Copyright (C) 2006 by William Mistele.  All rights reserved.

 

Note: I have added several new sections to this essay.  It now includes sections on the four elements within the body and within nature.  I have also added new comments on the sphere of Saturn and a brief description of the sphere of Uranus.    

 

     The Planetary Spheres

 

Introduction

 

In this essay, I explore the akasha—the realm of light--surrounding nine different planetary spheres.  This is slightly different for me in that I usually first and foremost work with a spirit.  In this case, however, I am seeking a more personal understanding of the qualities of the different planets.  It is a getting acquainted exercise.

 

Note: This essay is similar to my series on the Presence of God.  I imagine if the Apostle Paul was right, God is someone “in whom we live, move, and have our being,” then each planet’s aura is a kind of outer reflection of God’s aura.  Simply meditating in the akasha of different planets, then, not only clarifies and defines the nature of the spiritual beings that dwell there.  Studying a planet’s akasha also tells you something about the mind and soul of the Creator--the way studying in a class taught by a world level economist, philosopher, or general tells you something about the individual’s mind and outlook on life. 

     In this brief essay, I spent about two hours meditating in each of the different planetary spheres, so about four to six hours a day over five different days.  What motivated this little venture was I needed some clarification as to what method and perspective I should use to solve two sets of problems.  One solution was more personal in nature—I decided to spend some time working with Nith-Haiah of the Mercury sphere, “the Guardian angel” of all magicians on earth according to Bardon.

    The second question deals with karma and political evolution.  I wanted to double check my perspective and a get a little reassurance before proceeding.  In other words, I wanted a stamp of approval from Divine Providence before exercising my magical will.  Self-validation is always a highly questionable activity; then again, when using cosmic power you do not seek a second opinion from other people.  You are required to go directly to the source and with every ounce of intelligence your brain possesses you have to weigh and measure, draw your own conclusions, and then take full responsibility for your actions.   

    

9/28/96

 

The Four Elements in Physical Body

 

Earth

 

This is the place where we begin and to which we return.  The body is both the temple of God and the magic mirror that reflects the universe.  Working with other planes of awareness, not to mention spirits, takes energy and the body is the source of that energy.  In fact, there is nothing to be encountered “out there” in the highways and byways of the four elemental realms that is not already present in latent form within each of us. 

   Having done some preliminary stretching/yoga I focus on the four elements within my body.  The bones of the skeleton and physical mass of the body is like the earth element.  I sense the obvious: the solidity, stability, and enduring presence.  The body is framed upon the bones and tendons. 

   Part of my physical being is silent and solid and enduring—a perfect embodiment of the mystery and initiation of silence and all the spiritual qualities of earth.  So it is natural for me to sense how the vibration in my body is almost identical to the vibration within that five thousand year old stone circle I wrote about that is in Scotland.  The pyramids of Egypt, ancient and forgotten temples, mountains and minerals, geologic strata—the presence of what endures down through the ages—all of these sensations and qualities of the earth element are right here. 

   There is a little crater near my house—Koko Crater.  It is no more than a few thousand years old.  This crater will still be around long after I am dead.  This island is no more than five million years old.  But the solidity I sense within my body—the weight and mass—is an awareness that goes back to the Vishnu schist at the bottom of the Grand Canyon—a billion years old.  It goes further—it goes back four billion years to when the planet first formed. 

   The body is ancient and beyond the knowledge of all religions on earth. In every glass of water we drink, in every breath of air we take in hydrogen atoms that were formed soon after the Big Bang thirteen billion years ago.  The elements in our bodies, for example oxygen and carbon, we formed in the nuclear furnaces and through the explosions of stars. 

   If we were to proceed into the astral/etheric realm of the earth element wherein gnomes dwell, we would certainly want to feel comfortable in advance with doing what gnomes do—they place their minds directly within physical matter to sense its qualities and influence its vibrations.  The vibration of zinc, tin, gold, silver, lead, precious jewels, trees, and plants—gnomes can spend hours on end immersed within the vibrations of matter the way dolphins can swim in the waves or eagles can ride the winds. 

    Each day our consciousness passes through alpha, beta, theta, and delta states of awareness as when our minds are open, problem solving, falling asleep, and in a state of deep, dreamless sleep.  Penetrating and encompassing physical matter with our awareness is very similar to being fully alert and awake in a state of deep dreamless sleep.  Our bodies contain such knowledge.  We just need to learn to sense it. 

    When dealing with the unknown it is wise to move slowly, systematically, and from the familiar to the unfamiliar, from what you can fully control to what is new and what challenges you with forces that are outside your grasp.  It is a gradual process. 

   Some people want quick results in magic.  Why can I not control my thoughts?  Why can I not evoke spirits?  Many of the higher spirits are quite capable of materializing and dematerializing matter.  For these spirits it is nothing to penetrate physical matter with their consciousness, take hold of it, and transmute it at will.  

      Physical matter contains great energy.  Matter is dynamic, powerful, and intense.  But all of this is wrapped about in a quiet grace, a silence, and an immense stillness.  When God says, “Be still and know that I am God,” he is not referring to water, air, or fire.  He is pointing to the gate hidden within the element of earth with its quiet, silent stillness.      

    Meditating on physical being, the personal fades.  You remain aware of the physical and yet in a place of great stillness you move beyond time and space and pass through the gate that leads into akasha and the Divine Presence.  Like I say---the body is a temple.  Herein are taught the divine arts of creation.   

 

Water

 

The sensation of water I can pick up from the flow of blood through my body.  A doctor told me that some people can feel when there heart skips a beat.  With experience, you can feel blood flow into part of your body when you relax it.  The blood vessels dilate with the result that there is more blood flow into the area and it becomes warmer. 

     Some people can sense the pulse of their blood as it surges through the body.  It is the liquid, flowing quality of the blood that is emphatically the water element.  Water is in tears, sweat, salvia, urine, moisture in the lungs, the eyes, and various body fluids. 

     As I concentrate on the flow of blood, immersing myself in this sensation and awareness, there are also feelings that arise: a sense of peace, of flowing and letting go.  It is purifying, renewing, nurturing, and reviving.      

    Within water is also a more subtle presence called the magnetic fluid.  It is like the flow of blood produces a magnetic field in and around the body.  If you can sense or feel auras, you can probably pick this up as well. 

   Well, here is what I sense of the magnetic fluid in and around my body.  It is cool, soothing, and healing. It is nearly incomprehensible receptive—though completely nurturing and life giving, it is also utterly open and empty.  It is so encompassing, it can embrace, shelter, and protect anything. 

   As men are granted a token surcharge of the masculine electric fluid by virtue of their gender, women have a surcharge of the magnetic fluid.  It is seen for example in a woman’s ovaries which embody a powerful attracting energy. 

     As I mention elsewhere, some martial art masters like to marry young, nubile women because the woman’s powerful estrogen based magnetic field automatically draws the energy in his head and arms downward along the front of his body.  This feminine essence, yin jing, or magnetic fluid allows him to remain flexible, grounding him and cooling his excessive body heat.  It frees him from being a slave to his own mental powers of concentration which would otherwise make him obsessive and dictatorial. 

   To put it another way, a man might notice that sensing the magnetic field arising from the water element in his own body is like what he may feel after making love to a beautiful and loving woman.  For a limited time, something of her feminine essence and beauty are transferred over to him as a purely physical sensation.  He then feels blessed, anointed, made whole and complete—the inner unity between body, soul, mind, and spirit are restored and brought into balance. 

    This magnetic fluid is kind, gentle, and tender.  It seeks to heal, complete, and make whole whatever it touches.  It is absolutely natural for it to hold things within itself restoring their balance and harmony.

    This magnetic fluid is present in men and women, though as I mention women tend to have a much higher and more natural charge of it.  Becoming aware of it directly strengthens it and allows us to make it an active part of our consciousness. 

     Obviously, if a person’s mind is influenced by the magnetic fluid it is easy to try to bring out the best other people.  Instead of viewing others from a position of competition and insecurity, a person’s mind is empathic, sensitive, and caring.   

     Franz Bardon really set up a furor in the magic world by publishing the wrong names for many of the spirits he describes.  People write me this about this.  They ask me, Do you know the real name of such and such a spirit?  This inquiry seems most paradoxical and ironic to me because these people rarely give me their real names and here we are having a nice conversation.  So why such a big deal about the names of spirits?  You want their email address you have it in the sigils Bardon has published.

    If you find the magnetic fluid in your body, I mean look, it is right here under your breath, barely hidden behind your heart beat; it is right here riding the physical sensation of blood through your veins and arteries—find the magnetic fluid in your body and you have found a magic mirror and holy well: in it is reflected the nature and presence of any spirit in the universe.  The magnetic fluid is that empathic and full of the mysterious and wonderful magical powers of clairsentience.    

   Let me say it again, the magnetic fluid is so receptive and utterly open and sensitive it can quite easily produce in itself, (that is you can experience it within your own body and consciousness) the actual presence of any living thing.       I tell you that in my experience when a woman really loves you she holds part of your soul and spirit within herself nurturing and sustaining it.  

     At the same time, her love extends inside of you and is constantly striving to make you whole and complete, to heal your wounds, and unify every fiber of your being.  That kind of love employs the powers of the magnetic fluid. 

     If you go exploring out there into the domains of the elemental beings, the undines and mermaids, the spirits of  love on the higher planes and within the sphere of Venus, it is easy to encounter love and attractions which seem beyond human understanding.  The beauty of these beings is again nearly incomprehensible. 

    But that beauty is always a quality and power of the magnetic fluid.  Find the magnetic fluid within your self.  Then you will be able to see what is in front of you.  And then you will not fall victim to other worldly temptations not to mention human lovers with a dark agenda hidden beneath their beauty.       

 

Air

 

The air element in the body is easy to sense through the lungs and breath.  There are the subtle changes in air pressure, lung capacity, moisture, and temperature in the lungs set off by the contracting and release of the diaphragm.  This is very similar to sensing the differences in air pressure, temperature, and moisture that move the winds and shape the weather in the sky. 

    Bardon suggests that the essential quality of the air element is the sensation of weightlessness.  Air has a freedom to move without being so closely bound to shape and magnetic attraction.  This carries with it a feeling of independence and detachment.

    The oxygen in breath is free to travel throughout the atmosphere of the entire planet.  Breath also carries a sense of open expanse.  The freedom from limitation and capacity for movement are, like the cosmic letter A, a tool for studying enlightenment and cosmic wisdom.  The mind, like breath, can become open, free, detached, and expansive. 

