readoldthings

Today, let's have the whole of Matthew, Chapter 3

1 In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judaea,

2 And saying, Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

3 For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.

4 And the same John had his raiment of camel's hair, and a leathern girdle about his loins; and his meat was locusts and wild honey.

5 Then went out to him Jerusalem, and all Judaea, and all the region round about Jordan,

6 And were baptized of him in Jordan, confessing their sins.

7 But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, he said unto them, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?

8 Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance:

9 And think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.

10 And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.

11 I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance. but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire:

12 Whose fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.

13 Then cometh Jesus from Galilee to Jordan unto John, to be baptized of him.

14 But John forbad him, saying, I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me?

15 And Jesus answering said unto him, Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness. Then he suffered him.

16 And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him:

17 And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.

What's in a Name?

Let's return to John the Baptist for a moment. His name in Hebrew is יוֹחָנָן, "Yohannon," which means "Graced by God." Or, rather, graced by Yah. Yah, as we have seen, is an abbreviation of YHVH, the Jewish God. "Grace" in English is a translation of the Greek word "energia," which is where we get our word "energy." The grace of God consists of his energies or his actions. John's name shows us that through him, God is acting in the world.

We'll see that word "Grace" again when we get to the Gospel of Luke and talk about Mary, "gratia plena."

Tarot Cards

Here is John's name "Yochannon" in Golden Dawn terms:

Yod: The Hermit; the Sign of Virgo.
Vav: The Hierophant; the Sign of Taurus.

These two together form the "Yah" part of John's name. They show us John himself: an isolated hermit and priest, living in the desert, eating locusts and wild honey, the gifts of the Earth (Virgo and Taurus are both Earth signs).

Cheth: The Chariot, the sign of Cancer
Nun, Nun: Death, the sign of Scorpio

The Chariot and Cancer are somewhat contradictory symbols. The Chariot is a card of power, which shows a charioteer controlling two horses, one white and one black. The charioteer, the white horse, and the black horse, together form an image of the soul. The charioteer is the nous, the white horse is the thymos, and the black horse is the epithymia. As this card follows the Hermit and the Hierophant, the charioteer himself is the same figure as the man in those two cards. Having withdrawn from human society and encountered the spiritual world, he has gained mastery over himself.

Cancer is a water sign, relating to the moon, the common people, and the imagination. This shows the people generally coming to John for baptism in water. The Moon is the first sphere above the Earth, and Baptism is the first of the seven Sacraments of Initiation, which lead the soul to Heaven.

Scorpio is also a water sign, and is the only sign represented by, not one, but three symbols: The scorpion, the water-snake, and the eagle. The Death card shows us that Baptism, like all initiations, is a type of death. The second nun has a slightly different form from the first one, showing us that a different form of Scorpio is now present. The scorpion has awakened to the higher life and is now the eagle which sores in the light of the Eternal Sun.

The two death cards also represent the double deaths of, first John by beheading, then Jesus by crucifixion.

As the water-snake, Scorpio is also the "brood of vipers": The Pharisees and Sadducees that come to John for baptism, not because they wish to seek the higher life, but just because everyone else is doing it. In other words, they want power in the material world, the lower world represented by the water through which the poisonous water-snake swims.

Quis Est Deus

Speaking of YHVH... We probably should have gotten to this already, but since we're on the subject, how are we to understand that name YHVH? In Hebrew it's יהוה‎, "Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh." As discussed, this Name is rooted in the verb "To Be." It thus tells us that the God of the Jews, who is the Most High God according to this perspective, is related to Being Itself. To the extent that YHVH is "The God of" something, as Asclepios is "The God of" Healing or Thor is "The God of" Thunder, he is the God of Being-- Existence Itself. As Existence precedes Healing, or Thunder, or any other particular thing, we are therefore justified in identifying YHVH as the Most High God. "He brings into existence everything which exists."

In the occult tradition, there is another way to understand יהוה‎, which I want to talk about now. On this view, the Name itself represents a four part process of creation that unfolds through the Four Worlds of Being. Four Worlds? Those are the Henadic World, or Atziluth, the World of Absolute Unity; the Intellectual World, or Briah, the Archetypal World of Eternal Patterns; the Psychic World, or Yetzirah, the World of Forms and Images; and Assiah, the Physical World of Manifestation. All of these four worlds are always present in everything. YHVH is the power that underlies the existence and manifests through all four worlds, and it does so in the following manner:

י, Yod, is the primary spark of being. It is related to the element of Fire, the suit of Wands in the tarot, and the First of the Four Worlds.

ה, Heh, is related to the element of Water, the suit of Cups in the Tarot, and the Second of the Four Worlds. It is the formless Divine Mother discussed by Plato in the Timaeus: a kind of Great Matrix in which all the Eternal Forms come into being.

These two together are also what are called the Sun and the Light of the Sun in the Real World in Plato's allegory of the cave in the Republic. The light is the power by which all of the things in the real world are made visible. The Sun is the source of the light. Remember that the Sun in the Real World, which is the Intellectual World, is also the Son of the Good.

ו, Vav, is related to the element of Air, the suit of Swords in the Tarot, and the Third of the Four Worlds. The Third World is the psychic world or the astral world as we generally understand this. All concrete thoughts and mental images that you actually experience, from pictures in a daydream to songs getting stuck in your head to the sound of these words pronounced in your mind in your own voice as you silently read them are part of the Psychic World. The meaning of these images comes from the Intellectual World; their very being comes from the Henadic World.

ה, the Final Heh, is related to the element of Earth, the suit of Pentacles in the Tarot, and the Fourth of the Four Worlds. The Fourth World is the Physical World, the world of manifestation. Here the forms that came into being in the First World, were given meaning in the Second World, and form in the Third World, take on substance in the physical world.

YHVH is the Divine Power which underlies, generates, and sustains all four worlds, continuously and simultaneously.

Back to Repentance

We spoke yesterday about how the term "repentance" doesn't mean "Say you're sorry and be sad," but instead refers to a whole process by which the nous, the highest part of the soul, is transformed in the image of God.

But how does this come about?

At the beginning of The Iliad, the Greek forces have offended the God Apollo, and Apollo in his wrath has sent disease to ravage their armies. The Greeks eventually decide that they are in the wrong and they need to make peace with the God. The first thing they do is to plunge themselves into the sea in order to "cast off the filth." Then they sacrifice a large number of oxen to the God to appease his wrath. Also, of course, they amend the actual wrong they committed, by returning a captured Trojan girl to her father, a priest of Apollo.

What's going on here?

The purification by water found in The Iliad is preserved to this day by Shinto practitioners in Japan, who call it misogi. Natural sources of cold water have a profoundly purifying effect on the energetic body, that is, the aura of subtle energies and "vibes" that surround the physical body. Shinto practitioners make use of it to this day, Greek pagans made use of it in Homer's time, and John the Baptist makes use of it in our text. By immersion in water, the subtle body is cleansed of toxic or evil energies, called kegare in Japanese, that can include the sort of spirits that induce a person to commit evil acts.

Once purified in this fashion, the next step is a sacrifice. In the case of the Greeks, they offer to Apollo a hecatomb of oxen, an animal sacred to him. In ancient times, Gods were always worshipped by way of animal sacrifice, and the Jewish God was no exception to this. The animal was offered to the God-- and, critically, the meat was shared among all the worshipers. Sacrifices, whatever else they were, were the neighborhood barbecues of the ancient world, in which every hamburger and hotdog was infused with divine blessing.

Notice that the entire process of atonement with Apollo found in the Iliad is also found in the story of Jesus. He is purified by water, and then, ultimately, sacrificed, "the lamb of God." In the Eucharist, this sacrificial meal is shared by all the people.

John says that "One is coming who will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire." This suggests the institution of a new and more powerful ritual of purification, one which will take place directly on the spiritual level. I would suggest that this is the rite of Confession in sacramental Christian churches, in which sins are forgiven by the cleansing fire of the Holy Spirit and a penance given by which the sinner may amend their actions, like the Greeks returning the captured Trojan girl to her father. Confession is followed by and is required to participate in the Eucharist, in which the Sacrifice of Christ is reenacted.

Chains of Initiation

Initiatory magical traditions are very concerned with lineage. This is the process by which a magical current is passed from initiate to initiate. Plato was initiated by Socrates, and Socrates was initiated by Diotima.

John is the final prophet of the old era, the era which is passing away with the current generation (of Jesus's time), and Jesus is the beginning of the new.

In addition to being a magical purification, baptism, in the work of John, is a rite of initiation. The baptized are initiated into the magical current whose last and greatest manifestation is in John the Baptist. By accepting baptism from John, Jesus accepts initiation into this current, and carries its power forward into the New Era.

In the thinking of some esoteric Christians of the last century, particularly those influenced by the Theosophical Society, Jesus was not born the second person of the Holy Trinity, but rather received the Christ Force once he was baptized and initiated by John. This moment is dramatized in the descent of the Christ Force in the form of a dove, and the words "This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased."

Whether or not one accepts that interpretation, or the view that Jesus was always the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, the Christ and Son of God, begotten of the Father before all ages, the point of his baptism is clear. God saves, and Jesus demonstrates that salvation through his life; God graces, and John demonstrates that grace through his work. By Baptism one is initiated into the magical current of Christianity, one which extends backward in time to Jesus himself, and before him, through John, into the ancient world.

Below is the chart for this year's Summer solstice, which took place on the 20th of June, 2021, at 11:32pm:

The good news about this year's Cancer Ingress is that, as it is in a Fixed Sign, it will remain in effect until the Aries Ingress of 2022-- a whole 9 months from now. Given that, it hardly matters that I'm getting to it a week late.

Preliminary Remarks

The most important thing in this chart is the Grand Cross between the Moon, Mars, Saturn, and Uranus.

I've talked for some time on this blog about the square between Saturn and Uranus, representing ongoing conflict between the forces of order and chaos. For the rest of this year, the Moon, ruler of change and the common man, and Mars, ruler of war and violence, join in the conflict. The Moon is particularly badly afflicted in this chart, as Scorpio is the sign of her Fall and she suffers from hard aspects to all three malefic planets. This will not be an easy year for the average American, and the Moon's position in the cadent Ninth House shows us that their options for dealing with things are limited.

Now it's important to note that the Grand Cross isn't perfect. Aspects between planets in particular charts are rarely exact-- that is, within a single degree of perfection. Instead, the aspect's energy extends several degrees out to either side of the exact degree of perfection. This extension is called an orb. 7 degrees is about as wide an orb as an aspect can be granted to still be in effect, and that only for outer planets. In the case of the Grand Cross, Mars and Uranus are about 31 minutes out of orb, and so can't really be considered to be square to one another. We'll keep this in mind as we proceed.

The Sun and Moon

The Sun represents the head of state in a mundane chart; Joe Biden, in our case. In our chart, the Sun is in the Fifth House, making a trine to Jupiter in the First House and a semisquare to Uranus in the Third.

This is a fairly good position for the Sun. The position in the Fifth House tells us that Joe Biden will continue to be favored by the forces represented by that House-- Hollywood for one, but also Wall Street, and also the teacher's unions. The trine to Jupiter is strongly beneficial, though it has to be weighed against indicators in other currently active charts, including the eclipse charts and the Aries Ingress. It also suggests that Biden will be strongly supported by a significant fraction of the general population, who will benefit from his policies. What policies, and what fraction? The chart doesn't say, but we can make a few guesses. Jupiter rules wealth and imperial power; in our chart he is in Pisces, the sign of Neptune, ruler of socialism (and also of delusion.) Look to government aid to continue to flow to groups favored by the president and his sycophants in the entertainment media.

