This is the latest in my series of posts reproducing the writings of Colonel Charles Seymour, one of the least known but most important esotericists of the twentieth century.

October 1936 to September 1937

Part 1

Who or what were the Old Gods? Pause for a moment and reflect on this, then note what pictures float up from memory’s storehouse as the conscious mind focuses attention on the question. The answer will show, to some extent, what religion you hold. An atheist might well dismiss the whole question as meaningless, holding that there is no God and no gods. He is probably right and certainly not altogether wrong.

The Westerner brought up in an atmosphere of so-called Christianity will usually dismiss the gods of pagan religions as nonsense, or, he may admit to their existence, in the past of course, and attribute them to Satan.

It has been written that: ‘An honest God is the noblest work of man.’ Turning over the sacred books of mankind and considering their claims, it would appear that man is not yet an expert craftsman. The student is here recommended to read J. M. Robertson’s book A Short History of Christianity, published by the Thinker’s Library. It is widely read and to meet this type of thinker on his own territory one should have a sound knowledge of this type of literature. Do hold in mind, however, that the Church historians start with the assumption that the pagan religions were false, and on this basis they exalt the Christian religion as being the only true faith. Robertson starts with the same assumption and shows clearly that there is nothing in the theology or rites of Christianity that was not in pagan religions, and on this he bases his conclusion that Christianity is also a false religion.

Both these outlooks are false for they ignore the fact that all theology and all rites are of human fabrication. All religions contain some small portion of the truth mixed with much error for they are all the result of man’s inner and personal religious experience. Paul, not Jesus, is the founder of modern Christianity, for it is a religion about Jesus and not the religion of Jesus.

It is often forgotten that religion, per se, is a matter of personal experience which is valid only for the person experiencing it. Since this is so, religions should be systems for the obtaining of that experience. They would then avoid the dogma which has crippled modern Christianity, and the need for a privileged class of priests claiming to be mediators between man and God would disappear. Naturally this will antagonize vested interests.

It is a universal principle that to appreciate a thing one must share the mental attitude of its creator. Once able to enter into its spirit we can reproduce in our own souls the same quality of life which called that thing into existence. To understand paganism we must enter into the spirit of paganism. What answer then can be given to the question asked at the beginning? Let us see what the pagans themselves had to say. Seneca wrote:

The wisest among men understand him whom we call Jove to be the Guardian and ruler, spirit and soul of the universe, the Lord and Maker of this mundane sphere, to whom every name is applicable. Dost wish to call him Fate? Thou wilt not err. He it is on whom all things are dependent … Dost wish to call him Providence, rightly wilt thou do so; for by his counsel … provision is made for this world so that it may proceed in an orderly fashion, and unfold his deeds to our view. Dost thou wish to call him Nature? Thou wilt commit no sin; for he it is from whom all things are sprung and by whose spirit we breathe life. Dost wish to call him the World? Thou wilt not be mistaken, for he … is all infused in its parts.

Over a temple at Sais in nothern Egypt was the inscription, ‘I am all that was, and is, and is to come.’ An Orphic teaching runs, ‘One is the Self Begotten, and all things were derived from this same one.’ The Egyptians called God Ua Neter, the One God, they were as much monotheists as the Jews, the Arabs and the Christians who officially believe in saints, archangels and jinnee.

Proclus in his Elements of Theology gives the same teachings, as the following will show, related to the Qabalistic Tree of Life.

(A) The One Originative Principle of the Universe = The Qabalistic Unmanifest, called by Proclus The One and the Good. The First Principle. It is Unparticipated, and is Unparticipable.

(B) The Many or High Gods = The Qabalistic Manifest. The ten Sephiroth in Atziluth

The high gods are the ‘Participated’ and the ‘Participable’ as well as the source of all that participates. They are above being, life and intelligence. These gods are divine henads or unities, the outshinings of the One and the Good. They are the Ten Holy Sephiroth, and are derivative terms proceeding from the first principle. Their attributes pre-subsist them in a unitary and supra-existential mode.

In connection with the above and with the aid of the Tree of Life consider the implications which are contained in the following propositions of Proclus.

Prop. 126. A God is more universal as he is nearer to the One, more specific in proportion to His remoteness from it.

Prop. 128. Every God, when participated by beings of an order relatively near to Him, is participated directly; when participated by those more remote, indirectly, through a varying number of intermediate principles.

These propositions when studied in the light of the descent of life force through the Four Worlds of the Qabalists give a clue to the use of god-forms, and to the varying functions of certain gods, like Osiris, Thoth and Isis.

To the uninitiated the pagan systems look chaotic, but there is a clue. It goes by function and not by name. So to answer the question posed at the opening of this chapter we may say that for an initiated pagan, the gods, as distinguished from God, represented divine intelligences and hierarchies of intelligences who were, and are, living out a form of experience which is other than man’s experience. They were, and are, undergoing this experience of living on the various planes of consciousness in this universe in much the same way that man undergoes the experience of living on this earth.

The atheist believes he is the highest type of intelligence the universe can produce, which conceit explains why he is an atheist. The average Christian is little better, for he usually repudiates all the unseen that stands between God and man. He may give lip-service via the prayer book to the angels and archangels, but he is secretly ashamed of them as being ancient and unscientific. The Catholics are a little wiser, they at least acknowledge the existence of the archangels, angels and saints, and teach their followers how to get in touch with them.

We can divide these intelligences and hierarchies into three main classes, which in turn have many subdivisions. There are the high gods which correspond largely with the Qabalistic names of God, the archangels and lesser gods corresponding to the great devas, jinnee and angels, and the humanized gods such as Osiris, Orpheus, Im-hotep, etc., which are somewhat similar in conception to the Christian saints.

Behind these high gods are unmanifested divine aspects which are not usually personalized, and are named as the Unmanifest, Chaos, Old Night, etc. They could be said to correspond to the Unmanifest and the Three Veils of Negative Existence as used in the Mystery schools of the Western Tradition.

Within the above classification there is another and smaller one: that of the sun-gods, the underworld- and moon-gods, the earth-gods and the mind-gods. This last is important for it contains the ‘principles’ which were and are used by the pagans for the practical working of their rites and for meditation work.

The first classification gives us the broad background of paganism. The second gives us the foreground of the stage on which the action takes place in the pagan Mystery dramas. Therefore, for the pagan both past and present the gods as a class represent the type of experience of which it has been said, ‘I do not believe that our experience is the highest form extant in the universe.’

The gods were personalized and named by the initiates in the same way, and for the same reason, that modern science names certain types of experience as electromagnetic, radioactive, etc. The Old God names are labels for certain types of divine experience which the initiates of old met up with in the course of their researches into the nature of the unseen. To sum up we may say, by using methods similar to those used centuries ago we can get similar experiences of the divine, for the old classifications still hold good. This again means the message which the Egyptian Thamus gave to the islanders of Palodes is false. [This is a reference to the story that Thamus was told, “Great Pan is dead”.]

Part 2

In the study of religions it soon becomes evident that each one has its inner and its outer section. Christianity denies this and protests that all its goods are in the shop window. At first sight this appears to be so. But even a perfunctory glance at Roman Catholicism shows that its priesthood forms an inner section and the laity its outer. The priesthood, too, has the same inner and outer sections, and this division rests not upon the secret dogmatic teachings which the ‘inner’ keeps from the ‘outer’, but upon the use of secret methods of spiritual, mental and emotional training.

The Roman Church says that it has no secret dogmas which are kept from the faithful that support it with money and votes. This is probably correct. But the priesthood, the monastic orders, the enclosed orders and the higher grades of the hierarchy have methods of training which are not readily available to the general public. The expression ‘religious vocation’ had for the highly trained Roman priesthood a meaning of which the Protestant laity has little suspicion. The highly trained priest bothers little about dogmas, for he knows it is the method not the dogma that really matters.

The great difference between the Church of England and the Church of Rome is that the former base their faith on a regard for the Thirty-Nine Articles, and the latter upon that special religious experience that Mother Church provides for those who are capable of using it.

The intent of celibacy and monasticism is, au fond, magical, and their community life prevents worry about the earning of their daily bread. With no financial worry, discipline, celibacy and a highly developed system of mental training, the efficacious evocation of the ‘real presence’ becomes an easy matter of daily religious routine. This explains why almost all the Roman Catholic churches are centres of magical power, and those of the Protestant have all the charm and warmth of an empty lecture hall. The Roman Catholic is said to call Protestant churches temples. This is the one thing they are not.

The reason why the Roman Church has this magical power is that it works, in a modified form, the old magical system that it took over from paganism. The Protestant divine is in most cases totally ignorant of, and hostile to, magic, which is why the spiritual and devotional atmosphere is lacking in his church. Such churches are not temples, for a temple is the dwelling place of the god and is ensouled by him. Instead they are places for the teaching of an ethic tinged with a decorous emotionalism. The magical element is absent from their rituals, the ministers are teachers, not priestly magicians as are the Roman Catholic clergy.

The Mystery schools based their training methods on the maxim, ‘As above, so below.’ They taught that man is a replica of the Great Cosmos, he is the little cosmos. The ancient teaching of Hermes is the method to be followed in this exposition of paganism, and it takes ‘mind’ in its various forms as the working basis of its training methods.

It postulates that mind is everywhere and directs everything. For example: the earth is the outward symbol of an indwelling intelligence in a manner analogous to a man’s body, which should also be the outer symbol of an indwelling intelligence. This intelligence incarnates to gain experience as does man.

All upon the earth lives, moves and has its being and is dependent upon this intelligence, called the Earth Soul or Earth Mother. These indwelling cosmic intelligences are graded. The grade above that which controls the earth, is that of the sun. This intelligence controls the whole solar system, which in its outer spatial form is its body. The planets and all they contain live, move and have their being within the all-inclusive being of this solar intelligence, considered to be the Great Father and giver of life to the Earth Mother.

