BARBARIAN

“Well, you know, sometimes when you hate, you’re in Love, Flora.

If you love someone, you want to kill them.”

Peter Quint 

“Every man has a double anima. He comes factory equipped — it is absolutely ingrained— with two visions of woman. How he manages this dilemma says a great deal about his integrity. The first is the heavenly vision, a Beatrice-like figure who leaves him speechless at the world that she opens for him. Beatrice appears early in a man’s life, and all he can do is store her away until he is strong enough to reencounter her. The other vision is an earthy woman who is lots of fun, sexually attractive, and perfect for courtship. She has all the human attributes, as well as the dark aspects —a dragon, a bitch, a whore. Every man is torn between the light and dark expectations of woman. 

And every woman has experienced man vacillating between these visions.

The woman’s animus also comes doublea knight on a white horse and a barbarian. Her soul guide, usually a male figure, will guide her in much the same manner as Beatrice guides Dante. If you’re homosexual, the same thing happens, but the labels are reversed. We all follow the same path.

Beatrice, the heavenly anima figure, is the vision of all that is tender and beautiful. If you are personally unlucky, like Dante— although lucky in an impersonal way— the person who awakens Beatrice in your life will vanish or even die, separating herself from you. Beatrice can live within you only in subtle form. If you marry Beatrice, your marriage will drift off, because it is more a kind of worship than a marriage; or you will turn your Beatrice into the earthy anima image and then wonder what happened to the goddess you married. Probably, like Dante, you will marry an earthy woman who will bear children and help manage your household. You are companions, and  you talk and fight and make love and go through the vicissitudes of life together. But she is not Beatrice.

At age forty-five or fifty, when you have raised your children and become accomplished in your work, suddenly you fall into a hole. The more sensitive and intelligent you are, the deeper the hole might be. A guide in the form of Virgil may come and list all the things in your life that have gone wrong. These are the nine levels of Hell. Your guide, your intelligence, will dis-illusion you. “ Abandon hope, all ye who enter here” is a classical beginning to what Jung called the “ individuation process,” or the spiritualization of a man. If I could rewrite that sign, it would say, “Give up all expectations and presently held concepts.”

 

The job of your intelligence is to catalog Hell for you, to tell you all the things that don’t work. If your integrity is sufficient, if you go forward, Beatrice will come in the form of a radiant vision of hope and the feminine to take you the rest of the way and gently deposit you in Heaven. This will be one of the most profound experiences of your life.

Modern men and women have forgotten how to take this journey. Even with the best of motives— trying to find that vision of life that will nourish us and give meaning to the progression of our days on earth—we do crazy things. We let our marriage go to pieces and marry someone else, hoping to find the visionary feminine in her. We would do well to learn from Dante. Most important is to remember that Virgil, the one who helps us discern what is wrong, and Beatrice, the heavenly guide, are both interior figures and that this is an interior journey. It has its exterior dimension. If you are an artist, a poet, a healer, a teacher, or a mystic, you will produce outer, tangible results of your journey. But the journey is essentially inner. This is the most important thing to learn.

You will never find a Beatrice to marry, because she is in your imagination, your art, and your prayers. When you seek her in an interior way, she will come in an instant. But you must be humble enough to ask your feminine side for these rare qualities of tenderness and beauty, receptivity and love. Without doing so, it can be difficult to become truly whole. Even if you experience her as a real woman who has entered your life, the grace that has descended upon you is your inner awakening, catalyzed by this wonderful experience. 

It is not the other. It is in you.”

 

Excerpt from: "Inner Gold: Understanding Psychological Projection" by Arnie Kotler.

“ I am a democrat (1) because I believe in the Fall of Man. 

I think most people are democrats for the opposite reason. 

A great deal of democratic enthusiasm descends from the ideas of people like Rousseau, who believed in Democracy because they thought mankind so wise and good that everyone deserved a share in the government. 

The danger of defending democracy on those grounds is that they're NOT TRUE. 

Whenever their weakness is exposed, the people who prefer tyranny make capital out of the exposure. 

I find that they're not true without looking further than myself. 

I don't deserve a share in governing a hen-roost, much less a nation. 

Nor do most people — all the people who believe advertisements, and think in catchwords and spread rumors. 

The real reason for Democracy is just the reverse. 

Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows. 

Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. 

But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters.

This introduces a view of equality rather different from that in which we have been trained. I do not think that equality is one of those things (like wisdom or happiness) which are good simply in themselves and for their own sakes. I think it is in the same class as medicine, which is good because we are ill, or clothes which are good because we are no longer innocent. I don't think the old authority in kings, priests, husbands, or fathers, and the old obedience in subjects, laymen, wives, and sons, was in itself a degrading or evil thing at all. I think it was intrinsically as good and beautiful as the nakedness of Adam and Eve. It was rightly taken away because men became bad and abused it. To attempt to restore it now would be the same error as that of the Nudists. Legal and economic equality are absolutely necessary remedies for the Fall, and protection against cruelty.

