I was raised Scottish-Catholic. It is a culture steeped in the traditions of the Celts. Those story seeds are sown into my DNA and its genetic memory blossomed into a facination with the occult in adulthood. Occult is a word that stirs up many ideas and feelings, and I refer to the root of the word’s meaning which is eye. The occult is our eye on culture, and culture is the universal ethnology of mankind. Occult Illumination is the use of occult methods to attain personal enlightenment and the symbol for this method of illumination is an eye.
Ancient Greeks called my fascination with the occult the Problem of the One and the Many. In my practise as a fortune teller, I had seen the internal disconnect that prevented people from changing to improve their lives. The foundation of mysticism, or of any path to enlightenment, is self awareness. Self knowledge, a mastery over the self, is the power that allows us to push past the fugue of physical circumstances to create the change we wish to see.
Fugue in psychology is a rare psychogenic state of mind that usually cures itself. In engineering fugue means a system of principles that support the mechanics, and in data consumption, it is the abstract layer of unified interfacing. In the occult, it is the mechanical methods of emotional engineering that border the boundary between our physical consciousness and the universal consciousness. The occult provides a system of psychic applications to build up personal awareness and illuminate the psychological state wherein the One manifests in the Many and the Many connect to the One.
Fortune telling may very well be the second oldest profession and I have found no society that does not have a cultural path leading to some version of a soothsayer. Magicians use slight of hand and fortune tellers use slight of mind. I have told fortunes for money and entertained friends at parties, but my favourite encounters were with individuals who wanted to better understand themselves. Seekers of enlightenment were my favourites, because they understood that the treasures of the occult were more than just an opportunity to be entertained.
Henry Cornelius Agrippa, an occultist born in Germany in 1486, published his books during the 15th century renaissance and Agrippa’s s books of philosophy carried forward the germs of what we know today as the Western concept of the occult. Progress is the forward movement of a subject and the books are full of the demons and witches cliches that colour today’s perceptions of the occult.
Agrippa’s images lie in the foundation of today’s orphic knowledge. They are not the only occult books from this period but they demonstate the last moments of its progression in the West as an accepted practice. To these Western influences from the Greeks and Romans, indiginous European cultures , like the Celts, left the Prophecies of Merlin. Collected in the thirteenth century from oral traditions that were much older the original stories were compiled into a Latin text called the Vita Merlini. The mystical life and prophecies of Merlin are explored by R.J. Steward, and his books are based on a translation of this Latin text. There is also a translation by Basil Clark from The University of Wales in 1973. They are obscure but these books restore to the modern, Western perceptions of occultism, a truer measure of the enlightenment that is a more accurate illustration of the occult eye.
In 1891 John Collier painted the famous Oracle of Delphi. The philosophy of Aggripa, the stories of the Vita Merlini and the painting of Pythia, all express humanity’s enduring desire to connect with the Universal One and the word oracle is the pronoun we use to name the person, place or thing that has this connection with the divine. An oracle is mentioned twenty-one times in the first Book of Moses[1], and this connection to divinity has been cultivated since the dawn of mankind.
Pythia is depicted perched on a stool and sitting above a crack in the earth that emits intoxicating vapors. Chemical inducement of an altered state is a form of establishing the connection. The chemicals infiltrate the mind and override the loop of intellect to connect our individual physical consciousness to the divine universal one. Customs of ritualized intoxication exist globally, the ayahuasca cerimony in the Amazon, peyote in the Americas, and the magical soma drink of the Indo-Aryans are only some. Today, science is investigating the potential of psiloocybin mushrooms in the treatment of post traumatic stess disorders. This is not to advocate for intoxication, and I certainly do not mean for you to hang over an active volcanic fissure, but stated to emphasise the existance of a connection and that the connection in our subconscious has benefits. Drugs and acts of daring are captivating but a gentler method can be found by managing the flow of your emotional vibrations.
The word root of oracle is orare and it is rooted to the word occult. This word root is also in the words optic, inoculate, and oculus, and with these words we can describe the eye of illumination and its connection to our individual consciousness.
