3. A complete diagram of the Tree of Life.
4. The practice of control of the aura.
5. The placing of the Tree of Life in the aura.
6. Tattwas—astrology—divination.
1. The Thesis. Read the rituals. Build them up in imagination. Compare the opening and closing in the various grades. Note the general underlying scheme for each elemental grade—and note where the differences occur. Follow the careers of the various officers. Note at what grade an officer disappears.
Make a precis of each ritual so that the general scheme becomes apparent. This is of the greatest assistance when you are called on to take office because you will not then need to follow everything in the ritual but need only turn to the page where your office is mentioned and when you have no more to say, you can turn to the closing and put the ritual aside till required for that. Ability to do this and to move correctly in the temple adds greatly to the harmony and repose of the whole ceremony.
Note the positions of the various officers—what mathematical shapes they make among themselves from time to time as they take up their places in the temple. It may be a triangle, a cross, a pentagram, etc.
Read the speeches carefully, and read them sometimes aloud so that you get familiar with the sound of your own voice in saying the words. Note that some speeches are designed to create atmosphere by their archaic form and should be read rhythmically and sonorously, while others are informative and should be read in such a way as to make their points clear.
Examples of archaic passages are challenges of gods: “Thou canst not pass the gate of the western heaven unless thou canst tell me my name.” And the speeches of the Kabiri in the grades of Practicus and Philosophus. Information is given in speeches about tarot keys and diagrams.
Note the technique for traversing the various Paths—the words and the badges with which the Path is entered, the length of the circumambulation and the special symbolism described therein.
Let all these things soak into your mind, make notes as ideas occur to you—and presently your personal reaction to the grades will crystallize out and you will be able to write your thesis.
2. Make a list and drawings of the crosses which have been given you as admission badges throughout the grades, from the swastika of the Zelator to the five-squared cross which you put on as you stood at the altar at the second point of the Portal grade. Read what is said of them in the rituals and knowledge lectures, and make notes about them.
3. The Tree of Life. This should be done fairly large in order that the writing and symbols should be clear. It is essential to show the deity names, names of archangels and angels in Hebrew in the Sephiroth, and to number the Paths and give their attributions. Apart from this, the Tree should be your personal synthesis of the Order symbolism as it applies to the Tree of Life. Colours may be used.
4. Control of the Aura. If you are not already familiar with the parts of your own body such as nervous system, respiratory system, digestive system, get some simple textbook such as is used in ambulance work, or attend a course of first-aid lectures so that, before starting to work on your subtle body, you may know something about your physical body.
Your physical body is interpenetrated by a subtle body or aura which also surrounds the physical body like an egg of light. You should now begin to practice controlling this aura or sphere of senion. This means that you must first try to get your emotional reactions under conscious control. Instead of automatically liking this, disliking that, you must try to understand the mechanism which underlies these feelings. To assist you in this, the study of psychology is recommended. There are many books on the subject, of which the following are easy to understand and clearly stated.
Psychology by Wm. McDougall (Home University Library).
Psychoanalysis for Normal People by Geraldine Coster.
Psycho-Synthesis by the Dean of Chester Cathedral.
Machinery of the Mind by Violet Firth.21
Having built up some idea of the mechanism of your mental processes, you should now try to make yourself negative or positive at will towards people or ideas. If you are likely to meet someone who always makes you argumentative and irritable, decide that your aura is dosed to their power of irritating you and that your mind will not be disturbed by what they say. It is good sometimes to listen to views with which you disagree to teach you not only to make no verbal response, but to keep your feelings in abeyance also. In this way you come to learn how much of your disagreement is due to prejudice or personal factors, and how much to your regard for abstract truth.
Again, sometimes practice opening your aura to people or ideas in an endeavour to see things from another’s point of view.
The practice of deep breathing is also of help in establishing poise and in controlling nervousness. It is good to expand the chest to its fullest extent and then to expand the diaphragm below the ribs as well and then to let the breath out slowly and steadily on a vowel sound such as “ah” or “O.”
If you are nervy, you will find that your breathing is shallow and that your muscles are tense. You tend to clench your hands and tighten up the abdominal muscles. To cure this, take a deep breath to full capacity, hold it while tensing and relaxing alternately the abdominal muscles. Do this (i.e., the tensing and relaxing of the muscles) three times and then relax completely into a chair. Allow all your muscles to go limp and let your breath out to the last gasp. Do the whole process three times, if necessary. It is designed to stimulate the solar plexus which is the heart of the nervous system which governs emotion.
Another good exercise is to say the deity names aloud. Take a deep breath and say them softly, smoothly, and slowly, imagining the while that your voice travels out to the confines of the universe. This can be done in conjunction with the pentagram ritual.
