Unurthed

Ten diagrams from W. B. Yeats’ A Vision (“B” edition, 1937). A Vision details an esoteric geometry and its applications, ambiguously channeled via automatic script and speech by Yeats’ wife, George, then organized and augmented by Yeats himself.

“Life is no series of emanations from divine reason such as the Cabalists imagine, but an irrational bitterness, no orderly descent from level to level, no waterfall but a whirlpool, a gyre” (p40, from Robartes). Indeed, two opposing and interpenetrating gyres form “the fundamental symbol of my instructors” (p68):

“If I call the unshaded cone ‘Discord’ and the other ‘Concord’ and think of each as the bound of a gyre, I see that the gyre of ‘Concord’ diminishes as that of ‘Discord’ increases, and can imagine after that the gyre of ‘Concord’ increasing while that of ‘Discord’ diminishes, and so on, one gyre within the other always” (p68). Here the three-dimensional gyres, or spirals, are represented more easily by cones or triangles.

Yeats labels these “struggling states” (p71) the primary and antithetical tinctures:

The primary tincture, shaded, represents objectivity, Concord, space, the solar, the reasonable, plasticity, passivity; the antithetical tincture, unshaded, represents subjectivity, Discord, time, the lunar, the natural, beauty, unity of being. “Whereas subjectivity tends to separate man from man, objectivity brings us back to the mass where we began” (p72).

“Within these cones move what are called the Four Faculties: Will and Mask, Creative Mind and Body of Fate. Will and Mask are the will and its object, or the Is and the Ought; Creative Mind and Body of Fate are thought and its object, or the Knower and the Known. The first two are lunar or antithetical or natural [subjectivity], the second two solar or primary or natural [objectivity]” (p73).

“These pairs of opposites whirl in contrary directions, Will and Mask from right to left, Creative Mind and Body of Fate like the hands of a clock, from left to right… As Will approaches the utmost expansion of its antithetical cone its drags Creative Mind with it — thought is more and more dominated by will. Then, as though satiated by the extreme expansion of its cone, Will lets Creative Mind dominate, and is dragged by it until Creative Mind weakens once more… The Mask and Body of Fate occupy those positions which are most opposite in character to the positions of Will and Creative Mind. If Will and Create Mind are approaching complete antithetical expansion, Mask and Body of Fate are approaching complete primary expansion, and so on. In the following figure the man is almost completely antithetical in nature” (p74-7).

The vertical lines mark the positions of the Faculties in their respective cones. To represent direction, Yeats indicates expanding Faculties along the bottom of the diagram, and contracting Faculties along the top.

“In the following [man is] almost completely primary” (p77).

“In the following he is midway between primary and antithetical and moving towards antithetical expansion” (p78).

“A particular man is classified according to the place of Will, or choice, in the diagram” (p73).

“I have now only to set a row of numbers upon the sides to possess a classification… of every possible movement of thought and of life, and I have been told to make these numbers correspond to the phases of the moon [see last diagram of previous post]. The moonless night is called Phase 1, and full moon in phase 15. Phase 8 begins the antithetical phases, those where the bright part of the moon is greater than the dark, and Phase 22 begins the primary phases, where the dark part is greater than the bright” (p78-9).

Or, drawn lunarly, the Great Wheel:

For each phase, Yeats derives the character and destiny of a man whose Will is so located, and whose Mask, Creative Mind, and Body of Fate have assumed their complimentary locations and influences. This discussion constitutes the largest topic of A Vision. Here are a few excerpts that reveal such interplay.