The Moon represents the people generally, but especially that fraction of the people who have the power or the wealth to participate in the national conversation. The Moon is in a very bad way in this chart. She is in Scorpio, which is the sign of her Fall; weakened by placement in the cadent Ninth House; and making hard aspects to the three malefic planets: Uranus (opposition), Saturn (square), and Mars (square). It literally does not get worse than that for any planet in any astrological chart. So let's unpack it, one at a time.

A planet in its Fall expresses its worst characteristics. As the Moon waxes and wanes, she always represents change. The Ninth House is the house of religion, law, universities, science and foreign travel. The Moon in this House, badly afflicted and in square to Mars, the House Ruler, suggests that the people as a whole will be badly impacted by changes for the worse in all of these affairs over the next nine months. The hostility of Official Science and Academia toward the general public is going to continue to worsen and probably cause serious harm during this time. Issues related to immigration are continue to cause serious problems, and we may expect open conflict over the attempts by the government of Texas to control its border with Mexico.

Mars, the ruler of the Ninth House, also rules the Second House of the nation's wealth; the affliction to the Moon tells us that economic trouble is going to continue, and the location of Mars in the Sixth House tells us that the working class is going to be badly impacted.

The affliction to Saturn, God of Death, is equally troubling, for obvious reasons. In this chart, Saturn particularly rules the Twelfth House of secret enemies, national institutions, hospitals and prisons. All of these afflict the population. The corruption in our national institutions has reached a fever pitch, as has public distrust of them. The Twelfth House also suggests that the social chaos in the United States is being deliberately provoked by the nation's enemies. This isn't at all surprising, as the US has a long history of provoking ethnic conflict among its own enemies-- funding the Kurds in Iraq and Syria, the Albanians in Serbia, Baloch separatists in Iran, and so on. (Nor is that something unique to the US; every country does it to its enemies, because it works.)

Mars rules war, Saturn rules sorrow and death, and Uranus rules chaos. In our chart, Uranus also rules the First House of the people generally. The opposition between the Moon and Uranus tells us something we already knew: The American public is sharply divided, and the two sides really, really don't like each other. We aren't going to see a civil war break out at this time, but incidents of violence, possibly including riots, terrorism, and mass shootings, are very likely.

The Moon's only dignity is a trine to Jupiter. Note that Jupiter is also trine to the Sun. I suggested that the latter trine primarily represents federal financial aid. If the Moon were just a few degrees earlier in Scorpio, we would have a Grand Trine, which is as strongly benefic as a Grand Cross is malefic. Instead, we have a hint of a Grand Trine that fails to perfect-- just as the Grand Cross doesn't quite perfect. What this suggests to me is that some government aid will be directed to the, er, "afflicted" members of the population, but that it will fail to have any positive effect on the mood of the people, and may be resented. Recent programs which awarded federal aid to farmers based on racial preference are probably the model here, as even those members of disfavored groups who did receive the aid are likely to have been left with a bitter taste in their mouths.

The Ascendant

The First House or Ascendant rules the people generally. In our chart, the Ascendant is in Aquarius, which is ruled by Uranus. Saturn is distantly conjunct the house cusp, and Jupiter and Neptune are both in this house-- but in Pisces, not Aquarius.

We've already said a bit about the position of Uranus in this chart. Let's say a bit more. It is very bad. Uranus is in Taurus, the sign of his Fall, on the cusp of the cadent Third House, square Saturn. The square to Saturn has roughly the same significance that the Moon's square does. The corruption in major American institutions will cause serious harm to the general public during this period, and internal conflicts between segments of the US population are being funded by the nation's enemies, including hidden enemies within its own borders and those of allied nations. The presence of Uranus in the Third House of the internet and the news media suggests ongoing issues with internet censorship, dishonesty and rancor in the news media, as well as trouble with the postal service.

Neptune and Jupiter in this house tell us that a certain fraction of the population will benefit from more-or-less socialistic policies directed by the president and the Executive and Legislative branches of government. We probably saw the beginning of that in the days before the Solstice. Jupiter and Neptune are both very well aspected, telling us that these policies are both beneficial to and welcomed by the groups that they are meant to help.

House II: The House of Wealth

The Second House rules the nation's wealth. The House Cusp is in Aries, and so Mars is its ruler. Mars is not doing well in this chart. He is in Leo, a sign where he has no special dignity, in the cadent Sixth House, opposed to Saturn and square the Moon. As we've seen, the square to the Moon suggests economic trouble; the location in the Sixth House tells us that we will continue to see public health issues and problems in the military. The opposition to Saturn suggests deaths in high places; possibly a Supreme Court judge, possibly President Biden.

House III: All The News That's Fit to Hide

The Third House rules transportation and communication; in modern times, it is the House of the Internet. The Third House is in Taurus, and Uranus is conjunct the House Cusp. The presence of Uranus suggests ongoing disruptions in the mail and ongoing conflict over lockdowns and censorship by media and big tech companies, and more wars of words in the media and on the internet. The preceding sentences are copy-pasted from the Aries ingress chart, as Uranus's position is the same in this chart, suggesting that these issues will continue to worsen over the next nine months, and have a direct impact on the general population.

Venus, the House Ruler, is in midling shape in this chart. She is in Cancer, where she has no special dignity, weakened by placement in the cadent Sixth House but strengthened by a trine to Neptune. This suggests media support for the federal government and its socialistic policies but bad news related to public health, the military (especially the navy), and unemployment.

House IV: The Flyover House

The Fourth House represents the interior of the country, the farms and mines, and the opposition party. The House Cusp is in Gemini, which is ruled by Mercury. Mercury is here in this House, conjunct the cusp, trine Saturn, and retrograde. Mercury's position in this House is thus very strong. The trine to Saturn, natural ruler of the past and conservatism; the location in the Fourth House; and the retrograde motion suggest a strong turn toward traditional values and conservative populism by rural people and the Republican Party. This new conservative populism is represented by groups like the National Conservatism movement, the Claremont Institute, the candidacy of J.D. Vance and so on. Expect them to continue to make gains, especially in the red parts of the country, and to increase their share in the national conversation and their power in the Republican Party. I don't see any reason not to tell you that I view this as a very positive development.

There is another side to this that is worth discussing. If you remember, I talked in my post on the Cancer Solar Eclipse about Hermes's role as an underworld deity. That role is very much on display in this chart. The Fourth House, at the bottom of the chart, and the Twelfth House of hidden things, both relate to the Underworld; Saturn is the natural ruler of the Underworld; the trine to Mercury tells us that Mercury is acting as the natural conveyor of his energies. The blowback to 40 years of malign neglect of the working class and the interior of the country is coming now, in the form of a resurgent conservative populism.

House V: TV, Stocks and Kids

The Fifth House rules the entertainment industry, financial speculation, and children. The House cusp is in Gemini, which makes Mercury its ruler; the Sun is in this House too, almost exactly conjunct the House cusp. All these placements are good for Fifth House matters. We will see a return (Mercury retrograde) of children to school (Saturn). The conflict between the populist movements and Wall Street, on the one hand, and the left wing elite school boards and teachers unions, on the other, which have taken center stage lately, will probably be decided in favorable terms for the populists over the rest of this year.

This is another House which contains two signs, suggesting divisions in matters ruled by this House between the President (Sun, Jupiter) and his party on the one hand, and the rural population and the Republican Party (Mercury, Saturn) on the other. As the Moon is very badly aspected, the Party and interests represented by the President can be expected to lose, but very likely without Biden himself suffering on account of it.

House VI: Health, the Working Class, the Military

The Sixth House represents public health, and also the working class and the military. As the House Cusp is in Cancer, the ruler is the Moon. Venus and Mars are both found herein as well. Venus is the good news, so let's start with her. In Cancer she suffers neither affliction nor benefit, but she is aided by a trine to Neptune. This further suggests government largesse reaching a certain portion of the population, very much to their benefit.

The news regarding the Moon and Mars is rather worse. The afflictions to both of these planet suggest ill health, high unemployment, and trouble in the military. I'd suggest, as I said above, that the ongoing controversy over the promotion of far left ideology in the military may be at the root of it. This chart suggests that we may see at least one incident of violence in connection with the military during this time. Rioting or violence by working class organizations is also possible.

House VII: Foreign Affairs and War

The Seventh House represents foreign nations and war. As the House Cusp is in Leo, the Sun is its ruler. The Sun's trine to Jupiter is good for foreign affairs, and predicts at least one major foreign policy success. The position of the Sun in the Fifth House may point to the ongoing kowtowing to certain foreign governments and fashionably foreign ideas by the entertainment industry.

House VIII: Other People's Money

The Eighth House represents foreign wealth; it also represents death. As the House Cusp is in Libra, Venus is its ruler. Venus's position in Cancer in the Sixth House is more-or-less neutral, and she is aided by a trine to Neptune. This suggests that either all is well, or it appears that all is well (Neptune as ruler of illusion) in these matters.

I don't make much use of Pluto, but I think the extent of his influence remains an open question. Given that, it's worth noting Venus's opposition to Pluto, who rules the Underworld and hidden things, in the Twelfth House of secret things and hidden enemies. This probably points to further complications with the Coronavirus vaccines, which will be ignored or suppressed in the official media.

House IX: God's Law, Nature's Law, Man's Law.

The Ninth House represents the Supreme Court, religion, science and higher education. As the cusp of the House is in Scorpio, the ruler is Mars, whose condition we've already considered. It's worth further noting Mars's opposition to Saturn, and the presence of a badly afflicted Moon, ruler of change, on the house cusp. This strongly suggests that a Supreme Court Justice will die during the next nine months. Given Saturn's location in the Twelfth House, it is at least possible that this death may not be of entirely natural causes. Expect speculation of the sort that we saw after Antonin Scalia's death.

Changes in the laws and legal system will have a negative effect on ordinary Americans during this time. H.S. Green tells us that an afflicted Moon in the Ninth House predicts "religious excitement." This is possible-- one source may be conservative American Catholics irritated by their bishops' refusal to deny Communion to President Biden. Another source may e the Black Lives Matter movement, which shows every sign of being essentially religious in nature.

House X: The Powers That Be

The Tenth House rules the Executive Branch of government as distinct from the president himself. As the House cusp is in Sagittarius, the ruler is Jupiter. Jupiter is in a very favorable position in this chart, in Pisces, in the First House, trine the Moon and the Sun. With the president's support, government largesse is going to continue to flow to favored members of the population, very much to their benefit.

House XI: Congress

The Eleventh House represents Congress, especially the House of Representatives. As the House Cusp is in Sagittarius, Jupiter rules this House too, with everything that entails. In particular, the joint rulership of both the Tenth and Eleventh Houses by Jupiter and the trine to the Sun tells us that Congress, and the House in particular, will be behind the president's agenda at this time.

House XII: Hidden Things

The Twelfth House represents national institutions, prisons and factories, and hidden enemies. As the House Cusp is in Capricorn, Saturn is its ruler. Saturn is in Aquarius, as we've seen, conjuncting the Ascendant from the Twelfth House. Saturn is afflicted in this chart, as we've seen, by Uranus, Mercury, and the Moon. We've already discussed the meaning of this. Trouble is on the way in all the matters related to the Twelfth House. Saturn's only positive aspect is a trine to Mercury. At a mundane level, this trine and the retrograde motion of both of these planets suggests hidden scandals brought to light by Fourth House actors-- the opposition to the president and the Populist movement generally.

Welcome back to our ongoing occult Bible study! I've selected just a few short lines for today, because we have a lot to talk about before we can go forward, and what we say here is going to shape everything we talk about from here on out.

The Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 3, Verses 1-2

1 In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judaea,

2 And saying, Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

Saint John the Baptist

Let me begin by wishing you a blessed Feast of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist! Yes, it's today, and no, I didn't plan it this way-- it "just so happens" that he enters our discussion here on his Feast Day. If you follow this path for just a little while, you'll find a lot of things "just so happen."

