The Starcarved Stone

“The bodies made from matter are diverse. Some are from earth, some from water, some from air, some from fire. All is compounded of parts, some more complex, others simpler. The more complex are heavier, and the simpler lighter. The rapid motion of the turning cosmos produces the varied qualities of beings. The blast of air from this is continuous and lends qualities to bodies as well as the abundance of life”
- Corpus Hermeticum 9:7


Man is a stone and on this stone the stars carve their signatures creating a stone unique in placement and constitution. A stone is solid and still and as such man is constantly attempting to solidify it self in a process that leads towards what we call identity. Man appears to have a drift or need towards a stabile form, a notion that is illusory and result in nausea and frustration when movement or change occur. Mans mortality creates this illusory need for being solid, while the created cosmos man is a part of is founded on immortality and movement. The creator, the unmovable mover points his finger and the stars move along in galactic dance, within the ways of milk and emeralds – the starry heavens. To often man fail to realize that the stone was hived down from the heavens and the signatures carved in it was made by the stars, making the solid having the tendency of movement. To move a stone is like moving the planets - but the stone fails often to see it placement when in motion. In the same way the other stones fail to understand the movement of other stones as they often seem “out of place”. Man sees this conflict constantly in his life, by confusion, frustration, enmity and by what appears to be evil things happening to man. It all is due to failing to understand ones placement and how this placement is interrelated with all things. There is nothing in existence that is not supposed to be, nothing in our life that is not supposed to be there, just a failing understanding comprehending it to be so. The saying: “May the blessing, curse and cunning be” reflects this truth of being to the point as there are only blessing and cunning to be found. The curse is solely a word designating the portal that leads to the road of cunning.

When man point his finger and say, this or that is evil, he is failing to see its placement, looking from his own solidified or mummified state of affairs and judge the placement of bodies and intelligences accordingly. Let us turn to the stars and see if we can stretch the golden chain from the height to hell in order to explain this mystery of successful living and marvelous existence. The planets in our solar system were used from the beginning of time as a mundane reference to explain causes. Heroes of the past turned into constellations and the starry heavens also hosted the Irin, or what is also known as the Watchers with the retinue of immortal gods and goddesses ruling planets, stars and moons given that they had an effect of sorts on human life and organization. If we turn to Mesopotamia and Babylonia and not to forget the Sabeans of Harran we see that the procedures of witchcraft and magical actions where calculated by the position of the stars and appeals to the stars, like for instance the Sumerian ritual practice called zikurudû, it says that: “Zikurudû was mostly performed in the night before certain stars, and rituals against it were likewise carried out in front of the same stars, for instance the Great Bear, Scorpio or Sirius.” In this short quotation that describes a ritual procedure that we today would designate as harmful witchcraft we see that certain stars and constellations were appealed to both to bring misfortune to people as well as appealing to the very same forces for appeasement of the malediction. This would indicate that stars approached in a specific manner with a specific intent could bring about both good and bad things. And also, the notion of a malediction in this early age of the practice of witchcraft a malediction was to be void of divine providence and protection, that one was found “filthy” in the eyes of the heavens. One can simply say that a malediction contained the idea of pushing the victim out of relationship with the starry heavens and make him void of course to use the language of the stars.

Man is not only a stone, but we can say that he is also a star, the imprint on the stone changing the nature of the stone to be as if it was a star. This in turn means that the nature of the starry heavens are all found within the soul of man and when man exercise these varied natures he experience judgment from man made society. Man made society is a construct based upon man made illusions, such as morals and dogmas. It tries to etch into the stone certain rules based upon a universe of separations or dualism. Dualism constitutes a perception of contradictions, that one excludes the other and we create ideas of enmity and evil where there are none. The sufi sage Henry Corbin comments upon this in The Man of Light when he says: “However, settling for the ordinary terms “I” and “self” to describe the two “dimensions” of this unusambo might well lead to a misunderstanding of the real situation…One cannot understand this relationship except in the light of the fundamental Sufi saying: “He who knows himself knows his Lord.” The identity of himself and Lord does not correspond to a relationship of 1 = 1, but of 1 x 1: the identity of an essence raised to its total power by being multiplied by itself.” (Omega publications. 1971: 9). The implications for the initiates spiritual journey are immense seen from this perspective, but so is the consequence of this philosophy on the fundamental view upon man and the sense of belongingness as Corbin here speaks about a separation between man and his spiritual double that are bridged by multiplication, himself and his Lord into an higher octave. This result in a perfected understanding, which would say an understanding void of the shadows of doubt or perhaps one should say shadows and doubt. It all rests in perspective and recognition of the need for this celestial union that constitutes the perfected or the man not fallen, meaning having his light captured by the darkness of ignorance and demonic fields of imprisonment. The perspective in question is the one that seek to understand all things placement, who understands that there is no thing in creation that do not belong. When we sense something is evil or don’t belong we are perceiving an affliction, a disease of the perfect substance and rather than feeding this perception that what is afflicted is evil one should seek to understand how to mend the affliction or remove one self from the afflicted sphere.

