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| Arrowhead Arctic Blue Butterfly |
At Big
Creek, where the hillsides blaze with poppies, so many of my paths over the
years, though occasionally rocky or difficult to see, suddenly link together,
and I feel vindicated because opening myself to the Mysteries, despite all the
times I’ve felt lost, ultimately led me to understand my purpose. I have remained
open to inspiration, which has enabled me, a chronically ill member of the precariat
class, to know the subtle archetypal forces of nature and the power of the Sun.
At Big Creek, with the hillsides on fire, I can see my spiritual path clearly from
its beginnings to the present day, winding through the spheres of the Moon and
Mercury and Venus and ultimately to the sphere of the Sun, where I can feel the
influx of the forces of Mars and Jupiter. Others might have considered me a
malcontent or a fool because I have repudiated a capitalistic society that ignores
and dismisses and demonizes these forces, but I can say now, without any sense
of pride, that I have struggled to experience a part of myself that few others have
ever recognized, let alone found valuable: My higher self. And this has led to
an achievement that belongs to the whole human race: The triumph of the spirit.
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| Blue Dick and Poppies |
Allow me to
place that last statement into perspective: I have suffered from
a chronic disease my entire life. For the past forty-five years, the vast majority of people,
including doctors, never thought that I was “really” ill, just depressed or
psychosomatic. Only in the last two years—after I started experiencing atrial
fibrillation whenever I ate gluten and after my stomach stopped digesting food
efficiently—a few people have begun to believe me: It’s hard to deny that a
person has a problem when his heart goes haywire after he eats certain foods,
and he can’t digest fiber and meat properly. But celiac disease and food
allergies also affect emotional and mental states. A constant diet of foods
that are toxic to a sensitive person’s system eventually leads to brain fog, severe
depression, even psychosis. And, unfortunately, instead of receiving support
during my worst health crises, I have often been viciously attacked in various
ways. (See previous posts.) Yet now at Big Creek, after I have eliminated
everything harmful from my diet, and foods toxic to me are no longer polluting
my body or my thoughts and feelings, I can clearly see that I have succeeded in
living a life of inspiration despite all the misery stemming from my illness,
and the veils have fallen: Even though based on my experience I have little
reason to feel optimistic about humanity, I know the essential magnificence,
harmony and abundance of the human soul.
I have
never been a religious person. Over the years, however, I have evolved spiritually
without ever trying to be spiritual—mainly because of a strong compulsion to experience
inspiration through nature and the arts. Whether or not the overwhelming desire
to feel inspiration sprang from the constant misery of a chronic illness, I cannot
say. Nevertheless, each exaltation has resulted in an expansion of consciousness
that has never quite retracted, and with each moment of inspiration has come greater
illumination, which has created the capacity within me for greater
understanding of spiritual principle. In the physical and mental and spiritual
realms, we only see what the light illuminates. At one point, for instance, after
I cleansed my aura through mental purification, I began having visions of
spiritual symbols from the higher astral plane, known in the Qabalah as
Tiphareth, the Christ-center, and due to the cumulative experiences of illumination
from numerous moments of inspiration, I could soon understand the abstract spiritual
principles behind the symbols.
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| Five-Spot |
What my “heroism”
amounts to is simply this: Instead of striving for status or power or money, I have
pursued moments of inspiration as I explored nature and the arts—which,
ironically enough, some people over the years have considered selfishness. As
far as I was concerned, the spiritual inebriation caused by these exaltations
often made socially valued pursuits such as making a lot of money or landing a
great job seem like huge wastes of time and energy. Eventually, after I found
the Qabalah due to synchronicities and spiritual visions, I discovered that these
inspirations occur in the sphere of the Goddess Venus, who rules Netzach
(Victory), the seventh Sephira on the Tree of Life. In my twenties, after I
graduated from college and wandered away from the sphere of the intellect, I entered
the forest and returned to the arts to experience treasured moments of
inspiration again, and I have since concluded that the Sephira of Netzach, the
realm of Venus, remains forever dangerous to the status quo: The inspirations
of Venus have opened me and others to the great subtle cosmic forces that exalt
the soul and burn away false and limiting beliefs.
In the
realm of Mercury, known as Hod (Splendor), the eighth Sephira on the Tree of
Life, I can know those forces intellectually, but in Netzach, I feel them with
the heart, and the resulting exaltations, which I seldom experience in the
daily grind of a capitalistic society, have often led me to question human
institutions that have blinded me to the liberating cosmic forces that make the
soul blossom. To Christians this should be especially significant: The exaltations
of Venus can swing the soul across a gulf into the Sephira of The Sun, the
sphere of harmonizing love and spiritual inebriation on the Tree of Life known
as Beauty (Tiphareth), the Christ Center. A society that is both Christian and capitalistic,
however, shows how much it fears these subtle, cosmic forces by despoiling
nature and treating everything within it as a commodity, and by cutting funding
for the arts in our schools and communities, thereby closing the door on exaltations
that can awaken the higher self. We cannot know the Son without numerous
experiences of inspiration and illumination—and the Son shows us the Father.
