Blog Archive

November 29, 2019

Sefirot and Powers of the Soul


Sefirah: Outer function in Divinity and soul
Human Soul Powers: soul expressions of Divine motivations
Keter- Crown above consciousness
"Three Heads (levels) in Keter":
Essence of Keter:
Unconscious unity of faith (emunah) -
Essence (etzem) of soul in Atzilut or God's essence.

Inner Keter:
Unconscious source of (higher self rooted in delight (ta'anug).

Outer Keter: transcendent will (ratzon) which higher self expresses through will/
Chokmah -Wisdom insight
Bittul- Selflessness (Conscious illumination inspires self nullification)
Binah- Understanding concept
Simchah- Joy (Understanding awakens joy)
Daat- Knowledge of idea
Yichud- Union (Union with idea awakens emotions)
Chesed- Kindness expansion
Ahavah- Love of God and Divine in all things
(Response of Divine giving)
Gevurah- Restriction, Might
Yirah- Awe of God (Mystical awe of Divinity)
Tiferet- Beautiful harmony
Rachamim- Compassion (Balances kindness with restriction)
Netzach-Victor, Eternity
Bitachon- Confidence (Confidence inspires determination)
HodSplendour, Thanksgiving
Temimut- Sincerity (Sincere response to Divine Glory)
Yesod- Foundation connection
Emet- Truth (Desire for expressing higher powers  as truth in action)
Malchut- Kingship action
Shiflut- Lowliness (Action through receiving higher Sephirot lights)

Shadow Quotes and the Daimonic Attitude


According to Jungian analyst Liliane Frcy-Rohn, the dark treasury of the personal shadow includes our infantile parts, emotional attachments, neurotic symptoms, as well as our undeveloped talents and gifts.  The shadow, she says, "retains contact with the lost depths of the soul, with life and vitality—the superior, the universally human, yes, even the creative can be sensed there."

The "brain of Jung," Marie-Louise von Franz acknowledges the relationship between the devil and the personal shadow when she says, "The principle of individuation is actually related to the devilish element, insofar as the latter represents a separation from the divine within the totality of nature. The devilish aspects are the disrupting elements—the affects, the autonomous power drive, and such things. They disrupt the unity of the personality."

James Hillman, the so-called "anti-Jungian" said: "The unconscious cannot be conscious; the moon has its dark side, the sun goes down and cannot shine everywhere at once, and even God has two hands. Attention and focus require some things to be out of the field of vision, to remain in the dark. One cannot look both ways."

Jungian Astrologer, Liz Greene points to the paradoxical nature of the shadow as both the container of darkness and the beacon pointing toward the light: "It is the suffering, crippled side of the personality which is both the dark shadow that won't change and also the redeemer that transforms one's life and alters one's values. The redeemer can get the hidden treasure or win the princess or slay the dragon because he's marked in some way—he's abnormal. The shadow is both the awful thing that needs redemption, and the suffering redeemer who can provide it."

Author Doris Lessing tells us: "Yet there is a mystery here and it is not one that I understand: Without this sting of otherness, of — even — the vicious, without the terrible energies of   the underside of health, sanity, sense, then nothing works or can work. I tell you that goodness — what we in our ordinary daylight selves call goodness: the ordinary, the decent — these are nothing without the hidden powers that pour forth continually from their shadow sides."

William Shakespeare: "This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine."

Pondering these questions can awaken awareness of the personal shadow. But, we have to be willing to consciously feel and suffer these feelings without acting in a base way on their prompting. Fortunately, there are many methods of sublimation which contribute to conscious feeling without denial and repression. Art-making in all its shapes is good because we can choose to contain suffering within images, sounds, paint, color, ink, movements and gestures. In this way we can preserve the unconscious shadow in a mindful state of awareness. 

Imaginal dialog is effective too. If I am willing to let feeling become a personification through creative imagination, that personified emotion can express itself to me. The presence of this previously unconscious spirit within my daylight consciousness can teach me something new about my totality. By maintaining an openness to the inner figures of emotion, I gain in power and inner light. I can choose to take the advice of this inner figure, or I can reject it's opinion since I am responsible for my total personality. Yet this shadow figure is an important part of the complete person I claim responsibility for. 

