Descriptions:
Video Description
Tucked inside alchemy’s strange old drawings is a richer form of thought than the modern world remembers. In this full-moon conversation, Lyam Christopher asks why the art of transformation seems so weird: flasks, bubbles, serpents, sun and moon, sulfur, mercury, and fire all gathered among the symbols. His opening move is to treat those strange substances less as chemicals and more as figures arising in the imagination, nature constantly bringing forms out of a hidden background.
At the center of the lesson is a dance of opposites. Fire and water, sun and moon, sulfur and mercury, male and female are not enemies to be crushed together, but currents that cross and spark. He points to Mercury as a substance with a surprising double nature, carrying both poles at once when stirred. In that image, the old alchemists were not hiding a recipe so much as picturing the way life itself keeps rippling into being.
The practical ending brings it down to earth. The wand in a temple, he says, does not wave a car into existence or conjure a perfect life; it works on the one holding it. Alchemy becomes a way of noticing that discomfort about deep things is often a defense, and that the mystery is not far away but right up against us. It is a strangely cheerful invitation to sit with the unknown.
Full Video Transcript
Okay we’re having a full moon right now and this time around we’re talking about
imaginal substances somehow in my consultations with people i always seem to end up talking about
how imagination is real and then about how things in the imagination aren’t necessarily real
except as imagination okay so it’s important to talk about maybe imaginal substances
yeah um maybe we can get uh talk a little bit about reification which is the primary
fallacy that happens in the practice of magic and why is alchemy so weird why is alchemy so weird
so if you study alchemical texts we get all these really strange diagrams of weird creatures
and strange contraptions with fire burning down below
and then liquid that is maybe bubbling in some kind of beaker
and evaporating and then condensing and falling back down again,
things like this, right?
As those substances are being played with
and these substances are being personified in forms of male and female
and they’re also being symbolically represented in terms of sun and moon
and sulfur and mercury and fire and water and the four elements all right so one way to look at
the these imaginal substances they’re really not so complicated if you look at your experience of
the world you can notice that nature is bodying forth all kinds of things as though they’re coming
forth from a background and i remember in biology when we first started studying biology as life
sciences maybe even in elementary school the concept of spontaneous generation gets taught
in chapter one okay oh it used to be thought that uh that the that matter spontaneously generates
life uh so in other words when there’s some meat um decomposing uh then the meat eventually
transmutes or spontaneously generates maggots and the maggots just come from the meat and then they
you know turn into little i guess flies and fly away or something like that um and so the thought
was that um matter was being spontaneously generated or that that life was being
spontaneously generated from matter somehow and then of course the the big aha is that oh science
eventually revealed that that doesn’t happen that life emerges differently and i always thought that
was a bit weird because it’s like well the things that are alive are made of matter right so where
did they get the matter they get them they get that matter of their bodies from the matter around
them so so matter is somehow spontaneously generating forth these life forms something
like that right so i didn’t think that the idea of spontaneously spontaneous generation was that
naive i thought it was pretty spot on even if the process by which matter does that was uh still not
fully appreciated by the you know early scientists or the proto-scientists of their time
I’m bringing this up because all around us, we are constantly presented with personifications
of magical substances, and the whole world can be seen as a sort of an imagination backdrop
from which things are emerging forth to express things from unmanifestation into manifestation.
And you yourself are one of those sort of characters that is being bodied forth from
nature into the open air of expression where we get to interact with other things that are being
bodied forth and all of us are constantly uh in bloom like this coming forth from nature and then
of course receding back into nature again or disintegrating back into nature again uh but
things are constantly just coming forth constantly like uh and so this is the way the psyche works in
a dream too the the psyche is just sort of this universal background of of goo and occasionally
like solidifies and spews forth this sort of form that does things for a while and then it recedes
back into the background again okay so the psyche is sort of like that it’s almost as though the
psyche itself is some kind of universal substance from which forms congeal and emerge and enact some
kind of little drama and then dissolve back into that sort of universal goo again okay and we could
say that that universal goo from which everything emerges is the imagination itself why not let’s
say that and then of course the mystery is well the physical world isn’t imagination is it okay
and this is where things get very interesting and very tangled up okay ultimately for a romanticist
or for a golden dawn magician, the physical world is also made of imagination. Everything
is made of imagination. Everything is mind. Okay. But the manner in which that can be appreciated
must be grokked. It must be explored. If it is true, how is it true? How does it happen?
