Descriptions:
Video Description
There is an invisible background behind every visible thing, and the old practitioners called it the astral light. Lyam Christopher returned to this video to fix a recording with poor sound, which feels fitting for a lesson about the hidden and barely audible. The astral light is a way of picturing potential energy, the not-yet-things waiting to be brought into shape by attention and ritual.
Inside the magic circle, the practitioner contracts and then works with what arises, learning which potentials to help and which to leave unmanifested. He ties the image to the four worlds of Kabbalah, with the highest world, Atziluth, as pure possibility, and to Tzimtzum, the withdrawing that makes room for a world at all. Many people assume waking attention is who they are, but he suggests the truer shape may be closer to deep sleep, the open background from which each day emerges.
The practice becomes surprisingly simple and hopeful. Visualize the enlightened aura not with complexity but with patient imagination, as a closed loop of light that radiates freely instead of interfering with itself. The magic circle becomes a kind of moldable wax seal, and the goal is less about pushing the world around than about becoming familiar with the energies already trying to incarnate. The curriculum in Kabbalah, Magic & the Great Work of Self Transformation calls this gradual seeing a central part of the Great Work.
Full Video Transcript
Okay, I am so sorry about that last recording. I didn’t check the sound settings and you know how it is. Sometimes your computer decides to switch to another microphone all of a sudden. Apparently there’s some kind of hidden microphone deep inside my computer and now that last video I posted makes it sound like I’m coming out of a tunnel or something like that.
so this video is about the astral light and i’m going to be filming it again with proper sound
so hopefully the sound’s working properly this time so for our purposes here visualizing the
astral light it’s really for what you are what kind of visualizations you’re doing inside your
magic circle and i think one of the most important things about the astral light for our purposes is
going to be the concept of potential energy and when you think about the practice of ceremonial
magic and or the practice of manifesting things in your life what you’re working with
are potential forms of energy let’s say you’re working with potentialities in life and you’re
actualizing the ones you want to and you are not actualizing other types of energies so basically
performing ceremonial magic you actually help various forces incarnate into the physical world
and you create a harmonious you know wealthy existence or something like that or existence
in which you are free of suffering that kind of thing and so in order to do that you become
familiar with energies that are attempting to manifest in the physical world okay and you begin
to manage those energies. And as you do that, there’s this concept called the astral light.
And like, how do you actually work with potential energy if it’s not actualized right in front of
you? And so the idea of potential energy is kind of strange anyway, because when I heard about that
as a child in science class, it seemed like a superstitious concept to me that if you walk up
the stairs a scientist would say that you are now accumulating potential energy
and then of course if you so as you walk up the stairs the potential of you
manifesting that energy would be if you fell down the stairs or if you fell off of the stairs
you fell back down again there’s a potential for you to generate lots of energy as you fall
down to the bottom okay it’s a very strange concept actually and so the way that we tend to
visualize energy as more like, you know, sparks or beams of light or radiation or things like that.
Whereas, and the concept of potential energy is really more of an abstraction,
but it does account for the idea of energy sort of disappearing into the unmanifest and then being
ready to emerge again into manifestation. Okay. So when you think about visualizing the astral light,
you can kind of think of it in the same way we visualize the energy as radiation or glowing or
scintillating brilliance but what we’re acknowledging is that there’s this sort of
field of energy with where aspects of it are attempting to actually become actualized instead
of just remaining as potential when it comes to magic this is very much part of kabbalah
you could even say that the highest world of the four worlds is Atzaluth, and that is the world
of pure potentiality. Nothing truly exists there, but if it does exist, it only exists as
potential, as pure potential. It’s ready to come out, right? And then it needs some vehicles of
manifestation in order to basically come down through the worlds and then eventually appear
in your physical life, okay? And of course, your ability to work with magic supposedly is able to
manage how things manifest in that way, okay? And that will show you that working with the astral
light is a way of doing that, okay? Now, the astral light is really nothing more than imagination,
okay? For our purposes here, we can define it that way. And when I use the word imagination,
i also mean uh the soul or the psyche this is very important um so if somebody says well how do i
what is it what is the soul how do i work with the soul the soul is not real is it right
or what is the psyche for that matter where is it what does it look like um the soul or the psyche
they really are the same thing as imagination okay so that medium in your mind supposedly
where various images can form like in your dreams or various images can form upon command
as you try to visualize your wardrobe let’s say or try to visualize an extension to your house
that happens within the the medium of imagination which is the soul and to go even further than that
it’s also the memory because memory and imagination are really very much the same thing
And so when there’s a sort of memory pattern going on in nature, you could say that various patterns have sort of embedded themselves in the mind of the universe and that those patterns are now embedded there.
And they sort of continue to operate in a sort of potential realm where they exist as a form of like proto matter, they’re not really emerged into the physical world, unless they are provided a vehicle to do that, like, in other words, through your body or through a particular behavior that an animal executes something like that.
And if that behavior is not being acted out right now, then the energy only exists on the potential level as a sort of image or memory within nature, which is ready to express itself as an instinctive behavior or something like that.
It’s not that difficult to understand.