But medicine is not good. There is no spiritual sustenance in flat equality. It is a dim recognition of this fact which makes much of our political propaganda sound so thin. We are trying to be enraptured by something which is merely the negative condition of the good life. That is why the imagination of people is so easily captured by appeals to the craving for inequality, whether in a romantic form of films about loyal courtiers or in the brutal form of Nazi ideology. The tempter always works on some real weakness in our own system of values -- offers food to some need which we have starved.

When equality is treated not as a medicine or a safety-gadget, but as an ideal, we begin to breed that stunted and envious sort of mind which hates all superiority. That mind is the special disease of democracy, as cruelty and servility are the special diseases of privileged societies. It will kill us all if it grows unchecked. The man who cannot conceive a joyful and loyal obedience on the one hand, nor an unembarrassed and noble acceptance of that obedience on the other - the man who has never even wanted to kneel or to bow - is a prosaic barbarian. But it would be wicked folly to restore these old inequalities on the legal or external plane. Their proper place is elsewhere.

We must wear clothes since the Fall. Yes, but inside, under what Milton called "these troublesome disguises" (2). We want the naked body, that is, the real body, to be alive. We want it, on proper occasions, to appear -- in the marriage-chamber, in the public privacy of a men's bathing-place, and (of course) when any medical or other emergency demands. In the same way, under the necessary outer covering of legal equality, the whole hierarchical dance and harmony of our deep and joyously accepted spiritual inequalities should be alive. It is there, of course, in our life as Christians -- there, as laymen, we can obey – all the more because the priest has no authority over us on the political level. It is there in our relation to parents and teachers – all the more because it is now a willed and wholly spiritual reverence. It should be there also in marriage.

This last point needs a little plain speaking. Men have so horribly abused their power over women in the past that to wives, of all people, equality is in danger of appearing as an ideal. But Mrs. Naomi Mitchison has laid her finger on the real point. Have as much equality as you please – the more the better – in our marriage laws, but at some level consent to inequality, nay, delight in inequality, is an erotic necessity. Mrs. Mitchison speaks of women so fostered on a defiant idea of equality that the mere sensation of the male embrace rouses an undercurrent of resentment. Marriages are thus shipwrecked (3). This is the tragi-comedy of the modem woman -- taught by Freud to consider the act of love the most important thing in life, and then inhibited by feminism from that internal surrender which alone can make it a complete emotional success. Merely for the sake of her own erotic pleasure, to go no further, some degree of obedience and humility seems to be (normally) necessary on the woman's part.

The error here has been to assimilate all forms of affection to that special form we call friendship. It indeed does imply equality. But it is quite different from the various loves within the same household. Friends are not primarily absorbed in each other. It is when we are doing things together that friendship springs up – painting, sailing ships, praying, philosophizing, fighting shoulder to shoulder. Friends look in the same direction. Lovers look at each other -- that is, in opposite directions. To transfer bodily all that belongs to one relationship into the other is blundering.

We Britons should rejoice that we have contrived to reach much legal democracy (we still need more of the economic) without losing our ceremonial Monarchy. For there, right in the midst of our lives, is that which satisfies the craving for inequality, and acts as a permanent reminder that medicine is not food. Hence a man's reaction to Monarchy is a kind of test. Monarchy can easily be "debunked", but watch the faces, mark well the accents of the debunkers. These are the men whose taproot in Eden has been cut -- whom no rumor of the polyphony, the dance, can reach – men to whom pebbles laid in a row are more beautiful than an arch. Yet even if they desire mere equality they cannot reach it. Where men are forbidden to honor a king they honor millionaires, athletes, or film-stars instead -- even famous prostitutes or gangsters. For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served -- deny it food and it will gobble poison.

That is why this whole question is of practical importance. Every intrusion of the spirit that says, "I'm as good as you" into our personal and spiritual life is to be resisted just as jealously as every intrusion of bureaucracy or privilege into our politics. Hierarchy within can alone preserve egalitarianism without. Romantic attacks on democracy will come again. We shall never be safe unless we already understand in our hearts all that the anti-democrats can say, and have provided for it better than they. Human nature will not permanently endure flat equality if it is extended from its proper political field into the more real, more concrete fields within. Let us wear equality; but let us undress every night.”

(1) C.S. Lewis lived and wrote in England. Hence, his reference to "being a Democrat" had nothing to do with our (USA) "Democratic Party". 

(2) John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667), Book IV, line 740. 18 

(3) Naomi Mitchison, The Home and a Changing Civilization (London, 1934), Chapter I, pp. 49-50.

EARTH-0

When you are ready to listen, Your Beatrice will appear. 

Clark Kent, I Know You’re Secretly Superman!

I Know Everything About You.

I Offer You One Ultimate Chance to Save Her! 

But We Must Leave This World Now Before It’s Too Late!

Sometimes I get the feelin'

She's watchin' over me

And other times I feel like I should go -

And through it all, The Rise and Fall

The bodies in the streets

And when you're gone, we want you all to know

We'll carry on, we'll carry on

And though you're dead and gone, believe me

Your memory will carry on

We'll carry on

And in my heart, I can't contain it

The anthem won't explain it

A World that sends you reeling

From decimated dreams

Your misery and hate will kill us all

So Paint it Black and Take it Back

Let's shout it loud and clear

Defiant to the end, we hear The Call

To Carry On.