Phase 10, The Image-Breaker: “If he live like the opposite phase, conceived as a primary condition — the phase where ambition dies — he lacks all emotional power (False Mask: ‘Inertia’), and gives himself up to rudderless change, reform without a vision of form. He accepts what form (Mask and Image) those about him admire and, on discovering that it is alien, casts it away with brutal violence, to choose some other form as alien. He disturbs his own life, and he disturbs all those who come near him more than does Phase 9, for Phase 9 has no interest in others expect in relation to itself. If, on the other hand, he be true to phase, and use his intellect to liberate from mere race (Body of Fate at Phase 6 where race is codified), and so create some code of personal conduct, which implies always ‘divine right’, he becomes proud, masterful and practical. He cannot wholly escape the influence of his Body of Fate, but he will be subject to its most personal form; instead of gregarious sympathies, to some woman’s tragic love almost certainly…” (p122).

Phase 17, The Daimonic Man: “He is called the Daimonic man because Unity of Being, and consequent expression of Daimonic thought, is now more easy than at any other phase. As contrasted with Phase 13 and Phase 14, where mental images were separated from one another that they might be subject to knowledge, all now flow, change, flutter, cry out, or mix into something else; but without, as at Phase 16, breaking and bruising one another, for Phase 17, the central phase of its triad, is without frenzy. The Will is falling asunder, but without explosion and noise. The separated fragments seek images rather than ideas, and these the intellect, seated in Phase 13, must synthesize in vain, drawing with its compass-point a line that shall but represent the outline of a bursting pod. The being has for its supreme aim, as it had at Phase 16 (and as all subsequent antithetical phases shall have), to hide from itself and others this separation and disorder, and it conceals them under the emotional Image of Phase 3; as Phase 16 concealed its greater violence under that of Phase 2. When true to phase the intellect must turn all its synthetic power to this task. It finds, not the impassioned myth that Phase 16 found, but a Mask of simplicity that is also intensity…” (p141).

Phase 25, The Conditional Man: “Born as it seems to the arrogance of belief, as Phase 24 was born to moral arrogance, the man of the phase must reverse himself, must change from Phase 11 to Phase 25; use the Body of Fate to purify the intellect from the Mask, till this intellect accepts some social order, some condition of life, some organised belief: the convictions of Christendom, perhaps. He must eliminate all that is personal from belief; eliminate the necessity for intellect by the contagion of some common agreement… There may be great eloquence, a mastery of all concrete imagery that is not personal expression, because though as yet there is no sinking into the world but much distinctness, clear identity, there is an overflowing social conscience. No man of any other phase can produce the same instant effect upon great crowds; for codes have passed, the universal conscience takes their place. He should not appeal to a personal interest, should make little use of argument which requires a long train of reasons, or many technical terms, for his power rests in certain simplifying convictions which have grown with his character; he needs intellect for their expression, not for proof, and taken away from these convictions is without emotion and momentum. He has but one overwhelming passion, to make all men good, and this good is something at once concrete and impersonal; and though he has hitherto given it the name of some church, or state, he is ready at any moment to give it a new name, for, unlike Phase 24, he has no pride to nourish upon the past. Moved by all that is impersonal, he becomes powerful as, in a community tired of elaborate meals, that man might become powerful who had the strongest appetite for bread and water…” (p173-4).

Finally, Yeats, speaking of his own time and place in history (for the Great Wheel can describe history as well as individual man — another topic in A Vision): “When the new gyre begins to stir, I am filled with excitement. I think of recent mathematical research… with its objective world intelligible to intellect; I can recognize that the limit itself has become a new dimension, that this ever-hidden thing that makes us fold our hands has begun to press down upon multitudes. Having bruised their hands upon that limit, men, for the first time since the seventeenth century, see the world as an object of contemplation, not as something to be remade, and some few, meeting the limit in their special study, even doubt if there is any common experience, doubt the possibility of science” (p300).

A photograph and two diagrams from Clarence R. Smith’s Earth and Sky: Marvels of Astronomy, 1940, part of the University of Knowledge series, edited by Glenn Frank.

What lies beyond? Courtesy Lick Observatory (p170).

“With the earth beneath his feet and the sky above his head, man lives his brief moment in a world he can see and touch and come to know, but sublime mystery shrouds his coming and his going. His twofold passion is to penetrate the mystery and to perfect the mastery of life” (pVII, Frank’s introduction).