We come prepackaged with all kinds of instincts and fears and desires.
desires and those fears and desires and instincts are constantly attempting to express themselves
and when things happen in the world those various instincts desires and fears can be triggered
and they exist as images and scenarios embedded in the memory of nature which is the astral light
okay what this means is that the imagination that you experience is not just yours
or the soul that you think you have, it’s not just yours. You don’t have a soul, according to
the alchemists, necessarily. It’s more like the universe has a soul, or it has a soul level of
existence, where this sort of proto-matter or potential matter exists, ready to come out into
the actual world. Not all of it is going to make it into physical manifestation. It depends on how
things get orchestrated in the physical world to see which one of those will come out okay and of
course the ability to orchestrate things in the physical world said that one comes out and not
the other one that’s sort of what ceremonial magic is okay um and of course that you’ll begin
to realize that anything you at all that you do is a sort of a magical act it calls various forces
into manifestation and denies other forces manifestation depending on what’s happening
in the physical world let’s say right what this means then is when you do ritual that’s a way of
stirring up the astral light so that aspects of it may or may not manifest uh in your physical life
okay and that what that essentially amounts to is like a form of psychic surgery you’re basically
delving into the soul with ritual and you’re opening up that space you’re making an incision
going into the imagination and now you’re moving things around in that imaginal space
sort of remapping it or remolding it but you’re installing pentagrams here you’re putting archangels
in their stations okay you’re visualizing the rising sun in the east or all these things right
and that’s so that the that way the inner realm of imagination begins to constellate in a particular
way that supposedly is going to then manifest physical reality differently for you okay in
terms of your feelings, in terms of actual things happening in your life, whether it’s good fortune
or ill fortune or putting a curse on somebody. So this is the kind of thing that you are learning
supposedly how to do. Entering into imagination, moving things around, and then going back out of
imagination again, and then just going to live your life. And you go about your world knowing
that you have made some tweaks to imagination so that your external life, your physical life,
is now going to function somewhat differently because of the inner tweaks that you’ve made
to that imaginal realm. That’s essentially what magic is. You do your magical ritual work to go
into the imagination, move the psychic furniture around, then you go back out into the regular
world again, and then supposedly the psyche now functions differently because things have been
inter rearranged on the inside and then the physical world will then manifest differently
around that supposedly okay this is not really much different than feng shui feng shui is the
asian practice of rearranging your home decor your furniture in your house and placing things around
the house so that um the uh the astral light let’s say the chi will manifest differently or flow
through that space differently and then change your fortunes for the better or for the worse
depending on what you do with that space okay it’s not that the furniture itself in your house
does that but the um the constellated symbology of you occupying that space it makes the psyche
function differently in your house now. And that’s sort of your ritual space, which means that
the realm of the psyche that surrounds you is now manifesting your fate, your reality differently.
So feng shui is kind of ceremonial magic right there. It’s kind of amusing to me that people
who practice feng shui will say, oh, this isn’t magic. It’s just simply symbolic or something
like that. Of course, it’s magic. And the nice thing is you don’t have to do feng shui. You can
just have a ritual space, and then you can go into the imagination and tweak various things,
and then change your fortunes for the better, provided you know what you’re doing.
So, okay, how is the astral light defined in the older texts? Okay, I think I got this from
Rigardi’s Tree of Life, and he got these definitions of the astral light from various
sources i think mostly from theosophy uh and theosophy gets its astral light from probably
hinduism or something like that um the astral light includes all subtle planes within or above
the physical a refined plastic substance magnetic and electric serving as the ground for the physical
universe the imagination and memory of nature the ether the collective unconscious interesting that
he would say that it serves as the ground of the physical universe, because in the Kabbalistic
scheme, the physical universe is at the bottom, right? And yet, if you know your occultism,
that’s not really it, because things emerge into the physical world out of somewhere,
out of the ultimate ground of being, okay? And they emerge out of the imagination of the universe.
They manifest out of the subtle planes of existence, and they crystallize supposedly in this
physical realm. And so lurking behind everything or beneath everything or above everything is the
astral light, which is attempting to manifest or crystallize or express itself within the physical
world. And we should be careful not to confuse the astral light and the aura of the body
with the electromagnetic field around the body. It’s pretty obvious to anybody who’s done ritual
magic for a while, that working with the aura and with the magic circle does tend to tweak the
electromagnetic field in the area. You can actually feel it sometimes as there’s areas of charged
space. But that doesn’t mean that the torus field around the body generated by the heart
is the same thing as the aura okay the aura is much more interesting than that the aura can be
seen also as a um a sort of condensation of power condensing inward from the outer planes let’s say
um uh sort of like in astrology things kind of condense inward towards the earth and then they
solidify and where the earth is right uh the aura can be seen that way too so um the subtle planes
of existence are out here and as it comes in it kind of condenses inward this is this field of
condensing power. Not that that’s necessarily true, but visualizing it that way can give you
a handle on how the energies manifest. The way that we visualize things in the imagination is
very much metaphorical. It’s not really the way things necessarily are, but the way things
actually are apparently cannot really be visualized by us in this brain consciousness.
