Today I will go through what is remaining of chapter V, plus chapter VI. Of these parts, I find the latter more interesting. From it can be found most of the later, more important Demons' Cube ideas in ovo.
It is regrettable, but also understandable and humane, that those many who have no ”psychic sensitivity and tendency to introspection”, cannot by any means be thought to take our declaration for real. They will ridicule us, like their kind has always ridiculed those who give these speeches, for they have no ability to understand cosmic changes in spirit and based on spirit, for they do not know the spirit: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.(*40) Nothing can be done for this, for there are laws in the evolution in spirit as there are in the evolution of body, and not much can be done to quicken that individually. For many are called, but few are chosen, now as before.(*41)
Footnotes:
*40 Matthew 13:10-17.
*41 Matthew 22:14.
"Spirit" is herein used in the meaning of sublimity of consciousness, like in most places of my writings. The vocabulary holds Neoplatonic rather than later Christian connotations.
In 1923 Pekka Ervast lectured about the prophecies of Nostradamus. The following is taken from one of his lectures:
”Then he scries onwards into future and says that the third time the Antichrist will come most likely at the end of this century and at the beginning of the next, which is, perhaps already about in year 2000. I think that this cannot be said with certainty, although Bildenstein has come up with year 1982. But this might be too early, and we may say, that the third coming of the Antichrist will come approximately after one hundred years. In passing, this is true also according to the modern occult investigations. In the occult world the coming of the Antichrist is also expected, and it will most likely come to pass in the next century. And this coming will be the hardest one of all. There will come terrible wars, a world war, which is much worse than the current one. An unexpectedly horrible war will last long everywhere, but in northern Italy will be born a new republic, and a man will present himself, this being Antichrist himself, namely an extremely cultured and fine gentleman and a great lord of war, but terribly materialistic. For the Antichrist always means also materialism and a man, who is a great materalist, who uses people like puppets and cares of nothing; like everyone would be only bags of meat for him to use as he pleases. And he will be immeasurably intelligent, to the point that people will serve him like a god.”(*42)
Ervast's way of presentation naturally uses the terminology of the Right Hand Path, which is difficult for us to understand as such;(*43) but the things in themselves he presents brilliantly, as always. Let us also remember the vision of Solovyev and Dostoevsky, let us recall the prophetic, symbolic dreams of raving poet Lovecraft, and let us understand the allegory behind these myths – which yet may be a little less metaphysical in natura than materalistic rationalism would be easily willing to believe. But let us also remember, that investigating a historical change is of lesser importance when compared to those unseen forms that have their influence in the spiritual world.
Footnotes:
*42 Pekka Ervast: Nostradamus ja Cagliostro.
*43 It is a custom typical to the Right Hand Path to express the aspects of Satan as fundamentally negative, but also here the energy stressed as materialistic by Ervast may manifest as equally positive. The question is whether the higher trinity is predominant or not.
Of Solovyev's vision I mentioned something above. Dostoevsky's idea of the Antichrist is given in the great two-fold (and "masked") nature of Stavrogin in his The Possessed (also known as Demons), as well as in his idea of the Roman Catholic Church as the paragon to antichristian values, lead by a secret chiefs like the Grand Inquisitor (in The Brothers Karamazov). Lovecraft's dreams were "raved", because he did not himself believe in them, and that is also why so heavy layer of symbolism lays upon the fundamentally true ideas of "the sleeping gods" of non-anthropomorphic form, and their atavistic presence coming felt once again in a new way and by new means.
What, then, will be the personality of such an ”Antichrist”? He is the eye and the hand of the Father on earth, like we all are, only in the greatest extent – by the spirits of the time and by the work of his own devotion he will incarnate Satan much more perfectly than a human being is usually able. But does he know it himself? In his soul, in his will he does know it, but it is not so important what kind of words does he use, does he speak of Satan using this old name, or does he name this omnipotence of WILL OF THE SELF and hubris(*44) and its worshipfulness using the terms of some other religion, or a scientific, or a philosophical approach. But how our reader might remember, we have often stressed the meanings of two different directions in order to understand Satanism correctly. These are indeed of the same essence, but in the occult process it is of utmost importance to learn to distinguish them from each other and to choose. In brief: There is a ”celestial” Satan, like there are celestial, archetypical, ideal and exquisitely vital – real, intelligent – forms for all beings that manifest in matter as stained and mixed to each other. He is perfect, pure, eminent, and without any kind of base selfishness, even though he does represent the fundamental essence of selfishness: that real strength of pride and selfhood, which through corruption and weakening becomes attraction to personal shell and its petty achievements, charactistics of will to power and pleasure, et cetera. Likewise there are several kinds of beings on earth – mostly in its astral atmosphere, i.e. the spirit world, which belongs essentially to this material plane and which Eliphas Levi expressed by the emblem of Baphomet(*45) – which have taken into themselves more or less the essence of this celestial Satan, and followed the path of his ray (that is, the left path) either up towards the Mater, or down towards that matter, onto which his black light shines, impregnating it; towards personality.
