SAXTOMP

Saxtomp, 16th of 91 parts, first of MAZ. Zodiacal king: Gebabal Ministers: 3620 Mundane association: Numidia (current-day Algeria).

(Note: Dee's sigil for this Part contains two lines, and does not connect the letters in the sequence they appear in the Part's name. I am using a version that does connect them in order.)

Friday, October 28, 1994

Several times in the last few days, I have tried to penetrate this Part, and found extreme difficulty in doing so. I had sensed even before beginning that there was something strange about it, and so attempted to get some contact with the energy before trying to get a vision. It was not so much that the energy was hard to summon; it came when invoked. The problem lay in identifying my consciousness with it.

The first impression I got of it was of a windstorm of flame, a fiery version of the dust-devils seen in the desert. Along with this impression, there was a sense of wild abandon, which brought to mind thoughts of dervishes, and of gypsy dancers.

When I tried to identify my awareness with the energy, I found myself being thrown away from it, with a sideways vector, as if I had been grabbed by the whirlwind and thrown away again. I kept trying, and found that with a little effort, I could focus my awareness in the still center of the whirl. But it required an absolute centering of my attention in the root of the sahasrara chakra, and complete detachment from the normal activities of the mind; I had to keep a state of complete stillness. The moment my attention moved away from the focus point, I was thrown out of the center of the whirl and spun around it. Even the small relaxation of focus necessary to summon a vision was enough to upset the balance.

I spent an hour on each of the last two nights practicing that focus. Each time I achieved a state where the consciousness dissolved totally into the energy. Everything that distinguished me as an individual disappeared, and there was nothing left but Fire. (I don't know if this qualifies as a form of samadhi or not.) Awareness of time's passage vanished; when I came out of the state I was surprised to find the roughly twenty minutes had passed. To my internal clock, it seemed like no more than thirty seconds or so.

Coming out of the state each time, it felt like my energy-body was entirely flame, an orange-red conflagration enfolding and penetrating my physical body. My heart rate was accelerated and irregular, my temperature felt a little elevated, and I was covered in a thin film of sweat. I was panting as if I had run a long way.

Possibly in reaction to this, I now find myself slightly reluctant to try entering the Part again. I've put off starting several times already today, on the faintest excuse, and a couple of times with no excuse at all. (In fact, I'm going to do so again as soon as I save this file, and play Nethack for a few minutes.)

Saturday, October 29, 1994 2:09 PM

Invoked Saxtomp according to the revised procedure.

Immediately I got a sense of the Part's power, as a rod or beam of fire stabbing downwards through my body. Similar in some ways to the “king's beam” in my Enochian Temples, but without the helical torsion. There was also a sense of compression, as if the beam were squeezing down as it got closer to its lower end, which also manifested as a feeling that I could not breathe. I did pranayama for a few minutes while vibrating the name of the Part internally. The pranayama quickly made me dizzy, so apparently there was no real problem with the amount of air I had been getting. My physical body developed the “tingly” sensation that is common with some Hindu discipline I once learned, but the name of which I've now forgotten.

While concentrating on the physical, I lost sight of the sigil in its circle on the astral. I reformulated it and invoked the names again.

“Now the Fires of God have come into the Earth; for the Sun in Tiphereth is the fifth element, and therein is the Elemental conjoined with the Spiritual.

“That Fire, that originated in the Still Point of Kether, once again becomes the Point, at the center of the circle. It is concentrated by the power of Pluto concealed within the Path of Death, and injected into the worlds of the elements as the Scorpion injects its poison. And like that poison, it pervades the body, killing it, but only in preparation for a new life to come. Not one part of that body can remain alive, if the spirit within is to rise up.

“But the power of God descends upon Tiphereth not only through the path of Fire, but also through the paths of the Sun and the Devil. And it is these three conjoined that are the reason for the whirling power you sense in this place. Now look:”

Before me I saw a desert coast somewhere in northern Africa, sand coming down directly to the water. Some way inland there was a great whirlwind of fire, standing still in the wasteland.

The vision changed, and now it seemed that Eblis was standing in the whirlwind; indeed, he was the whirlwind, but took on a quasi-human shape above it as well, a djinn formed all of flames and heat, laughing in great delight.

A sound of music came up, music of the sort usually associated with the Arab countries in movies. A drum provided a jerky, polyrhythmic beat; some sort of stringed instrument gave a droning continuo; and a squealing woodwind glissaded up and down the scales in quartertones.