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| Red Bud by Kings River |
“As above,
so below” is a maxim within the Qabalah. In other words, the energies within the
macrocosm (the cosmos) correspond to the energies within the microcosm (the
individual). Another way of looking at it: There is no part of you and me that
is not part of the Gods. “Know ye not that ye are gods?” asked one of the most revered
spiritual leaders of the past two thousand years. Imagine what sea change would
occur if this society actually understood and internalized the meaning of these
words.
Without
knowing it at first, through each inspiration I was building an inner temple of
the higher self. Moreover, repeated experiences of inspiration eventually enabled
me to contact the subtle forces of the cosmos and the corresponding energies
within myself. Netzach, the Sephira of Goddess Venus, is the realm of the
“Elohim” (Gods). In other words, within the realm of Venus the soul awakens to
the subtle forces in the cosmos and ourselves that throughout history the human
mind has personified as Gods and Goddesses. Once we begin to awaken these
subtle forces, we eventually open the psyche to the Sephira of the Sun, the
sphere of harmonizing love and spiritual inebriation associated with the Christ,
which, by the way, is neither a man nor a God but a force that each human being
can manifest.
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| Poppies above Big Creek |
Before my
unexpected awakening, I never would have believed that a higher self existed. Part
of me always wanted to believe what I had been taught over the years—that external
validation and ego satisfaction from worldly success would result in some form
of happiness. After my awakening, however, I realized that the higher self has
nothing to do with satisfying the ego. Instead, awakening the higher self is
linked to the exaltation of spirit: A person who clears a path to the higher
self through mental purification and inflames the soul through inspiration eventually
opens the heart and awakens the spirit. Only after my higher self awakened did
I feel the triumph of spirit that is the birthright of each person, a birthright
that has been stolen from the vast majority of us by a society obsessed with profit,
momentary gratification and ego satisfaction.
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| Path 14 |
On the Tree
of Life, Netzach (Victory) and Hod (Splendor) complement each other. Netzach is
a Sephira of “feeling with” the subtle, cosmic forces. In Hod, the human mind
fashions the forms that ensoul the forces of the Gods so that through worship
the forces pour into the soul. Without the element of feeling in worship, nothing
significant happens. When the soul experiences the subtle, cosmic forces,
exaltation occurs and consciousness expands. If this illumination happens often enough to allow the mind to understand spiritual principle, the higher self awakens
and recognizes the light within all things, the One within the Many, the Many
within the One.
Within the
Tarot, the Sevens represent the subtle, cosmic forces of the seventh Sephira,
Netzach. The symbolic correspondences of each of the Sevens are as follows:
Seven of Pentacles: Lord of Success Unfulfilled
Decan: Saturn in 21 - 30 degrees of Taurus
Tree of Life Association: Venus in Netzach (Seventh
Sphere)
Seven of Swords: Lord of Unstable Effort
Decan: Moon in 21 - 30 degrees of Aquarius
Tree of Life Association: Venus in Netzach (Seventh
Sphere)
Seven of Cups: Lord of Illusionary Success
Decan: Venus in 21 - 30 degrees of Scorpio
Tree of Life Association: Venus in Netzach (Seventh
Sphere)
Seven of Wands: Lord of Valor
Decan: Mars in 21 - 30 degrees of Leo
Tree of Life Association: Venus in Netzach (Seventh
Sphere)
The central focus of the
ritual should be The Empress, the Major Arcana card representing Venus. Using
the Tarot Pentagram Spread, you can lay the cards out using the process
suggested by the illustration below.
I recommend using the Active
Invoking Pentagram because of the Fire within nature. First lay out the
foundation cards (The Aces), then the modifiers—the zodiac cards, then the planetary
cards, and finally the associated number cards (The Sevens).
The associated Gods of the
Egyptian pantheon are as follows, but remember you can invoke the Gods of any
pantheon.
Venus: Hathor (terrestrial) or Isis (celestial)
Saturn: Ptah
Taurus: Osiris or Serapis
The Moon: Nephthys, Khonsu or Thoth
Aquarius: Sothis or Hor Wer
Scorpio: Anubis
Mars: Horus
Leo: Sekhet or Bast
Be sure to perform the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram (LBRP) after the Ritual of Victory. If you
are serious about spiritual development, you should perform the LBRP at least
once a day in order to protect yourself.
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