Part 4: The Stele of Jeu. Emanation, Self-Actualization, and the Ladder of the Spheres

Phanes and the Ladder of the Spheres digital photomanipulation 14 x 16
 http://www.deerapposelli.com/illustration.html

A friend passed along a YouTube (see below) of Israel Regardie reciting the Bornless Ritual. The friend, a Brit, mentioned that Regardie’s voice was kind of quaint—“like an old relative with that cockney” as he put it. I’m guessing that the equivalent would be me listening to my now long-past grandpa with his East Side Bowery New York accent. I had imagined that Regardie’s voice and delivery would be more elegant. I searched YouTube for a clip of someone orating the Stele of Jeu in original Greek but came up empty handed. (If anyone can direct me to such a video, I’d luv it). 

I was thinking that the most potent way to orate the Stele of Jeu would be in original Greek, with intonation of barbaric words and vowel sounds in proper ancient Greek pronunciation. After all, as explained in Part 3, the letters and sounds of the Greek alphabet were thought to have special mystical efficacy in perhaps much the same way that the Sanskrit and Hebrew alphabets were and still are thought to. On that note, scholar Judith Dillon, who has been in contact with me regarding my posts about the Stele of Jeu, explained that both the structure of and mysticism surrounding the Hebrew and Greek alphabets can be traced to the Phoenicians. Joscelyn Godwin, in his book The Seven Vowel Sounds explains that Hebrew sound mysticism was adapted from Egyptian mysticism, particularly in regard to intonation of vowel sounds, and this mystery was preserved in Graeco-Egyptian Gnosticism.¹

In taking closer look at Marsanes (Codex X of the Nag Hammadi texts), we see that the fragmentary text is talking about sound combinations in relation to the “shapes” of the soul, qualities of angels, and the process of emanation from the Monad (“God” as the transcendent Absolute) to gross material existence.

On Emanation

A number of mystical ideologies operate under the premise that existence as we know it was not created by a primordial, self-caused personality, popularly called God. Rather, they operate under the premise that material existence is an “emanation” in which the “thing” that is Existence itself inscrutably divides and transforms Itself through a series of progressively denser stages until the physical world as we know it comes into being. This idea is found in Neoplatonic, Gnostic, Hermetic, Qabalist, Vedantist, and Tantric systems to name only those I’m somewhat familiar with.

Verse 35 from an esoteric Tantric meditation manual called the Saundarya-Lahari, which is the text-accompaniment of a famous Tantric image called Śri Chakra, explains it nicely:

You are the mind, you are space, and you also are fire.

You are water and earth, too.

When you have transformed yourself into the universe in this way,

There is nothing that exists in relation to you.

To transform yourself into the universe,

You assume the aspects of consciousness and bliss² in the form of the power of Śiva.

It is important to understand the idea of emanation because this is the real rationale for chakra lore and for its Western parallels found in the Qabalist Tree of Life and the alchemical/hermetic ladder of the planets and Hermetic and Gnostic cosmogony.

Magical texts such as the Stele of Jeu may incorporate vowel or “barbarous” sounds as a way to work with the processes of emanation in a “path of return.” Writers, such as Godwin,¹ have pointed out that the vowel sounds can correspond with the classical planets, which correspond with elements and with the psychic centers in the body in a way similar to “chakras” of Eastern Tantric lore. Like chakras, they are seen as forming a ladder of evolution and involution in the human psyche. Understanding and passing through their mysteries becomes a path of liberation and self-actualization.

A Visionary Experience with the Stele of Jeu

So, here is where I segue from being a nerd to begin discussion about how the practice of reciting the Stele of Jeu is going for me. How it’s been revealing itself, possibly playing out in my life.

I began doing the practice on May 15^th and intend to complete a 40-day course. I begin the ritual with an opening that acknowledges spiritual ideals I take refuge in and also includes rituals of self-purification and casting of ritual space. I chant the ritual (a bit more mellifluously than Regardie orating the Bornless Rite) and conclude the ritual with a few minutes of meditation. With the exception of the second time I did the ritual, visionary content has been minimal. Frankly, at this point in my life, that is a good thing. The practice is mostly making me more “mindful,” which I will elaborate on in my next blog entry.

In any case, on the second day that I conducted the ritual, I had an interesting experience—the kind that people who do this sort of thing generally aim to have happen. During the preparatory part of my ritual, which involved chanting that was unrelated to Stele of Jeu text, I experienced some dynamic phenomena related to my foundations in yogic and Tantric Buddhist practices. Upon completion of the oration of the Stele of Jeu, I “heard” the statement “I am the seed of Atum.” At this point, I had not yet gathered information or made the leap about possible inferences to Ra in the text. The statement was a kind of foreshadowing--something I had experienced frequently while working with the Arbatel years ago. 