The same idea holds good with regard to these vast transcendental intelligences which control the systems of solar intelligences and even the cosmos itself. Each god lives, moves and has its being within the vaster intelligence of the grade above it, the grade above fertilizing the grade below it. If you wish to study this more deeply you will find the ideas developed more fully in Proclus, The Elements of Theology, Propositions 113-17.

These ideas are worth bringing into the sphere of everyday life. For example think of the multitude of little lives that have their being within the vaster life, being and intelligence of a man. Study the living contents of your next boil with a microscope, then meditate by analogy on man and the gods, and the cosmos, keeping in mind the axiom, ‘As above, so below.’

Compared with man these cosmic gods are superior and perfect, while man is inferior and imperfect. The object of the initiated pagan was to gain conscious touch with these superior beings in whom he had his own beingness. He based his methods on the psychological maxim, ‘As a man thinks, so he becomes.’ The second great hypothesis on which they based their training was, ‘The mind gains conscious touch with that upon which it broods.’ The method of Loyola depends upon this, and his system is one of the most successful that Christianity has produced and is essentially magical in its methods and results.

It now becomes necessary to define the word ‘pagan’. According to the Oxford Dictionary, it means ‘heathen, unenlightened person’, yet Socrates, Plato and all the great intellects of the ancient world were pagans. Jesus ben Joseph was the flower of a pagan civilization. The word comes from the Latin, paganus, meaning in, or of, the country. When Christianity came to power it was used to denote those who worshipped the old gods at their shrines on the hills and in the vales, in contradistinction to the Christians, who were mainly town-dwellers.

The modern pagan, too, is a lover of open air, one who worships God made manifest in nature. In Qabalistic terminology he worships Adonai Ha Atretz, the Lord of the Earth. He sees God most clearly in the countryside and finds Him in the open spaces. He knows that God is just as present in the stuffy chapel, and the slum dwellings, and in the public houses as He is in the wooded vale and the dim forest glade.

For him the approach is not via a priesthood for every pagan is his own priest or priestess, he is the master of his own soul, and his own saviour, he has no belief in a supreme personal God. He denies all that the Church holds dear, including bishops, priests and even deacons. However, he remembers gratefully the great pagan mystic who walked and taught in Galilee, a man who, when he was tired of working in the towns and slums, went out into the hills to commune with his Father, Adonai, to obtain by meditation refreshment for body and soul from the open spaces and night skies. He learned to draw near to the Great Mother and to be at One with Her.

Jesus was essentially a pagan whose home was the paganus. It was the city-dwelling Saul who founded that which we call Christianity. The communism of the Galilean pagan was put to one side and its place filled with a teaching about Jesus, which made of him a God to be worshipped. Thus the very real dangers of communism were averted by deifying this Arch Communist and turning attention from an inconvenient teaching to the person of the teacher. It has been said that real Christianity has never been tried. It might equally be said that the supposed founder of Christianity was the greatest of the ancient pagans.

As with Jesus, so with the modern pagan; communion with nature is his means of worship and of rest, of refreshment for body and soul and spirit. Religion is for him a conscious linking of phenomenon with noumenon. Once this has been mastered the pagan is his own high priest, and he is independent of the priesthood as Jesus was independent of the Temple and the priests in Jerusalem. The third great hypothesis upon which modern initiation bases its system of training is, every man can become his own priest by right of function.

Part 3. The Background of Paganism

The mind of Man is this world’s true dimension,

And knowledge is the measure of the mind:

And as the mind, in her vast comprehension,

Contains more worlds than all the world can find,

So knowledge doth itself far more extend

Than all the minds of man can comprehend.

Rupert Brooke

The cosmic background to pagan religious thought is formed by the idea of the ‘oversoul’ or ‘world soul’, which Plotinus calls the Divine Creative World Soul, and which he describes thus:

First let every soul consider that it is the World Soul which created all things, breathing into them the breath of life – into all living things which are on Earth, in the air, and in the sea, and the stars in heaven, the Sun, and the great heaven itself. The Creative World Soul sets them in their order and directs their motions, keeping itself apart from the things which it orders and moves and causes to live.

It will be seen from this quotation (Enneads) that the Divine Creative World Soul is the ultimate form of creative energy to which the mind of man can reach. The other great and divine souls, such as that of the solar logos, our sun, of the great Earth Mother, of the various stellar logoi, are born and persist as this Oversoul grants them life … but this oversoul lives for ever and ever and never ceases to be itself. This is not the Earth Soul, which is of a lesser grade.

To use the terminology of the Qabalah, in its first manifestation this creative over soul is the Supernal Triad of Kether, Chokmah and Binah, and as such, it is the primal manifestation of that Unmanifest which the Qabalists call the Ain, the One, the Absolute; that which has its own mode of being behind that purely human convention which is called the Three Veils of the Unmanifest. The Ain thus corresponds to the itself of the passage quoted above.

Emerson, as the prophet of modern paganism, in his work Oversoul, writes with regard to man, the microcosm: ‘The Soul of man is not an organ, but animates, and exercises all the organs: it is not a function like the power of memory, of calculation … it is not a faculty… it is the background of our being in which all faculties lie,’

‘As above so below.’ The ancient initiates, recognizing the limitations of human thinking and of human methods for expressing their thinking, postulated as a working hypothesis the theory of the Divine Oversoul, analogous to the Soul of man. And this theory of a Divine Creative Oversoul which is analogous in its working to the Soul of man, and with which the human soul can get conscious communion, is the background of both ancient and modern Mystery school training.

We can divide up the Mystery systems of the Western Esoteric Tradition of today into six groups – Qabalistic, Chaldean, Egyptian, Greek, Celtic and Norse. It is not easy to decide which of these is the oldest. When educated people thought of human history as beginning in about 5,000 BC, it was generally considered that the Egyptian system was the oldest and that Egypt was the Mother of civilized religions. Today this assumption is considered a doubtful one. There are schools which think that the Druidic branch of the Celtic religion and the Egyptian Mystery systems are both offshoots from a common and still more primitive religion which they call Iberian, a system which was in vogue between 10,000 and 5,000 BC. If this theory is true it will explain the likeness as well as the curious differences between the British Druidic systems and the Mystery religions of ancient Egypt. The Celts themselves are not Iberians, but in their wanderings conquered or displaced the more ancient Iberian tribes and added their predecessors’ religious practices to their own.

It must here be remembered that these ancient religious systems were not collections of dogmatic teachings which are supposed to be capable of demonstration by, and to, reasoning in the minds. They were practical systems for obtaining ‘religious experience’, in its widest sense; and as most of them were based upon a technique for using the subconscious mind, they could not be rationalized or made reasonable in the modern sense of that term.

The ancient initiates found these systems reasonable because their sole religious criterion was that of utility. A system was valid if it produced religious experiences. If it did, all well and good – if not, the priest died! Invaders coming into a new country found that the old power centres were easier to work, and the old and local methods often gave more satisfactory results than their own. This is why so many of the old centres have remained in use for religious purposes down to the present day. Many Christian churches are sited upon old pagan centres that have been in use from time immemorial.

From a practical point of view it is far easier to open up, and gradually modify an ancient centre of religious power, than to start a new centre and a new system that is alien to the country, to the oversoul of the place and to the race. Looked at from the pagan initiate’s point of view the key idea is this: that man can get into intimate touch – almost at will – with the world soul once he has realized that the mind touches that which it constantly and sympathetically thinks about.

Part 4. General Classification of the Gods

The object of this section is to classify the gods of the pagan initiates from the practical point of view. This classification may not recommend itself to the historian or to the scholar. In the first place it is limited. In the second place it deals with deities which are unlike those of the classical religions and philosophies. And, finally, it is according neither to popular historical importance nor to the conventions of esoteric religion, but to the efficiency of gods when they are used in accordance with a certain technique.

The reader may say here: ‘What does this mean? Can I for example see, hear and touch the Great God Pan?’ Certainly. You can make Pan your constant companion and you can bring the ‘Pan within’ to life in exactly the same way that the orthodox Christian saint by a certain technique brings to birth the ‘Christ within’. But you are not recommended to do this without safeguards, for the pagan who has called into over-activity the ‘Pan within’ can be as unbalanced a person as the Christian saint who has roused into undue activity those forces which are sometimes called the Christ Within.

If you are a monotheist, and not that much-abused person, the dualist, you must, logically, recognize that Pan and Christ are but two aspects of the same thing, which temporarily, for the sake of convenience, will be called God. Both aspects are good – in the right place and in the right proportions. Both are harmful when misplaced in time, or space, or both. Spiritual adultery is just as common as physical and in the long run it is even more undesirable.

In The Mystical Qabalah by Dion Fortune there is given the system for the classification of the pagan gods which is used by the initiates of a number of modern schools. Briefly, it divides all the gods of the pantheons into ten classes, called the Sephiroth, and presupposes that they emanate from an unmanifested state of being which is the source of all that has been, is, or will be. The Neo-Platonists call it the One, as opposed to the Many. These ten classes are:

1. The space-time-gods – Kether

2. The all-fathers – Chokmah

3. The great mothers – Binah

4. The builders – Chesed

5. The destroyers – Geburah

6. The sun-gods – Tipareth

7. The virgin nature-gods – Netzach

8. The wisdom-gods – Hod

9. The underworld- and the moon-gods – Yesod

10. The earth-gods – Malkuth

From the practical point of view the student need, for the present, concentrate only upon numbers 1, 6, 9, 10 and 8, which reduces his classification to the space- or time-gods, sun-gods, moon- and underworld-gods, earth-gods and the gods of wisdom.

….

A short comparative list of the more common forms is:

1. Space-gods:

Qabalah – Eheieh.

Greek – Chaos, Nox and Eros. Zeus, Jupiter as sky-gods.

Egyptian – The Eight Gods of Hermopolis with Thoth at their head; Amen and Ptah; Nu and Nun.

Chaldean – Apsu, Mommu and Tiamath. Anu as the All-Father.

Celtic – Lir and Beli.

Nordic – Odin or Tiwaz or Tyr.

