Meditations with Isaphil

Note. Isaphil is one of the eight undines briefly described by Franz Bardon in his book, The Practice of Magical Evocation. I refer the reader to Bardo’s book for the graphic depiction of Isaphil’s sigil.

The Undine Isaphil

Isaphil. 6/27/2000. Sunday.

Preliminary. If you are planning to interact with undines, it helps to attune yourself first to the water element. One way I do this is to recall briefly my experiences with water. I recall times when I have been in extremely cold water. I enter memories where I swam in different lakes, rivers, streams, and oceans.

Next I explore water in nature a little more creatively. I imagine I am floating lying on my back in the ocean somewhere between the tip of South America and the South Pole. I sense the depths of the ocean beneath me and I notice an iceberg drifting a few miles to my left. I send my mind into the iceberg exploring its shape, mass, and temperature.

And finally I let go and just free associate with the water element. What comes to me is sitting on the shore of different islands in different seas and watching the waves and sea around the islands. I sit on a sandy beach in an island in Greece in the Mediterranean Sea and I sit on the rocky stone shore of upper Michigan overlooking Lake Huron. I lie on the dunes of the Florida Keys and I sit on the Island of the Sun in Lake Titicaca between Peru and Bolivia. I overlook Crater Lake and watch fisherman in the Black Sea.

After a while, the water element begins to feel very friendly. The air around me feels wet as if there are waves breaking around me and currents flowing through me. This is a nice beginning. It is very personal and the images are all familiar and reasonable.

To move to a more magical level, I imagine I am at the center of a sphere of ice cold water as large as the planet earth. It is silvery white in color like moonlight. After a while, I imagine this sphere to be made of solid ice. I explore different temperatures gradually working toward absolute zero. There is nothing else here--just ice cold water, liquid or solid, silvery light, and my consciousness. There is a point at which I begin to feel that if I persist a little further in my meditation I could fool even an undine into thinking I am one of them.

What I am suggesting is that to interact with undines you need to learn to think like an undine. The language of undines is different from what we are used to. Its lexical items, its grammar, and its logic follow a different pattern. Eskimos have thirty or forty names for the word snow. Imagine having thousands of names for the word water.

And then you can think about the verbs that describe action. We have words such as water flowing, rippling, splashing, spraying, surging, swirling, waves rolling, rising, curling, breaking, drops of water running, tides rising and falling, coming in and going out, etc. But imagine for a moment that you could perceive the movement of water directly with your consciousness. Imagine that you could measure accurately through direct intuition the mass, shape, movement, temperature, inner flow and currents, and mineral content of any body or aspect of water anywhere on earth.

Imagine being able to sense the quality, to recall, and have a name for individual waves. Imagine being able to touch the water in a stream and be able to tell the altitude and kind of clouds from which the rain fell, how quickly it fell, and how much rain water was absorbed by the ground and how long it took the rain to find its way into the stream. Imagine being able to look at a river flowing into the sea or an icy bay at the N. Pole and see in color and in holographic detail the way the fresh water is merging with the salt water.

And if the verbs are based on direct perception which have no limit to the predication, the logic is even more radical and novel. The logic is empathy, sensuality, receptivity, containment, release, pleasure, bliss, and ecstasy. The logic is love that joins freely without regard for form or identity. The ecstasy is in the ability to flow freely into and through any form without fear of loss, regret, or need to attach. There are times when learning to think like an undine requires learning to love like a divine being--the ecstasy is that intense.

If the water element is a problem for you, just practice a few minutes, even for half a minute every day. When you wash your hands or take a shower, make a picture of some aspect of water in nature and feel you are there within a lake, a stream, an iceberg, a waterfall, etc. After a few months, years, or decades--time is not really important--the water element begins to share with you its magick and beauty out of respect for the level of empathy you have attained.

Isaphil’s Domain. Isaphil’s Domain is very calm and incredibly deep. There is also a very strong magnetic field in this watery energy. I can sense other undines here who are under Isaphil’s influence.

Franz Bardon suggests you do not speak first, but remain silent allowing them to notice and then approach you. This is a good idea. You do not have to wait long. Sometimes it is just a matter of focusing on an undine. It does not take long for the undine to notice he or she is being observed.

There is one nearby who is sweet, friendly, and communicates a thrilling delight and ecstatic release just by her aura and responsiveness. She is like water splashing as an iceberg is formed from falling into the sea and as mist gathers before dawn and rises up over island cliffs.

