Divine Hierarchies - A Comparative Study Group

Discussion on literature other than by the Star of Azazel.
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Smaragd
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Re: Divine Hierarchies - A Comparative Study Group

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For the sake of clarity, today I will simply break down the two extremely long sentences of Section III. The third one I will leave for another day.

Caput I.
Section III.

The 1st Sentence
Wherefore, the Divine Institution of sacred Rites, having deemed it worthy of the supermundane imitation of the Heavenly Hierarchies, and having depicted the aforesaid immaterial Hierarchies in material figures and bodily compositions
The Divine Institution of sacred Rites could well be interpreted as part of the hierarchies and thus the meaning here would further on depict how the initiations and forms of the immaterial spirits are laid out in nature, and how the archetypes project themselves into all forms out of which they can be recognized. But I will now take a side step out of this interpretation and read this in more literal sense, as an introduction in to the source where the formal representation of the hierarchies came from and how they were approved by a religious authority.

in order that we might be borne, as far as our capacity permits, from the most sacred pictures to the instructions and similitudes without symbol and without type, transmitted to us our most Holy Hierarchy.
Whether the material figures, symbols and type mean planetary bodies and other forms or names on a paper approved by a religious institution, the meaning is the same: we are to use these formal representations as aids that are later to be discarded in order to know the immaterial Hierarchies behind the formal representations. This is the idea of the heuristic ladder. The aim of finding similitude with the celestial beings is to embody the inherent initiations and become a worker with higher - truly alive beings, and eventually reach nirvana.

The 2nd Sentence
For it is not possible for our mind to be raised to that immaterial representation and contemplation of the Heavenly Hierarchies, without using the material guidance suitable to itself, accounting the visible beauties as reflections of the invisible comeliness; and the sweet odours of the senses as emblems of the spiritual distribution; and the material lights as a likeness of the gift of the immaterial enlightenment;
This is repeating the above and the tantric idea of approaching things from the ground up, which I already happened to touch upon. This justifies the usual magic of correspondences used in natural magic of the ancients as well as Catholic and Orthodox churches with their elaborate use of specific materials and ritual paraphernalia from frankincense and myrh to gilded altars and various sorts of iconography etc.
and the detailed sacred instructions, of the feast of contemplation within the mind; and the ranks of the orders here, of the harmonious and regulated habit, with regard to Divine things; and the reception of the most Divine Eucharist, of the partaking of Jesus, and whatever other things were transmitted to Heavenly Beings supermundanely, but to us symbolically.
This list as a whole reveals quite a vast range of areas and it could be seen breaking through the preconceptions of where one might automaticly draw their associative limits of formal things when imagining the immaterial above the material and form. In addition it draws out areas where spiritual practice can take place and how the immaterial hierarchies can be seen present behind all those forms of practice. Thus the text can be seen fighting against the dead letter and ritual without meaning. In this spirit, there is also a brief presentation of a general key in to the inner mechanics of the Eucharist.
"Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets”, Numbers 11:29 as echoed by William Blake
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Re: Divine Hierarchies - A Comparative Study Group

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Pseudo-Dionysius wrote:For it is not possible for our mind to be raised to that immaterial representation and contemplation of the Heavenly Hierarchies, without using the material guidance suitable to itself, accounting the visible beauties as reflections of the invisible comeliness
Smaragd wrote: Tue Oct 04, 2022 9:20 pmCatholic and Orthodox churches with their elaborate use of specific materials and ritual paraphernalia

The most sad and incompetent manifestation of the sad and incompetent Christian religion must be Protestantism. Luther's original idea of making religion more available to masses was praiseworthy enough (in its core if not in its execution), but what quickly resulted was a religion of no this nor that: Lutheran church and its descendants have neither the magical, uplifting beauty of the catholic churches (rightfully defended here by Dionysius), and neither have they that direct, loving spirit free of pomposity and dead formalities that the reformers might have sought. Indeed, Protestant religion is a religion of offices and stamps of validity, and it is no wonder how many modern artists depict modern angels as kind of clerical employees.