2. Sun-gods:

Qabalah – Aloah va Daath.

Greek – Apollo and Helios.

Egyptian – Ra, Horus and Osiris.

Chaldean – Shamash. Asshur, Enlil, Merodach or Bel.

Celtic – Lugh or Angus Og, Dagda, Bile and Hu.

Norse – Balder.

3. Moon-gods and the underworld-gods.

Qabalah – Shaddai El Hai.

Greek – Semele, Pluto, Persephone.

Egyptian – Isis of the Moon and Thoth as Tehuti, Khensu and Osiris.

Chaldean – Nin-gal and Sin. Ishtar. Allatu and Nergal.

Celtic – Celi as the husband of Keredwen. Midir and Etain of the Fairies. Bile, Manannan Manawyddan Mab Llyr the Welsh Lord of Hades. Brigid and Gwynn ap Nudd.

Nordic – Mani the moon-god. Ran and Hel the Goddesses of Death.

4. Earth-gods:

Qabalah – Adonai.

Greek – Demeter, Gaea as Earth Mother and Ceres.

Egyptian – Isis.

Chaldean – Ishtar. Tiamath as Earth Mother.

Celtic – Keridwen and Dana (Irish), Brigantia. Cernunnos.

Nordic – Rinda. Thor and Sif, the God and Goddess of Crops.

5. Gods of wisdom:

Qabalah – Hermes, Thoth.

Greek – Hermes. Pallas Athene.

Egyptian – Thoth.

Chaldean – Nabu or Nebo, and Sin.

Celtic – Ogmios and Briganda. Ogma (Irish), Myrddin (English). Dagda (‘The Lord of Great Knowledge’).

Nordic – Odin, with Loki as the God of Evil Wisdom.

This list is a brief one, and it refers only to the cosmic intelligences, i.e. to the type of beings that Iamblichus in his book The Egyptian Mysteries calls ‘the gods’.

In the Mystery schools of Egypt and the Gnostic schools at Alexandria, the ‘many’ gods were considered to be the emanations or the ‘outshinings’ of the ‘One’ God who was the super-essential deity, or, as we should say, the Unmanifest Cause of All. Iamblichus divides the divine hierarchy into the gods and the superior races, and it is clear that he considered the former as representing or personifying qualities in the Divine Mind rather than as personalities or individuals.

For the ancient initiate, mind was ‘the leader and King of the things that actually are’. Thus we can best understand these pagan gods by thinking about them as the great directing minds of this universe.

When studying these deities, the student, in the course of meditations made with some degree of proficiency in the technique of the Mystery school method, is bound to come across certain curious phenomena which have been described as the Memory of the Earth. A.E. in The Candle of Vision (p. 56) has dealt with this subject and the student is advised to study this great writer’s theories. But for the present we may take the ‘Memory of the Earth’ as a working hypothesis. The modus operandi will be discussed later, and if the student will tentatively accept this theory, he will save himself a good deal of worry about details, and this will result in accelerated progress.

The student is advised to read and re-read these classifications of the gods. He may not agree with them. If he has been educated in what is called the classical tradition he will probably disagree heartily. But it must be called to mind that we are not dealing with the classical pantheons. The criteria of the classical records are not the same as the criteria that are applied to results obtained from the recovery of Earth Memories. The latter are empirical; the former are not. The main object is to get a working process that can be relied upon to give adequate results when recovering the past.

The more these gods are reflected upon in solitary meditations the more such meditations pass inwards into sympathetic contemplation and the easier it becomes to develop, from latent existence in the subconscious mind, the long-hidden memories of the ancient Wisdom religions.

Part 5. The Gods and their Functions

The souls came hither not by sending, and not of their own will; or at least their will is no deliberate choice, but a prompting of nature … The Intelligence which is before the World contains the destiny of our abiding yonder no less than of our sending forth; the individual is sent forth as falling under the general ordinance. For the universal is implicit in each, and not by authority from without does the ordinance enforce itself; it is inherent in those who shall obey it and they carry it always within them. And when their season is come, that which it will is brought to pass by those in whom it resides; bearing it within them, they fulfil it of their own accord; the ordinance prevails because the ordinance has its seat in them, as it were pressing upon them weightily, awakening in them an impulse, a yearning, to go to that place whither the indwelling voice seems to bid them go.

(Dodds, Select Passages Illustrating Neoplatonism)

When striving to unravel the complexities of the numerous pantheons it is necessary to call to mind the fact that the gods are but symbols for certain manifestations of divine force. Their names are the X, Y and Z which enable the theurgist to work out this system of divine algebra and to function as a priest.

Isis, for example, is a man-made personification of a certain type of divine force. Again X may stand for many things which are not of this physical plane. Isis too stands for many non-material things. There is Isis as the Earth Mother, as the Virgin Lady of Nature, as the Queen of Heaven, as the Moon, as the Cosmic Mother, and so on.

There are many forms in which electricity can be used – as a motor agent, as light, as heat, as a curative agent, or as a means for executing a criminal. What electricity is per se we do not know, but we do know how to make use of it in various particular ways. What the gods are per se we do not know, but the theurgist does know how to bring into function a god-form, i.e. a divine symbol in many particularized ways.

From a practical point of view this is all that really matters. The divine within reaches out to the divine that is without, the contact is made, and the divine machinery is set in motion upon the plane of consciousness that is required. But if there is no Isis within your own soul, you will call in vain to this goddess. You must seek within yourself for the starting-handle.

To understand what the pagan was trying to do one must imagine, as he did, that divine all-embracing power which welling up under pressure from the unmanifest is ever seeking to express itself more and more fully, more and more perfectly. It has been well said that ‘God is pressure.’

This pressure is often called Spirit, or Life. In reality it is all these things, and more, for there is the transcendent aspect to this power which the Chaldeans called the Great Silence, as well as the imminent aspect which is the Great Sea. In order to exist – this universal power must differentiate itself into particular units. The One must become the many – the High Gods.

The Qabalists use the system of the Tree of Life to explain the process by which the One becomes the Many. They divide divine manifestation into four worlds or states of consciousness. The most subtle of these worlds is Atziloth, which might be called the world of pure spirit, the Archetypal World, the sphere of the divine archetypal ideas, the plane of the High Gods, or the world of the ten Divine Names. All these things, and many others, it has been called, but it must be remembered that in itself the world of Atziloth is beyond our comprehension. It can be described only by means of analogy and by the use of symbols. Neo-Platonism, as a system, gives a full and very vivid teaching concerning this sphere of the divine activity. But the modern student must not forget that these ancient initiates were carefully trained in the pure dialectical method, a subject little studied today.

The best line of intellectual approach to the comprehension of ideas concerning the world of Atziloth is a study of mystical theology. This art reaches out to the supreme goal by the use of analogy and paradox, by blending the Via Affirmativa and the Via Negativa, until the super-essential Darkness which is the Ultimate Light of Light is reached in a contemplation that ends in Agnosia. One can study these methods even if one cannot use them. A study of Neo-Platonism can take the competently taught student by an ancient, well-trodden road to identification with the ‘One and the Many’. But competently taught students are extremely rare for the world has seen few such teachers as Plotinus, Ammonius Saccas or Lao-tzu. These teachers are themselves living embodiments of the divine wisdom-gods. By sympathy they have become ‘at one’ with the divine wisdom. By their ‘at-one-ment’ they are able, at least temporarily, to lift the prepared student up to the metaphysical heights of the Light beyond all Lights – the Transcendental One, or to take him down to that abyss beyond all abysses.

The experiences which these teachers produce in the student’s soul are evanescent. Yet something remains in memory for the hand of the Initiator has been laid upon the neophyte. When Height has challenged Height, and Deep has called to Deep, one is never quite the same.

The second sphere of the divine outpouring is called the world of Briah, a word derived from the Hebrew verb meaning to create, to produce. The divine ideals have, as it were, become the divine ideas. In Qabalistic terminology this is the world of the archangels, of the creating gods and the all-mothers of the ancient pantheons. It is the world of the great devas of the Eastern systems. In modern language we might call it the sphere of the abstract mind, or the world of abstract thought and ideas.

The third world is called Yetzirah. Now the Hebrew word Yatzar (Yod, Tzaddi, Resh) has several significant (from our point of view) meanings. It means to form in the mind, to plan, to fashion as an artist, and in certain cases to destine for a particular purpose. Now the initiates conceive the physical world to be crystallized astral matter, the astral world to be crystallized mind-stuff, and mind-stuff to be crystallized spirit. The same thing but varying in, shall we say, density.

In this third sphere of being, ideas take form, and the etheric moulds that hold dense matter in its physical form as we know it are fashioned by the divine artists; for Yetzirah is the sphere of the greater localized divinities, and the student will find a good deal given in Chapters 3-6 of The Egyptian Mysteries by Iamblichus. In modern terminology Yetzirah may be called the astro-mental world, though one must remember that there is no hard and fast line between the various spheres of being; they shade off imperceptibly one into the other. Dividing them up is like dividing the human mind into the descriptive sections that are used by psychologists. This is convenient for teaching and description, but these hard and fast lines of distinction exist only in textbooks.

The fourth sphere or world is that of Assiah. It corresponds to the physical world in its most subtle form. It is the densest form of the etheric world. In this sphere of the subtle pre-matter of existence are to be found the nature spirits, elementals, and the children of Dana, of the Great Earth Mother, the divinities of mountains, streams and woods.

If we bear in mind the ancient Mystery teaching that ‘all the gods are one god, all the goddesses are one goddess, and there is one Initiator’, it will be seen that in the system of the Tree of Life as expounded in The Mystical Qabalah there is developed a perfectly logical sequence of cause and effect. From the human point of view the Tree of Life works as a system for enabling a human being to obtain contact with divine things, and again using the analogy of electricity, to put himself in circuit with the power-house of the universe.

