Neurosis

Suppose the whole essence of Abramelin is in the mechanism consisting of the pure enjoyment of consciousness to play hide-and-seek with the Angel. In that case, it seems that this mechanism, in all this waiting, finds a constant of madness instead of ultimate pleasure. And it is precisely this time of waiting in the eternal game of hide-and-seek that leads to the basic phenomenon that accompanies human existence – neurosis – which makes the Abramelin mechanism possible at all. It is precisely neurosis that is the main ingredient of the Great Work; without it, this whole story would be an incredibly tasteless dish. And no matter how invigorating it may be, there will always be something missing that would complement the atmosphere, something that will give an apparent meaning or, better said, an evident impetus in such an abstract and meaningless work.

This story will never be told, for the reason that language and mind are equally the closest generals of this prince of evil. As long as we think about it and lead ourselves to a solution, we will equally be declining. That is one of the greatest truths about our neurosis, which is that it keeps coming back. No matter how much we go forward, we will always go back to the beginning, and no matter how much we think we have learned something, we will still fail an utterly banal test despite being positive about the outcome.

A lot of things are wrong in our work, our entire cornerstone is hollow, and it was done not with intention but out of that human need to continually improve and continuously work on oneself. It is difficult to set up the order and organization of methods in something as varied as human experiences. If the Aspirant really understood the nature of his neurosis, he would experience the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel at that moment. Neurosis is the only constant that will take him to the City of the Pyramids. It seems much more apparent than the Angel himself, who becomes visible only toward the end, while his appearance does not even seem to exist in the beginning. With neurosis, it is an entirely different thing. It exists as long as we exist, and its mechanism is always the same. Its actions are exactly the same no matter how high or low we thought we were, and no matter how spiritually experienced and advanced is the person that we find; we will always be surprised at how low he can fall concerning completely insignificant things. All the peculiarities of this observation apply equally to the Adepts, as well as all the other Aspirants.

So many things in our Order are swept under the carpet, and so many things are not perceived as important. Our holy books are full of sublime archetypes, while we refuse to recognize the names of diseases, flaws, and tics inside our own being. And as long as that is the case, can we even believe that we will get closer to enlightenment, as long as we feel uncomfortable when we see a movie with a scene of wild sex in front of our parents, or step in a simple piece of crap on the street with our brand new shoes?

Neurosis is the moment in which a soul is stuck. Therefore, it is a temporal phenomenon. Its real feature is unreality above all, but which got stuck in us at that moment and is interpreted as real and completely true reality; it is the child in us who refuses to grow up because time simply does not fly with him.

Unreal does not mean illusory at all; the nature of its permanence is completely the same as the manifested Universe; the truth of its lie is real like the body. Such unreality is like constellations. When looking from a limited point of view from the Earth, constellations assume the form of mythical figures in two dimensions, but if the same stars are to be observed from some other part of the Universe, it will construct a completely different picture. This does not mean that constellations are unreal; those stars are the same, but our perception of how we connect them leads us to a completely wrong picture of what things really look like up in the skies. Especially since what we are looking at is a picture from a few hundred or thousands of light-years ago, and that now, the situation is anything but the way we see it currently.

A lot about this subject has already been said in the book about the Probationer, but now is the time to understand neurosis more intimately, much more intimately than it experiences us. From that intimacy, the Aspirant must find the strength to fly toward the Sun, not toward the Angel, because the Angel is already intimate enough with the Aspirant. Almost everything the Aspirant is doing at this point is wrong. Instead of striving for intimacy and coexistence with his neurosis, he is intimate with an utterly chaotic idea such as the Angel. From the domain of the City of the Pyramids, neurosis and the Angel are the consequence of one and the same thing, and this claim may even offend many Aspirants. Still, it only shows how important the notion of neurosis is for the work of an individual in our Order.

The relationship between the Ego and neurosis is like the relationship between the Knowledge and Conversation. Neurosis is the energy of the same idea that is embodied as the Ego; these are the two states of the same phenomenon. Just what ice or steam is for the archetype of water, so are the Ego and neurosis a pair of wings of the same Angel.