I call this the "daimonic attitude." I don't know if I invented this term or not, but find that a daimonic attitude assumes personality and intellect all throughout the soul I live within. I can generally talk with another intelligent being. I can argue, persuade and agree with it, even it it's values are at times radically different than mine.

Magical traditions retain spirit lists such as the 72 demons of the Lesser Key of Solomon or other grimoires. These can be useful in practical magic, and that seems to have been their historical purpose. But someone who is open to the daimonic worldview and the creative imagination hardly requires a prefabricated grimoire to converse with the pregnant darkness. The individual psyche opens seamlessly into the collective unconscious of humanity even as the anima mundi births all our personal souls. 

Close the eyes and breathe deeply, drifting into an easy trance state. What is your mood? What feelings predominate? Ask them to become visible in images. Wait... it will come spontaneously. Allow the imagination to express itself on its own authority. Be patient with your inner world, allowing it to visualize itself within the mirror of self-reflection. 

This is the daimonic attitude: spontaneous, willingness to feel, openness to beholding interior images, patiently waiting upon the unconscious to present itself to awareness and having faith in the image.




November 27, 2019

Prayer


May Urania's lamp shine upon my path
May I see the saving light of the world!
May I draw aside the Veil of mystical Isis
To read the always-burning truths of Nature
hidden behind Her magical curtain,
inscribed upon the scrolls of time.

November 26, 2019

Prayer for the Dead


Angels ever watchful,
Guardians of  souls!
May your vibrations stream
Our souls' petitioning love
Unto our Hallowed Dead
Those within your charge,
That, united with your power,
Our prayer may helpfully radiate
To the souls it lovingly seeks!

The Internet is the Opposite of the Etheric Life World


There is much anxious talk about the advent of artificial intelligence. Occult talkers are not immune to this rather clever way to worry catastrophically. While I read a good deal of science fiction and I enjoy a robot insurrection as much as the next guy, I do have difficulty working up a good panic about the doom of humankind by AI. It is interesting to me that most of this discussion appears on social media which I think has a similarity to the etheric plane with its flow of pictorial images. Yet the Internet is the opposite of the etheric-life world.

I sometimes use a fourfold model of the cosmos where matter is represented by elemental earth; etheric-life is represented by water; astral-soul by air; and archetypal spirit by fire. Allow me to analyze machine reality in terms of the two lower levels: physical-matter (Earth) with its sub-parts: plasma, gas, liquid and solid; and etheric or formative life forces (Water) with its sub-levels: life meaning, tone structure, light pictures and warmth.

Spirit
Fire
beingness, light, love
Astral-Soul
Air
thinking, feeling, willing
Etheric-Life
Water
life-ether,
tone-ether,
light-ether,
warmth-ether
Physical
Earth
                             states of plasma,
                            gas,
                                 liquid,
                                       solidity

Social media occurs on the Internet which is a digital machine reality housed in physical-mineral computers. Although "social media" appears life-like, and is the medium for human, emotionally charged communication by texts, picture-images and complex sounds, it is obviously a production of the world lower than etheric-life world of elemental Earth. The basis of  machine reality is constructed of a digitally interactive "cloud" which exists only within the physical-mineral world.

Through computer technology we are provided a communicative system which mimics the higher etheric-life world existing one step higher than the mineral world. The etheric world streams into the planet from outer space, bringing animating vitality to the bodies of plant, animal and human kingdoms. In the human race, the etheric-life matrix, initially forms our physical bodies and sustains them through incarnation, scattering back into the global matrix upon our deaths. The etheric world has been described in occultism as having four related levels: where the first is the most subtle, verging upon the human soul, and the final is the most biological, merged into the homeostatic functions of the physical body: life-ether, tone-ether, light-ether and warmth-ether.

A life-etheric world  can be recognized by our human sense of ourselves as having  a life purpose. We feel motivated to think, speak and act in the external world out of a personal meaning, purpose and will. Life-ether expresses motivation in our biological organs to maintain movement and function: heart, keep pulsing, liver keep processes, kidneys keep filtering, stomach keep digesting.

A tone-etheric world can be noted in terms of how we recognize the presence of organically occurring patterns in our bodies and in Nature. These patterns are similar to our culturally constructed systems of musical harmony whereby pitches are organized into patterns of intervals and chords each producing culturally-determined responses to sound experience. In occultism, music is often a metaphor for Nature's ordered construction of shapes throughout crystal formation in metals and minerals as well as cellular and organ tissues in plants and animals. This metaphor operates down to microscopic shapes and geometries of chemical molecular chains and the probability patterns of atomic electrons, protons and neutrons.