Thus it will be clear that the pagan initiate looked upon life from a rather different point of view from that of the ordinary man. The ambitious self-reliant man of the world strives to make himself a forceful personality and to get things done by his own driving power. He is his own power-house, and he supplies – or thinks he does – his own energy. The pagan, however, grasped the idea of ‘Spirit’ as the fountain head of a great ‘forming power’ which he received into himself. Then he proceeded to manifest it in accordance with the Law of Harmony and by means of a technique that he had been taught.

Once more the student is warned that he must distinguish between ‘the order of that which is’ and ‘the order of ideas concerning that which is’. One is not now trying to describe a chemical experiment. How these things that have just been described by analogy and by symbol may appear to minds superior to our human minds, we have no idea. To such minds our explanations are certainly childishly inadequate even if they are not entirely inaccurate. But this Qabalistic system of describing and using the mind fulfils the following fundamental conditions for obtaining results. First there is the power. Then there are individuals of various grades in all four worlds of manifestation who understand how to use this (divine) power. And, lastly, there is a method, or rather methods, for using this power in so far as mankind can become aware of it.

The divine life or power – like electricity – is not generated by the individual. The individual uses power which is already existing and the specializing of the divine energy which alone leads to manifestation must take place through individuals, human or otherwise. In theurgy this is a matter of experience as well as of common sense.

The pagans taught that every man is a distributor of this all-embracing, originating divine spirit or power. The initiate, however, was a trained man who, understanding the nature of the divine power, was able to transform it at will. He was a well-trained engineer, and he got his training in the same way that an electrical engineer gets his today – by working practically in an electrical power station. The initiate worked in the power-house of nature after having been taught the theory of his craft in a Mystery school. Then he took his practical training in the sphere of Yesod, which is the unmanifested element of the Four Elements of the physical world, the aether of the wise, the astral light of the ancients.

The various gods and their hierarchies are specialized functional types of this omnipresent divine energy. For example, Venus is the personification of the divine activity that is called attraction; Mars is that of repulsion, the divine destructive force; and Jupiter is a constructive mode of action. Again the religions of the mother and the daughter – Demeter and Persephone for example – are not so much family relationships as psychological stages in the life of the soul. From this point of view, the doctrine of the identity of Kore the Maid and her mother is obvious. The Maid is the psychological parent of the mother, and so the confusion of the persons disappears – the mother is the virgin and vice versa. The One God has become many gods, and each god functions as the head of a divine hierarchy with aspects that are spiritual, mental and astral. Each hierarchy in its turn carries further into manifestation the cosmic principle of the One, which becomes the Many. And each plane of manifestation has its own standard of truth and its own ethic, and these standards are by no means identical.

Cosmically, every man is a unit, but he is also a multiplicity, a hierarchy of divine lives, and in his activities proper to himself he manifests the same principles as the One and the Many. The virgin is the parent of the mother(!) psychologically if not physically. The virgin goddess renews her virginity every winter solstice. This becomes clear if we study the Babylonian Ishtar, who is called ‘the Virgin’, ‘the Holy Virgin’ and ‘the Virgin Mother’ by her worshippers. Yet this virgin goddess says of herself, ‘A harlot compassionate am I.’ Among the ancient Jews and Babylonians a veil was the mark of both virgins and prostitutes – Ishtar in certain aspects wears the veil. And Genesis 38: 14-15 throws a curious light on this custom. Also, the word Parthenos, upon which so much theology has been founded, is worth looking up in a modern Greek dictionary, for in ancient days bastards were called Parthenioi, virgin-born.

The key to ‘understanding’ is sympathy, which is strong feeling carefully directed. Once sympathy has been aroused, the soul feels the truth of a ‘mythos’, not because it is in any way reasonable, but because something in the depths of one’s innermost being has been touched. Pre-natal memories of a divine knowledge that the soul once had long ago – a knowledge temporarily lost while wandering in the realms of mortal generation – begin to stir. By meditation these memories of a lost understanding can be recovered; for in the long dead past, perhaps, one may have known something of the Egyptian, Chaldean, Orphic and Pythagorean systems.

To sum up we may say that in this universe there is an ever-descending stream of divine power and life welling up under pressure from an unmanifested state of being and pouring down into manifestation. The various gods, each on their own plane and functioning according to their own degree, manifest and specialize this life force on planes of being which are more subtle than the plane of physical matter. The pagan by taking conscious thought of the gods can draw through himself the specialized life force of the gods or god with whom he is most in sympathy. Thus by a conscious effort man can forward evolution by increasing his capacity to distribute and to specialize this divine life power.

Again, by the study of the inner aspects of man’s existence before conception draws him back into the realms of matter, the identity of Kore becomes manifest, for Kore is the Virgin Mother, the higher self in man; and every man – in terms of his lower self, and excluding the physical body – is one of the parthenioi. For the ancients, the moon-mother is a virgin, yet Demeter, curiously enough is the goddess who presides over divorce. (Harding, Women’s Mysteries, p. 78.) The doctrines of the virgin who has a child, of the perpetual virginity of the mother, of the renewal of the mother’s virginity with the death of the child, will yield much spiritual food for thoughtful meditation.

There are many curious paradoxes to be found in the psychological teachings of these ancient myths when once we begin to study the ‘Great Silence’. For, as the ‘Great Sea’ is the root of things that are in matter, so the ‘Great Silence’ is the root of thoughts that are in mind – divine mind. As the Chaldeans taught, the ‘Great Silence’ and the ‘Great Sea’ are cosmic yoke-fellows. They are the duad of the monad which, on each plane of being, forms a divine triad such as woman, saint, butterfly; Zeus, Apollo, Dionysius; Chaos, Erebus, Nox. Does not the picture of Nox, crowned with poppies or stars, with large dark wings and flying robes, riding in a chariot drawn by two black horses, touch the very depths of your being with a feeling that is subtle and mysterious?

Part 6. The Earth Mother

26

Oh, come with old Khayyam and leave the Wise

To talk; one thing is certain that life flies:

One thing is certain and the rest is lies;

The flower that once has blown for ever dies.

27

Myself when young did eagerly frequent

Doctor and Saint and heard great argument

About it and about: but ever more

Came out by the same Door as in I went.

(Roses of Parnassus, Number One)

The modern man with his childhood mind shaped by the dogmas of Christianity, his youthful mind filled with the facts of modern science, and his mature mind discarding both, is often apt to let religion slide. If there is life after death he just hopes for the best. And so we find that among the more thoughtful men of this type an intense pleasure is sometimes taken in Fitzgerald’s ‘Omar Khayyam’. Consider the first verse just quoted. Can, so far as human experience goes, anything be more certain than these facts and this conclusion? Can anything be more satisfying to the average logically trained mind than stanza 26?

Christianity and science alike consider that the earth is a soulless ball of mud, following natural laws which condemn it to float for aeons through apparently boundless space. Man’s body is part of it, man’s mind is – and here please read stanza 27, for it describes the situation as regards this last point perfectly.

The greatest of the Masters told us much about that inner reality which lies just beyond appearances. He called it the Kingdom of the Heavens. It is within man himself; men have got to become as little children to enter it; it is possible to know the hidden things of this inner kingdom of the heavens, and that those who think that they are ‘learned’ and the ‘sanctimonious’ cannot enter it themselves, and will even try to prevent others from entering.

The pagan initiates who lived at the time of Jesus knew that the earth is not soulless. They knew of the greater reality that underlies the actuality of outward physical manifestation. They could enter this Kingdom of the Heavens at will. They would not have contradicted any of these statements of Jesus.

There is no reason why the student of this ancient paganism should not follow in the footsteps of these initiated pagans if he wants to do so, and if he knows what to do. And the knowing what to do is perfectly simple; all that is required is to get in touch with the earth soul consciously instead of subconsciously. For the subconscious mind in always in touch with the earth soul, even when the conscious mind denies the earth soul’s existence.

There is an ancient proverb which runs: ‘Any fool can tell you what to do: only a wise man can tell you how to do it.’ Having, I hope, achieved the first of these things, let me try so far as lies in my power to do the second.

Speaking generally, it is unwise to try to take the Kingdom of the Heavens, i.e. the inner worlds of nature, by force. For the average man, the only safe and reasonable way is to train under a competent teacher in a Mystery school which is functioning under a duly authorized authority. There he will be taught, and guarded, and later on, guided. The difficulty does not lie in opening the gates – that is easy – but in closing them after your return, which is quite another matter.

There are many who are by temperament what is called nature mystics. These persons seem to have an innate right of entry into those kingdoms of nature that substand the outer form of the Great Mother Nature. The process comes so easily to them that they are almost unaware of the fact that a technique is needed. And the very facility with which they are able to function makes them unsafe as teachers. They are unaware of the many and dangerous pitfalls which await persons less gifted than themselves; and so they can do little to help or guide their pupils in time of trouble.

The number of desirable students who can attend a Mystery school is limited. The number of schools which can teach under duly constituted authority is exceedingly limited. What then can be done by the would-be enquirer who cannot, as yet, attend a school in order to learn the ‘How’ to which reference has just been made?

He can do a great deal in safety if he sets about the long preliminary preparation methodically. If he determines to get in touch with an authorized school, it is curious how the way will open for a really determined student.

In the preliminary stage one can get in touch with the Earth Mother by taking a pre-determined line of thought and sticking to it. Also, it helps to store the mind with ancient symbols, and with the myths and folklore of the pagans, studying their pantheons as a record of psychological processes which are both human and cosmic. Here the Tree of Life makes a good filing system, and it is an aid to their analysis, classification and synthesis.

There are two distinct aspects to this method of study, and for convenience we will call then the ‘out of doors’ and the ‘indoors’ methods. The student must remember that unless he is a nature mystic of a very high type, one who has recovered from his subconscious mind the knowledge that we once had before the darkness of the Middle Ages fell upon Europe, he must work these two methods in a harmonized proportion while waiting for the opportunity of joining a Mystery school, an opportunity which will come fairly quickly when he is ready.