And just like water, we can generally find three aggregate states of neurosis: fear, anger, and sadness; these are the three main positions behind which each of our ordeals and pain hides. The Neophyte’s task is to find the dominant one in his life, although it can hardly be said that anything is stronger than fear. The Aspirant has one moment in his life when a seemingly insignificant event triggers an avalanche of complexes, tics, dreams, and beliefs – all triggered by a snowball of frozen emotions that is basically one of these three terrible and passionate goddesses – rolling downhill through our lives it has grown into a disaster of emotional chaos, misunderstanding, and suffering.

The essence of neurosis is in the strong and dedicated construction of a new reality, as constant as this reality is. Yet, it is so different from the idea of unreality. Neurosis is not unreal; on the contrary, it is as real as everything else in this world. In fact, it is surreal; its permanence and truth are precisely in that, and for that reason, it is so well rooted and ready to remain forever in our lives. In other words, the Aspirant, being a cause of that neurosis, must eradicate himself in order to eradicate that neurosis, which is a paradox. It can be said that there are only two approaches to the problem – one which solves it, the other which denies it. Both are equally catastrophic and unsuccessful.

Neurosis is an integral part of every grade and a part of every moment of our action, to a greater or lesser extent. We may say that becoming free from neurosis is an utterly impossible thing; it is already very well-known during Probationship, and now it takes on its crueler and concrete form. Partly because of Binah’s pressure, but also because of the possible appearance of the Vampire; both make Probation feel as light as a breeze concerning this period. The period of being a Neophyte can be permeated with the suffering of the worst kind, the kind because of which many give up without ever realizing the real reason – which was exactly the goal of neurosis. Indeed, that is the ultimate reach of neurosis – not to come to an end and discourage that dreams can come true. Neurosis does not want fulfillment but procrastination. It does not want a happy ending because it does not want an end at all. It wants to last and not end. It wants the stability of unreality, not the realization of reality or opportunity of real fulfillment. Its scope is as wide as the reach of Ruach, if not wider. The deepest levels of lucid dreams and the astral plane contain all those very same characteristics of neurosis, and we can see that it did not even dare to change – on the contrary, it even gained a deeper meaning at a deeper level and much more brutal impact on the Aspirant’s psyche. Indeed, many Aspirants of lucid dreaming find a unique phenomenon that is the same for everyone, and that continues to shock and frighten Aspirants who cannot overcome the specific appearance of the shadow in their experiences for years. This shadow experience, which occurs in its manner of frequency, always brings the ultimate horror, terror, and insurmountable fear into a dream experience where the Aspirant has no control over the projection. Many Aspirants cite this as their worst nightmare, and that shadow usually feeds on their strangest and most ingrained childhood fears, which have such destructive power once they have risen in a lucid dream. But if lucid dreaming brings benefits in anything, it is precisely in the assimilation of this shadow. The very success in lucid dreaming is nothing compared to the experience of assimilating the shadow in a dream – which could be one of the most important undertakings of the Aspirant he may have had before Abramelin once he had found tremendous courage before the projection and managed to present it to himself as the goal of the projection, if he approaches the shadow, embraces it and to feels it illuminate. So little technical knowledge is needed for this, but so muchdevilish love and courage – the same one that will later take him along the whole of Abramelin operation. We will certainly have an opportunity to talk about this topic in more detail in the area closely dedicated to lucid dreaming experiences.

To understand one’s own neurosis and the cause of its onset would actually be Adeptship in the highest form. It can be said that only Adeptus Exemptus can fully understand and overcomes this. Although the Adept approaches this topic quite politely, he still cannot understand that the four Princes of Evil still remain because he still accepts time as an agreed notion in the world in which he still lives, so they really “still” exist. In this “still” lies all their sense of existence. They do not exist because they are emergent, but because they are permanent – not because they happen, but because they still last.

