Descriptions:
Video Description
The lesson begins like a dark bedtime story about a little boy and a door in the floor, a door his mother warns him never to open. Lyam Christopher uses that image to lead us into the most guarded room of the Golden Dawn. He shows us the Vault of the Adepti, a chamber built to be walked upon: its floor bears a triangle pointing one way, its ceiling a triangle pointing the other. Stand in that room and the two shapes close around you as a hexagram.
What is under the door in the floor, he asks, if not the old powers of chaos? He tells the Greek story of the Titans thrown down into Tartarus, the gods above them keeping order, and warns that every civilization has whispered the same fear, that the old ones might come back. Hell, then, is not a cartoon furnace but a picture of the wild forces of nature held in check so that human life can have its drama. The planetary gods stand between, like the colors of a rainbow arranged between light and dark, making the world steadier than it would otherwise be.
Then the teaching turns personal. The true danger in magic is hubris, the pride of believing you are the one with godlike power, and even Moses is remembered as cautionary for striking the rock as if the miracle were his. The Holy Guardian Angel, he says, may not be the soft presence we imagine, but a force behind us that holds us to our task. The final quiet shock is the same one woven through cosmic horror: what if heaven and chaos are the same formless radiance seen by two different hearts? The path to that realization is mapped in Kabbalah, Magic & the Great Work of Self Transformation, where the safe and careful work begins.
Full Video Transcript
There was a little boy who didn’t know if he wanted to be born. His mommy didn’t know if she wanted him to be born either.
They lived in a cabin in the woods on an island in a lake, and there was no one else around, and in the cabin there was a door in the floor.
The little boy was afraid of what was under the door in the floor, and the mommy was afraid too.
Once, long ago, other children had come to visit the cabin for Christmas,
but the children had opened the door in the floor and had disappeared down the hole.
The mommy had tried to look for the children, but when she opened the door in the floor,
she heard such an awful sound that her hair turned completely white, like the hair of a ghost.
And the mommy had also seen some things, things so horrible you can’t imagine them.
And so the mommy wondered if she wanted to have a little boy,
especially because of everything that might be under the door and the floor
and then she thought why not I’ll just tell him not to open the door and the floor
yet the little boy didn’t know if he wanted to be born into a world
where there was a door and the floor
but there were some beautiful things in the woods on the island and in the lake
why not take a chance he thought
and so the little boy was born and he was happy
and his mommy was happy again too
although she told the boy at least once every day
don’t ever not ever never never never open the door in the floor but of course he was only a
little boy if you were that little boy wouldn’t you want to open the door in the floor so that
little story comes from a movie called surprise surprise the door in the floor um 2004 2007 with
jeff bridges in it um not a particularly good movie as far as i’m concerned but that story is
pretty ominous it’s from a children’s book that was featured in the movie and so this week we are
talking about hell and the hexagram what does that have to do with the door in the floor all right so
in the golden dawn system of magic this is the door in the floor okay and you can see that it’s
almost like there’s a magical stamp pressed down on the floor there and there are some writhing
serpents or scary forces down below okay so this is taken from the floor of the vault of the adepte
this is not something that a an outer order student of the golden dawn would see
this is more for very experienced practitioners of magic they had this vault constructed it has
seven sides and uh the floor of the vault looked like this so they’d walk into the vault and they
would stand on top of this okay and so um if you’re if you’re familiar with something called
power posing there’s something you can do to increase your sense of confidence and power
you can pretend that you have just slain a mighty beast and put your foot on top of it so you know
put your foot on top of the couch and then do a victory like oh like a yes i have defeated the
monster and that can have a surprising effect on your confidence and your level of testosterone
in your body okay power posing that’s something people do before they do public speaking events
sometimes. This is the ceiling of the vault of the Adepti. Okay, I’m going to go back to the
previous one again. So you can see that there are no hexagrams here, but the floor of the vault has
a triangle with the point pointing west, and the ceiling of the vault has a triangle with a point
pointing east. And so between the two, one’s on top of the other, they form a hexagram. And the
interesting thing is that the adept enters the vault and then stands on top of the door in the
floor essentially with all those primal powers beneath him and has the other part of the
hexagram above him so those two triangles together form a hexagram and as you can see for anybody
who’s doing the Kabbalah magic work from the Kabbalah magic book your daily practice involves
eventually forming a tree of life in the aura okay this diagram of 10 spheres and amidst that
tree of life is the hexagram the hexagram is a constellation of planetary powers okay planetary
powers according to astrology the sun and the moon are planets in astrology and so um what’s
under the door in the floor well the titans primal forces of nature okay and this is from the movie
Hercules 1997 and you can’t really see it here but the the plant the not the planetary the
the titans are monstrous and gigantic and there’s a little tiny figure in the center and that is
Zeus the king of the gods the king of the Olympian gods is the little tiny figure
seemingly now at the whim of these monstrous powerful forces okay and if you know anything
anything about greek pathology you’ll know that the olympian gods led by zeus overthrew the titans
and cast them down into tartarus most of them anyway and there in tartarus they are locked away
tartarus being the ancient greek word for hell essentially and those forces are immortal they
can’t be killed but they can be bound for all eternity or for a very long time at least and
held down there okay and as you might guess they are something that’s being held down like that
would be seething with rage and power and sort of the idea here is that once the Olympian gods
came along they represent the craftiness and the intelligence of the human-like intelligence that
comes along and controls represses and harnesses the primal powers of nature okay this is probably
a better more accurately more accurately this represents the ability of each human being to
to repress his or her own animal nature keep it under control but also the ability to harness it
And use its energy constructively, supposedly
But there is a problem with that scheme
And if you have studied Greek mythology
Or at least enjoyed the stories
Or seen some of the movies
You will notice very quickly that the Greek gods
Are not necessarily very nice
In fact, they are filled with all kinds of unruly passions
And they’re jealous of each other
They get angry and they act irrationally
And yet at the same time, they are supposed to be models of virtue to aspire to, okay?