Footnotes:
*44 Omnipotence of hubris: A human being is ultimately a sovereign lord for his own reality, as has often been stated. As long as the personality is confused with the Ego and the monadicism of its center point is misunderstood, this deepest kind of self respect holds a hubric tint. It can be only Luciferian rebellion, that is, Satanism. But when the relationship of personality to Ego and the unity of Ego with the monad is realized, this Satanism becomes as a portal to adepthood.
*45 Leviathan or the lower Baphomet of the astral light.
The idea of the "masked Satan" is now so prominent in the brotherhood philosophy, that it is rare to remember all the work that was needed to reach this point.
A human being, like every conscious mind, may come to incarnate any kind of cosmic powers, by devoting itself completely to their service. This can be rationally conscious or completely unconscious: all activity is to join with the agency of certain spiritual prototypes, i.e. walking the path of this or that archetype, towards either spirit or matter. On the path of Satan, the Left Hand Path, the ideal form for the individual is the picture of Master, and the emblematic charactistic of his is the SELF of each being, the sensation which goes through many planes of existence, and which can be nothing beyond one's self, but being the core of each of the self-sensed vehicles. On the Right Hand Path, the holy spirit of meaning projects itself to otherness.(*46) To walk that path is to break that feeling of self again and again; on the Left Hand Path the same is the purifying and distilling it to its most absolute manifestation. Both of these processes are lengthy indeed, and as said, the both can be traversed to two directions: downwards into matter, multiplicity, chaos – or upwards into spirit, unity, perfection. For a human development it is natural that the mind will at first choose the downward path in order to attain experience, and after it has ”seen all”, it will step with great (subconscious) potential to the cumbersome path of ascension. Few only choose the conscious continuing downwards and resigning the higher forms of development, in order to attach more to the personality than the Ego, for whose shell and mask that personality acts in the world.
Footnotes:
*46 The basic emphasis of the Left Hand Path can in such a model be seen in âtma, the one of the Right Hand Path in buddhi. But when these meet correctly, they are in perfect balanced in manas, an individual mode of experience that is yet aware of higher nature, attained by abstracted intellect.
As discussed in Chapter One, the path turns downward when the personality is empowered by the power of the higher triad to the point that the latter becomes vampirized by it. In such a case the aspirant most likely considers himself an exceedingly spiritual – or at least magical – being, for the powers thus drained to his lower beings make him extraordinary individual. But this is actually a reversal of the actual path, when the intention is not stabilized and balanced into that higher trinity, but remains focused in personality. This personality may also be focused into a group agenda or any kind of nonhuman demonolatry, and need not be evidently self-absorbed. The true watershed is the point between the higher and lower triads, herein named "Ego" and "personality". In other systems they are called by other names.
Ergo, depending on what any given time permits, in what form the Master is able to partake to its work – either masked or with a brightened countenance – the Antichrist will represent either one of these directions of the path. The same name fits equally well to the black magic on the path of ascension, whose power is in the perfect clarity of intellect and will and spiritual intensity, as the downward path neophyte, who with absolute selfishness and cruelty moves the destinies of the world using the outer factors. Both of these are fit for the work of the Master in this world, both are instruments held by his hands. But most prominent is this name for him who be devoting himself to Satan has become a conscious and perfect channel for His will.
This chapter is mostly an extension or and appendix to the Chapter VI of Cista Mystica in Fosforos, and joins to some of its points the clarifying aspects from The Left Hand Path text. I think that it holds quite little of interest besides of spelling out some vital points in basic ethics in Satanism.