There seems to be a school of thought that considers such depictions as accurate enough visions of actual spirits. When something is met in the astral, when something is dreamed or intuited, it is taken as reality. But it is not like that. Office-angels, pitchfork-devils, most forms seen in dreams and so on are that play of flickering shadows of subconscious that only veil and hide the real entities. Cherubs were not changed into babies with tiny wings when the painters started depicting them thus, and the angelic hierarchies have not changed into office workers when people see them like that because of exoteric cultural reasons.

One way to understand why that is would be to take a look in qabbalah or similar systems of divine geometry. The power of celestial form is so penetrating, so enduring, that it changes only by very careful permutations.
Faust: "Lo contempla. / Ei muove in tortuosa spire / e s'avvicina lento alla nostra volta. / Oh! se non erro, / orme di foco imprime al suol!"
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Re: Divine Hierarchies - A Comparative Study Group

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The 3rd Sentence
Pseudo-Dionysos wrote:For the sake, then, of this our proportioned deification, the philanthropic Source of sacred mysteries, by manifesting the Heavenly Hierarchies to us, and constituting our Hierarchy as fellow-ministers with them, through our imitation of their Godlike priestliness so far as in us lies, described under sensible likeness the supercelestial Minds, in the inspired compositions of the Oracles
Again, the imitation of ”their Godlike priestliness” can be interpreted as preparing oneself to receive initiations from the higher entities.
Pseudo-Dionysos wrote:in order that It might lead us through the sensible to the intelligible, and from inspired symbols to the simple sublimities of the Heavenly Hierarchies.
As On the Celestial Hierarchy could be seen as a bridge between Neoplatonism and Christianity, it is rather obvious that we are now looking to the same concept that is called Plato’s Cave in classical philosophy. As we go on to study the Hierarchies, such endeavour can be understood to inspecting the way out of Plato's Cave and inspecting "the world" outside it. As Plato’s metaphor can be misleading, we can also think it as the world inside but also beyond the subjective colouring and shadows. Like Nefastos seemed to hint out on his previous comment, the nature of the Hierarchies could be seen as the objective world in an occult sense, beyond the objective world we know by our senses alone.
"Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets”, Numbers 11:29 as echoed by William Blake
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Re: Divine Hierarchies - A Comparative Study Group

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Studying a source marked in the footnote of the Secret Doctrine, I happened upon another text about Paracelsus' work and ideas the pull of which I could not resist. As it happened Maurice Fredal opened up Paracelsus' philosophy in a way that one could well think it was just another form given to what On the Divine Hierarchy has thus far stated. It also grants another perspective to our theme here, which might give much clarity to some readers. In addition to similar thoughts, Paracelsus' practical angles presented in the article give magnificent examples of what we have spoken here as approaching the Hierarchies from the ground up.
The Theosophist, February 1887 wrote: Remarkably suggestive is that part of the works of Paracelsus in which he developes the theory that each natural form is the outward expression of inward power and capacity. There is, say those who know, a natural alphabet, in terms of which Nature herself seems to work. By the knowledge of this alphabet the visible secrets of nature may be unriddled and by making use of a corresponding force-correlation, a dynamic aspect of this alphabet may be brough into play, and its letters will marshal themselves into words and phrases for the exposition of higher truths. Our author says ”The soul does not perceive the external or internal physical construction of herb and roots, but it intuitively perceives theri powers and virtues, and recognizes at once their signatum.
What follows in the article is a citation from Paracelsus where he explains the relation of similar and dissimilar things in nature and how they relate to the a specific ’star’, or if you will, a letter in the alphabet. Especially for those interested in the art of healing, I recommned reading the whole article and plan on perhaps seeking the book from which it draws from: The Life and the Doctrines of Paracelsus, written by fellow Theosophist, Dr. Hartmann. The article is found from the February's number of The Theosophist, 1887.
"Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets”, Numbers 11:29 as echoed by William Blake
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Re: Divine Hierarchies - A Comparative Study Group

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Smaragd wrote: Thu Oct 06, 2022 4:45 pmI (...) plan on perhaps seeking the book from which it draws from: The Life and the Doctrines of Paracelsus, written by fellow Theosophist, Dr. Hartmann.

Very recommendable, it's an excellent book. But unless there has been recent repressings I don't know of, it's hard to find.

