Daily Advice 1.20.21

A new administration takes power in America today. The astrological conditions for the event are almost comically terrible; JMG posted his analysis a few weeks back and later today or tomorrow I'm going to post my own writeup over at Vox Caelorum. Astral conditions are as bad as they've ever been in my lifetime, and a clairvoyant friend who is old enough to remember 1968 says that they are worse than she's ever seen them.

Sounds like a good day to discuss the spiritual warfare, with the aid of our old friends Sun Tzu and Eliphas Levi.

Sun Tzu tells us:

In the practical art of war, the best thing of all is to take the enemy's country whole and intact; to shatter and destroy it is not so good. So, too, it is better to capture an army entire than to destroy it, to capture a regiment, a detachment or a company entire than to destroy them.

Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.

The territory on which our war is being fought is the soul. We will understand what that means better if we remember that "soul" is the English translation of the Latin word "anima" and the Greek word "psyche." Anima is the root of "animate," meaning "that which moves." "Psyche," of course, is identical to "mind," and consists of all of the contents of our minds. And so we could define "soul" as "the total contents of our minds and our actions."

Let's turn to Levi for a moment:

And now the nature of the conflict clearly presents itself:

Part of our souls lie under the dominion of the Enemy.

Which parts?

For the specific purpose of this discussion, the Enemy is the demonic power which is driving people in the United States and around the world into a frenzy of rage over political issues. It first manifested itself in the deranged reaction to the election of Donald Trump and the successful Brexit referendum by members of the liberal classes in the United States and the United Kingdom. But it is active on the political Right as well, and has now exploded into full force among certain Trump supporters in their reaction to his electoral defeat.

Expect it to continue to evolve and mutate and to take many forms in the years ahead. It will change its story and its appearance, but you can always tell that it's there. Watch for the following signs: Excess emotion, especially rage; willing indulgence in fantasies of violence, which then become acts of violence; a complete lack of reflective thought. If you are sensitive to these things, you can feel its presence in a tightening in your various energy centers, as though someone were squeezing your throat or punching you in the solar plexus. You can see it in others in the glazed looks in their eyes and the incoherent justifications they give for violent actions.

Our goal, let us remember, is to live in peace. This doesn't necessarily mean an absence of physical violence. It means the subordination of all of our actions and all the contents of our minds to our spirits, our wills, and our gods. 

Let's turn back to Sun Tzu, then, with this in mind.

Our goal is to "take the enemy's country intact," not to "shatter and destroy it." What does that mean in the war for our souls?

Two things come to mind.

First, we want to be live in such a way that peace, as I've defined it, comes naturally. If we're spending time straining and struggling within ourselves, we're both suffering and wasting a ton of energy. The classic example of this, of course, is the devout and scrupulous Catholic who is trying to avoid "sexual sin" by a constant internal struggle. The result is a person who feels blocked up, constipated, and irritable, and is unable to get very much done because of all the energy they're spending trying not to think about masturbating. Even if they "win," they've done so at great cost, and have certainly "shattered and destroyed" much of the country of their own souls.

"What you resist you strengthen." Don't fight the demons and the passions by resisting them. Instead, as I've suggested before, simply do other things with your time. Things which matter and have meaning to you. Above all else, pray, meditate, and engage in spiritual practice. If you feel "tempted," don't fight against it-- use the energy to do something good with your time. 

Now let's turn to Levi, because I want to add another piece that we haven't discussed before:

 

Magnetic respiration produces a radiation around the soul of which it is the center, and it surrounds itself with the reflection of its works, which makes a Heaven or a Hell for itself. There are no solitary acts and there can be no hidden acts; all that we truly want, that is to say all of which we confirm by our acts, remains written in the astral light, where our reflections are kept; these reflections continually influence our thoughts through the mediation of the diaphane, and it is thus that we become and remain the child of our own works.
 

Our souls are not isolated units, and don't exist in a vacuum. They are more like whirlpools of astral substance. You can define the boundary between the whirlpool and the river, but both are made of the same water. It's not enough to act in isolation and pursue personal fulfillment. We have to do some work to purify the waters around us.

And how do we do that?

Let me allow another one of the great ancient masters of magic to answer that.

You have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thy enemy. But I say to you, Love your enemies: do good to them that hate you: and pray for them that persecute and calumniate you: That you may be the children of your Father who is in heaven, who maketh his sun to rise upon the good, and bad, and raineth upon the just and the unjust. 46For if you love them that love you, what reward shall you have? do not even the publicans this? And if you salute your brethren only, what do you more? do not also the heathens this? 48Be you therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect.

Today, and every day, pray for your enemies. If, like me, you're not a fan of Joe Biden or his party, today is a good day to pray for them. Don't pray that Biden will become a Republican, a Populist, a Socialist or whatever you wish he was; just pray that he will be blessed by God and guided in the presidency. If you're Christian, a candle for the guardian angel of the United States, and the Virgin Mary as patron saint of America under her title of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception would be appropriate, and doubly so since Biden is at least nominally Catholic. If pagan, an offering to Jupiter would accomplish the same thing. 

And while you're out in the world, spend your time blessing people. This is especially easy to do when you're driving, for two reasons: 1. you will encounter a lot of people and 2. most of them will make you angry. Use the energy of the guy that just cut you off to send a blessing his way, and honestly mean it. A simple "May you be blessed," is enough, if you can say it and mean it.

Finally, in addition to prayers, this is a good time to make offerings. (Actually, there's never a bad time.) If you follow the planetary deities, you can synchronize your offerings with the days of the week; Chris Warnock has details here. But you can always pick a cause you care about, invoke your God, and make a donation in their name. In this way you will increase the amount of good in the world. It will return to you, but you must do it without expectation of reward. Do good and allow yourself to love the Good for its own sake.

In these ways, we can begin to reconquer our own souls, and the Soul of the World around us.