Contrary to man made society is the cosmic order governed by natural laws, as such the cosmic order surpasses what man is able to construct amongst them selves given the corrupted state of man and its failing perception. Since this perspective governs the construction of man made society it will at all times suffer from various afflictions. If we turn to the perfected world of stellar harmony we understand an affliction or debility to be caused by a relationship of tension or disharmony between two forces. Let’s take Mars as an example. Mars is a planet represented by martial activities, it is hot and nocturnal. It is a planet of rebellion and warfare, of perfected young maleness. Now, Mars can enter into a trine with for instance Venus which has a benevolent effect upon Mars temper and softens its martial radiance. However, it can also enter into a square with Jupiter and our wealth can be afflicted by misfortunes, such as stealth and violence. But does this make Mars evil when afflicted? We can very well use this term, evil, but let us understand that with evil in this sense we refer to an afflicted condition that affect us negatively. Actually, by confronting an affliction with understanding and distributing the remedy we can gain both the planets favor and understanding. This understanding will then be based upon perceiving the reasons for the planets placement and see this as an additional knowledge that widens our understanding of life and the road towards perfection. Applying these principles in our life will result in a perception void of the idea of evil and this will be replaced by concepts concerning misplacement and affliction and we will use these as tools for teaching, as sources for enrichment of our life. This will result in us meeting our enemies and oppressors with understanding and using these tensions and this malefica as stepping stones towards a perfected stature and in the end it will give wealth of spirit and richness of life. If we turn towards the philosophical metaphysics of Ifá, similar ideas are expounded in more practical ways. Here the basic idea is found in the 256 patterns of cosmic reality that manifests in men and conditions either afflicted or perfected accompanied with their solutions. This means that a man manifesting one of these 256 odu in its afflicted manifestation can perform actions and deeds in order to remove the affliction and at the same time the priests of Ifá are the holders of the secrets of understanding of these varied conditions and thus is able to heal the community with this very same understanding. As such the priest of Ifá is considered a pact-maker, a manifestation of peaceful understanding and wisdom it self. Also here we find deep within its metaphysic a relationship with stars and constellations, with the tenants of classical astrology and thus a perfected understanding of the cosmic order and its many roads of manifestation amongst men. At the heart of the matter is simply the lack of understanding of the placement of the various powers - that we do not understanding that man is fundamentally about possibility. Every affliction that hits our life and happiness is always a lesson in disguise, ways of tempering our corrupted state, ways of reaching perfection. The failure to realize the lessons that are blazing within the subterranean waters of affliction and misfortune creates the deceptive illusion that we are subject to meaningless evil – but there are no meaningless evil, there are only conditions. There are only the blessings and the accursed road towards great cunning and the only compass on the accursed road is by way of understanding.

Oh Beloved Enemy of Mine

I have this neighbor who is a thief and a cowardly murderer. He has clearly a mental condition reminiscent of, if not, sociopathic personality disorder. He is naturally greatly despised in the neighborhood and all this hatred he holds for himself and others, all this fear and insanity of course piles up and develops into bad character. This form of bad character is in Ifá called ibi inú. This would signify a condition of great resistance towards what is good and a great acceptance of what is bad and negative. One day this neighbor pulled a knife on my wife. His submissive son, standing on the side with a scythe, helped to enhance the threat. It all went well, no one got hurt. To cut a long story short. This situation was the culmination of a series of events that begun with stopping this man from trespassing in our land and steal from us. It was followed by a long period of sabotage of light, water and road - and of course gossips about our evil constitution, like he attempted to transpose his own bad character on us. One day I had enough and upon fixing the sabotage of electricity yet again, this time with gun in hand, I threatened in return. Upon calming down I was thinking. God, I am becoming my neighbor! My hunger for justice had made me partake of this hatefulness. I realized I was nurturing that hostility which is at the root of developing bad character and thus failing fortune and destiny. I decided to speak with my Baba. He told me that all living beings are divine doors. Since man is interconnected with all other beings, each being holds a mysterious message for us. It is a question of understanding the place this being has in our life. I started to realize that my failure in seeing the place of my neighbor in my web of being made me myself the author of this series of misfortunes. Of course his role in my web, was that of a clown, and well, I did see a clown, but a Bozo with a machinegun and a bloody grin of madness. I perceived him as something he was not. This carries many lessons, because failure in recognizing what the many divine doors leads to will ultimately end up with the same door being opened elsewhere in our life. It is like the Kreyol proverb says presenting a deep truth: "Jou neg la kitem map jwen on lot o" meaning: “On the day the ‘evil’ man leaves I will find another”...

Gacela of the Dark Death

I want to sleep the dream of the apples,
to withdraw from the tumult of cemetries.
I want to sleep the dream of that child
who wanted to cut his heart on the high seas.

I don't want to hear again that the dead do not lose their blood,
that the putrid mouth goes on asking for water.
I don't want to learn of the tortures of the grass,
nor of the moon with a serpent's mouth
that labors before dawn.

I want to sleep awhile,
awhile, a minute, a century;
but all must know that I have not died;
that there is a stable of gold in my lips;
that I am the small friend of the West wing;
that I am the intense shadows of my tears.

Cover me at dawn with a veil,
because dawn will throw fistfuls of ants at me,
and wet with hard water my shoes
so that the pincers of the scorpion slide.

For I want to sleep the dream of the apples,
to learn a lament that will cleanse me to earth;
for I want to live with that dark child
who wanted to cut his heart on the high seas.

Federico Garcia Lorca

To take Death on as an Advisor

Don Juan told to Castaneda that the warrior chooses Death while the common man chooses immortality. The warrior takes on Death as an advisor and thus the annihilation of self importance, assuming responsibility and erasing personal history becomes the heart of the art of the warrior. What we should understand by this observation is that the warrior who chooses Death as the Advisor is refusing to succumb to the dream of loosing life, which motivates those who are choosing to live forever. They are choosing to walk the path of illusion and at the threshold to the other side they will be overcome with dread and fear. The warrior who has walked side by side with Death will at the crossing realize the profound peace of entering the castle.