Notice that his Feast falls on the 24th of June. This puts it at the opposite point on the Wheel of the Year from Christmas, and shows us that the two feasts, and the two figures commemorated therein, are connected. On Saint John's Day, the Summer Solstice is just past. The Light of the Sun has triumphed over the darkness, and high summer is here-- but now begins the long, slow decline that will culminate in the darkness of Midwinter.

John is, we are told, Jesus's cousin, born six months prior to him; we can therefore set the date of his birth at around 3BC. It seems worth noting that this is the High Summer and the beginning of the end of the Classical pagan civilization that will be replaced by Christendom. Jesus will later say, rather mysteriously, that John is the greatest of all the prophets, and yet the least in the Kingdom of Heaven are greater than he.

Magic Rites

Certain places are places of power, where magical works for good or ill are strengthened or particular spirits may be contacted; similarly, certain points on the calendar are times of power, when particular rites may be accomplished. These two types of power-points, geographic and temporal, are related to the two great currents of magical power. The Telluric current arises from the heart of the Earth, and governs magical places; the Solar current descends from the heart of the Sun, and governs magical times.

Saint John's Day is a potent day for certain types of magic.

Traditionally, the herb known as Saint John's wort was gathered on this day. The flowers can be dried, blessed, and hung above doorways to protect the home from malefic magic. It was also customary to build bonfires on Saint John's Day or Saint John's Eve. The fires were blessed and piled with Saint John's Wort, and livestock were then driven through the smoke, in order to protect them from witchcraft and evil spirits. Of course, most Christians today are far too smart to do such things, because Christians today are actually atheists, and what Christians think is "paganism" is actually Christianity.

A Bit of Speculation

In the thinking of Rudolph Steiner, there are two different types of Evil, represented by the demons Lucifer and Ahriman. The evil of Ahriman is the evil of wallowing in gross matter and sensory pleasure, rejecting the life of the Spirit. In a sense, it is the evil which fueled every side of the 20th century's Cold War, as that was mainly a contest over which economic system was better at producing and distributing material goods. The Communist side was officially atheist, but the capitalist side was tacitly so, justifying itself in religious terms only to mollify certain reactionary forces in the United States.

Luciferic evil, on the other hand, is the total rejection of matter and physical existence.

Discussing Classical Pagan civilization, the civilization whose peak and decline is marked by the Birth of Christ, Steiner writes:

If this ancient Paganism is rightly understood, it will be found to contain sublime, deeply penetrating wisdom, but no moral impulses for human action...

But why should this be the case?

Steiner tells us:

It was because through the millennia directly preceding Christianity, this Pagan wisdom was inspired from a place far away in Asia, inspired by a remarkable Being who had been incarnated in the distant East in the third millennium before Christ — namely, Lucifer.

To the many things we have learned about the evolution of humanity, this knowledge too must be added: that just as there was the incarnation which culminated in Golgotha, the incarnation of Christ in the man Jesus of Nazareth, there was an actual incarnation of Lucifer in far off Asia, in the third millennium B.C. And the source of inspiration for much ancient culture was what can only be described as an earthly incarnation of Lucifer in a man of flesh and blood.

The Wisdom of the Pagan World is rooted, ultimately, in an incarnation of Lucifer. This is why we see, in the High Philosophy of many pagan traditions, the total rejection of physical matter and incarnate existence.

According to Steiner, Lucifer was incarnated upon the Earth in Eastern Asia in the 3rd Millennium BC.

The Forerunner

John comes before Christ, and heralds his coming. The decline of the light immediately following the Summer Solstice heralds the approach of winter and the rebirth of the light following the Winter Solstice. John must decline, that Christ may increase.

The Goodness of Christ stands between the evil of Lucifer, the rejection of matter, and the evil of Ahriman, the rejection of Spirit. John is the last Great Prophet of the world before Christ. He is not a pagan prophet, of course, but a Jewish one, but he still dwells in the old world-- we'll see this more clearly when we discuss the work of Baptism.

Say Your Prayers

John tells his followers, "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven" is at hand.

I don't know about you, but for most of my life and especially during my childhood, I thought those words meant something like this:

Say you're sorry, punk, because God's about to show up and kick the living shit out of you.

As amusing as that interpretation is, it isn't true. The word "repent" doesn't mean "Say you're sorry and be really sad." It's much more interesting that.

"Repent" in Greek is "metanoia." "Meta" means "change." "Noia" is derived from the word "nous," which means "mind."

To repent is to change one's mind. Often one will hear this described as a "change of heart," and there is a reason for this, which we'll get to momentarily.

And John says we must do this, because the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand, or "has drawn near," or "is among you."

If the Kingdom of Heaven means anything, it is the sovereignty of God. But what sort of kingdom is it? The message we will see over and over in the Gospels is that it is not, and cannot be, a political kingdom. Heaven is not Earth, and Divine Power is, as we saw last time, not human political power.

The Kingdom of Heaven is the reign of God within the human soul.

God, remember, is the Most High God, the Spirit who rules the Universe; and is identical to the One, which is also called goodness itself or The Good; and is that power by which we accomplish the Great Work, become that which we are meant to become, and gain mastery over our souls and our futures.

"Heaven" is the proper home of God, and since Heaven is, contra the '90s song, neither a place, nor on the Earth, it is not a location at all. Rather, it is a condition, and that condition must be the condition of the presence of God-- since Heaven is where God lives. Therefore, whenever we are in the presence of God, we are in Heaven.

We attain the Kingdom of God by changing our minds-- or, rather, our nous. And so we'll have to talk about what that means.

More on the Kingdom of Heaven

On the magical worldview, the spiritual world is not separate from the material. Matter is only the last and most tenuous extension of spirit. Have you ever been to the sort of place-- perhaps a majestic cathedral, perhaps a natural setting like the ancient Redwood forests in the Pacific Northwest-- that filled you with a sense of awe, reverence and serenity all at once?

Those are places that border on Heaven, in which Heaven is made manifest.

On the other hand, have you ever driven through the kind of neighborhood that filled you with a sense of dread and foreboding, the kind of place that seemed marked by rage, violence and addiction?

That was a mouth of Hell.

Lately, I've found that the sort of outwardly pleasant suburban neighborhoods where every person still goes about in a facemask, with a suspicious look in their eye, and the tension in the air is so thick you're afraid to breathe too heavilyand most of the lawns have signs that say

IN THIS HOUSE, WE BELIEVE
BLACK LIVES MATTER
WOMEN'S RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS
NO HUMAN IS ILLEGAL
SCIENCE IS REAL
LOVE IS LOVE
KINDNESS IS EVERYTHING

Those are hellmouths, too.

One doesn't have to travel as far as a cathedral or a redwood forest to find Heaven on Earth. In the old story, a samurai approaches a Zen master and says "Teach me about Heaven and Hell."

The Zen master replies, "It's a real shame that they're letting dumbasses like you become samurai these days."

Enraged, the samurai draws his sword and prepares to cut the Zen master's head off.

"This is Hell," says Zen master.

The Samurai understands. In an instant, his heart is changed: He sheaths his sword and bows in gratitude.

"And this is Heaven," Zen master says.

Heaven is never far away, and neither is Hell.

An Anatomy of the Soul

In the Republic, Plato tells us that the soul consists of three parts:

Nous
Thymos
Epithymia

Now "nous" is often translated into English as "reason," but that is incorrect. Reason, which is dianoia in Greek, is part of nous, but nous isn't limited to reason. Proclus tells us that nous also has three parts: the lowest is opinion (in Greek, doxa). Above this is dianoia, and above dianoia, nous proper, which is sometimes translated as "Intellection."

Intellection is not a familiar concept to most modern people. In the modern, scientific worldview, the highest capacity of the mind is reason; intellection does not exist. That is the literal meaning of the word "rationalism." In that way, we can see that Rationalism itself is already a debasement. In Intellection, the nous is functioning on its own, proper level-- the level of pure being which is above manifested, material reality. On this level, it is able to grasp the objects of knowledge immediately and entirely, without any intermediary thought process. This is very hard to describe in English.

In Christian literature, the nous is sometimes called "the eye of the soul," and Intellection is the process through which the soul interacts directly with God and spiritual beings. Bear this in mind as we continue.

Thymos is another word which doesn't have an exact translation in English. It's often rendered "spirit," but what's meant by "spirit" in this case isn't the eternal soul, but, rather, what we mean when we say that someone is "in good spirits," or that a horse is "high-spirited." Sometimes it is rendered "anger," but that isn't exactly it, either. The Thymos is the inner strength or energy.

The best English translation of thymos is probably "heart," as that word is used by high school athletics coaches. Traditionally, the Thymos was seen as located in the heart, while the Nous is in the head and Epithymia, which means "appetite" and refers to all of those desires that we share with the lower animals, is in the abdomen. It is worth noting that this arrangement of powers in the human body corresponds exactly to the three dan tiens of Chinese Taoist inner alchemy.

It is the failure of the Thymos in modern man that C.S. Lewis discussed in his essay, "Men Without Chests," in The Abolition of Man. Drawing directly on Plato, Lewis describes the proper relationship between the three parts of the soul:

The head rules the belly through the chest — the seat, as Alanus tells us, of Magnanimity, of emotions organized by trained habit into stable sentiments. The Chest-Magnanimity-Sentiment — these are the indispensable liaison officers between cerebral man and visceral man. It may even be said that it is by this middle element that man is man: for by his intellect he is mere spirit and by his appetite mere animal.

The work of Ahriman is to render man headless; that of Lucifer, abdomen-less. (There is a less polite way of saying this; I'll let you work it out yourself).

The work of the two together in the modern world has produced Lewis's Men Without Chests.

Each one of our three energy centers has its own proper virtues, and its own afflictions which must be overcome. The result of the spiritual life, the attainment of the kingdom of Heaven and the accomplishment of the Great Work, also means all parts of our psychic anatomy working harmoniously. The nature of this harmony is the virtue of Justice in Plato, and its consideration is the entire purpose of the Republic. Jesus's Kingdom of Heaven is the harmonious spiritual republic of Plato. Eventually, Jesus will teach us how to bring each part of the soul into harmony.

We begin by changing our nous. We will discuss what this means as we go forward.

Hi Everyone,

I meant to note on yesterday's post that I'm going out of town for a few days starting tomorrow, so the next post in the Gospel of Matthew series will be either on Wednesday or Thursday. It should be an interesting one, as it's at this point that the strange figure of John the Baptist turns up in the story.

See you then!

The Gospel of Matthew Chapter 2, Verses 13-23

13 And when they [that is, the magi] were departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word: for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him.

14 When he arose, he took the young child and his mother by night, and departed into Egypt:

15 And was there until the death of Herod: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called my son.

16 Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently inquired of the wise men.

17 Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet, saying,

18 In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.

19 But when Herod was dead, behold, an angel of the Lord appeareth in a dream to Joseph in Egypt,

20 Saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and go into the land of Israel: for they are dead which sought the young child's life.

21 And he arose, and took the young child and his mother, and came into the land of Israel.

22 But when he heard that Archelaus did reign in Judaea in the room of his father Herod, he was afraid to go thither: notwithstanding, being warned of God in a dream, he turned aside into the parts of Galilee:

23 And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene.

The Holy Innocents

The story told in these verses is the tale of the Massacre of the Innocents. King Herod has learned from the Astrologers where the new king will be born, claiming that he wants to go and worship him. But he's lying: Feeling his own power threatened, Herod wants to destroy the child. Failing to do so, he settles for killing every child under the age of 2 in his kingdom.

