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).

The Stele of Jeu : Part 3 Can“Headless” refer to the Divine Man embodied as the Tree of Life?

The Stele of Jeu : Part 3 Can“Headless” refer to the Divine Man embodied as the Tree of Life?

On Qabalah, Barbarous Language, and Gematria in the Stele of Jeu

The Headless also is a term in Qabalah. Given other jargon within the Stele of Jeu¹ and the notion that aspects of Qabalist-like Jewish (and other) mysticism long predated early medieval Qabalah,^1-4 I thought it might be okay to conjecture that Akephalos, in this context, also could refer to an esoteric Hebrew term. I contacted independent researcher Gary Lee, who specializes in Qabalist influences in ancient and medieval esoterica, for more clarity. He had serendipitously uploaded a paper to Academia.edu that included content on the significance of “headless” on the very day that I had decided to pursue a project involving the Stele of Jeu.  His paper, titled The Visconti –Sforza Tarot: A Sacred Open Secret, continues his ongoing exposition on how the Visconti-Sforza Tarot acts as a mnemonic device for Qabalist revelation.

Lee explained that “Headless” refers to the Divine Man, in the form of sefirot 9 to 4. These sefirot correspond with the limbs of the body. Chessed (compassion) corresponds to the right arm, Gevurah (judgement) to the left arm, and Tiferet (Truth/Beauty) with the heart. These sefirot form the Emotional or Aetheric self. Netzach and Hod represent the legs and Yeshod the genitals—the physical self.  The “head,” Lee explained, can be seen as the sefirot Da’at, which is the gateway/gatekeeper to the higher sefirot. The higher sefirot correspond to the higher faculties of the Divine Man. In other words, the head of the Divine Man manifests through integration of the mysteries of the lower sefirot and self-actualization at Da’at (ie, “crossing the abyss”). In his paper, cited above, Lee writes, “Headless” is in reference to the workings of the [Merkabah] Chariot in which one internalizes the Tree of Life as one’s body and this mnemonic system is one’s ‘Head.’”

The “barbarous” terms, which are treated as “words of power” (voce magicae) in the Stele of Jeu have intrigued those who have worked with the text. It has been said that the terms are obscure godnames, garble of once intelligible mystical terms, and/or sacred sounds. In this way, there has been an attempt to make the barbaric terms intelligible.

Although we might be looking at nonsensical woo-woo garble from a past and alien age, we also may be looking at encrypted content. Palindromes and anagrams are common devices in ancient and medieval magical formulae. Acrostics and other word puzzles and gematria also played an important role in magic and mysticism, particularly Greek and Jewish magic and mysticism,^3,6 the latter of which happened to be rather influential in the ancient world^1,4 

and a reason why the orator of the Stele of Jeu assumes authority by announcing "I am Moses."4   

Bernabé and Jiménez San Cristóbal point out in their work on the Orphic Gold Tablets that barbaric terms may not be magical gibberish but a string of letters within which is an encrypted message that only the initiate knows and knows how to weed out.⁷  Hypotheses related to the Orphic Gold Tablets may not apply to the Greek Magical Papyri but they are nevertheless “food for thought.”

Kieren Barry, who makes a case that Jewish Qabalah emerged from Pythagorean and Hellenist Isopsephia (Greek gematria), cites two second-century Gnostics, Marcus Magus and Marsanes [the fragmentary Codex X of the Nag Hammadi texts, known as Marsanes, actually], to explain that the letters of the Greek alphabet were thought to be aligned with creative powers of the Cosmos,⁸ perhaps much like Sanskrit and Hebrew in which  the “garland of letters”and their sounds and sound combinations represent mystical concepts and keys to gnosis and empowerment. Barry, in paraphrasing  Marsanes, says that “the various combinations of vowels and consonants could bring about control of [Cosmic] powers. The Greek letters are ‘the nomenclature of the gods and the angels’; ‘and as they are changed, they submit to the hidden gods by means of beat and pitch and silence and impulse.’” Barry goes on to say, “This concept was central to much of Hellenistic magic and can be seen throughout the Greek magical papyri in the combinations of vowels, letter permutations, and long lists of ‘barbarous names,’ or voces magicae, that were contained in various charms and divine invocations.”

And this might be at play in the barbarous terms in the Stele of Jeu—but let’s look at some patterns in the gematria. Some interesting patterns emerge when pythmenes (a technique sometimes simplified and called Pythagorean reduction) is applied to some of the terms.

The gematriac value of Osoronnophris (Οσοννωφρις) “Beautiful Osiris” is 2220. Now we can pair the word with other words and phrases that have the value 2220, such as phrases known in Gnostic and Christian mysticism such as "I, alpha and omega" (egw alfa kai wmega) or we can reduce the numbers to 6 + 0. The number 6 has specific significance in Pythagorean and also Jewish mysticism, but, in this context, we can perhaps infer an association between Osoronnophris and the 6 limbs (sefirot) of the Headless (0) Divine Man. The string  of godnames  that appear toward the second half of the oration and are traditionally used by modern-era occultists for the headband formula:  Aoth, Abaoth, Basym, Isak, Sabaoth, IAO also reduces to 6.  Each may have its own numerical significance. For example Isak equals 231 and Iao  (Ἰάω) reduces from 811 to 10/1. 

The numbers 10 and 1, both Pythagorically and Qabalistically significant, also recur.