The entire IAO formula contains all the zest of neurosis in its true form; indeed, regardless of the New Æon or Old Æon perceptions, it is precisely this time frame that is the main weapon of neurosis that envelops itself in this framework and upgrades in this way, forever fleeing from the Aspirant. Neurosis has its two aspects equally; lower – in the form of Apophis within the IAO formula; and the second and considerably higher – in the form of the four great Princes of Evil, even after the Great Work has been securely founded in the Aspirant. A distorted Tetragrammaton, perceived as the idea of “four great Princes of Evil,” that shadow of the memory of what has been transformed into the gold of Tiphareth, is a negative transfer of the highest kind in the same way. That memory, which serves not to return through time but precisely to create the illusion of time, is the same mechanism of rejection to capture the wave of the present is always the same requirement for the creation of neurosis. We should not mix the shadow with the shape, which gives us a shadow in the first place. The four great Princess of Evil are “just” ruin of the old IHVH temple, which the Angel destroyed by light. There are no “elements” – just our perception of reality, which we just call elements. There are no centimeters in the world; space itself is surely not divided by lines on a ruler. These lines exist in our mind only. They are just an invention of our mind to understand the distance easily. The four great Princes of Evil are actually a true perception of the elements and the Tetragrammaton. These are not elements but illusions, and now the Adept knows them the way they are. These are obstacles in front of the light that create shadows. We believe and understand these shadows as real things, and in fact, they are just illusions that only have a twisted shape of what blocks the light in the first place. 

IAO formula – is “ouch,” cried by your Angel stepping over some daring thorn on his path through the light, every time you act “out of him,” like a mother screaming each time as her child doing some silly things. Every action of ours and everything we do is just “silly” things that do not have a connection with the Pure Will. You silly, crazy, wonderful child. It is this madness and insanity which is neurosis in its pure form.

The disappearance of neurosis could be attributed to Magister Templi at first glance. However, long meditations and endless thought patterns indicate to us that Adeptus Exemptus is the one embarking on this adventure. He does sail the sea of his neurosis, which is quite calm at first and near the shore, but as he boldly sets out to open sea, it becomes horrible and cruel. The Abyss is the only place which neurosis cannot climb up and leave because, in the City of the Pyramids, there are no values that the mind builds around neurosis. Neurosis will never ascend to that place, simply because there are no dimensions “there,” upright or descending, that are so much needed by neurosis.

Some of us might really ask what is the relationship of the Angel and neurosis, and can we get a hint about this relationship that would help our hungry souls? Ultimate phenomena serve ultimate achievements, and, surely, a well-trained Aspirant evokes the idea of the relationship of these two entities in his mind – of which he has no experience, no control, no real knowledge; except that he knows they are both pushing his life like an autumn leaf in a storm. We can say that the relationship between neurosis and the Angel is like between thunder and lightning. Although both things result from the same phenomenon, they have completely different ways of being perceived, which makes them separate things. One is by the perception of our sight, and the other is of sound; even their temporal aspects are different – one is before while the other is after. But neither of these two actually explains the phenomenon itself, which is completely different from the perception of that phenomenon. The moment the human soul begins to be neurotic in childhood, that moment it gets its Angel. Just as both the occurrences of lightning and thunder have had completely ridiculous explanations throughout history and evoked a sublime sense of fear, which is the surname of one neurotic phenomenon, so the Angel and neurosis cannot be viewed separately. Moreover, they must not be observed at all because the very perception of these phenomena brings in confusion. Before we deciphered the Great Question, the way we asked the question was completely wrong because of the simple fact we asked it at all. In the end, we did not even pose it; the Ego posed it, setting us up as the usual suspect. There is no difference between the Ego and the Angel; the Ego is the difference. It is hard to explain, but the nature of the Angel and the Angel itself is not the same thing. Every mentioning of Him equally creates the Angel and the illusion of the Angel. Furthermore, neurosis is all the false evidence that benefits the Ego; neurosis is that forged signature that confirms the indictment of the Ego, making the Angel a false perpetrator. Therefore, all three concepts – the Ego, neurosis, and the Angel – are completely unsuitable for statement and practical work. All that remains for us is to try to sculpt these models of abstraction with our minds and call it nothing but art, just an artist’s expression in the clay or canvas of the Abyss. 

