Robert Fludd Image part 3

At the top of the picture emerging from the cloud of unmanifested spirit there is a hand. This is where the One commits its first act that will lead to the creation of the universe and the generation of the many. 

Pure spirit (the Tetragrammaton inside the cloud) is completely homogeneous, absolute, with no shape, boundaries or dimensions. But a cloud of itself cannot act and the emerging hand is the concrete symbol of its power of agency, direction and execution. A hand gives but it can also hold and enclose, all qualities needed to make a universe. The hand signifies the Logos in action and the point where the formless Supreme Masculine Principle purposefully steps down its own infinite frequency to create the dualistic universe. It is the unmanifested Father projecting an active instrument of Will so that the cosmic plan can be executed.

The hand acts as the initial stepping-stone into form. While it is fully part of the divine cloud, it possesses a distinct shape. By reaching out of the formless void to grip the chain that is the link to the lower worlds, the hand demonstrates that the higher planes must take on the clothing of form to govern the lower worlds. 

In the image the process goes like this. The Hand of God binds formless spirit into the chain of manifested being and sends it down the vertical axis to the Anima Mundi who uses it, the life in it, to form the worlds.

The descending hand is a refutation of the position of the Gnostics, strict non-dualists and advaita enthusiasts because it shows that form, maya, is not an illusion or aberration but the instrument of God through which he works to bring about the multiplication of his being and the expression of his glory in the worlds of time and space.

I said in the previous post that we would explore how Fludd depicts the Trinity in his image. We should now be able to see that this hand represents Christ as the Logos, the first manifestation of form emerging from the formless Father.

The opening of St John's Gospel states that "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God... All things were made through Him." Fludd’s engraving translates this text into visual form showing Christ as the Hand of the Father. For creation to happen, the Hidden God of the cloud must project an active, relational and creative aspect of himself. This is the Son, and the hand emerging from the cloud depicts the action of the Logos. Christ is referred to as the Right Hand of the Father, the instrument of Divine Will, and that is precisely what we see here.

But, Christ is not just the hand. He is also that which the hand holds, the vertical chain that descends from the hand down to the wrist of the Anima Mundi, and then from her down to the Earth. Christ, the Son, is the universal Mediator and the bridge that links the absolute of unmanifested Spirit, the Father, to the dense matrix of physical matter, the Mother.

The perverted ideology of modernity with its rejection of transcendence and collapse of everything to the horizontal reduces Christ, when it bothers with him at all, to an egalitarian social teacher. Fludd’s map shows the much deeper reality. Christ stands for and is the peak of the sacred hierarchy. He is the begotten not created Son of God who enters the world of matter acting as the vertical axis that upholds the entire cosmos.

So far we have seen in this picture the presence of the Father as the cloud and the Son as the hand. The Magna Mater, who is the divine form of the Virgin Mary and Queen of Heaven, is obviously present and it just remains to show how the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, is depicted.

In Christian theology, the Holy Spirit is the divine breath that spreads through all creation from the transcendent above to the immanent below. When we examine Fludd's cosmological map, we see it revealed in the great burst of light radiating outward from the cloud in all directions. This is God as the Divine Fire and Light acting as the immediate agent of creation. The Father wills the plan, the Son acts as the Logos or structural blueprint and the Holy Spirit is the active, vibrating light energy that carries that down into the planetary spheres where it takes a secondary manifestation as the radiation of the sun which has converted divine light into physical heat, life and vitality for the kingdoms below. Note the similarity of the light from the sun positioned in the planetary spheres with the light radiating from the cloud.

Thus, the Father is the hidden source that wills creation, the Son imagines it so that it can be given form by the Anima Mundi and the Holy Spirit is the radiant light-breath that fills the Anima Mundi from her starry crown down to the elemental earth with divine life. The Trinity does not passively sit outside of creation watching it. It surrounds and animates the entire structure of the world, all of which is shown by the light spreading down through the chain into the Anima Mundi and thence further down to the world. The hierarchical nature of creation is plainly on display, and each of the principal actors in the drama are shown performing their special tasks.

