoming more preoccupied with faith. We live by it more than we think and achieve by it more than we realize. I believe that faith is a precursor of all our ideas. Without faith, there never could have evolved hypothesis, theory, science or mathematics. I believe that faith is an extension of the mind. It is the key that negates the impossible. To deny faith is to refute oneself and the spirit that generates all our creative forces.

“My faith is in the unknown, in all that we do not understand by reason; I believe that what is beyond our comprehension is a simple fact in other dimensions, and that in the realm of the unknown there is an infinite power of good.”

Charles Chaplin, My Autobiography, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1966, p.287

ILLUMINATIONS BY RIMBAUD –

“The Illuminations are an attempt to blow up all appearances, all orders, all forms of the world, which make our happiness. They are an attempt to blow up all happiness and make a work of pure unhappiness out of the debris and fragments of the explosion. But how strange! These fragments are not pieces of dirt and ugliness. They are not disgusting like pieces of blown-up body. They have a strange, fascinating beauty. They are like precious stones and broken tender whispers . . . This heap of fragments from all possible orders, which should reveal to us what lies beyond all orders of the world, beyond all happiness, rises before us like a glorious rainbow speaking to us of the sweetness of pleasure . . . How they shine, how they sparkle before us, all these diamonds and this foam, these drops of sweat and these eyes, these rays and their floating hair, these flames and this herbage of steel and emerald, these white, burning tears and these ringing, flashing dream flowers, these swarms of gold leaves, these balls of sapphire and these angels of the Illuminations!

From an essay on Rimbaud’s Illuminations by the Greek poet Demetrios Capetanakis, in: John Lehmann, Three Literary Friendships, Quartet Books, London, 1983, p. 93.

W. B. Yeats on Magic

"I believe in the practice and philosophy of what we have agreed to call magic, in what I must call the evocation of spirits, though I do not know what they are, in the power of creating magical illusions, in the visions of truth in the depths of the mind when the eyes are closed; and I believe in three doctrines, which have, as I think, been handed down from early times, and have been the foundation of nearly all magical practices. These doctrines are

(1) That the borders of our minds are ever shifting, and that many minds can flow into one another, as it were, and create or reveal a single mind, a single energy.

(2) That the borders of our memories are as shifting, and that our memories are part of one great memory, the memory of Nature herself.

(3) That this great mind and great memory can be evoked by symbols.

W.B.Yeats: Ideas of Good and Evil, London 1903.

Samten comment: The third and last point of Yeats, describes in a nutshell, the functioning of the Tarot. And Yeats himself worked with the Tarot cards in his poems and other writings.

The Path

“You, traveller, there are no roads,

Only wind trails on the sea.”

Antonio Machado

Recently, when I was availing myself of a friends collection of books on the Kabbalah – I had something of an epiphany. Without excavating the profusion of details, the essence of the matter involves two interpretations of the Hebrew word for ‘path’. I have a tendency to siphon lexical interpretations into the experiential and subjective realm, as was the case in this instance.

These experiences are in essence ‘gnostic’ in the sense they involve, evolve and revolve around specific ways of ‘knowing’. It is difficult to transmit these ways of knowing in words. And difficult outside of specific conditions or modalities. Words are very inadequate. I would suggest it is also very connected to the ‘seeing’ of the SEERS! Like the satori of the Zen koan, you either get it or you don’t. Boiled down to basics, what I’m saying is there exists a specific ability to ‘see’ the path that one’s life takes. It is a matter of direction. Of discovering the gestalt. And in clumsy, dualistic terms, of self-actualization. {Without the self!] I also have the unfortunate proclivity of ‘seeing’ how other people have not found their ‘path’ in life. They are floundering around like fish in water. And this applies to most human beings, who only wallpaper over the existential uncertainties. Animals, by contrast, live their path, on an intrinsic, instinctual level.

The hidden core of this emerging essay, depends on an analysis on the two Hebrew terms for ‘path’ - which will be forthcoming in due time . . . for the moment, what I have the audacity to say is that I feel at this moment, more certainly than ever before, that I see the direction of my life’s path more clearly. And it is not even a case of ‘seeing’ . . . . pieces of the puzzle just fall into place, rather in the sense of synchronicity. One feels that there is a Puppet master behind all this. As my mother used to say and live by the saying: “Thy Will Be Done.” The least we can do of this “will’ on earth, seeing that we have no opportunities, as yet, of doing this “will” in Heaven . . . or perhaps merely in the sense of “storing treasures” for some future eventuality.