5. The Tree of Life in the Aura. In the aura which interpenetrates and surrounds our physical bodies, we are to build up a replica of the Tree of Life. The Pillar of Severity is on our right side, the Pillar of y on our left, and the Pillar of Beneficence in our midst.
It is best to build up the Middle Pillar first. To do this stand up and raise yourself in imagination to your Kether—a brilliant light above your head. Imagine this light descending to Daath, at the nape of your neck, and thence to Tiphareth in your heart where it glows like sunlight and whence it radiates into the other Sephiroth. From Tiphareth the light goes to Yesod in the region of the hips, and thence to Malkuth in which your feet are planted. Having made a clear image of the Middle Pillar, you can then establish the other Sephiroth by vibrating the deity names. This can be done as an alternative to the pentagram ritual as a preparation for meditation.
The Middle Pillar and the Human Body
1. Imagine yourself standing in the temple, facing west. The black Pillar of Severity will be on your right—the white Pillar of Mercy on your left. You will make the Middle Pillar as you stand between them.
2. Imagine now that the black pillar is reflected in your right side—the white pillar in your left.
3. Take a deep breath and raise your consciousness to your Kether above your head and vibrate the name Eheieh—which means “I am.” Imagine the light flowing down through Daath (at the nape of your neck) to Tiphareth.
4. In the same manner, establish Yesod in the name Shaddai El Chai, and Malkuth in the name Adonai ha-Aretz.
5. Make the Qabalistic cross to indicate that you have called down the light of your Kether and balanced it in your aura. Then let your imagination dwell on the aura and see it oval and clear, puling with the glow from Tiphareth.
If you are called to see anyone who is ill, who is depressed, or who has a depressing effect on you, you should do this exercise beforehand. In the case of the person who has a depressing effect on you, you may also imagine that your aura is hardened at the edge so that they are unable to penetrate it, and so deplete you of vitality (which is generally what such senions mean).
In all these practices it is well to rem
ember that “strength is in silence.” If you talk about them, save to your Chief, or if you try to analyse their effects, you will not benefit by them. Try them with simple faith and in silence for a year before rationalizing them.
It is better at first to keep your aura to yourself, rather than to try to flow out towards others. Unless you are particularly vital and well balanced, you will only waste energy. So-called modes of healing and of “doing good to others” should be eschewed for a time. Such methods have a technique of their own and require trained and balanced minds and bodies to carry them out. Get yourself right first before you attempt to interfere with others in any way but the ordinary ways of kindly decent society.
When you have practiced the exercise of the Middle Pillar for some time and can visualize it easily, you can establish the other Sephiroth.22
6. Tattwas—Astrology—Divination. The tattwas are designed to assist you in your researches into the soul of nature. They are at first done with a senior member, and later can be done alone or with a companion of your own grade. They should never be allowed to become uncontrolled daydreams. The method taught should be strictly adhered to—a definite time, preferably in the morning, being set aside—and they should not be attempted when you are feeling tired or when your mind is too occupied with other things to let you “get away.” They should not be done too frequently—once in three weeks or a month is enough, once a week if time and circumstances permit. Notes of the pictures and symbols seen should be kept together in a book.
Astrology. This should be done as time permits. The subject is vast and highly technical and can be studied fully through the various schools and correspondence classes if you are interested in it. From the Order lectures you should be able to set up a true birth horoscope for any place and any time. You can practice setting up horoscopes for the cases given in Alan Leo’s little book 1001 Notable Nativities and see whether you can tell for what the horoscope was remarkable. You should attempt the reading of a horoscope for someone you know and then get the data for someone about whom you know nothing, and see whether you can give a reading which isfies their friends.
The Order requires only that you should be able to set up an accurate horoscope and that you should know how to work out the aspects and how to make a simple assessment of the good and bad factors in a horary figure. If astrology interests you further, it is a very fascinating field of research.
Divination. You may try to develop your intuition by the use of horary and natal astrology, geomancy, and the reading of the tarot cards by the method given in the small book by Mr. A.E. Waite.
You are advised to attempt only questions in which you are not emotionally involved because methods of divination can be a fruitful source of self-deception to those who are psychic but not self-knowing. If you are given to having intuitions you must learn to say not only “I was right about that” but also “I was quite wrong about that,” and if you advertise only successes (as is usual) at the bar of your own conscience, learn to assess them honestly.
The interval of time between Portal and 5° = 6 should be given to the study of the whole makeup of yourself. All these methods are designed to assist you to get as far as you can along the road to self-knowledge.
You are to realize the different layers of your being—some of which you have been led through symbolically in the outer grades—“which in one sense quitteth not Malkuth”—the kingdom of yourself.
This line of thought, coupled with the study of the rituals, may lead you to realize what it was you gathered together in the first point of the Portal ritual, and what it is you are trying to perfect to lay on the altar of the spirit.