And the Greeks had this down pretty well because apparently as the human universe formed,
so first there were the primal forces of nature and there were no humans, all right?
Then eventually humans came into existence and then we were hunter-gatherers for a very long time, okay?
And we had shamans in each tribe.
Each tribe tended to naturally develop a shaman and, of course, a leader, probably like a tribal chieftain or something like that.
And the shaman would tend to commune with nature spirits and things like that.
Shamans still tend to form today, but they usually become schizophrenics.
So it’s not really a natural development that serves us very well anymore if somebody starts to develop shamanic ability.
Nowadays, we enter a path of magic voluntarily.
In any case, eventually what happened is civilization came along and you had leaders that were powerful enough to unite people within cities and city-states.
But with so many people now living together in an agricultural community, the shamans were a bit of a problem.
So the king of the city-state tended to kill all the shamans or banish them or give them special positions that were kind of marginal and not very important, kind of keep them away from the population.
and in the place of shamans he appointed priests and the priests were not really
they didn’t form naturally okay so a shaman is something that tends to form naturally
in a hunter-gatherer setup or framework and if you live in a city-state what happened eventually
was that we the people wanted their shamans they wanted their spirituality so the shaman was
replaced by more of a political figure or a control figure the priest and then religion
really became that came into existence then and magic was really more about just moral control
um behaving really well um serving your king uh generating wealth for the people at the top
okay and so religion is was kind of developed um as a counterfeit form of magic okay it doesn’t
mean it’s not magical okay but it was pretty much um it replaced magic sort of sort of a
counterfeit version of magic so people would still be satisfied um but of course um magic was still
practiced and it went underground all right now in the in the process of creating the city-states
uh there were new gods who came into being so the spirits of the land that the shamans
used to commune with they eventually became a sort of dogmatized and and they really became
more like gods of civilization gods of the city-state that represented virtues that are
not so much natural anymore but very much more geared towards generating harmony between humans
and nature and so these new gods were the olympian gods okay and they all take much more human form
okay instead of um you know crazy magma monsters and uh representations of um primal forces of
nature okay uh and they tend to look smaller than the titans right um and so these you might even
say that the gods of civilization are not really you know legitimate they’re they’re more artificial
elementals or sort of constructed or or they’re kind of pieced together by um the kings of city
states and by the priesthood uh to control the population you know keep everybody in line uh but
still give them something to worship and to work magic with, okay? And now when this happened,
the old gods that the shamans worshipped, okay, or even the old gods of older civilizations
were seen as more primal, more unruly, evil, and there was a threat that those old gods or old
spirits of the land might come back okay so the olympian gods kind of came in right or the gods
of civilization kind of came in and established a sort of human order on top of everything
right and then so the humans and humans did begin to use technology to control the forces of nature
to control their own primal urges to control themselves so that they could have you know
agendas and systems of control and systems of management to live more peaceful more orderly
lives and so as this developed there was the threat now what if the old ways come back again
and things get out of control and the peace falls apart and so we have this threat of the
old gods coming back okay i’m going to go back to this previous image up here
so here we have so in the system of magic that is from ceremonial magic the forces that
that have developed here uh as between mankind and god let’s say okay are sort of um forces that
are seen as uh controlling the unruly primal forces of nature okay so they’ve come into
existence to help humans establish some kind of order and control in the world a sense of peace
um and the nice thing is uh the way the greeks saw it apparently was that this was a a fairly
good arrangement so that something could happen okay so we have a relative relatively peaceful
world now where which permits all kinds of problems still to arise okay so that humans
can experience catharsis okay so humans can do there’s a new task to be developed here so in
in the form of drama or theater or just life in general we can experience the forces of nature
in a more controlled way, and we can make sense of them, okay? We can come to terms with them,
and some kind of spiritual work can be, can happen because of that, okay? And the gods themselves are
not really the highest divinity. They are simply the sort of, see, the gods were born from the
titans, okay? So the gods arose from the primal forces of nature. They are the children of the
titans okay they really are titans themselves but they are more humanized more civilized a little
bit more civilized more clever not as powerful but smarter and they have better technology
they have better social skills they have better teamwork than the titans do okay and this gives
them power and advantage okay it’s a civilized form of magic that they wield the magic of
civilization and this is very much what ceremonial magic tends to embody okay but the the Olympian
gods are still offspring of the primal forces and those primal forces are the stuff that they are
made of and that this is why the gods are not perfect they are well they’re perfect examples
of more evolved forms of the primal forces but they are and they are they are immortal at least
in in relation to us they are immortal okay uh the universe is not necessarily going to be around
forever okay so technically they’re not immortal but they’ll be around as long as the universe is
around something like that anyway um or as long as this current era of um human-like experience
exists they gods will be there to um to sort of oversee or maintain this sort of human
this human friendly world okay it’s not going to be forever apparently and there are many
mythologies that bear that out like uh in the nordic traditions uh there’s ragnarok or the
end of the universe how will the universe end in fire or in ice all right so um the reign of the
gods apparently it’s going to be a very long but it’s not going to be that long it’s not going to
forever all right and so there’s this threat now while civilization goes on and we have this nice
sense of control and peace okay so that we can experience the unruly forces of nature in a more
controlled way somehow so that we can make some kind of meaning out of them and some kind of
experience catharsis with them whatever that is okay there’s always this threat of that of the
of the order of the Olympian gods being overthrown and this is something that all civilizations have
had an anxiety an anxiety about for instance in ancient Egypt there was a constant fear of
chaos breaking into the world of order again and destroying everything like the gods had
established a nice um sphere of order where where egyptian civilization could exist and then we
could have this relatively peaceful uh orderly society but there was always a threat that the
old primal forces were going to break in from from everywhere not just from up from the earth
but also through the sky and come crashing in on this sort of bubble of control that the gods had
established okay and uh here we have the beast of revelations which is kind of the same thing
notice how it has um so even the um so as when the christian world came along even the old pagan
gods were considered like a previous manifestation um that was also demonic so there’s always there
always tends to be a fear of the older more primal systems coming back or the old primal
older forms of humanity coming back and wiping out or destroying the newer forms that have just emerged, okay?