So we have to use metaphors, we have to use symbolism, we have to use imagery, in order to manipulate the astral light, the astral light is not necessarily glowing motes of light or little sparkly eddies of astral ether or anything like that. But visualizing it that way can be very helpful.
okay so whenever you’re working with magic imagery it’s very important not to take it
literally it’s like we know we’re just doing this with the imagination because it does tend to body
forth or express forth uh whatever it symbolizes even though whatever it symbolizes cannot be seen
directly we kind of we can’t cannot necessarily see the unmanifest we can just see the um the
forms that it’s trying to become and by visualizing those forms we are inviting it to come into that
kind of manifestation. And whether or not it does that depends upon your skill with magic and with
the ability to work with correspondences. Yes. And also the ability to introduce you to yourself,
to those inner forces, so they get to know you and you get to know them. That’s probably the
most important part, okay? Because the astral light is a living thing. It’s the soul of the
universe, and it bodies forth all kinds of living things or entities, which we would call thought
forms or spirits or instincts. The astral light is also called a blind force that manifests as
either a sanctified nimbus or a destructive serpent. This comes from the idea that the
imagination or the astral light, because they’re both kind of the same, the imagination, according
to the alchemists is the most poisonous substance in the universe, and yet the most miraculous cure
for our suffering is also the imagination. So the astral light is all at once a very poisonous
substance, but it is also the cure for its own poisoning, basically. That is not difficult to
understand because, um, essentially the imagination itself is not poisonous, but the patterns that
form within it, the, the scenarios and the images that get embedded in the memory of nature,
they can be toxic and they keep, they keep replaying themselves over and over again as
traumatic, um, traumatic experiences, whatever like that. Right. And, uh, because they keep
automatically playing like that they can cause a lot of trouble in the physical realm okay unless
we’re aware of like what’s happening and so it’s not the imagination itself that is poisonous or
dangerous to us it is the imagery and the scenarios and the movement of the astral light that is
actually possibly dangerous the astral light itself is completely innocent and pure unto itself
but the forms that exist in it can be problematic and that is the oroboros one of the most troublesome
images in the universe because it represents karma. So anything that circulates in your magic
circle or in your aura that travels in an arc is potentially problematic because it’s karmic.
It basically now involves some kind of cyclical motion that repeats itself, which is not necessarily
bad but cyclical motion is how bad karma maintains itself and so the primary task of students in the
outer order work is to identify the patterns within the astral light which are repeating
themselves and are problematic so that we can eventually come to understand how they arise and
how they maintain themselves not so that we can banish them and get rid of them per se
but so that we can understand how they are generated and once we understand that we can
help them self-liberate and or transform into something else okay this comes from rupert spira
he’s a famous non-dual teacher spiritual teacher in order to manifest as a world consciousness
contracts within itself in order for consciousness to reclaim its innate happiness a reversal of this
process takes place. This is very important because in order for anything to appear or
manifest at all, a contraction has to happen. So the medium of imagination can’t really
manifest anything unless it creates a separation within itself. Okay, this is very important too
because the reason we exist in this material realm is because there’s a tremendous contraction
of imagination. So imagination has sort of removed itself from itself so that it can look at itself
and regard itself objectively. This happened when the universe was created. We’ll talk a little bit
more about that because when you’re working with the aura uh or the magic circle which are these
kind of the same thing really um you begin to notice how your let’s say the imagination
in your life has become sort of contracted and uh divided against itself and is regarding itself and
it’s kind of um fighting with itself so you get to notice how your imagination is at odds with
itself uh because it’s it’s um it is uh it’s sort of like that yin yang symbol now it’s it’s it’s
it’s kind of stuck in this pattern of um trying to figure itself out okay and this is what we call
life in the world uh there’s a disturbance in the realm of imagination and imagination is now
contracting into part of itself so that it can look at itself and manifest parts of itself
nope that’s that’s not very clear is it uh now this process of contraction is the way that the
universe was created supposedly according to the kabbalists and this is a famous kabbalist
uh he says contraction represents the movement of the infinite light into manifestation of form
until its eventual presentation as the dualistic human experience of separation okay so when we
emerge in the physical world there’s a very strong sense of me inside here and big bad world out
there what has just happened what how did i get here why am i incarnate and what’s happened is
that the imagination of the entire universe has sort of contracted into this little sense of you
and sort of been shoved up into your physical body
and is now awakened within this nervous system
looking around going, oh my God, what is this?
Where am I? Who am I?
So that’s a contraction of imagination into a narrow space
so that it can now pretend that imagination doesn’t exist outside of itself
and then sort of regard various external images of the imagination.
The way this happened when the universe was created, supposedly God became restless and he wanted to understand what he was to get to know himself.
But he couldn’t really do that because he filled everything.
And so if you’re trying to reach for yourself and touch yourself and figure out what you are, you can’t really do that when you are everything.
so in order to begin to explore what he was all about he withdrew from a part of himself
he contracted and this is what the Kabbalists called Tzimtzum and so that means the imagination
of God sort of retreated into one corner of himself let’s say and then the rest of that
whatever he used to be is now empty of him not truly though it just appears to be empty of him
He opened up a space within himself into which he could now cause various aspects of himself to manifest, and then he could examine them as they sort of played themselves out.