The consequences of consciously accepting Death as ones Advisor are dire as the realization of ones worth need to be addressed and many of Death’s aspirants succumb to the protective mechanisms of our personal construct, often called ego as it virtually attacks the aspirants emotional system in order to preserve its construct. This construct we often refer to as I, me myself, is what often masquerades it self as our essence or true self. But it is merely a social construct, a way for the self to use the man made order more effectively. This condition is at times referred to as the seduction of the Demiurge amongst Gnostic schools of thought, in particular the Valentinian. This conflict is arising because of the contradictory nature of the human condition, a true paradox, where the mortal flesh and the immortal soul is united. This paradox makes man believe that flesh should be immortal as well and the refusal to accept the temporary state of the flesh causes dread and fear for Death. This in spite of Natures daily demonstrations that flesh is mortal and upon its mortal assumption it turns into a different unity, with the earth it self. Some schools of thought concludes that this reasoning will conclude that the soul is a prisoner of the body and that the world of senses are at worst a demonic charade to tempt us to focus on the world of pleasures which leads to a contempt for the world and the world of pleasures. This is the way of immortality. The way of Death will embrace the world and sensual experience for what it is, a temporary blessing, a field of experience and lessons to cultivate the warrior within. The warrior who has chosen Death as advisor will make proper use of the world and see it is the playground of the gods and ultimately realize that Nature is the lover of Death. By loving Nature and live life in a way that unfolds her mystery Death is walking in your Shadow reminding you to enjoy life and the world from the perspective of this garden of joy being just a dwelling on the road back home.

Death will encourage the warrior to erase personal history, or we might say, the importance of personal history as the personal history creates the construct we identify as who we are, but it is not so. Death teaches that this is but a way for the self to maneuver through the world. Our personal history is an accumulation of experience that we are interpreting according to our environment and the powers that lies in this environment. This means that this construct is subject to the volatile nature of the temporary state of mortal life, Death can advise us how to use this construct effectively by reminding us about its frailty. Our strength and uniqueness is not from these conclaves of interpreted experiences we are using to shape our personality, but from our divine mind, our connectedness to the godhood and the stellar rays. The constitution of the soul is temperate by the stellar rays and can be either drowned by sensorial experience and its organization or used as a compass for its mortal reflection. In this lies the virtue and dignity of man as children of the stars, shrouded in flesh, not as a veil for the corpse but as a shroud to the honour of Venus. By the senses we can come to know our soul, the senses are the pathways of Eros, and just as the soul seek love we should seek our true self within the temporal dwelling and thus become a temple for the glory of Natures stellar richness and Death’s embrace.

This walk of life forces the companion to assume responsibility, to enjoy without indulgence, to suffer without succumbing, to be righteous and up right, to not fall into the misery of the temporal or the pleasures of the mortal. Rather Death’s companion will enjoy and suffer life with the conviction that this is not an end in it self, but a field of pleasure and sorrow, a land of blessings and lessons for the cultivation of the soul and the tempering of the warrior. The companion of Death look in the face of Death and see there necessity, urge and solution. He sees in Death the ferryman that takes you over the river to the lost Eden, to the castle of the ancestors.

Death opens a road for life’s mastery, for a way of conduct based on honour and reflection, of steadiness. Death is life’s certainty and the warrior will fix his anchor in Death’s land so he can grow wise in his journey in the flesh. Wisdom is Death’s gift and wisdom stemming from Fate it self is what will guide the warrior on his path of righteousness.

There will always be enemies in the way for those who take on Death as their guide and Advisor, and the greatest enemy is the one within. The nafs that try to seduce the soul to chose immortality, to refuse Death and thus indulge into suffering and pleasure alike, affixing their hopes on the life after the veil, refusing the hand of Death. The enemy within takes on the form of Death, externalized and the divine play is whirling you in within its layers of illusions and possibilities that rebukes Death. But in the end, a man who has lived a blessed or accursed life will meet Death, Sator who will reap the mortal flesh and give back to Nature what you borrowed - in a remembrance that we are truly of the Nature. The powers of the stars and the powers of earth conjoined in one mystical and divine paradox. The companions of Death will go to their master in peace, knowing that they will lie down on a bed of jewels and be satisfied with the gifts life gave, for through Death’s door we will find home.

While the enemies of Death will at the gates of gold find only the dread of night, the crows cry and the rottenness of holy putrification, the true balm seen as a pot of worms and filth, a rupture in the temporal fabric perceived as unnatural caused by the desired to be everlasting.

As such the warrior who takes on Death as his Advisor will walk the way of the Sage and in this lies the secrets speaking of the reddening of the gold, the stone made visible and the ashes brought back to being. With Death as Advisor the vinculum from the height to the depth are established on the pole of the worlds. For in the North the Power resides.

The Anatomy of the Archetype

- A Critique of C.G. Jung and his impact on modern magical thinking.

“The pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.”

“The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases. We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.”
“Masses are always breeding grounds of psychic epidemics.”
- C.G. Jung