And so, in Christianity, you notice how the Beast of Revelations has seven heads.
These are the gods of the seven planets, okay, that might come back and destroy Christianity, okay?
And, of course, the Whore of Babylon rides on the Beast’s back, and the Whore of Babylon is also known as the Adolatress,
the idolater. So in other words, he or she who would worship false gods. There’s always this
fear of the old gods coming back. So for the Greeks, it was fear of the old, old gods, the
Titans. And for the Christians, it was a fear of the old gods, like the planetary gods. Now,
even though many Christians were into astrology, and they did not think it was necessarily
the old evil magic. And so in order to develop a more human-friendly universe, the Olympian
gods arose. And of course, in the system of astrology, there are really seven major Olympian
gods that control everything that happens on Earth. There were more Olympian gods than
that. I guess there were 12 or so, something like that. But the ones who are credited with
control of what manifests on earth tend to be seven seven of them that’s um saturn jupiter
mars apollo or maybe helios uh venus mercury uh and um the huntress whatever i’m thinking
diana the huntress right um of course for the greek gods it was chronos at the very top there
and then uh it was uh not jupiter but for it was zeus and for the god of war was aries
and for the god of the sun it was apollo still or helios or or um even in later times soul
soul invictus okay and uh f not not not venus but aphrodite and then for not it wasn’t mercury it
hermes and then of course at the bottom it was not diana artemis artemis was the greek name for the
moon goddess one of the moon goddesses anyway the the main one at least for um as far as astrology
is concerned nowadays there’s also celine i believe yes and then anybody in the golden dawn
system will recognize this color scheme uh flashing colors and isn’t it interesting that
on the bottom right we have the color of venus is normally green and the flashing color of venus is
red and the upper left the color of mars is normally red and the flashing color of red is
green and they are opposite each other how interesting and the same thing is happening with
jupiter and mercury flashing colors we’ll talk about flashing colors in a future video and in
the golden dawn system the sun is at the center so that star in the center is the sphere of apollo or
helios god of the sun so those are seven deities and they all seem to have like colors associated
with them okay um we could add two more to that so ultimately um between the realm of the light
in the realm of darkness below there are the colors or the the planetary colors and um it’s
it’s really kind of um nice how um the golden dawn took the the spectrum of colors roy g biv
red orange yellow green indigo green green blue indigo violet right um it was theosophy that did
that and uh but basically assigned those colors to the planets okay so green for venus which is
very time honored and and interestingly enough uh green was if you look at venus in the morning sky
you can sometimes see the green color okay so um and mars is red for spilled spilled blood on the
battlefield the god of war would be red so they these colors really tend to work pretty well
Okay, so in between the light and the darkness, we have a full spectrum of colors.
And of course, in the vault of the Adepti, up above on the ceiling, that’s all brightly colored white.
Hang on there.
So the ceiling of the vault is light, and the floor of the vault is darkness.
And in between, we have lots of different colors going on.
But it’s mainly Roy G. Biv, the rainbow spectrum of planetary colors.
Quite elegant, really, if you think about it.
So there are seven major planetary gods that are all about manifestation,
and they are sort of intervening between the realm of light and the realm of darkness.
So since the gods are not perfect, they are the offspring of the primal forces of nature.
They’re considered divine, I suppose, because they are immortal.
okay but uh not even the greeks thought of them as the ultimate ultimate divine the greeks really
at least the esoteric greeks the ones who had the mystery schools they were essentially monotheists
they believed in the one and the good okay and that was when they were doing their religion if
you want to call that religion um when they were doing that um it was really uh a god was not
really the ultimate divine a god was simply a personification of like um a cosmic force okay
that could take on um human form or animal form or whatever and um was a limited thing and not a
perfect thing necessarily a perfect embodiment of some kind of major cosmic power yes but an
embodiment of that cosmic power and all of its beauty and terror and um unconsciousness sometimes
Not fully conscious, not fully evolved
Still evolving along with the rest of us maybe
And the esoteric Greeks still had the concept of the one and the good
Which was the monad
Or very similar to the Kabbalistic notion of Ein Sof
God himself
It was only later that the Hebrews came along
And the Hebrews at first had their own tribal god
which is sort of a pagan deity that governed them.