So that is supposedly how the universe was created.
The space opened up, and then God poured aspects of himself into it so he could observe them playing themselves out in some kind of sequential drama so he could then understand what he was.
And in the process of doing that, something supposedly got out of hand.
And as he attempted to pour that energy into the universe, he was creating 10 vessels of
manifestation, which is the tree of life.
And those vessels shattered.
And what that means for us here is that the production of that drama that he was trying
to witness, it got out of hand.
and so all kinds of fragments of awareness shot into the universe and now um we are all out here
looking around going oh my god this has completely gotten out of hand there’s no longer one observer
apparently we’re all sort of separate bits trying to figure out uh what the manifestation is like
okay that’s difficult to describe these things of course i mean these are very deep kabbalistic
concepts. But what we’re describing is how manifestation actually happens. And in the
hermetic tradition, we have the idea of as above, so below. So this idea of tsimtsum or this
contraction of the imagination, it happens on a cosmic level, and it also happens on the level
of each one of us. And so when I want to examine aspects of myself, supposedly, I can then
sort of contract within an area of myself and look at areas of myself dispassionately
and these areas of these aspects of myself are actually playing themselves out
okay and this is what’s what this kind of what we’re doing in the magical work because we
um when you draw the magic circle you’re contracting into that magic circle
and then various things begin to manifest outside of the magic circle
and that is basically mirroring the process of the creation of the world okay when you do that
then the various problematic memories and images that are embedded in the mind of nature can now
come out and show themselves to you so that you can regard them dispassionately or or you can make
meaning from them you can understand how they function and what you’re kind of doing when you
do that is you’re basically fulfilling the original purpose of the universe where god was trying to
figure out what he was okay and so on a smaller scale we are now doing that work of um prodding
the universe to show forth aspects of itself so we contract into the magic circle then we
prod the imagination of the universe to then show us various things and then we make meaning out of
them and figure out what’s how this all works what’s going on what’s what’s the meaning of
life or like how do things arise that’s that’s called the contraction and um that is basically
done for to establish a sense of control okay and the reason we suffer is because of contraction
let’s see if we can talk about how that lives um so in the sense of contraction we are we live
inside a self-woven conceptual cocoon that insulates itself from raw reality this is already
our predicament. And people like to think that their waking world consciousness is really who
they are. But that’s not really it, because the way that you really are or who and what you really
are is better characterized by deep sleep. That’s because when you are in the waking world,
If you’re going about your business every day and awake after getting out of bed, you have entered a highly contracted state where you really have retreated inside the body.
The imagination is retreated and now is looking at everything through the nervous system in a very contracted state.
This is almost an unhealthy thing, really.
And apparently that’s why we need sleep, because maintaining this highly contracted state where we are now functioning as material beings is stressful to the imagination, and it is not representative of who and what we really are.
And when we return to deep sleep, we expand outward again, and of course, that’s more representative of what we are.
One of the goals of spiritual work is to get to know this level of deep sleep
so that it no longer becomes a realm of consciousness in which we black out, okay?
So you could say in Kabbalah, let me see if I have another diagram here.
Those of you who are studying Kabbalah, you know about the four worlds, okay?
Asiya at the bottom is Malkuth, which is the physical world.
that’s the waking world consciousness and when you when you get out of bed in the morning you
are in a sea up you’re you’ve been you’ve contracted into your physical body and now
you are functioning and nervous system and all this stuff right um supposedly when you’re dreaming
at night you’re in yatsira okay which is not as contracted it’s much looser and as you know when
you’re in the dream world things are kind of wishy-washy and things can be can switch can
change very quickly. And then in the world of Bria, that’s the world of dreamless sleep,
which there’s nothing really evident there. You can’t really see anything there because there
are no forms anymore. Forms only exist in the dream world. And of course, they really only
exist in the dream world, actually. And in Essia, the forms are still apparent there because the
dream world is active already when we’re in Essia. And then in Ataluth is the world of pure
potentiality. Okay. One of the ways to understand this is that the world of Atzaluth and Berea are
really the same world. Okay. But the reason we see them as separate is because our human
consciousness, when it enters Berea, that’s the realm of dreamless sleep. That’s a realm of
darkness. We can’t remember what happened during our dreamless sleep. Okay. Usually. And that zone
of consciousness seems like it’s completely dark because there are no forms within it like in the
dream world but what the reality of it is that that realm of darkness is completely suffused
with light it’s a conveyor of light we just can’t see that light because there are no forms yet for
it to manifest as or to bounce off of okay this is very important too because that means that
it’s possible to eventually get familiar with the world of baria or the world of dreamless sleep
and enjoy that world every night
if you have a healthy sleep pattern
and you can enter deep sleep.
If you can’t enter deep sleep, that’s really bad.
That’s very unhealthy
because that means you’ll stay in a contracted state.
You can’t get…
Asiya and Yatsira are the only worlds
that you’re able to function in, right?