We all have the same dick and the same cunt under our clothes. Some have longer panties, some have tights, some thongs, but deep down, a penis is a penis, and a vagina is a vagina. And we all have the same neurosis mechanism, everybody trying to cover their own by underpants, foils, lies, while for others’, we pretend they are not around at all. Again, and again, and forever and ever again, always in circles. This is another feature of neurosis; in addition to being surreal unreal, it is recurrent. Always and in every way the same, always in a spiral. In fact, not in a circle, because it would mean that neurosis is a closed system. On the contrary, it is always alive as much as we are alive; it always adapts to all circumstances. Aspirants often realize that they have remained the same throughout all grades; they even triumphantly express such a discovery. Which, of course, is impossible – that is exactly the definition of one’s own neurosis – it is always the same. We are never the same, we are never the same “us,” we are many “I,” who always live now, always everywhere and with the same illusion of that “always,” that “live,” and that “now.” Our neurosis is the same; it always wants us to be the same so that it would live through us in the same way.

Both fears and dreams come true, sometimes one, sometimes the other, but always and in every way the unreal, the unfulfilled, the coveted. And even when it comes to the realization, our neurosis activates a defense mechanism and rejects happiness right in front of us. Because for it, the reality of joy is poison; it wants to crave chocolate more than to eat that same chocolate, only to dream of a divine kiss rather than dare to kiss, to enjoy its unreality, rather than its manifestation. Therefore, it always wants and achieves nothing. It always calls but never summons.

Let us observe ourselves the next time a fly flies through our field of vision while watching a movie, buzzing so persistently above our heads. Does our attention have to be so special now in dissecting this happening? There is discomfort, but it certainly cannot meet our criteria. We really have to look for higher and deeper attributes. If we continue to pay attention to this discomfort, it will soon turn into anger, a kind of irritation, and finally, the fear of that irritation and the inability to do anything to stop it. As our attention is now less and less directed toward the movie, it would be equally wrong to assume that it is focused on the fly. On the contrary, we have been inside ourselves all the time, and both the fly and that movie are part of an unreal child’s fear and desire for love. Within every neurosis, there is as much desire for love as there is a position of fear; it can be said that millions of different types of neuroses are shades of these two ultimate colors, making each one of use have their own personal shade, but the exact same mechanism. We are really unable to fully experience this statement to the proper extent – thinking that it is always a different mechanism. It is an entirely fascinating aspiration and struggle of the Aspirant to keep his neurosis, embracing it and sacrificing everything he painfully finds that can be taken away by that same neurosis. Therefore, an aggressive self-hatred neurotic expresses this aggression towards his loved ones, at the same time expressing the phobia that something terrible can happen to his family. These are completely unrealistic mechanisms, but every Aspirant must accept that equally:

1. he has this mechanism within himself,
2. he shall work on this mechanism and experience it, with an active approach and intense vitality, by all methods and by all possible means – his neurosis is alive, so he must be alive too.

The Neophyte must be a skeptic in his own faith, always thinking that ours is the method of science and the goal of religion. But we must be careful not to choose either of these two; we are not here to choose; we are the ones chosen by the gods and forces of nature as the result of all actions around us and within ourselves to be what we are, in a completely natural and spontaneous, by no means occult, esoteric, or spiritual way. In his work John St. John, Aleister Crowley said the following:

“I further take this opportunity of asserting my Atheism. I believe that all these phenomena are as explicable as the formation of hoar-frost or of glacier tables. I believe ‘Attainment’ to be a simple supreme sane state of the human brain. I do not believe in miracles; I do not think that God could cause a monkey, clergyman, or rationalist to attain. I am taking all this trouble of the Record principally in hope that it will show exactly what mental and physical conditions precede, accompany, and follow ‘attainment’ so that others may reproduce, through those conditions, that Result.”