In this article an attempt of presenting the legacy of Jung as it has been inducted into the modern occult thinking will be presented. This means that there will be no distinctions made between the pattern of thinking of Jung himself, as clearly towards his death and the manifestation of the text Seven Sermons for the Dead to present a mature Gnostic vision of the world. This critique is as such aimed towards the heritage Jung left with the occult world and it is therefore by proxy an example of my own schooling in the discipline of psychology. First there is need to comment that in the scholastic environments in Europe C.G. Jung never had a great impact, as he had in large parts of the Americas. Rather the post war condition created a critical field of academic approach where critical theory, Marxism and hermeneutics of various kinds coloured the research. In terms of psychology Julia Kristeva and Heinz Kohut became more important than their psychoanalytical predecessors. Jung and his ideas became more popular with the mystical awakening in America in the 70s than amongst psychologists on the continent and his legacy lives on in the Americas and colours also psychotherapy in America as well as its continuations in the works of more mystical or religiously inclined therapists, such as Ralph Metzner and James Hillmann. In the case of the latter, this has brought Jungian reformed ideas of self realization out to the masses and a disappointing side effect is how these ideas have come to be assumed by people no matter how denigrated they might be – that a realization of self, no matter how, rude or afflicted it might be deserves realization. I would in the words of Jung denote this as a psychic epidemic, alongside with the neurotic libidinous world of mans veiled inner life.
The psychoanalytic ideas of Jung was and is a theory of the possible activities of the psyche or man’s inner life and Jung’s later search within the realms of Gnosticism and Alchemy led to Jung displaying a mystical or even occult format for psychological understanding. We have seen for quite some time a Jungian epidemic in the world of occult reflection that freely adopts Jungian terms and principles as living truths and ready realities fitting perfectly with a magical world view. The complexity of personality types, the alchemy of the unconscious, the rich inner life that replicate the themes found in the collective unconsciousness, the archetypes and the anima are the main foundation of Jungian psychology and it is typically modern in its constitution by its acceptance of the meaning in these terms on modern premises – and as such it cannot be an expression of timeless truths on the basis of its foundation. Assuming that modernity is expressing values that includes a rejection of the traditional world-view in the age preceding it (the renaissance) as being outdated a whole array of systems of meanings are born and over time developed into a system of sense and explanation resting on a quite different foundation. One example is the impact Jung has had on modern astrology and reduced it to an insecure and inaccurate pseudo-psychological tool for the understanding of man that does nothing to clarify but rather veils man in mystery and complexity to such extent that mans connectedness tends to be completely obscurated by meaningless details. Personally, I feel this development is a reflection of the dysfunctional basis of modernity where obscuration serves as distractions from a real investigation about our identity and our connectedness to all things. A natural consequence is that the application of this mode of thinking will not serve to clarify but to obscure and in the last instance the knowledge provided is distorted and coloured by a thinking that opposes a traditional magical world view. I believe this condition is partly due to the world spirit of modernity and secondary to the tendency of invalidate a given context with no epistemological concern. Let us take the word, that has infested the occult world mostly, Archetype.
Jung approached this term as a philosopher, by turning to Greece and thus finds a proper term to express an idea. Clearly philosophy is occupied with the genealogy of Greek words and how they can express philosophical truths in the contemporary society. The problem arises when people believes themselves capable of understanding the meaning of a thing or a term neglecting their limited knowledge of the subject. The term archetype is in our contemporary world used often when we do not actually know what we want to refer to and see that a wide word as ‘archetype’ can be used in order to induct a sense of reliability into our lack of knowledge. For Jung the archetypes were primal forms of consciousness found in religions, mythologies and concepts, by looking at comparative studies of religion he set out to find or rather locate collective archetypes and themes, such as the hero, the king, the father, the mother, the trickster, the wise one and so on. As such Jung saw the archetype to be an idealized model of concepts, situation, person of thing which were subject for replication throughout time and culture. We also have two subgroups to archetype, namely epitome and stereotype. The latter is usually a simplification of a type or category, as is the tendency with nationality and in-group/out-group labelling. An epitome is usually understood to be the very embodiment of an archetype, a type of perfection. In a linguistic sense the term refers to ‘a summary’ and is actually less complex and cruder even thou idealized in its summarized elegancy. If we look at the work ‘archetype’ itself it started to pop up in Europe in connection with fairytales in the middle of the 1500, in the sense of being the ‘first formed’. The word itself is of Greek origin and is a composite of ‘arkhe’ meaning first and ‘typos’ meaning model. It can also denote the mark left in a thing after it has been subject for a blow. This means the mark a club leaves in the head of a man is a ‘typo’ and the word can as such both refer to ideas such as the first man, Adam, the first woman, Eve and the first murder effectuated by Cain’s blow on his brother Abel. Nowadays the term archetype is seen in an uncritical use – and any pattern or factor that seems to repeat itself or reveal the innermost nature of a thing is referred to as ‘archetype’ or ‘archetypical’. Considering the root of the word, to mark something with a blow in order to create a form for perfect replicas the word would be subject to grave limitations. For Jung however the psychological archetypes described universal prototypes that were experienced to be so consistent that he could use this in interpreting the psychological make-up of a person. The fact that Jung perceived the concept of the archetypes to be a part of a greater complex is largely ignored in contemporary usage. The problematic factor with Jung’s psychology in this regard rests on the demand of universality of the archetypes, as a sort of baseline for human life and activity across time and culture. That learning changes the neurons in the brain and secure storage of this information in parts of the dna associated with memory seems to be a reasonable and true assumption, but to state that the archetypical categories are meaningful and useful across time and culture is a supposition I would proceed with carefully. The greatest critique against Jung’s psychology is the dualist stance that likes as a foundation for his thinking. This segmentation is predominantly modern – and in this I would also like to aim a critique against viewing the so called Manichaean world view as dualist and question if not this is a modern interpretation of a qualified monistic worldview. Likewise the segmentations into anima and animus to denote the male and female psyche easily turns into rigid categories that rather seek to conform the phenomena within the category rather than the dynamic expansion that would lead to a greater sense of connectedness that in the last instance will make such categories less important. This argument is sustained by Jung’s own conviction that the archetype was of a dualistic nature, both integrated in the inner life of the organism and in existence in the world as a timeless structure. Likewise in his comment about the significance of Buddhist and Tantrik mandalas where he states in the 12th volume of his Collected works on page 571:
“Mandalas used in ceremonies are of great significance because their centres usually contain important religious figures, e.g. Shiva or the Buddha. If, as surmised, mandalas symbolize a psychic centre of the personality that is separate from the ego, the high value placed on them is justified.”