The minor details of this out of doors method for regaining touch with the soul of the Great Mother must vary widely. No two individuals are alike, no one method will completely suit all comers. But the following generalized methods are suggested, not because they are specially valuable, but because they have been tried out and found to be adequate even if elementary.

Next time you are alone in the country or by the seaside, get into a quiet place and note carefully all that you can see, hear and feel of the nature happenings that occur within a hundred yards of where you are sitting. Be sure to limit your awareness strictly to the things that happen within this circle, and do not go outside it. Later, with practice, you will be able to limit your sphere of sensation further, to, say, a single tree or a bed of flowers.

Below is an example of how the method works. Remember that in actual practice you make the experience intensely personal until you find that your consciousness of yourself is merging into something that is wider, greater, and more intense than you are: also it is of a beauty more vivid than that of your own imaginings at their best. This sensation of merging is the test of success; by it you can tell whether or not you are at heart a pagan, i.e. a member by right of function of the paganus, of the countryside.

Example of the Method

You are lying on a cliff face on the coast of Devon; the sun is hot and bright, and the cliffs are covered with sea-pinks and small yellow flowers. The sea, a hundred feet below, is blue and very still. It is late spring or early summer, and the young gulls in their brown plumage keep the old ones busy. They scream and mew. It is lovely and warm lying on the red-brown earth, and no one is near. A large gull floats up, balances for a moment, looks at you seriously out of bright, intelligent, but soulless eyes and then slides swiftly to the left and out of sight. The warm air, the warm earth, the soft murmur of the summery waves, produce a feeling as of sleep, and slowly one begins to slide down that slope that leads to unconsciousness and to slumber.

Now comes the critical moment if you want to gain touch with the earth soul. You must slide down until you come almost to the slumber line. Then by an effort you bring your focus of consciousness to a fixed point and watch in an active and yet detached manner, the impressions that are coming in upon the inner senses and recording themselves in your mind. And here the student had better note that this is much easier said than done.

This last stage must not be allowed to develop into passivity. It is a simple form of semi-physical contemplation. The mind and the inner senses are intensely active, while the bodily functions have passed out of the focus of consciousness. The soul of man can then consciously draw nearer to the soul of the Earth Mother. What this exercise tries to do is turn a subconscious into a conscious contact: and this takes time and much earnest practice. Constant daily practice is necessary. This need not be always in the same place, though it undoubtedly helps to have one favourite spot for this type of meditation. What may we expect to get from this exercise? At first very little. In any event the conscious result is small even when a careful daily record is kept. But the object is not factual knowledge; instead, it is the conscious opening up of latent powers within the soul itself that is aimed at. And this slowly leads to a heightening of some inner sense of awareness, to some inner sensing of the beauty and harmony of the unseen side nature. The focus of consciousness is very carefully being transferred from the Malkuth of Earth to that inner kingdom of life and strength and beauty which lies just beyond this visible physical plane. And in times of weakness and weariness the trained soul can draw consciously on the life forces of these ‘inner kingdoms’ for renewed health and strength.

The next stage in this process comes when the holiday is ended. Suppose one is back in town and that the noise, and smells, and asphalt have cut one off from earth contacts, then indeed the Earth Mother can seem very far away. The past is as a dream, vague, distorted and lifeless. The initiated pagan, however, does not let this worry him. He settles comfortably in the easy chair he uses for his daily meditation in the privacy of his own room. His thoughts turn inwards and he seeks the Kingdom of the Heavens that is within himself. He goes into that inner chamber as that great man Jesus ben Joseph told his disciples to do. By means of the technique that his school teaches he is, in thought, in feeling and in action, back in Devon. Again he is lying on that cliff, he sees the sea-pinks, he hears the sea-birds; once more the big gull with its bright eyes floats up, hovers for a moment, and then slides away. More and more the focus of consciousness turns within until suddenly a contact is clearly felt between the soul of the initiate and the living earth soul. Then once more he is in the loving arms of the great Earth Mother. Her life flows into him until every cell and nerve is bathed in it. The joy becomes almost an agony of ecstasy. The Chalice of the Soul is full to overflowing. Later the contact is cut deliberately. Grateful thanks are given, and the pagan initiate returns to his daily round, rested, strengthened and refreshed with the Elixir of Life.

Heidrun supplied Odin with the heavenly mead, the drink of the gods of the Norsemen; this supply is still available for those who can earn it; for the high gods never die. It is man who foolishly forgets that they are powers immanent within his own soul.

But one must have understanding if one is to earn this sacred drink of the gods, be it called Soma, Haomo or the Heavenly Mead; and the indoor training of the nature mystic aims at producing this understanding. For few educated persons today are content with ‘rule of thumb’ methods for attaining to glimpses of that Truth, Harmony and Beauty which are aspects of that Infinite Unity which we know as Nature, the Earth Mother.

The first question that has to be answered is ‘What is nature?’ It has been said by modern philosophers that, as a man sees things, nature is ‘a concept of order’, also that nature is ‘an empirical reality in space’. The nature mystic would say that these concepts are undoubtedly true, and they are useful so far as they go. But they do not go far enough; for, from the mystical point of view, they do not cover the whole of man’s experience, even though they may cover the whole of some men’s experience. It can fairly truthfully be said that many people regard the existence of nature as a self-evident fact, and say ‘why worry about asking “What is nature?” Is it not obvious that nature is just naturally nature? Why bother about the obvious?’

Looking at this question solely from the point of view of the nature mystic, there are three ways of approaching the study of nature: the way of materialism; the way that some philosophers call spiritualism (this way has nothing to do with ghosts and mediums, but refers to ideas and not to so-called psychical manifestations); and the way of the initiates of the Ancient Mysteries. The wise student will study all three with strict impartiality, for all are true, none is all the truth, and one learns most by combining them in that harmonized proportion which suits your own mental make-up. Study most the aspect you like least in order to obtain balance.

Some of the most modern materialists deal only with nature as an ’empirical reality in space and time’. The late Professor J. B. S. Haldane describes this attitude of mind thus:

To many persons in modern times, it seems that the only reality is what can be interpreted in terms of the physical sciences, with the addition, however, that certain physical processes occurring in the brain are mysteriously accompanied by consciousness, the quality of which depends on the nature of these processes. This belief is known as materialism, and for those holding it, religion is necessarily no more than an illusion based on ignorance …

For traditional physical science the visible and tangible world of our experience is interpreted as consisting of self-existent material units reacting in space and time with one another in such a way that the energy represented in mutual movements and reactions remains constant. Any apparent co-ordination or unity which exists in the physical world is regarded as accidental to the unit of which it consists, and ultimately a mere matter of chance as far as our knowledge goes…

If we disregard the fact of life, and of our own relations to the universe around us, it undoubtedly seems to behave in such a manner as physical science assumes … If we assume this interpretation then anything that we can really be conscious of can only consist of isolated impressions in our brains, these impressions being somehow put together to form a picture which is really subjective, and only simulating a surrounding universe.

These extracts from one of Professor Haldane’s last lectures are worthy of close attention. Materialism from the nature mystic’s point of view is a true and very valuable belief so long as it is remembered that here is a partial and not an integral or complete view of nature as the mystic apprehends it. For him Nature is more than her physical manifestation in time and space.

As regards philosophical spiritualism, which is the foundation of all religions, Professor Hocking in his extremely useful book Types of Philosophy (p. 28) has summarized it as follows:

There exists another world than this world shown us by the senses. This other world is somehow veiled from our ordinary perceptions; and yet is is continuous with Nature; and of easy access in either direction if one has the right path. It is the residence of powers or agencies which we distinguish as divine; they always know how to get at us; we are not so clear as to how to get at them.

In these seven short statements there is given us a very different conception of nature; and yet it is one which is the complement and not the contradiction of materialism. For when both are taken together, a more complete and satisfactory view of Nature and man’s relationship to Nature is obtained than when either is taken singly and the importance of the other ignored or decried, or denied.

Now let us turn to the third way – that of the initiates of the Ancient Mysteries. How did they touch the inner realms over which rules Rhea, the Tower-Crowned Phrygian Mother of All?

One way is shown in the celebrated romance of The Golden Ass by Lucius Apuleius, a well-known writer and philosopher who lived in the early part of the second century. This book, while suited to grave students, advanced in years and learning and above all in understanding, should not be left lying around indiscreetly, lest a prudish and priggish ignorance mock at that which it cannot understand.

Some 400 years ago, Apuleius was familiar to classical students and was used by discerning theologians. The student of the Mysteries will remember that the ‘ass’ is the symbol of the Typhonic aspect of human nature. This is the key to the inner meaning of the first ten books, for nature mysticism may, in an ill-balanced soul, stir up that aspect of human nature which is here depicted in the adventures of the ‘ass’.

In the eleventh book Apuleius turns to the Goddess of Nature, to Isis of the Sea, of the Moon, and of the Earth, imploring her to save him from himself; for the forces that he has, by mistaken methods, evoked from within himself threaten to destroy him. In this, the last book, we have in carefully veiled language the story of his initiation into the Lesser Mysteries. The scene by the seashore depicts, in the curious symbolism of 2,000 years ago, the first step that must be taken by those who seek this ancient way into the adytum of Pessinuntia, who is the mother of the gods. With the coming of this divine vision that, star-crowned and moon-girt, rises from the hushed sea of man’s subconscious nature, the great adventure of religion begins, for this is the inner way to vision.

Without this vision, and without the direct summons of that Tower-Crowned One whom the ancients adored under many forms as Aphrodite Pandemos (seeing her veiled in the symbols of the Moon, of the Star that rises from the twilight sea, and of the ‘Rosa Mystica’) there is for the would-be initiate no road to those unseen realms that are concealed within the soul of the great and fruitful Earth Mother, Queen Isis.

Part 7. The Door and the Bowl

Stanza XXXII

There was a door to which I found no Key:

There was a Veil past which I could not see:

Some little talk awhile of Me and Thee

There seem’d – and then no more of Thee and Me.