In this lies a very appropriate instruction to interpret all things as a unique dialogue of God with our own soul. But that dialogue is always more a whisper and a call than the songs of the foreign languages; this instruction has an extremely simple solution, and that is the cognition of all processes within us, as well as without, as part of one and the same nature, completely open, simple and cordial. All secrets are just our inability to grasp the simplicity of our soul by neurosis; the point of the ultimate experience is by no means in barbaric names, nor in the hours spent in Dharana. Both the Knowledge and Conversation, as well as the Crossing the Abyss, do happen at a single moment – but our neurosis makes all this look like a month-long Abramelin or miles-deep Abyss. The first phenomenon is the phenomenon of time; the second is the phenomenon of space – together, they suffocate entirely every sense of occult science and skill, making it possible at any moment of life or a single breath for the human soul to capture both things without any pre-established standards or preparation. This movement is as mystical as a movement of the lungs to take a breath or the movement of the heart muscle that pumps the blood inside us – both conditioning life with a completely simple mechanical reaction – and yet making that same simple life full of complications, absurdities, and emotional nebulae due to our completely natural tendencies to believe that we do not understand. Both an ugly and a handsome man are equally neurotic about their own appearance – their appearance seems to have nothing to do with the experience of themselves at all; they both think that beauty is wholly unattainable and complex and such a remote thing for them who are so repulsive and miserable. An unenlightened and enlightened man are by no means opposites. Enlightenment in itself has no counter position. Enlightenment itself is a negation, it cannot be not experienced. One may think that we are not enlightened – that is a correct counter-thesis, but that is the whole point of human enlightenment – not that he reaches, but that he remembers that he has already attained enlightenment. That phenomenon of time, which is the condition of all neuroses, as well as the condition of the creation of the Angel and the Abyss, is the only hidden teacher to whom humanity aspires. It is that immeasurable unit, which means to the Selfness as much as that pumped blood for the heart, or that inhaled air for the lungs.

You are not afraid. You just think you are afraid. Because you think. This is the only motto of the ritual before the Neophyte – the Ritual of Passing Through the Duat – raising Zelator in him with the same holiness as it was the case with the Ritual of the Pyramid turning him into the Neophyte. It seems that all the instructions for this ritual can be reduced to the following: recycle your fear and pass further. This performance is a sublime hyperbole of neurosis; all this ritual has only one element – going through the night. The night of the soul, the twilight of the gods is always poetically depicted in the same way, yet so far away from the silent Self that sails through the darkness. The Aspirant may notice those awfully powerful mechanisms flowing through his being in all their forms and variants, of which fear is certainly the most dominant. All these claims should be taken with a grain of salt by the Neophyte because each Aspirant has a specific case, and all generalizations are wrong – including this one.