Is all this true? Yes and no. It is symbolically true but the reality will go far beyond what is captured here. Nonetheless, the basic pattern is here and meditation on Fludd's image should prove instructive, especially in its colorised version which I feel sure would have been approved of by Fludd had he known of its possibility.

Robert Fludd Image part 2

  Looking at the Fludd image again (this time in the original black and white), let us now examine the concentric rings that go out from the innermost terrestrial bands towards the cosmic rim.

 

The first section of rings immediately after the central globe are dedicated to the works of man as he translates natural laws into practical action, first of all in the mineral, then the vegetable then the animal kingdom where he corrects nature (metalcraft), assists nature (agriculture and medicine) and imitates nature (hunting and animal husbandry). We then reach the sphere of the liberal arts where man goes beyond working with physical matter to a more purely intellectual level. Even so, all this relates to the concrete mind and its operations.

 

The next sections relate to the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms, and you might wonder why these come after the level of human work with nature since the further you travel out from the dense earth at the centre, the more refined and spiritual the spheres become until they reach the angelic host at the circumference so you would expect humanity to come after the three lower kingdoms. However, the idea is that the work of man lies below the work of God as it is an imitation of nature and not nature itself - hence the representation of man's activity by an ape. This means that the spheres of the three lower kingdoms are pure and holy in a way the human spheres are not as these latter belong to sub-creation rather than creation itself. Human art and science can only work with nature. It cannot create it. And so these levels are below the level of nature in and of itself in this scheme. Man is higher than mineral, vegetable and animal but his works are lower than the least of the works of God.

 

Having dealt with that we now come to the sublunary spheres, and this time you might question why there are only spheres of air and fire. This is because earth and water are already represented in the central globe where you can see them though you might have to blow the picture up a bit to do so. The tendency of these elements is to fall downward but air and fire are rising, active elements and so they have their spheres corresponding to the physical atmosphere and then an outer elemental ring of pure, unmanifested fire which is between the earth and the moon which we can imagine in spiritual terms as constituting a barrier between the material plane and the next world. These rings concern the mutable material world which is the world of generation and decay. After them we enter the celestial spheres.

 

These spheres that we now encounter are identified with the physical planets of the solar system, but they also relate to spiritual planes and states of consciousness. The interface between the sphere of fire and that of the Moon is a critical boundary between the mortal world and the spiritual. The Moon acts as a gateway separating the lower elements from the higher heavens. We might see it as the astral plane or the lower levels of that plane with the spheres belonging to Mercury and Venus governing higher realms that relate to intellect and beauty in their primal or pre-material forms.

 

We then reach the Sun which is the visible heart-centre of the solar system and the physical manifestation of God in the material world. The Sun is where spirit and matter are in perfect balance and acts as a reflector of the uncreated divine light. Proceeding onwards, we travel through Mars and Jupiter which we considered in terms of their meaning for human development in the previous post, but here we may add that the cosmic principles they hold and transmit are dynamic force and divine justice. Mars is the active energy needed to drive creation and Jupiter is the order that governs and directs that energy with wisdom and benevolence. Finally, there is the final planetary boundary—the ring-pass-not of time, absolute law, and strict structure which is Saturn.

 

Directly above the orbit of Saturn lies the sphere of the fixed stars where the Zodiac would be though Fludd does not depict that here, and then you have the Supercelestial Empyrean with three rings of angelic hierarchies representing the nine choirs of angels from Principalities, Archangels and angels to Dominions, Virtues and Powers and on to the highest rank of Cherubim, Seraphim and Thrones who are the nearest to God.

 

When this image was designed in 1617 the outer planets had not been discovered so it is tempting to speculate how they might fit into Fludd’s overall scenario if he had known of their existence. In fact, we find they do not disrupt his scheme but fill it out to bring greater detail and more spiritual understanding. Here’s how.