Historically, the Feast of the Holy Innocents was celebrated on the 28th of December, as part of the Christmas Cycle, and many interesting customs were attached to it. In many countries, whatever day of the week the feast fell upon was considered unlucky, and so for the rest of the year, no work at all could be done on that day. In other places, whipping customs were attached to it-- these were odd traditions whereby parents beat their children, or children beat their parents, or servants beat their masters, or boys beat girls or girls beat boys. In most cases, the beating was returned with sweets, wine or some other sort of treat, and whoever was doing the whipping often had a song to go with it-- "Fresh green, fair and fine, gingerbread and brandy-wine!" and the like. In most cases that I've read about, it was important to use branches from a particular tree or bush to do the whipping-- fir in some cases, rosemary in others, birches in a third. (All of these have magical properties, by the way. I've found that rosemary sprigs in particular are excellent for cleansing the aura; use one to trace a line a few inches out from your skin, covering your whole body, and discard it afterwards. See how you feel.)

These are among the many barbarous customs from which the Protestant Reformation, the Counter-Reformation, and the reforms of Vatican II have saved us.

Myths and Dreams

It is said that, in a dream, every character is you, in a sense. Now, this is only said by those psychologists who don't realize that spirits can appear to people in dreams. But it's worth considering-- most of the time, the contents of your dreams are from your own unconscious mind, and so the characters in a dream are indeed aspects of your own personality. Even when other minds intrude into your dreams, the image which they inhabit in the dream is drawn from your own imagination.

A myth is like a dream shared by an entire culture. We saw yesterday that myths are stories that "never happened, but always are." Leave aside teh question of whether the events recounted in the Gospels ever happened; whether they did or not, they always are. This means that myths describe processes in the worlds of nature or human culture that are ongoing and always active. Thus, in the same way that every character in a dream is a part of you, every character in a myth is relevant to you. Including the bad guys.

So let's talk about the Gospel's first Bad Guy, King Herod. Other than the fact that he's a jerk and we shouldn't be like him, what can we learn from his story?

Two Kinds of Kings

Herod is a king--a political leader. He is threatened by Jesus, because he wants to maintain his power, and you can't do that if there's another king running around your country. So he tries to kill him. He fails, but succeeds in killing all the children in his country-- the future of his own kingdom.

Herod's mistake is that he does not understand the difference between political power and the true power of God. If he had, in fact, gone with the magi to worship Jesus, would Jesus have overthrown him? Of course not; instead we'd now be talking about Saint Herod, the good king who tried but failed to protect the messiah from the Sanhedrin and the Roman soldiers.

In Chapter 1 of the Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic, Eliphas Levi tells us that:

Magic, which the ancients called sanctum regnum, the holy kingdom, or the kingdom of God, regnum Dei, is only appropriate for kings and for priests: are you priests, are you kings?

So a magician must be a king. But does that mean that he must be a political leader, like Herod? Emphatically no:

The calling of magic is not a vulgar calling, and its royalty has nothing to do with the princes of this world. The kings of science are the priests of truth, and their reign is hidden from the multitude, as are their sacrifices and their prayers.

Magical kingship is divine: it is power which comes from God and which shares in the Power of God. The sort of political power that Herod has is a lesser thing. It is the same type of power that silverback gorillas and alpha baboons have; the same power that the queen of the beehive has. It's mere human power, which is another way of saying animal power.

Most of us will not ever have the political power of a king or a president; most of us won't even be mayors or city councilmen. But all of us participate in social groups of various kinds-- groups of friends, professional associations, social "scenes," sports clubs, families, internet forums. All of us will, at one time or another, be given the chance to attain power in those kinds of groups. What will that look like?

Human beings are social primates, and the social structures that we form naturally and informally are identical to those of our cousins, the chimpanzees. Every group of chimpanzees is led by one or two alpha chimps surrounded by a small circle of beta chimps. the rest of chimps are gamma chimps, with no particular power. The way you become an alpha chimp is by overthrowing the previous alpha chimp. The way you get into the circle of beta chimps is by overthrowing one of the other beta chimps, or by proving your toughness by brutalizing one of the gammas. No one wants to be a gamma chimp, but if you want out of it, you have to have to play the chimpanzee game. You have to be willing to turn on your fellow gammas, to find another gamma chimp weaker than you and hurt or even kill them.

To attain power in a group of humans you have to become Herod, and murder the innocent.

But who are the Innocents? In the story, they are the children of Judea; in human social dynamics, they are people who are weaker than you. But insofar as all of these characters live within you, the children are you too-- they are your past, the innocence you slay; and they are your future, the salvation you abandon.

These things always are. At times, we have all been Herod.

When worldly power and popularity tempt you, always remember: The top dog in any dog pack is still just a dog.

Right Use of Power

Notice that Saint Joseph, the great wizard, once again receives a warning in a precognitive dream, and so flees with his family to Egypt. Joseph is the head of the holy family, the guardian of the Blessed Virgin and foster-father of Jesus Christ. As Head of the Holy Family, he is an icon of God the Father, and the model of Christian leadership and Christian fatherhood.

(Please remember that this is a discussion of the Bible as a magical text, and the word "Christian" should be understood to refer to magical initiates in the lineage of Jesus Christ.)

Joseph protects his family, but he does not seek power for his own sake. His is a servant leadership. His wife will be exalted above him, as Queen of Heaven and Earth; his foster-son is the Living God, infinitely above both of them. And yet his reward, too, is great. St. Alphonsus Liguori writes, "Who is not aware that, after the Blessed Mother, St. Joseph is, of all the saints, the one who is the dearest to God?"

Holy Ones

We should talk about what that word, "saint," means. Officially, these are people who are in Heaven with God. In order to be officially added to the list of saints, a dead person needed to have performed 2 confirmed miracles. How are their miracles achieved? By the power of God. Consider the meaning of this in light of the definition of God we discussed two entries ago.

The Land of Magic

Notice, too, where Joseph takes his family: To Egypt. Again, nothing is done at random. The Scripture tells us that this was done in order to fulfill prophecy may be fulfilled. But why Egypt?

In ancient times, it was said that of the 10 parts of magic, the Gods had given 9 to the Egyptians and divided the last 1 among all the other nations of the world. "Out of Egypt I have called my Son."

Why Nazareth?

The meaning of "Nazareth," the name of the town where the Holy Family settle upon their return from Egypt, is debated by scholars. This is another area where we can apply a bit of Cabalistic letter-symbolism. Nazareth is נצרת in Hebrew:

Netzach
Tzaddi
Resh
Tav

In the Tarot, this is:

Death
The Star
The Sun
The World

Now the Death card refers to Herod, the massacre of the innocents, and the remaining threat to the life of the Christ Child. The woman in the Star card is the Virgin Mary, carrying her child, the Sun, to safety in Nazareth, from which he comes forth to enlighten the World.

The Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 2, Verses 1-12

1 Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem,

2 Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him.

3 When Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him.

4 And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born.

5 And they said unto him, In Bethlehem of Judaea: for thus it is written by the prophet,

6 And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, art not the least among the princes of Juda: for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel.

7 Then Herod, when he had privily called the wise men, enquired of them diligently what time the star appeared.

8 And he sent them to Bethlehem, and said, Go and search diligently for the young child; and when ye have found him, bring me word again, that I may come and worship him also.

9 When they had heard the king, they departed; and, lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was.

10 When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy.

11 And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense and myrrh.

12 And being warned of God in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed into their own country another way.

Got it? Let's dive right in.

The House of Bread

Remember what we said last time. Meaning is always present, and names are not arbitrary. Jesus wasn't just a great guy, and his name isn't just a popular name. His parents also aren't just a couple of people chosen at random-- and neither is his home town.

Jesus-- Yah-shuah, "God saves"-- is born in Bethlehem, a city whose name means "House of Bread." Later, of course, he will share a meal of bread with his disciples, telling them "This is my body."

Nothing is random. Jesus wasn't just born in Bethlehem because Pittsburgh hadn't been built yet, and they didn't have bread at the Last Supper because they were out of pizza. There is something about bread which is points to Jesus, and something about Jesus which is manifested in the world as bread.

How I Spent My Covid Vacation

During the course of the Covid lockdowns, I learned to bake bread. If you've never done it, I recommend it. First of all, it's the easiest thing you can possibly cook. Bread requires just four ingredients. Mix 1 cup of water, 1/2 a teaspoon of salt, 1 teaspoon of yeast, and 3 cups of wheat flour together in a bowl, and then leave it alone overnight. In the morning, preheat your oven to 450 degrees. Put your bread in the oven. 35 minutes later, you will have the best loaf of bread you have ever eaten.

Baking bread always feels like a religious act. From the moment you pour your flour in a bowl you are connected to your ancestors going back to the dawn of human civilization. Indeed, it's grain agriculture which allows civilization to exist at all.

The Power of Myth

Whether or not the Gospels are history, they are also myth, and it's worth taking a moment to discuss what a "myth" is. The clearest and simplest discussion of the nature of myth that I know of comes from the ancient Platonic philosopher Sallustius, in his treatise "On the Gods and the World." Let's quote it at length:

There is this first benefit from myths, that we have to search and do not have our minds idle.

That the myths are divine can be seen from those who have used them. Myths have been used by inspired poets, by the best of philosophers, by those who established the mysteries, and by the Gods themselves in oracles. But why the myths are divine it is the duty of philosophy to inquire. Since all existing things rejoice in that which is like them and reject that which is unlike, the stories about the Gods ought to be like the Gods, so that they may both be worthy of the divine essence and make the Gods well disposed to those who speak of them: which could only be done by means of myths.

Now the myths represent the Gods themselves and the goodness of the Gods -- subject always to the distinction of the speakable and the unspeakable, the revealed and the unrevealed, that which is clear and that which is hidden: since, just as the Gods have made the goods of sense common to all, but those of intellect only to the wise, so the myths state the existence of Gods to all, but who and what they are only to those who can understand.

They also represent the activities of the Gods. For one may call the world a myth, in which bodies and things are visible, but souls and minds hidden. Besides, to wish to teach the whole truth about the Gods to all produces contempt in the foolish, because they cannot understand, and lack of zeal in the good, whereas to conceal the truth by myths prevents the contempt of the foolish, and compels the good to practice philosophy.

Later, after discussing several ancient myths and their meanings, he tells us:

Now, these things never happened, but always are.

Bear all these things in mind as we continue.

Jesus's nature and purpose are summarized first in his name, and second in all the details of his story-- that is, his myth. Much is hidden in these, so that we will be forced to use our minds to search out the meanings, and in that way rise above the mind and above the stories, to the Power behind them.

Whenever you discuss the Bible, you have to deal with the fact that we already have 2,000 years of commentary on it, and the established churches and their followers tend to be very jealous of their specific interpretations. If we take the perspective of Sallust, this is both wrong and destructive, as it keeps people from being able to exercise their own minds and souls in the exploration of the Gospels, and so prevents people from being able to use the Gospels to reach the One who is discussed in them.

To return to the discussion of bread-- For now, let's simply bear in mind the connection between Jesus and bread, and see where it leads us.

Three Wise Guys

The next thing that happens is that "three wise men" turn up.

Except, of course, that that isn't what happens.

The word used to describe the three guys who come from the East is "magoi." In English, we would say "magi" or simply "magicians." This word refers to the priestly cast of the Zoroastrian faith, who were known for the practice of, er, magic, and also astrology. "Wise men" is a misleading translation at best. The three guys who turned up because they learned from observing a star that a great king would be born and are from a tradition known for practicing astrology are astrologers.

What is the star they were following? We will never for sure, as much of the astrological lore of the ancient world is lost to us. It seems reasonable to suggest that it was the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in the sign of Pisces in 7 BC. Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions are said to herald the birth of great religious figures, and Christianity is the most thoroughly Piscean of all religions. On the other hand, it may have been the conjunction of Jupiter (planet of the Father of the Gods) and the star Regulus (most important star in Leo, the sign of kingship) in 3 BC. Or something else. We'll never know.

The important thing here is that, just as we saw that in the first chapter, we are already in a world of spirits, symbolic numbers, and psychic powers, by the first few verses of the second chapter we're in a world of magicians and astrologers.