we have to get at that um the experience of how that happens without falling for the the tricks
of science that try to prove to us that imagination doesn’t exist kind of absurd actually to say that
imagination doesn’t exist it’s kind of what we’re looking at all the time when we look at the world
so imagination bodies forth all kinds of characters and substances and colors and textures and
creatures okay and these creatures and experiences and colors and textures come forth and then
recede back into nature again and maybe come forth again and these substances come forth in forms of
life or as characters in a drama such as male and female or sun and moon sulfur and mercury
the sulfur and mercury of alchemy okay that’s why alchemy is so weird because it simply acknowledges
that there’s this universal goo of the imagination from which things come forth and express themselves
and then the things recede back into that universal background okay um it just acknowledges
that as a reality and then you begin to work with your life as if it really is this universal prima
materia this substance also known as imagination let’s quote uh alistair crowley here one of the
of the biggest mistakes that aspiring magicians make is that they take magic literally or they
reify it okay so if i am able to work with elemental fire then i can maybe light fire
with my fingers okay actually that’s possible but not in the way that you think okay so the
very often the way that new students in magic describe the elements nope it’s not it okay so
there’s the elements of the wise though and there there’s the elements as the as the vulgar see them
okay and so there’s the inner elements which we explore in the elemental grades of the golden
dawn and then there’s the elements that we experience as you know a campfire or a river
or an avalanche, okay, or the breeze, the wind, okay. The elements on the inside are not quite
the same as the elements as they appear in the external world. And this is something we have to
wrestle with in the elemental grades because it’s not an easy thing to explain or to understand.
All right, to quote Alistair Crowley, this is from Liber O, okay. And Liber O is a book
and uh or it’s more really more of an essay um in this book it is spoken of this the sphere oath
and the paths of spirits and conjurations of gods spheres planes and many other things which may or
may not exist it is immaterial whether these exist or not by doing certain things certain
results will follow students are most earnestly warned against attributing objective reality or
philosophic validity to any of them okay and you can usually tell whether someone’s an initiate or
not um as if they are reifying uh what they are experiencing um i’ve been working with the element
error for a while and el and the the element air is all about the mind and so it’s all about my
thinking right that’s fine yeah but that’s a very the element air is much more than that okay so
somewhere in some kind of catalog of magical powers the student has heard that the element air
actually just represents the mind and then that’s it air means mind end of story right no now air is
much more subtle than just a single definition like that all right and so hopefully maybe by
the end of this video we’ll sort of loosen up those um those uh definitions so that people
don’t just say oh i know the meaning of air now and it means this let’s next let’s move to the
next concept oh fire means this fire means the passions right that’s what fire means okay now
let’s move on to water what’s the water is the emotions oh now i know what water is no you don’t
it’s not that simple all right so and here crowley warns people not to take magic literally
okay so if we’re going to get at how imaginal substances work what is magical fire magical
water magical air what is the sulfur and mercury of the alchemists what are these imaginal
substances if they’re not real then why are we bothering to mess around with them okay so to
explore them we should go back to the the dawn of creation okay and the dawn
of creation there was nothing let’s say we’re gonna go into Kabbalah here and in
Kabbalah the before the universe existed there was nothing but God okay so God
existed just everywhere was because there wasn’t really aware to go into
he just he simply was all so in order to create something he first had to get
sort of restless and there was an agitation going on and so somehow he had
he was getting restless within himself and and had to find a way to agitate
himself or to touch himself to stimulate himself to produce manifestation it’s
almost like you he’s able to reach out and touch himself and then stir stir the
waters of himself so that ripples of manifestation begin to emerge kind of like throwing a throwing
a rock into a pond or something like that right and so it’s almost like um he is there’s nothing
but god but then he arises from himself and then touches himself and agitates his um infinite being
so that it produces ripples of consciousness or ripples of drama that now produce creation and so
in the act of doing that first there’s a separation between god and not god okay so
he has to open up a space within himself in which he’s not there okay that isn’t really possible
okay there isn’t really such a thing as no nothingness okay so it’s more like he has a
dream he had just imagined there’s just he imagines there’s a space within himself in
