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readoldthingsThe Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 4, Verses 1-11
Jesus is led into the desert to fast for 40 days, and be tempted during this time by the devil.
The first thing to notice about this passage is just how much it would have sucked. Have you ever fasted for even one day? It's not a fun experience. Have you ever spent even one day in the desert? Actually, that can be a fun experience-- just ask Ed Abbey-- but it isn't an easy one. And as for temptation by demons... well. We'll get to that.
Notice what is happening here, then. In Matthew 3:17, Jesus has been initiated by John into his magical current. A dove descends from Heaven and the Voice of God says, "This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased." This is a pretty extraordinary experience, and you might think it would be followed directly by Jesus beginning his ministry. But you'd be wrong. Instead of ministry or an ongoing experience of God, Jesus comes face to face with the devil himself. Finally, after fasting 40 days and after overcoming the Devil 3 times, angels come down from Heaven and minister unto him.
There is a very important lesson here for anyone pursuing the spiritual life, and especially for the practice of magic.
Illumination, Purification, Unification
In traditional Catholic theology, there are three stages to the spiritual life: the Illuminative, Purgative, and Unitive.
The Illuminative Stage is the beginning of the spiritual life. This often happens with a spiritual experience, a sudden realization of the inadequacy of one's former ideas or of one's way of life. The soul is dissatisfied with material life. It seeks God, and often has an experience of God.
The Illuminative Stage can occur in any spiritual setting. It can follow the first time you attend mass, sit zazen, attend an AA meeting, or practice the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram. It is marked by profound joy and enthusiasm. This is the descent of the heavenly dove.
But the initial joy doesn't last. The soul soon finds that the initial burst of enthusiasm fades. Mass becomes dull, daily practice becomes routine, meetings get on your nerves, the pentagram ritual becomes a chore. And, very often, all of the old faults that the soul had begun to overcome reassert themselves in a big way: The temptations of the devil. This is the Purgative stage, so named because, in Catholic thought, it requires the purgation of the besetting sin. "Maybe it wasn't for me, after all," is the keynote here. Many, many people leave the spiritual path at this time.
And they're missing out. Those who persist come to the Unitive stage, named for union with God. Now the old joy reasserts itself, not as a sudden flame of enthusiasm, bright but brief, but as the kind of deep, sustaining fire that lasts through the night. It's the fire of the soul that has persevered, achieved, and won at great price. And angels come to minister to your needs.
These three stages are linked directly to the three traditional sets of Mysteries of the Rosary-- the Joyful, Sorrowful, and Glorious. One day I'm going to put together a 3-degree system of Christian ceremonial magic which is built around the Mysteries and the Three Stages.
In fact, most-- probably all, actually-- 3-degree magical systems follow this format pretty exactly. It's also the formula of all alchemical operations.
LVX
In the Golden Dawn tradition, there is another way of looking at this. The letters L V X spell out the word "light" in Latin. In the Rose Cross and Hexagram rituals, these letters are used as signs, representing three moments from the story of Osiris. L stands for Isis, the wife of Osiris; V for Apophis, the destroyer; X for Osiris, risen from the dead. In the Analysis of the Keyword ceremony, one pronounces "Virgo, Isis, mighty mother; Scorpio, Apophis, destroyer; Sol, Osiris, slain and risen."
In this way of looking at things, Isis, in her innocence and joy, represents the Illuminative stage; Apophis the destroyer represents the Purgative stage-- and he was also linked to the heat of the desert by the ancient Egyptians; and Osiris, risen from the dead, represents the Unitive stage.
It's worth keeping in mind, at this point, that Osiris, the dying and rising God, was a God of grain agriculture.
The Temptations
What are the specific temptations Jesus has to face? The devil tries to get him to satisfy his hunger; to use the power of God to defy nature; and to worship him in exchange for worldly power.
Some have called the three temptations Hedonism, Egoism, and Materialism.
There is an enormous amount of material on this subject from mainstream theologians of every denomination, so I won't go over it in detail. For our purposes, I want to note a few things.
First, who is the Devil, again? In the thought of Eliphas Levi, who we've been drawing on, a single, unitive being named "Satan" doesn't exist. It isn't that there aren't evil spirits-- there are. It is, rather, that unity itself is a quality of divinity. Rejecting divinity, the devils reject unity; Hell is a giant anarchy. Levi writes,
Elsewhere, he defines the Astral Light, which is the total current of psychic forces that exist in the world, as the devil itself when it acts upon us outside of our control. How is that? Because the Astral Light carries within it every human passion, every popular enthusiasm and popular madness, and the body of every spirit, whether good or evil. Unrecognized and untamed, it conquers us, and sweeps us along to whatever end.
The work of the mage is the work of self-creation, which is accomplished by and through the power of God. The temptations to turn aside that one faces during the Purgative or Apophis stage are the actions of the Astral Light working on the soul. The specific forms they will take will be unique to every individual.