Stanza XXXV

Then to this Earthen Bowl did I adjourn

My lip the secret Well of Life to learn:

And lip to lip it murmur’d – ‘While you live

Drink – for once dead you never shall return.’

(Omar Khayyam)

Reference has been made to that peculiar phenomenon which A.E. in The Candle of Vision calls ‘The Memory of the Earth’. He says:

We experience the romance and delight of voyaging upon uncharted seas when the imagination is released from the foolish notion that the images seen in reverie and dream are merely images of memory refashioned; and in tracking to their originals the forms seen in vision we discover for them a varied ancestry, as that some come from the minds of others, and of some we cannot surmise another origin than that they are portions of the memory of Earth which is accessible to us. We soon grow to think our memory but a portion of that Eternal memory and that we in our lives are gathering an innumerable experience for a mightier being than our own. The more vividly we see with the inner eye the more swiftly do we come to this conviction. Those who see vaguely are satisfied with vague explanations which those who see vividly at once reject as inadequate.

This quotation with regard to the earth memory should be carefully studied. It reveals ideas concerning the nature of experience which are much the same as those which William James expressed when he wrote: ‘I do not believe that our experience is the highest form of experience extant in the Universe.’ It lays stress on seeing vividly with the inner eye, and upon the fact that those who have not this gift strongly developed are really not in a position to offer criticism of a constructive nature. How can you criticize that of which you are ignorant? In order to see, you must visualize the veil until the intentness of your gaze renders it transparent; you must knock long and loud upon the unseen door until an unseen hand presses the key upon you. When your lips touch the bowl that some call the Grail, and some the Cauldron, the Goddess will Herself impart to you the riddle of the secret well of life. Omar Khayyam had the solution of that secret, though Edward Fitzgerald did not.

If the student with aptitude and energy takes up the study of these ancient pagan systems, he is bound, in time, to come across things unpleasant as well as pleasant, and it is well to warn the enquirer that he may, unexpectedly and without any previous preparations, touch pages of the ‘Earth Memory’ congruous to hidden records buried deep in his own subconscious mind. This experience may leave him badly shaken mentally and physically. By working in a group with trained teachers and obeying the rules, this shock can be minimized and no permanent harm is done; but working alone, groping blindly in the dark, using a half understood technique drawn from the books of those who pretend to have been able to betray the secrets of the Mysteries, is folly. The genuine secrets of the Mysteries cannot be betrayed. Would Judas have betrayed Jesus if he had really understood the source of his Master’s power and could have used it himself? Jesus taught nothing new; and even Judas, the intimate companion, the treasurer of the inner group, one of the Twelve, could not betray the secret of the power of Jesus for he could not realize it, or use it. Judas only betrays because he does not understand.

The student working alone is advised to read and to ponder deeply on the symbols of the ancient pagan systems, on their gods, on their teachings, on their folklore and myths. This work is preparatory to the real inner work that is developed in a Mystery school. He must not expect from these articles anything except hints as to how he must best prepare himself for the coming of a teacher. When the neophyte is ready, the Master will see that he is called to the Temple. This sentence – an ancient one – is written from personal experience, and from seeing again and again this same experience happen to others.

As the Memory of the Earth is one of the chief clues to the Mysteries of the pagans, it is worthy of examination as a working hypothesis and in order to familiarize oneself with this somewhat unusual concept. Beyond, behind, within and yet without (one has to use spatial terms) transcendent to and yet immanent in man’s body, is the soul of man. Man is triune: spirit, soul and body. The soul, as the instrument for gaining experience, has faculties which are called the will, the memory, the imagination, the emotions, the reason, the instincts, etc. If the student will accept the hypothesis that the earth is the body of a great entity whose soul may be thought of as being in certain respects analogous to the soul of man, he can pursue the following methods of study with the prospect of getting a mental and spiritual training that will enable him one day to come prepared to the Temple. If he cannot accept this working hypothesis then he had better go off and play golf, where foozling – even if it leads him into blasphemy, will not take him, and others, into serious trouble.

The Earth Mother has many names. In Egypt the initiates called her Isis, and they thought of her as veiled in green. In Ireland they called her Dana or Danu, and in that country, which was one of the world’s greatest spiritual centres, the Tuatha de Danaan, the Tribe of the Goddess Dana, can be communicated with – given the right conditions – more easily than is usual elsewhere. The veil between the actual and the real, the phenomenal and the noumenal, the seen and the unseen, the sensible and the intelligible, is less dense in Ireland than it is in stolid, bovine England. This fact, probably, is the true explanation of the curious characteristics of the Irish, and of the ‘more Irish than the Irish’ sentiments of certain Sassenachs that settle there. Ireland can stir strangely the deeper strata of the souls of certain Englishmen. It can charm, it can also annoy. It can produce love and hate, seldom indifference.

In England the Great Mother is Keredwen, and from the Welsh point of view Snowdon is her most sacred district. But the true Englishman can get in touch with the Great Mother at Glastonbury where Christianity has metamorphosed the goddess Brigantia into Saint Brigid. On the Tor and at the Well are nature-worship centres which are inferior to no other. Brigantia is as potent for better or for worse as is the Greek Athene.

The classical tradition has had its effects on the group soul of England, and the gods of Greece and Rome must not be neglected. Demeter was the best-known name of the Earth Mother in Greece, and her chief centre was Eleusis, the centre of the Eleusinian Mysteries. In Asia Minor and Babylonia she was known as Astarte, Ishtar and Astoreth, the Earthly Venus-Aphrodite. The student must never forget that while names seem to divide, functions bind the pantheon into an intelligible religious unity. Here is a valuable clue.

Before we start meditation, it is wise to examine facts and to avoid fancies. So let us take this list of names – Dana, Keredwen, Isis, Demeter, Ishtar, Astarte – and see what we can find out about them when we consider them as symbols of the unknown power which we call the Earth Mother, the great Fertile Mother. Go to the monumental works of Sir James George Frazer. Read if you can the twelve volumes of The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, and see what is to be found. Dana is not mentioned in the general index, neither is Keredwen, though there is a large number of useful references to the other four names. The Golden Bough is supposed to be a study in magic for the English-speaking race, but although Sir James may know much about curious and indecent rites which he thinks are magic, he has not made clear to his readers the elementary principle that true magic, like charity, begins at home, in the group soul of the English race.

There is a very interesting book by Dr M. Harding called Women’s Mysteries Ancient and Modern. In it is an immense amount of information which should set the reader’s subconscious mind questing to and fro on a scent which grows warmer and warmer until Chapter 15 is reached. What Chapter 15 means to you will depend entirely upon what you are. It is true this work deals almost entirely with the Moon Mysteries, but, a man’s immediate inner self – his anima – is feminine; also it is well to remember that the ancient initiates believed that the earth and the moon shared one ‘etheric’, and that in this state of cosmic matrimony the moon is the positive and the senior partner – a situation not altogether unknown in the earthly state of so-called holy matrimony, for woman has an animus (masculine aspect) – not an anima – if Jung is correct.

Let us suppose that you have got your supply of facts from your general reading, and that from meditation upon your reading you have built up in your mind a set of living symbols dealing with that Great Mother aspect of the Inner Worlds with which you wish to get in touch. The next step is to specialize in type. So concentrate on Isis, if that suits you best.

Isis is a goddess that is peculiarly attractive to this race. She was worshipped under her own name for a long period of the Roman occupation of Britain. The adoration of the Virgin Mary is the Christianized adaptation of the Egyptian Isis worship, and its introduction in the fourth century was the cause of bitter strife in the Christian Church; so the intense Mariolatry of medieval England has been a blessing for us pagan moderns, for it has kept alive in the great power centres of England those ancient forces which were once called the goddesses Keredwen, Danu, Isis and Briganda – who as a nature goddess is the Catholic St Bride. The modern English pagan owes the great Christian Church of Rome a deep debt of gratitude for preserving for him in working order these ancient shrines of the pagan power deities. In these places are concentrated centres of pagan power, astral, mental and spiritual, of which the Protestants and agnostics in their ignorance have never suspected the existence. In the ranks of the Church of England are many fine scholars, great social organizers, and great ethical teachers, but genuine priests are few.

In Isis, Keredwen, Dana, Briganda, and in their particular symbols of the Cup, the Grail, the Cauldron, the Sword or Spear, and in the young horned moon, low in the southern sky, are the keys of the Mysteries of the English Earth Mother, the One who is veiled in green; yet first you must solve the mystery of the ever-fruitful virgin mother who dwells in the most secret recesses of man’s individuality. The cosmic aphorism ‘As above, so below’ has its counterpart in the psychological aphorism ‘As within, so without.’ In all the pagan Mystery systems it is clearly taught that the clue to the forces of Mother Nature is hidden within the soul of the worshipper, and it is there that the search for the key must commence. The veil that was impenetrable to the outward-looking eye of Edward Fitzgerald becomes transparent to the inward-looking eye of the trained mind. The Cauldron of the Earth Mother when raised to the lips of the neophyte gives him that ever-flowing inspiration which is from the Secret Well of Life.

Now let us turn to the particular symbols and see what door to the inner realms the moon symbols will open. What does the term ‘Diana’s Mirror’ convey to you? Anything, or nothing? A memory that is almost a feeling. Have you ever seen it cold and black, still and star-lit? The moon-goddesses are regarded as the guardians of water, rivers, wells and springs. The moon-god is the local divinity that inhabits many of the sacred wells of Ireland and England. You can get some vivid emotional reactions by meditation upon the moon shining in a holy well if you have had personal contact with one of these holy wells.

Ishtar was called the All-Dewy-One; she is the ruler of dewponds and springs. There are some curious superstitions in Celtic countries about seeing the moon in wells and springs – confused remnants of ancient teachings and practices. There are, even in modern England, superstitions about seeing the moon in the crystal bowl of a dewpond; there are even more curious myths about the serpent in these moon-consecrated wells and ponds. Even Oxford has its Child’s Well and serpent lore, and the serpent in the well is the man in the moon. Jung has told us of the interacting effect of a man’s anima and a woman’s animus. New Thought and Christian Science tell us of the powers of the directed will acting upon a vivid imagination. Hence the maiden at the moon-well concentrating on what is hidden in the crystal bowl in her imagination.