We can recognize a light-etheric world in the colors of our memory pictures which emerge in  collage-like tableaus during our nightly dreams. Etheric light also appears in conscious daytime fantasies of imagination as another aspect of the etheric world directly underlying our human culture and personalities. Occultists consider the most intimate human-animal quality of the etheric-warmth world to be the immanent heat of our own bodies. Our agency and our very livingness appears to be shaped by a purpose inclusive of both waking and sleeping.  Body temperature rises during conscious physical activity as well as during REM dream states. Body heat decreases in both awake resting states and in the unconsciousness of non-dreaming.

While the etheric-life world is often symbolized in magical traditions as elemental Water, the lower world in which life is imitated by the Internet is elementally Earth and mineral-metallic. The personal computer is composed of many different metals, plastics and alloys. Copper, lead, and gold are used in various parts. Lead is used as solder, radiation shielding and as a plastics stabilizer in PVC cabling. Gold is used for pin plating while copper is a good conductor of electricity and is also used to make the hard disks along with aluminum, magnesium, silicon and zinc. Hard disk platters often are composed of alloys of cobalt, nickel and iron. Computer casings often contain steel, aluminum and carbon fiber. Plastics are mainly used for insulation to protect parts against heat, some are used in capacitors which conduct electricity.

Through computer technology we are provided a communicative experience characterized by what could be called virtual or machine-warmth, machine-light, machine-tone, and machine-life-likeness.

Machine-warmth arises from the physical frictional properties of electricity moving through metal with some machine components requiring more electricity than others. Electricity passing across circuits and through wires meets a degree of resistance. This is like two hands rapidly rubbing together and creates heat. Depending upon the kind and number of applications running or calculations being performed, the amount of electricity used results in variable heat production. Certain components generate more heat:

  • The CPU or Central Processing Unit handles number crunching data or text input in a word processor.
  • The GPU or Graphics Processing Unit handles graphics intensive processes. The GPU handles billions of calculations and instructions per second and can produce more heat than the CPU.
  • The Heat Sink is a thermally conductive device covering a CPU and GPU to absorb some of the heat being generated. Often fans are incorporated into the heat sink to disperse heat.
  • HDD or hard disk drive contains small disks that spin as information is written and accessed by other components - a steady flow of electricity is needed during certain functions to keep disks spinning which generates heat.
  • The optical disk drive (ODD) can play CDs or DVDs which spins the inserted disks so data can be read and written. The ODD uses a laser to read and write which require a large electrical input which generates considerable heat.

To encourage heat dispersal PCs prefer a hard surface. For dispersal they also prefer a cold/dry environment rather than the opposite which can case it to generate more heat

Machine-light appears upon a gaseous video display using an electrically charged ionized gas called plasma to illuminate pixels. A pixel is the basic unit of programmable color on a computer display. It is a logical unit, not a physical unit. The specific color of a pixel is a blend of red-green-blue. Three bytes of data are allocated for specifying a pixel's color, one byte for each major color part. A bitmap is a file that indicates color for each pixel along a horizontal and vertical axis. 

Machine-tone is the acoustical sound wave of an audio signal which is converted into an encoded numerical sample in continuous sequence. Many samples are required to replicate the waveform with each sample representing the intensity of the waveform at that instant. The number of bits used when taking samples varies according to a spectrum of accuracy in imitated quality. Common sampling is 16 bit samples taken over a spectrum of 44.1 thousand cycles per second (44.1 Kilo Hertz, kHz). Another way to phrase this is that in CD quality media, audio samples are taken 44,100 times per second each with 16 bit sample depth. Digital audio is used to record, store, manipulate, generate and reproduce sound using audio signals encoded into digital form.

Machine-life or Artificial Intelligence is the imitation of the life-ether which we realize in terms of meaning, vitality, functional movement and purpose. The much-discussed and hotly anticipated advent of AI "… is the branch of computer sciences that emphasizes the development of the intelligent machine, thinking and working like humans. For example [AI can be recognized in] speech recognition, problem-solving, learning and planning." (Farhan Saeed at www.iqvis.com).