Another undine is completely different. She embodies the ocean depths like the depths of the unconscious out of which dreams arise. Her nature is a deep silence and pure receptivity free of images and disturbances of any kind.

A third undine I also sense quite readily is different from the previous too. She seems very responsible, even maternal. I do not think of undines as being responsible. They are very magical and full of love, empathy, and delight, but the idea of a responsible undine is new for me.

This undine seems to specialize in sensing the ocean currents over the entire planet. It is a little hard to explain how this intuition comes to me. There is just a spontaneous connection--I can feel the energy inside of her body and this energy feels like what I would sense if I could feel the currents moving in all the oceans of the world.

She says to me, “There is more going on inside me than what you can imagine at this time.” For this undine, the oceans are like a living being. The undine is aware of the part the oceans play in nourishing life on earth. She is not as sweet as the other two undines, but she is very interesting. I would have to say in fact she embodies a very powerful maternal and protective instinct. There seems to be a lot I can learn from her.

Isaphil’s Inner Source of Inspiration. The moon embodies a pure receptivity. It receives and reflects light. The water element is similar. It also embodies a pure receptivity. Like the moon, it receives the light of the sun. But water also stores and transforms that solar radiance. It turns it into vitality, life force, and the power to heal and to restore. This combination of pure receptivity to inspiration that empowers healing and nurturing is the essence of Isaphil’s inner source of inspiration. It is extraordinarily calming and rejuvenating in the same moment.

Isaphil’s Sigil. Carefully visualizing this sigil produces a nearly palpable serenity. The content and peace are like a physical presence and force in your room. This physical force of serenity is really nice since it balances and enables so many of the higher plane kinds of peace and serenity to manifest in a more tangible form. Without the dense etheric and familiar astral feelings, the higher qualities of spirit are easily misplaced or lost amid the demands of ordinary life.

Outer Aura. Isaphil’s aura is calming and renewing. It has a way of getting inside of you, reconfiguring itself to offer you the kind of support you need in your journey through life. She is very perceptive. She notices instantly the kind of feminine support I have needed over the years and never found. I have the telepathic and tactile sense of being with a woman sitting out of doors perhaps at the White Sand Dunes in New Mexico, a grove of trees in northern Arizona, or among the granite domes of Yoshemite.

We are underneath a full moon. And she, the woman I am with, embodies the silence of the night and the serenity of the moon. Her mind is free of thoughts, her soul is open and receptive, and her heart knows how to be one with another person without holding anything back. And as she is one with the night and the moon’s light, she is also one with me. Like I say, Isaphil is very perceptive and, like other undines highly skilled in magick, she begins immediately filling in for what is missing in yourself.

I have personally witnessed men who have fallen in love with a woman and suddenly felt that they had attained their full power and strength. The woman’s receptivity amplifies by a factor of ten the man’s natural self-confidence and virility. It can become quite humorous at this point and also sad.

Some of the men thought they had suddenly changed and the woman was not part of the change that occurred to them. When they turned their back on the woman, all their confidence and masculine strength, so real a few days before, suddenly drained away. They tried desperately to persuade the woman to come back, but it was too late. The women usually have nothing more to do with these men who underestimated and abandoned the love that had been given them.

I make this point because Isaphil is like an archetype. She is one embodiment of the beauty in the seas of the earth. Unlike human women, she is always there and you cannot exhaust her patience any more than you can persuade the seven seas to be less receptive or nurturing because you no longer care.

But like human women, you can indeed make the mistake of giving too much or too little of yourself. Or you can mistakenly assume that the undine, like a lover, will fill in for everything you are missing in yourself or that she is the purpose of your life. Relationships are not quite like that. We can enter relationships that are intimate, practical, and intensely passionate, but all of us still have our own lessons to learn from life. You can never put off to the side the things you need to learn no matter how much beauty and love you find.

On the other hand, when you are clear about what you need to learn and someone offers to assist you in learning it, there is no need to be shy or hesitant. Isaphil has a very great deal to teach me and I intend to learn everything I can from her.

Another way to say this is that Isaphil seeks your heart. She seeks to fill it with peace and serenity, healing your wounds in the process. The difference between Isaphil and a human lover is that the peace and bliss Isaphil fills you with are the beauty of the oceans of the earth. If you feel comfortable with the energy of the seas and enjoy that natural peace, then this will not be a problem for you.