To the average exoteric Christian who carefully refrains from using his mind in religion, except in church when he concentrates on the task of keeping awake, these things are unknown, uncanny, and not quite nice. Study, for example, Dr Jung’s Psychology of the Unconscious. He gives some examples of moon symbols and their effect on the human mind. Why should this be so? Why should the symbols of the ancient religions live in the hidden recesses of the men and women of this twentieth century? Is this due to the convenient explanation – race memory? Is it due to reincarnation and to the recovery of individual lost memories? Has the earth got a memory, and if so can we recover from it these lost memories? No single theory will explain all the factors. Perhaps all three theories are partially true.

The regular and methodical use of symbols such as those just mentioned, can, in some cases, produce results that are to say the least not dull. Sometimes they can be exciting, far too exciting, and occasionally – and this warning is given from personal experience – they can be rather terrible. A very unpleasant death, died some 2,000 years ago, is still unpleasant if you happen to recover it from what shall we call it? – a race memory, a personal subconscious memory, or the earth memory?

As has been said before, the lore of the Mysteries is not for all and sundry.

Part 8. The Priest and the Moon Bowl

LXXIV

Oh, Moon of my Delight who know’st no wane,

The Moon of Heav’n is rising once again:

How oft hereafter rising shall she look

Through this same Garden after me – in vain!

LXXV

And when myself with shining Foot shall pass

Among the Guests star-scatter’d on the Grass

And in Thy joyous Errand reach the Spot

Where I made one – turn down an empty Glass!

(Iamad Shud)

In research work it is usually considered to be wiser to hunt up the facts and then think out the implications for oneself. Afterwards one can compare results with the standard authorities, and then decide upon one’s attitude. In dealing with the great myths such as those of Isis and Osiris, or with the ancient sun and moon myths, the student cannot as a rule follow this method in its entirety. In all cosmic myths there are at least two aspects to be considered, the sensible and the intelligible meanings. In applying a cosmic myth to the microcosm, man, there are also two aspects which have to be taken into account, the objective and the subjective. One must know something of both these aspects before one can realize the implications of the facts one has collected.

So when the anthropological school takes an ancient myth and explains it in terms of corn and oil and water and fruitful soil, it is giving a true explanation, the type of explanation that might suit a rude unlettered child of the soil, the farmer and his labourers. But there are at least two other explanations which can be given, and all three are partially true, though taken singly each is inadequate, for it is but a partial explanation.

In the Isis myth, for example, Osiris can be taken as the life-giving moisture, he is the Nile-Flood: Isis, his wife, is the fertile soil rendered fruitful by the Nile. Set, his adversary and slayer, is the dry heat of the desert which hems in the Nile valley. Nephthys is the ribbon of soil that marks the edge of the fertile land; sometimes the Nile is high enough to render it fertile for a short time, then it lapses into the condition of wasteland. And so we find in this myth that Nephthys has sometimes as her husband Osiris, though she is usually considered to be the wife of the destructive Set. The child of Osiris and Nephthys is Anubis, the jackal-headed god. A fit symbol when we remember that the home of the Jackal is the desert edge and his hunting grounds are the fertile lands where men and their leavings abound.

Osiris is the moon-god who measures the seasons, and regulates the moisture and dew as well as the rise and fall of the Nile. He reigned twenty-eight years; twenty-eight is the moon period. Set cut his body into fourteen pieces, the fourteen days of the waning moon. Horus the younger is his son and is the new moon that reigns in place of the old moon, and so on. Divine numbers and god-names were sometimes keys to the ‘inner tides’ and their festivals, as are the Christian Golden Number and Dominical Letter.

Isis as the moon-goddess plays a role which can be explained by the growth of plants, fertility, etc. Again, up to a point this explanation is true for she is the Lady of Nature, and hers are the moon-powers which influence the physical life of the mothering sex. These ideas may be considered satisfactory when looked at from the point of view of the farmyard, but there were minds in the olden days which had progressed beyond the rather rustic level of modern anthropologists; not that their views are either new or modern. Plutarch, an initiate who lived at the time when St Paul was laying the foundations of Christianity, writes (LXV.):

And we shall also get our hands on the dull crowd who take pleasure in associating the mystic recitals about these Gods either with changes of the atmosphere according to the seasons, or the generation of corn and sowings and ploughings, and in saying that Osiris is buried when the sown corn is hidden by the earth, and comes to life and shows himself again when the corn begins to sprout.

Plutarch, as one who was initiated into the Osiriaca at Delphi, knew that the true initiate of Isis is one who must for ever look for hidden reasons that substand the things said and done ‘in the sacred rites’ (III.5). But a true Isiac is one who, when he by law receives them, searches out by reason (Logos) the Mysteries shown and done concerning these gods and meditates upon the truth in them. This last sentence tells us where to look for the cosmic solutions of these ancient myths. For meditation is the process that links the microcosmic mind of man with the cosmos through the mind side of nature, that is with Isis, the Lady of Nature, the teacher, the nurse, the mother, the slayer of all.

Another solution of these problems of the ancient myths is psychological. It deals with the relationship between the subjective in man and the objective mind side of nature. The priest must look within the brimming circle of his moon bowl, for this solution is a matter of interpreting symbols that have an effect on the subconscious mind of man. It is not merely a matter of ancient history of kings and queens, nor of natural phenomena.

Psychologically, Isis is within the soul of man, and from one aspect we may call her the subconscious mind. Osiris, too, has his place in man’s soul; he is focused consciousness. Both the Isis within and the Osiris within have a relationship to the Isis without and the Osiris without – that is, with the objective, mind side of nature, the dual-natured world – Isis and the world Osiris. Or in terms of the Chaldean myths, with Ishtar and Sin, the moon-god.

Isis had many names and so too have Osiris and Sin. The initiate of the Ancient Mysteries selected the aspect of Isis or of Sin that he intended to meditate upon with exactly the same care with which a watchmaker selects the tools that he is going to use. Also, a thing that is often forgotten today, the initiate of that day had to know his times and his seasons. It is no good seeking the Black Isis when it is the rising tide of the Lady that is veiled in green. When the silver moon rides high in the blue-black night sky, and when she is seen shining brightly in the crystal vase, waste not a tide that is flowing strongly in your favour.

Osiris too has his black and green and golden moments, and Sin also is a triune god; but it is only within the pylon gates that this detailed knowledge is given to the student. Still, the methodical worker who is able to measure the rise and fall of the tides within his own psyche, and who is prepared to note the times and seasons at the head of his daily meditation record and to analyse and synthesize and correlate results, can work out a practical table for himself. It will not take him very far, but it will save him quite a lot of time that would otherwise be wasted. For how many novices remember that in the Ancient Mysteries the moon is not only the sphere of generation, but is also the place of the dead, and the sphere of regeneration?

Again, the moon-man ever attends upon the moon goddess who sails in the ‘Ship of Life’. It is often forgotten that it takes two to make a pair, for the sphere of manifestation is the sphere of duality, and while we are in these realms of duality it takes two to complete the functional unit, whether that unit is in the sphere of generation or in the sphere of intellection. There is always the subject and the object, the within and the without, the subjective and the objective, the worshipper and his deity. Nine-tenths of students’ failures are due to neglect of these commonplace hackneyed truisms. How many keep in their daily record a note of their inner states and feelings during meditations? There is a direct relationship between these inner feelings and the so-called superstitions of the myths, for both have reference to the impalpable, immaterial substance which has been well called ‘the plastic material of life’.

There is an ancient saying that a goddess cannot indwell her shrine unless there is a priest to offer the acceptable sacrifice. This is true of the cosmos, and it is also true in psychology. ‘As above, so below.’ All women are Isis; and a woman is most feminine and most like her true self when the priest invokes the inner nature of the goddess. But, whether it be Great Isis above, or one of her human incarnations here below, the priest has to be acceptable by right of function. So waste not ‘here’ or ‘yonder’ the propitious seasons; be true to instinct when working in the realms of the moon deities.

When in solitary meditation a man sits in the Temple of the Goddess who nurses, mothers, slays and gives life, if he is to win through to that inner sanctuary where sits Isis, Astarte, Aphrodite or the Great Mountain Mother – the names matter not for all goddesses are one goddess – and to find his own regeneration, he must see himself as the priest who bears the sacrifice. The sacrifice is himself. He must face himself, his own instincts, above all his own emotions. He must experience the latter to the utmost. There is no need for him, today, to become one of the Galli, but there must be no mental reservations. It is all or nothing. Do ut des is a fundamental principle when one is seeking to evoke the appearance of the Goddess.

Isis will come only to the favoured few. Always she, and she only, selects her own priest; and she will come only when the postulant for the ordeal of the priestly initiations has reached his limit.

It is here that the role of Typhon or Set, as the story is told by Plutarch, rounds off and completes the dual role of Isis and Osiris. The great gods of the cosmos and of the souls of men are always triune in their nature. Osiris is the brother of Set, neither is complete and neither can function without the other, as Apuleius shows in the story of the ‘Golden Ass’. It is after the Typhonic ordeal that the postulant is given the ‘Roses of Isis’, and attains to the power of a moon initiate. But a moon priest the Initiate cannot become until he has been called yet again by the goddess of Perfect Intelligence.

Sin as the moon god is triune, and we know from the cuneiform inscriptions, as translated by Rawlinson, that Sin is Three Persons but one god; and these Persons are Anu, En-lil and Ea. As the inscription runs. ‘The moon is during the period of his visibility, in the first five days, the god Anu; from the sixth to the tenth day, the god Ea; from the eleventh to the fifteenth day, the god En-lil’.