A mural showing comparative dimension of natural objects in miles. Courtesy Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago (pV).

“Man might seem to be reduced to utter insignificance in this limitless cosmic scheme. Thus far science has found no evidence that life as we know it exists anywhere but on this planet. Man is the highest form of that life. He alone has the gift of comprehension. He alone must seek the answers to the eternal questions of Whence, Whither, and Why. We cannot study the earth and the countless stars and suns scattered through space without a vital quickening of the imagination. Life itself takes on a new meaning” (pIX, Frank’s introduction).

(The lunar cycle; prelude to the next post.)

Diagrammatic explanation of the phases of the moon (p246).

Hexagram 20, Contemplation, of the I Ching, with King Wen’s explanation from 1143 B.C., as translated by R. G. H. Siu in The Portable Dragon, 1968.

“A person should contemplate the workings of the universe with reverence and introspection. In this way expression is given to the effects of these laws upon his own person. This is the source of a hidden power” (p138).

A Navajo sand painting, New Mexico, c. 1950, dissected in Joseph Campbell‘s The Inner Reaches of Outer Space, 1986. Such paintings, composed of colored sand strewn upon a hogan’s dirt floor, are used in healing and initiation ceremonies, wherein an assemblage of friends and neighbors chant and encourage an initiate, physically entering the painting, to [re]embark upon and [re]live a mythic adventure.

Starting at the bottom, “the footprints represent a spiritual ascent along the mystic way known to the Najaho as the Pollen Path” (p93).

“The two colors of the ‘female’ and the ‘male,’ lunar and solar powers… become one on passing between the guardian Spirit Bringers at the entrance to the sanctuary; the path, which is now of the single color of pollen, runs to the base of the World Tree, where three roots or ways of entrance are confronted” (p97).

“The bounded area is equivalent to the interior of a temple, an Earthly Paradise, where all forms are to be experienced, not in terms of practical relationships, threatening or desirable, evil or good, but as the manifestations of powers supporting the visible world and which, though not recognized in practical living, are everywhere immediately at hand and of one’s own nature” (p93).

The painting abounds with symbols, correspondences, archetypes, and hierophanies: the axial Great Corn Plant, its threefold root, the blue bird, its threefold perch, the lightening flash that “strikes to the exact center of the way” (p94), the yellow and black apparitions, the color system, the turns of the path, the number of corn ears and their placement. See Campbell’s expansive discussion.

“The ordeal is an act of sacrifice. The mind is to abandon forever the whole way of relating to life which is of the knowledge of the two powers of the path only as distinct from each other, red and blue. Beyond the exit gate, returning to the world, the path is to be no longer red and blue, but of the one color of pollen. The neighbors and friends who have gathered to witness the occasion will experience an exaltation, but then return to the world along the path by which they came… whereas the initiate, nearly naked and decorated as a god, will have become identified with the adventure” (p101).

Cover art from D. T. Suzuki‘s Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist, 1957 (Collier Books edition). We see the eight-spoked Buddhist Dharma wheel, the Christian crucifixion cross, and, before both symbols, an eye: Eckhart‘s eye, a prajna-eye, the eye of wisdom.

“It is not enough to ‘know’ as the term is ordinarily understood… Whatever knowledge the philosopher may have, it must come out of his experience, and this experience is seeing. Buddha has always emphasized this. He couples knowing (nana, jnana) with seeing (passa, pasya) for without seeing, knowing has no depths, cannot understand the realities of life. Therefore, the first item of the Eightfold Noble Path is sammadassana, right seeing, and sammasankappa, right knowing, comes next. Seeing is experiencing, seeing things in their state of suchness (tathata) or is-ness” (p34).

“Seeing is not just an ordinary seeing by means of relative knowledge; it is the seeing by means of a prajna-eye which is a special kind of intuition enabling us to penetrate right into the bedrock of Reality itself” (p35).