   In breathing we are sharing air with every living being.  In breath we gain a taste of enlightenment.  In joining our consciousness to the physical sensation of air our consciousness becomes a part of the entire biosphere of the planet.  Cosmic wisdom is close behind: it is being aware of a person and an individual thing from the point of view of the whole. 

   We have emotional disturbances but we can among other things calm our breathing and calm ourselves down in the process.  The sky has storms but the sky itself remains undisturbed.  In every breath is this knowledge of clarity of mind and balance.

    If I “bracket” the sensations of earth, water, and fire in my body and focus only and exclusively on the vibration of air, my body feels like it is make out of air.  At this point, I have the sensation of having become a sylph, a spirit that dwells within air. 

   On the other hand, a basic exercise in magic related to pranayama involves breathing in vitalizing energy with the air.  When I focus only on the physical sensation of air, I do not sense this vitalizing or more subtle energy in air.  To get that perception, I imagine myself surrounded by a sea of vitalizing and healing energy.  Now as I focus on my breath and the actions of breathing I can easily sense this vital energy entering my body.  It moves according to where I focus my concentration. 

   For some individuals, pranayama is quite easy.  Others like myself have to use both imagination and psychic perception in order to get the most basic of exercises to work.

 

 

Fire

 

The body produces heat. We cook food to prepare it for eating using high temperatures.  The body breaks food down at low temperatures using enzymes and catalysts.  Without much effort, I can sense the temperature differences on the surface of my body, in my muscles, and to some extent within my body as well. 

    If I screen out the earth, water, and air sensations in my body (in phenomenology this is called “bracketing.”), I am left with a sensation of fire: blazing fire within my entire body.  If I continue and place off to the side all outher distractions, all that exists is fire: a conflagration, a fire storm, and burning and consuming without beginning or end. 

    You may think that eating your carrots and broccoli and following your vegetarian diet you are being gentle and peace loving.  But your stomach is dissolving that physical matter in a pool of acid determined to break it down into its components with the ferocity of the acid in a car battery attempting to strip electrons from metal. 

     The rapacious, consuming hunger in the body producing heat takes place on a molecular level under the direction of the DNA molecule.  Sense something of this process and you are sensing the raging fire that extends throughout the universe.  In every heartbeat is the pulse of lightning surging between the earth and the sky.

     There is a limit on coldness called absolute zero.  There is no limit on the degree of heat or the will that derives from fire.  Nonetheless, too much or too little heat and the body shuts down.

   Someone was asking advice about a really powerful spirit he had encountered.  With all due respect, there are no really powerful spirits.  Nothing “out there” even remotely reflects the power you have within your self should you but find it. 

   Now then, there is a feminine essence.  The masculine essence is derived from the electric fluid.  Men become electrified when they are aroused.   Obviously passion and desire can be overwhelming.  But this electrical energy in passion is but a faint reflection of the real thing. 

    Like male sexuality, the electric fluid is hot, burning, intense, and explosive.  It is consuming and commanding.  It is more: it carries with it absolute faith and conviction.  The adrenal glands kick in: all of conscious and all strength are focused on one task—to overcome any obstacle in its path and to fulfill its mission. 

    Combine the electric and magnetic in your self?  You are fully alert yet relaxed; ready for action but at peace.  You have the sensitivity and receptivity to respond to what is in front of you and yet the will to do what needs being done. 

   Magic is using a little bit of the will of the Creator to create.  You initiate something new.  But magic also requires the art of the lover who holds in her heart everything involved in what you are undertaking until it finally bears fruit.  Magic requires both the electric and magnetic fluids in equal measure.

   

   

Akasha

 

Akasha seeks to balance the four elements and maximize their development.  It is an awareness of the activity of all four elements at once.

    In terms of my own nature, akasha has the function of regenerating and balancing my body/health, emotions/astral body, and mind.  This akasha that accompanies my spirit is very alchemical: it hermetically seals itself off from the world in order to focus on and transform the elemental materials active within me. 

    This is again very Aquarian and very unlike Leo that shines outward with light and enthusiasm.  The alchemy focuses within, recreating itself from within.  It is a very solitary activity and thus is very difficult to share with others because it is a process each individual pursues within himself. 

 

The Elemental Domains within Nature

 

Earth

 

I am now extending my awareness outside of my body and into the earth element.  Basically, I sense dirt all around myself.  The primary sensations are density and weight.

    Bardon recommends imaginatively filling one’s body with the earth element (not accumulating it but just an even spread throughout one’s body) and then dropping one’s mind down into the ground. 

    Not much is going on.  But after a while I begin identifying my consciousness with the earth element.  I become the earth spread out for miles in all directions.  At this point, I begin to sense geologic strata and various mineral deposits. 

   The limestone recalls the skeletons of fish from which it was formed and seas long gone.  The sandstone recalls sandy dunes.  Coal deposits remember Jurassic forests with the bones of ancient creatures mixed around. 

    There is the top soil and vegetation from which it is formed.  Here is a water table and underground streams.  Caves and caverns, magma chambers, and tectonic plates.  There are fault lines with their strange twisting and straining like a sculpture of wrestlers striving for an advantage. 

   There is the sand from mountains long gone; the boulders from rivers that have not flowed for millions of years and the rubble left over from ice ages come and gone.  I think the process is fairly clear: if you extend your consciousness into the earth becoming the earth then the memories of the earth begin to download into your brain with images from a book called, “This is the geology of the planet you live on.”

    From the point of view of a billion years, all of this is very bubbly and constantly changing like the spray from a wave breaking on a beach.  Everything is in motion. 

     But from the point of view of a few minutes or an hour meditation, it is very quiet and very, very patient.  It has exactly the feeling that accompanies some of my meditations which I have been practicing for over thirty years. 

     I have written about the beings who dwell within the earth element elsewhere.  At this point, I suspect one result of acquainting one’s consciousness with the earth element is that you begin to appreciate the physical world.  You enjoy working with material things.  You find it enjoyable to take something physical into your hands and to change it so it is of more value.  Obviously, the earth element is very grounding, very practical, and very down to earth.     

 

 

Water

 

I have been writing a book on the water element so let’s see what happens here.  I project my consciousness into the water element in nature.  I find myself immediately surrounded by the sea, blue green and around me is sea weed.  And I am soon within a water fall and a lake—I have become the lake.  I am a river flowing to the sea.  I am the North Atlantic current, a tsunami, a tide rolling in, a flashflood, a storm surge, a river flooding its banks, rain, a cloud, fog, snow, the North Pole—I am within all of these. 

   I feel a part and one with the vibration of water across the entire earth—I am the surface of the sea and its depths.  I am a billion waves set in motion by ten thousand different winds.  I am the glass of water a woman drinks in a five star restaurant.  Now I am in her stomach and now within her blood stream. 

   I absorb and release carbon dioxide.  I absorb and release heat.  I am fluid, liquid, and malleable.  I purify and I give birth to and sustain life.

    If I focus exclusively on the vibration and sensations of water, I seem to turn into a merman (the male version of an undine or mermaid).  I am committed to preserving, expanding, and clarifying magnetic fields produced by water.  This is my vocation and my soul.  I celebrate magnetism in all my actions.   

   In a waterfall, I am sparkling, effervescent, and I renew life.  In a river, I let go and go with the flow, following gravity as it walks at my side across the land as we listen for the distant sounds of the sea. 

    In a mountain lake, the stars’ fiery dance fills my nights with dreams of unending delight.  The clouds drop down and as fog caress my skin.  In winter I am still as ice; and in spring the warm sun penetrates my depths and I turn that radiance into a song that intoxicates, ravishing the heart and causing the senses to see visions of what shall be.

   

      

Air

 

Again, as I focus exclusively on the air element within my body, I feel as if I have become a sylph, a spirit of the air.  Weightless, floating, I stand within the sky just below the jet stream.  And a little higher, in the ionosphere, where the blue of the sky changes in the black of outer space. 

   This is being very detached surrounded by a vast, open expanse.  Though my eyes are penetrating, my gaze is calm.  I am incredibly relaxed. 

   If you want to understand the state of mind represented by all those huge stone statutes of the Buddha just put your self into the air element.  Light is a subtle nectar that nourishes and gives life.  The mind is so open, vast, and expansive it becomes mirror like—its ferocious quest for the truth so joined to stillness that it perceives without distortion or presumption.

   This state of mind can think but it has no dependency on thoughts.  It is not attached.  All conceptual systems depend upon and are limited by their assumptions.  In this state of mind, when a thought and its assumption no longer clarify and illuminate a subject that thought and assumption vanish instantly.

    What is it like to be a sylph?  You know the wind, from where it arises, how it moves, and to where it is going.  A thunderstorm is in your mind like a pleasant daydream—it is entertainment like watching a puppy chasing its tail or watching a cat climbing down cautiously from a tree, its claws clasping and scratching the bark as it descends.   And as with a playful puppy or a frightened cat, with care you can pick them up and take them somewhere else if you want.

       Many scientists have a surcharge of sylph in their astral bodies.  The result?  The vibration within their minds of an original observation or the birth of pure and new scientific knowledge are for these men and women exquisite pleasure—the mind expanding its clarity and understanding of the surrounding universe are their passion.

   Artists and poets also dabble with sylph magic: when a tornado of whirling desire or a hurricane with its upheaval and wild, raging emotions passes through them, they do not run for cover or hunker down to wait out the storm.  No, they ask, “Now how did this happen?” as they try to sift through and express every nuance and variable within the phenomenon.         

    Yes, sylphs in human form or at least temperament have walked among us.  We have seen them wearing the disguise of Mozart, Shakespeare, Newton, Einstein, Socrates and Plato.        

   As for weather control?  I have met the Dalai Lama’s weather controller.  And the ancient Druids were said to exercise some influence over the winds.  But if I asked a sylph about this topic he might say simply, “If you become the sky with your mind and also a hurricane at the same time, then controlling the direction and strength of the hurricane are no more difficult than controlling the depth and rhythm of your own breath.” 

   In evocation, the idea of a “magical name” for a spirit is that if you possess it and understand it you can control the spirit.  But from the point of view of the air element, this is complete nonsense. 

     Though it may take ten, twenty, or thirty years, the process is more like your mind is the wind that gets inside of a cloud.  And then when the two are completely joined, you move as one.  It is something very beautiful and profound because one of the most basic secrets of the universe is that there really is no separation.           

 

Fire

 

Again, focusing just on fire within my body it is easy to freely associate in my mind with fire in nature and to enter that fire.  Fire in nature: forest fire, lava flow and pyrochastic flow, volcanoes, the heat of deserts and the light of the sun. 