So again, the attention is moved away from the ego, to the idea of some great one Universal Macrocosmic Plan, of which we are microcosmic parts. And this is the true Path of all sentient beings . . . whether they are conscious of it or not. In fact, being conscious of your place in the Great-Scheme-of-Things-Without-a-Schemer . . . makes perfect sense. To me.

And to be honest, the epiphany, the revelation has not been revealed. I am keeping that core, the heart of the matter, under wraps for the time being. As we said, words cannot express these inner observations - but perhaps actions can. Hence:

By Their Fruits Ye Shall Know Them.

And perhaps our revelations, which are far and few between, are not gifted to us to be shouted from the highest rooftops. They remain esoteric, because they are the very energy from which future action is gestated.

Samten de Wet

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

The White Flame of Life

The White Flame of Life

"I dreamt that I was standing at the top of a very high tower, alone, looking down on myriads of birds all flying in one direction; every kind of bird was there, all the birds in the world. It was a noble sight, this vast aerial river of birds. But now in some mysterious fashion the gear was changed, and time speeded up, so that I saw generations of birds, watched them break their shells, flutter into life, mate, weaken, falter, and die. Wings grew only to crumble; bodies were sleek and then, in a flash, bled and shrivelled; and death struck everywhere at every second. What was the use of all this blind struggle towards life, this eager trying of wings, this hurried mating, this flight and surge, all this gigantic meaningless biological effort? As I stared down, seeming to see every creature’s ignoble little history almost at a glance, I felt sick at heart. It would be better if not one of them, if not one of us all, had been born, if the struggle ceased forever. I stood on my tower, still alone, desperately unhappy. But now the gear was changed again, and time went faster still, and it was rushing by a such a rate, that the birds could not show any movement, but were like an enormous plain sown with feathers. But along this plain, flickering through the bodies themselves, there now passed a sort of white flame, trembling, dancing, then hurrying on; and as soon as I saw it I knew that this white flame was life itself, the very quintessence of being; and then it came to me in a rocket-burst of ecstasy, that nothing mattered, nothing could ever matter, because nothing else was real, but this quivering and hurrying lambency of being. Birds, men or creatures not yet shaped and coloured, all were of no account except so far as this flame of life travelled through them. It left nothing to mourn over behind it; what I had thought was tragedy was mere emptiness or a shadow show; for now all real feeling was caught and purified and danced on ecstatically with the white flame of life."

From:   J.B.Priestly,  Man and Time:

Quoted in Adler, Studies in Analytical Psychology, p. 143;  Edward Edinger, Anatomy of the Psyche, Alchemical Symbolism in Psychotherapy, Open Court, La Salle, Illinois, 1985, p.129-30; and Marie-Louise von Franz, On Dreams and Death, p. 113-14.

 

 

The Castle of the Soul

    Like Godwin I think we need to approach the Hypnerotomachia from the perspective of Henry Corbin’s Mundus Imaginalis . . .  what type of esoteric stream was taking place, not merely neo-pagan, or neo-Platonic, more likely Hermetic . . .  for example, these clues from Henry Corbin:

 “Unfortunately, there are those who can only think in terms of “conversion”; that is, in terms of a process that would permit them to assign you a collective label. No. To speak of “conversion” is to have understood nothing of “esotericism”. A philosopher knows very well that to be a Platonist is not to register one’s self in some Platonic Church, and even less to prohibit one’s self from also being anything else besides a Platonist. Each and every ‘Orafa, whether from the East or from the West, cannot but think and weigh things in terms of interiority and interiorization, which means making in one’s self a permanent accommodation and abode for the philosophies and the religions towards which one’s Quest conducts one. And such a one must keep his or her secret: Secretum meum mihi. A secret that belongs to the Castle of the Soul. It is not through some external sociological choice that he will outwardly manifest this profound internal reality. It is in the “personal” work that he produces, the exteriorization of which results from the concordance of all of his or her “modes of being”. The “community”, the omma of the esotericists, found in all places and in all times, is the “inner Church”, and there is no confessional act of adherence required for one to be a part of it.