 

 In 1617 astronomy only knew of the seven visible planets, with Saturn being the outermost physical limit of time, boundary and law. If we integrate the modern transpersonal planets of Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto into this metaphysical framework, we must put them between Saturn and the fixed stars, and when we do we find that they function as the direct mechanisms of a more advanced pattern of soul progression as befits the idea that the consciousness of humanity is evolving.

 

Saturn represents the strict law that limits human ego-consciousness. He is the Lord of Karma, ensuring we reap what we sew. Incorporating Uranus in the sphere beyond him sheds new light on spiritual evolution for Uranus is the planet of sudden breakthroughs and the higher mind, it represents the inspiration that takes you beyond worldly understanding. Once a soul has mastered the lessons of Saturn by achieving a certain degree of spiritual discipline, stabilisation and focus, Uranus comes as the revolutionary force that shatters the rigidity of the lower personality with lightning flashes of illumination. To an unprepared human vessel, it can destabilise and inflate but to one that has absorbed the discipline and humility of the school of Saturn it can open up new fields of consciousness with its energies of liberation and disruption of a convention that may have become stagnant.

 

As Uranus can be seen as the higher octave of Mercury, thought taken beyond the personal, so Neptune bears the same relation to Venus. This mystical planet represents universal love and the dissolution of boundaries, specifically those of the ego. In the Fludd (a very Neptunian name!) image, Neptune would fit where the starry firmament meets the World Soul. Spiritually speaking, it softens and dissolves the hard boundaries of the concrete mind, allowing individual consciousness to merge into the Anima Mundi, and attuning the mind to the timeless wisdom of the higher planes.

 

But there is more to come and that is Pluto, who shows that blissful mysticism is not the end of the path.

 

Pluto is the planet of death and rebirth, and it would be positioned at the outermost edge of the manifest cosmos where the starry zodiac meets the concentric choirs of the Angelic Hierarchy. The spiritual function of Pluto is the final, irreversible purging of the soul. In esoteric terms, it is the divine force that destroys the separate self, even in its most elevated and ‘spiritual’ form to prepare the soul to become one with the unmanifest light.

 

 These planets will, perforce, be present in the horoscopes of all human beings but most of humanity cannot yet respond to their true, what you might call, high-voltage spiritual frequencies. Instead, the unawakened personalities of ordinary humanity not yet on the path to God act like uninsulated wires that reduce the transpersonal energies of the outer planets into lower, materialistic or basic psychological echoes. Even the highest spiritual energy, love, for instance, if one can call love an energy, has a lower counterpart.

 

Uranus, which in its pure form corresponds to the higher mind, telepathic impression and alignment with the order of the cosmos, may when manifesting not on the vertical axis but the horizontal one of earthbound humanity appear as eccentricity, the revolutionary impulse or an obsession with technology. Neptune, which is universal love, intuition and mystical communion in its true form, may descend to escapism, sentimentality, formless mysticism and even drug addiction. The unevolved Uranian may be a rebel for the sake of it. The corresponding Neptunian may be subject to all manner of glamours and delusions as he indulges in feeling without discrimination, detachment or thought. As for Pluto, this represents the most powerful aspect of God, that of the Will with its ruthless task of shattering lower forms to enable the life within to grow. When unaligned to proper spiritual understanding and not guided by love, this may appear as the simple desire to dominate and control.

 

The lower response comes because the person for whom the planet may be strong in their chart has not yet subjected himself to proper spiritual discipline or evolved the purity of motivation to aspire to the soul and beyond. So, he responds to the energy but in a way that steps it down to his level where it takes a distorted form. The lower ego translates the energy into the only language it understands, that of personal emotion, material appetite and worldly power and survival.

 

If Robert Fludd were alive today to update his image, the outer planets would be drawn between Saturn and the fixed stars and would be included in the steps leading to the gateway to the heavens. They represent the higher-dimensional stepping-stones that human evolution has grown into since 1617. They embody the forces that an individual is required to master to lift his consciousness directly up the vertical chain, transforming him eventually into a divine son of the Father. 

 

The third and last part of this examination of Fludd's Integrae Naturae Speculum will look at how the Holy Trinity is represented. 

