Perception vs Consciousness

Occulted

[maeviuslynn]

Here are some of the absolutely beautiful full color illustrations found in: The Alchemical Feminine: Women, Gender, and Sexuality in Alchemical Images by M. E. Warlick

"With more than 200 illustrations, this ground-breaking book examines the alchemical feminine and the thematic diversity of alchemical images of women."

Publisher: Fulgur Press 

[portalibis]

Alchemical Scroll by George Ripley from the Bodleian Library, 16th or 17th century.

P.I. Telegram / P.I. Facebook

[portalibis]

Ulrich Ruosch’s Alchemical Manual, c. 1680

P.I. Telegram / P.I. Facebook

[percyquest]

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[percyquest]

Next read fresh from abebooks

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[magictransistor]

Pat Steir, Miles Wragg. Cover for The Doors of Perception, by Aldous Huxley. 2014,1970.

[madamlaydebug]

"The term "Kabbala" (Tree of Life) derives from Hebrew. Some religious systems have a different term for this science. In India and Tibet, the science of the words is called "Tantra". In other religious systems they talk of "formulas". Kabbala therefore is the universal language by which everything was made, it is the incarnation of one or several divine ideas (John 1:1). By means of quabbalah, i.e., the universal language, God has created everything. Thus, from the hermetic point of view, a genuine kabbalist is the highest initiate, for he acts for God in the miniature world, the microcosm and, applying the laws of analogy, he may become active also in the macrocosm (as above, so below)." Franz Bardon

"The theories of Kabbalism are inextricably interwoven with the tenets of Alchemy, Hermeticism, Rosicrucianism, and Freemasonry." Manly P. Hall (33°)

[cosmicportal]

the 33 vertebrae of the human spine ,Jacob's ladder and the Kundalini awakening experience.

[tomasorban]

Excess (from essay: The alchemy of desire)

There is one final alchemical concept that irrevocably binds Schwaller’s operative alchemical principles to his metaphysics of sex. This is the ‘sense of excess’ (le sense de l’excès), which he compares directly to both catalysis and orgasm. If eroticism is the desire for union—culminating in marriage via the conjunction of opposites to reconstitute the primordial androgyne—then the orgasm is the transfiguring flash of eternity that catalyses this union, raising the conjoined being beyond duality.

Excess is accorded a vital role for it is seen as a phenomenon in the moral domain that corresponds to crucial processes in chemistry and alchemy. ‘Now, that which in morality is called excess corresponds to that which in alchemy is called fermentation, identical to that which in chemistry is called catalysis’:

By this last term [catalysis] we can better comprehend the phenomenon. More and more one has noted in chemistry that this mysterious catalysis plays a preponderant role in reactions. It consists of the inexplicable action of the presence of an apparently strange body upon the milieu or upon the named phenomenon. For my part, I know that this body is never effectively a stranger, but, as occult atomic physics reveals, it intervenes always as the excess of affinity in the composition. Excess intervenes in the material phenomenon exactly as in the moral, or, better said, in consciousness. It is the instant thanks to which the present possibility is surpassed; this is also the moment thanks to which the passage is possible from one state to a superior state.

The transfiguring ability to ‘surpass the present possibility’ is pivotal here, and we can see how this ‘sense of excess’ forms an important precursor to what he would later call ‘qualitative exaltation’, a concept central to his esoteric theory of evolution. In its earlier formulation, however, it is described specifically in relation to the function of the orgasm:

The sexual function, in itself, is not an excess; the orgasm properly speaking is an excess: an excess of erotic tension. This is the most natural excess, imposed by nature. Now, all excess—whatever it may be—leads to this consciousness, even if it comes about that its effect should be death. The effect is secondary. What is essential is what passes into the consciousness of this being who knows that, if it pushes such a thing to [the point of] excess, it can result in death. If his act is the consequence of a logical decision with himself, and is therefore an absolutely conscious act accomplished after mature reflection upon his desire for ecstasy, without anger, without any weakening of his faculties by intoxication or narcotics, then, even if death ensues, the act is not to be morally condemned. In this case, he does not want his death, he wants the supreme exaltation in which he hopes to find the annihilation of his I, his ego, his sensorially fascinated being.

The need for infinity exists in man: but he must learn to make the sense of excess conscious. The sense of excess leads all things from evil to the veritably mystical—that is, to the most complete abnegation, to complete fusion (confondement). If this is difficult or impossible in many cases for some, it is yet possible for him, in things that his nature requires or that an erotic disposition imposes, to find in these things the point of support in order that they may be exalted to the supreme. This is the sense in which eroticism is sublimated to the mystical.

As the Italian esoteric philosopher Julius Evola (1898–1974) recognises, this passage (which he cites in his Metafisica del sesso), pertains to a form of erotic alchemy that is comparable to the secret ritual of the Ordo Templi Orientis (article XIV of De arte magica), which speaks of an initiatic ‘death in orgasm’ called the mors justi. This ‘limit of exhaustion or frenzy and intoxication’, comments Evola, ‘is also indicated as the moment of magical lucidity, of powerful trance in man or woman’.