When you are ready to listen, Beatrice will appear. 

A man I knew who was at this point on his journey asked me where his guide was. 

He needed her so badly. I suggested he look for her in his active imagination. 

When he did, she appeared instantly and she told him, “I’ve been waiting for you for twenty years. You only had to ask.” 

Beatrice will be there the moment you ask and are truly ready to listen.

Beatrice shows Dante the vision of the unitive world. 

She takes him through the rest of Purgatory and into Heaven. 

Then, at the last moment, she gives way to another guide, St. Bernard, which is puzzling. 

But Beatrice is the psychopomp — a wonderful medieval word for soul guide — who leads Dante through the deep levels of Purgatory into the vision of Heaven, a journey of wholeness and healing. 

Dante owes his success initially to Virgil, but primarily to Beatrice, who leads, inspires, and awakens him spiritually.

“I don’t really know what to say about my race, I’m so proud of them —

I love The Welsh with a passion that’s almost idolatrous, 

and particularly the South Welsh, the people I know best, 

and particularly the mining class.”

For I am Welsh, you know, good My Countryman —

Solitude and Community

  As an intuitive introvert, I rarely feel lonely when I’m alone. 

When I was in my early twenties, I took a job in a lookout tower, firewatching in the forest. 

I was alone on a mountain peak for four months, and I never felt lonely. 

Reality didn’t catch me there. 

I was not in danger of my Queen leaving me. 

But the moment I returned to civilization, loneliness descended on me like a landslide. 

How could I be so happy on the mountaintop and then rubbed so raw when I came back down? 

I didn’t want to live my whole life on a mountaintop—

I’m not a hermit. 

I had to go back and forth, as the King did, until the visionary life could finally stand the impact of the water of reality. 

The Queen in me had to learn to withstand the water. 

It’s a process. 

I believe that everyone who has touched the realm of spirit has had to go through this antechamber.

If you’re honest and perceptive, you can tell the difference between regressive loneliness, the first kind, and the ineffable second and third types of loneliness, where you sense and then see What You Cannot Yet Have. 

The second and third types of loneliness are nearly indistinguishable. 

If you can say exactly what you are lonely for, it will reveal a lot. 

Do you want to go back where you came from, to the good old days? 

Or have you seen a vision you can’t live without? 

They’re as different as Backward and Forward.

Dr. Jung said that every person who came into his consulting room was either twenty-one or forty-five, no matter their chronological age. 

The twenty-one-year-old is looking backward and must conquer it. 

The forty-five-year-old is being touched by something he cannot yet endure. 

These are the only two subjects of therapy.

Solitude

The Garden of Eden and the heavenly Jerusalem are the same place, depending on whether you are looking backward or forward. 

A person touched by Loneliness is a holy person. 

He is caught in the development of individuation. 

Whether it’s a development or a regression depends on what he does with it. 

Loneliness can destroy you, or it can fire you up for a Dante-like journey through Hell and Purgatory to find paradise. St. John of the Cross called this the Dark Night of the Soul.

The worst suffering I’ve ever experienced has been loneliness, the kind that feels as though it has no cure, that nothing can touch it. 

One day, at the midpoint in my life—a little like Dante—I got so exhausted from it that I went into my bedroom, lay face down on my bed, and said, 

“I’m not going to move until this is resolved.” 

I stayed a long time, and the loneliness did ease a little. 

Dante fell out of Hell, shimmied down the hairy leg of the Devil, went through the center of the world, and started up the other side, which was Purgatory. 

I felt better, but as soon as I got up and began to do anything, my loneliness returned. 

I made many round trips until gradually an indescribable quality began to suffuse my life, and loneliness loosened its grip. 

Nothing outside changed. The change was entirely inside.

Thomas Merton wrote a beautiful treatise on solitude. 

He said that certain individuals are obliged to bear The Solitude of God. 

Solitude is Loneliness evolved to the next level of reality. 

He who is obliged to bear The Solitude of God should not be asked to do anything else; it’s such a difficult task. 

For monastics, solitude was one of the early descriptions of God. 

If you can transform your Loneliness into Solitude, you’re one step away from the most precious of all experiences. 

This is the cure for Loneliness.

Excerpt from: "Inner Gold: Understanding Psychological Projection" by Arnie Kotler.

Stories are a Science

“I find that the uneducated Englishman is an almost total sceptic about History. 

I had expected he would disbelieve the Gospels because they contain miracles: but he really disbelieves them because they deal with things that happened 2,000 years ago. 

He would disbelieve equally in the battle of Actium if he heard of it. 

To those who have had our kind of education, his state of mind is very difficult to realize. 

To us The Present has always appeared as one section in a huge continuous process. 

In his mind the Present occupies almost the whole field of vision. 