     I notice that fire changes things: it melts metals, pulverizes mountains, and builds islands from out of the depths of the sea. It both tears things down destroying the form and builds things up shaping new forms.

    It can work with the other elements adding depth and passion to love, integrity and urgency to the quest for truth, or purifying and refining physical matter as in producing steel from iron and pure gold from ore.

    It can destroy as in killing a human being, burning down a house, or vaporizing a city.  Fire in nature just is.  It changes things in accordance with the laws of nature.  Fire controlled by human beings depends on intention and wisdom to determine whether the outcome is creative or destructive.

    Fire may seem rather hostile to human nature.  We try not to get burned or have an accident when it is near.  But fire is fabulous as a meditation.  You can find all sorts of “Ah has” within it.  Such as here is the nature of faith and conviction.  Here is the birth of new light.  Here is the highest illumination.  And here the power that rejuvenates and, in combination with the other elements, gives birth to life.

   We could talk about the use of fire in your life.  Something is not right.  And so you decide to change things.  A certain amount of will and conviction is required to extricate your self from your limitations.  To do this you may have to acquire more of the element of fire within your soul.  People imbibe fire sometimes through anger, sometimes by acquiring new faith, and sometimes by being forced into action in order to protect others.

   And we also can talk about fire in the life of nations.  Occasionally some dictator appears with a strength of will equal to a mountain exploding, to a pyrochastic flow that destroys entire cultures. 

    But if you know fire well through the depths of your meditations you can become for that dictator the equivalent of an asteroid hitting the earth.  The explosion destroys entire mountain ranges in an instant.  The dictator with all his formidable power, even when he is under the protection of the dark side—he does not know what hit him.  He did not even sense it coming.         

    Meditating in fire, again, is a strange and seemingly unnatural thing.  But if you make its acquaintance, when you encounter others abusing their power and using their wills for malice, you can look at them the way a gnome can look at a tree and determine the depths of its roots, the strength of its wood, and the health of its fruit and leaves. 

   When you understand the raw material from which the power of will derives, then you are able to see clearly what is in front of you.  And you know how to cooperate (to blend) with it, to further it, or to destroy it.  Such is the magic of fire and the sacred mission it has been assigned.

  

 

Akasha.  My ability to penetrate through space and time with my awareness derives in part from gifts various spirits have offered me.  These gifts reawakened abilities I developed in previous life times.  The task, then, is apply what has been learned before to this world in which I now live so there is some sort of productive, fruitful, and creative action appropriate to these times.  

 

The Planetary Spheres

 

From the four elements within the body and within nature, we now proceed further into the spheres of light.  The vibrations are more subtle.  These realms are penetrated not with the astral body but only with the mind and spirit.  Of course, all of these following spheric vibrations are present here on earth in some form or another. 

    It is just that we rarely encounter them as a pure and undiluted vibration.  And if we do the experience is often temporary and fleeting.  The emotions generated by such encounters are somewhat like the shock wave from a nuclear explosion—we can sense the effects of its presence but its light is too intense for our natural eyes to behold without some form of protection.           

   To some extent religions have been invented to preserve a small taste of the original experience from when the light touched a soul in earlier age.  Rituals and doctrines both protect the mind while attempting to channel a tiny part of that original inspiration to us so it can become a part of our lives.  And, from my point of view from experiencing the following spheres, many new religions (and truths of the universe) have yet to find a place in our hearts.  

 

 

The Earth Zone

 

The akasha within my self obviously relates to my own body, emotions, mind, and history of personal experience in this life time.  That is its immediate are of supervision. 

The akasha of the earth in a similar manner relates to the physical, emotional, and mental activities taking place on earth during the life time of this planet.  That is its area of activity and supervision. 

   Obviously, I can go to the earth zone to deepen or explore aspects of my own development on the three lower planes.  But the outlook here also encompasses the entire history of the earth.  The sensation on a sensory level is that of akasha: of penetrating through space and time and also perceiving the inner spiritual realms of the earth.

   The earth zone, which for me is always new whenever I enter it, is at this moment very peaceful and there is that sense of “akashic records,” of a virtual reality recollection of any experience that has ever happened on earth.  You can enter anyone or any spirit and see through its eyes and experience what it has experienced.  Genghis Khan: I am within him laughing at a comrade’s joke and I can taste his battle lust and virile, wild cruel and insatiable hunger and thirst for power without limit.       

     Alexander the Great: Within him I feel utterly radiant.  There is a classic nobility he exudes on an emotional level.  A truly generous person expansive and in many wise while at the same time perhaps the most brilliant military strategist in history.  Inside Alexander I feel like I am ten times more powerful and in control of my faculties than is any other person on earth. 

   Why all these wars and incredible amount of suffering and pain that are a dominant theme in human history?  Sitting here in akasha it is plain to see: human beings are under a divine mandate—learn to master your body, emotions, mind, and spirit and the very forces of history so that you can take control of your fate and attain to a destiny of your own choosing. 

    Take Clinton.  How many people get the opportunity to become president of the United States?  So it is a personality flaw, a problem with astral equilibrium that leads him to have sex in the Oval Office.  It is a temptation/male thing.  Totally understandable for a man to screw up in this way.  But he should have been working to fight terrorism around the world instead of spending his energy fighting impeachment. 

     His fate was in control of his life due to his personality flaw so that he did not attain to his destiny.  Failing to attain to one’s destiny due to a personality flaw is totally understandable.  But what an incredible loss and mistake to expose the nation to so much wasted time and energy due to his out of control passions.  A question for the next presidential nominees: “Sir, if you are elected president, will you be able to keep your dick in your pants while you are running the nation so the opposing party does not try to impeach you after you lie about it?”  

    Jews sometimes say about God (or divine mandates by implication): “It is not necessarily a good thing to be the friend of God.  And do not count on God to help you out of a difficult situation.”  Or put another way, “We either learn all we can from life and become our own teachers or fate will become our teacher.”  Its your choice.

    The spiritual power here in akasha can solve any problem on earth.  The price for entering and activating akasha within your self to solve these problems in an active and timely manner is very expensive.  

    Genghis Khan, by utilizing cutting edge military technology, horse cavalry and archers, spread terror across the world.  But the horse was a wonderful gift to mankind. 

     Nuclear energy, esp. fusion which we have not yet learned to apply for electrical power generation, is a wonderful gift to mankind. But I notice small nations spending a hundred billion dollars to develop nuclear weapons solely for the political status and terror they can spread across the world.

     Like I say, here in akasha of the earth zone there is no problem that can not be solved on earth.  But the cost in terms of training, commitment, time, and energy is very expensive. 

   It is my position that the human race has more important things to do with itself than rattle nuclear sabers.  I would hope some other people can learn to use akasha in doing what akasha does: supervising, inspiring, and also setting limits so that human beings learn in the best way possible, with the highest learning curve rather than though so much pain and suffering. 

     “They shall beat their swords into plowshares.... neither shall they learn war anymore.”  This will happen when more people are comfortable operating from akasha having worked for decades on refining and balancing the elemental energies on the three lower planes within themselves.  Then we shall have the peacemakers whom Christ spoke about.

   

A few more comments on the earth zone.  Akasha is so into life on earth.  For a sense of wonder, be sure to visit the earth zone. 

    In my screenplay, The Fall of Atlantis, the Goddess of the Earth says to a woman, “Create a religion without priests, temples, or rituals in which wisdom, power, love, and justice are equally honored and pursued.”  Being here in akasha is such a religion.    

 

See also my essay, The Earthzone as a Spiritual University and articles on earth zone spirits such as Melamo.  Also the short essay, Visiting the Earthzone.   Most of my essays are listed under What’s New if no where else.

   There is a wonderful sense of the poetic here: you learn to appreciate every moment of time as something unique and special; and you see each moment as part of the fabric of everything else that has occurred on earth.  

 

The Lunar Zone

 

After the earth zone is the lunar zone.  It takes me about two seconds and I am fully present here with my mental body.  Think silvery, slightly violet light.  Think moonlight, magnetic and gravitational pull on the earth, tides rising and falling.  The lunar zone’s vibration is often invoked in a Wicca ceremony.  The lunar vibration is thick and rich in the call to prayer at an Islamic mosque. 

    The lunar zone is an inner peace with the universe.  It is the ability to enter a dream and experience it here and now as if it is completely real. 

    “Going into the light?”  Think that when someone dies they go into a dream and live within an astral place that is appropriate and comfortable to their astral nature, assuming they make it that far. 

   Basically, you step outside of space and time without emphasizing a connection to our physical world which is so characteristic of the earth zone.  Here you get to pursue the most subtle vibrations of the astral plane.  Obsessed with internet, with computer games, with sex, with gambling, eating or not eating or some other kind of addiction?  What do these things do?  What do they have in common? 

    For one, they take you outside of the tensions and anxieties of your life.   They take you into an imaginary situation, a situation offering, in however twisted and warped way, a ray of hope, a sense of completion, a temporary taste of satisfaction and the thrill of being alive. 

    Enter the lunar zone and at least in terms of your inner life, your life of feeling, you are already anywhere you want to be.  It is that real of a dream.  Do you hear voices?  Something unreal is calling to you as if it is real? 

    The lunar zone is Yeats:  “Come away Oh human child, to the forest and the wild, for the world is more full of suffering than you can understand.”  The lunar zone has its dark side, its negative vibration and when this low grade vibration touches people it takes them into a dream but a dream that turns into a  nightmare, insanity, obsession, torment, sorrow, regret, lost life, illusion—all of that because they do not draw upon its positive light. 

    The positive lunar light is the illumination of a dream that allows you to live within what shall be so that you see and experience exactly what you need in order to change the world.  As in, “I have a dream” and “without a vision the people perish.” 

     To be nurtured from within when the world offers you no nourishment--this is the power of the lunar zone.  “Take my hand.  I will find you.  I will guide.  I will heal you. I will be all that you need.  I will show you your path to completion.  Trust me and you shall attain your deepest happiness and highest satisfaction.”  Who speaks in that way without at the same abusing his or her power? 

     The lunar zone is appointed by Divine Providence to provide inner life, self-illumination, inner peace with the universe, the vision and experience of completion, and a perspective that from outside of  time and history allows you to taste, touch, and participate in a high ideal, a dream of  what life is in its innermost heart meant to be.