   But it is precisely this inner connection that is the true connection because it is not such as can be prescribed and is moreover invulnerable, and because it is in this sole case that one may truly say that the mouth speaks of the abundance of the heart.”

 

Henri Corbin

 

 

A World Infused With Divinity

In the eyes of the Vedic people, everything in the world was infused with divinity, and they saw the gods themselves as belonging to the everyday world of men. Their gods were not entities outside the world, but personifications of the forces of nature. And since nearly everything in nature was personified as a god, or was seen as an attribute of some god or goddess, Aryans lived, in a real sense, in the thick of divine activity.

Vedic Aryans saw the gods not as creators of the universe, but as part of the creation. However, in later Vedic times Prajapati (the Lord of Beings, here identified as Brahma) came to be designated as the creator, but not so much an active creator as the being from whom creation emanated. ‘Prajapati moves in the womb,’ says the Yajur-veda. ‘Being unborn, he is born in many shapes ... In him all the worlds stand.’ As Keith comments, ‘The idea of world creation is always in the Vedic literature regarded in the light of sending out of something already there rather than of mere bringing into being.’ There was really no creation, only evolution — the universe evolved out of its own latent potential.

Abraham Eraly, Gem in the Lotus. The Seeding of Indian Civilisation, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 2004, p.132

Love Your Neighbour

We should share the sufferings of our fellow human beings and practice compassion and tolerance, not only towards our loved ones but towards our enemies.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama, The Little book of Wisdom, Rider, London, 1997.

The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.

G.K. Chesterton

We are told on Sundays that we should love our neighbors as ourselves. On the other six days of the week, we are exhorted to hate. But you will remember that the precept was exemplified by saying that the Samaritan was our neighbour. We no longer have any wish to hate Samaritans and so we are apt to miss the point of the parable. If you want to get its point, you should substitute Communist [terrorist] or anti-Communist, [anti-terrorist] as the case may be, for Samaritan. It might be objected that it is right to hate those who do harm. I do not think so. If you hate them, it is only too likely that you will become equally harmful; and it is very unlikely that you will induce them to abandon their evil ways. Hatred of evil is itself a kind of bondage to evil. The way out is through understanding, not through hate. I am not advocating non-resistance. But I am saying that resistance, if it is to be effective in preventing the spread of evil, should be combined with the greatest degree of understanding and the smallest degree of force that is compatible with the survival of the good things that we wish to preserve.

Bertrand Russell, Knowledge and Wisdom

Chopping Wood and Fetching Water

There is a wonderful old vision - perhaps it originates in Japan, and may actually be seen in a woodcut by one of the Japanese Masters such as Hokusai. It show a burning building, with two rows of people between the fire and the river. One row is passing empty buckets from hand to hand en route to the river, the other, full buckets, en route to the fire.

This is a possible analogy of how we should be working together but it depends of course on whether the fire is near to a river, or any source of water, a well, or a tap. Another image, a sort of visionary image, that has always been imprinted on some back page of my brain, (and I am not sure which hemisphere) - is a image of a vast dam in the middle of a huge dessert. Here, the emphasis is on hydraulics. The water must be brought to the thirsty earth, to the spiritual aridity of humanity. Thus, engineering is necessary, canals, pipes, plumbing. Or if all fails spades to dig the watercourses. All this involves Work, and we are a lazy species. This could be called: social engineering . . .

Another image, comes from the beautiful and mystical novel ‘Mount Analogue’ by Rene Daumal. Here the analogy is Mountain Climbing. Those who have gone upwards, towards the Peak, or Goal, always prepare the Way for those Ascending from Beneath. They chop wood and leave fresh food for those ascending. As Above So Below. Basically, this should be the principle of any Fellowship. It has resonances with the Dream of Jacob, and the Angels going up and down the Ladder. On a mundane level, most people, when they ascend the social ladder, pull the ladder up behind them.

Unfortunately, there is still a greater reservoir of selfishness and greed - even among my personal friends and it has caused me great pain to see how the basics needs of the self have triumphed over any altruistic motives. But then this is an absolute indictment of our acceptance of competition and greed as the ground motivation of our society. People treat one another accoding to their position on the Food Chain. As such, we must accept the inevitable consequences of such behavior, in the Small Picture, and in the Big Picture, it will only lead to a ruination of the species, if this has not already become an irreversible process.