Beyond it, isolated from it, and quite unimportant, is something called ‘The Olden Days’– a small, comic jungle in which highway men, Queen Elizabeth, knights-in-armour, etc., wander about. Then (strangest of all) beyond The Olden Days comes a picture of ‘Primitive Man’. 

He is ‘science’, not ‘history’, and is therefore felt to be much more real than The Old Days. 

In other words, the Prehistoric is much more believed in than the Historic.”

— C.S. Lewis, 

Christian Apologetics 

Now let me ask you a question. 

Why are humans so fascinated by old things? 

DATA: 

Old things? 

SOONG: 

Old buildings, churches, walls, ancient things, antique things, tables, clocks, knick knacks. 

Why? Why, why? 

DATA: 

There are many possible explanations. 

SOONG: 

If you brought a Noophian to Earth, he'd probably look around and say, 

“tear that old village down, it's hanging in rags. 

Build me something new, something efficient.”

But to a human, that old house, that ancient wall, it's a shrine, something to be cherished. 

Again, I ask you, why? 

DATA: 

Perhaps, for humans, old things represent a tie to the past. 

SOONG:

What's so important about the past?

 People got sick, they needed money. 

Why tie yourself to that? 

DATA: 

Humans are mortal. 

They seem to need a sense of continuity. 

SOONG: 

Ah hah!! Why? 

DATA: 

To give their lives meaning. 

A sense of purpose. 

SOONG: 

And this continuity, does it only run one way, backwards, to the past? 

DATA: 

I suppose it is a factor in the human desire to procreate. 

SOONG: 

So you believe that having children gives humans a sense of immortality, do you? 

DATA: 

It is a reasonable explanation to your query, sir. 

Black Vomit

JOSEPH CAMPBELL:  

This is killing The Dragon. 

And you have Fears and things, 

This is The Dragon; 

That’s exactly what’s that all 

about. 

At least, The European Dragon; 

The Chinese Dragon is different.

BILL MOYERS: 

What is it?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

It represents The Vitality of The Swamps 

and The Dragon comes out beating his belly and saying 

“Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.” 

You know, that’s another kind of dragon. 

And he’s the one that yields the bounty and the waters and all that kind of thing. 

He’s the great glorious thing. 

1.3 Nigredo - Blackness

The wise man is not surprised by death
he is always ready to leave.
La Fontaine
This melancholic state is so powerful
that, according to scientists and doctors,
it can attract demons to the body,
even to such an extent
that one can get into mental confusion or get visions.
Agrippa

Nigredo, or blackness, in the alchemical sense, means putrefaction, decomposition. By the penetration of the external fire, the inner fire is activated and the matter starts to putrefy. The body is reduced to its primal matter from which it originally arose. This process is also called ‘cooking’. The black earth is closed up in a vessel or flask, and heated.

(Basilius Valentinus, Azoth, Paris, 1659)
The Body is to be decomposed, that is one shifts one's awareness to the inner self. The planets are both stages of the process and energies in the body to be transmuted. The Saturn star is black as Saturn reigns over Nigredo. Sun and Moon are the opposites to be united, and fire and air are the elements stimulating the decomposition. The black crow is another symbol for Nigredo. The two birds coming out of the body are the soul and the spirit. One needs to become aware of one's soul and spirit. The circle emphasizes the idea of union or unification.

"Putrefaction is so effective that it destroys the old nature and form of the rotting bodies; it transmutes them into a new state of being to give them a totally new fruit. Everything that has live, dies; everything that is dead putrefies and finds a new life." (Pernety, 1758)
On the mythological level, nigredo signifies the difficulties man has to overcome on his journey through the underworld. Nigredo is sometimes called ‘blacker than the blackest black’. Hercules had to accomplish twelve, almost impossible, tasks. The pilgrim traditionally encounters shadows, monsters, demons. In the ancient mysteries the candidates had to undergo difficult, sometimes painful and even dangerous initiation tests. 
In alchemy, one of the symbols of nigredo is the ‘decapitation’, and also the ‘raven’s head’ (caput corvi). Those symbols refer to the dying of the common man, the dying of his inner chaos and doubt because he is unable to find the truth in himself. In one of his works, Hercules cleanses the Augias stables. It is the cleansing of all the impurities in oneself. 
(Johann Daniel Mylius, Philosophia reformata, Frankfurt, 1622)

A monk in meditation in an earth crevice, shows that alchemy was in first instance a spiritual practice. The two bird-figures are the soul and spirit to become aware of.