 

So, get it right.  When someone says, “Christ it going to return, Christ to going to return.  I saw it in a dream. (Or I read it in God’s Word). Come with me and sell all you have (put it in my bank account for safe keeping) and come sit on a hill with me.” Or when they say, “The dream of my God is so real I will simply blow myself up so I can be a martyr and enter paradise that much more quickly since, gee, my life here is so incredibly unfair, unjust, and I don’t want to think about how corrupt my spiritual teachers and political leaders are who can’t figure out how to deal with this world other than trying to destroy it and get back to our golden age.”  

 

These two are both mistaking the power of the dream for the work necessary to make the dream real.  And so they fail in the mandate for the earth of taking responsibility for oneself and for the world.  They do not buy the wisdom that is expensive.  They buy an option that is cheap (that is “out of the money” to use a phrase from investing)—they place their life force and spiritual essence in a bottle that is unable to contain or preserve it.

 

Note: the above lunar zone descriptions were written over a period of three hours.  It may seem like I zoom in and out of spiritual domains with great ease.  I did say it took me two seconds to get into the lunar zone.  At times I do that. But generally, especially when I am trying to write up and communicate my experience, the process is very slow, like a translator trying to make sense of a written language no one has spoken for four thousand years. 

     I am here studying not what I already know.  I am looking for what I do not know--the wisdom that is lurking but easy to miss. 

    Like some yogis who attain bliss, they just want to sit and do yoga and meditate.  What else in life can beat this?  There is a temptation with the lunar zone to want to stay here forever.  Why return to reality? 

    Perhaps the answer is in the voice of the lunar akasha which seems to say, “I am peace and I am serenity.  Don’t think small.  Think big.  Become peace.  Become serenity. Become the vision that encompasses the beginnings and final ends of history.  Think ‘Peace on earth and good will toward men.’”

    

A few additional notes: being here is almost exactly like a waking dream—you are asleep but you wake up within the dream and realize that you can design your own dreams and then experience what you have imagined.

    Last night I dreamed that Phelps Dodge, a stock I had bought three days ago, went up another two dollars.  Today it did go up and I sold it near its high today with a ten dollar per share gain after holding it for four days.  Phillips Dodge (symbol: PD) does this little up and down movement about four times a year.  This time I rode the rise just right.

    Dreams do not have to be so prosaic and materialistic.  Imagine you could write a dream or two for tonight that you would experience after you fall asleep.  I just worked through several dreams—dreams that bring happiness, peace, tranquility, satisfaction, contentment, love, an inner connection to others, friendship, and why even peace on earth.  

     Imagine the dream with details, with feelings, with new experience, with surprises happening, with a sense of physical and emotion reality.  The lunar sphere embodies a vibration that is rich in emotional images and sensual experience.  It is a dense magnetism that with the breath of spirit gives life to the dream of satisfaction and fulfillment contained within any desire, longing, hope, or purpose.          

     The lunar sphere is the magic and enchantment within every fairy tale.  Be clear: the lunar sphere does not tell you how to proceed—it is not the work you must do to make a dream real.  But just having the dream in place, fully informed with vitality, graphic image, and grace, exercises a power of persuasion over fate.    

    To put it simply, what you imagine within the lunar vibration surprises you because it is so full of life, so unexpected, so satisfying, and new.      

 

See also on my website my articles on spirits from the lunar zone--Ebvep, Emrudue, and Gabriel

 

The Mercury Zone

 

Well, enough of the lunar zone for now.  Let’s get out of this mode of inner illumination and move on to Mercury.  Mercury is your high school teacher and college professor trying their hardest to get you to think clearly.  Isolate the parts, aspects, and variables.  Separate, study, define, and then integrate into a whole.  Gain a perspective that takes everything into consideration. 

    The spirits of the Mercury zone speak thus: “You have a problem?  We have a solution in the here and now, for God is a God of action and we are the servants of the Most High.”

    One of the mysteries of human history is when Pope Leo went out single handedly, alone, and had a conversation with Attila the Hun who was on his way to sack Rome.  After the “conversation,” Attila the Hun turned his army around and went somewhere else.  This is the sphere of Mercury appearing briefly on earth.  Mercury is about communication, clarity, reason, and persuasion. 

   But Mercury is not timid.  Like Moses in Egypt, its voice is quite willing to appropriate the elements of nature into its voice of persuasion.  In Mercury, science and magic are the same thing.  You can solve the problem one way or you can solve the problem the other way.  What is the difference?  You use whatever means is easiest for you and the most accessible.

     The periodic table?  Scientists arrived at a point where they realized that elements have chemical properties that follow patterns according to atomic mass.  This way they could predict the nature of elements before they had even discovered them. That is clear thinking combined with experimentation and observation. 

 

Dark matter?  Can’t get a handle on it?  Evades all your instruments, observation, research, and theories even though you figure it makes up 95 % of the matter in the universe?  You can put your mind directly into dark matter. 

     Gee, look at that!  It is like gravity but it is not gravity.  Perhaps the universe has dimensions impinging on our own that we have not yet defined according to our categories of space and time.  That is the magical approach.  Just getting a handle on solving a problem a little bit ahead of the science of our time. 

   The sphere of Mercury is Joseph in Egypt interpreting the dream of the pharaoh and then putting into play an economic means so that Egypt would survive the coming seven years of famine.  When a Jew has a gift from God, like Joseph or Einstein, the whole world is influence by its application.

   Wiccans and Moslems have the vibration of the lunar sphere.  When they get the dream right, they are full of inspiration and inner illumination.  When they get the dream wrong, they are haunted by dark visions and terrible suffering. 

    Jews have the vibration of the sphere of Mercury.  When they get it right, they speak with the Voice of God prophesizing the fate of the nations and revealing the nature of matter, space, time, and energy in addition to their superb sense of business acumen.  When they get the vibration wrong, they spend thousands of years wondering what they have done wrong. 

    The voice of akasha in Mercury?  “I am clarity.  I am communication.  I exist to solve problems and to offer options.” 

    The archangel Gabriel presides over the lunar zone.  Evoking him produces in my experience a vision of the entire sky being filled with choirs of angels singing with astonishing beauty.  I don’t get angels here singing to God in the Mercury sphere.  Instead, there is a prevailing sense of the worship of the Divine Majesty, full of glory, wonder, and awe. 

    A princess in my screenplay, The Fall of Atlantis, demanded that a magician give her a demonstration of his magic since she accidentally discovered he could speak the cosmic language.  He replied, “The Divine Majesty is known for its creativity.  What dream would you make real?” Mercury takes the dream of the lunar sphere out of the inner psyche, out of the desire of your heart, and materializes it through a brilliant plan of action or else the masterful applications of a magical will. 

   In the hermetic tradition of magic a la Franz Bardon, the magician takes responsibility in some way for the world.  He seeks real time and real world solutions to problems which often seem to have no solution.  This is the inspiration and power from this sphere. 

     If you are going to practice magic, real magic, for twenty five years, then you ought to occasionally read in newspaper headlines the results of something you have accomplished that benefits mankind.  Otherwise, you might be happier pursuing some other form of leisure time activity, one that is not so exhausting and which is a lot more rewarding for all the effort and time you put into your practice. 

 

Friday, 9/29/06

 

The Venus Sphere

 

Franz Bardon likes to say that the three previous spheres are analogous to the physical, astral, and mental planes.  If that is the case, then this sphere is the integration and harmonious interaction between them.  This is the realm where the personality is perfected—the physical body, the emotions, and mind find their common ground and highest mode of harmony and expression.

   It takes me a few moments to get the emerald green light right and then my impressions start streaming in. What I notice right away is that this sphere enhances the sense of knowing who you are and what you are best at doing.  As a consequence, you know how to maximize your positive influence on others and the world to the greatest extent. 

    Your personality—it enables you to get the most out of any situation.  You are not stuck in your thoughts or caught in your emotions or slow in your responses actions due to your body’s habitual reactions.  You feel invigorated, alive, and ready to engage what is occurring in the world around you.

   In my Pop Quiz for Magicians I mention a humorous anecdote in which a spirit appeared to me at age four and asked me to enter the divine service.  I told the spirit in effect to get lost because its call represented to me that Pisces Age crap of blind devotion, submission, and fanatical dedication.  This is the Age of Aquarius.  We are after conscious knowledge, individual innovation, and the creative exercise of volition. 

    So the spirit quite cleverly decided to utilize the powers of Venus.  It had a female incarnate nine months later who I would meet in college and who would introduce me to the spiritual world in which she lived—a world full awe, wonder, and elemental beauty as well as horror, darkness, and the powers of domination. 

   You can sit in front of a guru or some great world teacher who speaks wisdom and knowledge.  But that kind of inspiration and charisma are low grade and meager competition when it comes to meeting your opposite—a member of the opposite gender who reveals to you directly what is missing from your life and exactly what it feels like to be whole, complete, and attuned to your destiny. 

    When it comes to knowing others, your self, or God, there is nothing that can compete with love.  When it comes to attaining illumination or riding the highest learning curve, imagine what it is like to meet someone who embodies an entire kingdom of sensory experience, emotional life, and mental awareness that is from outside the boundaries of your life. 

    But this is not an area for the faint of heart, those who are insecure, manipulative, or greedy.  Love has a way of tearing you apart.  And then it puts you back together again making you new and revealing the divine spark within you.  Short circuit the process or fail to follow it to completion in terms of what you have to learn and you end up in pieces.  No healing, no integration, and no empowerment.  Better to stick to that guru who wants only to clone himself within you.

    There are a great many stories from mythology that portray the power of love and Eros.  I will skip those since I discuss them in many places elsewhere.  (See my essay on Problems in the Study of Magic, Part III).  Let me instead point to my immediate impression right now: I sense how in this sphere personal love is treated as a divine art. 

   This is not in the sense of a marriage ritual established by religion and tradition.  Instead, the Divine Presence is perceived in and through the attraction of opposites.  Life, space, time, matter, and spirit exist through the dance, the polarity, and the expression of opposites.   The dynamic polarity of opposites fully engaged results in the highest magic.      

     So, in the lunar sphere we meet a dream, well, many dreams of attaining an inner peace with the universe.  Here in Venus, we carry that dream(s) inside of us as we express ourselves actively in the world.  The Wicca ceremony joining the God and Goddess within the vibration of the lunar sphere?  The Islamic call to prayer with its hypnotic taste of the arch angel Gabriel’s peace? 

     The Temple of Solomon wherein once a year God Himself would appear within the Holy of Holies?  The magnificence of the Tai Mahal?  The grandeur of the Grand Canyon, the tranquility of Sedona, the splendor of Yosemite?  The mystery of the pyramids, the glory of the Parthenon, the inspiration of St. Peters Cathedral?  