which he isn’t in that space it’s imaginary right and then somehow within that imaginary space um
of nothingness of not godness um he then begins to uh to extend himself into that space so that
he can now agitate himself from the inside so to speak right um and then produce sort
of ripples of consciousness or even ripples of ecstasy so that he now um the passion of
existence now emerges the drama of existence now emerges as ripples of consciousness sort
like the ocean of infinite being agitating itself so that it can experience waves on its surface or
ripples of consciousness something like that and so in that process of rising up above himself and
touching himself those are two different forces supposedly created they both they both emerge
from the same ultimate ground of being but as they are now facing each other and saying he reaches
back to touch upon himself to agitate himself or stimulate himself um these two surfaces now face
each other okay and these two surfaces for the alchemists for for our purposes here are two
different substances um it’s almost like a tentacle of water rises up from the waters and
then turns back around and splashes down upon itself okay and the the tentacle of water that
comes up is somewhat phallic in nature right and it and it basically comes back and touches upon
itself or penetrates into itself and this is sulfur okay the penetrating power of alchemical
sulfur this is sulfur not with an f but with a ph s u s u l p h u r i think right um instead of s u
l f e r f u r something like that and um sulfur is the sort of irritating or agitating power that
comes around and then begins to stir a manifestation and create that ripples of consciousness
and the surface down here down below that’s being agitated is mercury okay you might even think of
it like quicksilver it’s now being jiggled and there’s these ripples of mirror-like consciousness
flowing out and within that the reflective medium of that rippling consciousness drama
the drama of the universe unfolds. It’s an interesting idea too, because whatever imagery
arises in that mirror is not necessarily real, but it is regarded as real. All right. And that’s
what happens in the drama of the creation of the universe, also known as Tsim Tsum by the Kabbalists,
where God opens a space within himself and then pours some of himself into that space and then
agitates out of the surface of the waters to produce ripples of consciousness something like
that okay so um when that happens uh you can see that um the symbol of the sun is actually
it can be seen as a representation of sulfur and mercury that that circle with the dot in it is the
astrological symbol of the sun and it sort of represents that that power of manifestation
already in operation. So in other words, the circle represents the sort of mirror of Mercury,
nice flat reflective surface, right? And then of course, the touching upon the center then is that
agitating sulfur force, which is stirring it or causing ripples of consciousness and drama to
emerge, okay? And you can think of this as the magician standing in the midst of his circle,
and the magician represents that sulfur aspect okay the irritating nature of the ego okay or
the persona who has now emerged in the midst of this drama and is now stirring things up causing
trouble okay so that things can now become dramatic and work themselves out okay so the
magician actually is sort of a troublemaker within his magic circle he’s agitating things to now
move and appear and that’s why when we when some conjurations of spirits they say move and appear
show thyselves you know something like that right it’s almost as though the spirits are always there
but you can’t see them unless they move move and appear okay um and supposedly in the process
of this um sulfur mercury interaction the drama of the universe unfolds okay and precipitating
out of that drama is the third philosophic principle. We have two philosophic principles,
sulfur and mercury. And then the third philosophic principle then is salt, which is like the
crystallization precipitating out of that drama of the universe. And supposedly the material world
is built upon that crystallization process or that. So the material world now is precipitated
out of that drama somehow crazily okay and then we have the three philosophic principles working
together okay the ultimate ground of being which cannot be seen agitates itself so that things
begin to become visible as two interacting forces and then precipitating out of that crazy interaction
is this crystallization substance of the universe or matter coming into being is any of this stuff
real not literally no okay and sulfur and mercury can be described in many different ways i’m just
describing them in one particular useful way right now i’m going to i’m going to be describing
them in other ways which is probably going to drive some people a little bit crazy and so this
process can be seen as um the uh the serpent here this is the bronze serpent or the serpent
nashashtan uh from the old testament um for the alchemists nailing the serpent to the cross was
the equivalent of the sulfur force pinning down the serpent and now forcing him to manifest some
kind of drama within that cross-like space okay and the cross represents salt let’s say
and the serpent represents mercury which wasn’t going to reveal anything unless he was pinned down