 

Robert Fludd and the Mirror of Nature

  One of my favourite images is Robert Fludd’s engraving Integrae Naturae Speculum Artisque Imago (The Mirror of Whole Nature and the Image of Art) which comes from his book Utriusque Cosmi.... or Metaphysical History of the Two Worlds which was published between 1617 and 1621. The two worlds are macrocosm and microcosm, the universe and man. Here is that famous picture in a colourised version which may appal the purists but helps to identify detail.

One is first of all struck by the female figure. She is clearly not the Virgin Mary, the usual feminine figure in Western religious art so who is she? Here I would like to examine just who and what she is, and use that as a jumping off point to look at the rest of the image in terms of the masculine and feminine poles of being because it sums up just what these are better than anything else I know. 

The image is a visual representation of the hierarchical nature of the manifested cosmos, and it shows the twin polarities of being as they are expressed in the field of creation. Here we have clearly delineated the metaphysical structure and relationship of the Transcendent Father (Spirit), the Immanent Mother (Matter), and the human being in a precise cosmic map.

There are three levels of this cosmic layout. At the apex of the vertical axis sits the Tetragrammaton (the Name of God), surrounded by a dark cloud radiating pure, unconditioned light. This is the Transcendent Source or Unmanifested Pole which represents the supreme masculine principle—the self-existent, independent root of being that sits outside and above the concentric circles of the manifested universe. It includes the formless Logos and originating Will that has its being entirely in itself.

Descending from the divine cloud is a vertical chain held by the hand of God. This chain is attached to the right wrist of a cosmic woman crowned with stars. She is the anima mundi or soul of the world who stands spanning the earthly and celestial spheres, and she represents the Immanent Feminine Principle or Nature in her universal aspect. She is not the self-existent source but the contingent reflection. Her posture embodies the sacred sequence of submission and containment. Her right hand, the vertical link, is passively raised and chained to the Transcendent Father, showing that she derives her being, authority, and life-spark directly from the vertical axis. Her left hand, which is the down stepping conduit, holds a second chain that descends to the arm of a small monkey who sits on top of the central terrestrial globe. This monkey represents human art and intellect.

Nature acts as the cosmic transformer. She takes the formless fire of the Father and uses her macrocosmic body which includes the nested concentric rings of the elements, planets, and stars, for all this emanates from her body, to shape, contain and crystallise that power of the Father into an ordered material reality. His word shapes her substance.

 At the centre of the image is the Earth, the dense and lowest point of the horizontal plane which is where the light that flows down from the Father and through the receptive womb of Mother Nature reaches the physical world. When that hierarchy is respected order and harmony prevail, but when it is neglected then disorder makes an appearance because the sacred has been disrupted.

Fludd's engraving is a pictorial rejection of modern horizontal and egalitarian materialistic flattening. It demonstrates that the vertical axis must hold structural superiority because it is the thread that keeps the material worlds from collapsing into a chaotic vacuum. Mother Nature does not try to usurp the position of the cloud. She honours her duty as the divine vessel, ensuring that the self-existent, primary law of the transcendent Father is properly held, shaped, and anchored into the fabric of space and time.

 Moving from the terrestrial centre toward the outer rim, Fludd lays out the geocentric planetary rings from the Moon to Saturn. In spiritual terms these spheres are not just the physical planets, they are the cosmic transformers of the Anima Mundi. As the supernal light of the Father comes down the vertical axis, it passes through each planetary ring, each one of which acts as a filter, slowing down the frequency, imprinting it with a specific vibration, and stepping it down so that it does not vaporise physical matter.

Likewise, for the individual soul undergoing the training of the Masters, these spheres represent initiatory checkpoints. To return home along the vertical axis, the consciousness must climb back up through these rings and pass the tests of the emotional vehicle (Moon), master analytical discrimination (Mercury), transform desire into love (Venus), achieve integration of the heart and spiritual sovereignty (Sun), understand how to use strength and the will in service rather than for self (Mars), learn wisdom, benevolence and justice (Jupiter) and endure the structural discipline, restrictive pressure and final humility of the boundary line (Saturn). The planetary spheres ensure that the path of return is an orderly, geometric ascent, preventing the soul from dissolving into chaotic, unstructured mysticism.