We are told in the Portal that the nine months’ wait which must intervene before the Portal is again opened for the aspirant has a correspondence to the nine months of gestation before birth. As the unborn child, stage by stage, grows through the ancestral history of the race so the candidate in the Portal by a single circumambulation for each, recalls his past grades and, at the end of the first point, regards their symbols upon the altar as parts of his body and contemplates them as coming together in one place—the unity of his person.
In the second point, he sacrifices his name—symbol of his idea of himself in order that the idea of a new self and a new consciousness may be attained.
This has a correspondence in the birth of a child. It emerges from the membranes and placenta which hitherto have been its body and source of life and finds itself not “dead” after the dread change, but translated to a larger consciousness.
Thus the Portal foreshadows the kind of change and development necessary for understanding the symbolism of the 5° = 6.
We do not know what consciousness the unborn child has—how far it has choice in its development—through what agency it unfolds the potencies of its tiny seed and draws to itself the necessary materials for growth. The miracle happens—and gives us courage to believe that a similar miracle is even now enacting whereby a body will be ready for us when this, which seems so real to us, shall share the same fate as the placenta and membranes which “die” at our birth.
But tradition, as embodied in our Order and shown somewhat less directly in the revealed religions, teaches that this development can be assisted by conscious effort—indeed, that there comes a time when this effort must be made through the body and mind we are now endowed with. And realizing that we are indeed in a path of darkness groping for light, we must feel our way to an understanding of the meaning of life—the reason for death.
To those who feel the call to make this effort, comes the order with a series of pictures, symbolic of the growth of the soul to new life. The meditations given with each grade are designed to lead the mind towards ideas which will assist in self-knowledge—universal impersonal ideas which each must find in his own way—“the secrets which cannot be told save to those who know them already.”
The aspirant is led to look backwards. First he must acknowledge his debt to evolution through which has been perfected the instrument wherein his mind works and gathers material. Then, through meditation, he is led to see himself as not only self-conscious—as one who receives impressions—one who criticizes and watches—one whose will is interfered with—one who is misunderstood—one to whom others are “persons” or masks (from Latin persona, a mask)—but, standing outside himself, he now becomes one who endeavours to sense how his mask appears to others—sees himself as part of the consciousness of others, as one who impresses, one who is criticized and watched, one who interferes with the will of others, one who misunderstands.
He may recall periods in his life when his convictions were sure, his judgments harsh and unjust, his actions shameful, and view himself in that picture dispassionately as an entity operative in the give and take of life, something growing and as outside the category of blame as is the bitterness of unripe fruit.
As the knowledge of his place and relative importance in the universe matures, he will attain strength to be honest with himself—ashamed of nothing he finds in his mind—one watching the antics of his personality with tolerant amusement—yet always learning.
He will reflect on words and the power of words. He will catch himself weaving them—twisting their meaning—deceiving himself and others with them. He will catch himself under obsession to them—he will see how they fix and make possible the recall of events and emotions, and with this knowledge he will become aware of how his words affect other people.
As he begins to realize the tremendous miracle of words, the magic both good and evil of human communion by words, he will begin to grasp why the Order reiterates the importance of silence. The true magician must understand his tools and, in periods of silence, he must contemplate words as one of them.
As he thus traverses the long road to dispassionate self-knowledge, and no longer has to waste energy in doing battle for and indulging wounded feelings in defense of a totally false idea of himself, he is led to meditate on the varied symbols of the cross,
and from this to contemplate the Crucified One, revealed to the west as Jesus of Nazareth.
This life and the sayings of Jesus given in the meditation should be studied and pictured in the mind.
The mind must be taught to die to useless churnings over past things and vain apprehensions about future things. This is difficult, for human phantasies die hard, but once the effort is made, however transient the result, it becomes easier with time to replace wasteful thoughts with those that cluster round a powerful symbol of eternal truth.
As the time for the 5° = 6 ceremony approaches, the aspirant should withdraw as far as may be from externals that these symbols may work in his mind.
He will find them waiting on the threshold of his mind ready to tell their story as he walks about or is occupied in mechanical tasks. Once a place has been made for them no “time” is required to develop them. They grow in the waste places.
Definite times, too, should be set aside for meditation wherein ideas may be formulated as far as possible.
Before going to sleep, the aspirant should do the pentagram ritual and impress on his mind that he must recall on waking any teaching that has been given him in dream or vision. This may be assisted, if on waking, he calls before his mind the sun rising, thinly veiled in clouds.
This should be done at least the week preceding the grade.
The ceremony will be a true initiation for the aspirant only in so far as he has prepared himself to receive it.
Like a word, it is a symbol, the communication of whose essence depends on the understanding and experience of the recipient.
Portal Meditation
Let the aspirant meditate upon the cross in its various forms and aspects as shown in the admission badges throughout the grades. Let him consider the necessity and prevalence of sacrifice throughout nature and religion.
The Golden Dawn Page 16