I hope there will at some point emerge a deeper and wider interest in Paracelsus that would result in good quality English translations of his works. It's hard to overestimate Paracelsus' unique influence on esotericism; it was much greater than, say, well known and often quoted Agrippa's, who seems to have been more like a compiler and pupil of Trithemius.
Faust: "Lo contempla. / Ei muove in tortuosa spire / e s'avvicina lento alla nostra volta. / Oh! se non erro, / orme di foco imprime al suol!"
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Re: Divine Hierarchies - A Comparative Study Group

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Nefastos wrote: Sun Oct 09, 2022 12:04 pm It's hard to overestimate Paracelsus' unique influence on esotericism; it was much greater than, say, well known and often quoted Agrippa's, who seems to have been more like a compiler and pupil of Trithemius.
That's close to the image I have recently got. Agrippa seems to a bit more like a historian, or an academic scholar on areas of magic and occult. Although I can not rule out his partaking into it in practice, it seems even probable to a degree. By the way Paracelsus was also a pupil of Trithemius! Although I'm not sure how accurate my source on this is. Trithemius had a vast library in his monastery and housed often the intellectuals of his time. Who was a pupil and who was a fellow student, or both? Previously I had gotten too much of a quack image of Paracelsus, but the small glimpse I got from that article on the Theosophist has risen tremendous fascination towards his ways of working and some ideas there that I must look closer into.

I'm also interested how Paracelsus spoke about the alphabet, which I interpreted to come to the idea of the Hierarchies. His studentship under Trithemius offers a rather wild idea which must be studied further, but I will say it outloud in order not to forget it. Trithemius' work on Steganographia was originally thought as a work on angels and demons, but modern studies have come to a conclusion that it is only a mask underwhich is a system of encrypting messages. Now, it may well be that Trithemius used his occult and theological knowledge as smoke and mirrors to house a conventional and profane system of encryption. After all, just writing about the occult generally or with fellow students and pupils was dangerous, so it could have been handy at those times. Now, the wild idea is that a systems of encryptions using a system of spirit hierarchies could be in addition used as a tool of adding meaning to the text. When a student would receive a letter, he would have to "translate" the message which could be a process of values and meanings of alphabetical poetry not entirely dissimilar to the gematry of the Hebrew brothers. Only this would be a Latin system and a bit more Western making.

***

This week we will go through:

Caput II.
”That Divine and Heavenly things are appropriately revealed, even through dissimilar symbols.”
Section I.

The chapter starts digging in to the meanings of the Hierarchies and proper ways to point and interpret them from the various forms which the Hierarchies inspire.

”It is necessary then, as I think, first to set forth what we think is the purpose of every Hierarchy, and what benefit each one confers upon its followers”
As the Hierarchies are divisions in the procession from the spirit to the creation of cosmos, we may conclude that ultimately all idealism and ideas base on some of these divisions. The lower on the Hierarchy we get, the more definitely separatist the followers of such idealism become. This is because higher in the Hierarchy the divisions are understood to be necessary and instrumental, while lower on the Hierarchies this fact is forgotten, and there idealism becomes a desperate measure to justify existence or annihilation rather than seeing to the instrumental nature of the ideas from the perspective of the whole. The students of Hermeticism are naturally guided to this perspective of the whole which gains its idealism above the Hierarchy and sees its parts as instruments. Thus the ”benefits each [Y-division] confers upon its followers” are all available to the occultist, and this totality forms the initiation path, which is closed from those who fall into separatism on the level of idealism. That is, small mindedness of the lesser powers.

The separatism must not be confused with the known idea amongst occultism how ”many are called, but few are chosen,” for such is the sine qua non of Hermeticism, recognizing the necessary steps to truly and actually see the whole rather than being obviously, or in hidden ways, still too paralyzed by some of the divisions in the Hierarchies. In the Divine Hierarchy requirements ≠ falling into separatism. The former is the mirror image which may be hard to swallow as it may show the separatism in oneself which is not ready to meet such requirements, although the usual person may escape this reflection and imagine the message bearer (like an occult authority) as the one making separations by such notions. Balance found between the humble self and the prideful self is key here.