And if you can’t expand outward
and let go of all forms into that deeper level of sleep,
then your body kind of can’t reset you can’t recharge okay and so you can see that waking
the waking consciousness here is uh like asia the physical world and then the dream sleep is like
yetzira okay of course when you imagine things you’re also functioning in yetzira so if you’re
imagining something or dreaming it’s kind of the same and uh and then of course we have deep sleep
which is baria and then the white space all around that is atzaluth which is like pure potentiality
And so in the Kabbalah magic curriculum, we visualize the aura in symbolic ways, okay?
And it’s quite simple, really.
The physical body you see there in that aura, the physical body would be then the waking consciousness, the physical body, right?
And then the dream body would be the same.
In other words, you would see a glowing outline of the physical form, and that’s your dream body, your yetzeratic body, okay?
And then, of course, the big egg of light around that is the womb of creation, right?
Within which all forms are generated, okay?
But there are no forms there in that womb except what has emerged into the Yetziratic realm.
So the world of deep sleep is symbolized by the ovoid aura shape, okay?
And then, of course, we do something weird here where the absolute in the above diagram, that’s that white space all around the world of pure potentiality.
And the way we see that in the magic circle work is that absolute is attempting to manifest the 10 sphere oath.
These are the spheroth that shattered when the universe was created.
And so they are attempting to manifest through the lower worlds.
So we see the superimposed tree of life on top of the body.
That tree of life doesn’t really exist in Berea or Yetzirah or Asiyah.
It only exists in Atzaluth as pure potentiality.
The way you can see that is that there’s 10 aspects of God, let’s say,
that are attempting to manifest within the lower worlds,
but they can only do that indirectly, okay?
And so you can experience the 10-sphere oath in your life,
but only indirectly, okay?
And the things that happen in your life
can sort of organize around the influence of the sphere oath,
let’s say, sort of like iron filings
gather around a magnetic field of a magnet.
All right, okay.
so the all four worlds are present in this visualization of the aura is the aura really
like this no of course not um but we don’t we can’t really visualize the way it actually is
so we use a symbolic overlay and of course the psyche seems to like that in other words it will
it will cooperate with our symbol systems and manifest deeper levels of reality to us sort of
indirectly it’ll give us intimations of divine activity and so we we begin to establish our
inner planar contacts if you call it that by use of these symbolic structures let’s say and that’s
why we spend so much effort to build various symbol systems like the tree of life the magic
circle with the four quarters and the archangels and the pentagrams and the hexagrams for working
with the planetary influences. These are all basically tricks that get the imagination to
manifest in particular ways. And you could say, yeah, you could even say that your magic circle
that you work with, if you do magic, is like a spirit trap. That’s what a mandala basically is.
A mandala or a magic circle is basically a spirit trap. It’s spiritual forces
sort of maybe pass by it or whatever like that for lack of a better way of putting it and they
see it and they get fascinated by it and they get drawn into it and in the process of getting
drawn into a mandala or some kind of symbolic form they will manifest possibly through it
okay so that’s kind of what has happened to us when the one way of looking at reincarnation
is that you know after you die your your potentiality is just kind of out there in
the universe but eventually it gets mesmerized and fascinated by some kind of fractal pattern
or some kind of karmic pattern and it goes to investigate and it falls into it and gets sucked
in and suddenly it’s where i wake up in a nervous system with a body that’s looking for food like
what happened where what is this all about uh and then we have to sort of shake ourselves out of it
Who am I again? What world am I really from? What’s going on here? And in the process of doing
that, then we free ourselves from that spirit trap. And you can see that playing around with
the aura, with the magic circle, and with these symbolic diagrams. These are all different ways
of tweaking the astral light so that various things can incarnate in your magic circle,
around your magic circle in your life okay this comes from and andrew holacek um he i love this
description because it’s very much what happens to us um so people who are really contracted like
in other words they’re stressed out by life and are really taking life very literally and they
think they um this is a very everything’s survival right i have to have to do well i have to succeed
those kinds of people tend to end up really crammed up inside their heads this is what we
call being uptight being uptight and so as we have incarnated like we’ve kind of stepped into
these karmic patterns and now we’re emerging in physical forms you can get even more crammed up
inside your physical body if you get stressed out and really take everything so literally and
seriously about what’s happening in the physical world. And people who do this end up really
tightly up in their head, like they’re uptight. And what you can see is that whenever you are
suffering from chronic stress, what can help you with that is to focus on your lower body
and sort of just get out of your head, right? And so descend down into the heart,
because essentially we have evolved out of the enteric nervous system up into the cardiac brain
and into the cephalic brain. And the further we go up here, the more stuck up we get or the more
uptight we get. So it really helps to what you can do in order to not be so incredibly contracted
and super incarnated is to focus on the lower body, focus on what it feels like to be for the
butt to sit in the chair. It feels really good. And what you’ll notice is that do we still have
rock stars, rock stars who have a lot of charisma, they’re kind of like that. They’re looking at you
like, it feels fabulous to sit here with my ass on the chair, you know, and my feet on the floor
feel really good right now. I wish you could feel that too, but you’re obviously the reporter who’s
interviewing me, who’s really focused on getting the story right. You’re really stuck in your head,
right? And I think that these people who have a lot of charisma are those who are very comfortable
in their bodies they’re not um taking life so literally they’re not um contracted inside
themselves looking at everything out there as though it’s out to get them okay this is a way
of working with the aura because in other words the aura is kind of condensing inward creating
who and what you are but you don’t need to take that contraction process so seriously you can come
out of it and the one of the best ways to do that is just to sense what it’s like in the lower body
So the awareness begins to come out of the head and then begins to participate just in being embodied again.