And that deity eventually became the one of the good, the cosmic God.
And so we then transferred the word God to that ultimate ground of being.
But what God used to be was an entity, a limited entity, very powerful,
a manifestation of a cosmic force, but nonetheless not the ultimate divine itself.
And because the gods are not perfect, and because they tend to be so merciless in dealing out justice, and they get vengeful and jealous and things like that.
uh the later on you know traditions came along like under the umbrella of christianity and looked
back upon those old spiteful jealous uh crazy and virtuous beautiful and immortal whatever they were
uh they looked at those old gods and thought wow they they really are sort of evil aren’t they
because if we just take the slightest little misstep,
they can punish us severely.
And life can be really tough for us, for some mortals,
because of the way the archons are so spiteful.
Anyway, so under Christianity,
we could look back upon the time of the gods
and see, wow, this universe really is still governed
by these powers that are um they don’t really have our best interest at heart it seems they’ve
established this realm for us where it’s possible for us to experience catharsis and drama and
something really important seems to be possible now under this system of control and order okay
so remember the titans are locked down in hell so the chaos is mainly being kept in check but in
place of that we have these gods that are not perfect who are now establishing some kind of
system of a field of drama now where where troublesome things can happen but in a somewhat
controlled and orderly fashion okay um and because the the world isn’t perfect and there’s lots of
suffering going on um the under the christian umbrella we start to look back at these gods and
think that they are evil too that they are just just like um they have this they’ve established
this world of compromise that’s not perfect and they’re keeping the chaos at bay okay it’s almost
like they’re keeping the world from dissolving back into perfection again and there’s something
kind of evil about that yeah so we can look at them and say well they would say well those are
the archons okay and the archons are basically um an astrological interpretation okay uh so we take
the idea of the planetary spheres, like the divine power descends down and condenses down
to form things on earth, how things manifest, right? And as it does so, it filters down
through the various spheres of the planets from Saturn to Jupiter to Mars to the Sun
to Venus to Mercury and then through the moon and then reaches the earth, okay? The earth
not being considered a planet astrologically speaking and and because as this happens
the system of control or whatever it is allows so much drama and calamity to happen it seems as
though the gods are evil or the planetary gods are evil and they might even be laughing at what’s
happening down here on earth you know and maintaining that system of control okay so
there are a number of different ways of looking at it okay so in in Kabbalah the universe is playing
itself out for some kind of higher purpose that we can’t see in in its entirety so in its in its
in its entirety it is good just like the Greeks thought of it as the one and the good okay but
in its parts it can feel really unfair okay so if you don’t want to look at it in terms of its
entirety and you just want to think of it in terms of poor me I’m suffering then you’re going to look
at the gods and say oh those are evil archons that are controlling the universe and they are just
laughing at us and and causing suffering for us and and laughing at our expense and sending us
misfortune and then maybe even like you know gambling with each other to see what will you do
now if I torture him this way you know oh and I’m going to reward this person and punish this person
unfairly let’s see how they react and so we look at the um at the the apparent powers that are
running the universe and we can accuse them of being evil and refer to them as archons okay
or we can look at them um in terms of they are mysterious we don’t really understand
why things are happening the way they are okay and in a bigger scheme in a kabbalistic scheme
there is a one true good purpose behind it all apparently so that’s kind of what where the archons
came from uh it’s from gnosticism which is like um a heretical sect of christianity or that’s
there are many heretical sects of sects of christianity that developed um many many of
them are considered to be gnostic and the gnostics are basically mainly known for a very dualistic
version of the universe where the universe was seen as a an evil enclosure where suffering is
allowed to happen and that that evil enclosure is controlled by the archons i’m oversimplifying
things of course there are many forms of gnosticism and not all of them were like that
all right so what’s down in hell in other words in order to establish this universe
the gods or the archons have thrown the primordial forces of the universe or the older gods they have
thrown them all down into jail okay and for the greeks uh yeah down in hell in in tartarus there
was typhon okay and in the golden dawn typhon is mentioned and if you do the lesser if you do the
banishing ritual the hexagram um you do the lvx signs and v is a sign of typhon and apophis
and typhon and apophis that that’s a very interesting creature because it is a monster
that Typhon was imprisoned in Tartarus by Zeus himself and in the golden dawn system Typhon
is synonymous with the crocodile monster that would eat the soul of the dead person who was
not deemed worthy to achieve immortality in the afterlife and he was like a crocodile god
the the egyptians had um the most fearsome monster in the nile other than the hippopotamus
was the crocodile and many people were eaten by crocodiles crocodiles will sometimes eat humans
leviathan um is sort of synonymous with typhon but i think in um in hebrew myth leviathan is a
creature maybe uh that exists in this world is more like a mouth of hell let’s say okay um
But very synonymous with Typhon, and I think Leviathan was defeated by Yahweh
and cast down into the depths of the sea, the ocean, not necessarily Tartarus.
And of course the Titans are down in Tartarus or in hell.