At the apex of the vertical column, inside the radiant cloud, sits the Tetragrammaton representing the First Person of the Trinity, the source of Will and Power that commands time, space and phenomenal being into existence.

Fludd and his engraver/publisher Johann Theodor de Bry demonstrate visually that the First Person cannot touch the lower three worlds directly. He remains enclosed within the sacred cloud of unmanifested positivity. His being and energy must be funnelled down the vertical chain into the wrist of the Feminine Principle or Nature who acts as the primary transformer to hold, shape, and distribute the power of God through the cosmos.

At the centre of the image, sitting on top of the terrestrial globe (Animalia, Vegetabilia, Mineralia), the small monkey holds a compass which Fludd calls Art mimicking Nature. The monkey is man and the compass stands for his creative work as expressed through the divine order of geometry. Without that compass and the higher connection it symbolises as it measures divine law into concrete form the work of man becomes destructive because it is separated from the source.

In Western esoteric thought the Anima Mundi is not an abstract concept. She is the universal being that bridges the gap between unmanifested Spirit and physical Matter, and, as such, the intermediary between the pure spirit of God in the formless cloud and the material world. She mediates his energy so that it can manifest on lower levels, and this is shown by the fact that her head touches the starry heavens while her feet rest upon the earth thereby connecting the top of the hierarchy of manifestation with the bottom. Her right hand and upper body are aligned with the heavens, chained to the unmanifested Source, showing her essence to be purely spiritual and deriving its light and life-spark directly from the Father. At the same time, as the mother of the physical world, her lower body and womb are positioned over the terrestrial spheres. She takes the formless spiritual fire of the Father and translates it into the concentric rings of the elements and planets, so organising the physical laws of nature.

When all is said and done everything is spirit. We may think of the unmanifested source as like vapour—pure, unconditioned, formless Spirit. This is stepped down to the Anima Mundi where this spirit becomes like flowing water. The Anima Mundi is the intermediate matrix that catches the vapour and carries the divine blueprints from the Logos through space to the etheric and astral planes, the fluid, psychic, and energetic levels of being where substance is not yet locked into rigid shapes but highly mobile, permeable, and constantly flowing.

We then come to physical matter where originating spirit has become like solid ice. It is not a different substance than the water; it is simply the water itself brought down to its lowest possible temperature and frozen into a dense, rigid structure which includes our familiar solids, liquids and gases, the final crystallisation of the cosmic substance. It is the time-bound realm of rigid boundaries.
The etheric plane holds the invisible, energetic grid or template upon which the dense physical ice congeals. The astral plane holds the emotional desires and cosmic magnetism that draw the atomic particles together. The Anima Mundi catches the formless vapour of pure spirit descending down through the vertical chain and from her fluid water-matrix distributes the blueprints down into the physical world.

Therefore, matter is simply the outermost garment of the World Soul. Physical matter is universal spirit operating at its slowest, most dense, and highly crystallised vibrational frequency.

The Anima Mundi is the form-building matrix. She acts as the macrocosmic womb of manifestation and as such takes the formless ideas of the Divine Mind and spins them into form, first as etheric blueprints which then congeal into physical objects, plants, animals, minerals. Matter derives its being from her and is sustained by her life force.

Returning to the engraving, we see concentric rings branching upward and outward directly above the three foundational kingdoms of Mineralia, Vegetabilia, Animalia. These show how formless spirit is gradually crystallised into physical reality in the formation of the cosmos, and we will consider them in the next post.
 

Soul Loss

 The well-known Alice Bailey books are a development of Theosophy though with greater emphasis on Christ than Blavatskian Theosophy, even if he is still not the Christ that Christians know but a kind of grand hierarch. But then, since the assumed source of these books is Buddhist, that might be expected. Also, we must remember that Theosophists were often reacting against the 19th century version of Christ, a time when he was well on his way to his conversion to humanitarianism and starting to lose his purely spiritual qualities. So, when they downgraded Christ that may have been part of an attempt not to be bound by the developing materialism of Victorian Christianity.