“…which is no other than Eckhart’s eye: ‘The eye wherein I see God is the same eye wherein God sees me: my eye and God’s eye are one eye, one vision, one knowing, one love'” (p43).

Five illustrations from Baron Eugene Fersen’s Science of Being, written in 1923, with additional text from his 1927 workbook of the same title (both recently reprinted by Health Research Books).

In Science of Being, Fersen defines a principled framework of reality (a Causeless Cause, the Statements of Being, the Definition of Matter, the Law of Attraction, Magnetic Chemicalization, and the Law of Polarity, to name just a few topics) and the function of man’s triune nature of Life, Mind, and Soul within that reality (health, wealth, truth, love, inspiration, intuition, poise, telepathy, subconsciousness, supercounsciousness, etc).

“Divinity working from the four-square of Humanity” (1923, p16).

Fundamentally, though, Fersen presents a course based on channeling a Universal Life Energy that produces Success (with a capital ess) in all of these areas. Fersen identifies this energy as a primal, vibrating force that constitutes manifest reality; at the three different levels of mans’ nature, this same ultimate energy manifests in different forms: magnetic energy, mental energy, and spiritual energy, respectively.

Life energy.

The Life level is embodied by the Star Exercise, a physical routine whose purpose is to make contact, circulate, and cultivate the Universal Life Energy. To perform the exercise, stand with the body in a five-pointed star-shaped configuration: legs somewhat more than shoulder width apart and arms straight out to the sides, left hand palm up and right hand palm down. “The whole body must remain erect, but not tense… straight, but relaxed” (1923, p65).

Fersen’s star exercise.

In this configuration, the Life Center, a point located at the base of the spine, acts as a magnet to attract the Universal Life Energy and to cast it into magnetic energy, or Life Energy, the physical manifestation of the universal. The pull of the Life Center draws energy through the fingertips of the upward facing left hand and down the spinal cord to the Life Center.

From the Life Center, the transformed energy is pushed to the Solar Plexus. This area, more commonly known as the “pit of the stomach”, is the central storage and distribution center of the magnetic energy throughout the body. Fersen also calls this area the abdominal brain. From the Solar Plexus, the magnetic energy is distributed to those parts of the body that require it, but, in particular, the magnetic energy is returned to the spinal cord, passes through the seventh cervical vertebra, and enters the back part of the brain.

This process of energy ingestion, transformation, storage, and distribution is the basis of all Success. “The strength of the individual is in direct proportion to the development of Solar Plexus” (1927, p41). “Each cell in the body will exhibit a greater constructive activity, each organ of the body will perform its duties with an ever increasing power and precision, this giving all members of the body the possibility of manifesting in a most perfect way the activities of the soul. (1927, p163).

Leaving the back part of the brain, the energy is further transformed in order to power the successive levels of human nature: the Pituitary Body casts energy into mental energy, and the Pineal Body casts energy into spiritual energy. Once the storage capacity of the Solar Plexus has been filled, excess energy is routed to the down-turned right hand and into the earth. As the energy flows through the fingertips, the thumb bears the strongest current, followed by the index finger, ring finger, pinky finger, and, at last, the middle finger.

Mind force.

This energetic process naturally functions as a result of the physical laws governing Universal Life Energy and the attraction exercised by the Life Center. However, to achieve any benefit from the process, one must become conscious of it. Fersen introduces the exercises of Silence and Relaxation to actualize this consciousness: Relaxation is the complete relaxation of body, mind, and emotions; Silence is the stilling of the willful mind. When one is relaxed and the Will is stilled, the mental conception separating Universal Life Energy from Magnetic Energy is deposed. Physical relaxation enables contact and awareness of Magnetic Energy; mental relaxation stills the Will, and “Soul Vibrations are the natural result of utter Poise” (1927, p567). As a formula of this process, during the Star Exercise, say to oneself, “I am one with the Universal Life Energy. It is flowing through me now. I feel it” (1927, p63).