Notice that the three astrologers are never once condemned in the text. Instead, they accurately predict Christ's birth, and come to do him homage. The periodic, hysterical condemnations of astrology you find in later Christian thought are quite simply absent here.

We can interpret the passage as teaching us that magic and astrology must always be practiced in the service of the Most High God.

Birthday Presents

Notice that the gifts they bring to Christ are Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh. Now Gold is the primary metal of the Sun, and represents the Sun in the world of minerals. However, it also has a connection to Saturn, the planet of Death, and is described in certain medieval and Renaissance texts as being ruled by both the Sun and Saturn. Frankincense is a solar incense. In magical use, its primary purpose is to elevate the soul to the level of divinity. As Charles Leadbeater put it, frankincense "vibrates at the frequency of devotion." Myrrh is also a devotional incense, but its associations are different from frankincense. Myrrh is an incense of Saturn. It is used in rituals of purification and exorcism, especially in funerals and other contexts in which the spirits of the dead are helped to transition to the next life. In ancient times, it was used to anoint the bodies of the dead.

The Son of God and the God of Death

And so we have, in the gifts of the Magi, the symbols of Saturn and the Sun. So let's talk about these planets a little more.

Until modern times, Saturn was the most distant planet known. In ancient cosmology, every planet, including the Sun and Moon, governs one of the seven heavenly spheres which revolve around the Earth. Saturn is the highest of the planetary spheres. The planet Saturn signifies time, limitation, sorrow, and death. Despite these very difficult associations, Saturn's feast at Rome was a very joyful time. Not a time of mourning at all, Saturnalia was a weeklong holiday in which all the ordinary social customs were suspended, masters served their slaves at their table, lords dined with peasants and so on. These ideas seem contradictory, and contemplation of this apparent contradiction will yield much to the understanding.

It's worth bearing in mind that Saturnalia was a weeklong feast held in late December; that Christmas was traditionally a 12 day feast preceded by a rigorous fast, not a one month shopping season ending with a morning-long orgy of consumption; and that the early Christians held all their possessions in common and believed that there was neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male or female, but all were one in Christ Jesus.

It's also worth noting that Sallust says that the sphere of Saturn is ruled not by Saturn, a fallen titan, but by Demeter, the goddess of grain agriculture.

The Sun is far more obvious as a symbol both of Christ and divinity generally, and not much needs to be said about it. For now, I want to point out that Plato tells us that all things in the visible world are reflections of things in the spiritual world. The Sun in the visible world is an analogous to the Eternal Sun of the Spiritual World. That Sun is called the Idea of the Good: The closest our minds can come to grasping the Good Itself, which is identical to the One that we discussed in the last two entries, which is a definition of God.

You could call the Eternal Spiritual Sun the son of the Good.

The Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 1, Verses 18 to 25

Read along here.

18 Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.

19 Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily.

20 But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.

21 And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus: for he shall save his people from their sins.

22 Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying,

23 Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.

24 Then Joseph being raised from sleep did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, and took unto him his wife:

25 And knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son: and he called his name Jesus.

Once again, there's a lot going on in these few short verses.

The Enchanted World

In Act I, Scene I, Joseph is planning on breaking his engagement to Mary, but then an angel appears to him in a dream and tells him not to do it, because the child is a miraculous child.

As I've said, there are modern approaches to the Gospels (Thomas Jefferson's is the most famous) that attempt to edit out all of the miraculous events and leave just the part that the editors find important-- the moral teachings or whatever. To do this is to do immense violence to the text. From the getgo, this is a world in which God exists; spirits exist; spirits can interact with human beings; and dreams can be sources of accurate knowledge of the most extraordinary sort.

In other words, this is the magical universe.

The House of Wizards

I said yesterday that I think St. Joseph must be seen as a wizard from a line of wizards. This passage confirms this view. Consider: It is not at all unknown for people to encounter spirits of various types, and it is not unknown for people to be able to do this in dreams. I have a friend, for example, who has had vivid dream-encounters with other friends of ours who have died, and has been able to convey useful information from them to their relatives who remained here.

But most people can't do this. It is a psychic ability, and psychic abilities are either inherited or else gained through spiritual practice. Or both. St. Joseph is a magician, and it might be worth noting that Levi describes the magician as "a priest and king."

As a magician, he must have been a great one indeed to have been given the care of the Son of God.

How much greater must Mary have been, to have born him?

Miraculous Births

Children of divinities are not uncommon in the ancient world. Pythagoras, who we met last time, was considered by many to have been the son of Apollo. Iamblichus tells us that this is not literally true-- rather, Pythagoras's birth was announced by the Oracle of Apollo, and his spirit was a hero in the order of Apollo.

Quis ut Deus?

Since this is-- er-- a Bible study, we're going to have to talk about God. And it would be helpful, therefore, to know exactly what we mean by that word "God."

For our purposes, then, here are three definitions of God:

1. "A God" is a type of being, which exists outside of time and space and benevolently governs and cares for the material world. "God" as a singular noun, in this case, specifically refers to YHVH, a God whose role is or was to govern the Jewish people.

2. The Most High God, a being who is higher not merely than all other Gods, but who stands in relationship to the Gods as the Gods stand in relationship to human beings. This being may be identical to the Jewish YHVH, but may also be the being called the Maker or Demiurge in the works of Plato, or the Soul of the Universe in the thought of the Stoics.

3. The One, as described in yesterday's post. The One is that by virtue of which everything which exists, has existence. "The root and beginning of all things in this world" is how it's described by a later author; "the sole truth and unique unity, and from it, anything united receives its unity."

Any of these definitions will do. But let's add one more, before we go on:

"God, for us, is the AZOT of the sages, the efficient and final principle of the Great Work."

This is from Eliphas Levi's Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic. What does he mean?

"Azot" or "azoth" is the universal solvent of the alchemists. This is the substance which the first matter is dissolved, in order to begin the process of transmuting it into the philosopher's stone. Levi hints at this by calling it "the efficient and final principle of the great work." What does he mean by that?

First, "efficient" and "final" principles are technical terms, derived from Aristotle. For Aristotle, there are four types of causes. The efficient cause is the necessary precondition for any given event: in order to knock the water cup off the table, the cat had to sit on the table and reach out with his paw. The final cause is the purpose of the event: the cat wanted to get the human's attention, to remind him that he needed to be fed. (Or given water. Or a toy. Or just to be an asshole.)

The Great Work, meanwhile, for Levi, "is, before all things, the creation of man by himself, that is to say, the full and entire conquest of his faculties and his future."

God, then, is that power by which the bonds that tie us to the lower things-- the wills of others, the prejudices of our society and our era, the body and its passions-- are dissolved (Azoth); and the power which allows us to create ourselves, by ourselves, emancipating our wills and our psyches.

Let's keep all these definitions in mind as we proceed.

What's in a Name?

The child born in Chapter 1 is given two names: "Jesus" and "Emmanuel." Both of these are meaningful, and we need to discuss their meaning--

But before we do so, we need to discuss the meaning of "meaning." Yesterday we talked about the significance of numbers in a magical context. Words are significant in exactly the same way. Words and their definitions are, to a certain extent, arbitrary-- it doesn't matter whether you call the delicious, bitter black fluid I'm drinking café, coffee, or 咖啡; it's the same stuff regardless. But in the magical worldview, meaning is always present to everything. Moreover, "meaning" isn't as simple as "definition" or as abstract and powerless as "a sense of significance"-- the two ways of thinking of it that are common in the modern world. "Meaning" is present to everything, and it points to the underlying reality behind material things.

Consider the coffee again: Its color (black), its flavor (bitter), its effects (central nervous system and cardiac stimulant); the time and circumstances of its consumption (ritually, in the morning) all form a pattern which underlies the simple act of drinking liquid from a cup.

Ultimately, even the seemingly random syllables used to identify it are not meaningless, either-- though we need a system of some kind to decode them. This is where magical alphabets and similar systems come in. For example: "Coffee" in Hebrew is קפה, Qoph, Peh, Heh. In the Golden Dawn tradition, the letters of the Hebrew alphabet are related to paths on the Tree of Life, and also to Tarot cards and astrological symbols. From that perspective, this is what "Coffee" means:

Qoph: The Moon, the 29th Path, the sign of Pisces
Peh: The Tower, the 27th Path, the planet Mars
Heh: The Emperor, the 15th Path, the sign of Aries

One way to read this: Coffee begins in Pisces, the watery sign of Neptune, Lord of the Great Dark Sea. This refers both to the great sea of sleep in which our day begins, and to the dark liquid itself. In the imagery of the Moon card, we see the sort of strange landscape through which we wander in our dreams. Then the lightning strike comes: This refers both to the dawn which shatters the night and wakens the sleeper, and also to the sharp, bitter taste of that first sip of coffee. Mars, the planet of energy and war, is active here in the caffeine which fuels us like the lightning in the Tower card. So empowered, we are able to attain the Empire of ourselves, like the Emperor in his card, beginning our day with the power of fiery Mars within us as the sign of Aries begins the year with the power of Mars.

God Saves; God is With Us

And so we have two Names here. One, "Jesus" means "God saves." The other, "Emannuel," means "God is with us."

It's worth noting that the words being used for "God" in each case differ.

In the case of "Jesus," the actual name is "Yah-shuah," which is the origin of the English name Joshua. "Yah" is short for YHVH. YHVH is known as the "Tetragrammaton," the 4-letter name. The exact meaning of YHVH is debated by scholars. We know that it is related to the verb "To Be." According to the Encyclopedia Brittanica, "Many scholars believe that the most proper meaning may be “He Brings into Existence Whatever Exists” (Yahweh-Asher-Yahweh)."

"El," meanwhile, simply means "God," and was used as the name for the Most High God by Semitic cultures, including the Jews.

Here, then, is what we learn from the Names of the child born in Matthew, Chapter 1.

1. God is with us.
2. God is that which brings into existence anything which exists.
3. That which brings everything into existence saves.

4. These three concepts are embodied in a single man, Jesus of Nazareth. Therefore, the study of his life and teachings will allow us to understand the presence of God

Please consider all of these ideas in light of the definitions of God I gave before, especially Eliphas Levi's.

From what are we saved?

"For he shall save his people from their sins."

The word translated as "sin" is "hamartia." Many people know that the word "hamartia" relates to missing a mark or target.

But what are our sins-- or, to say it differently, what is the target that we are missing?

Let's return to the idea of God found in Eliphas Levi for a moment.

If God is Azoth, and Azoth is a solvent, then God is something which dissolves. The traditional saying which summarized all the works of Alchemy was "Solve et Coagula," which means "separate and combine." Any alchemical operation is divided into various stages. The first stage is always separation-- the bonds that hold a substance together are dissolved, rendering it into its constituent parts. These parts are then purified, and then recombined into a new substance which exists on a higher level than the original. Lead is turned into Gold.

In spiritual alchemy, what is the substance that we are working to purify-- to turn into gold?

Our souls, of course.

And what are our souls?

The principle of life within us, meaning especially the sum and total of our willed actions and mental experiences.

And what are the bonds, then, which must be dissolved?

Those which keep our souls enslaved to the habits, norms and prejudices of our particular culture, time and place; to the passions and instincts of the body insofar as these interfere with the operation of our reason and our will; and to the wills of others who are not working for our evolution, but for our enslavement-- whether those other wills are human or nonhuman.

Another way of saying this is: The World, the Flesh, and the Devil.

By freeing ourselves from these, we become the beings that we were meant to be. Another way of saying this is, we do the will of God.

Alchemy

The life and example of Jesus allows us to free ourselves from bondage and to accomplish the Great Work, to transform spiritual lead into gold, and to attain the immortality of the alchemists.