The world is dying, as one old matriarch said, from a lack of love. The world is burnt dry by the selfishness of humanity. There are great reservoirs of resources, of wealth - of plenty - which are held for the few - by the few. The New Visions which are arising at the moment, in the attempt to counteract this materialism, that may, or may not, destroy the planet - have manifested in countless forms, among many which we count as our own forms, the ones which we have spiritually, intellectual and culturally identified with. These forms, include social forms, religious forms or scientific forms to use a few labels. Among these, for example, I can make a list of all the subjects and their corresponding forms, or manifestations that have interested or involved me in action over the decades, e.g. Buddhism, the Tarot, Art, History, Archaeology, Jungian Psychology, Astrology, Literature, Theatre, Music, Ecology and so on. You can do the same. And mostly, we find there are wide areas of convergence that we share, that demonstrate our mutual friendship, our Fellowship, and hopefully, eventually, our commitment to Serving All Sentient Beings in whatever enlightened or suitable Form we find, or  Create.

Some Forms have Traditions - and some of these Traditions, for various reasons have been hidden and are in the process of re-emerging in the present time. Or, perhaps they have always been present in the ürgrund of Archetypes, and merely manifest in so-called New Forms, to satisfy the Needs of the Day.

One of these forms, and a Form of supreme importance is the Web. It has taken me a years of working on the Web – to digest what it has to offer as a tool, as a medium - and so on. A period of testing and trial. It is my idea of a Hermetic Heaven on Earth! But like all tools, it must be used according to its Inner Nature - which in this case, is definitely Mercurial, and therefore Hermetic. So this brings me back to the practical aspects of fires and buckets, and dams and sluice gates, and of Rest Houses, where those, whom we love, leave fresh milk and freshly baked bread - for those coming up the mountainside, whom we love…

So, let us continue with the work that needs to be done..

Samten de Wet: from the Archives: A Letter to a Friend, Turin, I Due Melograni, 14th October 1997.

Hermetic da Vinci

Professor Martin Kemp of Oxford University, is one of the word’s leading authorities on Leonardo da Vinci.. With Marina Wallace, he is the Director of UNIVERSAL LEONARDO, an absolutely stunning website on da Vinci. Martin Gayford, writing in ARTnews, says:

“To take an example Kemp has written about, what links a map of Tuscan river patterns, a detailed study of a dissected female body, and the Mona Lisa? The answer, Kemp says, is that the veins, arteries, and other sundry tubing in human anatomy and the streams of the Apennines were to Leonardo, not just similar but large and small examples of the same thing. The macrocosm of the wide world—the rivers, mountains, and lakes in the wonderful, cosmic landscape behind the Mona Lisa—was reflected in the microcosm of man (or woman). In Kemp’s reading, Leonardo would have thought of the scenery as a metaphor for the bodily mechanisms of the lady herself.

When Leonardo examined the corpse of a centenarian, Kemp says, he concluded that the old man had succumbed to the “silting” of his blood vessels— exactly the kind of process that would lead a river system to sclerosis. To Kemp, the drawing he labels “Irrigation systems’ of the female body: respiratory, vascular and urino-genital” (1507—8) is a masterpiece comparable to the Mona Lisa. More than that, it is, partly at least, about the same subject.

Of course, the Mona Lisa started off as a portrait of a particular person, Lisa Gherardini. But it became something more and different, and in fact was never delivered to Gherardini’s husband, who had presumably commissioned it. The landscape in the background is a poetic summary of Leonardo’s surveys of central Italian geography, which he had carried out for military and economic reasons. In front of the majestic system of the world, with its rivers and peaks, stands the woman—who Leonardo knew consisted, in part, of an intricate array of capillaries, valves, organs, and liquids. Microcosm recapitulates macrocosm: so there is one Leonardo mystery partly decoded.”

From: Martin Gayford, Decoding da Vinci, ARTnews, March 2007, pp. 134 – 137.

Using the axiom, As Above, So Below, from the Emerald Table, the above points to the essential Hermetic vision of Leonardo da Vinci, in its microcosmic and macrocosmic applications.