We could say that the heat of hell or the fires or the seethingness of hell
is because the titans are angry down there and they’re being so they’re they’re immortal but
they’re they’ve been chained down and they can’t move and that seething rage is what causes hell
to be like such a fiery place in celtic myth um the femorian giants uh are a myth of previous
forces that used to run amok in the in the land until the more civilized deities came along and
banish them to some other plane of existence. And of course, for any monotheistic religions or
supposedly monotheistic religions, all the old pagan gods were considered sort of locked away
in hell now. And especially for the Hebrew religion, older pagan gods that the Hebrews
used to worship were all turned into demons which were considered somehow um infernal um not
necessarily in hell because hell became sort of came around later but they’re all considered evil
and they existed i think in the air and in the air between the the lunar sphere and the earth
okay uh there wasn’t a hell really yet um until uh the the hebrews had the concepts of sheol
which was very similar to hades where where people supposedly went when they died they just turned
into sort of shadowy you know um reflections of what they were in life it wasn’t really a place
of suffering but the greeks also had the idea of tartarus where if you were really bad okay you
were then chained down for all eternity and punished there okay and so the idea of hell
as a place of punishment uh be it came around later and it became you know much more strongly
pronounced of course with christianity with the idea of it being eternal being tortured forever
and ever and ever and of course in the christian myth um instead of banishing titans or old gods
it’s now the fallen angels the angels who dared to descend and mate with earthly women they are
thrown, cast down into hell, and then had boulders piled on top of them. And they’re also chained
with adamant chains, things like that. And of course, eventually, anybody in the city-state,
if they want to control, they could always threaten to have people damned to hell. And so
religion, pretty much as an arm of the city-state, began to threaten people with eternal punishment.
And you couldn’t even escape by killing yourself because they would say, well, if you kill yourself,
then that’s a mortal sin and you will be damned for all eternity.
You couldn’t even escape from the king’s control by killing yourself
because that would supposedly damn you to hell.
And so we’ve already talked about Typhon being the sort of associated with the crocodile god
who swallows the unworthy soul of the dead person
who basically doesn’t pass the test in the judgment hall of Osiris.
and pretty much for the ancient egyptians that meant you were destroyed utterly like you would
just simply cease to exist yeah it was one thing they were really afraid of as as i think every
human is pretty much afraid of that we have a an animal instinct that is somehow afraid of
becoming extinct or being snuffed out of existence and apophis was similar to typhon but i think it
was actually a serpent-like being, more like a Leviathan, okay? And all these things were sort of
swallowing creatures of annihilation. And then, of course, the devil became associated with that,
too, because the mouth of hell would swallow you up, okay? Not necessarily oblivion, but it became
synonymous with being swallowed up by oblivion, going into that dark pit. And, of course, in the
western magical system ever since the renaissance we have the entity karanzan which is a powerful
spirit of oblivion essentially it represents the death of the ego if you want to cross the abyss
and get back to perfect unity with the divine you must face karanzan and that means the karanzan
will destroy your ego eat your soul will will destroy who you think you are okay and so in
order to have a life in a sort of human realm where drama and catharsis and working out your
past trauma issues and things like that where this kind of work is possible these forces of
oblivion and chaos need to be kept in check and so the system of planetary powers or olympian
gods supposedly exist in this sort of human friendly realm to keep that order so that the
drama of human experience can continue on and on okay and then of course the enemy of of that
system then becomes Typhon and Apophis and Karanzon and the devil the forces of hell
rising up so it’s interesting too because now working with the planet the planetary powers
invoking the planets in magic or the planetary deities the way I’m describing them here is that
they they’re not necessarily authentic representations of natural forces they are
the offspring from those natural forces but they are sort of um constructs from those natural
forces okay in human form okay i’ve got some sirens going here and uh those constructs uh
were kind of created by religion okay but apparently these constructs are pretty important
they they still have a very strong force in our system of order and culture and control in the
western world okay and in other cultures too the various deities of civilization and the question
is like well if these if these gods of the planets are sort of artificial elementals
maybe they’re sort of constructs what are the real forces what are the real forces and you
might look at the um the system of astrology and notice how each of the signs is ruled by
a planet for instance cancer is ruled by the moon gemini is ruled by mercury okay um so
when mercury passes in front of aries let’s say um somehow um mercury is sort of a human
representation of what’s happening in aries aries is a very fiery very elemental sign
so you might say that the the primal power of the elements that exists in the astrological signs
is being kept at bay some degree to some degree or filtered the harmful effects are mostly filtered
out by the planetary spheres okay so the planets pass between the earth and the various elemental
signs okay each of the signs of the zodiac is a representation of one of the four elements earth
air fire water okay there are three earth signs there are three air signs there are three fire
signs three water signs etc and so you can see that the the spheres of the planets are sort of
like filtering devices that help to maintain a more safe realm for humans to experience
the chaos of the universe but in a controlled orderly relatively peaceful world where they can
now use drama and storytelling and philosophy to make sense of these things for some kind of divine
purpose. What’s going on exactly? This is kind of what we’re figuring out as we do magic and
philosophy and older forms of religion, you know, things like that. Okay, so various entities such
as the titans have been cast down into tartarus or into hell like they’re being punished but for
what exactly like what’s considered so bad that they need to be punished in hell okay um in
christianity it’s called sin which means missing the mark literally sin is translated as missing
the mark and in the greeks uh primarily called it hubris which you could translate as pride
okay um the greek idea of hubris is quite interesting and it’s very important for us
in magic too because is there such a thing as black magic so many people who are supposedly
enlightened will say magic is neither black nor white to try to get the system of morality out
of the way right and just say magic is just magic it’s just energy or something like that right
well um so apparently the uh the greeks thought of hubris in a way that kind of will bother us
today um hubris was pride but what it really meant is um acting out of place okay so acting in a way
that is beyond your station so if you assume an air of authority that is not yours that’s hubris
Okay, in other words, if you start to consider yourself to be godlike, this is what the gods will punish.