Psychologically, nigredo is a process of directing oneself to find self-knowledge. A problem is given full attention and reduced to its core. This is not done so much in an intellectual way, but especially by feeling the emotions. By really going into to it, one causes putrefaction, the decomposition of that in which one had been stuck. The confrontation with the inner reality is often painful, and can lead to depression. But once in the depth of the darkness, with the discovery of the seed of the problem, the seed in the ‘prima materia’, the white light is born (=albedo, whiteness, the next phase). A state of rest arises. Insight into the problem has been gained, it has been worked out emotionally, and knowledge arises on how to handle it in a more positive way and to build a more pure attitude.
Alchemists talked about unraveling ‘the mixture’(=man with all his complexities) in order to return to the germ. "That from which a thing has been made in a natural way, by that same thing it must return to a dissolved state into its own nature. Everything has to be dissolved and reduced into that form from which is arose." (Anton Joseph Kirchweger, 1728)
‘Matter’ has to be stripped of its superfluities in order to arrive at the center, which contains all the power of ‘the mixture’. The seed is the essence and contains all the essential powers of the body. One has to go to the center of his problems, to the center of his emotions, to the center of himself. There is the power of transformation.
Saturn is the planet that rules nigredo. Saturn as an alchemical symbol is used, like Mercurius, as a symbol of chaos, the prima materia as rough stone, and as the philosopher’s stone. These are all symbols for man at the beginning of the alchemical process. Saturn, with his traditional scythe and hourglass, is the god of death and putrefaction, from which new life will arise. The scythe is another tool for penetration, as is the lance and the sword. Saturn is the philosopher’s lead. He is the god that can cause melancholy and devilish visions. ‘Melancholia’ is another term for nigredo. As melancholy can arise when alchemically working on oneself, the alchemists advised the use of music to lift the soul.
Saturn is also a god of fertility. Therefore "our black earth is fertile earth", an alchemical expression to express the transformation of death into new life, which is also clearly depicted in the thirteenth tarot card. The putrefaction is a necessary phase to start a new beginning. Life itself is a cycle of death and birth, ever creating new life, giving man the opportunity to work on himself and strife to improve his condition.
The alchemists say that nigredo lasts forty days. Forty days has a symbolic value. Jesus fasted for forty days in the desert. There are forty days of fasting between Easter and Ascension Day. The Israelites wandered for forty days in the desert. Saint Antonius spent forty years in the Sahara desert, being plagued by visions of extreme erotic scenes and devils.

 

1.4 The Peacock’s Tail

"What hinders men from seeing and hearing God, is their own hearing, seeing and willing; by their own wills they separate themselves from the will of God. They see and hear within their own desires, which obstructs them from seeing and hearing God. Terrestrial and material things overshadow them, and they cannot see beyond their own human nature. If they would be still, desist from thinking and feeling with their own self-hood, subdue the self-will, enter into a state of resignation, into a divine union with Christ, who sees God, and hears God, and speaks with him, who knows the word and will of God; then would the eternal hearing seeing and speaking become revealed to them. " 
Jacob Boehme (1575-1624 C.E.) 

‘Cauda Pavonis’, the peacock’s tail, or the peacock itself, is a phase in which many colors appear. Many alchemists place this phase before albedo, whiteness, although some of them place it after albedo. Gerhard Dorn (16th century): "This bird flies during the night without wings. By the first heavenly dew, after an uninterrupted process of cooking, ascending and descending, it first takes the shape of a raven’s head, then of a peacock’s tail; its feathers becoming very white and good smelling, and finally becoming fiery red, indicating its fiery character." The colors refer to the three stages of the Great Work, with rubedo, or redness, being the last one.

(18th century manuscript from the Collection of Dr.C.Rusch, Appenzell)
The drawing represents Distillatio, 'distillation'. At a certain point in the distillation the peacock('s tail) will appear.

The symbol of the peacock’s tail was chosen because of the many colorful and brilliant ‘eyes’. It is said that originally they were the eyes of the Greek Argus, whose name means ‘he who sees everything’. Argus was a very strong giant with a hundred eyes, of which at all times fifty were open and fifty were sleeping. He was decapitated by Hermes. Hera, the mother goddess, placed the eyes on the tail of her favorite bird, the peacock.
The phase of the many colors was also symbolized by the rainbow, or the goddess of the rainbow: Iris, the messenger of the gods, especially between Zeus and the mortals.
The peacock’s tail can have two meanings in the Great Work. It can be the collection and totality of all colors in the white light. Remember, the white light refers to the second stage, albedo, or whiteness. In this sense the peacock was seen as a royal bird in ancient times, and it corresponded with the phoenix.
The second meaning is that it represents the failure of the alchemical process. When the conscious enters the unconscious "each part of a thought can take shape and become visible in color and form", according to a Chinese text about yoga exercises. One starts seeing all kinds of forms which look real and which look like they have an independent life. But one cannot go into it as it leads to discord of the mind, and possibly to schizophrenia. The alchemist is seeking unity, expressed in the white light.
It is know that during meditation exalted feelings and unusual observations can happen. In essence there are two kinds of observations. The first one is wanting to escape the discipline of meditation, which Zen practitioners call makyo. Makyo are illusions we project onto reality in order to escape the guidelines of meditation. For example, the object of meditation is starting to radiate with a wonderful light or color, or it expands and contracts rhythmically. One starts to feel lighter or heavier, or one feels pleasant energies going through the body. All kinds of sensations can happen. Many meditators are readily distracted by these phenomena, and even take great interest in them, thereby neglecting the real purpose of their meditation. One needs to be aware of this.
A second cause of distraction is a change in consciousness whereby we look at the world in a different way than we did in the past. It can be quite a shock reverberating on the psychic or bodily level. The accompanying feelings can be quite wonderful. But the advice is: enjoy it, do not take it seriously, and continue with the meditation.
Visions are also distracting. Many wise men and mystics have pointed to this kind of danger. "We should not long for or expect visions. With all our power we should refrain from them and look at them with suspicion." (Ignatius of Loyola). They always stress that visions of lights, of angels, yes even of the great masters, should be neglected, because they block inner progress.