Technically speaking, everything on and within this planet is a part of ourselves. We just need to awaken to this awareness. As we mature as a race, the fury of a hurricane, the force of a pyroclastic flow, the solidity of a mountain, and the peace of the seas will all seem like something familiar and within our ability to control--even as a great master once bid the storm and the waves to be calm and still and they obeyed his will. Isaphil is one of the great treasures of our planet and part of my job is to discover how to share this treasure with others.

Let me tell you something about myself. In this life, I have had several very real opportunities to become a multimillionaire. The job positions were open. The training and skills were within my grasp. But what completely undermined that promise of career and wealth was my curiosity. Early on I could sense the unfathomable beauty within the natural world.

And so in this moment it is no mistake or chance that I enjoy sitting here in Isaphil’s company. In her presence, the wealth of satisfaction, contentment, and peace are more than anything I have seen anywhere else. A good protestant would point out that this peace and inner serenity are something I should have found by going to church on Sunday and worshiping God. But it is Divine Providence that has demanded I search out these treasures of nature and spirit so that I can share them with the world.

In this moment, I feel that one of the purposes for which I incarnated is near completion. I have found an inner peace, an inner harmony with the universe, and a union with the beauty of the seas that are as natural as breathing. They fill in for an emptiness and a sorrow that have haunted the human race from the beginning.

I do not think I am overstating my case or using exaggeration to persuade. Let me explain to you how this works. We middle aged men have been granted by God a unique dispensation, an authority if you will, that is of greater merit than church doctrine and orthodox traditions. After living half a century, we are permitted to ask this question, “What is missing from life?” Youth who rebel and old men who regret have not the same detachment and force of will to follow through in seeking an answer. Sometimes, like Milton, Hormel, Virgil, or Vyashu, we wax poetic and create great mythological kingdoms from our imagination in order to sketch the spiritual landscape in which our souls dwell. Sometimes we get it right and sometimes we fail.

But in all cases, whatever the strength of our vision and creative will, we are basing our search and our questioning on the same set of inner feelings--something profound and wonderful has been missing from human experience--there is some gift of spirit we have not yet sought, found, and claimed. Oh, we all know how to love. This is part of the human heart. But also within our hearts is an abyss that we as individuals and we as the human race must one day learn to cross.

Within this abyss are the creativity of God and the light of Divine Providence. Yet on first sight, the abyss is an emptiness so great and deep an individual must be willing to let go of all he or she knows in order to discover the treasures hidden within it. The letting go is also a way of finding something new you have never known, could never imagine or believe.

It is being like a child who finds a new flower, animal, or bird and delights in the discovery even though he does not know its name. Except forty years later having retained his sense of wonder, this child goes on to discover a new subatomic particle, a new kind of star, a genetic cure for some disease, or perhaps how to talk face to face with an archangel. There is no difference between these kinds of acts. I consider Isaphil to be a part of the inner landscape of the human soul. We will not be complete as a race until we discover such charms, secrets, and treasures found in the hearts of these magnificent elemental beings.

Inner Aura. Isaphil’s inner aura is very clear, pure, still, and sensitive. She is very feminine and extraordinarily receptive. A woman who is receptive in this way to a man increases the man’s awareness of his own power. She does this not just through her response to him but by also providing a balance and counterpart to his energy.

Isaphil’s inner aura is a receptive tenderness, kindness, and nurturing caring. There is no end to it. It is vast like a sea.

Part of a woman’s feminine beauty is in her acceptance and responsiveness to a man’s needs. An individual woman in part serves as a representative of the archetype of the Great Mother. The human woman provides pleasure, bliss, and ecstasy in small enough measures that the man’s identity and strength are not dissolved or annihilated by the taste and the touch.

In safety, the man can return again briefly as a fetus to the womb, taste her breasts as an infant, hug her as child, rely on her support as an adolescent, relate to her as a friend as a young man, love her as her mature lover, and also worship her when he discovers the goddess dwelling within her. Feminine beauty encompasses in the same moment all of these pleasures both sensual and spiritual.

Individual women, of course, are not required to embody any of this. They do not need to play a supportive role in relation to men if they do not want to or do not feel inclined to do so. But the feminine form is itself a symbol of the universe, of cosmic beauty, and divine receptivity. As a symbol, it cannot be exhausted. There is no limit to its depth, breath, and its power to transform, rejuvenate, heal, and restore. The feminine form, in its power to transform and offer ecstasy, will be with us as long as the universe remains.