When I sat for meditation, which was actually more an exercise in cogitation that day, I was met by the inner vision of an erstwhile “spirit guide” who first emerged when I was doing astral temple/inner plane work with a Dione Fortune lineage years ago. The same character showed up again while doing Arbatel work. I entertained some disjointed images that “he” was “showing” me. When I “got” that a geometric shape I was seeing had something to do with the orphic egg, as if in response, a flood of images came into my mind, which I made a digital illustration of later that day.

I don’t give the same weight to visionary experiences as I once had. I see them as 1. dreamlike insights or ways of seeing that my subconscious mind commandeers and my conscious mind artificially spins into something intelligible or 2. epiphenomena (byproducts/symptoms) of a change in brain structure that can occur when we experience something new or break a pattern or habit—a change that manifests in thinking and behavior.

In any case, I got the idea that the image above represented the ladder of the spheres—a path of emanation—from Chaos to Cosmos to self-actualization.

Reference and a note

1. Joscelyn Godwin. The Seven Vowel Sounds in Theory and Practice. Grand Rapids, MI: Phanes Press, 1991.

2. The word ananda, which translates as “bliss” means “experience.” The power (Shakti) is the world as we know/experience it projecting from hypostasis (Shiva).

Seeking the Original Self

I'm looking for the face I had before the world was made.  WB Yeats

Although I’ve spent the past several years delving into folk magic, Neopaganism, and the Western Mystery Tradition, my primary spiritual orientation is Advaita Vedanta. Advaita Vedanta is a form of Hinduism that I was introduced to nearly 40 years ago. It is a system that dates back to about the 6^th century CE and is primarily founded in the Upanishads.

The spiritual journey in Advaita Vedanta is a reclamation of the atman, a philosophical term that is translated from Sanskrit to English as “The Self.” Finding Self is realizing who/what you really are. That Self is not your body or personality or “baggage” or the drama of your life. It is also not what you want to become, spiritually speaking. (See my blog entry on my Spiritual Ideal project for more on that). The Self, in Vedantist philosophy, is the mechanism out of which all these interdependently arising things express themselves like suds on the surface of water or a movie against a movie screen or dream in the REM sleep of a dreamer.

The question is: What is it to wake up from the idea of yourself?

Becoming truly real, conscious, and capable of free will begins by realizing the whimsical and fabricated nature of one’s own being—the idea of self—and then detaching from the automaton (the robot) of its personality, habits, and conditioning. Then the person who is the life beneath the mask of selfhood opens her eyes and watches herself reveling through the motions of daily life like a dreamer reveling in lucidity. The dreamer is pristinely aware of what she and everyone and thing around her is and has the ability to truly exercise free will within the field of consciousness and experience. Spiritual types call this “enlightenment.”

This past summer, I became an isolation-tank enthusiast. Yes, a few times a month, I enter a pitch black and virtually soundless chamber and float on my back in buoyant saline for an hour or so.

In the tank, all there is to do is watch the mind as it sinks into a theta state. Ontological thoughts emerge during these sessions—thoughts about being and meaning. And I sometimes think, “What is it to wake up from the idea of myself?” Who am I when I am not the circumstantial preferences, habits, and conditioning the world made into me? In the words of poet W. B. Yeats, what is “the face I had before the world was made”?

In working through how to express this in my art work, I found, in a box of old photos, an elegantly brooding picture of myself at age 3. Its background depicts Christmastide, and there I am standing with a gift-box bow on my head, like a grumpy house cat on the head of which an ornament has been unwantedly placed.

I excised, cleaned up, and colorized the figure in the photo but then opted to use it in monochrome to better convey the brooding composure. The child here is contemplating all those questions raised in that Talking Heads song Once in a Lifetime:

And you may ask yourself 

What is that beautiful house? 

And you may ask yourself 

Where does that highway go to? 

And you may ask yourself 

Am I right?...Am I wrong? 

And you may say to yourself  

My God!...What have I done?!

That image is juxtaposed with a stairway to heaven where perhaps those answers reside ....

Favorite quotes on "Self-Realization":

“If you dissociate from the body and rest in consciousness, you will be happy, serene, and free from bondage.”  --Ashtavakra Samhita 1:4

“He sees the totality of objects appearing and disappearing in the space of consciousness, like reflections in a mirror. Suddenly, all of his thought constructs are destroyed through the recognition, after a thousand lives, of his true, essential nature, which surpasses ordinary experience and is replete in unprecedented bliss. He is struck with awe, mouth gaping. Upon attaining the experience of spaciousness, his true essential nature comes forward. –Spandakarikas, from section 1, verse 11 (from the advaitic Kashmir Shaivite tradition)