     In the sphere of Venus we internalize and carry all of these feelings, dreams, wonders, awe, and inspiration inside of us.  They are a part of our internal life.  It is quite obvious from being here that the journey toward entering the Divine Presence and meeting God face to face begins with the experience of His creation—namely, in and through our personal experience with life and in and through personal love.

    When you are in love and you truly love for many years, a lot of the qualities and powers of the other person appear within your self.  Love is not idle.  It captures the essence of the other and internalizes it.  There is in fact an exchange of inner soul, life, and spirit.  Venus captures the splendor and magnificence of everything beautiful and makes it a part of its self.  

   It would be nice if they taught this respect for beauty, the study of polarities, and the means for internalizing its harmony within one’s physical body, emotional life, and mental awareness in Sunday school, but they do not.  The sphere of Venus is beyond the knowledge of all religions on earth.  Oh, occasionally someone intuits its presence and tries to express it. There have been great artists and geniuses who briefly enter this sphere through force of will.  But the methods of teaching and mastering the grace of Venus have not yet appeared on earth.  

    I suppose the methods are not all that difficult to conceive.  Lovers think constantly about each other.  They are trying to make the other a part of themselves.  The German poet Rilke used to sit in front of something like a cathedral and clear his mind and just focus on his feelings and body sensations in response to his perception.  Then he would write a poem. 

    Imagine taking all the examples above from nature and religion and concentrating on them until you could produce their beauty and wonder at will within yourself.  Imagine being inside Socrates as he is engaging his students in dialogue as he is walking about Athens or inside the mind of Beethoven as he is composing the Ninth Symphony.  Imagine being inside the mind of Lao Tzu who with fine brush strokes is composing the Tao Te Ching: “One who has the wings of a man and the wings of a woman also is in himself .... an image of the world ....” I imagine the art of Venus is something like that.

 

See also my essays on Venus spirits--Gomah, Guru, and Obideh.
  

The Solar Sphere

 

 Onward.  Where do all these ecstatic, blissful, and wondrous experiences with love lead?   They lead to the sphere of the sun, to the realm of pure light.  

    The method is to surround oneself with bright, brilliant light like the sun.  And then project your mind into the sphere or aura of the sun known in Kabbalah as Tipareth.  It is possible in the sphere of Venus to so love another and to be equally loved in return that a miracle happens.  You feel so full of love that you experience in the same moment a love for all living beings—you desire to protect them and to promote their fulfillment.

    It is a crazy notion, especially here on earth where just surviving and succeeding in our occupation is a major life accomplishment.  What is this crap about divine empathy that takes into account the needs of others?  Leave that to mother Teresa and the Dalai Lama.  Their traditions somehow have propelled them into that space of the heart.

    Nonetheless, experiencing love for everything alive is still a personal experience.  It is the desire to take something you feel within your heart and to express it through action.

    The solar sphere is not so personal.  Here it is the divine spark within yourself, your contact with and embodiment of Divine Providence and the divine spirit within you—these become fully activated.   What is that like?

     I have projected my mind into the heart of the Dalai Lama and studied his energy, his inspiration, and his motivation.  (I am doing this right now in fact).  I mean he actually has thousands of students pass through his chakras during a Kalachakra empowerment.  This projecting into others to experience their essence is par for the course, normal operating procedure in some traditions.  Make it a life long habit. 

    The Dalai Lama’s heart is like an endless sea of compassion.  It is breathtaking.  Now, by comparison, (this is what writers and commentators do) the heart of the archangel Gabriel (just a moment.  Okay. Here I am inside of his heart) is a love, a peace, and a vision that encompasses all of human history.  It is very angelic.  But the Dalai Lama is the real thing.  His heart at least is that of a god incarnate which his tradition proclaims he is. 

    Still, the Dalai Lama is not operating from the sphere of the sun.  It is not the quality that is lacking. It is the level of power behind it.  If the Dalai Lama radiated the sphere of the sun, when he met Mao, Mao would have, like Attila the Hun confronting Pope Leo, turn aside from invading Tibet.  Didn’t happen.

     In other words, you can shine with the light of infinite compassion and a mean old dictator can put out your light-- at least in terms of killing a million of your followers, stealing your country, and forcing you into exile.    

    The light of the sun is not so concerned about personal integration and the extent of its influence.  Its light shines to the ends of the universe.  The higher spirits of this sphere are autonomous, independent, creating their energy and inspiration from within.  And from within they are joined directly to God, the Creator of the universe.  It makes them wild, dazzlingly exuberant, and utterly free to express themselves according to their own inner vision.

     The voice of the sun?  “The solar system revolves around me.  My energy and light nurtures life and brings beings into full consciousness.  By passing through me, they attain to their divinity.”

     In each second, millions of tons of matter are exchanged for energy within the sun with temperatures of fifty million degrees.  It takes a million years for those photons to reach the sun’s surface.  And then in minutes that light streams past the inner planets and out into the surrounding universe.

    The fusion of opposites within the sun is so massive and complete that when you experience this process within your self you become an independent source of life, light, and wisdom. 

     Having spent five thousand hours in Baptist churches when I was a youth, now that I am older I love to dialogue with Jews.  The Catholic Pope is quite wrong in saying the Logos and reason are an essential part of Christianity.  The Catholic theologians in borrowing and stealing Greek philosophy got it all wrong.  They did a great disservice with the result of placing barriers in the way of individual’s desire for spirituality.  

    A Jew can understand this.  God is formless.  There is no relation between the concepts developed by the mind in Greek philosophy and the formless, imageless God.  God is like akasha, penetrating through space and time. Western philosophers in the end try to conceptualize the forces unfolding history.  You can get for example dialectical materialism from this approach or a historian like Toynbee. God understands the forces of history and also the issues of each individual’s heart.  Even Kierkegaard with his resistance movement attempting to overthrow the powers of reason only made matters worst. 

    So I dialogue with Jews.  For me the question Christian theologians should have asked in the first century is how can we present Christ in a way that is not in conflict with Judaism?  After all, it is not possible in Judaism for God to incarnate as a human being.  On this, all the prophets of the Old Testament are in agreement, well, everyone except maybe Isaiah.

     So, imagine an individual who has the inner dream of the lunar sphere—an inner peace that reflects and derives from the universe.  And he has that mental power of Mercury (like unto Balaam) and can concentrate with his mind like Mercury spirits for hours on end without the slightest thought or distraction disturbing his concentration.  And like the spirits of the sphere of Venus, he has experienced the bliss of union to such a degree that every cell in his body is overflowing with love, a love that effortlessly encompasses the world.

     And to this add an inner stillness like the spirits of the sphere of the sun who within are so empty of form and so utterly open to the divine that at last God can be reflected within and through them—like light from the sun in which the exact photons that strike the mirror are the same ones that the mirror reflects without distortion.  In other words, a human being, like the solar spirits, can be so still and mirror like within his heart that God’s Presence is reflected through him. 

    Well, that in my understanding would be a doctrine of incarnation in which Christ could say, “I and the Father are one” which is precisely what the higher spirits of the solar sphere can say.  Now, I would never expect a Jew to like my interpretation.  But this is a possible answer to the question about how close Christianity and Judaism might come at least in terms of initiating a dialogue. 

    But then again Christian would never like my interpretation.  They want a Christ so divine that he can not commit sin, in fact, he is so God that he does not even have a choice to commit sin.  That may be the doctrine you want to buy into.  But that choice by definition means God does it all for you.  (And by definition, at least for me, you no longer have a human being—no  choice, then no humanity). You do not have to lift a finger to enter this brilliant, radiant light I am currently sitting within.  And that I would consider a spiritual act of criminal negligence. 

      But I am an Aquarian, remember?  I don’t like human beings or spirits telling me what to think or do.  I like to find my own answers though investigation and direct experience.  Evangelists can be content to “see through a glass darkly.” I am not.    

     I should point out that meditating within the sun does not make anyone a master no more than sitting  in a class at Harvard or attending Harvard summer school (which anyone can attend) grants you a degree from Harvard.  Though I have to admit that the two classes I took in economics at Harvard summer school were the best economics classes I ever had.   It is nice when the professor of economics once helped run the British economy.  The illustrations in his lectures are often drawn from the choices he himself made.

     Another thing about sitting here meditating in the sun is that your light is seen from other stars.  You hear their songs.  You are a part of the harmony of the universe.  The harmony is analogues to Venus and reflected in a soft, quiet way in the light of the moon.  The sun is just far more dynamic and expansive. 

     What else?  In this light there is no selfishness.  There is no fear.  There is a grand nobility.  There is still individuality.  But when you look at the individual you tend to not see the person but rather the beauty of the universe that shines through them.  

     Does the sun have a dark side? Obviously.  Its light is so bright, even when reflected in a dim and twisted manner though someone’s personality, that it blinds others and turns them into narrow minded fanatics.  Overwhelm others with the power of your words and the brilliant ideal for which you stand and then kill off millions with the stupidity of your economic system or through the cruelty of your dominion.  Happens all the time.  Expressing the negative is so much easier than mastering the positive. 

 

See for example my essay on the solar spirit EMNASUT.

 

The Sphere of Mars

 

What?  After the sun there is more to do?  Well, let’s take a look.       

     The analogy is rather simple.  The sun, like Jupiter also, is like a king who oversees and illuminates a realm with his wise decisions.  Mars, then, is the captain of the guard and commander of the armed forces.  His job is to preserve and protect.  He is to the kingdom what the white blood cells are within the body—they fight off infections.  Without its presence the immune system weakens and the body dies.  

    So, the king is over there in the solar sphere exercising the wisdom of Solomon and helping his people with his judgments and inspiring them with his light.  Mars on the other hand is practicing like any good martial artist three hours minimum per day in perfecting his martial arts.  Which are?

   First, he is mastering himself.  This is not only your basic astral equilibrium of bringing the elements into balance within your self.  This is more than the spirits of Mercury who though the power of magic control the elements of nature. 

     No, when it comes to hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, tornadoes, thunderstorms, lightning, pyroclastic flows, volcanoes, and the like, Mars embodies these powers within himself.  It is a lot more personal.  It is a matter of reflecting though oneself the fundamental powers of creation in both their creative and destructive aspects. 

     The white blood cells are not the Red Cross or Green Peace.  They are like special force units whose mission is to destroy the enemy.  Until a species fully ascends and attains total and complete enlightenment, becoming like unto spirits, the sphere of Mars will have an essential role to play.  It is about survival and survival is sacred. You as an individual can die and an entire planet and civilization can be destroyed in any moment.  Get used to it.  Survival is always an issue.  