1.5 Albedo - Whiteness

Je ne craignais pas de mourir
mais de mourir sans etre illumine.
(I was not afraid to die,
but to die without having been enlightened)
Comte de Saint-Germain, La Tres Sainte Trinisophie
 
The herald of the light
is the morning star.
This way man and woman approach
the dawn of knowledge,
because in it is the germ of life,
being a blessing of the eternal.
Haji Ibrahim of Kerbala
 
Lucifer, Lucifer stretch your tail,
and lead me away, full speed through the narrow passage,
the valley of the death,
to the brilliant light, the palace of the gods.
Isanatha Muni

 

Being deep in nigredo, a white light appears. We have arrived at the second stage of the Great Work: albedo, or whiteness. The alchemist has discovered within himself the source from which his life comes forth. The fountain of life from which the water of life flows forth giving eternal youth.
The source is one: male and female are united. In alchemical images we see a fountain from which two streams of water flow into one basin.
Albedo is the discovery of the hermaphroditic nature of man. In the spiritual sense each man is a hermaphrodite. We can also see this in the first embryonic phase of the fetus. There is no sex until a certain number of weeks after conception.
When man descended into the physical world his body entered a world of duality. On the bodily level this is expressed by the sexes. But his spirit is still androgen, it contains duality in unity. Its unity is not bound to space, time or matter. Duality is an expression of unity in our physical world. It is temporal and will eventually cease to exist. When male and female are united again, one will experience his true self. Conscious and unconscious are totally united.
Albedo happens when the Sun rises at midnight. It is a symbolic expression for the rising of the light at the depth of darkness. It is the birth of Christ in the middle of the winter. In the depth of a psychological crises, a positive change happens.

(L'Aurore, Henri de Linthaut)
Albedo, symbolized by Aurora, by the dawn, the morning star (Venus-Aphrodite), and by the sun rising up from the Philosopher's Sea.

Albedo is also represented by Aurora, the Roman goddess of the dawn. Her brother is Helios, the Sun. With a play of words aurora was connected with aurea hora, ‘the hour of gold’. It is a supreme state of conscious. Pernety (1758): "When the Artist (=Alchemist) sees the perfect whiteness, the Philosophers say that one has to destroy the books, because they have become superfluous." 
Albedo is also symbolized by the morning star Venus/Aphrodite. Venus has a special place in the Great Work. In ancient times Lucifer was identified with the planet Venus. Originally Lucifer has a very positive meaning. In the Bible we find 2Petrus 1:19 "…till the day arrives and the morning star rises in your hearts". In Revelation 12:16 Christ says: "I am the shining morning star". Here Christ identifies himself with the Lucifer! We find the same in mystic literature. In ancient times Lucifer was a positive light being. It was just one man who changed all that: when a certain Hieronymous read a phrase from Jesaja 14:12 (Jesaja talking to a sinful king of Babylon): " How did you fall from heaven, you morning star, you son of the dawn; how did you fall to earth, conqueror of people". Hieronymous used this phrase to identify Lucifer with the dragon thrown out of heaven by Michael. By the interpretation of this one man, Lucifer was tuned from a shining light being into the darkest devilish being in the world.
We find Lucifer in alchemy associated with impure metals polluted by rough sulfur. It means that the light being Lucifer in ourselves is polluted by what the alchemists call ‘superfluities’, ‘dross’, caused by man himself. 
Mercury and Lucifer are one and the same. One talks about Mercury when he is pure, it is the white sulphur, the fire in heaven. As ‘spiritus’ he gives life. As ‘spiritus sapiens’ he teaches the alchemist the Great Work. Lucifer is the impure Mercury. Lucifer is the morning star fallen from (the golden) heaven. He descended into the earth and is now present in all humans. Lucifer is Mercury mixed with impure elements. He dissolved ‘in sulfur and salt’, ‘is wrapped with strings’, ‘darkened with black mud’. Keep in mind we are always talking about our consciousness. Lucifer represents our everyday consciousness, all the (psychological and other) complexes have clouded our pure consciousness, Mercury.
The light of Mercury that appears to us as Lucifer, because of the distortion caused by the impurities, gives the impression of what the alchemists called ‘red sulfur’. The red sulfur of Lucifer, as traditional devil, is actually an illusion. It does not exist by itself because it is only an image, a distorted image of Mercury. We ourselves caused the impurities, the blackness that veils our true light being. 
Red sulfur is the same as what is called Maya in eastern philosophies. Maya is the world of illusions, or the veil that prevents us from seeing and experiencing true reality, where the eternal light is. By the impurities of Maya, man has become ignorant. He has forgotten his origin and thinks he is in a world which in actuality is an illusion. 