Problematic is also the idea of Self and shadow expressed in his thinking. Self expresses the Self we acknowledge, while shadow express the negation of the ego, or in other words, the parts of our active self, or ego we refuses to acknowledge and thus it is deemed unconscious but nevertheless it do influence thinking and behaviour and colours our anima/animus.
Jung comments in his 1921 work about Personality types on page 10:
“Thinking in general is fed from two sources, firstly from subjective and in the last resort
unconscious roots, and secondly from objective data transmitted through sense perceptions.”
Observations like these remains as suppositions, - vague and unclear and I would argument that these objective data that is filtered through the senses are the very fabric of learning and thus this constitute a superior importance than the subjective and unconscious roots. In other words, Jung believed that evolution had formed structures in mans psyche that were already present at birth, so to some extent our anima/animus were already present in the form of a simplified blueprint. The esteemed psychologist and thinker B.F. Skinner on the other hand saw these structures as predispositions that needed stimuli – or external sensorial data to be triggered. Actually, Skinners’ views presents a more dynamic and rich attitude towards the constitution of man, as an organism with limitless dispositions, and at the same time open for being worked upon by society and creation at large. So, within the limits of the predisposition the many possibilities for each and everyone are far less rigid than what Jung suggested. Basically, Jung, like his teacher Freud expressed a deterministic and somewhat fatalistic view upon man, indicative of the neurosis and psychosis arising as a consequence of not conforming to the patterns already laid at your birth.
Jung considered ‘the shadow’ as an archetype and understood this to be a segment of the unconscious mind largely consisting of repressed experiences, perceived weaknesses and instincts related to shame, guilt and other categories imposed upon the western world by Christian morals and authoritarian control and condemnation from within the fabric of society. Jung associated the shadow as a faculty more close to animal instincts, a category that was triggered when the self experienced forms of stress and threat related to worth and integrity. Since Jung saw the shadow as irrational and instinctive it would kick in during confrontation and reveal aggressive and melancholic sides of the self. An important part in Jungian psychotherapy is to acknowledge and integrate these problematic aspects of one’s personality, the shadow, in ones conscious self. He saw for instance projection as an activity of ‘the shadow’, as projection is always a strategy of psychic defence and also this category of inner silent conflict was considered intimately related to creativity. Jung also suggested that ‘the shadow’ could consist of several layers in order to protect the self from direct confrontation with the persona, what we would understand to be the personality, the ‘I’ we recognize as being our self. Since the anima/animus archetype was understood to reside in all humans it would also indicate that males were predestined to solve inner conflict of a female nature and women inner conflicts of a male nature. It is in this interplay between anima/animus and the establishing of ‘the shadow’ we can understand this emphasize on father-daughter and mother-son relationships in psychoanalysis as it is here the strength of ‘the shadow’ often are established. In a way we might say that the successful integration of ‘the shadow’ makes man ready to acknowledge his anima, a process Jung described repeatedly as ‘a masterpiece’, when this was accomplished. This integration again rested on archetypes. While for the male and animus, the archetypes were less, the integration of the anima was far more complex as women were always confined to a host of different roles and accordingly the ordeals were harder and more difficult with the integration of the anima. These terms are originally from Aristotle, but we shall leave the inquiry into this maze alone for now, and rather focus in a few words on one of the many archetypes, the one of ‘the trickster’. This archetype can denote a man, woman, deity or animal which create confusion by deliberately challenging norms and expectations. Famous tricksters are the fox, Prometheus, Loki, the raven and Esu. They have in common a certain ambiguity and that they challenge of norms and pranks create a movement that often leads to positive results or a widening of knowledge. With this comes also the feeling of someone you cannot trust and as such the tricksters express the volatile and unpredictable factors in creation, in man, in relations and in things.
That certain themes are recurring in myths and societies across time and culture that denotes the existence of a cosmic and universal pattern is difficult to argue against, but this amazing phenomena to often lead to people in search for defence for a theory of point of view do stretch the categories too much and goes outside context and meaning for the theme discussed. In the last instance it can create an illusion of truth that rests on false premises. In our contemporary occult world, the word archetype is used to such an extent that the meaning has disappeared - and the term is readily available for a wide range of uncanny and uninformed opinions, by those who resort to Jungian terminology as labels to induce meaning in their meaninglessness. Especially is this evident in works with the ‘dark goddesses’ for the purpose of integrating ones ‘shadow’. This idea has been entertained to such an extent that in the contemporary occult world these ideas are now integrated in a apparently meaningful symbiosis – that serves no purpose other than giving strength to the illusion of a connection. As demonstrated here, the shadow is a segment of our self we deny to accept. It we seek to transpose these terms on a dark goddess, it would indicate that the dark goddess herself represents a condensed format of a counterpart to this dark goddess that she denies to acknowledge. Does this make sense? A dark goddess embodies in a perfect sense a composite – or complex – that might challenge the category Jung referred to as ‘the shadow’, and whether we make or break such relationship can be dependent on what level we recognize this category we deny to acknowledge for ourselves. But even such relationships have become subject for a form of ‘psychic epidemic’. People use these terms thinking they are self explanatory, just to reveal through interrogation that they are just terms filling the emptiness and insecurity with meaningless content.
In conclusion, when words and descriptions are used uncritically they are emptied for meaning. Today, the unconscious refers to whatever we do not know or refuse to accept, or to acts made by what we deem to be spontaneous or instinctive – this without ever questioning if there actually is a category of unconscious experience we act upon. Likewise, ‘the shadow’ is frequently associated with sexual matters, while these issues are actually more properly ascribed to the anima/animus complex. And archetypes... every man and every phenomena seems to express and archetype and this is all of a sudden used as a model of explanation that we use to excuse our lack of honour and character and in the same vein falls modern astrology. It is seen as a map of your psyche to explain why you are as you are and thus induce the fatalistic reasoning to why you do not have to do anything about your current estate. And it is in these consequences my critique of Jungian psychology and his grave impact on the ‘magical archetype’. By appealing to Jung a dualistic fatalism is at work, where you are already born a blueprint that is marked by a certain archetype and in the course of life your level of neurosis or psychic affliction is mediated by these principles. Rather that make a happy destiny happen and embrace luck man is falling back into excuses resting on false pretences and excuses by referring to their natal chart of shadows or inner conflicts or the unbearable challenges of their archetypical unfolding. For me that question severely if any archetypical blueprint is presented by see these questions are crucial. I see man born into a world that is marked by some level of social dysfunction. It is this dysfunction that establishes our ‘shadow’. This dysfunction is brought upon us by disruptive families, limited worldviews and religious control that dominate human life and organization with moral and dogmas – and this leaves imprints. These imprints are for the psychoanalysts seen as imprints on the psyche – but I believe, we are all born good and blessed, these imprints are social and they scar our psyche when we act upon this dysfunctional world. As such, we are never responsible for our scars, they are relationships possible to heal and from seeing the interrelationships’ and connectedness we can reach our full potential. The key is not resting within a slimy web of obscure and vile psychosis. The key to our fulfilment is out there – within the web of stars, our home and being and we need to reach unity, not fragmentation.