Okay, so in other words, humanity, if you’re existing in a human form, you have to acknowledge that you are human and you have human capabilities.
And if you try to adopt a persona that is above that station, that’s what the gods will supposedly punish you for.
And they’ll send you down into Tartarus or something like that, right?
well not literally but it does have some bearing on uh magic okay and so is there such a thing as
black magic well yeah apparently there is and it has to do with hubris okay so hubris um like
here’s an example of hubris like a physician who has saved a number of people’s lives okay
Or he’s studying a science that is famous for saving lives.
And as he does that, he begins to believe or she begins to believe that she has power over life and death.
I have the power to save you.
And of course, and the physician will treat many patients and the patients will get better, usually on their own.
They probably would have gotten better anyway, because the body tends to recover.
Okay, and most of the medications that allopathic medicine prescribes are just suppressing symptoms anyway, right?
And so, but the doctor adopts an attitude of arrogance, thinking unrealistically that he or she now has power over life and death,
as though he or she has the power to bestow life back upon you, like if your heart stops beating.
It’s like, I did that.
Okay. And if that sort of hubris takes over, this is the kind of stuff that will cause you to
suffer. Okay. If you literally begin to believe that you have the power of life and death that
way, that’s going to cause some terrible ironies in your life. And we know this is true, don’t we?
People who take themselves too seriously tend to end up suffering tremendously. And this form of
Hubris naturally is a problem for magicians, okay?
So the sort of myth cycle of Doctor Strange illustrates that fairly well.
A very arrogant character from the beginning was a doctor
and had to learn humility in order to become a powerful magician.
Now, here’s a good story about hubris, okay?
And this illustrates it probably even better.
What’s up with the hair there?
Like go up to Mount Sinai, talk to God, and suddenly your hair is like gorgeous, right?
Or static electricity or something like that.
So there’s a legend about Moses.
He was a prophet and he appeared to have magical powers,
like the parting of the Red Sea and things like that.
And as he led the Jews into the Promised Land or towards the Promised Land,
he took care of them and he would follow various signs of God and things like that
to help them find food and whatnot and at one point he was they needed water and so he was
looking for water using his prophetic ability right and he became aware apparently that there
was a spring somewhere right and so he wanted to reveal the spring to the people so they could
drink and um god in his in his mind told him to point to where the spring was so that they could
get water but he in his arrogance wanted it apparently he wanted to make it seem like he
was using magic to cause water to flow from the earth and so he struck the a rock with his staff
and the rock rolls out of the way and the water starts coming out and everybody’s like oh he
caused water to gush from the earth with his magical power. Now, God didn’t like that. He
punished him for it, at least according to the myth, right? So he was not allowed to enter the
promised land. He had to stay behind. Okay. Now, is that really a punishment? Okay. See, the problem
was that he had lost, in that moment, he had lost sight of the fact that he was not God. He took it
upon himself to become god for a moment and and use the miraculous power and make it look like
he was the one causing the water to rush out of the earth okay so when magicians do things like
that that’s what we call ego inflation and that does cause them to suffer and the more they do
that the more they miss the mark okay so if you become a magician and then if you believe you
really do have magical powers that are godlike or special or different then you have missed the mark
you have sinned and now you’re not going to be you’re not going to be able to get much further
than that you won’t be able to get into the promised land whatever that is right you can’t
really achieve enlightenment if you think you are the ultimate divinity okay in your human form
i hope that makes sense okay and so it can be very discouraging for me to say that because
many people who are doing magic well they want those powers they want to be able to do it
what really tends to happen is that you begin to live a life that is sort of more prophetic or in
harmony with the world around you and it will seem as though you have magical powers but there’s
really um you’re doing the same thing everybody else is doing okay or that everybody else is
capable of doing there’s nothing special about you okay and but if you try to adopt a status
that is some kind of divine status you are going to it’s going to hold you back okay it’s going to
keep you out of the promised land of enlightenment so yes in that sense black magic really is
possible okay and so one of the easiest ways to fall into the trap of black magic is to go after
very specific results in order to think literally okay to so when you make a goal for magic you
you visualize a specific outcome and it has to take that form okay this is you adopting a sort
of magician status that is beyond human which you are unworthy of okay it’d be better to remain
human and remain under the umbrella of that force whatever force you are calling upon
but allow it to decide how it will appear i don’t know if that makes sense okay um this is really
very tricky too because it can be very useful to visualize a specific outcome that you want okay
but the trick is that you do not become attached to that exact outcome if you’re visualizing
specific outcomes it’s more like well it could take this form it could take that form okay but
i leave it to the greater powers of the universe to decide how this thing is going to manifest
so i’m hoping that makes sense okay if you think you really do have the power to change to cause
something to appear exactly the way that you want it then you are engaging in black magic not only
isn’t not going to work. It’s going to keep you from living in
harmony with those higher powers or bigger powers who are
actually in control of everything. This is difficult to
describe, as you can tell. But you might say that having a
specific outcome of mind is a small is a sort of small
mindedness of the magician. Okay, so if I want to experience
wealth that’s fine so i can start exploring the theme of wealth and then all the karmic forces
in my life that have to do with wealth will start to unpack themselves okay that’s the most i can
hope for okay um now experiencing the theme of wealth that can take all kinds of forms okay it’s
not necessary and so if you think it’s going to turn into cash or something like that this is
where the small mindedness comes into play. So you’re adopting a status for yourself that is
above your station when you do that. And then of course, supposedly the gods will punish you then.