Liber Cadaveris, or its full name – the Ritual of Passing Through the Duat, has as much darkness as it has the idea of passage; it is, after all, passing, in no way pausing, never halting. The Sun that inevitably floats in the dark is only surrounded by nature, and its passage through that night is a completely natural phenomenon. Therefore, the Neophyte has nothing to perform by this ritual, as much as it is actually just a poetic play that the Aspirant should only gently follow – with attention and love. This ritual, just like Pyramidos, has completely different content and essence from other techniques and ceremonies, and together with Liber Samekh, it contains a specific mixture of absurdity, abstraction, and transcendence. But the change induced by this ritual is not aggressive; it is not imposed, but something completely different and milder – it is instead a consequence of aligned layering of experiences within a magician, making his life become a major consequence of all previous movements in the Cosmos. His change is not his – he has no right to ask for or demand anything, except for that smooth movement of the Sun across the Universe and its passage through the night. All the trouble of this ceremony is in fear of stopping that Sun; all the power of our neurosis lies solely and exclusively in that fear – the fear of change. That is exactly what Qliphoth is – our inability to accept the constancy of life, and I will be even more insolent to say that Qliphoth is nothing but immobility and retardation of change. Therefore, each and every truth that exists for more than a moment is Qliphoth. Each of “you” individually here, including myself, is a Qliphoth. The only constant is the constant of change. That is represented by the symbol of Swastika, as one of the oldest forms of the cross. Actually, the symbol of Swastika is an active, living form of a cross that is moving and changing. Everlastly. Neurosis is the complete opposite of this, in every respect. It is alive, but its vitality is in conflict and not in coexistence. It struggles and fights because it wants to remain in place; it is afraid of duration because it cannot accept time in a way that only Magister Templi can understand. This kind of illumination of darkness is an entirely sublime phenomenon in our Order – and the whole concept of the Superior and the Student which is so particular to our Order is reflected in this, looking at it as a specific vow given by one Bodhisattva. Only by illuminating that darkness is it possible to move on – illuminating it with one’s light. But that brilliance is completely impersonal in nature. It is directed at others because there is simply no “Self” in that place.

When Buddha lay on his deathbed, he noticed his young disciple Ananda was quietly weeping. “Why are you weeping Ananda?” he asked. Ananda replied, “Because the light of the world is about to be extinguished, and we will be in darkness.” The Buddha summoned up all his remaining energy and proclaimed what were to be his last words on earth: “Ananda, Ananda, be a light unto yourself.”

But let the Neophyte feel deep inside how many times he has summoned this moment. How many times have you lived through all this in the same way? Ask yourself deeply; you already know all this. You have that feeling, that knowledge. And this time, as you are reading this, you know it is not the first time. There has been at least one before. And then, if you call this one first, as well as every next one, it is anything but the first – how many times have you experienced the same present? Now you can think that you are already an accomplished Adept and that you crossed the Abyss a long time ago, but your memory is over here now, not over there to understand it. In the night of Pan, far away, there are no shadows. So there is no memory of something that has happened an infinite number of times. There is a memory for a repeated thing, two or more times, but endless memory is needed with endless repetition. Endless memories of one and the same Knowledge and Conversation – which, in fact, from the point of Abyss, has never happened.

The greatness of the Passing Through the Duat is not in feeling the power of the Sun, but in the fact that you have already passed its path. The majesty of this path is not in its closedness or completeness but in its multiplicity. It is not strength but ferocity. The Sun that appears in the morning is the same one that passed through the darkness of midnight. Its greatness is not that it is ready to fight in the morning, but that it went through that same fight a long time ago and is now sailing steadily and peacefully, regardless of the trials that await it. It is a great difference in understanding this glorious path, and only in this way will the Neophyte pass on. The Sun will pass on because it is all really its nature – to pass and that it has already passed on, over and over again, continually passing on.

The Aspirant may think that all that blocks him, all the fate of his fall is hidden in darkness. Still, the worst is the fear of light which is indeed fear of his incompetence and stupidity. There are no hidden judges or prosecutors in this place who are blocking justice, who have conspired against us and are holding back our nature by acting together. That blockade is reserved only for ourselves; only the fear of light distances the Aspirant from his attainment the fear of who we are and what we are afraid to be.

Equally, both light and darkness cause blindness, but again, an equally different kind of fear. In the darkness, we are afraid of what may be in it, and there is what we project. Moreover, we cannot even see what cannot be seen, but we are still afraid of what we do not even know is there, and we know very well what it should be. But the fear of light is the worst of all fears; in fact, it is one single fear, because finally, fear is always one and the same thing – the inability to look at the light without looking away because it is by turning our gaze that we turn into darkness. In that glorious darkness, we project again what we are afraid of because we initially looked away from that blinding, radiant, blessed, and living light.