Look up in a mythological dictionary the essential natures of these three gods, the God of Heaven, the God of the Primeval Deep, and the Lord of the Golden Age. Then you will understand, through your meditations, why the moon priest has to undergo three initiations and has to make three sacrifices before he can drink from the moon bowl the draft of conscious immortality that will make him a priest of Isis or Ishtar, the Lord of the Three Worlds; for the moon-goddess is ‘Goddess of Heaven, Goddess of Earth, and Goddess of the Underworld’. Always there are these three moon initiations, whether the rites are those of Isis, of Sin and Ishtar, or of the Celtic Briganda. In terms of psychology this means that the initiate has gained the knowledge of the subconscious mind as the past, as the source, as the origin of things that are and that will be. ‘I am all that has been and is and shall be, And no mortal has ever revealed my robe!’ said Great Isis.

When the moon priest has drunk from the moon bowl, the mortal has become immortal, and that which the robe hides is revealed; the Veil has been parted, and the goddess within leaves the shadows of the sanctuary and becomes the regnatrix that dwells within the soul of that man. The Light of the Goddess is rising once again and is enwombed in the psyche of the moon priest.

The moon priest and the moon priestess become one, for the man has found his anima. And once the moon that lights the inner life has risen there is no need to seek in the garden of psyche in vain! There is no need to ‘turn down an empty glass’! The bowl is filled with a living water and those who drink of it shall thirst no more – for it is ever flowing, and it is within – for ever. The goddess, incarnation after incarnation, will call her own back to her temple.

Part 9. The Moon Virgin and the Snake of Wisdom

‘The Maiden’s First Love Song’

What can I do, what can I begin?

That shuddering thing:

There it crackles within

And coils in a ring.

It must be poisoned. Here it crawls around

Blissfully I feel as it worms

Itself into my Soul

And kills me finally.

(Mörike, quoted in Jung, Psychology of the Unconscious, p. 5.)

The snake was a symbol for the divine wisdom. It was a dual symbol, the White Serpent of Yetsirah and the Dark Serpent of the World of Assiah, two aspects of the same principle.

If one thinks for a few moments on the nature of human wisdom it can be divided into three main divisions or faculties. There is first of all that which has been called the estimative faculty, or the wisdom of the children of this world. It deals chiefly with the mundane business of living well, and with that type of concept and opinion which man’s mind formulates as the result of experiences met with in what the ancient mystics called the ‘sensible’ world. Plato calls this faculty pistis, faith in the aspect of trust. He considered it to be a non-reasoning faculty because it depends upon the opinions of others and on the testimony of the senses. It is a faculty that when highly developed leads to success in things mundane. It can always be distinguished from reason because though it knows that a thing is, it cannot explain why it is. Many of those who take their opinions ready-made mistake this particular faculty of the mind for reason. But when the student has begun to study ‘religion’, then he commences to suspect that much of his supposed religious and philosophical knowledge is based upon an authority external to himself and not upon that personal reasoning faculty which Mother Nature has implanted in every man’s mind. Meditation upon the fundamentals of the estimative faculty will lead man to the next main division – reason.

In the Ancient Mysteries each of the moon-goddesses was looked upon as the giver of wisdom, as man’s protectress during life upon earth, and as offering worldly success to diligent devotees.

In terms of modern psychology it may be said that the moon deities rule over the estimative faculty of the human soul. They were the goddesses of instinct and of instinctive reaction, and they were the rulers of the powerful subconscious mind. In terms of the Qabalah, they function in the sphere of Yesod. Again, if we study these ancient myths, we shall find that these moon-goddesses were taught by the cosmic wisdom-gods. For example Thoth as the Logos or Divine Reason taught Isis, and there are somewhat similar myths in most of the other great religions.

In the Neo-Platonic system of psychology, reason, which Plato called dianoia, is that faculty of the soul which addresses itself to those intelligible principles upon which all sensible nature depends. In the mysteries based upon Plato’s teachings, pure reason was described as the faculty that enables the mystae to know and to apply those abstract and divine ideas which the ancient form of ‘Idealism’, as a philosophy, holds to be innate in the human soul. Their Mystery initiations aimed rather at educing these innate divine ideals by means of the cult’s meditation technique than at teaching a special and novel kind of concrete knowledge. Reason is innate in the human soul, though often it appears to be almost completely dormant, as is clearly shown by the difficulty some people have in following an argument when put formally as logic, or in comprehending abstract ideas. How many people can study with pleasure the science of logic?

Thoth, Nabu or Nebo, Hermes, Sin (or Enzu) as the ‘Lord of Wisdom’, the Celtic Dagda and Myrddin, all are, to a greater or lesser degree, gods of that Divine Wisdom which is typified by the White Snake. As such they are the teachers of the moon-goddesses, who represent that type of divine wisdom which some of the Gnostics called the fallen Sophia. As moon-gods they gave their ‘syzygy’ the divine knowledge which ensures power over the creations of the great creator-gods such as Ra.

‘As above, so below’; and turning to the microcosm and to psychology we find reason as the positive mental faculty controlling, organizing and often repressing those power-supplying instincts that lie behind and energize the somewhat feminine and less positive estimative faculty. In the Egyptian Mysteries Thoth’s syzygy is Maat, who is a form of Isis. Nabu’s wife was Tashmetu – ‘she who hears’, an exact description of the rather negative faculty, that is, the lower reason.

Thoth as the god of reason guides the ‘Ship of Life’, that is to say, Isis, who is psychologically the subconscious mind of man and of Nature, according to the teaching of these Ancient Mystery systems.

In addition to pistis and dianoia there was also a third faculty – intuition. This Plato called noesis, and it was thought of as the highest expression of all the human mental faculties when working as a well-trained team. It is often confused with instinct and with feeling. We all know the person who says: ‘I have an intuition; I feel it in my bones.’ But the noesis of the Ancient Mysteries was something much more than this for it was a faculty of comprehending those ‘great universal ideas of which the manifested universe is a differentiated and objective expression’. It is the unfallen Sophia; it is a wisdom that is beyond all earthly wisdom.

Bearing in mind this psychological background, which may seem strange to us moderns, one can comprehend the importance of understanding clearly the use of the snake as an explanatory symbol. Some of the goddesses are shown holding snakes attended by snakes; to the initiated this explained the phase of the goddess that he was expected to concentrate upon. The snake, or pair of snakes, stood for a particular aspect of sacred knowledge; and there were many special kinds of this knowledge that the ancient gods and goddesses could impart to their devotees through meditation, contemplation and ritual. They knew that one must focus and restrict if power is to be generated in mental work.

Man’s greatest task is the finding of himself and his purpose in life. And man can only find these two things by using himself for the conscious and concentrated expression of life (Isis with the Ankh) according to his own personal potentialities. In this lies the dual wisdom of the divine snakes as they climb the sacred rod of Hermes, or the Paths of the Tree of Life. In finding himself man is working in the sphere ruled by the cosmic gods of wisdom, the realm of ideals. He becomes an initiate, or better, a devotee of the Great Hermes Trismegistus. But for the expression of his life purpose, man must serve the moon-goddess, for she and not a male god rules in the realm of actuality. The dark snake rules in Assiah, the sphere of the form-giving mother, Mut of ancient Thebes.

Wisdom, like most other things in cosmic manifestation, is dual in its nature. There is the wisdom of the Ibis-headed Thoth, who has been described as the Logos of Plato. There is also the wisdom of Isis of the throne, and of dark Nephthys of the Cup. Always there is the Wisdom of the Inner and the Outer, of the Sensible and the Intelligible.

The parable of the unjust steward, who was, we are often told, an unworldly visionary and not really a thief, explains this; and the steward’s lord commends him for learning the earthly wisdom before trying to master the Wisdom of the Children of Light. In terms of the Mystery initiations, you must serve Isis before you can ascend to the eight steps that lead to the Throne of Khemennu in the House of the Net. For in ancient Egypt there were the Lesser Mysteries and the Greater Mysteries. There was also the Mystery that was taught in ‘the House of the Net’ at Hermopolis.

For those who care to seek it, there is divine as well as human symbolism in that love song of Mörike which begins:

What is in the net?

Behold,

But I am afraid,

Do I grasp a sweet eel,

Do I seize a snake?

In this section the reader has been given a series of mental pictures, a number of mythological images which have to be meditated upon frequently in order to get at their inner meaning. They are not meant to teach the conscious mind anything. The hard-headed man of the world will find them incoherent and unreasonable. Up to a point he is right. They are incoherent, that is to say, they are not easily followed. But their meanings can be grasped if you will follow the example of Theseus and carry Ariadne’s thread with you when, in meditation, you enter the labyrinth that is your own subconscious mind. Again they are, of course, unreasonable! ‘Love’, that seizes a snake, ‘is a blind fisherwoman’. But these mythic images are most certainly not untrue to your own inner nature. Try them and see what comes to you in the still moments of deep meditation; or better still, try to dream about them at night.

Have you ever read ‘The Song of Solomon’ translated accurately into modern English? Moffat’s translation is as good as any other. Try reading the verse given below, and see what comes. Your conscious mind may seek to give you one set of meanings, and they are reasonable. But the pictures that will rise from the depths of your subconscious mind when it is stilled in meditation on this jewel of ancient wisdom may not be reasonable, yet they may not be the less true. For ‘The Song of Solomon’ deals with the snakes of wisdom and it pertains to a moon-virgin and to the moon-goddess. Get at the subconscious meaning of the following:

5. I am dark, but I am a beauty,

Maidens of Jerusalem,

Dark as the tents of the Blackmen,

Beautiful as curtains of a Solomon.

6. Scorn me not for being dark …

When the subconscious mind is as still as the dark windless surface of the high-flying, star-lit mountain lake that is at the foot of the five white glaciers, you may enter in safety the labyrinth and rely on the thread that Ariadne (intuition) has given Theseus (yourself).

As Adam and Solomon discovered long ago, there is a close connection between ‘the Woman’ and the Snake of Wisdom. Today Jung teaches that a man’s inner self is an anima not an animus. Here is your Ariadne’s thread – if you can use it.