and then forced to do something yeah it sounds kind of scary actually okay so that’s what these
symbols tend to mean okay there are other meanings for them of course and so with sulfur and mercury
for our intentions here they represent sulfur is the subject okay it’s you in the center of your
magic circle looking at the world out there and the world out there is the object okay and when
that’s how our consciousness works subjects and objects when you think of how a sentence works
a sentence is a complete thought and a sentence contains a subject and an object okay really
really a subject and a compliment but let’s call it subject and object something doing something
to something else subject verb object right the subject is doing something to the object and in
that subject object interaction there’s the drama of creation without subject and object nothing can
really exist everything just kind of recedes back into a seamless nothingness so sulfur is the
subject and mercury is the object and and it’s nice to look at that way because then you see that
the subject you in your magical experiments are the agitator you’re actually a fiery irritating
force which is stirring the universe to produce some kind of drama this is how magic works okay
this is how the lesser banishing ritual the pentagram works you’re stirring up trouble
actually as we have talked about before and of course that also represents in alchemy the forces
of the sun and moon the sun usually being male and the moon usually being female they don’t have
to be seen that way in fact the moon taken as a male symbol is very interesting and maybe i’ll do
video on that at some time okay but usually for alchemy the moon is considered um female very
much like mercury um in that in the dichotomy of sulfur and mercury mercury would be female
But as we will see later on, Mercury also has a sort of hermaphroditic quality, both male and female at the same time.
You might say that Mercury, when it’s being agitated or there are ripples in it, then it has both male and female qualities going on at the same time.
The interesting thing is when God is reaching within himself into that emptiness, stimulating the universe into manifestation, producing ripples of ecstasy and drama, it’s kind of analogous to reaching inside and finding the G-spot, okay?
I think that’s why, you know, on some level there’s such a mystique surrounding the G-spot, not that it’s really that big a deal, okay?
Or whether some people don’t think it really exists.
and uh or their system it’s such a mystique or a mythos around it right because on a deeper level
it represents the um irritation and stimulation and agitation um that produces ripples of ecstasy
or ripples of appreciation or ripples of drama okay um you can see how all of these different
scenarios get tangled up with each other in associations and the magician learns
to untangle them and just see them as representations of the forces of
creation or manifestation itself yeah and to not make such a big deal out but
to not make such a big deal out of them anymore to not see those as vulgar
necessarily at but to see them you know in multiple different ways but but
mainly in very let’s say deep sort of ways okay this could also be seen as
then that’s Center that dot in the center is this spot of irritation or
agitation that produces ripples of drama or ecstasy or whatever you want to call
that that produces then manifestation or you know a new child something like that
all right so in the last video I talked about finding the off switch of
suffering and we have to remember that um that so the monster maker is you who uh walks around in
the world making good and bad things out of everything it experiences and of course as in
the process of you labeling things good and bad you create suffering for yourself and those
qualities of good and bad that you um put out there into the world in order to navigate among
various forces okay those qualities of good and bad don’t really exist but you think they do and
that’s you think they’re really out there and when you think that they are real like that in that way
then you are guilty of the fallacy of reification making them real okay they’re not really there
now do good and bad really exist well they sort of do yes as sort of qualities that you inject
into things for for various reasons they exist as that but they’re not really out there in the
object if i stub my foot on the door i might get angry because it hurts and hit the door punch the
door because damn it that hurt what i’m not noticing is that my mind has automatically
ejected a negative quality into the door it’s an enemy of some kind and must be repelled or
punished or whatever like that right that isn’t really happening it’s not really possible okay
but of course i have reified it i have fallen for the illusion of the door being a bad entity and
hit the door out of anger right uh and of course an enlightened being supposedly wouldn’t do that
or or would um or to catch himself in the act of doing it just as it’s happening it’s like oh
that’s the doors not really to blame yeah so that’s the monster maker like that’s you in
the midst of your magic circle seeing forces around you as monsters okay and of course uh
if you want that process of suffering to end you need to find you need to find the off switch of