Cliches limit the optical nature of the eye to the talent of second sight. Premonition is innate in many occult disciplines but the allure of predictions belittles the true endowment of its visionary scope. The visionary scope is comparable to the light sabre of the Jedi Knight in that it is an elegant tool and one that must be built by the owner. The eye in the scope sees through reality as the lightsaber cuts through matter and with that penetrating, cauterizing stare, one can see their universal connection.
Imagine a human being as a plant lying dormant in winter. The eye of the occult is the internal bud of new growth waiting for the light of spring. This metaphor of plant growth reflects your spiritual growth and a plant in need of sunlight is the same as a soul in need of enlightenment. The optical scope is a focusing of light for the individual soul and it shines with the inner light of spiritual insight.
Light enters the darkness through an opening and to create this spiritual oculus is not for the fainthearted. The purpose of the eye is not to comfort and heal but to seek and reveal. The eye seeks out truth and shines a personalized light in the darkness, not to comfort or heal but to protect and prepare. It inoculates the future from the unknown.
Each of the Many connects to the One and the universal connection in each of us is the connection of our physical bodies to the universal body of our souls. In the old dictionary on my desk there are four entries for the word oracle. The archetype of red robed Pythia rationalizes the first three and then last is its function- to orare, to come to a place where divine announcement is given. This function is not limited to the fabled minions of Apollo and it is not a literal place like the Vatican. Our connection to divinity resides within ourselves and it is, as described by a follower of the prophet Muhammed, a far off place[2]. Banesh Hoffman, one of the physicists who worked with Einstein on the theory of relativity, describes what the connection to the far off place looks like, when he described Einstein working on a problem.
“When excited discussion failed to break the deadlock, Einstein would quietly say in his quaint English, ‘I will a little tink.’ With his German accent, he had trouble with the TH sound. The room would become silent, and Einstein would pace slowly up and down or walk around in circles, twirling a lock of hair around his forefinger. There was a dreamy, far away, yet inward look on his face. No sign of stress. No outward indication of intense concentration. After a few minutes, he would suddenly return to the world, a smile on his face and an answer to the problem on his lips.”
The soul is a seperate body of light that is part of God and God is the Universal One. I use the word God because it is often a summation of those things, of which we are a part, that elude our current comphrehension in reality. It addressses the invisible nature of dimension. We do not comprehend it by means of intellect and the five senses. We comprehend it emotionally, intuitively. We feel it. The light of the soul is seen by few but experienced by everyone because we all feel emotion. When you are feeling your emotions, you are feeling the physical presence of your dimensional body. A description of the soul body and how it all works is the basis for many philosophies and religions. I have no intention of dragging you into a debate about the existence of the other dimensions, the existence of God, or of anyone’s attempt to explain or discredit either. My intention is to highlight the fact that these concepts are repeated everywhere. A repetition of concepts through all cultures exists because within the many expressions of individual belief lies the singular truth. The truth that mankind collectively knows that there are invisible dimensions to which we are all universally connected.
There are multiple dimensions, and we have two bodies. The body of light dwells in the ninth dimension and our physical body dwells in the third. The sixth dimension between is not a third body but a separate space where the conscious mind connects to the imaginative mind of the soul. When these two minds work in unison the duality of the third dimension resolves itself and the universal vibration flows freely. A vibration is an oscillation and when our emotions oscillate in the soul, it disturbs the equilibrium in our physical bodies. A tingle on the back of the neck, a knot in the gut, a bad vibe; there are many colloquialisms for the vibrational disturbance. We feel it but we do not see it and therefore struggle to validate its reality.
The casual body has an apparatus for being that is the light of the soul and an apparatus for seeing that is the third eye. The third eye resides in the sub-conscious and the soul connects to our body, in the area just below our belly button. The soul is connected directly to the core body. It sees into the mind through the third eye and acts independently on our physical bodies directly through instinct.
There are three aspects to the third dimension and each of these aspects; casual, astral and physical, demonstrate a dimensional worldview. A view mythologized as a tree in the occult and visualizing the light body of the casual dimension with your third eye, is known as the Tree of Life. The occult mysteries surrounding the Tree of Life are popularized as the Kabbalah. The word Kabbalah is Hebrew and translates literally into to receive. Its original usage referred to the passing down of knowledge through an oral transmission. The Kabbalah is a means of transmission. It is how we receive the divine announcement, and it helps us to visualize the casual body of the soul and manage the universal vibrations that are the source of consciousness.