Psychic Anatomy, Again
Jesus is tempted to satisfy his appetite, inflate his ego, and take worldly power. Each of these individual temptations can be seen to correspond with one of the parts of the psychic anatomy we discussed in the last post.
Two more things are worth noting:
Politics
First, Satan will give Jesus all the kingdoms of the world, if he will only consent to worship him. This suggests again what we said about worldly power in our discussion of Chapter 3. To be a mage is to be a priest and a king, but to be a king among human beings is not our goal. The true magician will not have worldly power and must not seek worldly power. The king of all the world's dogs is a dog.
Plotinus wrote,
Satan grants power to those who worship him. It isn't necessarily the case that to attain power is to worship Satan-- but it often is.
We want to be a different sort-- the sort intent on the realm above, like Plotinus, who, his student Porphyry tells us, came 4 times by meditation into the presence of the Most High God; the sort who will respond to the temptation of power with "Begone, Satan!" and will be received by the Angels instead.
Cycles
These things never happened, but always are.
And because they always are, they never stop happening. The LVX cycle does not occur once, and then it's over; we don't get to the Unitive stage and discover that we're done. The Unitive Stage always leads to the next Illuminative Stage; Osiris Risen must die again. We will always find that the time of dryness and temptation returns. And we will always find that if we persevere, we will achieve a higher level of power and wisdom.
Nor are these cycles limited to the spiritual life. It will be found, instead, that every human endeavor, from learning to play an instrument to learning to make a marriage work, will follow these cycles. The desert is always out there; Apophis always comes. But beyond the desert, the angels wait.
1 Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.
2 And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred.
3 And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.
4 But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.
5 Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple,
6 And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.
7 Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.
8 Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them;
9 And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.
10 Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.
11 Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him.
Jesus is led into the desert to fast for 40 days, and be tempted during this time by the devil.
The first thing to notice about this passage is just how much it would have sucked. Have you ever fasted for even one day? It's not a fun experience. Have you ever spent even one day in the desert? Actually, that can be a fun experience-- just ask Ed Abbey-- but it isn't an easy one. And as for temptation by demons... well. We'll get to that.
Notice what is happening here, then. In Matthew 3:17, Jesus has been initiated by John into his magical current. A dove descends from Heaven and the Voice of God says, "This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased." This is a pretty extraordinary experience, and you might think it would be followed directly by Jesus beginning his ministry. But you'd be wrong. Instead of ministry or an ongoing experience of God, Jesus comes face to face with the devil himself. Finally, after fasting 40 days and after overcoming the Devil 3 times, angels come down from Heaven and minister unto him.
There is a very important lesson here for anyone pursuing the spiritual life, and especially for the practice of magic.
Illumination, Purification, Unification
In traditional Catholic theology, there are three stages to the spiritual life: the Illuminative, Purgative, and Unitive.
The Illuminative Stage is the beginning of the spiritual life. This often happens with a spiritual experience, a sudden realization of the inadequacy of one's former ideas or of one's way of life. The soul is dissatisfied with material life. It seeks God, and often has an experience of God.
The Illuminative Stage can occur in any spiritual setting. It can follow the first time you attend mass, sit zazen, attend an AA meeting, or practice the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram. It is marked by profound joy and enthusiasm. This is the descent of the heavenly dove.
But the initial joy doesn't last. The soul soon finds that the initial burst of enthusiasm fades. Mass becomes dull, daily practice becomes routine, meetings get on your nerves, the pentagram ritual becomes a chore. And, very often, all of the old faults that the soul had begun to overcome reassert themselves in a big way: The temptations of the devil. This is the Purgative stage, so named because, in Catholic thought, it requires the purgation of the besetting sin. "Maybe it wasn't for me, after all," is the keynote here. Many, many people leave the spiritual path at this time.
And they're missing out. Those who persist come to the Unitive stage, named for union with God. Now the old joy reasserts itself, not as a sudden flame of enthusiasm, bright but brief, but as the kind of deep, sustaining fire that lasts through the night. It's the fire of the soul that has persevered, achieved, and won at great price. And angels come to minister to your needs.
These three stages are linked directly to the three traditional sets of Mysteries of the Rosary-- the Joyful, Sorrowful, and Glorious. One day I'm going to put together a 3-degree system of Christian ceremonial magic which is built around the Mysteries and the Three Stages.
In fact, most-- probably all, actually-- 3-degree magical systems follow this format pretty exactly. It's also the formula of all alchemical operations.
LVX
In the Golden Dawn tradition, there is another way of looking at this. The letters L V X spell out the word "light" in Latin. In the Rose Cross and Hexagram rituals, these letters are used as signs, representing three moments from the story of Osiris. L stands for Isis, the wife of Osiris; V for Apophis, the destroyer; X for Osiris, risen from the dead. In the Analysis of the Keyword ceremony, one pronounces "Virgo, Isis, mighty mother; Scorpio, Apophis, destroyer; Sol, Osiris, slain and risen."