suffering okay which is deep down inside the mother of the monster maker deep down there in
the dark of the subconscious let’s say right and it’s deep down there in the dark where in in that
deep cave of existence where god is touching himself and stirring the universe into manifestation
okay um and so the off switch of suffering is right there where that agitation is happening
it’s like oh doesn’t need to be happening does it like just okay or when you realize how that
actually works it’s like this is oh this isn’t just agitation doesn’t need to hurt it can feel
wonderful so you begin to see how manifestation is actually being created there’s your off switch to
suffering right there okay now uh if you’re not aware of how that’s happening then of course the
agitation is creating you the ego let’s say and the ego in turn makes lots of monsters out of
everything it sees and so that the great mother of the universe who’s being stimulated like that
is often blamed for making the monsters okay but she’s actually making you who who basically sees
everything out there as monsters it’s you who are making the monsters not that it’s your fault
because it’s happening unconsciously okay all right so um when you when the universe is being
agitated and creating um ripples of drama again you arise as an entity in that drama and you are
arising as someone who sees things as good and bad okay when you fall for the appearances of
good and bad and you think that really are happening you have created or entered into
a shell world okay so in order for me to see things out there as good and bad i have to create
little bubbles out of them or little objects out of them i draw outlines around them and then and
then i label what’s inside that outline as good or bad okay or monster or angel or demon something
like that right and uh then then if i end up believing that those little territories of good
and bad really are there i have reified them and then i exist in a shell world because i’ve created
these shells of good that contain good and bad entities okay and that’s what the klipath are
klipath really really means shell empty shell or husk okay so when your mind creates little
thought bubbles and then fills each bubble with good and bad qualities you are operating within
a shell world which is perfectly fine okay but when you are not aware that you’re doing it
then it becomes a world of suffering because you really think that good and bad is the out there
out to get you or out or out to deprive you of what you don’t have or and then that’s a world
of suffering and then the so that’s why the shell world or the the world of the kleepoth is the world
the demons demons are empty husks you know soulless empty husks and yes they sort of are
okay um and any entity at all that arises from the universal background of the imagination
it arises in some kind of form is now arising in some kind of shell okay but it’s not an entity
that automatically produces suffering unless you take it literally and you think it really is like
that okay you you insert a good quality into it and make it into an angel and then you insert a
bad quality into that one over there and call it the devil a demon um and if you take that
literally and you believe it then you yes you’re trapped in the shell world you’re trapped in
samsara the world of suffering okay which doesn’t exist really yeah if you withdraw your projections
and stop projecting good and bad qualities out there it disappears there is no real good and bad
okay well you could just shift good and bad to another level and say well good is the thing that
keeps me stuck believing in all these things and suffering or no well or bad is the quality it
makes me keeps me suffering like this right good is the thing that makes me aware of what i’m doing
and that makes me stop suffering yeah sure why not so there yeah very often good and bad on that
level is like a new level of morality it’s like what i call hermetic good and evil there’s good
and evil of the things you believe oh this this is uh this causes people to die so it’s evil and
this caught this helps people live so it must be good that’s absurd okay those qualities are not
inherently good or bad okay but in a hermetic sense um something that helps you free yourself
from that drama could be considered good and that but something that keeps you stuck in that
illusory drama of good and bad objects right that could be considered evil and it’s a whole
different level of morality hermetic good and evil is that real no that’s not real either but
the deeper level of morality okay fire water air and earth these are also imaginal substances okay
even if you’re looking at a campfire and sticking your hand in it and getting it burned
that isn’t really fire fire is a label that you are attaching to something that you’ve sort of
wrapped a thought bubble around okay and very often it gets a bad label attached to it or a
danger label attached to it fire dangerous right um but if you if you stop doing that you stop
creating a little shell around it and stop filling that shell with danger or whatever quality you’re
filling it with heat like say and you really look at what’s happening you don’t know what’s there
it becomes quite mysterious there’s no such thing as fire actually how interesting and then so when
when fire like that when when the quality of fire begins to withdraw from the fire the campfire out