     Need action in a catastrophe?  Do you have a hurricane Katrina? If one helicopter pilot had defied government authorities and flew over to the coliseum in New Orleans with all those desperate people waiting for help—if he had rescued just one or two people, he would have been on the cover of newspapers around the world, the cover of Time Magazine, and on the Larry King show.  He probably would have testified before Congress and won the election for the next Congressional seat. 

     All of this because he did what no one in the government was able to do—act in a timely manner.  You want your armed forces trained, mobile, and ready to go.  You want to be able to know how to stop five lanes of traffic to rescue someone injured in an accident or how to  find the one escape route that is open when you building is about to collapse.  You want to be able to have total command of all your faculties and turn your adrenaline to the highest possible level while retaining a clear mind.  Survival is sacred and it sometimes requires that we take command of all the power we can command in a moment of time.          

     Now then, in a well-known national newspaper today I have a quote in a letter to the editor written by a nation’s Press Secretary to the U.N. “[Our] nuclear program is entirely peaceful, legal and is under the watchful inspection of IAEA.  In his Aug. 31 report, the IAEA’s director-general, Mohammad ElBaradei, stated: ‘[This country] has been providing the agency with access to nuclear material and facilities and has provided the required reports.” 

   Okay.  Let me just jump directly inside of the mind of this nation’s president.  Here I am now.  I am just going to ask him outright if he is planning to develop nuclear weapons. 

    His response: “I hope to have nuclear weapons within the next year.  You do not build a hundred billion dollars worth of nuclear facilities—heavy and light water reactors, centrifuges for extracting uranium form uranium fluoride, plutonium, uranium and secret underground facilities—in order to produce electricity and peaceful medical research.  You do not make that kind of investment when we could spend twelve billion dollars instead for an oil refinery and produce gasoline for ourselves instead of importing it as we now do.”

    (Note: here I am editing this essay and N. Korea, a different nation, just tested its first nuclear weapon.)

     I am getting ahead of myself.  I usually leave matters concerning karma, the suffering of millions, and justice to the Judges of Saturn.  You can thank this president and others like him for motivating me to write this essay.  I am moving through the planetary spheres on my way out to Saturn in order to gain a better perspective on this issue of the proliferation of nuclear weapons.  Aquarians worry about the future and we at times have the telepathic capacity to consider options in solving problems.  Back to Mars.

     The maxim within Mars is simple and straightforward: “You train your self to whatever extend is necessary in order to accomplish your mission.”  This training is not just mind, emotions, and body.  The beings in this sphere train their inner spirit as well.  If it is necessary, they will incorporate the fundamental forces of nature into their wills.       

     When I was young, I was disturbed by the fact that other nations had nuclear weapons pointed at my house.  Yes, that is right.  I took it personally.  These nuclear weapons were a threat to my self and my future children. 

     What is the level of will within a human being that is analogous to a nuclear weapon?  Does a petty dictator, a strong man, or a religious fanatic understand the power at the nucleus of an atom that he has under his command? 

   You want the peaceful application of nuclear energy?  Then from the perspective of Mars you will need a power of will that can survive the sphere of Saturn, that has an absolute commitment to preserving life understanding that all of life is sacred.  It is a will that, without abuse, is able to channel though itself the very powers of creation.

     And what is funny is that when fusion reactors appear instead of the fission reactors we now use, oil prices will fall within ten years from sixty to less than twenty dollars a barrel.  The Arab kingdoms raking in all this oil profit will soon be bankrupt. 

    By all means, let’s have peaceful applications of nuclear energy.  Understand, the human race will then find it easy to place colonies on Mars and within a hundred years in other solar systems.   But these peaceful applications will not happen unless there are individuals who train their body, emotions, mind, and inner spirit aligning themselves with the powers of creation so that “nation shall not lift of sword against nation.”  Otherwise, the suffering will be greater than anything occurring in the last century of two world wars.  

 

See also my essays on the Mar’s spirits Idida and Gibsir

 

The Sphere of Jupiter

 

Today my first response to being in the blue light is a feeling of gratefulness for the simple things I have been given.  Growing up, I have had food to eat.  I had thrilling and challenging physical activities.  I had people around me who were committed to living a good life.  I had intellectual interests and challenges on a high level. 

    And, though rudimentary and very basic, there were people who were honestly trying to pursue a spiritual life.  I can be grateful because not more than a half mile away there lived large numbers of people who did have these things.  While I had the wealth of Jupiter on at least three levels, they experienced poverty, drug addictions, crime, broken families, cultural deprivation, and horrific living conditions.  We did not have crime in my neighborhood because the mob boss lived across the street and criminal activity was forbidden.  Wealth on earth is never without irony and contradiction. 

      The vibration of this sphere encourages you, in fact, demands of you that you think in terms of being wealthy within yourself.  And this wealth means having such an expansive spirit that you seek to enhance every situation you are in making it better because your interaction adds something of value. 

   Do you have a problem holding you back?  Solve your own problem and you solve the same problem for many.  Overcoming your limitation enables you to enrich others’ lives. 

   I am told by someone who used to sit with Bill Gates during corporate meetings that in spite of hiring the best and most brilliant people in the business community, Bill Gates just “doesn’t get it.  He does not understand even the most basic changes that have occurred in technology.  And if you suggested to Bill Gates or Steve Ballmer that they no longer ‘bundle’ their products in Windows, they would die of a heart attack.” 

     Sell people individual items so people can pick and choose what they really want?  Forget it.  Forcing crap on people is what has made Bill Gates the richest man in the world.  Still, he was once innovative and masterful in leading his corporation to supreme success. 

    But the history of corporations in America demonstrates a pattern—those that succeed later stagnate.  They can not keep up their level of growth and creativity.  To do so, they would have to reinvent themselves. 

    How do you reinvent yourself?  You go back to basics.  You start over.  You see life anew.  For Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer?  Stop thinking in terms of how you can manipulate and exploit others’ weaknesses.  Allow your self to act, think, and feel differently.  Take the perspective of others.  Think in terms of what they want and need.

   A family stock broker said to me, “I don’t make money unless you make money.  How can I help you?”  I replied, “Sure.  Give me the list of all the foreign stocks listed on the New York Stock Exchange.”  He never got back to me.  Ten minutes on internet and I discovered the New York Stock Exchange, nyse.com, lists all the ADR’s or foreign stocks by country on its website. 

   A lot of people are not trying to help you or others.  They are wrapped up in their own ways of thinking.  To grasp life, you have to think outside the box. 

    So, the mark of someone who has a vastly expansive inner spirit?  This individual knows how to listen without preconceptions and then creatively responds.  In the remake of the TV series, Battlestar Galactica, the scientist Baltar has an inner guardian spirit and later he in effect plays the same role for another woman.  The guardian spirits save the lives of their human counterparts over and over.  They do this simply by pointing out things that are completely obvious. 

    When you are entangled in life situations, the most obvious things miss you.  But when an expansive inner spirit is present, in this case, one who is completely detached and yet utterly intimate, you change your behavior and seize opportunities the moment they arise.  Generosity and nobility, seizing the high road, are the pure power of creativity.  They are freedom in action.

     You want the high road?  You want to live a good life?  You want to do something remarkable and noble with your self?  You want be able to say at the end of your life, “Here and here I did things and made decisions that even God has got to appreciate.”  

       “Tell me why we live so many sad and lonely years?” asks the song writer.  So often we live our lives without growing, transforming, or learning anything new.  Jupiter offers things to do during each stage of our lives that grant us the highest levels of fulfillment.  These things are also the very things that enable us to fulfill and enhance others’ lives as well.  Do this and you do not possess wealth externally.  You embody the wealth of spirit.

    I could write a book on the value of honesty and integrity in business transactions and how they lead to success.  I could go on to discuss in detail how power corrupts and the corruption that plagues businesses and governments around the world.  But I will skip the anecdotes. 

    Sitting here in the blue energy of Jupiter, I gaze out at the lives of many people I know who have succeeded in their careers.  And from the point of view of Jupiter, “You fight to protect every single dollar you make.” (George Forman after losing millions).  But you also realize equally “Our work is humanity.” (Lewis Carole.)

   Learn to listen well to others.  And then recreate your self and the world around you, for this is the will of God and the power of akasha in Jupiter.        

 

See my essays on the Jupiter spirits Asmodel and Aduachiel.

 

The Sphere of Saturn  

 

Ah, Saturn!  I often mention that Saturn is like a nightmare.  It is rather gloomy.  Druids and Wiccans, however, see that Beltane and Samhuinn (Halloween) are both sacred times on the same circle of life.  They each view life from the opposite side of the other.

     Beltane is like Venus.  It is a time of joining and coming to together, of the bliss and ecstasy of union, and the creation of new life.  Samhuinn is like Saturn.  It is death and separation.  It is departing and leaving behind the life we know and have lived. 

    Sitting here in the aura of Saturn it is natural to ask certain questions such as “What did my great grandfather and grandmother bequeath to me?  Did they live through horror and suffering so that I might live and breathe?  What part of their lives produced something of value that has come down to me?  What sins did they commit, what good did they omit that has passed down through the generations and which I have to now deal with?  And will my great grandchildren ask the same questions about me? 

    Will anything of my self remain?  Or will time destroy all that I am?  Shall the person that I am now be no more?

      I quite the Psalmist often in my essays, “You turn men to destruction and say, ‘Return you children of men,’ for a thousand years in Your sight are but as yesterday when it is past or as a watch in the night.”  These words could easily have been written by a man who had a habit of meditating as I am doing right now within the sphere of Saturn.
     Time destroys all things.  Can we join Samhuinn and Beltane, Venus and Saturn within our hearts so that separation and death lose their sting?  I have suggested this path in some of my poetry.  (See the poem, Samhuinn).

 

If we could join Venus and Saturn within our hearts, then we would realize how precious love is and also how rare, fragile, and fleeting.  In any case, however we decide to bargain, negotiate, deny, resent, protest, or accept our fate and the limitations of life, meditating here is certainly viewing your life from the other side of the grave. 

     Some Shaman from different parts of the earth, in order to become healers and to overcome their own and others fears/demons, meditate in graveyards.  It is standard practice.  To understand what it is to be alive you have to view life from both sides.

   Meditating here today is very melancholy.  I find myself reliving experiences with others, both the beginning and end of the relationships.  In the movie, Meet Joe Black, the wealthy industrialist says that “sixty five years go by like that” and he snaps his fingers. 