The Hieroglyph of Exu Mor

Kimbanda is the fruition of multiple sorcerous impulses that were running through time in Brazil. In spite of much disagreement of the origin of kimbanda we can at least say that it was given a particular place with the formation of Umbanda in the 1920s. This was quite natural as Umbanda started as a syncretistic attempt focusing on uniting Kardecism or Spiritsm, Christianity, native folk magic and Afro-cults. Umbanda was founded as a consequence of the spiritst Zelio channeling of a message of unification from his caboclo (Indian). In this work of unification there were also made room for diabolic spirits and practices referred to as black magic or macumba in those days. The kingdom at the left hand of God, kimbanda was established and understood on Kardecist principles where the elevation by the power of light and charity was essential. In this fashion kimbanda became a cluster of helpful albeit perverse spirits that were seen as depending of the umbandista for engaging into a form of elevation towards light. This partly explains the hierarchy found in kimbanda where the spirits are separated into kingdoms and liens of origin. There is yet another organization quite similar to the hierarchy or armies and aristocracies, which suggest an influence from European grimoires. This influence is quite evident in the popular grimoire of São Cypriano, which is basically a collection of available magical practices, quite chaotic in its content and without the philosophical foundation found in most of the western grimoires. Rather, the grimoire of São Cypriano attempts to describe the varieties of magical arts ascribed to São Cypriano, a Bishop of Carthage from the 2nd Century as well as a host of other material. In the 1950’s Fontenelle and Alves contributed to a syncretism between kimbanda and ‘Grimorium Verum’. Most likely these ideas were in circulation long time before, but saw the light of print under the authorship of these two pioneers. Amongst the spirits from ‘Grimorium Verum’ that lend themselves to kimbanda are the three demon princes from Verum, Lucifer, Ashtaroth and Beelzebuth. The latter is known as Exu Mor in the hierarchies of kimbanda.

Exu Mor has presented quite a puzzle and a multitude of contradictory explanations are to be found, but the simple truth of his becoming will also help us to understand more the progeny of the ‘demonic’ influences in the hierarchies of kimbanda. His mythical origin is traceable back to the destruction of Solomon’s temple, that were constructed on the mountain Mor or Moriah. In the seal of Beelzebuth we find even the insignia of the pillars of Solomon’s temple, a J and B. It is an adaption of this seal that is often used as his ponto riscado in kimbanda. These letters are both Jak-in and Bo-az as well as yud and beith. Jak means ‘he will establish’ and bo “confusion’. From the destruction of the temple the confusion is established and man is given an opportunity for deliverance, but he is also hurled towards the terrestrial where demonic intellects that attempts to pervert mankind is found. As such Exu Mor, symbolizes the house (beith) of confusion (bo). And interestingly from an unexpected quarter, Martines de Pasqually says about this that: “The number of confusion of the second column is designated by the binary rank held by the first letter of the word Boaz”. Ultimately the pillar of confusion carried the secrets of Cain’s legacy as the pillar of Jakin veiled the secrets of the descendants of Seth. So ultimately the mystery of Exu Mor is contained in yet another observation of Pasqually: “confusion derives from two powers in opposition, to sustain on the one hand, and to liberate on the other”. In this we can also remind of how Al-Arabi saw Iblis as the power that affirmed the perfection of the creators design. We should also mention that the name Beelzebuth or Bael Zebub is not necessary referring to ‘The Lord of flying things”, such as flies, but it can also refer to the Lord of Zebub, a place of unknown location, that might describe the location of the mountain Mor. It can also mean beith zebul, in conformity with what is written in the 1^st Book of Kings 8: 13 meaning ‘the house upon high’ which opens up avenues of understanding Exu Mor that harmonizes with the confusion arising from dyadic opposition. From this origin Exu Mor represents a principle amazingly profound as being the Lord of the House of Confusion. This might be taken to the symbolism of Janus in his capacity of presenting multiple choices for the seeker and herein is found his mystery – and danger.

Aquele que tem paciência tem a tudo

English version

Ifá, a fé tradicional dentre os povos de língua Iorubá é um somatório de tesouros de recomendações práticas de como conduzir sua vida para que se alcance a felicidade e a realização; a meta prometida para qualquer um que ousar abraçar seu destino. Quando Ifá fala de guerra , por exemplo, fala também sobre coragem e retirada, como fala da importância de se manter uma mente calma e da importância da paciência.