Additionally Pseudo-Dionysius guides us towards the Black astral when approaching the Hierachies with our visionary eye. This happens by celebrating the Biblical oracles where there are archetypal – simple forms present, rather than the more complex forms of animals in general. This can be understandably read as Christian favouritism, but the pearl amidst the mud here is the fact that reaching towards the Black astral we activate within our mind those points in the Hierarcy which reach highest in the Divine structure. By working with the thus opened depths, and by working the misunderstandings and dross in our own subjective eye, we create more stable relationships with the archetypal beings. Thus we gain clearer view above the carcerated state of the cosmos, rather than hopelessly fighting against the shadows of the carceration, as our perspective would be buried in the complexities of the wordly phantoms. In practice we can see the work happening also in the lower hierarchies where their instrumental abilities are given to us as we devote ourselves working with the archetypal entities. Thus the work joins the hands of Right and Left, rather than changing one prison in to another – the one of the commander of the carceration system.

In the end of Section I is described how “Word of God artlessly makes use of poetic representations of sacred things, respecting the shapeless minds, out of regard to our intelligence”. Perhaps we can think about this how obvious some parts of messages in other peoples dreams may be to us, while they may still have something to realize there. From an occult point of view, the poetic representations are in part relative to the initiations our mind needs to go through, and in part coloured by the way we have conditioned our mind. Thus we come back to the recommended idea of trying to condition the mind to receive the archetypal forms as purely as possible in order to avoid having to go the longer way of trial and error cycles repeating and hitting our head on the same brick wall over and over again. “Artlessly” could be interpreted as according to law – without artifice -, according to the way the, to a degree, free human operator chooses to condition or focus one’s mind towards life and existence.
"Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets”, Numbers 11:29 as echoed by William Blake
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Re: Divine Hierarchies - A Comparative Study Group

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Caput II.
Section II.

Dionysius dives further in to the subject of depiction of the divine entities of the Hierarchy. The problem is that giving representative form to a formless being does not reach the formless being with clarity and misleads the readers. But in order to communicate and teach these things some sort of form need to be used. We need to step to a region of poetry and allegory. But there are many levels and depths these tools can be used, and others are less accurate and less faithful to the archetypal reality.

We could use the Arthurian legends as an example here. While the knighthood and its virtue seeking ethos may be very accurate and revealing when depicting the strive from the persepctive of a occult student, still its attempts to mimic the divine hierarchies or teachings of Christ in its entirety becomes lacking quite fast. I think Tolkien denying his work on the Lord of the Rings being allegorical comes close to this point: while it is obviously allegorical in a mythological sense, it is not allegorical in the way that the Ring would be a banal allegory of the atomic bomb and so on. The mythological allegory reaches much deeper realities behind the forms, rather than uses substitute forms to depict other forms.

We must enter a flourishing world of poetry which uses the Eye of Dangma, incorporated within which are the powers of Saturn, and look in to the Black astral and see how the most simple or abstract forms of the archetypes influence the more complex forms in order to see clearly through the incongrious and rough (cf. immanence) as well as through the more accurate symbolism closer to transcendental philosophy. The latter is ofcourse close to the school of early Christianity which Pseudo-Dionusius represents here. Even thought the Saturn trained Eye may be more ready to see the meanings in the rough and immanent forms, the problem may still remain considering the high entities in the Hierarchy: the symbolism just starts to point elsewhere at some point. Yet, through understanding correspondences a true Tantric initiate may still work with the heights through the lower forms. Thus the ”forms are naturally attributed to the formless,” but this point of view should be left to the initiates, instead of falling in to the ”everything is everything” trap which abolishes all meaning within the reach of a human being and prepares the mind for ignorance rather than knowledge, understanding and nuances.