Two figures appeared outside the whirlwind, one dressed all in black, the other in white. They wore loose-fitting pants and shirts, and scarves covered all of their heads but the face below the eyebrows. And it seemed that the rings holding the headcovers on were really crowns.

These two figures danced around the whirlwind. Or was it dancing? Each held a swords and moved it in katas as it circled. There was great violence in their movements, but also great style, as if each step had been choreographed and practiced to perfection.

The music became more and more frantic, and the figures passed around the whirlwind with greater and greater speed, until they were blurred beyond distinguishing. One caught a fleeting glimpse of a form occasionally within the blurring, but its clothing was neither one nor the other, but instead was some varying shade of gray.

“Confound their understanding with darkness, says the Call. And so it is; not the darkness of Night, but the darkness of inescapable Ignorance. For the divine is in their world, but they see it not; they see only the illusions of the mind. And thus it is God himself who is the Deceiver.”

Now many seekers came up and surrounded the whirlwind and the blurred ring of the speeding dancers. (They could not see Eblis.) I could see them wondering and talking among themselves, saying “Surely this is the divine itself before us.” And one by one, from various points around the circle, individuals would rush forward and dive into the blur, shouting “Allahu Akbar!” But they were instantly thrown out again, to land tumbling in the sand. Every one of them, as they sat up, had on their faces an expression of awe and wonder, and in their eyes was a piece of the Fire. Others of the seekers gathered around each as they stood, and the awed ones began speaking with great animation of what they had seen.

After five or six had jumped in and been ejected, it became apparent that not one of them had seen the same thing within the blur. Persons who moved from one group to another began to point out the differences in what the jumpers were saying about their experiences. And those jumpers left off talking to their groups, and began to shout at each other with great vehemence, each proclaiming the rightness of their own experience and the falsehood of the others'.

Suddenly they drew swords and began to hack at each other. Their followers did likewise, and soon a general melee surrounded the whirlwind. And in the middle stood Eblis, unmoving, and laughed within himself.

The image faded out.

Said the Voice: “Thus is the balanced triad of the divine become the false duality. And the ignorant do not see it. They take the blurred images of the interacting opposites, and make of them a false crown, taking a figure of their own minds for the real thing. And the consequence of this is eternal discord.

“Seek not Truth in God, o men. For truth is a function of the mind, and god is not in the mind. In God there is no truth; the divine is beyond truth or falsity, beyond knowledge. The which is known is always a lie, and belief always a delusion.

“And so it goes. We are done.”

Seer's comments:

Saxtomp is the first of the Parts in sequence to be derived from the Tablet of Fire. Its zodiacal king, Gebabal, is attributed to Cancer, and this is also the first Part to be ruled by that King. The fiery whirlwind is a good symbol for this combination, since the symbol of Cancer is sometimes interpreted as a whirlpool. Those with imagination might also note that if you put the number of the Part next to the total number of Parts, (i.e., as 1691) you again get the image of a whirlpool, this time between two pillars.

The vision seems to be a – “peritheosis”, if I may coin a term – of the Path of Fire in Achad's Tree, recounting something of its ending in the sphere of Tiphereth. The power of Kether descending through the path here anchors itself in Tiphereth as a hidden point of power within the expansive, inclusive power of that sephira; just as the point of Kether is at the center of the astrological symbol for the Sun.

It is impossible to express the sense of total abandon, of total disregard of the self, that this fiery energy produced during the days when I was attuning myself to it. There was an almost uncontrollable urge to immolate myself in some act of holy destruction. It was only when I achieved a state of perfect silent centering that it disappeared; but then the finite self disappeared with it. The physical effect was also interesting; I don't think there was any real physical heat involved, but my body was certainly convinced that it had been exposed to heat.

The “Hindu discipline” mentioned at the start of Saturday's working I now recall to be an introductory exercise of Kundalini yoga. The arms are held above the head at 45 degree angles, with the thumbs extended straight up. Then the engages in deep rapid breaths for a couple of minutes. This produces a sensation of energy descending the arms to strike the heart. Then the arms are raised further until the thumbs touch, and a similar flow of energy comes directly down the spinal column. Note the similarity between this and the descent of divine power from the Supernals through the paths of Fire, Sol, and Capricorn as mentioned later.

Eblis is the Islamic Satan; when God commanded the angels to worship Adam, Eblis said “Me thou hast created of smokeless Fire, and shall I reverence a creature made of dust?” Thus he has a fitting connection with this path. In the current context, one might think of him as the hindmost portion of God.

I cannot seem to form a coherent comment about the remainder of the vision at the moment, though its implications are fairly obvious.