Nesta última semana, como o Sol, Mercúrio e Vênus estiveram vagando ao redor do signo de Áries, notei muita raiva. Não direcionada à mim, mas uma raiva social, em uma variedade de tons. Nesta manhã acordei com o Sol, e um sentimento de paz precipitou-se de minha cabeça para baixo, e eu pensei comigo 'como sou feliz ao ser uma pessoa pacífica' – e então me lembrei de um provérbio de Ifá: “Ìbìnù Kó sè Ohùnkóhun Ìwà Sùsù Ní Ohùn Gbògbò”. Significa; “a raiva não alcança a nada. A paciência é a coroa do caráter e das realizações. Aquele que possui paciência, possui tudo.”

Há muito, naturalmente, que pode ser contemplado sobre isto, mas em particular a 'ira' ou raiva/ódio, veio à minha mente em razão da quantidade de raiva desviada que tenho visto ao redor nestas últimas semanas. Com isto também notei como a raiva não consegue alcançar a nada, ao contrário, começa a ser gerada em outros domínios da vida atormentada das pessoas. Na ortodoxia católica, a ira é o pecado e a virtude que lhe é contrária é, interessantemente, a paciência. Todos os sete pecados capitais vieram do sétimo, o primordial, hubris.

Hubris é geralmente traduzido como orgulho, mas hubris não é o tipo de orgulho que surge quando alguém está satisfeito com seus feitos. Não, é um orgulho feio, onde a alma inferior é exaltada à realeza na vida de alguém. É um senso deslocado de auto-importância, e com coisas e atitudes deslocadas, elas irão naturalmente ser desafiadas para que sejam colocadas novamente no local. Naturalmente, inveja e ira sãos os gêmeos feios do orgulho. Galeno considerava a raiva uma forma de loucura, e Sêneca dizia igualmente, em política e eventos esportivos, que considerava a raiva tanto inútil como sem valor. Em Provérbios 6:18,19, quando detalhando os atos de abominação, lista-se dentre eles: “Um coração que maquina projetos iníquos, pés que se apressam a correr para o mal; uma testemunha falsa que profere mentiras, e o que semeia contendas entre irmãos.”

A raiva faz tudo isto, faz as pessoas mentirem, enganarem e se tornarem invejosas. Não só isto, a raiva pode alcançar isto tudo sozinha. Por isto é que Ifá chama pela paciência e diz, se você a tem, você terá todas as coisas. Então, eu só tenho a dizer, como digo toda manhã, adaptando do Odù Ifá Òtúrá Ogbè:

Quem quer que se sinta confortável irá se comportar como tal
Eu venho para louvar a calma
Para despertar nas primeiras horas da manhã
E dar ao destino o que ele merece
Eu sou uma pessoa que irá encontrar a sorte e felicidade em seu caminho
Ao dar ao destino o que ele merece
Encontrar sorte hoje e amanhã
Pois não há confusão na minha cabeça
Não há raiva em meu coração
Não há ganância em meu estômago
Minha cabeça está calma e limpa
Que assim seja!

O Temor da Matéria

English version

Nos fragmentos filosóficos particularmente longos do filósofo dinamarquês Soeren Kierkegaard (1813 -1855) encontramos: “observe, o sofrimento do homem não é sua morte, mas sua vida toda é uma história de sofrimento; e é o amor que sofre, o amor que se dá do nada. Que admirável renúncia!” Com isto ele está lamentando a morte do amor, e como o desespero e temor tomou seu lugar. A modernidade encontra seu significado no sofrimento. Vivemos em um mundo sob controle negativo, sempre há demandas e códigos de conduta que nos são dados pela nossa sociedade ou de nossa história pessoal, e nos engajamos neles para evitarmos a punição. O amor se tornou um servente egoísta de necessidades imediatas e um escape de manipulação.

Kierkegaard via o temor da morte tomando o lugar do amor, Sartre viu a asfixia entrando na cena e para Nietzsche a conclusão era que o bem estava morto. Pois certamente, se Deus é Amor e amor não é sofrimento e auto-engano – o Deus dos antigos morreu com a chegada da modernidade. O que aconteceu foi que com as meditações e subsequentes experimentações de Descartes para provar a ordem divina, ele também pavimentou o caminho para o dualismo moderno. Era suficiente que fosse uma matéria perceptível aos sentidos e a percepção de nossos arredores, auxiliados por uma forma inferior de razão que abriram espaço para racionalizarmos para longe de Deus. Hoje em dia, pensamos em Deus de formas muito personalizadas, e vemos deus em nós mesmos e não mais um reflexo divino. Para os antigos, como Platão, Porfírio, Tomás de Aquino e Marsilio Ficino, Deus era amor. Então, ao expulsar Deus da equação do ser, expulsamos o amor. Não que Deus SEJA amor com tal, mas é através do amor que ganhamos o conhecimento dos perimetros divinos que definem a tangibilidade divina.

Com o cartesianismo, a ação à distância foi negada. Não havia mais graça ou raios divinos, e o homem se fechou em um universo corpuscular onde ele mesmo se tornou o autor de seu próprio destino, de acordo com a posição do nosso corpo em tempo e espaço.

O dualismo moderno não é está na relação da crença em bem e mal, não está na crença da queda e redenção, mas na crença ou descrença. No dualismo, a crença em amor e Deus, se tornou uma escolha pessoal. Disto se ergue o desespero, porque nos sentimos alienados e perdidos – não estamos mais conectados. Quando Baudelaire descreveu o amor como uma fonte de sangue que jorrava para que as prostitutas bebessem, ele mediu o temor e a alienação de formas que transcendem o temor e sofrimento de Kierkegaard. Para Baudelaire, a alienação da fonte se tornou uma vala de infecções e seu amor uma paixão de miséria e angústia.