The interesting thing is that your life can become a sort of hell when you do that,
when you lust for specific results. Okay. I gave an example of that from, there was a great movie
called American Gigolo with Richard Gere and he plays a gigolo naturally um he’s very talented
he is Richard Gere after all and uh and he goes to take care of a client and this is a client
situation where the the husband wants to watch his wife having sex with the gigolo okay uh he’s
being paid to do this right so the wife is not really cool with this she doesn’t really want
to go through with it okay but um he’s been paid and the husband is sitting back and watching and
then the um they begin making out uh and he’s quite talented and the wife does start to really
get into it and something starts to unfold and develop naturally a really natural passion begins
to start to happen oh it’s like oh we’re really going to have a really hot sex scene going on
here right and then suddenly the husband interrupts and says no first you have to take off her blouse
Then you have to take off her belt.
Then you have to take off the brassiere in that order.
It has to happen like this.
And then they both look at him like, dude, you just ruined everything.
So it totally kills the mood, kills everything, and then wrecks the whole production.
That’s the black magician at work thinking, I need to have, everything needs to happen
to my specifications, this way, to please me in this specific way.
Okay, so that is, and that is the kind of approach to life management and magic that causes the gods to punish you, or causes some serious irony to start happening in your life.
Okay, karmic repercussions, which brings me to the concept of the holy guardian angel.
okay so in the golden dawn system students uh supposedly the goal is to achieve contact with
your holy guardian angel okay and uh i’ve had a number of consultations where i kind of give the
scary version of the angel so many people like to think of the holy guardian angel as a being of
light who comes down from heaven and consoles you and and guides you and rescues you and fights for
you well there’s another image of the angel that might be closer to the mark and this is this one
is not uh very pleasing it can be quite unsettling actually so here we go okay so the holy guardian
angel is behind you you can’t see it okay i’m only speaking figuratively it’s not literally
behind you okay so it’s you can’t see it it’s like it’s behind you and it is holding you down
into manifestation okay so it’s pinning you down into the material realm forcing you to look at
things okay this is very much like the Greeks thought about it okay so the every person sort
of came into this planetary field of the universe where drama could unfold where the gods were
pretty much maintaining a system of order that allowed some kind of drama to unfold right people
would enter that realm so that they could experience some kind of drama. And if they
shrunk away from that task of experiencing that type of drama, they had a guardian spirit that
accompanied them. And that guardian spirit, yes, it would protect them sometimes, but it would also
hold them to their task. So if they shrunk away from their destiny, it would force them,
it would rub their noses in their destiny, right? So if you are someone who hides from the things
that you have to process karmically, who shrinks away from the tasks that you were given supposedly
when you entered manifestation, when you entered incarnation, right? If you shrink away from your
destiny and you’re not brave enough to face it, the holy guardian angel will grab you from behind
and push you into it and pin you down and make you experience it and it’s kind of like it’s
grabbing you from behind saying look look at this drama and you’re saying no I don’t want to I don’t
want to see it I don’t want to do it and it’s like look look at it and the more you resist that the
more you suffer and so that experience of being pinned down or held down and and sort of made to
to complete your task it’s kind of like being held down in hell or in tartarus okay and so the more
you resist that sort of divine plan or whatever it is the more you suffer and the more hell-like
your your life can become okay and so you think about it so the the magician enters the vault
of the adepte okay and you got that floor which represents these evil dark forces that are sort
of kept in check right and we’ve got the divine light coming down from above through that other
triangle and the the task then is to process all these raw forces and to make sense out of them
and help the universe complete its plan whatever that is okay so apparently god’s making meaning
out of himself or something like that right and you are part of that if you shrink from that task
then you’re going to be shoved down into it even harder okay so you’re going to be pushed down into
the floor of that temple to exceed that serpent power face to face in all of its ugliness okay
if you willingly take on the task then the angel will back off and everything becomes easier
Okay, everything becomes sort of effortless even it could even get that good. Okay, but it won’t be all roses
Okay, there’s still a task. There’s some work some kind of work that is to be done
Okay, and so looking at the holy guardian angel this way can be quite frightening
And you might have see, you know examples of people around you who have a very hard life
Why is it so hard notice how they resist everything?