It’s kind of funny, too, because you would think that if you go up in your head, you’re getting out of your physical body, but it’s actually worse.
You’re engaging more in that physical consciousness when you get up in your head like that.
So the astral light is a living thing.
It is bodying forth forms in the universe.
okay so the consciousness tends to emerge in various forms especially on earth right and
and it’s important that we not take it so literally because there’s a tendency to look
at the astral light as a big gelatinous protoplasmic horrifying blob that spews forth
all kinds of monsters the reason that happens is because there are so many traumatic memories
in the memory of nature, let’s say, because of all the traumatic scenarios from our survival drama
past, right? From a million years of evolution, there are many memories embedded in our cell
memory that are traumatic, and they’re constantly showing themselves, they’re being triggered to
arise. And so there’s a tendency then to think that the stuff that we emerge from the slime of
the universe is something horrifying you know there’s a there’s a tendency to do that and
there’s also a tendency to view the imagination as a bad thing as a bad place filled filled with
evil monsters and um because quite frankly it is filled with evil monsters um but it but those
monsters exist as um traumatic scenarios in the memory of nature which are embedded there and they
are continuing to try to work out the trauma so when stuff happens to you in life it’ll trigger
one of those traumas to come out and then express itself in some kind of traumatic
unconscious behavior and when that happens it’s your responsibility as a magician to notice it
because as a magician you are somebody who is developing the ability to only manifest the
things that you want to manifest, not just have everything manifest itself all over you willy-nilly
so that all these horrors then come out, right? You can manage your interior astral world or the
astral light so that only the things you want to manifest will manifest, more or less, okay?
We don’t have absolute control like that, but we do have a certain amount of control over what
manifests and what does not manifest. One of the ideas is that the negative karma that is waiting
to work itself out in your life, that negative karma can be dealt with on the level of the dream
world before it emerges into physical world. And it’s much easier to process your karma on the
level of dreams or imagination than it is to process it in the world of physicality.
And so you can see that people who have a difficult physical life, their karma is emerging in the physical realm because it was not dealt with on the inner planes, on the level of Yat-Zira, let’s say.
And as magicians, we can work with our karma on the level of Yetzirah or the world of dreams, make peace with it, or help it resolve itself so that it doesn’t have to express itself in material form.
If we’re able to do that, our life becomes more peaceful or more adventurous, more fun, maybe.
We don’t have complete control over that process, so bad stuff does happen.
But what you’ll notice is that people who engage successfully in spiritual work, they tend to do very well for themselves.
They tend to be able to handle things.
Things don’t freak them out because they’ve already dealt with these things on the inner planes.
And so those harsh lessons don’t have to emerge in physical life and then beat them over the head in physical life.
They’ve already dealt with those lessons on the inner planes.
So you can see your aura and your magic circle as kind of like this plasticky substance that already exists, but it’s like a mold that is manifesting your life around you in a particular way.
and what you can do is you can use ritual to restructure that inner mold so that that waxy
substance takes a different shape and that eventually so that physical reality will also
begin to manifest differently i find that interesting too because when i do research
into one of the most advanced schools of Tibetan Tantra Mahamudra practice. Mahamudra means great
seal. And that basically is working with the idea of the magic circle or the mandala, that the magic
circle or the mandala are basically an impact signature of the divine. Let’s say God has a
signet ring, right? And he pushes it down into the wax and it creates a particular type of
manifestation and so when you’re working with your magic circle that’s pretty much your um your great
seal and you you have some ability to change the way that that wax you know substance gets molded
and the big um aha experience that people get in the mahamudra tradition is that uh everything is
experienced as an impact signature of of the divine or whatever that is right so the unmanifest
just constantly um stamping its uh potentialities into actuality in our mandala like world
for lack of better way of putting it so working with your magic circle is very much like
um changing your uh little world and in in the hermetic in the in kabbalah i believe we call it
minute to mundum or that’s alchemy the little world as above so below and this great seal of
reality or or this impact signature of the divine can be experienced in various forms obviously
and it can be restructured into various forms so that it manifests differently and so this is a
mandala which seems to indicate um a vibrational impact you know this is the um the sri yantra
mantra i think it is right very famous symbol and you can see how this is basically like the
the magic circle, and it could also represent a person’s aura manifesting in a particular way
through the astral light. And so this is the typical way of seeing the aura as the ovoid of
light. But kind of what’s happening here, and we can kind of experience this even when we’re on
certain psychoactive substances, which I’m not recommending, by the way, but I’m just saying
it can happen. Or if you’re on certain painkillers, you can actually feel that the aura is more like
this that somehow we are shoved up into our physical bodies and being sort of trapped or
they’re not really trapped but we’re sort of the soul of the universe has become fascinated with
this form for a while and it’s kind of stuck here for a bit and it can actually feel like you’re
kind of being shoved off to the side so that you’re over here and you can look at the world
over there. And that sort of contraction of the soul into this perspective spot is what it’s like
to be incarnate as the soul of the world in one particular form. Okay, or it can feel like you’re