there and you realize this is just a projection of my mind and then you look back at the supposed
campfire what is it that i’m actually looking at i don’t even know it’s just the imagination
bodying forth mysterious forces that have no inherently good or bad qualities at all okay
okay so now fire water air and earth are very important to deal with in the elemental grades
and one way to look at these things is um when uh to in order to distinguish um the quality of fire
that you inject into things out there and uh the physical phenomena whatever that is that’s
truly out there it’s important to begin to recognize the um the troublesome aspects of
the elements and what you guys could do in your lbrp is actually see the um elemental forces out
there air in the east water in the west fire in the south earth in the north you could see these
elemental forces as dangerous okay and what happens is in the element in the lesser vanishing
ritual the pentagram you are actually pushing these elemental forces out supposedly into the
environment and regarding them dispassionately okay and so the the air that’s in front of you
can be with rafael standing there right um can be regarded as a hurricane force wind hurling things
at you okay but the pentagram in front of you blocks it from hurting you you’re protected okay
and the water behind you can be seen as let’s say the ocean there’s a path leading down to the ocean
right but then a wave has come up from the ocean like a tsunami has come up from the ocean and is
threatening with you with a wall of water but then the pentagram is there and protects you keeps the
water from hitting you right and then to the south there’s a fire erupting from the the ground which
is threatening to spread and to engulf you and that’s being blocked by the pentagram to the south
and to the north you could see like maybe like a mountain pass and there is an avalanche of rocks
coming down towards you and threatening to bury you but of course the pentagram is there to stop
them as well it stops them from from entering the magic circle and all these things are now
being regarded as just dispassionately and so the let’s say negative qualities that you are
prone to inject into all the forces out there are also now being regarded dispassionately okay is
oh the water is threatening to engulf me is it really dangerous is it evil because it’s going
to destroy me or is it just it is what it is right it’s just an innocent force of nature okay so it’s
important to experience the elements like this and that’s part of what the lesser banishing ritual
the pentagram does okay and uh also what the elemental grades do but the elemental grades
get you to experience the elements one at a time within the magic circle or within your own makeup
oh these things are part of me okay so these things that are supposedly dangerous out there
threatening to drown me or burn me or whatever blow me away bury me um they i made of these
things oh what is the world exactly it’s not a world of danger sure i can be killed but what
does that matter i’m made of this stuff the things that are killing me are me okay so that’s one
thing about the elements i’d also like to talk about the elements uh in terms of sulfur and
mercury because in in the golden dawn uh fire water air and earth you would think that the
highest element would be the least dense let’s say fire and then there’s a slightly more dense
element like air and then even more dense would be water and then the densest of all would be earth
but that’s not the way the the golden dawn lays them out very important because the way the golden
dawn sees the four elements is very much like an alchemist might look at them for the creation
of the universe or for your ability to manifest your heart’s desire for you or your ability to
create things apparently okay so when the as you will recall when the universe first stirs itself
into being there’s sulfur and mercury and sulfur is a fiery force it’s an agitating irritating
force and then it it agitates and causes trouble like fire does right and of course then there’s
the water so the fire and water are now you know um you could say maybe the fire is causing the
water to boil and that’d be turbulent or something like that right uh it can also be seen as the
fiery male force impregnating the female water force and from that union the universe spews forth
okay in that interaction between fire and water um fire could be regarded as sulfur water could
be regarded as mercury okay and earth could be regarded as salt which precipitates forth from
the interaction of fire and water okay this is not the only way of looking at it i’m sure i’m
i’m going to get interesting comments about this is wrong and all that stuff right if if you get
dogmatic about these things and say liam’s interpretation is wrong you are demonstrating
that you are not an initiate okay that you you need to be able to play with these concepts the
way that i’m playing with them now okay and not get stuck on one definition of fire and one
definition of water one definition of mercury okay uh what you can see now is that with fire and
water interacting um air is actually uh can be seen as fire and water together the vibrate the
combination of vibration of the two the the vibration between the two is now how air is
