#patrick harpur

[nousrose]

Death is not the opposite of life but of birth - life is a continuous realm out of which we are born; that (as Plato says) we can dimly remember during our existence; and to which we return when we die - to that totality of life compared to which mortal existence seems but a dreamlike fragment.

The Secret Tradition of the Soul

Patrick Harpur

[funeral]

Patrick Harpur, Daimonic Reality: A Field Guide to the Otherworld

[premortemsurge]

"Many tribal cultures from Tasmania to North America, from Malaysia to Africa, use the word “shadow”—or a word like it, such as reflection, image, echo, double, dream-body—to signify that part of a human that can detach itself from the body, notably at death. As well as surviving bodily death, the shadow was believed to appear to others separately from its body. It could be placed elsewhere, hidden in a secret place; for it is vulnerable to attack and can even be eaten.

It is almost universally agreed, then, that the soul can detach itself from the body. It can wander off on its own—during sleep, for example. Sometimes it becomes lost, cannot find its way back to its owner, and has to be retrieved by a shaman, who flies into the Otherworld of dreams to bring it back. Sometimes the soul is held in the Otherworld by spirits of disease whom the shaman has to persuade or overcome in order to release the soul. Sometimes it is not so much lost as stolen—by witches, supernatural animals, or the dead. In such cases the body that is left behind is but a husk that wastes away and, sometimes, dies if its soul is not returned to it.

In Irish folklore, for instance, it is said that when a young man or woman is taken by the fairies they leave behind a “log” or “the likeness of their body or a body in their likeness.” What remains, in other words, is not human but a kind of “living dead” like the Haitians whose souls, they say, can be locked up in jars by sorcerers while their bodily remains are abducted—as zombies—to work as slaves.

Even in death, when the soul might be thought to have finally separated from its body, they remain close. As many Africans say: “The dead are still living.” Thus, if you want to strike out at a dead man whose “shadow” is remote and invisible, you have only to act on his bodily remains. The Aboriginals of the Brisbane district were known to have mutilated a dead man’s genitals to prevent his having sex with the living, whereas those of the district of Victoria might tie his toes together to stop him “walking.” In West Africa the Ogowe for the same reason would break all the bones in a corpse and hang it in a bag from a tree.

Often, if misfortunes do occur after a death, the body of the dead person will be exhumed. Sometimes it is found to be intact, with a blush still in its cheeks, and an appearance more of being asleep than dead—a clear sign that the dead person was during life a witch or sorcerer who had gone undetected. Such a belief is not only found in places as far apart as Nigeria and Burma; it is also found in Europe. There, however, it is usually reversed: the intact corpse is held to be that of a saint rather than a sorcerer. When the coffin of St. Cuthbert, for instance, was opened some four hundred years after his death in 687, his body was found to be unchanged and undecayed. These signs of sanctity can be read in an opposite way, however: unnaturally healthy-looking corpses in eastern Europe used to be reburied with a precautionary stake through the heart.

We have tended to polarize body and soul to such an extent that, as a tribesperson might say, we have allowed our souls to stray so far from our bodies that we are in danger of losing our souls altogether. Our bodies are therefore left to wander the Earth like zombies who tell themselves that there never was such a thing as a soul: that we must simply face up to our inanimate condition, and grin and bear it."

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

The Death of Siegfried, from The Story of Siegfried by Howard Pyle (1882) :: [Guillaume Gris]

* * * *

“Although its shape constantly changes to suit the age, the central tenets of the secret tradition remain the same. The idea, for example, that psyche, soul, constitutes the very fabric of reality; that humans are individual manifestations of a collective Soul of the World which interconnects all things; that imagination, not reason, is the chief faculty of the soul – though not the pale imitation of imagination as we now know it; that there is another world whence the soul comes at birth and to which it returns at death; and that the idea of gnosis, of a personal and transforming experience of divinity, is of the essence.”

~ Patrick Harpur

[Thanks Ian Sanders]

[negreabsolut]

Coberta d'una de les edicions en anglès del llibre Mercurius. The Marriage of Heaven and Earth, de Patrick Harpur. Publicat per The Squeeze Press, 2008.

[poetamagus]

Patrick Harpur - The secret tradition of the soul

Recommended reading

[somethoughtseeds]

[1five1two]

Know this: I, Mercurius, have here set down a full, true and infallible account of the Great Work. But I give you fair warning that unless you seek the true philosophical gold and not the gold of the vulgar, unless you heart is fixed with unbending intent on the true Stone of the Philosophers, unless you are steadfast in your quest, abiding by God’s laws in all faith and humility and eschewing all vanity, conceit, falsehood, intemperance, pride, lust and faint-heartedness, read no farther lest I prove fatal to you. For I am the watery venomous serpent who lies buried at the earth’s centre; I am the fiery dragon who flies through the air. I am the one thing necessary for the whole Opus. I am the spirit of metals, the fire which does not burn, the water which does not wet the hands. If you find the way to slay me you will find the philosophical mercury of the wise, even the White Stone beloved of the Philosophers. If you find the way to raise me up again, you will find the philosophical sulphur, that is, the Red Stone and Elixir of Life. Obey me and I will be your servant; free me and I will be your friend. Enslave me and I am a dangerous enemy; command me and I will make you mad; give me life and you will die.

Patrick Harpur Mercurius: The marriage of Heaven and Earth