    There are auctions in Los Angeles for storage facilities in which the rent has not been paid.  You can bid on the contents of a storage locker but you do not get to see what is inside unless you win the bid.  Sometimes a man has left his valuables, his memorabilia, his keepsakes, etc.  And there are the pictures of his wedding, his marriage life, his vacations, his family, and his divorce papers.  It has gone.  It is the memories of a life time that now fall into the hands of a stranger who is no more than a scavenger.  How sad.

      Would he have still married that girl if he had known the final end?  What would he have tried to do different if he had known the end as a possibility he might have been able to forestall?  If “death were his guide” would he have been able to be both detached and loving enough to realize that in life the best and the worst walk side by side?  The infant’s first cry and the last breath of that child who later in life shall die—from Saturn you see them both in the same moment before your eyes.  

 

Now then, back to my theme.  I am out here in Saturn in my relentless, persevering, and life long quest for world peace.  After all, before I was born, Stalin killed tens of millions in Russia but Mao holds the current record of thirty million starved to death in China due to his idiotic economic policies.  I would like to play a small part in keeping such disasters from happening in this century.  

   I notice I have already written in my earlier writings the answer I am looking for now.  But I wanted to be sure.  I wanted to get the feeling stronger from within.

    To deal with a rogue nation rattling its nuclear saber and already threatening the destruction of other nations, simply follow the handbook.  The manual I am reading from which I have found in the akasha of Saturn reads—

 

Join your self to the sphere of Saturn so you are like unto one of the Judges of Saturn who has come down to earth.  And then mediate on the issues of justice and karma and the visions of what shall be from the point of view of Saturn and eternity.

    Become literally the Spirit of Christmas Future who takes that world leader into the future and shows him his own death and the final end of all his works on earth.  Those who return from brief encounters with death or who have survived cancer often see life through new eyes.  They see the life that remains to them as a gift rather than as an opportunity to see how much they can exploit. 

    Give this gift: give the experience of undergoing death while still alive.  Perhaps there is still time for a man to change his ways before he shall die.  “He that rules over men must be just .... and he shall be as the light of the morning, even a morning without clouds, after rain, with tender grass springing out of the earth.”(the last words of King David).

   Judgment day is akasha.  It is in every moment.  Millions can die or a man can make a better choice so that suffering is avoided and life and light are preserved on earth.  

 

Ah, that is what I was looking for—a little reassurance and wisdom about how to proceed with a very difficult karmic situation involving the nations of the earth.   

 

See my essays on Finding Saturn in Yourself and also Saturn, an evocation.  Also, my essay on Achaiah presents a peace meditation. 

 

10/22/06, Sunday.  Again visiting Saturn.  The energy is dense, heavy, and filled with the spirit of oppression.  Just think of any time when you were held back from moving forward—when getting what you wanted confronted overwhelmingly opposition. 

    It is a time when you are beset by darkness and can not find a path to follow.  It is a time when nothing around you seems to express or reflect the desires of your heart.  It is a time when all the opportunities for expanding your experience, for feeling alive, and getting the most out of life seem to come crashing down.  Your hopes dashed to pieces, dreams shattered, your life shipwrecked.

      Okay.  Let us take a look at this again.  A few brief reminiscences.  Hard work is one theme of Saturn.  I know a family.  The grandfather taught himself chemistry and metallurgy.  He emigrated to the U.S.  Here he gained and lost four fortunes one after the other.  Fifty years later an economist would invent the idea of preserving capital by diversifying your investments over different sector and size corporations.  The grandfather was extremely creative but his creativity lacked an essential self reflective capacity.  He failed to learn from his mistakes; or, sudden opportunities that boom and then bust are hard to learn from when so many others are making the same mistakes.   

    His son also amassed a fortune managing to hold on to it for most of his life but lost it in the end.  However, this descendant was able to do what his father before him was unable to do: keep his sons close to him by offering them jobs in his company. 

   Now the grandson also amassed a small fortune.  But unlike his father who was widowed twice and yet had the habit of marrying three Church organists one after the other, he married an accountant.  Accounting is the work of Saturn. 

   In those days, woman could become accounts but they could not get jobs as accountants.  Why had she studied accounting?  She wanted to understand the stock crash of 1929 and the resulting depression. 

    During that crash, her family survived for months buying food with the sixty dollars she had saved.  And her father was the only one on his floor of the General Motors building in Detroit who did not commit suicide or die of a heart attack during the crash of 1929.  Our recent Enron corporation debacle is nothing compared to the betrayal of employees and investors by GM management, the Fischer brothers, and Merrill Lynch. 

    So when her husband tried to do what his grandfather and father before him had done, namely lose his money after a life time of hard work (I mean, we are talking sixty and seventy hour weeks), his wife kept him in check.  She would yell and scream when he was about to throw away his money on some idiotic venture.  You could say that unlike his ancestors he was blessed by having a representative of Saturn by his side. 

     Another example.  Imagine Jesus.  Harold Bloom, a Jewish author and literary critic who wrote Jesus and Yahweh, says that in spite of the Christian attempt to rewrite the Old Testament, there is no Jew in history more loyal to Yahweh than Jesus.  And so, as opposed to both Jewish and Christian revisionism, when Jesus is asked about which is the highest law you can imagine his response.

   Now questions about law are another theme of Saturn.  Saturn is not only about balance and the ending balance.  It is about justice and judgment.  It is about the judicial interpretation of divine law and its applications. 

    With his spirit joined to akasha, Jesus could understand Yahweh’s perspective: “I have sent you prophets for a thousand years.  And I recall every single time you ignored them, resented them, mocked them, scorned them, persecuted them, sold them into slavery, or killed them.  Only very rarely did you respond.  For this reason, I will not send you another prophet.  

    “But just to answer your question--all the laws and prophets can be reduced to two commandants. (Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and the second is like unto it, Love your neighbor as your self).  If your religion does not take you to the bottom line (and lead you into akasha) then it has failed in its purpose making it worthless.  At this point, the divine will abandon you leaving you to your own devices and turning your religion into a house of illusion.”                

    In the example of the grandfather, father, and his son, all three men had a very powerful faith in God.  But they loved their hard work more than they loved God.  Akasha and Saturn exist to enable us to master our limitations.  Therein lies freedom.  But like the heads of nations I am concerned with, there is the danger of becoming enslaved to rituals, daily routines, and the things that one fears.  Having gained power, presidents and dictators fear losing their power rather than using it to its greatest advantage.      

 

11/3/06, Thurs. It is interesting sitting here after projecting my mind into the sphere of Saturn.  I am still aware of my body and surroundings.  But my spirit, the higher aspect of my mind, is also within the sphere of Saturn. 

   The part of my self that I am projecting immediately identifies with the Saturn vibration.  The outlook is that of a guardian angel who views an incarnated person from the point of view that sees his past and future incarnations.  

     It asks itself: What life circumstances can I create for this individual that will allow him to learn the most important lessons of life, not like answers you write on a test but realizations you embody in the very fibers of your being?  How can I get him to face his deepest illusions head on so that he learns on his own through his own insight and from his own experience that wisdom is better than folly.

    And that truth is so valuable that the pain of finding it and then enduring it is justified because the entire venture of life is designed for the discovery of truth? And how can I get him to see that freedom is found in learning all that can be learned from life and then learning how to share that wisdom with others? 

     What situations can I place him in so that when I give him the greatest gifts life has to offer these gifts do not destroy his life like the winners of so many lotteries who lose all sense of perspective and moderation because their intentions are no longer constrained by familiar boundaries?  And above all else, how can I make him my friend and confidant so I no longer have to wreck his life in order to gain his attention or use sickness, depression, and lost love to awaken his conscience?      

     How do I get him to realize that the laws of the universe and the laws of society are not the same? That both are subject to interpretation and that both can be modified, appealed, or amended by judicial oversight and creative action that recreates?  

   All of the above sounds rather detached and distant.  But guardian angels are kind of detached and distant, aren’t they?  Then again, the perspective here also asks: If I were in his body with his emotions, background, and mind could I make a better choice than the one he is making without losing my feeling of being alive?  What option do I see and am I willing to act upon that he does not see and can not grasp as a better alternative to the dark fate that awaits him?      

 

The Sphere of Uranus

 

If Saturn had a motto it might be: “Be responsible for all your actions.  Learn everything you can from life.  Use your time on earth wisely so your life has a solid foundation and you reap the fruits that arise from living with integrity.  Master your fate and your karma for therein lies freedom.”    

   Uranus also has a motto.  It might read like this: “In the fullness of time all things shall be made new.  This is our commission: To make a new heaven and a new earth.”

     Uranus is about the unexpected.  Saturn is respect for tradition and learning from the past.  Uranus introduces things that have never existed in the past. 

   Uranus is a part of our solar system.  It is in the same plane as the other planets.  It is just that it rotates at an angle to the plane of the solar system.  What is new does not fit in.  It moves at an angle.  It has its own sense of direction. 

   When new things appear in our lives—new and unexpected opportunities—we often let them go by.  The opportunities escape from us.  Our highest destiny pauses for a moment to touch us on the shoulder, to whisper in our ear, to greet us with a friendly smile, a hug and an embrace and then it goes on its way leaving our lives behind.    

    To take hold of the opportunities and gifts from Uranus you have to enter that vibration—think its thoughts, feel its feelings, see with its eyes, dream its visions, and make a place for it in your life.  It takes an effort because what is this new must tear a part something of the old before it becomes alive.

    You can just imagine two Uranus spirits somewhere out there beyond space and time having a casual conversation.  Think of someone like Q from Star Trek and a time traveler from the 28th century.  

 

Q. You know, I have been thinking about giving mankind something new.   

TT. Like what?

Q. Maybe radio.

TT. I think that already have that.

Q. Then air travel.

 TT. They have that too.

Q. How about the ability to pick up a phone and talk to anyone else on earth.  Now that would be great for developing international understanding and bringing about peace between the nations.

TT. They have it and it is not being used in that way.

Q. I know, how about the knowledge of matter and energy transforming into each other?

TT.  Been there.  Done it.  Nearly destroyed the planet. 

 Q. How about internet?            

 TT. You might as well give them virtual pornography.

  Q. New tools for investing?

  TT.  Think money laundering, new cons and scams not to mention spam. 

  Q. Unrestricted access to the encyclopedia of human knowledge?  

  TT.  And imagine that knowledge in the hands of madmen, extremists, cults, and terrorists.

Q. We are getting off topic.  How about antigravity vehicles, energy without dependence on oil, gas, or coal, the ability to observe events in the past, and also to scan the surface of planets in other solar systems close up without need for physical instruments?

TT.  Ah.  Now you are talking.  But you know as well as I what those changes would bring.