regarded and air in alchemy is regarded as both moist and warm first fire is hot and dry water is
cool and wet air is has the quality of both okay and so the the vibration between fire and water
is what we would call the air substance you could even say the air doesn’t even exist because it’s
merely fire and water and vibration okay and so there’s an imaginary space between the fire and
and water which is now in fluctuation whatever that the in in that opened up space between fire
and water we have manifestation happening this big space opens up and within that space earth
crystallizes into existence okay now so the fire and water interact and producing interesting
patterns within the air which is like a medium of imagination and thought and drama and thinking and
all things right and then uh as those patterns get more and more complex they eventually get
knotted up into earth-like clumps of substance and congeal into solid matter according to
magicians and alchemists um the material world around you whatever this stuff is right is also
imagination okay but this is imagination that is kind of none of our business this is part of god’s
dream going on and this is where he kind of has put us out into this external realm so that we
can cause trouble for ourselves and figure out what’s going on okay it’s almost like we’re now
emerged into this world as as um his eyes and ears looking oh this is what god looks like from
outside of himself what a strange surface world this is right and then now we’re supposed to
figure out how this is all an illusion or yeah and i think in vedantic philosophy it’s this is
all regarded as a big game of hide and seek where god hides consciousness inside each one of us and
we somehow we have to realize that we are god looking for himself or something something like
that okay and so this whole game of fire and water interacting and the interaction itself being the
air element and of course that the arrow element vibration becomes more kind of convoluted and
knotted up it crystallizes or clumps clumps up into earth okay the earth substances around us
the external world which kind of means that the realm of air is the realm of the mind where we
have much more free reign to think our own thoughts okay and the stuff that is sort of
congealed and clumps and crystallized out here this is now stuff we don’t have
much control over okay but it’s also made of mind stuff or of imagination
also okay but the imagination that we have more control over is in the air
realm and the interaction of fire and water okay it’s very hard for us to see
pure water in this sense or purifier in this sense we can only really see them
relative to each other do do fire and water actually exists as pure entities
apparently not we can only behold them relative to each other in the medium of
air and earth what does all this mean so you might say that the imagination
itself which is that original substance that got agitated and skits ripples of
consciousness and begins to produce drama and then magic manifestation and
the physical world right this medium of imagination has become agitated and then tangled up inside
itself it’s even experienced maybe an explosion like the big bang and in the big bang little
fragments of sulfur and mercury flew out everywhere and got all tangled up and lost inside
this chasm of craziness okay and now all these bits of sulfur and mercury are trying to
find each other again okay and that’s why in the outcome in alchemists they actually saw these
things as in the earth as like almost like literal sulfur and literal mercury and these things could
then be extracted forth from the earth and then maybe brought back together so that the pure dance
of manifestation can now again be appreciated okay and this is also where metallurgical alchemy
comes into play because they thought that the different metals of the earth were manifestations
of sulfur and mercury and salt right um and as metals evolved from lead into i don’t know lead
into copper into silver into gold whatever something like that um that uh we were getting
closer and closer to the original substance the prima materia or the the quintessentia
the quintessence and the quintessence is just basically the pure undisturbed medium of god
before manifestation emerged perfect peace profound as the theosophists i believe called it
right perfect peace peace profound is so peaceful that nothing exists okay until we have the
agitation coming back into play again and things begin to come out of it again and precipitate out
that all the trauma and everything so in the process of finding ourselves out
here in the world where sulfur and mercury are trapped in all these
different forms it’s as though sulfur is roaming around looking for mercury okay
and the way you can see this is that imagination has become trapped in matter
okay almost like it’s gotten frozen inside the earth that mercury is in the
earth but it needs to be now smelted out or extracted somehow right or gold needs
to be smelted out of the earth again to be rescued from its imprisonment and
matter okay so we we roam around in the world trying to free imagination from
these external forces okay so the imagination has been caught in a shell
realm in the world of the Kleepoth and frozen in place and forced to live in existence that is
inauthentic to itself, okay? It’s in these rigid forms that it can’t seem to break out of, right?