That admittedly large failing aside, by most other criteria these books are impressive. Their sheer volume for one. Then their wisdom. Yes, I do think there is much spiritual wisdom in them though that doesn't mean I agree with all that is there. I also think they come from a reputable spiritual source though I would guess that there is a fair amount of Alice Bailey and her own ideas in there too. Maybe she was impressed on a non-verbal level and clothed the ideas in her own words. Or something along those lines. But there is a happy medium between complete acceptance of these writings on their own terms and total rejection. I accept what makes sense, and a lot does, reserve judgement on what seems to me to be doubtful, and reject what I think is wrong. I haven't looked at the books for a long time, and I'm not sure I've ever read one all the way through, certainly not A Treatise on Cosmic Fire. But using the index to pick and choose was a helpful way to approach them for me, and the compilations that condense the several thousand pages to manageable proportions are also useful.

I bring this up because in a recent comment on Bruce Charlton's blog in response to a post on AI I wrote that "the real basis behind all these developments (in AI and computer technology in general) is spiritual destruction, going beyond mere atheism up to and including the destruction of the spiritual component of our being which I believe is possible when we reach the point that we totally deny all that spirit is."

My point was that for a long time many developments in technology and thought have supported the denial of the soul, the aforementioned spiritual component of our being. AI is the latest and most serious. Every time we get on board with one of these developments, all the way from simply not rejecting it to accepting it gladly as a real advance, we play into the hands of the forces of spiritual destruction. To a certain extent, it doesn't matter if we think we don't believe in God as long as we act, both mentally and in day to day life, as though there was some kind of spiritual reality to our being. For example, we might revere beauty or believe in free will. These are something though probably not enough. But they are something. But every step we take away from the soul, and embracing AI is a giant step in that direction, the more we lose contact with what it stands for, and the more we do that, the closer we are to severing our connection to it completely. To losing our soul.

After I wrote my comment I was reminded of something in the Alice Bailey books so I looked it up. Here's what she says. It actually comes from A Treatise on Cosmic Fire though I took it from The Soul, the Quality of Life which is one of the compilations I spoke of above. I've edited it slightly.

"If man neglects his spiritual development and concentrates on intellectual effort turned to the manipulation of matter for selfish ends, and if this is carried on for a long period, he may bring upon himself a destruction that is final for this cycle. He may succeed in the complete destruction of the physical permanent atom and sever his connection with the higher self for aeons of time. We must emphasise the reality of this dire disaster."

This warning comes in the context of discussing occult work and saying it must be undertaken in the light of spirit and guided by love and unselfishness. Consequently, it might be considered irrelevant in terms of the current scenario. But I would maintain that computer technology is a form of magic, and its development is motivated by the same ungodly impulses that motivated the black magician. Any attempt to bend matter to our will that is not guided by spirit is illicit. By the same token, any behaviour that denies the soul is selfish which may be an unusual definition but is true on a deeper level than the normal one. From a spiritual perspective, selfishness is acting according to the earthly self - even if the earthly self considers itself to be spiritually motivated, a common phenomenon. That aside, the more we deny spirit, and AI is the denial of spirit almost by definition, the more we cut ourselves off from it, and there may come a time when certain people who go all the way into this dark place cut themselves off entirely. The tragedy of the modern world is that the whole culture is sending us in that direction.

Leftism is at the very least the Pawn of Satanism

 It is said that evil often proclaims itself as such in some way. This may be because the law of free will dictates that if people are to be corrupted they must have some clue that this is the case. Within that criterion though there is ample scope for evil to disguise itself as good to the eye of one who does not wish to see beneath the surface and, on some level, actively wants to be taken in because this will justify some sin or fallen desire.

