VIROOLI

Virooli, part 8 of 91, second of ZOM. Zodiacal King: Alpudus Ministers: 3660 Mundane association: Thracia (European Turkey, Eastern Greece)

Sunday, September 04, 1994 1:35 PM

Vibrated the Call of the Aethyrs and the appropriate names as usual.

The first image was of a man in bronze-age armor walking from downstage right to upstage left. He wore greaves, cuirass, helmet and arm guards, all finely detailed with images of martial scenes. At his left hip he wore a bronze shortsword. In the background I could hear sounds of many men marching in order.

Gradually this image was overlaid and supplanted by an image of the Tarot card “The Tower”. Particular attention was somehow called to the gap between the crown and the top of the tower, at the point where the lightning strikes it.

A voice said: “How shall the power of the Mother be transmitted into the lands of the Son? Shall it be as a torrent of water raging in a stream bed? No. Shall it be as mighty winds hurling objects about? No. Shall it be as an hundred mighty earthquakes that shake the world? Perhaps, but not at this point. No. It shall be as a stroke of lightning which burns the mortar of his castle to a dust of lime, and loosens the connections between the stones.

“For was it not said to you, Our god is a god of terror and wonder? Was it not said to you that he shall destroy your dwelling places and make of them a place for the beasts of the field? He shall stretch your souls to bursting, tear the seams and threads that hold them together.”

(While this was said I was flashing on my own thoughts on this matter, explained in substantial detail in the paper Divine Creation and Initiation and somewhat in The New Aeon.)

“What shall be said of this place, o man, that you have not already understood to the roots of your being? For you have gone through this process times without number, and known the terror of its inception and the wonders that lie at its end. Is it not so?”

I said yes, it was.

“Just so. And in the ending of the life of man the life of god begins; there is no gap between, simply blindness and unwillingness to look.

“Now to explain briefly to those who might read: The Tower is the Mind of Man, the Ruach, which comprises all that he is as an individual. It begins deep in the Earth and is built by the powers arising in the lesser sea, the roots of emotions in Man. These are the urges of the physical organism to survive, and grow.

“Very deep are these urges; they originate in the cellular level and so are carried up through all the levels of organization within the living finite being. The cells have an intrinsic urge to coordinate and compete with each other to form organs and bodies. Similarly, after many intermediate levels, the various specialized parts of the mind have the urge to form a complete self-aware mental being out of their disparate functions and purposes.

“The process of initiation carries this further; through conscious effort and direction, the mental being so produced in turn increases the coordination and linkages between the parts that created it. This is the prime function of the Adept.

“The end-result of this process of coordination is a being whose entire finite existence is closely tied together into a single functioning unit. This is the Tower as we speak of it here.

At this point I felt we were getting distracted from the essence of the matter, and cut off the vision for now.

Monday, September 05, 1994

I seem to be having the opposite problem with this part than I had with the immediately previous one. There I had trouble entering; here, I am so thoroughly familiar with the effects of the Part's power, and have internalized it to such a degree, that the power tends to follow the existing paths in myself rather than forge new ones. I recognized the process of the Part instantly, and my recognition pulled the presentation into established lines of thought. I felt that there was no point in allowing the Voice to rehash things I could explain better myself.

Everything that exists consists of many lesser parts in a relationship to one another. In simple physical objects the relationships tend to be relatively static. In living beings the relationships are a dynamic homeostasis. Entities on magickal levels – including those we call the personality and the soul or solar self – are also complex systems in a dynamic balance.

Whenever a new source of activity or energy is introduced into a dynamic system, it produces a disruption of the existing patterns of balance. Some relationships are broken entirely; others are stretched out of shape and their action distorted. The connections between all parts of the system become looser and behave in strange ways until the new source is incorporated into the system.

We see this on every level of human experience. A new environment tends to make us anxious or puts us into a heightened state of alertness until we can define our relationship to it. An unusual object confuses our senses until we become familiar with it. Social interactions in a group change when a new member is admitted. And so on.

Initiatory magick is nothing more (and nothing less) than a constant, willed repetition of this process. The magician invokes some source of magickal energy, or some being(s) existing on a higher level of organization than himself. The response brings new contacts and energy into the complex system that is himself, producing a “mind-expanding” experience, stretching and breaking the habitual relationships between parts. Incorporation of these new contacts and energies into the system produces a new dynamic balance and a broader scope of perception. Certain levels of organization are relatively stable, and relatively common in group-experience; these we call “grades” of initiation.

In Achad's Tree of Life, the path of Mars connects Binah with Geburah. And the movement from the latter to the former provides the archetype of the process represented by this Part. Like any other energy, the entrance of Binah energy into the self produces a disruption and stretching of relationships. Since Binah is a transcendental power, it cannot be fully absorbed or integrated into a finite being. The integration must take place within the transcendent realm.

During the initial inflows of transcendent energy, and for some time afterwards, the finite self isn't capable of actually perceiving them. All it can perceive are the effects; a raising of awareness coupled with the “stretching” of itself to a point of near-dissolution. This is the experience of the False Sephira, Da'ath.

It recognizes that something outside its perceptual range is causing the effects, but cannot see those causes; its internal relationships and library of experiences are not the right sort to reflect transcendent events. Thus it “sees” a gap in existence, a blankness beyond which it cannot penetrate. This is the perception of the so-called “Abyss”. Like Da'ath, it is an illusion or hallucination due entirely to inadequate perception; it has no existence except as a construct in the mind of some person.

But the process of adaptation goes on despite the blindness of the conscious self. The difference from previous cases is that a configuration of internal relationship centered around a sense of individuality, around a reflective “I”, cannot absorb the transcendental powers. To integrate them into the being, the parts that make up the individual self have to achieve a permanently “looser” relationship to each other, and become reoriented so that they respond directly to the impulses coming from the transcendental levels.

The relationships among the parts are not greatly changed by this; everything that made up the individual soul is still present and active. The only difference is that the individuality that was created by their intense interactions is superseded as governor of the being by the transcendental aspect. It's importance gradually diminishes and it fades away.

It is the state of permanently “stretched” connections among parts that is the essence of this Part of the Earth. It's initiatory aspects are the most immediately important, but it appears in many other aspects of existence as well.

The analogous activity on the physical level would be a solid heated to just below the point where it liquefies. In the biosphere, it would correspond to the increased activity in some kingdom of nature brought about by a sudden increase in the available nutrients. E.g., a year with an unusually bountiful crop of nuts and fruits would produce an increase in the population of the animals that eat them. This in turn would create pressure and competition among them for territories, an increase in the population of predators, etc., all of which would require general adjustments in the relationships among the biosphere's various systems.