Iabas (214) and Iapos (381) (Samaritan terms for Yahweh) reduce to 7 and 3, respectively=10/1. The term “Paphro Osoronnophris”  is 3701 or 10 and 1. (“Paphro” is assumed to be "Pharoah" in some translations based on a speculative  comment by late 19th century Egyptologist EA Wallis Budge, who also speculated that Osoronnophris  was supposed to read as "Ausa Unnefer."9 )The following sentence says “This is your true name, handed down by the prophets of Israel.” Is that a reference to Malkuth/Kether? 

Also note that the word Israel consistently appears as Istrael (Ἰστράηλ). The added tau (τ) allows the word to reduce to 10/1. ). The letter tau designates a seal (as in a seal of ownership or contractual seal of agreement). It has been extrapolated to mean the seal between God and the devotee and also Truth and Perfection. On the topic of that extra tau in Israel, Gary Lee says [personal communication]: “Tau in the word Israel/ Istrael would represent the ‘perfection of beauty,’ which in Hebrew is the word ‘Zion.’ The term beauty is in regards to the Sefirah Tiferet, the Divine Man, thus the ‘Perfection of the Divine Man’ being the ‘cleaving’ or unification of the Human Intellect/ soul with the Active Intellect of the Cosmos . . .”

But wait! There’s more. If we add up and reduce the number of the string of barbaric words that follow (Ar, Thiao, Rheibet, Atheleberseth, A, Blatha, Abeu, Ebeu, Phi, Chitasoe, Ib, Thiao), we get 10/1, and the string of terms: theou Anlala Lai, Gaia, Apa, Diachanna Choryn ALSO reduces to 10/1.  

Next: Vowel sounds and the Ladder of the Spheres.

References

1. LiDonnici, Lynn. “According to the Jews:” Identified (and Identifying) ‘Jewish’ Elements in the Greek Magical Papyri. In LiDonnici, Lynn; Lieber Andrea, eds. Heavenly Tablets Interpretation, Identity and Tradition in Ancient Judaism. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2007.

2. Abbi Aryeh Kaplan. Inner Space. Jerusalem: Moznaim Publishing Corporation., 1990,

3. Kieren Barry. The Greek Qabalah. Alphabetic Mysticism and Numerology

in the Ancient World. York  Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser, 1999, pp 270-271.

4. Hans Dieter Betz, ed. The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation Including the Demotic Spells. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986, p xiv.

5. Yehuda Liebes; Batya Stein trans. Studies in Jewish Myth and Jewish Messianism.  Albany, NYL State University of New York Press; 1993.

6. Duncan Fishwick. An Early Christian Cryptogram? CCHA. 1959;26:29-41.

7. Alberto Bernabé and  Ana Isabel Jiménez San Cristóbal. Instructions for the Netherworld The Orphic Gold Tablets. Boston:Brill, 2008, p 141.

8. Barry, p 117.
9. E. A. Wallis Budge. Egyptian Magic. New York: Routledge, 2002 (reprint of original published in 1899), pp 176-177.

The Oration

I invoke you, Headless One!

You who created the Earth and the Heavens,

You who created the Night and the Day,

You who created the Darkness and the Light.

You are Osoronnophris, whom no one has ever seen.

You are Iabas; you are Iapos.

You have distinguished the Just from the Unjust.

You have made the Female and the Male.

You have made the Seed and the Fruit.

You have made men Love and Hate one another.

I am Moses, your prophet, to whom you have revealed your Mysteries, the ceremonies of Israel.

You have produced the Moist and the Dry and that which nourishes all life.

Hear me, for I am the messenger of Pharoah Osoronnophris, which is your true name, handed down to the prophets of Israel.

Hear me: Ar, Thiao, Rheibet, Atheleberseth, A, Blatha, Abeu, Ebeu, Phi, Chitasoe, Ib, Thiao.

Hear me and turn away this spirit.

I invoke you, awesome and invisible God who dwells in the void of the spirit.

Arogogorobrao, Sochou, Modorio, Phalarthao, OOO, Headless One.

Deliver this person from the spirit that restrains him.

Hear me: Roubriao, Mariodam, Balbnabaoth, Assalonai, Aphniao, I, Tholeth, Abrasax, Aeoou,

Mighty dH

Hea Headless One, deliver this person.

Ma, Barraio, Ioel, Kotha, Athorebalo, Abraoth.

Deliver this person from the spirit that restrains him.

Aoth, Abaoth, Basym, Isak, Sabaoth, IAO.

He is the Lord of the Gods.

He is the one who the winds fear.

He has made all things by the command of his voice.

Lord, king, ruler, and helper.

Save this soul.

Ieou, Pyr, Iou, Pyr, Iaot, Iaeo, Ioou, Abrasax, Sabriam, Oo, Yu, Eu, Oo, Yu, Adonaie, 
 Now Now Angel of God.
 Anlala Lai, Gaia, Apa, Diachanna Choryn

"I am the headless spirit with my sight in my feet; mighty immortal fire;.

I am the Truth.

I detest the unjust deeds done in the world.

I am the one who makes the lightning flash and the thunder roll.

I am the one who is the shower of life on the earth.

I am the one whose mouth is flame.

I am the one who begets and manifests. 

I am the Grace of the Aion.

My name is a heart encircled by a serpent.

Come forth and follow.