In this way of looking at things, Isis, in her innocence and joy, represents the Illuminative stage; Apophis the destroyer represents the Purgative stage-- and he was also linked to the heat of the desert by the ancient Egyptians; and Osiris, risen from the dead, represents the Unitive stage.
It's worth keeping in mind, at this point, that Osiris, the dying and rising God, was a God of grain agriculture.
The Temptations
What are the specific temptations Jesus has to face? The devil tries to get him to satisfy his hunger; to use the power of God to defy nature; and to worship him in exchange for worldly power.
Some have called the three temptations Hedonism, Egoism, and Materialism.
There is an enormous amount of material on this subject from mainstream theologians of every denomination, so I won't go over it in detail. For our purposes, I want to note a few things.
First, who is the Devil, again? In the thought of Eliphas Levi, who we've been drawing on, a single, unitive being named "Satan" doesn't exist. It isn't that there aren't evil spirits-- there are. It is, rather, that unity itself is a quality of divinity. Rejecting divinity, the devils reject unity; Hell is a giant anarchy. Levi writes,
Most of all one must remember... that the names of Satan, of Beelzebub, of Adramelech, and the others, do not designate spiritual unities but the legion of impure spirits. "I am called Legion," the spirit of darkens says in the Gospel, "for we are many." In hell, anarchy reigns, it is the crowd that rules, and progress occurs in the inverse direction, that is to say that those most advanced in Satanic development, in consequence the most degraded, are the least intelligent and the weakest.
Elsewhere, he defines the Astral Light, which is the total current of psychic forces that exist in the world, as the devil itself when it acts upon us outside of our control. How is that? Because the Astral Light carries within it every human passion, every popular enthusiasm and popular madness, and the body of every spirit, whether good or evil. Unrecognized and untamed, it conquers us, and sweeps us along to whatever end.
The work of the mage is the work of self-creation, which is accomplished by and through the power of God. The temptations to turn aside that one faces during the Purgative or Apophis stage are the actions of the Astral Light working on the soul. The specific forms they will take will be unique to every individual.
Psychic Anatomy, Again
Jesus is tempted to satisfy his appetite, inflate his ego, and take worldly power. Each of these individual temptations can be seen to correspond with one of the parts of the psychic anatomy we discussed in the last post.
Two more things are worth noting:
Politics
First, Satan will give Jesus all the kingdoms of the world, if he will only consent to worship him. This suggests again what we said about worldly power in our discussion of Chapter 3. To be a mage is to be a priest and a king, but to be a king among human beings is not our goal. The true magician will not have worldly power and must not seek worldly power. The king of all the world's dogs is a dog.
Plotinus wrote,
Wealth and poverty and all inequalities of order are often made a ground of complaint. But this is to ignore that the Sage demands no equality in such matters; he cannot think that to own many things is to be richer, or that the powerful have the better of the simple; he leaves all such preoccupations to another kind of man. He has learned that life on earth has two distinct forms, the way of the Sage and the way of the mass, the Sage intent on the sublimest, upon the realm above, while those of the more strictly human type fall, again, into two classes, the one reminiscent of virtue and therefore not without touch with good, the other mere populace, serving to provide necessaries to the better sort.
Satan grants power to those who worship him. It isn't necessarily the case that to attain power is to worship Satan-- but it often is.
We want to be a different sort-- the sort intent on the realm above, like Plotinus, who, his student Porphyry tells us, came 4 times by meditation into the presence of the Most High God; the sort who will respond to the temptation of power with "Begone, Satan!" and will be received by the Angels instead.
Cycles
These things never happened, but always are.
And because they always are, they never stop happening. The LVX cycle does not occur once, and then it's over; we don't get to the Unitive stage and discover that we're done. The Unitive Stage always leads to the next Illuminative Stage; Osiris Risen must die again. We will always find that the time of dryness and temptation returns. And we will always find that if we persevere, we will achieve a higher level of power and wisdom.
Nor are these cycles limited to the spiritual life. It will be found, instead, that every human endeavor, from learning to play an instrument to learning to make a marriage work, will follow these cycles. The desert is always out there; Apophis always comes. But beyond the desert, the angels wait.
no subject
Date: 2021-06-29 05:15 pm (UTC)Amazing how the mystery side of Christianity and the symbolism of pagan Neoplatonism can flow together so harmoniously.
"Satan grants power to those who worship him. It isn't necessarily the case that to attain power is to worship Satan-- but it often is."
This reminds me a lot of the ring analogy from LOTR and how it does a better job on informing what 'Satan' really represents in esoteric form, as opposed to most dogma-based explanations.
no subject
Date: 2021-06-29 08:53 pm (UTC)I'm also thinking of Frodo and Sam's long trek through the desert of Mordor, only to be rescued by Gandalf (an angel) and the eagles after the destruction of the Ring...
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Date: 2021-06-29 08:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-06-29 08:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-06-29 09:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-06-30 12:36 am (UTC)