In occultism the left hand path is the path of transgression, black magic and sexual licence. Often rebranded as a short cut to enlightenment, crazy wisdom, breaking the rules for greater freedom, rising above good and evil and other pseudo-glamorous deceptive descriptions, it is, in fact, the path that leads away from God and towards not God which is all that rejects God and the natural boundaries and standards of his creation. This ends up, if pursued and unrepented, in a spiritual state analogous to hell because hell is nothing more nor less than separation from God. That is a state in which light must be stolen as the soul can no longer get it directly from God. A soul has to fall a long way before that will happen but if it persists on the left hand path and does not turn back to its Maker that is what will happen.

The left has long been associated with the unnatural and the dark side of life. Obviously this is not the case literally but symbolically there is a certain truth to the idea. We take our modern usage from the time of the French Revolution when supporters of the monarchy sat on the right in the National Assembly and supporters of the revolution sat on the left. A pure coincidence you might think but those who are symbolically minded will see more to it than that. We are being told something. None of this means that elements of what became the Revolution, which term I am using to mean the overturning of traditional ideas in the 18th century, were not genuinely progressive. Human consciousness was evolving. The relationship between all sections of society from aristocrats to the ordinary people and between men and women had to be adjusted in the light of greater self-consciousness. Not to mention that a new approach to religion was called for with a greater emphasis on internal enquiry. But the whole process was hijacked and continues to be, and the clue to the hijacking was right there at the beginning.

The hallmark of Satanism is rejection of God and the order of creation. This involves undermining and then inverting all natural hierarchies and if you look at the last couple of centuries, and especially the last 50 years, you simply cannot help but see this as the underlying tendency of the left. It moves from one group to another but always with the aim of subverting the natural order. The excuse is compassion or justice but the real motive is resentment and even hatred of God.

It would clearly be absurd to say that every leftist is a Satanist but every one has allied him or herself to a degree with the Satanic agenda and has done so because of spiritual failings. At the bare minimum every one is a dupe of some kind. And note that when I talk of Satan I am not talking of an individual being though there may well be such. But the prime manifestation of this impulse is the tendency in the created individual motivated by corrupted desire and badly turned will to want to sit on God's throne. This is what is behind the left, particularly as it is in our day.

Consciousness and Christ

 According to standard esoteric teachings, human souls come to this Earth to evolve their consciousness, this being the perfect environment in which to do that given the sense of separation to be found here. It's somewhat like a child being turfed out of the secure family home where everything is done for it in order to make its own way in the world and as a result become a mature, responsible adult able to engage with life creatively and actually contribute to the world in a positive manner. These teachings assume reincarnation and say we come back here many times, seeking experience and means of expression to grow as souls. This is linked to the doctrine of reaping what you sow with the consequence that everything we do, and possibly even think, sets up a flow of psychic energy which we must deal with. It may manifest materially as external circumstances and conditions or internally as character traits but we are responsible for all that we are. This is not to punish but to teach. We evolve in this way until we are able to raise our consciousness to the spiritual level while in an earthly body. It's more complicated than that but this is the in a nutshell version.

Sometimes these teachings picture us as similar to cells in the body of a greater being which would be the spirit that stands behind our sun. This being or Solar Logos is also evolving and would be part of a Galactic being who, in turn, would form part of the being who stands behind the whole universe who would, I suppose, be God. There is a pleasing symmetrical order to this scenario and it makes sense on an intellectual level. I believe it to be broadly speaking correct with the solar and stellar spirits as something like great archangels and so on upwards.

There is a problem with this vision though. It doesn't really fit in with Christian teaching. Esotericists realise this and, as a result, tend to jettison Christianity, reducing Christ to a great spiritual teacher or Head of a Spiritual Hierarchy that oversees humanity or else picture him as the Solar Logos and say this was what was meant by Son of God. You can absorb most other spiritual approaches into this one which is what its partisans generally do, but you cannot really absorb Christ, not without making him something other than what he said he was or altering his teachings to mean something other than what he says they meant. Christ didn't talk about evolving consciousness and he was not inclusive. He said he (underlined) was the Way, the Truth and the Life. That is unequivocal. He is not part of some all-purpose spirituality but goes beyond mere spirituality to something higher, deeper and truer, something approaching proper holiness. Christ taught that we should love God whom we could see revealed in him. This is extreme to say the least but it is what he taught and if we believe in Christ we must believe that.