Pseudo-Dionysius wrote:For it is not every one that is holy, nor, as the Oracles affirm, does knowledge belong to all.
This stance may be seen as against the New School of the New Testament which Jesus’ teachings aimed to bring forth, that is: bringing the teachings to everyone. But we must never be content with an interpretation coming from the lowest common denoninator! Again, seeking the pearl amidst the mud we may understand the teaching is for everyone, but there are some stages which will only bring confusion and prolonged suffering if certain steps before it are jumped over. For example, as I tried to open just now, if one has not gone through enough work within the Black aspect, certain paths of immanence may be seen remaining shut for the time being, although it might as well be seen as an invitation to walk towards such a path.
"Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets”, Numbers 11:29 as echoed by William Blake
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Re: Divine Hierarchies - A Comparative Study Group

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Caput II.
Section III.
Pseudo-Dionysius wrote:the method of Divine revelation is twofold; one, indeed, as is natural, proceeding through likenesses that are similar, and of a sacred character, but the other, through dissimilar forms, fashioning them into entire unlikeness and incongruity.
The upcoming or biblical oracles as descriptions of the entities of the Orders is further founded on the philosophical basis which justifies the desctiptions by 1. natural correspondence, and 2. by eniterily dissimilar forms. This sounds not only like the way revelation work, but also an attempt by which the mind is first hooked with an associative correspondence to the meaning and then, by a poetic play of negating the form, guided towards the abstraction of the entities themselves. This could be taken as methodological mysticism and poetry, a key to the depths of this text.
Pseudo-Dionysius wrote: If, then, the negations respecting things Divine are true, but the affirmations are inharmonious, the revelation as regards things invisible, through dissimilar representations, is more appropriate to the hiddenness of things unutterable.
Our Satanism comes in to play here as it’s an aspect of Satan by which this stripping of the masks covering the face of God is done. Approaching Satan is here a way to approach God, to dig through the darkness and face the last guardian before ”the throne”. Another way to look at the stripping of the masks or veils, could be seen in the ascension of Christ through the heavenly spheres in Pistis Sophia. This is Lucifer & Christos seen operating the same function in different points of views. Additionally, the problem of evil, where God is seen possessing all the qualities of evil is present in the idea of being closer by the negation, but there is also some sort of an answer to the problem, as the Orders are indeed not the things they are negated from, but the Orders are there, in the presence of evil more clearly revealed by the evil and suffering. From an occultist’s point of view, one may take the suffering they receive in life as a gift and try to learn from it the good, the ideals and the laws of nature, according to which they may dodge the invisible traps testing the initiate.
Pseudo-Dionysius wrote:In order that men might not suffer from [formal similitudes], by thinking they are nothing more exalted than their beautiful appearance, the elevating wisdom of the pious theologians reverently conducts to the incongruous dissimilarities, not permitting our earthly part to rest fixed in the base images, but urging the upward tendency of the soul, and goading it
Emphasis mine. In addition to the grounded meaning here where the cold intellect undresses the masks away, the remark of elevating wisdom seems to point to the guidance of manas and the attitude of interpretation made by its guidance united with the philosophical and cold rational working of kama manas. Although ”elevating wisdom” might be read as part of overtly decorated way of writing about the divine or those in a position of power, as typical to older texts, I would first and foremost emphasise interpretations where such ”complements” mean something precise rather than being hollow decorations. Here it is rather clearly a meaningful choice of words.
Pseudo-Dionysius wrote:Further also this must particularly be borne in mind, that not even one of the things existing is altogether deprived of participation in the beautiful, since, as is evident and the truth of the Oracles affirms, all things are very beautiful.
To reach the divine realms where the ”upward tendency of the soul” guides us, the human way of dualistic thinking must be let go and the divine by which the terrible things also happen, is beheld as part of the countenance of the holy. Only human beings in our specific occult state of freedom are not in the position to make ethically questionable choices. Our certain kind of freedom is thus non-freedom, where as beings in the Orders seems to be already somekind of liberated state where perhaps decision making is on an entirely different plane.