“Remember, you are working now with a Power which functions only when relaxation provides It with adequate channels, and your purpose is to attract, not compel, the opportunity you desire. If you indulge the temptation to use your Will at this point you automatically close the channels within you and shift your reliance from the unlimited Energy of the Universe to the very limited and undependable powers of your own mind” (1927, p328).

Another aspect of relaxation is the requisite to conquer fear. “The reason [Power] does not [flow into your body all the time] is because your nerves and cells are contracted on account of the general tenseness of your body and are almost paralyzed and closed up by some latent fear. Naturally under these conditions the Life Force concentrated within your Life Center cannot attract the Universal Life Energy which surrounds your body on every side. That is why Relaxation and Silence are such important exercises for the harmonization of the body… Harmony means Equilibrium, and Equilibrium is Power. If you want to be powerful you must achieve the Balance which Power demands for its most efficient expression” (1927, p64-5). Controlling fear is particularly significant given that Success in life is a direct result of confronting Opposition, the progenitor of fear; and Opposition itself is necessary to develop the Life, Mind and Soul – by forcing their exertion.

Thus to make contact, attract, store, and distribute Life Energy via the body center and throughout the body, and to power the Mind and Soul levels that chase higher order accomplishments (Truth, Love, Poise, etc.), requires relaxation both physical and mental. Once one is aware of this circulation, the reservoir of Universal Life Energy can be tapped in lieu of man’s own limited internal stores; and this is the key that sparks true accomplishment: Success is necessarily limited without access to more Energy than insular man alone can provide. In all pursuits, therefore, it is imperative to first make contact with the Universal Life Energy in order to draw whatever Power may be required.

I am all power. With what power then art thou fighting me?

The process of relaxation, though, cannot be mastered overnight. In the 1927 workbook, each of twenty-seven distinct lessons presents a specific exercise that drills that lesson, yet all such exercises begin with the Star Exercise – as all exercises depend upon the awareness of the energetic center, it is necessary to practice this foundational exercise always. “Do not be discouraged if you fail to get results at once. Perfect relaxation is not an easy thing to achieve. In fact, it is the most difficult of any mental feats, because Mind is volatile, quick, full of aggressive activity. Contact with Universal Intelligence requires stillness, passivity, a rich sense of harmony within. Yet as in everything else, practice and training will develop the necessary poise in the most unruly intellect, and no price you can pay in patience and perseverance is too great if it brings you the power to contact at will the Eternal Source of All Knowledge” (1927, p427-8). “You cannot rush to your destination by your own willful strength; you can penetrate only gradually and steadily into that remote inner chamber of your Being” (1927, p468).

Three depictions from The Nuclear Platypus Biscuit Bible by Pope Gus Rasputin Nishnabotna Sni-A-Bar Freak The First, 1990 A.D.

The God-Biscuit (p6).

“Just then a giant flaming tree sloth ran across the stage carrying a billboard that said ‘I have no eyelids and must lick my own eyeballs to keep them moist. Call for help.’ No one noticed” (Biscuitus 48).

“The Eight Primal Vibrations of the Biscuitist Reality Structure. The God-Biscuit is one of many and the First among Them; though S/He is now All Things, at first S/He was only One. In Hir are the four elements yet S/He is and is not an element. S/He is a spirit yet has a universal body…” (p21).

“This sentence has you under its control for the moment, because you will continue reading it until it has nothing left to say… This sentence refers to the fact that this sentence refers to itself… This sentence refers to every sentence that does not refer to itself… This sentence is the thought you are currently thinking. If you are not reading this sentence please ignore it, otherwise do not ignore it… This sentence misses the point it was supposed to make, so never mind” (Appendix V: How To Understand Appendix V).