My point is that Isaphil’s inner aura is an experience with cosmic receptivity on the astral and etheric planes of our planet. She is so accessible, intimate, and personal and yet also seemingly limitless in presenting the depths and mysteries of feminine beauty.

If you can let go of thoughts and the thinking process, if you can let go of your identity without feeling any loss, and if you can just let go without feeling any fear or need to hang on to anything at all, then you will find that this energy feels like coming home. It takes you back in the past where any need was unmet and offers you the tenderness you have never known. And it takes you forward “into the light” that is there when you have died--a feeling of total acceptance and of being beyond all need, sorrow, and fear.

Two Days Later. As I revisit Isaphil’s outer aura, it takes a minute or two and then I enter a state of trance. I taste again the depths of her peace. I feel like I am back in time looking forward at what the human race might have accomplished if it had understood and learned to embody this peace.

There would have been no need for Atlantis to have fallen. Power, whether military, technological, or political, would not mean the same thing. Power would be tempered by inner vision. The relation between knowledge and advancement in the outer world and in the inner world would have been more balanced. .

The pharaoh of Egypt would have been happy to let the Israelites go. He would have seen the fire within the heart of Moses and recognized its authority as greater than his own. And there would have been no need for Christ to have been crucified. The idea of sacrifice as enabling a rejoining with or reconciliation with God would never have taken hold. It would have paled in contrast to the idea of dwelling in God’s presence--

You make a place in the mansion of your soul big enough and still enough for God’s presence to take hold. You take thirty or forty years to build a cathedral, not in the world, but inside yourself. No need to hire masons, carpenters, sculptors, painters, and architects to glorify God’s presence through a magnificent edifice. It would have been so obvious. There is a direct, immediate, and spontaneous soul to soul connection with God and with each other that requires no expenditure of materials, labor, and effort. It is already there. You only need to sense it, feel it, and appreciate it for the wonder that it is.

And the artistic ability shown in the cave paintings in Spain, France, and Italy would not have been lost for thirty thousand years. Painting in perspective showing action and accurate representation would not have had to wait for a Renaissance to be rediscovered. Art would have been appreciated as embodying both scientific observation and magical awareness.

Here in Isaphil’s presence, I am redreaming the history of the human race. I am within a vision in which the human race has become enlightened and dwells in harmony with the universe. There is something here from each of the three water signs of the zodiac. It has the Pisces sense of oneness, of sharing equally in the one life that animates all beings. It has the Cancer quality of nurturing, satisfying, and living in peace and serenity. And it has the Scorpio intensity that says, “For some things to happen, you have to use your will.”

Some journeys that we take lead to the center of the heart. On these journeys, if you lose your way, you return again to the point where you took the wrong turn and then you begin again following after what is essential. You avoid the distractions and amazing experiences that, though captivating, are beside the point.

The treasure of spirit Isaphil possesses is perfectly natural and yet it exists outside of time--it is an eternal aspect of the human soul and heart. Having this treasure of peace within you, you do not engage life with less enthusiasm or productivity. You simply never forget amid life’s conflicts and struggles for survival that your inner spirit remains absolutely transcendent.

Isaphil’s peace is like the moon at night. Cycling from dark to full to dark again each month, the phases of the moon remind us of the stages of our lives. Unaffected by events on earth, the moon’s light is always gentle remaining constant amid its changes and phases. Isaphil’s presence is like this light. It is constant through all generations and yet its touch is always new--part of your personal and individual experience.

Some would say again that I am overstating my case. They would insist that undines, if they exist, are whimsical, perhaps sweet, but at the very least dreamy, frivolous, and idol. In fact, history would not at all be different if undines were well known by our artists and philosophers.

My response is this. To enslave a people, you must create fear. You cannot enslave a people who in their hearts are free. If the sensuality, the pleasure, and the dreams of peace that are a part of the sea dwelled within human hearts, the forms of persuasion kings and politicians used to rule kingdoms and nations would have been altogether different. If the people have no fear, then to rule them you would have to speak of building things of value that endure. There would be no room for deceit. People would see the dreams that are in your heart.

My point is this. Undines, though often sweet and given to celebrating enchanting love, are not without power. Their perception is direct. There is no limit to their ability to connect. And they have the unusual gift of sensing your deepest needs. They offer their beauty and their love as a means for dreaming and tasting with you the fulfillment of your needs. Empathy on this level is sacred. And anything genuinely sacred is always imbued with power and purpose.

I plan to continue working with elemental beings throughout the summer. I will keep posting my observations and experiences.