basically shoved up in your head like this. So the aura can feel like you’re sort of like a sock
puppet. What that means is that the aura can be experienced as extending out from you. So anything
that you see out there that you think is um bad or good what you can do is catch yourself in the act
of injecting the bad or good quality into that thing out there okay so this here’s we have
somebody encountering a snake and the temptation is to then um the the mind or the nervous system
because of the memories that are embedded in nature is tempted to define the serpent out there
as evil because of all of the problems that snakes have caused humanity for about a million years or
so. And so because of the habits that are embedded in nature, we will see things happening in the
world that we automatically perceive as evil, let’s say, like the serpent, right? But you can
catch yourself in the act of doing that you can catch it happening and then realize oh it doesn’t
have to be that way and you you begin to restructure that process of the astral light
which is making your world into good and bad objects there are no good and bad objects out
there now the temptation um when the aura does this or when the astral light does this is to um
is to take it literally in other words the problem that we have is that when something
triggers us out there and then the astral light automatically defines it as evil or more good or
whatever um then we we take that literally and we think it really is evil or good and then we
interact with it in the imaginary external world um let’s say so i in other words i see the snake
and i kill it because i think it’s bad because that what what happened is i didn’t really notice
that my mind was making it into something bad in order to compel me to kill it okay because that’s
a survival behavior that has worked for us in the past okay and if i notice that happening
then something else can happen the problem is if i just respond to the form in terms of the
the good and evil that i see in it i’m going to enter this karmic wheel this karmic cycle
of doing something to the object but then of course the same image gets supported in my mind
and then i can i will continue to kill snakes every time i see them let’s say right because
my mind keeps interpreting them as evil okay and that’s called a that’s a karmic cycle that that
that kind of behavior is manifesting itself it’s it’s maintaining itself when in fact um it’s not
necessarily to kill a snake because they’re not all poisonous or whatever right and what we can
do when this happens is we can catch the um our behavior in the act of making this cyclic karmic
wheel and we can notice that both the offending object and ourselves are arising from the same
source. We are both arising from the astral light. Whether or not I kill the snake is not really the
point. I could still go out and kill the snake, but at least I’m not automatically compelled to
do that anymore. I don’t have to buy into whether or not it’s good or evil. And so that’s why people
who practice these kinds of tantric or mystical traditions, they tend to be more peaceful because
they’re not automatically compelled to do whatever the motions within their imagination
tells them to do based on past traumatic experiences they could if they wanted to
but now they’re not compelled to do that anymore okay so i know in order to make karma
lose its stranglehold on you it’s helpful for you to acknowledge that any form that you experience
is actually just arising completely innocently right out of the astral light there’s no um there’s
no need to go over there and beat it over the head and the whole universe is like that pretty much is
all kinds of forms being bodied forth by the astral lights uh and if you really believe that
you are a separate physical object then you’re going to use your physical object body to go
around and beat on other physical objects, right? And in order to fix your life, you’re always going
to reach for external objects and try to get those external objects to cooperate with you.
That never works because the actual karmic propensity is arising from within the astral
light, not from that object over there. So it’s not very helpful to try to fix your life by fixing
the things in your life, okay? It doesn’t mean you don’t do that, but you have to acknowledge how
the actual suffering pattern itself is arising and so when when you you regard yourself as a
physical object that needs to go fix other objects then you are only participating on the level of
those objects and you go around in circles you’re pretty much um and that and the behavior of trying
to fix the world keeps going you keep trying to fix the world and the world doesn’t get fixed
and the world presents another problem at you and you keep trying to fix the world when in fact
what you really need to look at is the the problem generating apparatus the the tendency to see
things out of the world as good or evil that’s what you need to look at and that’s when if you
can do that then you can see that all the various forms that arise in the world from the astral
light are simply innocently emerging they are not inherently good or evil this is kind of important
to because you can see that this pattern, the tendency to run in circles is what causes the
suffering. It’s not inherently wrong to live in a habitual pattern, but the way that our suffering
persists is through patterns like that, patterns that are going unrecognized. What this means is
when you’re visualizing the astral light or visualizing the aura, there are two aspects of
but that are very important. That is the circular aspects, the arc-like aspects, or the bubble
aspects, like the curvature aspects, right? They would represent the cyclical nature of your life,
the patterns that repeat and repeat and repeat, which are sort of round and round, right? Those
are very important because you have habits that you maintain and you have habits that are
problematic and that you wish you wouldn’t maintain anymore. And those are symbolized in
the aura by round cyclical patterns or bubble-like shapes. And then the faculty of consciousness that
sees through those patterns is perceived as going in straight lines. So in other words,
it’s helpful to see the aura in terms of that bubble shape, but also in terms of the straight
line that penetrates right down through it, which is the aspect of consciousness which can see
through the karma or it can see through the forces that are trying to work something out.