(Les Rudiments de la Philosophie, Nicolas de Losques, Paris, 1665)
The union of Hermes and Aphrodite. The moon is above the retort, indicating this is the stage of Albedo. The sun above is the next stage of Rubedo. At the same time sun and moon are again the opposites to be united. Aphrodite has two torches. One pointing down, representing the lower passions to be transmuted. The upside down torch is the purified energies. Aphrodite is standing on a tetrahedron, the perfect three dimensional body, as all corners are equally distant from each other, resulting in a lack of tension.

As we mentioned above, Aphrodite/Venus as the morning star is a central image for the albedo phase of the Great Work. Aphrodite was born from the foam that arose when the genitals of Uranus (cut of by Chronos, out of hate and jealousy) fell into the sea. The cutting of the genitals represents repressed and tormented love. The sea, symbol of the soul, however will bring forth the love goddess. Liberation will happen when we become conscious again of the contents of the soul. As Aphrodite is born from the sea, she is the guide through the fearful world of the unconscious (the sea, or the underworld). The alchemist descends into these depths to find the ‘prima materia’, also called the ‘green lion’. The color green refers to the primal life forces. Venus also has the green color. An important characteristic of Aphrodite is that she helps us in our human shortcomings. She gives ideals and dreams to fulfill. But she also gives frightening images in order to make man aware of his lower nature. "By her beauty Venus attracts the imperfect metals and gives rise to desire, and pushes them to perfection and ripeness." (Basilius Valentinus, 1679) Liberation can only happen by becoming conscious of the lower nature and how we transmute it.
In Jungian psychology Venus/Aphrodite is the archetype of the anima (in alchemy also the ‘soror’ or ‘wife’ of the alchemist). The anima is the collective image of the woman in a man. It is an image especially tainted by his first contact with his mother. The anima represents all the female tendencies in the psyche of a man, such as feelings, emotions, moods, intuition, receptivity for the irrational, personal love and a feeling for nature. She is the bearer for the spiritual. Depending on the development of the man she can also be the seductress who lures him away to love, hopelessness, demise, and even destruction.
Other alchemical images for albedo are baptism and the white dove, both derived from Christianity. Baptism symbolizes the purification of both body and soul by ‘living water’. ‘Living water’ was regarded as the creative force of the divine. It allowed the soul to be received into the community of the holy spirit. Thus baptism allows the purified soul to bring forth the resurrection of Christ in oneself. This is the ‘hieros gamos’, the ‘sacred marriage’ between the soul and Christ. Christ here represent our own inner divine essence.
There are many other symbols in alchemy for the second phase, or albedo: the white swan, the rose, the white queen, and so on. As lead is the metal of nigredo, silver is the metal of albedo, transmuted from lead. As silver is the metal of the moon, the moon was also a symbol for albedo. Alchemists also talk about the white stone or white tincture. They all means basically the same thing, although one has to understand them in the context in which they were written.
 

1.6 Rubedo -Redness

The alchemical process
is a method for self knowledge
that the soul undergoes
far outside its realm of existence.
Marry Anne Atwood
 
The jewel has been lost in matter
and everybody is looking for it.
Some look for it in the east
and some in the west,
some in water
and some among stones.
But the servant Kabir
has found its value
and has it wrapped with care
in the seam of the mantle of his heart.
R. Tagore, Kabir 72

Albedo is a phase of which the meaning was kept secret for many centuries. The meaning of the third alchemical phase, rubedo or redness, is even more secret and not easy to explain or understand.  

(Philosophia reformata, Johann Mylius, Frankfurt, 1622)
The union of the Red King with the White Queen, symbolic of the union of male-female, albedo-rubedo. In other words, when after having attained albedo (having discovered the divine light in oneself), the 'spirit' must be fixated (the descending eagle), resulting in rubedo. The two lions with one head signifies the unified nature that has been attained. Out of its mouth flows the water of life.

Rubedo is the continuation of albedo. That is why they are often seen connected to each other, like the White Queen and the Red King. Once the inner light has been discovered it must be made into the only reality in our consciousness. After having descended into the unconscious, into the darkness, into the underworld, we found the Light, we found the volatile Spirit. Now the volatile Spirit, or quicksilver, has to be fixated or coagulated. This means that our conscious, or attention, must completely penetrate our unconscious, or soul, or everything that lies hidden in ourselves. By doing this we fixate (that is bring it into the conscious) the volatile and make it durable. When everything in ourselves has been purified and the Light appears, we have to fixate this Light and make it durable so it remains always present.
White sulfur, attained during albedo, is also called: "the bodies composed of pure essence of the metals". The metals are the contents of the soul, and now they have been reduced to their pure essence. Now that the soul has been penetrated with the pure light, the alchemist has to make it permanent.
In the eastern philosophies rubedo corresponds with the formation of the ‘diamond body’, an term fitting for the pure and permanent Stone of the Philosophers.