Is it possible to reconcile these two teachings? Many people don't bother. They believe one or the other but I find myself in the tricky position of believing both. I do believe that human souls are supposed to be evolving their consciousness and this Earth serves as the background for that, a kind of playpen in which we can build things though what we are really building is ourselves. But I also believe that Christ goes beyond that. This means that spirituality and evolving consciousness is one thing but Christ is another. He comes to the worldly and the spiritual alike and offers them both something more. The spiritual may be further along the path to God as things stand but the wonder of Christ is that anyone can come to him from any background and is accepted by him if they give themselves heart and soul to him, and this acceptance will transform their soul to a higher degree than any self-pursued spirituality can ever do. You may be building a humble village church or a grand cathedral but both are hollow structures without the light of Christ illumining them from within.

Could it be that before the advent of Christ scenario 1 operated? Human souls reincarnated after a period in the spiritual realms to further their spiritual evolution and this proceeded in a certain direction, developing all aspects of the whole being, unless brought to a close by the attainment of Buddhist Nirvana meaning a complete disidentification with the phenomenal world and, in a sense, rejection of creation. But Christ came to bring a higher understanding, one in which the soul could be made like him by allowing him into itself. Any soul on any evolutionary level could do this though naturally the more developed the soul, the more of Christ it could absorb and express. Thus, the path of spiritual evolution exists and so does the path of Christ but this latter brings more of divine reality to the picture. For instance, an evolving soul might, in esoteric parlance, have opened all its psychic energy centres including that at the crown of the head, but unless it has fully accepted Christ it is still operating in the spiritual world rather than the true Heaven of Christ which is a new creation containing more of divine being than can ever be attained just through evolution.

I realise a lot more has to be done if one is to develop a proper understanding of how Christ impacts and goes beyond standard issue spirituality but this is my attempt at a start.

The Gospels and Everything Else

  Since becoming interested in spiritual matters I have, as one easily can nowadays, investigated all sorts of  mystical and occult highways and byways. On a literary level, I mean. I have never belonged to any group or followed any outer teaching but I have read numerous books, both in an Eastern and Western vein, on the subjects of mysticism and occultism. Some, a few, have been inspiring, some have been insightful, some have been informative and some just recycle other books. But I have to say that nothing compares to the New Testament. Of course, to a large extent that is because of the figure of Jesus but it is also because the spiritual teachings in the Gospels are presented simply and within the context of a story. They are not philosophical or metaphysical or esoteric in form, though they are all these things to an extremely high degree in essence. They are presented as the expression of the personality of a man and this makes them living truths rather than intellectual statements. They go straight to the heart and soul instead of just feeding the mind.

I must admit I find a lot of the classics of occultism unreadable. I have tried The Secret Doctrine and the Alice Bailey books on several occasions but always given up faced with their turgid, repetitive style and habit of saying things fifteen times that need only be said once. In a word, they are dull. In two words, they are dull and verbose. Even Dion Fortune, who otherwise writes very readably, produced in The Cosmic Doctrine something only an ardent disciple convinced he is penetrating the secrets of the universe could plough through with enthusiasm. Maybe they are the secrets of the universe but like many occult tomes these and other books lack the inspirational and intuitively satisfactory qualities of true spiritual writing. These works remind me that all occultists fail unless they eventually renounce their occultism. That is because "Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven."

The Gospels are stories, true stories, but still stories. The life of Jesus is commonly referred to as the greatest story ever told which it clearly is. Stories have the power to take us beyond the mental world we habitually live in to a higher reality. This is why the works of Tolkien have had such an impact and have been such a force for good. The Gospels are stories that speak to children of all ages, as are those of Tolkien. To be a child in the spiritual sense does not mean to be intellectually undeveloped but not to be limited by the intellect. Jesus did not say become children but become as children. There is a critical difference and I will end this brief post by leaving the reader to think about that.