It’s being sort of manhandled and made to do bad things, right? And this is almost like
the woman has been kidnapped. The beautiful blonde virgin has been kidnapped by the dragon
and now is being forced to endure the dragon’s uncomfortable advances in some kind of dark
cave down in the earth right and then the hero has to venture down into that dark cave and slay
the beast and free her okay so that’s why we get these images of you know this this is the myth
here this is the golden dawn version of the lover’s card of the tarot okay and it tunes into
the myth of Perseus and Andromeda, where Andromeda is chained to a rock, and it’s going to be
sacrificed to the evil dragon of the sea or whatever like that, and devoured. And he has to
cut her free and of course, kill the monster and cut her free. So in other words, imagination has
become trapped in matter, but it can be set free with some kind of effort, with some kind of
stimulating, agitating force, some kind of aggressive force. A warrior with a sword or
a magician with his magic wand can do things to set the imagination free. What this means for you
and me is that imagination has been conditioned into conforming to certain lines of reasoning.
So you get stuck into certain habits and patterns that keep repeating themselves.
and because it’s stuck in that pattern it’s like trapped inside an earth or like a rock or something
or chain to a rock or something like that right and in order to set it free um you have to see
that the um that imprisonment is not necessary that it’s it’s not even real okay and that that
requires an energetic force of consciousness or you know light of pure awareness to to break in
and um show imagination that she’s not really trapped like that yeah and um there really isn’t
any monster to slay it just seems like that okay and a lot of a lot of these myths play into that
like the whole king kong fey ray myth the hero has to rescue fey ray from king kong because the
king kong doesn’t know how to use imagination properly and he forces it into all kinds of
uncomfortable situations right so he needs to die or go away right and she needs to be rescued
from him so that she can be set free and realize that she’s not trapped and that she’s actually a
spirit of pure joy not a spirit of suffering what does all this have to do with magical powers it
kind of means that the ultimate task of the work is simply to set the imagination free so that it
maybe that you can use it more effectively let’s say okay what’s happened is that you your
Imagination is trapped and is being forced to repeat the same patterns over and over again,
causing you to suffer.
And it’s interfering with your ability to create your own reality.
When the imagination is set free,
you become more and more free to create things the way you want.
It doesn’t have to be the way you’ve been told
or the way you’ve been forced to believe that it is.
Okay.
It kind of means that magic is really mostly about transforming you
into a being that can create change it’s not really about causing the change itself
primarily about changing you into someone who can basically manifest that change without even trying
okay so it’s a mistake to try to do a ritual to make things happen out there you can do that but
the mechanism of action is basically transforming you so that the manifestation process gets tweaked
automatically yeah so the ultimate goal of the golden dawn magician is simply to become someone
for whom magic is just a way of life it’s just normal you walk into a room and the atmosphere
of the room changes because you’re there not because you wave a magic wand okay the magic
wand that you wave around when you’re at home in your temple space let’s say is really about
changing you into a magical being not about changing the world so you can have a car and
and a beautiful wife and all this stuff right all right i think that’s it for this video i hope
that’s clear some somehow uh sometimes i get into very i get into territory that seems very deep
but remember if you regard some of these things that i’m saying as deep remember that um the very
act of dismissing something as deep is a defense mechanism these things are right up against you
they’re right here. And if you say, oh, this stuff is too deep, that probably means it’s
uncomfortable. I don’t like what he’s saying and I’m going to keep it out here for now. It’s too
far down in there for me to understand, right? No, it’s not. Okay. The reason you’re making it
deep like that is probably because there’s something uncomfortable about it. So go ahead
and experience that discomfort and experience it right here. Okay. All right. So until next time.
Source: Lyam Christopher