Recently ConjureMan Ali presented some observations concerning friendliness with spirits that you can read in full by a click here.
I think his observations are immensely sound and valuable and he is highlighting some issues of grave importance here. First it is the hermetic axiom, as above so below – but such axioms are often repeated so often that we lose the message behind the axiom. The heavens mirror itself on earth and like a planet can go retrograde and enter malefic aspects with planets and stars so can the human actors in society – as well as the invisible world of spirits.
The world is supported by restrain and giving, by the protection and the blessing – this is the basic idea in the Etz Chaim – or Tree of Life as much as in the metaphysics of odu in Ifá.
We find this dual polarity expressed also in the Godhood it be the face of vengeance of the God in the Holy Bible or beautiful names such as al-Mumit, ‘the taker of life’ and Al-Qahhar, the Crusher’ in the Quran. In a ritual dedicated to Saturn in Ibn Wahshiyya’s ‘The Book of Poisons’ we find the first line of the summoning stating the following: “O God, the great, the violent, the powerful, the luminous, the killer of all who have been killed, and who brought all the dead their deaths.”
Saturn and Mars are traditionally referred to as the Greater and Lesser Malefica – and in this capacity they are also responsible for the transformation of the malefic into poison. Personally I believe it is important for all to contemplate the issue of malefic, evil and poison in all three levels of being. I conceive of the poison as a latent potential within what is malefic. Hence we have an experience of ‘evil’ on the basis of strength, restraint, Saturn and Mars – it is a form of ‘not-Giving’.
We see the states of poison played out most visible in the material world because the material world is a place of distance in all six directions. Between some souls there are a natural animosity, we find this amongst plants, as amongst humans, social groups – and also amongst spirits. We find spell workings in the Munich handbook of Necromancy where the sorcerer in order to generate hostility on the physical plane invokes spirits hostile with one another in order to generate this spiritual antimony amongst human actors. In the same vein we find by analyzing a birth chart using traditional techniques what stellar influences that bring blessing to the native and which brings restraint. Indeed, as above – so below, but profoundly so.
We are all unique souls made unique by the gathering of star and spirit accompanying our birth and becoming which gives various inclinations towards giving and restraint – and so it is with spirits, save the moral dimension which is quite unique for the human realm.
It is in this field we will do well in contemplating who we invite to our home and life. The world is a cosmic mirror and we mirror each other as spirits mirror us. This also implies that what we attract and what we are attracted by on both sides of the mirror can gravitate towards each other for good or for ill – because Eros, the divine vinculum itself – sees only attraction and is not concerned with directions. Hence his symbol is the heart struck by an arrow…