Awareness leads to enlightenment and enlightenment transforms the tree into a vehicle of dimensional ascension. The vehicle of ascension is called the Merkaba. The Merkaba is the matrix drawn between the branches on the Tree of Life and depending on which doctrine you adhere to, there are variations on the vehicle’s design.
In my explanations, I will focus on the Lotus Chamber, as it centers on gaining the illumination. Solomon’s Key is from Alchemy and assumes that the illumination has already been gained. The Merkaba of the Kabbalah is profound in that it projects manipulations of vibrational energy into physical forms and is subject to the advancement of the Craft.
Ancient in its origins the Kabbalah got adopted by an occult tradition known as the Hermetic Order. Within the teachings of this doctrine, the original meaning of the Kabbalah as a transmitter got smaller, and the diagram itself grew to become the focal point. How we visualize the light body reflects on how we communicate with God. These visualizations are personal and varied. There is only one path to truth and while there be but one path, the individual multiple makes each of us walk it alone. There is only one God but many interpretations of God. There are many footprints but only one path. Many voices, one kind of phone, and you can have your own Kabbalah just like you have your own phone. How you frame your visualization is important as it solidifies what is invisible and builds a construct of the vibrational flow that the intellect can grasp. The Kabbalah materializes our concept of the casual body and how, by suspending our light bodies in a framework of emotional flows, we move our consciousness along its channels to connect to the universe and illuminate.
Occult transmitters are diverse and range from the Taoist duality and a simple trinity to the Wiccan four, the Hindu seven, the Buddhist eight, the Teutonic nine and the Hebrew model of ten points, to the even larger number of the cosmic snowflake. The cosmic snowflake is a geometric design conceived of by Will Ransom for C. S. Jones, who was a pupil of Aleister Crowley. Crowley’s teachings helped to popularize the Kabbalah in the West but in my own effort to work the transmitter, I found The Sefer Yetzirah to be of practical use.
In exploring the Kabbalah, I also found the teachings available to often stray into divination and the manipulation of the light body. There are three components to occult instruction, the Illumination, the Divination and the Craft. In this, I will not wander from the first and present my Kabbalah as an example to illustrate the light body, so that you may realize the connection by imagining it.
The tree gives us a structure to visualize the spiritual body. The rigidity of this arrangement is deceptive in that it illudes to something that is invisible as a solid form. Metaphors of water ripples and energy flow try to describe the unsolidified nature of the vibration and you should visualize the tree as a swirling, intertwining mist that materilizes into cymatic light patterns instead of into solid form. By playing our emotions like notes of music, we can concentrate the vibrations into specific patterns and climb the tree of life to access our universal connection. The capital letters: A = astral, C = casual, and P = physical, signify in which aspect within the chamber of dimensional reality your personal vibration appears.
In my Kabbalah, The Tree of Life appears as twelve centers with five connection points located in our head, hands and feet. The source vibration enters our body through the palms of our hands and upon entering it splits into two flows. One stream moves directly into the subconscious to interact with the physical body and becomes the inner dialogue of our conscious thoughts. The second stream feeds into our casual soul and is reactive, first felt in the core physical body before being introduced into the mind. The distinction between these two is an important first step in illumination because to reach equilibrium in the duality we must know both bodies before we can create the balance between them. The subconscious blends the two minds and without an awareness of this distinction, we can easily suppress our emotions in favor of the intellect. The negative impact of suppressed emotions is well documented and deliberately using your astral faculties to co-operate with your feelings begins with identifying the emotions at their source. Identifying and separating your feelings from your thoughts, helps you to center your conscious mind on your emotions and is an integral aspect of a successful contemplation. Our intentions should not be centred on suppression or control but focused instead upon opening our minds to the full presence of our feelings.
[1] The Schocken Bible, Volume 1, The Five Books of Moses; Fox, Everett; 1983 Schocken Books Inc., Random House
[2] Muhammed, His Life Based on the Earliest Sources; Lings, Martin; George Allen & Unwin 1983, United Kingdom
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