Re-Initiation Into Hermetics — Part 2:

Patience, Introspection, & Disease

Purnacandra Sivarupa • June 11, 2015

I don’t know about the rest of the world, but Americans can be extremely, even pathologically,
results-oriented. This pragmatism can make us pretty good at a lot of things, but it becomes one
of our biggest obstacles in any form of psychological or spiritual practice. Discipline is in many
ways the opposite of our anxious pragmatism, because discipline demands that we take things
stepwise, focusing only on what needs to be done now rather than on what will rocket us past the
goalposts.

Let’s be clear: There is no goal to spiritual practice. That’s not to say there is no purpose, but there
is no end, no final tally that lets us say, “Ok, I did it; there’s nothing new to accomplish.” In
Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna tells Arjuna to relinquish all notions of “doership” and with it any
desire for the fruits of his actions. That is the spirit in which to take things. Not only does it breed
detachment, but detachment permits the development of real discernment by which we can
discriminate between the Real and the unreal; we can pick apart real from apparent results with
dispassion, relinquishing both pride and shame in order to examine what is really happening with
as little filtration as possible.

All of this requires that we make haste, slowly. We must give ourselves over to practice as fully as
we can, but be patient knowing that the process takes time and that in “giving my all”, “all” will
refer to drastically different quantities and qualities of effort at different phases. Franz Bardon
tells us to be “pitiless” with ourselves, but he also urges patience. In being pitiless, we don’t let
ourselves off the hook when effort is required of us, but by patience we remain flexibly poised
during those times when our efforts are exhausted, when we need to be more passive or reflective,
or when action simply isn’t prudent.

This emphasis on patience is all in the interest of avoiding disease, or at least treating it properly
once it has arisen. Mark Stavish has it that a good 90% of what passes for “spiritual practice”
among magicians and other esoteric practitioners is actually a particular sort of psychotherapy—
and so completely within the realm of the personal psyche rather than the deep soul or
transpersonal spirit. Some might recognize this as “merely” psychological, and many of them will
try to skip it in favor of intensive meditation or the fiery practice of mantra and other austerities,
but they are woefully mistaken. There is good reason for this “esoteric analysis”.

Our systems come mostly unprepared for the degree of power we will try to make them contain
and rechannel. In fact, we are fairly well insulated from many of them by design: most of these
forces are not directly related to biological survival and can be quite inimical to our psycho-
physiology prior to appropriate preparatory measures. We are each in a sense equipped with a
personal lightning rod to avoid a system blowout—if you’ve ever wondered what, exactly, your
holy guardian angel is doing before you go looking for him or her, here’s part of the answer.

But, being who we are, we eventually want to push our boundaries to learn, grow, and experience
more. To do so in a way which will not cause dangerous power surges, we must make our systems
ready. There are many approaches to take in this process, and they are all time-intensive and
must be engaged for the rest of our earthly days.

In Yoga—which includes Tantra for our present purposes—this preparatory process begins with
character. Patanjali, in his famous Yoga Sutras, gives ten yamas and niyamas: five ethical “don’ts”
and five moral “dos”. These are less like commandments and more like general categories by
which we may discipline our thoughts, words, and deeds—thus slowly dissolving habits and
allowing certain native forces to flow more freely. Not only does this have social consequences, it
also clears energy blockages and, as internal forces flow gradually more freely, lets our systems
become gently more accustomed to those forces.

Let’s not skirt this question: the forces and powers dealt with, here, are quite real and more ready
and capable of doing serious, even permanent, damage than many tend at first to believe. There is
especially a modern American tendency to think all such powers to be either metaphors for purely
human processes, or else completely benign. Both are mistakes. If we are lucky, such mistakes
hold us back from making any progress at all, but if we push too far too fast, these forces can and
will break us, mentally and physically. Madness, delusion, monstrosity, illness, injury, and death
are all recorded possibilities, and not just in the annals of ancient history; many is the
presumptuous would-be magician or mystic who winds up in the hospital, the prison, or the
morgue. It is thus that Frithjof Schuon and others have observed that the simple religiously
faithful are in many ways enviable.

One of Patanjali’s niyamas is self-study. Franz Bardon takes this as the jumping off point for his
own preparatory scheme.

Focusing also on good character, Bardon comes from the other way round: as you develop the
capacity for quiet inner observation (introspection, literally “seeing inward”), you may apply this
new perspective by analyzing your own patterns of thought and behavior. The “productive” ones
become your “white astral mirror”, while the nonproductive or counter-productive habits become
your “black astral mirror”. Of course, ultimately all such karmic seeds need to be excised, but it is
more im portant at first to cultivate the helpful and minimize the unhelpful.

This exercise alone is quite a boon and can be very time consuming. I was taught that 50 to 100
items per list (trying to keep the two lists approximately the same length) is a good start fro the
Step 1 work. But Bardon goes further.

The lists are analyzed again according both to the power or severity of each trait in our lives, and
the element to which each corresponds. To some, this seems arbitrary, but when we begin to work
directly upon these traits in Step 2, this effort of elemental analysis will provide and excellent
snapshot of the relative flows of elemental forces within our subtle bodies. Though not as detailed
a map as, say, the meridians of Chinese medicine or the nadis of Ayurveda, the astral mirrors will
still show us at a glance what many of our subtle energy knots look like quite well enough to begin
untangling them.

Even the Step 1 physical exercises clear the foundations of our energy systems. Not only do these
attention exercises make us more aware of our pranic intake through food, water, and air, they
also give us the opportunity to set those pranas to work in dissolving internal obstacles to their
free flowing. These may be thought of in terms of the transubstantiation of sacraments; though
nowhere near as powerful as a proper Mass performed by a person with valid lineage and
empowerments, they do work according to a similar principle that to change the meaning of a
physical substance is to change the impact of that substance within the organism. This is a very
real type of subtle alchemy combining prayer with the facts of biology.

I have told many magicians that the first 5 Steps of Initiation Into Hermetics can efficiently
replace most or all of the more cumbersome training of the Western mystery tradition. But Step 1
alone can be the mystical practice of a lifetime, replacing much of the useless nonsense passed off
by numerous expensive retreats and the dangerous “break down to build up in our image” self-
help seminars which have plagued the sincere seeker in ever-increasing numbers since the days of
est.

Once again, I hope that these reflections are helpful. May you be blessed in the work.

References & Other Readings

Problems on the Path of Return: Pathology in Kabbalistic and Alchemical Practices by Mark
Stavish

The Path of Alchemy: Energetic Healing and the World of Natural Magic by Mark Stavish
(2006, Llewellyn Worldwide)

On Becoming an Alchemist: A Guide for the Modern Magician by Catherine MacCoun (2008,
Trumpeter Books)

A Death on Diamond Mountain: A True Story of Obsession, Madness, and the Path to
Enlightenment by Scott Carney (2015, Gotham Books)

Advertisements

Related

The Heart of Freedom, part 2: Spiritual Practice & Its BenefitsIn "Blog Posts"

No Religion, No SpiritualityIn "Blog Posts"

Dharma Obscured: A Brief Critical Response to "The Dharma Manifesto"In "Blog Posts"