The Gospel of Matthew Chapter 1, Verses 1-17

Although it isn't the most accurate, the King James Version of the Bible is the nicest sounding in English, and so we'll use that translation. We're going to open, unfortunately, with a genealogy; you can either read along with me, or skip to the end.

1 The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

2 Abraham begat Isaac; and Isaac begat Jacob; and Jacob begat Judas and his brethren;

3 And Judas begat Phares and Zara of Thamar; and Phares begat Esrom; and Esrom begat Aram;

4 And Aram begat Aminadab; and Aminadab begat Naasson; and Naasson begat Salmon;

5 And Salmon begat Booz of Rachab; and Booz begat Obed of Ruth; and Obed begat Jesse;

6 And Jesse begat David the king; and David the king begat Solomon of her that had been the wife of Urias;

7 And Solomon begat Roboam; and Roboam begat Abia; and Abia begat Asa;

8 And Asa begat Josaphat; and Josaphat begat Joram; and Joram begat Ozias;

9 And Ozias begat Joatham; and Joatham begat Achaz; and Achaz begat Ezekias;

10 And Ezekias begat Manasses; and Manasses begat Amon; and Amon begat Josias;

11 And Josias begat Jechonias and his brethren, about the time they were carried away to Babylon:

12 And after they were brought to Babylon, Jechonias begat Salathiel; and Salathiel begat Zorobabel;

13 And Zorobabel begat Abiud; and Abiud begat Eliakim; and Eliakim begat Azor;

14 And Azor begat Sadoc; and Sadoc begat Achim; and Achim begat Eliud;

15 And Eliud begat Eleazar; and Eleazar begat Matthan; and Matthan begat Jacob;

16 And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.

17 So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David until the carrying away into Babylon are fourteen generations; and from the carrying away into Babylon unto Christ are fourteen generations.

Who loves reading these lists of names? Not me, and in fact I'd rather skip this part-- and you probably would too. But if we did, we'd be missing out, because there's much more going on here than meets the eye.

First, notice that the author takes great pains to establish the number of generations from Abraham to Jesus. We have fourteen from Abraham to David; fourteen from David to the Babylonian captivity, and fourteen from the captivity to Jesus.

We could go into detail on the number symbolism here, but to my mind, it's far more important to establish that there is number symbolism.

Do you remember hearing about Pythagoras when you were younger? My high school math teacher had a picture of him in his room, and taught us that he was the first mathematician. And he was right about that, but Pythagoras was more than a mathematician-- and mathematics is more than mathematics. Pythagoras was a magician and a founder of one of the first great mystical schools of the ancient Greek world. The later Neoplatonist Iamblichus wrote a biography of Pythagoras, in which he described him as a Hero in the order of Apollo. Hero, in this context, doesn't mean a really great guy that we admire; it's a technical term for a kind of spirit that's intermediate between human beings and angels. All Heroes are subject to one of the Gods, and they sometimes incarnate as human beings in order to teach and guide us.

In any case-- If your experience of mathematics as a kid was anything like mine, you probably learned to hate math and find numbers unbearably sterile, dull, and boring, the very definition of disenchantment and the opposite of magic.

They are anything but.

Consider the Pythagorean Theorem. This is written A² + B² = C² . It tells us that for every right triangle, the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the square of the other two sides. Sound boring? Consider the following:

1. There is no perfect right triangle anywhere in the material world.

2. The Theorem therefore describes a perfect triangle which has no physical existence, and yet which

3. Determines the nature of every imperfect right triangle actually existing in the material world, and

4. Knowledge of this perfect, immaterial world, grants the whoever possesses it the power to understand and control objects in the material world.

Mathematics is magic. That's why the entrance to Plato's Academy read "Let know one enter here who does not know Geometry."

Every number and every mathematical formula has its own special properties, its own magic.

As a second example, consider the number 1.

Three things are true about it:

1. It is the beginning of numbers.

2. It is in all numbers.

3. It is the end of numbers.

What do I mean?

The first is obvious. If we have any numbers at all, we start with 1. 1 is the beginning. What about the second? Well, if you count 1, 2, 3, 4, 5... how many of each number are there?

Only one.

There is only one 1, but there is also only one 2, only one 3, only one 9,875,423, and so on.

And there is only one 0, and there is only one Infinity.

Therefore 1 is the beginning of numbers, but it is also the end of numbers, and it is also a quality which is present to all numbers and, therefore, to all things which can be numbered-- and so to all things which exist.

In Platonic thought, the One is the highest term, referring to the ineffable something by which all things are brought into being. (In Christian thought, the One is variously understood either as God the Father or as the ineffable Godhead which is shared by all 3 members of the Holy Trinity.) Notice that Jesus will eventually be called the Alpha and Omega-- the beginning and the end.

Every number has its own meaning and, in consequence, its own magic.

What is the meaning of 14, and of 3? What is the meaning of 42, their product? Of 7 and 6, its factors?

I leave these as exercises for the reader. The important thing to know for now is that they have meanings; having meanings, they have magic (power); and the author of the Gospel went out of his way to include them.

What of the genealogy itself?

The most interesting thing here-- to my mind-- is that Jesus is born into the House of David, and St. Joseph, his foster-father, is established as being a direct descendant of King David.

And that's important, because the House of David is a line of wizards.

Remember that these guys weren't just political leaders. They had direct contact with God. David wrote the majority of the Psalms-- well, the majority of Psalms for which the author is known-- and these have been used for magical purposes for centuries. Here is a 17th century book of Christian folk magic called The Book of Gold, which outlines the use of the psalms for magical purposes; here is a Greek Orthdox "book of needs," which uses the psalms in the same way. . Solomon, meanwhile, has often been regarded as the greatest magician of all time. The medieval grimoires called "The Keys of Solomon" are still in use to this day.

Thus we have established: Jesus is born into a house of wizards, and fostered by a man who comes from a long line of great wizards.

Join me tomorrow, when we'll look more closely at Jesus, his name, and his magician-parents!

New Daily Reflection Series: The Magic of the Gospels

Introduction

Welcome to the newest continuing book review on this blog. Now that we've finished Sun Tzu's Art of War, I want to move on to another popular, and, I think, misunderstood, spiritual text: The Gospel of Saint Matthew.

My hypothesis is that Jesus, whatever else he was-- spiritual teacher, heretical rabbi, political rabble rouser, adopted son of God, living embodiment of the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, eternal Divine Logos-- was a great magician. The aim of this series, then, is to explore the Gospels from the perspective of the Western Magical Tradition.

What This Is and Is Not

I'm not the first person to take this sort of approach to the Gospels. There is a long tradition reinterpreting the Gospels in the light of some person's philosophy. This ranges from enlightenment rationalism in the case of someone like Thomas Jefferson to moderately-diluted Hinduism in the case of most contemporary "Christian esotericism." Other authors find everything from astrological allegories to whatever half-baked theology was invented last week at the First Church of Jesus Christ, Nebraskan.

So I want to be clear from the outset that I am not setting out to discover "what the Bible really says." Everyone who sets out to do that only ever discovers what they want to discover, and the enormous range of different interpretations is enough to show us that we simply don't know "what it really says." We only know what happens when the strange, ancient stories of the Gospels interact with the minds of particular human beings, in particular places, in particular times.

So that's what this is: An attempt to look at the Gospels from my own particular perspective. That means, first and foremost, the perspective of the Western Magical Tradition, as I understand it. The best modern exponents of this tradition, and the most influential on me, are Dion Fortune, Eliphas Levi, and the founders of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

From Levi, who wrote in the 19the century, the tradition runs backwards through Cornelius Agrippa, Renaissance Neoplatonism, the Picatrix, medieval Jewish Cabalism, and from there into the Hermetic, Gnostic and Neoplatonic traditions of late Roman times, as well as early Christianity and Jewish Merkavah mysticism; and from there to Plato and his immediate predecessors; to Pythagoras, who was initiated in the temples of Egypt; and from there back into unknowable antiquity.

It is popular in modern times for people who do not follow Christ to either deny his existence or to claim that he was "just a teacher." This was not the approach of any of the opponents of Christianity, Roman or Jewish, in ancient times. The question then was not whether Jesus existed or not or whether he had performed miracles or not, but how he had performed his miracles. For Christians of all stripes, he was the living Son of God; for Romans and Jews, he was a dangerous magician.

My view is that if he was a magician, then we should certainly be able to use the tools of modern magical theory to understand his teachings and his miracles. And this is all the more so if he were the son of God, as all true magic is theurgic magic, the manifestation through the acts of the magician of the will of the Divine.

If that sounds interesting, join me tomorrow when we'll be looking at The Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 1.

Okay, I wanted to say one last thing about The Art of War.

Ove rhte last 5 months I talked about a lot of different things, from fighting demons to getting laid, using Sun Tzu as a springboard. But the thing I keep coming back to is the Great Work, defined by Eliphas Levi as:

The creation of man by himself, that is to say, the full and entire conquest of his faculties and his future; it is especially the perfect emancipation of his will.

I have described this as the conquest and command of our own souls.

In some schools of Christianity, there is a great deal of confusion around the state of one's soul. The Catholic Church claims that extra ecclesiam nulla salus-- in English, "outside the Church, there is no salvation." It also claims that certain sins totally break one's relationship with God, and require the intervention of a priest to be forgiven.

Rather more appallingly, John Calvin claimed that some souls are damned eternally, and others saved eternally, by God for no particular reason other than because he can do it.

I do not accept these claims, or any claims like them. In fact, they are sheer nonsense, and we can know that they are nonsense for this reason:

You always know the state of your own soul.

The soul, let us remember, is the animating principle (from Latin "anima," root of our words "animal" and "animated") of an organism. Your soul is you: The sum total of your actions and your mental states.

Do you spend all of your time locked in internal arguments against imagined enemies, lashing out at other people who remind you of those enemies, and occasionally soothing yourself with booze or videogames or masturbation or drugs?

You are damned. Not after death, and not eternally. You are a slave to your passions, and you are in Hell right now.

Do you have self control, and is your resting mental state one of quiet poise and emotional balance? Are you able to enjoy the pleasures of life without being overcome by them and to respond to adversity without being shattered?

You are saved. Not after death, and maybe not eternally. You have gained control of your faculties and your future, and the goodness which is divinity is manifest within you. You are in Heaven, right now.

Now, the purpose of spiritual practice is to lead us to salvation. If a spiritual practice is leading us in the direction of self-control, emotional balance, and an awareness of the presence and activity of the divine in our lives, then it is working. No matter what it is, and no matter who thinks it isn't working, doesn't work, can't work, or shouldn't work.

Conversely, if a spiritual practice is leading us in the direction of neuroticism, Manichaean thinking, subordination of the mind to contemporary fashions (either slavishly accepting or unthinkingly rejecting), and either enslavement to the passions or a constant internal struggle with them, it isn't working. No matter what it is, and no matter who thinks it does work, can work, must work, or should work.

Are you winning the battle for your soul? Ask yourself the question, be honest about the answer, and persevere in the struggle!

I want to close with a fragment from the Alcibiades. This is one of Plato's dialogs, and was the first that a student would be given to study in the philosophical school founded by Iamblichus. (It's worth mentioning that the Alcibiades was believed to have been a forgery by 19th century scholars, but no one in antiquity believed that, and the 19th century had a mania for thinking that everyone who lived prior to the birth of Queen Victoria was dumb.) The setting is a conversation between Socrates and his former lover, Alcibiades.

SOCRATES: Then vice is only suited to a slave?

ALCIBIADES: Yes.

SOCRATES: And virtue to a freeman?

ALCIBIADES: Yes.

SOCRATES: And, O my friend, is not the condition of a slave to be avoided?

ALCIBIADES: Certainly, Socrates.

SOCRATES: And are you now conscious of your own state? And do you know whether you are a freeman or not?

ALCIBIADES: I think that I am very conscious indeed of my own state.