What the Liber Pyramidos had as a vector, here it is a circle. In this ritual, it is essential that the circle is completed and to pass steadily through the night, returning to the birth of dawn. As much as Pyramidos is Bhakti Yoga in its particular aspect, so much Cadaveris is Dhyana. It is necessary to note that Samekh would be a coalition of these two principles, enflaming with prayer and invoking often. Indeed, these formulas have nothing to do with esoteric teachings or occultism, by any means. These rituals do not have their power in the archetypes that will roll through the Aspirant’s mind long after he has performed the ritual, changing his consciousness slowly, so slowly that he does not even notice it. These rituals – Pyramidos, Cadaveris, and Samekh are just arabesque miniatures. They are a reminder of what has already happened, of what the Aspirant should remember, not realize. These three sublime things are just the variants of the highest meditation that can be found beneath the Abyss – and that is her majesty Samasati – which our good Brother Allan Bennett passed onto Master Therion so lovingly. Every form of attention, every instrument and magical weapon, every attainment is in itself Samasti practice – by which one does not achieve and know, but recalls. Every new knowledge is just old reshaped knowledge. Every character we meet is always and only one character. Pyramidos, Cadaver, and Samekh are forms of the same Selfness – “me, myself and I”; three aggregate states of one and the same reality.

But we want robes, insignias, charters, recognitions, oaths, and misery so we can be happy. Indeed, it is so remarkable, and we yearn for misery to be happy. Indeed, we are so atrocious to say that the Black Brotherhood is greater than the Aspirant can even conceive. Everything that is not in harmony with True Nature, everything that is distracted from the inseparable essence, is black magic. But, all this is a projection and a part of Adonai’s love play, as a process of the highest distraction of postponing the climax with this form of attention. We praise every boldness and proclaim every Aspirant a black magician until he awakens awareness of the Pure Will. Every act is an act of the Black Brotherhood if it is not accompanied by pure success. And even then, the fact that success was achieved subsequently does not make an action aiming at success justified. No act further distances the Aspirant from the Self than does his attempt to attain the Self. This is the whole secret of neurosis that is especially nourished by our occult engagement. It has a very special relationship with the body, like a relationship between death and dying. They are certainly not the same things, and while man generally has a misconception about death, in fact, what he rather thinks about is dying. This relationship between death and dying is specifically considered by Zelator and Neophyte – in the same way as Pyramidos and Cadaveris: the Neophyte in his Pyramid, as the Zelator on his journey through the Duat. The Neophyte in the Ritual of the Pyramid is not in the Pyramid at all. His death is nothing but another life; he is to be found in the womb and not in the tomb. The Zelator, on the other hand, is the same Zelator that goes through the night of the Duat. One is the formula of transformation; the other is of transcendence. In the same way, there is a consistent parallel between life and living. As much as the Aspirant is burdened with life, so much is the Adept alive. The mystery of Pyramidos and Cadaveris is that we are really incapable of understanding the concepts of life and death; even more, we are unable to separate the notions of life and death from the process of living and dying.

Our consciousness is certainly not a factor of the symbiosis of thoughts and feelings in our brain. On the contrary, it is only the result of excluding the Universe and everything that we are not. That result is what we perceive as individuality. This resultant is the Ego, which is the result of the substitution between us and the Universe. Our Self is constructed not by direct knowledge of what we are, but by the perception of what we are not. There are mirrors all around us, crooked, cracked, and wherever we look at we see a million distorted versions of ourselves in every place around us, but no version consistently reflects what we are. In fact, while looking around, we are looking at a distorted Self. It is an illusion of perception – the illusion of consciousness. The very perception that our consciousness has is an illusion; we perceive everything but not what should be perceived by the one who does everything but perceives. 

Kundry gives this whole thing a special confusion, and together with Cadaveris, these ideas will strike a catastrophic blow against the Aspirant’s being. This is such a sublime and special topic that we will address it in a special place. But do not be afraid, star child. For it is written: even if everyone gathers to harm you, they will harm you only as much as God has prescribed. Therefore, take your freedom. Because it is free.

Frater 273