I’m left questioning this. For example, there’s a thought where the Orders might be seen as working in a plane where ethics are for granted and to which we manage to be in contact with our being when we overcome an ethical problem with brilliance. But the orders (God) presents also all the suffering and terrible things in the world. There’s violence and suffering in the animal kingdom whether or not human beings interact with them clearly. But even then, it is always questionable whether the human being interacts with all of the natural world through the inner world. The idea of Man as the pinnacle of nature and the head of it is taken in today’s world in the way that human beings are free to use the natural world as they see fit (or rather as they see excusable), but I think the original idea should be taken mostly the other way around: our thoughts, deeds and existence make the bunnies and rodents of the forest to shake in fear and stress, the foxes and wolves to have their forms as they are and to hunt and lust for blood etc. This is the idea where all of nature is given its form by the collective human mind in the anima mundi. Thus all the evil in the world would come back to the freedom of human beings. But the individual can not be blamed for this because it is the collective karma which has stretched the powers to form in such ways. I wonder if the Demiurge is in its most clear idea the subject, or the head, of the human collective karma, and thus the creator of cosmos in the sense that through its ideation (=karma) the cosmos is created. The Demiurge as the God who should receive our divine hate is on a psychological and utilitarian level very good, because when pointing our hate towards it, the hate is quite accurately directed and allows the problems to begin to be solved. If we point our hate towards individuals or towards ourselves it easily blocks the way to understand our problems from behind the ouroboric wall of self-pity and other forms of hoplesness and despair.

Further more the hate towards the Demiurge can be seen refining in seeing in it both Satan and God. Traditionally it is seen as Satan, fromwhere the idea of Satan as the King of the World comes. But this has presented the problem of Azazel, where the evil entity has fulfilled the its role to the point where individual human evil no longer is scrutinized and all of its weight could be thrown over a scapegoat. Thus Satanism has become obligatory step to find balance here again and to re-ignite the meaning by pointing the hate towards God. But it must be kept in mind that the sole point of this hate is to recognize the problem we are dealing with and to gain clarity in answering it. Otherwise the hate starts to go unbalanced again and the God-Satan polarity in the Demiurge loses its meaning again and secular nihilism needs to reset the meaning matrix in the culture once again (preparing the poles to flip).
"Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets”, Numbers 11:29 as echoed by William Blake
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Re: Divine Hierarchies - A Comparative Study Group

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Caput II.
Section IV.


In this weeks section Pseudo-Dionysius clarifies and demystifies the way of pointing to the entities in the Hierarchies by dissimilar similitudes. He does this by a gross example of sensual passions and basicly pointing out the blind mechanisms embedded in matter.

I use the word mechanism, while Dionysius uses, among others, the word ’soulless’. Soulless means lacking connection to a larger whole, a severed state. ’Mechanism’ can be seen holding a similar meaning where something does not have a creative center of its own to tie it in a greater whole and entity, but only works through a certain mechanical law. Our limbs, organs or our instruments in the lower triangle in general work mechanically, but we as human beings are in a position to find their connections to the intelligent heavens in a living manner. The basic dichotomy between matter and spirit is here present as appropriate to the challenges in presenting the subject of this book.

This dichotomy helps the human mind to find helpful relations between substance and essence – corporeal and incorporeal – as they are in themselves. The incorporeal is ofcourse much more hard to take in to account as it is mostly hidden from our view and thus within the area of occultism. The author sees that even the area of lust, which quite clearly belongs more to the side of blind irrational (not suprarational) mechanisms of substance, can be interpreted by the way of dissimilar similitudes as something that comes from the incorporeal Minds in the Hierarchies. This is done by seeing to the pure, the truth and the virtue behind, for example, lust. As Dionysius acknowledged, this is the masculine, ”manly”, principle in action.
Pseudo-Dionysius wrote:But when we attribute "lust" to spiritual beings, by clothing them with dissimilar similitudes, we must think that it is a Divine love of the immaterial, above expression and thought, and the inflexible and determined longing for the supernally pure and passionless contemplation, and for the really perpetual and intelligible fellowship in that pure and most exalted splendour, and in the abiding and beautifying comeliness.
Emphasis mine. Besides demystifying with the example of lust, the author points with it the possible mystical union with the archetypal beings as such ways open up after the described purification process has been acknowledged and applied in practice. This ”pure and most exalted splendour” which can be achieved in meditation or, for example, writing about the divine things to train one’s inner eye, creates a sort of fellowship with those spheres, offering knowledge and affinity with the divine Minds and/or Master(s). Ofcourse this fellowship is strenghtened moreover by pulling from this same creative source in the day-to-day ethical challenges, not in theoretical work only.