SOCRATES: And do you know how to escape out of a state which I do not even like to name to my beauty?

ALCIBIADES: Yes, I do.

SOCRATES: How?

ALCIBIADES: By your help, Socrates.

SOCRATES: That is not well said, Alcibiades.

ALCIBIADES: What ought I to have said?

SOCRATES: By the help of God.

Today we're going to wrap up The Art of War with some closing thoughts.

Sun Tzu doesn't give us any sort of conclusion in Chapter 13, like a modern author would. He finishes his discussion of spies and sends us off without so much as a fare thee well. We could do the same thing, but I want to end this series with some sort of conclusion.

To my mind, the most important lessons of The Art of War are as follows:

1. Intention.

Let me say it again.

Intention, intention, intention, intention, intention, intention.

Before you undertake anything at all, have a clear image in your mind of what you want to accomplish. When you formulate a plan for action, ask yourself, "Will that accomplish my purpose?" Someone offends you, so you lash out at them. What did that accomplish? Are they less likely to offend you in the future? If it's a stranger, maybe; if it's a family member, you've probably made the situation worse. You gratified your passions for a moment and in so doing lost your cause. What do you want to accomplish? That's your question, and it must be asked before any undertaking.

2. Knowledge.

Before any undertaking, you need to know as much as you can about what you're getting into.

I've repeatedly discussed The Art of War as applied to what Eliphas Levi calls the Great Work: The conquest and mastery of our own souls. To do this, you need knowledge of the terrain, which means that you need knowledge of a. souls in general and b. yourself in particular. A is provided by a map of the soul, and there are many of these; my personal favorite is the tripartite model provided by Plato in the Republic and elsewhere. B requires reconaissance, which means self exploration, which means meditation.

Self-mastery is the great work, but it is not the only work. Whether you're looking for a job or a date, once you know what you want in general, you need to know the particulars of the situation. Are they hiring? Is she available? What is it like to work there? What does she want in a man?

3. The Spiritual Life

Sun Tzu regularly talks about allies, about the sovereign, about the general. There are different ways to look at each of these terms, but to my mind the most important thing is that no man is an island. We can't do it alone. Levi talks about the conquest of our souls and the mastery of our wills, but how is this to come about? It's my view that we ourselves are mere generals, in need of a sovereign. the highest part of the soul is called the nous in Plato. Eastern Orthodox thinkers describe the nous as "the eye of the soul." An eye, let's note, is a receptive instrument: It sees. What does it see? Light. What is the light which is seen by the soul? In Platonic terms, the light is the Idea of the Good, emanated by the eternal spiritual Sun, which is the Good itself; in Christian terms, the light is the Light of God; both of these are the same and are the Sun of the alchemists. Seeing the Good, or God; the nous is divinized; divinized, its command of the lower faculties is perfected, the will is conquered, the self is mastered. Read spiritual texts, pray, meditate and study. What you contemplate you will imitate; what the nous gazes upon will manifest in your life. Let the general follow the commands and the purpose of the sovereign, and in this way accomplish the Great Work.

Chapter 13 of The Art of War concerns the use of spies. Sun Tzu opens by telling us that

What enables the wise sovereign and the good general to strike and conquer, and achieve things beyond the reach of ordinary men, is foreknowledge.

Now this foreknowledge cannot be elicited from spirits; it cannot be obtained inductively from experience, nor by any deductive calculation.

Knowledge of the enemy's dispositions can only be obtained from other men.

This is a simple principle, but well worth keeping in mind. For the sake of our personal goals-- any goal-- we need information. For me personally, one of the things that I hate most in the world is going into any situation unprepared. If I have to do a job interview, go to a party, make a formal speech, or anything that involves dealing with other people, my imagination runs wild and comes up with ways that it can go wrong.

The absolute worst thing for me is to be put into a crowd of people that I don't know and told to "mingle." If you do that to me, I will not mingle. I will find a dark corner and I will hide in it until the people go away.

On the other hand, I'm usually the life of any party where I know at least 40% of the other attendees, and I can handle a crowd of any size as long as I have a defined role. Fear of public speaking is one of the most common phobias out there. I do not have that phobia. I love public speaking, and I'm good at it. On the other hand, public dancing-- where "dancing" is defined in the contemporary sense of "unscripted sexual gyration"-- is basically impossible for me.

All this comes back to foreknowledge. If you're at all like me, the best thing you can do when heading into a new situation is to talk to someone, get the lay of the land as thoroughly as possible, and have a clear idea of what you're getting into before you act.

Of course, I'd differ with Sun Tzu in that I'd also heartily recommend the use of divination and consulting with spirits. Provided you keep in mind their limitation, these practices can be of immense value.

Why should we be concerned about restraining our passions? Sun Tzu tells us:

Move not unless you see an advantage; use not your troops unless there is something to be gained; fight not unless the position is critical.

No ruler should put troops into the field merely to gratify his own spleen; no general should fight a battle simply out of pique.

If it is to your advantage, make a forward move; if not, stay where you are. Anger may in time change to gladness; vexation may be succeeded by content.

But a kingdom that has been destroyed can never come into being again; nor can the dead ever be brought back to life.

I have a bad temper. Astrologically, it makes sense; my Mars is in Cancer afflicted by a square to Saturn. My natural response to events not going my way is to lash out in fury. It very rarely works out for me.

I think I've told this story before, but let's have it again, because it illustrates the point.

A few years ago I took my cell phone to a Verizon store to have it looked at, because it wasn't working. The salesman I talked to quickly got past my defenses and got me to buy a phone I didn't want. I've never seen anything quite like it, and I'm pretty sure he had learned some basic magic tricks-- the second he approached me I became discombobulated, confused and clumsy, repeatedly dropping things and having items fall out of my pockets. I left in a state of mental confusion with a phone that cost several hundred dollars that I didn't want to spend.

Two days later, the pone broke. Oh, and my old phone started working just fine again. Of course.

At this point I was furious. I'd been tricked by this little weasel shithead, screwed out of money I never wanted to spend, and made to look like an idiot in the process. And I'll be goddamned if I was going to allow it.

So I did the thing anyone would do. I ritually invoked the Celtic thunder-god Taranis, made sure that my look said something like "violent guinea bastard," and drove over there in a wild red fury.

Well, I never got my money back, but on the plus side, I'm no longer allowed in the Verizon Store on State Street in Santa Barbara.

Learn a lesson from me, kids: If you're angry, it doesn't mean you should act, it means that there is a fire in your camp and your soldiers are burning. Figure out what you actually want to accomplish, and don't do it until you calm down.

Chapter 12 of The Art of War discusses the use of fire in warfare:

There are 5 ways of attacking with fire. The first is to burn soldiers in their camp; the second is to burn stores; the third is to burn baggage-trains; the fourth is to burn arsenals and magazines; the fifth is to hurl fire dropping amongst the enemy.

I want to suggest that in our case, fire can be a metaphor for the passions. In many esoteric systems, the fire element has a kind of dual nature, ruling the will in the awakened individual, the passions in the unawake.

Rather than talking about how to use fire to burn the enemy, then, I want to reverse the terms and talk about how fire may be used against us, and how to counter that.

First, a quick reminder about the passions. These are the simplest, and yet often the most powerful, drives in the human psyche. They are the rage that burns uncontrolled; the need for sex without regard to the object; the need for social acceptance that causes us to betray a friend in order to gain status; the desire for food or drink that pays no attention to the consequences of eating or of alcoholism; the terror of violence, death or rejection that overwhelms our courage and leads us to run from our duties.

To attack an enemy by fire is to arouse his passions to the point that they consume him. Under the control of his passions, and not his reason or his will, he can then be directed toward anything you choose.

This is the essence of evil magic. It is also the essence of advertising and political propaganda. As such, we are suffering under the attack by fire pretty much continuously in this culture.

I'm not going to talk about how to use fire against an opponent. Rather, I want to talk about how to counter it.

The first thing to know about fire-- regular, physical fire-- is that it's both extremely useful and extremely dangerous. It provides light and heat and allows us to cook our food. There are no cultures without fire; lacking it, human beings literally could not exist on this planet. It's a raw, primal force, harnessed for specific purposes. And yet, out of control, it can destroy us, and for that reason it can be used as a weapon against us.

The passions are the same. We need them-- without a desire for food, there is no life; without a desire for sex, there is no reproduction; without a desire for social acceptance, there is no society; without a fear of danger, there is no safety. And yet, out of control, they can destroy us, and for that reason they can be used as a weapon against us.

So how do we use our passions, without being destroyed by them?

The same way we use fire: First by containing it, and second, by limiting its fuel sources. We don't let fire burn just anywhere; we contain it within a hearth. And we don't keep feeding it wood without end; we give it just enough fuel to be useful.

The first is obvious, or should be. Buy food that is good for you, learn to cook it properly, and eat at meal times. Don't drink alcohol before 5pm or after 9pm. Share your sexuality with one person only. Choose your friends and your social circles wisely. That's your hearth.

And then, feed it only what it needs. The best way to do this is to create space. The classic piece of advice is to wait 24 hours before making any major purchase, and to wait 24 hours before saying anything in anger. This same idea works with any of the passions. If you want a drink, wait 10 minutes; if you still want it and it's after 5pm, go ahead and have one. When you finish it, you might want another one right away. That's a signal that you shouldn't have one. Wait 15 or 20 minutes, and see if you still want it. If so, go ahead. Then stop. You don't keep a fire burning all night.

Remember that fire-- that is, the passions-- is constantly being used against you. Know that, and be prepared to counter it.

Sun Tzu closes out Chapter 11 with a few principles, starting with the following:

When a warlike prince attacks a powerful state, his generalship shows itself in preventing the concentration of the enemy's forces. He overawes his opponents, and their allies are prevented from joining against him.

Hence he does not strive to ally himself with all and sundry, nor does he foster the power of other states. He carries out his own secret designs, keeping his antagonists in awe. Thus he is able to capture their cities and overthrow their kingdoms.

Regarding the first part, the later commentator Mei Yao chien says,

In attacking a powerful state, if you can divide her forces, you will have a superiority in strength; if you have a superiority in strength, you will overawe the enemy; if you overawe the enemy, the neighboring states will be frightened; and if the neighboring states are frightened, the enemy's allies will be prevented from joining her.

One of the ideas that I keep returning to in meditation is the difference between desires and choices. Desires, in general, come from the body-- we want food, we want a nap, we want a drink, we want to have sex. At higher levels, where the body interfaces with the mind, we want comfort, money, or power. But choice is something else. Choice doesn't come from the body, and it isn't the same as desire; choice comes from the will. Someone who chooses to become a priest chooses to forgo their desire for food during fasting seasons, for money and comfort if their order includes a vow of poverty, and for sex during either certain prescribed times or for good. Someone who chooses to join the military might forgo any desire, even the desire for life itself, for the sake of choice.

Sun Tzu's warlike prince isn't looking for allies-- he has chosen to forgo the all too human need for friends and companions. The warlike prince has a goal: to conquer a powerful enemy to enlarge his own kingdom. To do so, he starts by dividing the enemy's forces. In the same way, we can accomplish large goals by breaking them up into smaller increments.

On yesterday's Magic Monday, JMG recommended to one reader a recent book entitled F*ck Your Feelings by Ryan Munsley. I don't usually like contemporary motivation-psychology books, but I had a look at this one, and I'm enjoying it a great deal so far. Munsley shares this approach to large goals. Borrowing an image from American football, he uses the concept of "moving the chains."

In case anyone here isn't familiar, in football, a team has 4 tries (downs) to get 10 yards. Most of the time, you punt the ball on 4th down, so that really only means 3 tries. A football field is 100 yards long, but 10 divided by 3, rounded up, is 3.4-- so all a team has to do to retain possession of the ball is to get 3.4 yards every down.