CHAPTER VI
”All natures, all formed things, all creatures exist in and with one another and will be resolved into their own roots. (...) There is no sin, but you create sin when you mingle as in adultery, which is called sin.”
– Gospel of Mary
From Willis Barnstone & Marvin Meyer: The Gnostic Bible. An extremely recommendable book.
How is explainable that seemingly irreconcilable contradiction between the traditional devil worship, based on animal ecstasy and exalting of unrestrained desire, and our Satan worship, whose first principle is the reverence of death? Fundementally through the basic law of paradox, in whom the opposites touch each other unavoidably, being connected in their polarity. Also the emanation flowing from Satan will unavoidably be corrupted, like all forces descending from spirit to matter, when a human being is not channeling them directly. We speak of the classes of angels and demons, like believers call them, or of intelligences and spirits, like Agrippa; the celestial angelic beings and those bound to earth. These are not part of the ”golden chain”(*47) but of another system of development, which is intertwined into its action.
Footnotes:
*47 Of the system of initiations, which is the evolution process for the developed human souls.
We just spoke of this "assembly" of men and spirits in another discussion. About the "angels and demons", a large part of these entities are in themselves basically neutral, and may have their influence on us either way, depending on what is the condition of our own receiving set. Of course, this is blurred by the fact that the majority of the forces actually met consciously by an aspirant will be quite earth-bound and thus already individualized. "Angelic" presences usually help one from behind the scenes, so they are more often the "demons" which are met in one's work as personal entities. These earth-bound personal entities are often either wholly or partly remnants of human beings infused with problematic emotions of others and their own. It was yesterday I had this kind of uncanny astral visitor the last time. The "golden chain" is the brotherhood of human souls bound together by the unified will tempered by walking the demanding path of ascension. This comes closest to one can actually see traditional "personal God" which is both absolute (in a relative sense, of course) and "good" at the same time.
”Collectively, men are the handiwork of hosts of various spirits; distributively, the tabernacles of those hosts; and occasionally and singly, the vehicles of some of them.” Thus teaches The Secret Doctrine,(*48) and of the same thing we have already mentioned in the Catechism(*49) and elsewhere. Let us open slightly this mystery that remains so distant from the sphere of everyday life, but which is yet so important a part of everyday action of hierarchical nature. To make this possible, let us come back to the interpretation of the cube, like it has been begun in the Chapter VIII of The Left Hand Path.
Each of the facets of the cube of matter – which is the original Adam Qadmon in the celestial spheres, the prototype of the crucified consciousness ”before creation” – repeats its form and creates a being corresponding to itself down to matter, and thus born square of six 6 x 6 is the first geometric casting down. To the first human prototype the work of creation did not include an eidolon of the whole, but in the cube (which actually is seven, but the seventh point is absconditus, as we might recall) the harmony of the whole is repeated. In a way the development impulse following this stage is simply degradation,(*50) because the same cubic shape of matter repeats over and over again. This repetition is the seemingly endless diffusing on the material level of the physical universe, the predominant force of entropy. This process of squaring is therefore continual, and the multiplications of six create our of their borders (circumference) new reality precisely in the same way than π continues to infinity as measured by the circle's diameter.(*51)
In this context it is enough to stop to the first phase of squaring, which is the cretion of the ”other gods”.
Footnotes:
*48 Cosmogenesis, commentary to second sloke of the seventh stanza.
*49 The Catechism of Lucifer, Of Demons.
*50 Involution, which makes possible the adaptation to matter for the differently organized classes of spirits, or the minds limited by their geometric foci – the mental or kâma manasic correspondence precisely.
*51 Cf. Fohat (Hylätty Kivi #3).
Or "secondary deities", these words being identical in Finnish.
This 36 powers that have been imprinted onto primordial substance immediately come under the law of polarity in the world of cause and reaction, and thus they cast their shadow (not unlike the original triad and every human being), the 36 opposite forces; and these together are the Shem Ha-Mephorasch, the 72 names of God, as they are presented in tradition. They are the first demons, the guides to powers of matter, the angels of the angles. ”The Lesser Key”, known as Lemegeton or Goetia, depicts them in a fanciful way.(*52) In reality those combined shapes in which the demons of matter may approach the conjurer are countless like the stars in the sky, but the basic constitution of theirs is bound to the seventy and two original sovereigns. They are not archetypes in the meaning that we have given to the word in our writings, but they are ideas in the Platonic meaning of this word.(*53) The balancing and control of these angles we refered to in Pentagrammaton. Being acquianted with them is not necessary to the neophyte per se, but a careful investigation of the subject for the one who would be willing to start ”co-operating with nature” – that is, to become an operative magician. But hopefully we will come back to this in a text about practical occultism.