Three more illustrations from Fludd’s Utriusque Cosmi … Historia (see previous entry), these describing “man’s sciences as they relate to self-knowledge” (p88).

Man “is shown reaching from the Divine triangle down to the Ape, which represents his own efforts to imitate God’s work. His achievements towards self-understanding and self-discovery are prophecy, geomancy, the art of memory, the interpretation of natal horoscopes, physiognomy, palmistry, and the ‘science of pyramids’. The latter is Fludd’s own invention” (p89): these triangles are the microcosmic analog to the macrocosmic, which show “the interpenetration of material and spiritual qualities in the form of dark and light pyramids” (p43), the fundamental cosmic duality (again, see previous entry).

“The memory can be enormously enhanced by transmuting concepts into visual and spatial images: herein lies the secret of the Ars Memorativa of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance… Here the three ventricles are shown… but the things to be memorized are brought from the obscurity of the back of the head and exposed to the eye of imagination. The images are the Tower of Babel, Tobias and the Angel, an obelisk, a storm at sea and the Last Judgement” (p89).

“The gift of prophecy can come directly from God, or else indirectly, through the ministration of demons… Just as the Sun shines perpetually on all men, so God incessantly offers his pearls of wisdom, and those who receive them become prophets. But the evil demons can also give knowledge, inasmuch as they had it before their fall” (p90).

Three illustrations from Robert Fludd‘s History of the Macrocosm and Microcosm (Utriusque Cosmi, Maioris scilicet et Minoris, metaphysica, physica, atque technica Historia, 1617—1621), as reprinted in Joscelyn Godwin’s summary of the same.

“The Great Darkness. ‘And thus, to infinity’” (p23).

A picture of pre-creation or un-creation, of materia prima, or Paracelsus‘s Mysterium Magnum.

“Let there be Light” (p25).

From FIAT (“let it be”), the Spirit of God (the dove) creates the three realms of the universe by radiating its divine light in three revolutions: empyrean (the well-lit Heaven of the angels), ethereal (the crossroads of spirit and matter, domain of stars and demons), and elemental (dark home to man and plant).

“The Primeval Duality” (p30-1). Click image for larger version.

A recapitulation of the dove’s progress. Down the right, “divine volunty, from which comes the divine act or wisdom, doing the will of the Father and revealing the foundations from the darkness and bringing to light the lethal shadow, creates the world of formless matter.” Down the left, “divine nolunty, from which comes divine potency, doing the Father’s nolunty.” Down the middle, “one from two”, “God, still one.”

Just “as Dionysus tears man into his seven pieces by night, so Apollo restores him by day to his sevenfold constitution. They are both none other than the one God, who works all in all.”

Two diagrams from Homer Sprague‘s 1883 edition of Milton‘s Paradise Lost: the first, Milton’s cosmography; the second, Satan’s “probable course” from hell, through Chaos, to our own world, hanging fast to heaven.

“Such place eternal justice has prepared
For those rebellious; here their prison ordained
In utter darkness, and their portion set
As far removed from God and light of heaven
As from the centre thrice to the utmost pole.
Oh, how unlike the place from whence they fell!” (p16/7).

“Farewell happy fields,
Where joy forever dwells! Hail, horrors! hail,
Infernal world! and thou, profoundest Hell,
Receive thy new possessor! one who brings
A mind not to be changed by place or time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.
What matter where, if I be still the same…” (p30).
—“So Satan spake” (p31).

Click image to view larger, legible version.

“Long is the way
And hard, that out of hell leads up to light.
Our prison strong, this huge convex of fire,
Outrageous to devour, immures us round
Ninefold; and gates of burning adamant,
Barred over us, prohibit all egress.
These passed, if any pass, the void profound
Of unessential night receives him next,
Wide gaping, and with utter loss of being
Threatens him, plunged into that abortive gulf.
If thence he scape into whatever world
Or unknown region, what remains him less
Than unknown dangers, and as hard escape?” (p77/8).