Mr. Saeed lists the following examples of AI programs which are presently, if crudely, in operation.

  • Siri is a digital assistant designed by Apple to respond to voice-activation in performing daily tasks like message sending, voice calls and calendar inclusions.
  • Telsa is pioneering a self-driving car.
  • Cogito combines machine learning and behavioral science to enhance customer service AI systems. "The AI solution analyzes the human voice and provides real-time guidance [to the phone professional] to enhance behavior."
  • Netflix uses prediction algorithms to make recommendations  based on customer likes and previous choices. Pandora is called "… the DNA of music" using a core group of four hundred musical characteristics to analyze songs and making recommendations to customers.
  • Nest is Goggle's AI which controls home temperature based on your daily routines and activity levels.
  • Boxever is an AI system working in the travel industry which "conveys micro-moments or experiences that can please the customers."
  • Flying Drones are being involved in home shipping of products, making videos and in news reporting.
  • Echo from Amazon is a web search product that also schedules, helps you shop, controls "… lights, switches, thermostats, answers questions, reads audio books, reports traffic and weather, gives info on local businesses, provides sports scores and more."

Machine-life or AI appears sufficient in analyzing our external, behavioral patterns and routines, and then predicting out of that analysis what we might want next. Human behavior patterns certainly imply a degree of purposefulness. However, does AI really sense meaning as a human being experiences meaning? Does an AI gain a sense of energy and motivation, joy and exhilaration in accessing meaning? Is the raison d'etre of an AI affirmed and strengthened by feeling this enhancement? Probably not. So, at this time, etheric-life appears to be only superficially imitated by the computer.

It is similar to the process of an actor building up a role as a famous personality. The actor studies video and audio records, reads books, reviews available photographs of the life of the famous person. This is a first step in creating a reputable character. The actor will practice  imitating that person's voice, their recognizable gait, stylistic gestures, typical clothing and personal quirks. Artificial Intelligence can apparently do most of this external depiction of apparently meaningful human behavior, given enough processing power.

But then the actor "becomes" the role neurologically. This is probably based in our depth understanding of the interior of other people. We have an intrinsic understanding of the "reality" of another personality; that they also have an interior set of drives and values, motives and purposes. The actor can take on a felt semblance of that other personality because of this basic interpersonal assumption: you are like me to some degree. Actors can, for  a time, enter into sympathy with the gestalt of behavioral details. She becomes, through innate powers of imagination, empathy, self-reflection and skill, that other.

Can the Artificial Intelligence perform this act of taking on a role all the way from behavioral details to the internal gestalt? It is likely a matter of time before it will be able to fool the human observer into believing it is one of us. What will happen culturally when the AI is engineered to convincingly take on the persona of a thinking, feeling, willing being? We may have a decade or so to figure out the implications.

Mind-power Daimons


New Thought affirmation meets the Spirit Model of magic!

I find this useful in learning how to behold the spiritual world and the myriad intelligent beings therein. I've always been drawn to the daimonic world-view - that we are immersed and surrounded by invisible beings. This kind of prayer helps to make it more real.

Recognition: Our cosmos is constructed of interlinking spheres of myriad spiritual beings and intelligences; all moving in a cosmic dance of essential harmony and mysterious concord. Everything sensory, living, soulful and knowable is constantly emerging out of the Nine Orbs of the Spiritual World.  Out of the One emerges Creative Mind, scintillating within the Stars of the Celestial Wheel. Before the Throne of Wisdom stand Seven Creative Spirits, Principles and Agents of Mind. Out of Mind through the Seven emerges the Archai, grand Daimonic Time Spirits of meaningful aeons, significant seasons, creative days and planetary hours. Within the living matrix of kairotic Time, Archangelic Intelligences assemble holy ideas and potencies within nations, groups, and collective destinies. Archangels emit Angels as messengers of the dreamtime building with images for human help. Attracted by the lights and tones of the Twilight Spirits come elemental daemons of fire, air, water and earth, materializing forms woven by Angels, designed by Archangels, regulated by Archai, sculpted by Exusiai, motivated by Dynamis, idealized by Kyriotetes, arranged by Thronoi and conceived among the wheeling wisdom of Erelim whose axial center is the Stillness of the One.

