More on magical Motto

The Aspirant should at all cost refrain from thinking that the name has an identity. The name is a carrier of emptiness, as the void is a pure content of all identities. Indeed, let the Aspirant speak his name given to him at birth and let him feel where the source of that name is. Let him say aloud “Who am I,” then chasing that divine river of feeling which will bring him to the place of origin of his being. He will realize that this feeling is not anywhere specific, but rather he is this feeling itself. Like the illusion which helps him understand it as the Self; it is just a side effect of the presence of the Universe within him. Once he seizes it, let the Aspirant gently meditate on that feeling; he will perceive that it constantly moves like mercury. But this fantastic sensation, always existing in space from whence the Self observes, tells the Aspirant that it does not exist in space at all. This emptiness is not empty of things; it is empty of time. The Great Work is a phenomenon of time; the Angel is just a name of the present, in as much as the Motto is the nickname of the past.

The Great Work draws its essence from the fact that all these things are incoherent by themselves, and there is no level of cause and consequence between them, as there are no things in which this between could take place. Therefore the relationship between the Motto and the Angel is the same relationship between the Aspirant and the Motto. In every present which continually exists in the same way, the Aspirant, the Motto, and the Angel are one and the same thing. At the moment, that cannot be observed because it just does not exist in the usual sense of the word, the Great Work has already been realized; it is precisely the phenomenon of consciousness that creates an idea of “before” and “after” making the Great Work somehow always hidden in between. So either you notice it too late, or you are too early. Great Work is not achieved, it is constantly being achieved, even now, as you read these words, the Great Work is everpresent in your perception of these letters, while your consciousness is just a subsequent echo of its nature, and the shadow of the already occurring phenomenon. And such consciousness of success is equally illusory as a consciousness of failure; both are reactions of one and the same occurrence.

The second exercise that can be applied by the Aspirant is a continuous repetition of his name or a nickname. There occurs a moment of monotony during the endless repetition of the name out loud, when the Aspirant completely loses the meaning of it all, and where consciousness enters into a specific type of trance. That wonderful moment is well known to children, as this technique is one of the favorite games during childhood. It is necessary to repeat the name out loud in a continuous, monotone manner, maintaining the same tempo, doing so without any expectations, and when this specific state of nonsense appears within the mind, one is to seize the feeling of the Self, keeping it squeezed as it wriggles with all its power. Right then, the Aspirant will gently feel the new sensation that is above all other senses. This specific feeling is something special that will get revealed further in the Grade of a Neophyte, but for now, it remains for us to map this feeling well and note it into the Diary. Not as a success, nor as an isolated experiment, but only as a short statement. And this mild feeling should be forgotten as soon as possible. For it will begin to flow among the unconscious currents of the Aspirant, breaking the course of his mind in a way that he will later, as an Adept, apply it in His Great Work.

The Motto should not be original at all costs; originality is already present in you by virtue of you being born as unique. What is necessary now is to pour out the name from the mold of your nature. The effort towards originality is the blasphemy of the worst kind. Therefore, it is quite an ungrateful event to sit down and to think about what you want to be. Although it is a valid way, ask yourself about the nature of what you already are and then simply name it accordingly; choose a god, an angel, a demon, a color or a number that corresponds to it. You do not need to be something as much as that something needs to be you. This is not the ultimate test; it will improve and become sophisticated through the Grades in the same way the progress through the Grades brings the Aspirant closer to the Angel. Once again, twice, many times over, the Aspirant must know that the adoption of the Motto is his first failure in the Great Work. But as much as it is a failure, it is a misstep in nothing other than the Great Work, and that is the magical link of the most exalted kind.

The Motto is a metaphor of Will. As the Aspirant is onomatopoeia of his Angel.

Frater 273