(Scritinium cinnabarium seu triga cinnabriorium, Godfred Schulz, Halle, 1680)
The ressurected alchemist stepping from the shadow into the Light.
In Christianity, rubedo corresponds with the resurrection of Christ. Jesus ‘fixates’ the light garment of Christ. Jesus has left behind the old body and brought his inner divine self, the Christ body, into his consciousness, and made it his own reality. What Jesus did two thousand years ago, each of us can do the same, because we are all sons and daughters of the divine, and we all carry the divine essence, or the Christ body, within ourselves. 

When rubedo has been realized the alchemist has accepted his spiritual inheritance. He has become what he always has been, but never knew he was. He has realized his divine essence while still in his physical body. It is the same as what the gnostici called pneuma, the divine spirit in each man that is concealed in the deep darkness of the world, but can be made conscious again. When rubedo has been manifested man is master over both the physical as the spiritual world. He has become a King master over himself. 
When the unification of all energies of the four aspects of totality has been achieved, a new state of being arises that is no longer subject to changes. Chinese alchemy calls it the ‘diamond body’ which corresponds with the ‘corpus incorruptibile’ (untouchable body) of the European alchemy. It is also the same as the ‘corpus glorificationis’ (glorified body) of the Christian tradition.
In yoga traditions, rubedo corresponds with the unification of the spirit of man, called atman, with brahman. Atman is a part of brahman. Brahman is the soul of the All, it is the breath or the energy flowing through you and giving you life and consciousness. Atman is the individual self, brahman is the univerself self.
"As the body used to be slow, rough, impure, dark and destructible because it lacked power and energy, so rebirth unifies it with the soul and spirit, vivified and volatile, light and penetrating, pure, refined and clear, overflowing with energy, indestructible and full of energy, and it is able to maintain this." (Franciscus Kieser, +/_1600).
 
 "Ascend above any height, descend further than any depth; receive all sensory impressions of the created: water, fire, dryness and wetness. Think that you are present everywhere: in the sea, on earth and in heaven; think that you were never born and that you are still in the embryonic state: young and old, dead and in the hereafter. Understand everything at the same time: time, place, things: quality and quantity." (Corpus hermeticum, 1460).
 
I feel that all stars
shine in me.
The world is breaking as flood
through my life.
The flowers are opening in my body.
Youthfulness of earth and water
is burning like incense in my heart,
and the breath of all things
is playing as on a flute
through my thoughts.

ENOUGH

“Through Max I met his mate Stan, a giant, charismatic and adorable man who I instinctively liken to Omar, one of the four Caliphs to succeed The Prophet. 

A bountiful and warm soul with a great strength, yet to be refined. 

I asked Stan: ‘Is there any way I have helped you that I might be able to use in a book about mentoring to illustrate how the principles work?’ 

He said: ‘Mate. The other day when that bloke knocked me for that money, you said that I should not look at the people of The World as resources there to serve me but at myself as someone who can help others. To accept that everything won’t go my way all the time and when I am disappointed to talk through those feelings before acting on them. 

In a situation like that in the past I would’ve acted differently, aggressively, and tried to solve the problem through intimidation, which would’ve led to complications because this bloke is part of That World. 

Instead I went round there and politely explained my side of the situation and offered to help find a mutually beneficial solution. 

This is because you have taught me that I am valuable and I do not need to resort to bad behaviour to get what I want, that I am enough and do not need money to prove that I am a Man. 

I no longer unthinkingly get into conflict with my wife because I am stressed about work-related things, without recognizing it. 

The other day she asked me to do the washing up BECAUSE I’d AGREED to and I just DID it. 

In the past there would’ve been an argument, especially if I was fearful around work. 

This is because you have shown me how to behave towards my wife and given me safe outlets for my feelings.’ 

Hearing this made me feel valuable and useful

The Gratitude of Others, is a good way to build self-esteem. 

If you Regularly Help Others, the tendency to think of yourself as worthless or not good enough diminishes.”

Excerpt From

Mentors

Russell Brand

“Joyce and Jung met a few times, and they didn’t like each other, by the way.  

Joyce thought Jung thought Joyce was a possible candidate for therapy, and Jung thought Joyce was a man on the edge of schizophrenia who remained on the safe side through his art: 

if he lost his art he’d go complete wack-o.  

Joyce did not wish to believe his daughter was schizophrenic.  

He told Jung, 

“I’m doing the same experiments with language that she is.”  

And Jung said, 

“The difference is you’re diving, 

and she’s sinking.” 

“ When we look at The World, we perceive only what is enough for our plans and actions to work and for us to get by. 

What we inhabit, then, is this “Enough.” 

That is a radical, functional, unconscious simplification of The World — and it’s •almost• impossible for us not to mistake it for The World itself. 

But the objects we see are not simply there, in The World, for our simple, direct perceiving.

They exist in a complex, multi-dimensional relationship to one another, not as self-evidently separate, bounded, independent objects. 

We perceive not them, but their functional utility and, in doing so, we make them sufficiently simple for sufficient understanding. 

It is for this reason that we must be precise in our aim. “

Absent that, we drown in the complexity of the world.