While the point of the heuristic dichotomy between matter and spirit was to gain way to the paternal occultism of spirit, the point of the paternal occultism can be seen to be a more clear way to the maternal occultism of the materia, of substance and thus to the whole point of existence. In some Eastern classifications, which should not be seen set in to stone, the Left Hand Path is seen higher than that of the Right. I would interpret this idea with what I just wrote, where the Left Hand Path (taking substance and its powers in to the center of focus) as higher in the sense that it is almost impossible to do it if one has not, or is not in the process of integrating the wisdom and knowledge from the paternal occultism. LHP occultism can be seen asking more (the union of the Hands, not freezing in to heuristic concepts) and thus it could be seen ”higher”.


Our schedule continues as follows:
7th-13th of November: Caput II. Section V.
14th-20th of November: Caput III. Section I. & II.
21st-27th of November: Caput III. Section III.
28th of November - 4th of December: Caput IV. Section I.
5th-11th of December: Caput IV. Section II.
12th-18th of December: Caput IV. Section III.
19th-25th of December: Caput IV. Section IV.
"Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets”, Numbers 11:29 as echoed by William Blake
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Re: Divine Hierarchies - A Comparative Study Group

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Caput II.
Section V.


The dissimilar similitudes, or description through negation is described working through a shock where the description of the Heavenly Beings shocks with the contradiction which forces the mind to strip the dissimilarities from the earthly manifestations and see the high in the low. For Satanists, this might be very familiar, and perhaps for some of us it has been the very first way to acknowledge the divine once again after abandoning false gods.

In this section we are circling intensively around the concept of the divine intellect – manas. The shock is said not permitting the mind to linger in the discordand representations, but rousing to reject it, to rebel against it. This is the first sign that we might be talking about the Lucferian instrument of manas. But we must still remain focused and question whether we can observe a connection to buddhi, because manas is not manas if it does not connect to buddhi and atma. It can be disguised as manas, but in reality the rational mind might be only receiving its guidance from our blind spot(s) of unrecognized shadow in the downward triangle of the Hieroglyphic Key. This is Satan’s guidance that need to be turned the other way around by the tool self-reflection, as proper to mirrors. But if we can see the guiding intellect leading us to clearly helpful and goodwilled direction we might be very likely dealing with our buddhi-manas and the entity behind these instruments might be thus recognized as Lucifer-Christos. ”Morning Star rising divinely in the mind”, as Dionysius expresses it.
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite wrote:But let Christ lead the discourse----if it be lawful to me to say----He Who is mine,----the Inspiration of all Hierarchical revelation.
I deem this positively Satanic and ”Pagan” position as it possesses an intimate and actual relation to the divine powers rather than having obscured It to unreachable dimensions and behind the authority of clergy.
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite wrote:And thou, my son, after the pious rule of our Hierarchical tradition, do thou religiously listen to things religiously uttered, becoming inspired through instruction in inspired things; and when thou hast enfolded the Divine things in the secret recesses of thy mind, guard them closely from the profane multitude as being uniform
If we won’t cultivate our instruments pertaining to religious attitude, or alternatively refrain from cultivating our instruments pertaining to scientific attitude, we will be unable to reach the heights these instruments together is able to help us reach. Cultivating the instruments can be seen as showing Love towards it and consequently allowing loving understanding through the instruments with other entities on the same level as well as the inner corresponding entities of a higher octave.

We may be the swine whom no valuable information reaches, as well as we may use those instruments in contexts where there is no similar training of those instruments present, and the expression is thus polarized in a mangled way. It is not really for the fear of blasphemy this rule is given, but rather it is for the protection of the one who casts the pearls: if one understands the central idea of ethics in occultism, one may understand that it is not ethically a sound thing to present things to audiences that are unable to fathom the ideas in the right context. Buddhi is not present, Mercury is not present to "guide the souls". For example, many Christian churches have a vast history of casting pearls before swine (including its clergy), and in acting so tactlessly has created alot of confusion and abolished people from its halls.

Interestingly the pearls before swine problem could well be seen the reason for hiding the divine things behind the clergy. But such division has obviously been made too harshly and with too feeble bridges between the two parties, as Christianity has crumbled down so badly at least here where I have lived and experienced no possibility to seek my religious needs from the Church.
"Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets”, Numbers 11:29 as echoed by William Blake
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