Com Descartes a razão foi deslocada das emoções e do corpo; se tornou o monitor encarnado da verdade. O resto eram somente leis estéreis, e enquanto se poderia realizar um pensamento racional sobre a matéria, a com racional me referia-se à percepção diligente das atividades da matéria. Mas a percepção mental da matéria irá somente se engajar em uma 'admirável renúncia' – juntamente com o sofrimento naturalmente surgirá daí. O Homem é mais do que seu corpo, o Homem é microcosmo, a imagem divina da ordem celestial, a amálgama é amor. Então, por amor e bondade, pela compreensão de nossa participação em todas as coisas visíveis e invisíveis, podemos também alcançar as vias de nosso destino feliz, e se tivermos coragem o suficiente, podemos bater às portas de Eros...

He who has Patience will have All Things

Versão em Português
Ifá, the traditional faith amongst the Yoruba speaking people is a treasure trove of practical recommendations of how to conduct your life in order to reach happiness and fulfillment; the promised goal for anyone who dare embrace its destiny. When Ifá speaks of warfare for instance it also speaks about courage and retreat as it speaks of the importance of maintaining a calm mind and the importance of patience. The last week or so, as Sun Mercury and Venus has been fooling around in the sign of Aries, I have noticed a lot of anger. Not directed towards me, but social anger of a variety of shades. This morning I woke up with the Sun and a feeling of peace rushing from my head and down and I thought to myself, ‘how happy I am to be a peaceful person’ – and then I remembered the Ifá proverb. Ìbìnù Kó sè Ohùnkóhun Ìwà Sùsù Ní Ohùn Gbògbò. It means transliterated that; “anger does not accomplish anything. Patience is the crown of character and achievements. Those who posses patience possess all things.” There are of course much that can be contemplated upon this, but in particular ‘ira’ or anger/wrath came to my mind due to the amount of misguided anger I have been seeing around the last weeks. With this I also noticed how anger did not managed to accomplish anything, on the contrary it started to breed out into other domains of the afflicted peoples life. In Catholic orthodoxy wrath is a sin and the virtue that counters it is interestingly enough patience. All the seven deadly sins came from the seventh, the primordial one, hubris. Hubris is often translated into pride, but hubris is not the kind of pride that arises when we are satisfied with our accomplishments. No, it is an ugly pride where ones lower soul is exalted to kingship in one’s life. It is a misplaced sense of self importance and with things and attitudes misplaced they will naturally be challenged in order to call it back into place. Naturally envy and wrath are the ugly twins of Pride. Galen considered anger a form of madness and Seneca likewise, in politics and sporting events, he considered anger to be both useless and unworthy. Proverbs 6: 18, 19 when detailing the acts of abomination lists amongst them: “An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief. A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren.” Anger do all this, it makes people to lie, to deceive, to become envy. Not only this, but even just anger can accomplish the same results, which is why Ifá calls for patience and says, if you have this you will have all things. So, I only say, as I say every morning adapted from the Odù Ifá Òtúrá Ogbè:

Whoever feels comfortable will behave so
I have come to give praise to calmness
To wake up in the early hours of the morning
And give destiny its due
I am a person who will meet luck and happiness on his road
By giving destiny its due in the morning it is me that will be
Meet with luck today and tomorrow.
For there is no confusion in my head
There is no anger in my heart
There is no greed in my stomach
My head is calm and clean
May it be so!

The Dread of Matter

Versão em Português
In the rather lengthy Philosophical fragments the Danish philosopher Soeren Kierkegaard (1813 -1855) said: “ behold the man His suffering is not that of his death, but this entire life is a story of suffering; and it is love that suffers, the love which gives all itself in want. What wonderful self-denial!” With this he is lamenting the death of love and how despair and dread has taken its place. Modernity is signified by suffering. We live in a world under negative control, there are always demands and codes of conduct given to us from our society or from our personal history we engage into in order to avoid punishment. Love has become a selfish servant of immediate needs and an outlet of manipulation. Kierkegaard saw the dread taking the place of love, Sartre saw the asphyxia entering the scene and for Nietzsche the conclusion was that god was dead. For certainly, if God is Love and love is now suffering, and self deception - the God of the ancients died with the coming of modernity. What happened was that with Descartes meditations and subsequent experimentation to prove divine order, he also paved the way for modern dualism. It was enough to be a sensible matter and the perception of our surroundings aided by a lower form of reason opened up for rationalizing away God. Today, we think of God in ways very personalized, we see in god ourselves and not anymore a divine reflection. For the ancients, like Plato, Porphyry, Thomas Aquinas and Marsilio Ficino God was love. So, by expelling God from the equation of being we are expelling love. Not that God IS love as such, but it is through love we can gain knowledge of the divine perimeters that define the divine tangibility. With Cartesianism action from a distance was denied. There were no more grace or divine rays, man became shut off in a corpuscular universe where we became the authors of our destiny in accordance with how we placed our body in time and space.

Modern dualism is not about a belief in good and evil, it is not about a belief in fall and redemption, it is about believing or not believing. In this dualism belief in love, God, meaning has become a personal choice. From this rises despair, because we feel alienated and lost, we are no longer connected. When Baudelaire described love as a fountain of blood that gushed forth for whores to drink he measures this dread and alienation in ways that transcends Kierkegaard’s dread and suffering. For Baudelaire, the alienation from source became a cesspool of infection and his love a passion of misery and anguish.

With Descartes reason was dislocated from affect and body; it became the embodied monitor of truth. The rest was solely sterile laws, insofar as I could perform a rational thought about it, and with rational – a mindful perception of the activities of matter. But mind perceiving matter will solely engage in a ‘wonderful self-denial’ – and the suffering it naturally brings with it. Man is more than his body, man is microcosm, a divine image of celestial order, the amalgam is love. So by love and goodness, by realizing our participation in all things visible and invisible we can also reach the roads of our happy destiny and if we have courage enough, we can knock on Eros door…