It can see through the aspects of the universe that are on display and realize that it’s mainly
just a drama. It’s a show. It’s not necessarily real. So anything manifesting out in the world
of action or the physical world is really more of a show. It’s on display. It’s karma processing
itself so that the divine can make sense of itself, okay? And so this aspect of your consciousness
that sees through all that can be symbolized as a straight line or a ray that cuts right through it,
okay? It doesn’t destroy it, but it’s not trapped by that cyclical energy anymore.
and so when you visualize the aura it’s in terms of both round shapes circular wheels and things
like that and in terms of straight lines and for anybody who’s studying the zero equals zero ritual
or the neophyte ritual of the golden dawn you can see that the circumambulations and the straight
lines sometimes people walk in straight lines and those straight lines are also very important
who is it that walks in a straight line in the neophyte ceremony and why do they do that
what does that symbolize it’s that ability to cut through the crap right to cut through the
um drama to see the drama for what it really is that faculty of consciousness that cuts right
through the bullshit and what you’ll notice is that uh this kind of symbolism is very subtle
but it appears all throughout the mysteries and here we have the sun card of the tree of the
tarot and the straight rays coming out of the sun represent the faculty of consciousness which
sees through the drama of the universe and the wiggly rays are those that are generating that
that drama of the universe both are important it’s not that we need to become
um and straight rays of light and then not appear in any wavy forms they’re both very important
because in order to experience the joy of living we have to be able to we have to be able to see
through the drama and to participate in it at the same time and that’s what in the christian
mysteries i think they say it’s to to be in the world but not of it it’s one way of describing
now and you can see that in the eastern traditions this is from buddhism i believe it is then we have
that the rays of light proceeding outward from whatever that is the divine and of course the
cyclical nature of reality both are important and of course in the western mysteries we have the
caduceus and it’s not just the serpent that’s important in fact usually in our life there’s
too much serpent going on and not enough mysticism let’s say there’s not enough not enough of that
conscious faculty that can see through the drama of creation okay but if we um the the weird thing
is is that if you try to become all middle pillar and no serpent um that’s not healthy either okay
in order to have a completely manifest and robust uh experience of life both of these qualities are
necessary the faculty of consciousness that cuts through the crap and the crap itself which isn’t
really crap by the way but of course um if there is no sense of consciousness that can cut through
it then it gets experienced as crap it becomes problematic and you can see the wheel of spirit
also appears in our magical ritual work in the golden dawn that is if you are using the spirit
pentagrams people in the portal grade would be doing that okay and so when we get all kinds of
weird descriptions of the astral light here’s something from dion fortune uh what she says
the more highly developed the aura the greater what may best be described as its surface tension
a kind of skin a resistance formed by the interweaving of magnetic circuits
these arise from outgoing rays of emanation obeying the law of curvature of force and
are turning upon themselves at their point of emanation this is the aura right um so she’s
describing what she’s describing basically is the ability to withdraw your projections so when i see
the snake in the world this this um faculty of consciousness goes out into that snake and it
injects some kind of negative quality into it which then compels me to go kill it okay what
she’s suggesting is that if you have a more developed consciousness that you will you will
withdraw that projection you will no longer see the snake as evil okay you will see that your
nervous system is inviting you to see the snake as evil and that’s fine but you are no longer
compelled to react blindly as though the snake is evil so that that tendency of the of the
the psyche to go and inject a negative quality into the snake is now withheld and you have
control over what you think is good and evil and you might still kill the snake but it’s no longer
a compulsive thing and so there are all kinds of ways of describing these things but it’s very
important that you understand what the astral light you know really is and how it works and how
we are using various techniques or descriptions like this to basically um gain some control over
how things manifest in our lives and that’s so she’s describing that process of um you don’t
necessarily need to inject a negative quality into that snake in order to get things done
you can live like this instead simply regard it that’s that’s why that’s why it’s called
lack of attachment it’s um it’s a deep like a dispassionate way of seeing drama in the world
you simply see yourself as arising from the world and whatever is out there is also arising from the
world and both you and it are completely innocent there’s nothing wrong with either of you and
whatever you do is still up to you but it’s no longer compelled by good and evil qualities which
are conjured forth automatically by a traumatized nervous system okay and so hopefully that sheds
some light on how the aura functions and the importance of the serpentine like motions within
the astral light and the straight the straight line motions as well and that both of these are
necessary interesting that the symbol of wealth in the united states at least is the dollar sign
which is like a snake around a central column and uh interesting too because um is money evil or is
it good or is it like in other words um depends right if it’s all serpent then it can become
problematic but if you have um if you can see through how money works then of course you’ve
got something better going on there and you can actually appreciate money for uh for what it how
it really works as potential energy. All right, I’m hoping that’s clear. I’m going to post this
video as soon as I can, and I’ll replace the previous one that had poor sound quality.
Sorry about that. I know these concepts are difficult to describe, and if you guys have
difficulty understanding them, you want to talk to me further, you can schedule a consultation with
me if you use the links below the video. Or you can join me on Patreon. There’s also a link for
that support me on Patreon and, uh, you get direct access, uh, to me through, um, direct
messaging there, which is cheaper by the way. All right. So until next time.
Source: Lyam Christopher