Footnotes:
*52 The 72 spirits of the ”Lesser Key of Solomon” are astral reflections or parodical distortions of these spirits of the original cube. Like is always the case in astral magic, these lesser identify themselves with the essence of their prototypes, thinking themselves to be higher beings than they are, and when they got even a little admission from their conjurer or finding some fault from him, they can do a lot of evil to him – not by the power of choice, but because of the natural direction of their involutive current, which makes them more dangerous to human beings than handling a living lightning.
*53 They are not on manasic, but kâma-manasic plane.
This text came to be named the Demons' Cube, and was published with the second edition of the Gospel. It is about these things particularly, of the cretion of the secondary deities, the continual squaring of cosmos, and how in application of these goetic forces of eternal repetition the magician can summon entities of the angles of Metatronic cube to make changes in objective as well as in subjective world-substance.
Herein it is enough to say that these beings are in themselves neutral, but tied by their earth-bound magnetism; and through them or with help of them one cannot serve other but material purposes. They are good as servants, bad as masters, and one should never make pacts with them. Neither should they be summoned imprudently. This concerning the seeking of an effect of goetic nature. Contemplative and up-reaching theurgic practice reaches above these angels of the cubic angles to the pure primordial essence,(*54) and this kind of communion does not cause danger for a serious aspirant. Each one of these daemons reign over legions of spirits, like ”Clavicula” presents, similarly (and here really is a correspondence) like in a human being there lives a myriad of the spirits of matter.
The process of endless unfolding of this cube is the same, which we see in the circumference drawn by the rotation of swastika. In its center point is the fire, the border consist of refracted lines, which present on the one hand dynamism, on the other this limitless repetition. In a Kaarstadian rune stone from the Museum of Bergen (*55) we can find this same curious expanded swastika, which depicts this particular power in an understandable way. The supreme cosmic cube is the basis of every manifested cube; but the cube of manifestation is infinitely repeatable. We must identify our being with the first mentioned and left unobserved the infinite metamorphoses of the latter, for they repeat and variate ad infinitum. The first a philosopher – a lover of wisdom – may come to control, and he will come to do that: knowledge is power, and once truly understood beings of the angles become as realized to us as our own fingertips. The ”ends of the fingernails of Satan” will be for us to dominate over without a sacrifice, without a pact, with nothing else but the guarantee given by our own will and devotion. The means needed for this will be given in the text mentioned above, if our plan will be accomplished. Now it is enough for the aspirant seeks to place every power onto its own hierarchic place, rather than degrading or elevating a being out of its place, wherefrom disharmony, ”karma”, and prolongation of magnetical bound would result.
The 72 names of god, the 72 channels of human body, the 72 demonic princes are all the same, viz. the number that determines the casting into form. The same can be said in another words, depending on what purpose we are observing these systems. The nine choirs of angels and demons, i.e. the 18 classes of spirits are the same, only deciphered through the symbolism of triple cube, as a sum total of these cross-hexagrams.(*56)
Footnotes:
*54 To the highest davas, the deities, which are not in the state of involution and not mindless like the elemental demons over which they reign. A common astral karcist does not get apporached by these eminent beings and cannot communicate with them directly, although the spirits he meets will try to impersonate them.
*55 See Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology, Teutonic Mythology. Cf. The Secret Doctrine, Anthropogenesis, commentary to the stanza XV.
*56 Sorath, 6 6 6 or 18, ”the number of man”, which is the fulness of solar power in its connection to the reversed sun of Saturn. This is the dominating aspect of material hierarchy, triple cube or the three crosses, the imperial palace of matter. Its apparent evilness is not implicit, but is born from mind's focusing onto this artificial integrity of matter, thus forgetting the hidden, seventh point of spiritual integrity. But enough has been spoken about this already.