Everything that’s being coming up to saying look at me. Look at me. Look at me and they don’t want to see it
nope nope nope that’s not this that’s not how it’s supposed to be this is not how it’s supposed
to be right and the more they do that the more the angel says look process make meaning out of this
live meaningful live a meaningful life stop running away from things okay so the more you are willing
to adopt this apparent task okay um the more the angel will let up on you and actually will start
to protect you and guide you in really helpful ways okay there seems to be some kind of truth
to that this is not literally true okay but seeing it that way then you can begin to see
what this entity is this sort of holy guardian angel okay or this as the greeks would call it
the daimon the guardian spirit that will make sure you complete your task okay one final thing
the uh hp left craft is known for inventing the genre of cosmic horror so we move into modern
times where uh modern technology really is now harnessing the forces of nature and keeping
nature somewhat in control right it’s more the same it’s more that same of the the sort of um
olympian powers um showing up in our arts and sciences and our ability to control change the
course of rivers and things like that right and but the more we do that the more supposedly there
is a fear of all of that technological control not being enough and of course ultimately it
isn’t enough eventually the second law of thermodynamics is going to kick in and the
universe is still going to go through a chaotic heat death humans will not be here forever in
this form and that this cannot last and eventually the forces of chaos will overwhelm everything and
we’ll be gone at least in this form and that that fear of all this civilization’s control
the fear of our repression no longer being strong enough to hold back the darkness
that erupts into cool forms of modern horror and it’s the fear of the old gods coming back like
the god kothu who okay the old the old ones and uh the cool thing about h.p lovecraft’s mythology
is that they’re apparently um in some of the stories we discover religions that are far older
than any religion that we have any historical record of and these older forms of religion are
truly horrifying, where the powers that existed before are formless and gelatinous. And just to
look at them will cause you to go instantly insane. And H.P. Lovecraft is known for some
pretty iconic statements. And you’ll notice that that second one is pretty much captures it.
We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity. And it was not
meant that she we should voyage far this is the idea of that sort of bubble of the universe which
is maintained by the planetary powers or by the archons which are keeping things relatively stable
relatively peaceful so that we we can sort of in a controlled way make force make sense of chaos you
know uh and uh that placid island of ignorance okay is not really what the reality is like the
ultimate reality is full of chaos and horror okay so the true nature of the universe and H.P.
Lovecraft’s existence is uh is chaos and truly horrifying and if we looked upon it we would go
insane uh it’s kind of funny really because what he what the thing that his the characters in his
stories are most afraid of is that control of civilization dissolving and everything going
back into formlessness, okay, or into chaos. And the whole essence of that horror in cosmic horror
is a confusion between the concepts of chaos and formlessness. When the Greeks used the word chaos
many eons ago, they really meant formlessness, okay? But that could also refer to disorder,
like um turbulence craziness explosions you know and everything flying in every different direction
everything’s out of control right but being formless and out of control are really two
different things okay so um but it’s kind of funny because in lovecraftian horror the old
ones are gelatinous formless um creatures with many eyeballs all over them and many mouths and
and tentacles and things like that and that’s supposedly horrifying um but of course it’s it
is kind of funny because the um what somebody seeks in enlightenment is the formless state
okay but that formless state to the um to to the non-initiate that formless state
gets confused with craziness with turbulence and with being out of control okay and so if you’re
not ready for the enlightenment experience it seems like you are disintegrating and exploding
or turning into slime you’re going to melt away you’re going to you’re going to disintegrate right
that’s a misunderstanding now you can see here that the love crafting creatures are like that
they’re gelatinous or with tentacles and they have mouths all over them that come and go
or eyeballs okay and this is even a nice little example of that roadway it looks like a little
triangle of manifestation doesn’t it like something is being evoked with the triangle
of manifestation there and it’s a cosmic horror because it’s coming from the formless chaotic realm
from beyond the planetary spheres of the archons right before from beyond the planetary spheres of
stability and control so it’s almost as though everything outside of the astrological universe
is craziness and evil chaos and everything’s exploding and going every which way okay
but um you know according to initiates that’s no that’s that there’s that the chaos that exists
out there is simply formlessness it’s pure radiance pure divinity so it’s ultimately um
cosmic horror if you look at it it’s it’s mainly a um a confusion of chaos and formlessness
a chaos with formlessness okay and the the egyptians suffered from that too they were
really worried that beyond all the stars beyond all the stars there was a darkness and chaos and
you know um just a crazy formlessness that was threatening to flood in and just destroy everything
and make everything you know a bunch of explosions um but that that represents a um an uninitiated
perspective on what formlessness can be which is simply you know pure white radiance of consciousness
the clear light all right so i hope that made sense um so the takeaways are the interesting
thing is that uh what you learn in the outer order is how to invoke the elements and banish
the elements and the planets and yet um the planets and the elements are really part of
what maintains this sort of human realm okay and so the interesting thing is that the mystery is
still there why is this realm of relative stability and relative order being maintained
what’s it for okay so this is what you begin to discover for yourself and it begins to give you
a purpose like what oh this is oh this is what i’m going to use magic to do okay and these these
are things i’ve been talking about pretty much all throughout these videos like what is the true
purpose of this this material plane of existence okay and it looks like the you know the the
systems the systems of magic have some interesting ways of explaining that okay I’m kind of leaving
it open here so that you explore in the outer order you explore basically just the the framework
of the Olympian gods and the elements and this universe of relative stability it’s like you
begin to notice okay it’s here so now what you get it really firmly established for yourself
that it’s a framework that you can now play with and operate in but then of course
the question arises what am I going to do with this and this is something that you discover
when you go through you know the grade system of the golden dawn hopefully okay and hopefully with
the guidance of a teacher who has made some attainment. All right. So until next time,
I know that was pretty deep, wasn’t it? I think next time we’ll talk about something pretty simple
like timing, like the planetary days, planetary hours. I think we’ll talk about that. All right.
So until next time.