Evola, whose Metaphysics of Sex is a veritable tour de force of the initiatory role of eros, also points out the pertinence of Schwaller’s ideas to the tantric distinction between different types of desire (Sanskrit kama), which encompasses animal desire, human desire, and superhuman desire. Only the superhuman desire is ‘capable of total and superindividual abandon’, according to Evola, and he concludes his position by citing Schwaller’s distinction between a ‘Greater Desire’ and a ‘Lesser Desire’. ‘In essence’, remarks Evola, ‘animal desire is contrasted with that which might be called [and here he cites Schwaller] “the Greater Desire which unites body with spirit well beyond the union of bodies in the Lesser Desire”’.

For Schwaller, this ‘Great Desire’ is intimately bound to a mysterium whose ‘deep cause’ lies in a ‘desire for infinity’, but which ‘in its expression becomes the sense of excess’. This great desire for infinity can lead either to ‘the most absolute destruction’ or ‘the highest evolution’. All the excesses that human desire evokes—whether for physical eroticism, ecstasy, inebriation, intoxication, works of genius, and even criminal transgression—are so many substitutes for this primordial call to infinity. Now, because the infinity sought through the sense of excess is beyond duality, it is also beyond good and evil, and for this reason the entire spectrum of extreme acts undertaken in the quest for infinity can never actually satisfy this higher need, which nevertheless acts like a magnet for it through the chain of lesser desires. The genuinely anagogic effect of the sense of excess is only attained when the individual absolves themselves completely of duality through divine union in the metaphysical state of androgyny—the alchemical marriage. Indeed, it is precisely the attainment of this‘mystical ideal’ that is the true purpose of marriage, a ‘state wherein sexuality ceases, where the “divided souls” effectively reunite and are no longer engaged in coitus, which is merely a simulacrum of Union’.

The desire for infinity, and the sense of excess, also underpin the evolution of life, which for Schwaller is always determined by the desire for consciousness to achieve its perfect, immortal form: ‘the Universe is nothing but consciousness, and through its appearances presents nothing but an evolution of consciousness, from its origin to its end, the end being a return to its cause’. To the extent that all terrestrial bodies are partial realisations of this primordial or absolute ‘body’, the process of evolution through the kingdoms of nature mirrors the process of the desire for infinity. The bodies generated through the evolution of life are in a sense akin to the substitutes that we use to assuage the desire for infinity—they are vehicles but not destinations; approximate but never ultimate. Moreover, they only genuinely lead us ‘further’ if the confines that define these very states of existence are broken through acts of excess.

Thus, in addition to the general perception that visible evolution is the material expression of the mutation of consciousness, desire is implicated as the specific instrument by which consciousness ‘chooses’ or ‘determines’ the forms that express an entity’s ontological status in the chain of being. Within this framework, the aim of embodied life is to intensify consciousness through excess: to make it more integral and thus liberated from duality, whereupon (as a result) the physical instrument will become more integrally (and less dualistically) constellated. This is the goal toward which all becoming appears to be moving, but which, paradoxically, always existed, ever-presently, as its origin and foundation. It is at once the homogeneous equilibrium of the originary spiritual milieu in which agent and patient are latent, as it is the neutral ground that is produced when agent and patient differentiate, interact and neutralise. This is why Schwaller can speak of an incarnation that is simultaneously a liberation from corporification:

This is the moment in which consciousness is integrally corporified and, paradoxically, in which it becomes independent of the body: the body itself becomes energy, being no longer the support of an energy, no longer the container but wholly the contents’.

Image W. Russell

[santoschristos]

Taurus Decan 3 ~ May 11 to 20

Prayer Beads

Artistic Alchemy & Life’s Troopers

Perhaps Taurus 3 are so creative precisely because they are faced with restrictions and hardship. Ironically, with more choice and a larger budget, they are more likely to stagnate artistically. They seem to enjoy the challenge of having someone or something to overcome, like Perseus slaying his Medusa.Taurus decan 3 has a tinge of sorrow and melancholy about it since some of the stars here are associated with tears (Electra) and pain. (Algol). Saturn being the ruler here is also no stranger to melancholia, but combined with Taurus it gives great stoicism.

Taurus 3 is a mix of Fire (From constellation Aries) and water (From constellation Eridanus). Fire is their boundless, heroic passion and water gushes forth creativity and swelling emotions. Taurus decan 3 need to be able to express emotions and release their pain and sorrow into some creative outlet. Ptolemy associated all the stars in Eridanus the River with Saturn (Achernar is the exception). It brings into this decan the love of science and a need to experiment and quantify. These people are clever enough to realise they must underpin their go-with-the-flow lifestyle with a solid structure. On the surface, they can seem flaky as hell, but these people actually do have a backbone, you can lean on them pretty hard and they don’t snap. From: Darkstarastrology Image: Taurus Decan 3 Mahaboka

[recordplayerbabyyyy]

The Woman and the Dragon, Apocalypse of John of Bedford, 13th century

[sixofclovers]

hecate