(As an aside for football fans, the best example of this I've ever seen was the 2007 playoff game between the Steelers and the Patriots. The Patriots were unbeatable that year, on account of they're cheaters. But the Steelers had the ball to start, and the game began with an 8-minute long, yard-by-yard opening drive to the endzone. The Steelers lost in the end, but that game has always stuck in my mind.)

In the same way, even the largest goals can be broken into small pieces-- small enough that we can take a single action toward their accomplishment every day. Do this, and be willing to forgo the desires of the flesh and the need for companionship, and you will accomplish much.

Today, something completely different.

An article by the Catholic Traditionalist blogger Steve Skojec has been floating around the internet for the last couple of days. This morning I finally sat down and read it. Skojec has spent his life in the Catholic Church, but now he's leaving. And he's furious:

I’m angry because I feel as though we’ve all been abandoned and left to the wolves, and it’s incredibly frustrating to watch as people turn to this increasingly uncritical tribalism to feel safe, or conspiracy theories to “explain” things, or even in some cases an explicit desire for the end of the world so that the madness will finally cease.

I’m angry because my entire identity, my entire life, has been inextricably intertwined with Catholicism, and as all of this collides and comes apart, I feel as though that identity is being flayed from me, one strip of flesh at a time.

I’m angry — but perhaps even more sad — because I have begged God to help me find my way through all this mess, to do the right thing, and to hold on to my faith, but I get no perceptible answer, and I don’t know where to go from here.

I’m angry because people think I shouldn’t tell any of this to you, because apparently we’re supposed to keep everything bad that happens in our faith a secret — abuse, corruption, crises of faith, and serious questions about certain teachings that seem false based on real evidence. “You’ll lead souls astray,” they tell you, as though the problems you’re reacting to were of your own making. As though adults are infants with no agency of their own. As though the real scandals aren’t the problem, it’s the people scandalized by them who are.

Skojec's work resonates with me. I am also a Cradle Catholic, and I have a very fraught relationship with the church I was raised in. I love the traditional rituals, the imagery and iconography, the saints and angels, and the Blessed Mother. I hate the institutional church. Hate is not too strong a word. I hate the hierarchy of the Catholic Church for reasons that are as personal to me as Steve Skojec's are to him. I can say that I ddi not suffer as badly at their hands as he did, but I did suffer enough. I'll talk about that another time though.

Reflecting on Skojec's article prompted the following thoughts, which I ended up writing in the time I normally have set aside for blogging. I was going to post it as a comment on JMG's blog, but it's much too long and a bit too personal, so I'm going to share it here instead.

There is something wrong with Western civilization. This observation is at the heart of a lot of radical Left-wing politics, where it quickly goes toxic. I'm sure we've all heard about the Black Lives Matter movements attacks on Western rationality, which go to the absurd length of condemning "getting the right answer" in math classes. This is nonsense, of course, and in the BLM and other Leftist movements it's also blended with a toxic heaping of anti-white bigotry. But that doesn't mean that it's altogether wrong. Rationalism is, indeed, a feature of Western civilization, and it is a problem.

If you look at 19th century translations of Plato, you keep coming across the word "reason" and, even more commonly, "intellect." Both of these words, for us, indicate discursive, rational reasoning. In the Jowett translation of the Republic, Reason is one of the three parts of the soul, along with Thymos and Appetite. But all of this is wrong, because the word being translated as "reason" DOESN'T mean discursive reasoning-- or at least, doesn't just mean that. Proclus tells us that the rational soul has three powers: "Of the rational soul in its entirety one part is intellect (nous,), another is discursive reason (dianoia), and another is opinion (doxa), and of these the first is connected to the gods, the second projects the sciences, while the third provides these to others."

You commonly find these ideas discussed by Eastern Orthodox Christians. For example, here is a series of talks by an Orthodox priest in which he specifically describes the anatomy of the soul as consisting of Nous, Thymos, and Appetite (Epythemia). But at some point, apparently, this understanding was lost in the west, and we enthroned Reason (Latin Ratio, root of Rationalism) as the highest power of the soul. And we then deleted even the possiblity of understanding what we had lost, by giving Reason the name of "Intellectus," which had formerly been used as a translation of Nous!

And so we find ourselves in a degraded state. Reason (dianoia) is not the highest power of the soul. Nous is, and it is nous, as Proclus tells us, that allows us to access the Divine realm. Leftists who attack Western civilization and Western rationalism thus have half an understanding of the problem. The trouble is that, lacking the older vocabulary, they're unable to distinguish between non-rational capacities which are higher than reason (noetic experience) and those that are lower than reason (emotion and passion).

This is why Conservatism in the Western world has such a limited power. In the Anglosphere, it tends to be nothing more than a reactionary defense of the previous version of Liberalism, the revolution prior to the current revolution. But even so-called Traditionalism in the Western world ultimately ends in a defense of rationalism. That rationalism the root of the vicious legalism in the Catholic Church, and the root of the problems that Mr. Skojec (among so many others face.) According to the catechism of the Catholic Church, "Our holy mother, the Church, holds and teaches that God, the first principle and last end of all things, can be known with certainty from the created world by the light of human reason."

With Reason enthroned, the Church is able to get away with a number of abuses that can be defended with airtight logic arising from false premises. Premise: Barring Confession, Sin deserves punishment. Premise: The soul, after death, is outside of time, and therefore unable to change. Conclusion: Therefore, a sinner who dies unrepentant will be punished eternally in Hell, and will deserve it. (Yes, this is a real argument; George Weigel has said exactly this in almost exactly these words in First Things.) That this is monstrous does not matter; it is reasonable. What is still more pertinent is that similarly reasonable arguments are made in favor of priestly celibacy, clerical authority, and papal infallibility. All of which can be shown by the light of human experience to be absolutely destructive.

But there's another side to this too, beyond the anatomy of the individual soul. Another thing which is above the human capacity to udnerstand through discursive reasoning is the natural world itself. And nature, when applied to human beings, means history and society. The idea that we can use our individual reason to understand how human society works and then come up with a better way to do things is the most destructive fruit of rationalism. We see this most clearly in the Communist Revolutions of the 20th century, in which intellectuals (there's that word again) came up with brilliant schemes to fix society and ended up producing one bloodbath after the next.

The Communist Revolutions were produced by atheist rationalists, for whom the human reason is the highest thing and there is no God. But prior to atheist rationalists, there are Protestant rationalists. For Protestant rationalists human reason is the second highest thing after God, and so human beings are-- despite somehow also being totally depraved-- the second highest things in the universe. And prior to Protestant rationalism, there is Catholic rationalism. For Catholic rationalists, human beings aren't the highest things in the universe, or the second highest. There is still a heavenly hierarchy between us and God. But that hierarchy has been increasingly downplayed and ignored for a thousand years, starting-- I think-- with the preference of Aristotle to Plato in the Middle Ages. Now a faithful Catholic is permitted only to call upon 3 angels by name; is required to believe in the sufficiency of human reason to know God "with certainty"; and is required (this is official teaching, according to ultra-Traditionalist Father Chad Ripperger) to ignore any spiritual experience they have.

I don't know what to conclude, other than a sense that we somehow need to throw out the last 1,000 years and start over again. The scraps of the Western tradition that preserved the older Platonism-- at minimum the Occult tradition, which simply is Platonism; the Druid Revival; the works of Eriugena and Bonaventure; many of our poets and nearly all of our great ones-- can stay and form the basis of a new worldview. But everything else has to go.

Sun Tzu closes Chapter 11 by sharinga series of aphorisms, much of which we've heard before already. One idea comes up over and over that I'd like to discuss:

Throw your soldiers into positions whence there is no escape, and they will prefer death to flight. If they will face death, there is nothing they may not achieve. Officers and men will put forth their uttermost strength./

Soldiers when in desperate straits lose the sense of fear. If there is no place of refuge, they will stand firm. If they are in the heart of a hostile country, they will show a stubborn front. If there is no help for it, they will fight hard.

In war, this looks like driving deep into enemy territory, or burning bridges or ships behind you. Your soldiers know that there is no way out, and so they will fight to the death.

But this idea is useful in life, as well. It's often the case that we want to accomplish something but we're afraid to, or we're not ready, or we're waiting for just the right conditions. If we continue in this state, we never achieve anything! One way to overcome these sorts of blocks is to force the issue, but doing the equivalent of marching deep into enemy territory or burning your ships behind you.

But what does that mean?

Consider the following example:

A man wanted to be a musician, but he was afraid he wasn't good enough. So he booked himself a series of gigs, billing himself as a singer/songwriter. With the dates already scheduled and the audience lined up, there was no backing out, and no way forward but to succeed as a musician.

Or another one. Some friends and I were discussing going on a road to do a kind of speaking tour. I expected nothing to come of it, but then one of the guys, who had contacts in various underground music scene, went ahead and booked 7 dates for us around California. With absolutely nothing at all prepared, there was nothing to but go forward with it.

It's very often the case that if you're hesitant about something, or afraid to go forward, you can force the issue on yourself. In a worst case scenario, you fail-- but that's better than never trying, or, worst of all, not trying out of fear of embarrassment!

The last of the Nine Situations are:

Mountain forests, rugged steeps, marshes and fens -- all country that is hard to traverse: this is difficult ground.

Ground which is reached through narrow gorges, and from which we can only retire by tortuous paths, so that a small number of the enemy would suffice to crush a large body of our men: this is hemmed-in ground.

Ground on which we can only be saved from destruction by fighting without delay, is desperate ground.

How do we deal with these situations?

In difficult ground, keep steadily on the march. On hemmed-in ground, resort to stratagem. On desperate ground, fight.

All of these represent difficult situations that we find ourselves in. Places, times, and situations that have historically been triggers for our addictions or traumas; people we can't stand being around but can't get away from; energetic environments that are toxic or harmful or even demonic.

One thing needs to be said before we proceed, though. A few years back, it became very popular on the internet to place "Trigger Warnings" all over everything. The theory was that the world was full of traumatized people, and the only way to help them overcome their ptsd symptoms was to constantly remind them of those symptoms via "trigger warnings." Moreover, if you didn't put "Trigger Warnings" everywhere, you could count on being on the receiving end of a torrent of abuse from the supposedly-traumatized and their enablers.

Needless to say, this was all a pile of bullshit. First, because what traumatized people need to do is to learn to cope with the everyday world again, not to live in a constant state of trigger-avoidance. Second, because even if you've been traumatized, it's not everyone else's job to heal you. That's your own responsibility, and you'll learn a hell of a lot more from suffering and overcoming than you will from wallowing in victimhood and demanding everyone else accommodate you. That's the ideology of the social justice movement-- that any experience of victimhood automatically grants to the victim innocence, moral goodness, and, above all else, power over others. That's not true, never has been, and never will be.

I say all of that because I want to continue to talk about the experiences of trauma, addiction, and so on on this blog-- experiences that I've had, and that I continue to deal with-- without falling into the bad habits common to our unusually stupid era.

Sun Tzu tells us: On difficult ground, keep on the march; on hemmed in ground, resort to strategem; on desperate ground, fight.

And this is because, in life as in war, we cannot always have it easy. If you are recovering from addiction, you'll eventually find yourself in situations that trigger your desire for-- drink, drugs, porn, gambling, whatever it is. The best way to to deal with these things is to get away from them as quickly as you can-- leave the bar or the party, close your computer, get away from the casino. Sometimes, it isn't that easy. You might find yourself at a family function that can't be avoided which involves a great deal of drinking; you might have to be alone with your computer for hours for a work project. At those times, you need to resort to strategem-- or, as it's called in the mental health profession, coping strategies.

Sometimes, you find yourself in a situation from which there is no escape. On those occasions, there is nothing left but to fight with everything you have. As the later commentator Chia Lin remarks,

If you fight with all your might, there is a chance of life; whereas death is certain if you cling to your corner.

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