Unification: My being is rooted in fiery daemons who serve Creative Mind, burning, shining, flaring spirits of egoic heat and dryness in spiritual reality. My being is ensouled by the aerial daemons who serve Creative Mind, blowing, exhaling, inspiring, expanding spirits of astral heat and wetness in psychic locality. My being is enlivened by the aqueous daemons who serve Creative Mind, flowing, springing, fountaining, streaming spirits of etheric cold and wetness in elemental life and harmony. My being is grounded in the earthy daemons who serve Creative Mind, hardening, mineralizing, sinking, weighing spirits of physical cold and dryness. My mineral body was shaped and engraved by Silent Aralim, manifesting all mineral bodies on this Earth. My etheric body is an organism woven into matrices of life by the Shining Chashmalim. My astral body is a breathing soul located within the sentient world by the Holy Serafim. My spiritual ego is a spark of eternal presence, harmonized by the Malakim in the light of our evolutionary fire-flower coming from the One.

Realization: All phenomena of sight and sound, smell, taste and touch reveal the wise and guiding presence of immanent spirit beings. Visual images, remembered etherically, unfold in soul-consciousness as sentient daemons with a life and mission of their own! Experiences of sound retained in tone-ether, reveal spinning geometric shapes of beautiful intelligences I long to meet. I am embedded in the vaporous bodies of fragrant thought-beings whose sensory forms are evanescent. I am momentarily altered by the bitter, sweet, sour, salty sensory bodies of spirit beings briefly incarnated as they pass through me. Textures and kinesthesis emerge as sensory bodies of entities organizing through the trace of my skin, taking passage through me on their own paths. All experiences of livingness, animation and vitality which surge within, around and through me are evidences of inner spirit beings! Every action of Imagination, willed or spontaneous, is the temporary structure of an angel with magical origins and goals. Each zesty, motivating feeling of purpose and meaning is the brush of an angels wings, a touch of its grace. Moral urges arising in my heart from august astral spirits; inspiring moods, sweeping in from loving beings in the surrounding world soul; illuminating ideas catalyzing Intuition are aligned with divine messengers - all these inner experiences are potent signals of daemons.

Thanks: I am grateful for the building awareness of mysterious daemonic movements through the spiritual world. I gladly receive the presence of daemons whose temporary bodies make me take notice. If the daemons appear in plants or if they show themselves riding animals, and if they wish to shape the winds and breezes to their ends, or play in the sprays and streams of flowing water, cavorting in the dramatic shows of weather, I welcome their coming and going!. I am grateful for surges of vitality which suggest their formative life-forces are close by, moving near, settled intimately. I am glad for their true grace which softens my heart against tyranny and dilates my feelings in the care of others. I give my thanks to daemons that speak to me with their invisible breath, bringing companionship always, friendship often and arcane messages as needed to help me on the path.

Release: Now I propel this affirmative prayer for beholding daemons, into Creative Mind. I release my energized word into daemonic hands, knowing they carry my consonants up to angelic beings. I strongly feel angelic beings receiving my words and bearing up my vowels into the hands of their princes. I envision with trust the choral leaders, catapulting my word into the spirits of time, dissolving this word into compelling vibrations merging into Creative Mind - Potent Feminine Mind of the One, Holy Shekinah of IAOE, Poetic Spirit of David the Beloved - Creative Mind, our Maker, Founder, Active Law, Manifesting All, Omnipresent, Omnipotent, Omniscient, One Mind. Let it be so!

Greek Deities of the 36 Decans ("Liber Hermetis")


Signs 
Taurus 
Gemini 
Cancer 
Leo 
Vigo 
Libra 
Scorpio 
Sagittarius 
Capricorn 
Aquarius 
Pisces 
1 
Hades 
Kharis 
Tethys 
Nike 
Hephaistos 
Themis 
Erinys 
Kairos 
Ananké 
Tolma 
Osiris 
Elpis 
2 
Persephone 
Horai 
Cybele 
Herakles 
Isis 
Moirai 
Kairos 
Leto 
Kore 
Hygieia 
Phobos 
Dolos 
3 
Eros 
Litai 
Praxidike 
Hekate 
Sarapis 
Hestia 
Nemesis 
Nymphai 
Loimos 
Asklepios 
Dike 
Okeanos