POTHNIR

Pothnir, Part 12 of 91, 3rd of PAZ. Zodiacal King: Arfaolg Ministers: 6300 Mundane association: India (Pakistan and India south and west of the Ganges)

Friday, September 30, 1994 2:00 PM

Began to get images as soon as I formulated the intention to invoke Pothnir.

The first of these images was like the Tarot card The Sun, with some modifications. The sun in the image was still smiling, but an intent fierceness overlaid its original beneficence. There was no crown to the hill within the wall; it had vanished and only an emptiness remained. Below the hill the male and female children still danced with hands linked, but now they wore costumes representative of Life and of Death. And those costumes switched from one to the other with great rapidity, so that I could not tell which of them was truly Life, and which Death.

The second was of the Ganges, seen from space above India. It was oriented so that it was more or less horizontal to my point of view, with its mouth in the Bay of Bengal to the right, its origins in north central India to the left. Gradually this image was overlaid with one of the Tree of Life, and the river was identical with the path connecting Geburah and Chesed.

Now I vibrated the Call of the Aethyrs, and invoked Pothnir according to the revised method.

The circle disappeared, and I was in a city in India, looking at it from a point in the center of the river. Stone steps lined the bank in front of me, and these steps were filled with people coming down to wash in the holy river. Some were penitents, holy men, or mourners dressed only in loincloths and smeared all over with ashes. Others were families in colorful garb, carrying bundles of flowers or baskets of fruit and food; some made sounds with bells, cymbals, and other instruments. Mourners and celebrants alike entered into the river and began to wash themselves.

There was a sense of intense heat in the air, sourceless, as if the sky had caught fire and was radiating heat downwards from every point of its area. And the sunlight was equally intense. The heat penetrated everything. With the non-living things, it passed right through. Among the living, those who were not in the river seemed to absorb a certain amount, but then began to re-radiate it, forming a spherical shield that protected them from absorbing more. But with those who were in the river, the water carried away the heat as fast as it was absorbed, so that while the people did not contain any more of it at any moment than those on land, a great deal more of it passed through them. Each, according to their needs and desires, was cleansed and sanctified thereby.

I knew without seeing directly that somewhere upriver others were burning the bodies of the dead, and throwing the ashes into the river; or simply tossing in the coffins unburned. I sensed that even further upriver was a palace or seat of governance. And at the very headwaters was a survey tower, built by the British as a benchmark point for their mapping of the continent.

At this point I sensed that I was still too washed out from yesterday's invocation to get much more here. I decided to end the vision and try again another time.

Sunday, October 02, 1994 1:50 PM

Vibrated the Call and invoked the Part per the revised method. During the Call, I “heard” a multitude of voices echoing the words as I spoke them.

The voice said: “What is creation but the em-body-ment of the Will in the shifting streams of Life and Death? The Sun arises and dies daily; the moon dies monthly and is reborn. The Serpent sheds its skin in season, rising anew from the shards.

“The ideas and thoughts of men also have their time, bursting with vigor onto the scene, living their life, becoming outrun by the changing world, dying and drifting downwards in the waters to become the sediment out of which future dreams spring and grow.

“So too with the thoughts of God, though their season is long and many men come and go before its time is run. Think you that a single life, a single mind, might embody all of even one of God's thought? It is not to be.

I saw again the Ganges with the people there. But now it seemed that those people were all of humanity, living their lives out. Their various cycles were out of phase, so that at any moment there were always a great many in every possible stage of their cycles.

The heat beating down on them was the will of the divine. And while that will was one and remained one, it became many in touching the people. In each one it touched, it dissociated part of itself that was fitted to the person's nature and phase. And at no moment was the will of the divine fully expressed even by all of those it touched together.

The people went through their cycles of life and death, and as they changed the parts of the divine will that touched them also changed; a particular thread of that will might continue with one person for a time, and then jump to another person, only to be replaced by another thread in the first person. All of them were constantly acting out a portion of the divine will, but it was not always the same portion. Nor was its manifestation in them constant; it changed as their cycles changed them.

It seemed that only after many generations had come and gone was the will completely expressed. It unfolded gradually in time, reached a peak at which a great many of the people seemed to resonate with a single vibration, and then faded again. And another thought of God was waiting to take up those who were no longer needed to express the old one.

“There is no Word that man can speak, that expresses the complete will of God for a time and place. Such are merely aspects of the will that have greater force in the attention of men at that moment; a great many other aspects also are present and operating, but the consciousness of Man does not see them clearly.

“You yourself have seen powers operating in this time whose range of expression and effect dwarfs that of Thelema, or any other 'magickal Word'. You have tried to describe them for men, and in the end admitted failure; their scope was even beyond the range of your vision.

“Knowing this, o man, can you think that in your time of true magehood you will do better? It is a consummation greatly to be wished, it is true, but it is not to be. Not for you, or for any man. And if this is so with respect to the god of this world, how much more so will it be when you enter into the greater universe, and bring its powers to bear upon this world?

“No. Thou hast made the Gate, and will become the gatekeeper. But the keeper cannot know all that passes through his realm and places of power. You cannot stop the suns from shining through the gate, save by closing and sealing it. And that you will not do, for it would defeat your purpose.

“Most of those who pass through will do so unannounced, will work their effects, and depart again unremarked. This world will be touched by many, and be the better for it. Neither we who are the ministers of God, nor those into whose ranks you were admitted in the late time, can do anything about this. Nor would we wish to, remarkable as that might seem. For you work not for us, nor to our purposes, but to those of yourself, and one other. And in this, she is the ruler whose word is law.

“Now, as you descend again into the worlds of men, passing through the Parts of the Earth, there will be many and various things said that will be of interest. Continue on.

“We are done.”

I ceased to seek either vision or voice, but the altered state of perception produced by the Parts power continued for a time. Nothing more of interest appeared before it faded.

Seer's comments:

This is the first Part governed by Arfaolg, whose attribute in the system being used is Scorpio. But the content of the vision seems to be rather a combination or intersection of the Path of Scorpio with the Path of the Sun. The first two images seen are an explicit statement of this.

In Achad's Tree, the upper hexagram sometimes symbolizes the daily path of the Sun, the four inner triangles with apices in Tiphereth, Geburah, Chesed and Kether representing the quarters of the day. The path of Scorpio connected Chesed with Geburah, and represents the horizon, the point of transition between the upper world and the underworld, between the lands of the living and the dead.

In the vision, the Ganges becomes another metaphor for this path, watery to fit the element of Scorpio. The intense daytime heat of India becomes the power of the Path of Sol, which intersects Scorpio's path in its descent from Chokmah to Tiphereth.

The image might well be a representation of the process of incarnation. Those who are not in the river absorb only so much of the Sun's power, and then achieve a state of relative stasis. Those who have entered the river, whose lower halves are in the worlds of night, of incarnation, have connected themselves to both poles of existence. Power flows through them and thereby transforms them.

The last image of Friday's vision simply uses real landmarks along the Ganges as symbols for other paths that cross or touch the path of Scorpio. Those tossing coffins into the river are the path of Fire, the palace is the path of Capricorn, the tower the path of Mars.

Sunday's vision jumps back up the path of Sol towards Chokmah, showing the same scene from the transcendental viewpoint, and uses it to show some more ideas pertinent to the task of a Magus.