Q. Someone would have to open the gate of knowledge.

TT. Yes, if they are willing to pay the price.

 

And so on and on the conversation goes.  But Uranus is not always so mundane.  According to Bardon, Uranus decides when new magical knowledge may be taught on earth.  Uranus is the custodian of all magical keys.  It is the guardian of the gate of wisdom.

   Furthermore, Bardon mentions that for the vibration of Uranus to enter your consciousness you need to be acquainted with the sphere of the moon.  In other words, the gifts of Uranus are so far outside of normal human experience that you have to be able to enter a dream with your full consciousness intact in order to perceive them.  Or, to really ask and answer the questions—What can and what should be?—you need to possess an inner serenity.  Otherwise the weight of daily life will steal from your imagination your insight. 

    And when you think about it the keys to magical knowledge have been rather rare on earth.  The miracles performed by Moses?  The prophets that came later never had more than a small piece of the pie.  None of them ate from the same table that Moses sat at. 

   Christ tried to teach Peter how to walk on water but Peter chickened out.  The Church received no more than a few crumbs left over from the Great Celebration. 

     Padma Samhbava, the great magician and founder of Tibetan Buddhism?  He hid teachings for future ages here and there.  Occasionally something of the knowledge he possessed is found but then again in our own time that knowledge was given back because it was felt we were not yet ready for it. 

    Poor Merlin!  He taught his magic to Niniane and she tricked him and trapped him under a stone.  You could say Niniane was Merlin’s test—a test sent from Uranus and designed by Saturn.  To teach his magic to mankind Merlin had to first find his opposite within himself so he could recognize whether love was true or an illusion.  But does any man on earth possess such wisdom or does any man know the true worth of love?

   There is a hill on the Isle of Iona in Scotland where the sixth century saint, St. Columba, used to talk to angels—on a daily basis mind you.  His disciples describe how his little room at night would shine with its own light.  Columba believed he could enter the Presence of God. 

    But guess what?  He never got around to teaching precisely how to do that to his disciples.  I my terms, the transmission Columba used for shifting between reality and the spiritual worlds was stripped of its gears.  He was so blissed out of his mind, so blinded by the light that, like the Apostle Paul with his vision, Columba never could quite get back to this world. 

    It takes a special effort to focus on what needs to be done to lay a proper foundation for his disciples so they capture his experience or find their own path, one of equal value.  You have to cooperate with Saturn—you have to present something systematic that moves step by step involving self-discovery and self-initiation (self-empowerment) if you want the knowledge of Uranus to enter the world. 

    Why that concept is almost the complete opposite of the idea of religion.  Knowledge is freedom but only in the hands of a person who possesses wisdom—a sense of inner balance, proportion, moderation, and harmony.

    Uranus is very intense.  It is exuberant, full of promise and delight.  Like drinking expensive champagne—in this place, your head gets light.  Uranus is keeper of the treasures life has not yet revealed.  They are yours for the asking. You only need to pay a little price: just take into your hands a small portion of the powers of creation.

   Uranus is all about the powers of creation.  The air here is saturated with the knowledge of the building blocks of time, space, matter, life, and spirit.  It is called the cosmic language but I do not get a lot of email from those who find those kind of practices satisfying.           

    It is easy enough to read stories about the life of Steiner, Crowley, Bardon, and so forth.  Now imagine someone who really had the vibration of Uranus, someone who has made this sphere his home.  What I see is a person with a family who lives out in the country.  He lives a quiet, simple life. 

   But his telepathy is quite good.  His clairfeeling excellent and his clairvoyance right up there with the best.  He does not publish books.  He gives no seminars.  But like the head of the Carnegie, Ford, or Bill Gates foundation, he is constantly looking for new ways to share his wealth. 

    Yet unlike them, he does not interview those seeking donations for their projects.  Rather, he searches the earth with his mind for those who can serve as worthy vehicles for new discoveries and truth.  Fusion reactors, the cure for cancer,  longevity bordering on immortality, new economic theories and practices, the way to feed the hungry, heal the sick, give jobs to the poor, transform the criminal, resolve conflicts, probe the mysteries of matter and reveal the paths of spirit—why this is what he does.  He pores out new gifts to mankind through inspiration and direct mind to mind thought transference when and where someone appears who is ready to receive what he has.    

    Well, that is a vision of how someone who is rich with the knowledge of Uranus might operate on earth.  Like I say, he would live a simple, quiet life.  Not ostentatious.  Not pretentious. 

     His wealth is so great he already has everything he could want or even dream.  His only limitation is that he has to find those who will receive and carry his gifts to mankind without squandering them, abusing them, and also watching over them so that they do not become subject to evil designs.           

   Well, this has been a brief visit to Uranus.  It has been ten or fifteen years since I was last out here.  I will try to stop in again. But I have been told to also enter the next sphere of Neptune.    

  

The Sphere of Neptune   

       

This sphere is similar to the crown chakra’s relation to the lower six chakras and also in some ways like the relation of akasha to the four elements: it serves as a higher conscience and also an embodiment of all ideals.  It embodies the purposes that encompass everything else.  And it insists ultimately on balance, harmony, and unification. 

     The astrological sign of Pisces is ruled by Neptune.  Neptune plays the role to the other planets that Pisces has to the other eleven members of the Zodiac.  It is the conclusion, the unity, the completion, the final goal, and the mystical vision for which all else serves.

    Too much Pisces in an individual’s natal chart and you have a person who is over sensitive, mystical, self-sacrificing, blindly loyal, sometimes a fanatical idealist, and overwhelmed by others’ emotions and depths of feeling that have nothing to do with the reality of daily life. 

    Too little or a complete absence of anything remotely Pisces like in the natal chart and you get an individual who is materialistic, selfish, trapped in his own ego, insipid, without empathy, and who lacks the passion to change the world.

    The first few moments I projected my mind into this sphere the energy felt heavy and magnetic—but no more dense than the earth element and no more magnetic than is typical of the water element.  And immediately there was the sense of Piscean idealism with its vision of the unity of life and the oneness of all living beings. 

   Now, ten minutes later, the sensation or feeling is of a party, kind of like among undines/mermaids.  At this party everyone loves each other.  And like a party among undines, it is outrageously joyous and festive; the air intoxicating and the love as real and as precious as life has always hinted that it could and should be.

   Saturn is viewing life from the other side of the grave.  Saturn is like sitting down with the Judge of the World whose name is Fate.  And he/she reviews your life with you saying,

     “These were the cards life dealt you.  And look what you did with them!  Look how you played your hand!  I dealt you a wild card here and you threw that golden opportunity away.  I dealt you aces and you called too soon. 

     “And here and here had you only bluffed raising the stakes you would have walked away with the desires of your heart.  Don’t you get it?  Life is not only about the cards you have been dealt.  Life is about being attentive to others so that you transform each other.”

   Well, that is Saturn.  The Sphere of Neptune is like the heaven that people can not imagine.  But it is not out there after death or up there somewhere.  Rather, it is meant to come down to earth. 

   When there is a race of skilled magicians who love from the core of there being anywhere in this galaxy then that is where Neptune has made a place within the physical world.  That is the “marriage of heaven and earth” to misquote William Blake.      

   With all due respect, no religion is required for this dream, no belief and no faith.  It is about hard work, wisdom, and the realization that love is behind and underneath all things.  The song goes: “If the people lived their lives as if it were a song for singing out of light/Provides the music for the stars to go dancing circles in the night.”    

    Unlike the party among undines or even among the spirits of Venus, Neptune understands like no other realm that the physical universe has been created as the vehicle and preparation of a Great Celebration—of a dance of light that is infinite joy and unending love. 

    When Joseph Campbell explains the Hero’s Quest I do not think he ever found his way to this place.  None of the mythologies speak of it.  Oh, it is not that the great world teachers have not been out here.  It is just hard to describe without the direct experience:

   How do you explain the taste of the elixir the Chinese Eight Immortals drink that makes them immortal?  How do you describe the taste on your tongue of the twelve fruits from the Tree of Life that are for the healing of the nations? 

     How do you expound on what is like when the Tao is upon you,  within you, and around you so that all you have to do to move with its flow is to let go?  Beethoven could have said, “I can touch this Joy within my art but without my art it has nothing to do with my life.”

   Like I say, Neptune is rather mystical.  If you have a personal God, then it like knowing and feeling that when you pray your heart is joined to the heart of God during your prayer so that there is no separation.  It is more than Mother Teresa who says “I seek to find Christ hidden in others.”  With Neptune you are the life hidden within others.  It is part of your self.  

    Reviewing my brief time here I would have to say that this sphere is the most like anything that represents a genuine cosmic religious experience.  Just being here is a completion that is more than personal love.  Or more accurately the personal and the universal experience of love are completely united. 

   So, a guy is on a beach and he finds a lamp in the sand and of course if the story is to go anywhere he rubs the lamp.  Out come three genies.  They say to him, “Each of us offers you a wish in accordance with the sphere that we represent.  You may have one but not two or three.  The wishes we bestow consume an entire life by the power of their mystery. What do you wish for?”

   He says, “I want to get the most out of life.”  The first genie who represents Saturn says in reply, “Then I will give you a life of hard work—sixty and seventy hour weeks.  But you shall always be able to say truthfully that you are doing what you love most.  In the end, you shall be Warren Buffet (the second richest man in the world) who gives thirty billion dollars away to charity.”  [The genie later apologized about not being able to offer the “most wealthy man” in the history of the world.  A dumb college student who somehow got into Harvard and then dropped out got that wish as a result of a wish he made in a previous incarnation.] 

   And the second genie who represents Uranus replies, “I shall make you Winston Churchill.  All those around him said that England should accept Germany’s offer to end the war by leaving Hitler in charge of Europe.  Surrounded by doubt and fear, Churchill resisted.  He said that this island nation has not existed for a thousand years only to surrender to tyranny.  The fate of the world passed through Churchill’s hands and was shaped by the choice he made.”

    And the third genie who represents Neptune replies, “I will make you Bob Dylan whose words shall inspire a generation.  You shall be the tambourine man, the Fool card in the deck of the Tarot, who walks through life unconstrained and free.  The spirit shall be upon you.  But you shall not understand the words you speak for no one is yet ready to comprehend my Mystery.” (Bob Dylan wrote the song Blowing in the

Wind in ten minutes.  But when you listen to Dylan when he is asked about what the song means it seems pretty clear to me that he not only does not care what the song means but that he lacks the mind to even begin to understand the words.)        

   Which wish did the man on the beach with the lamp choose?  What did he gain and what did he lose?  Was he wise or was he a Fool?  I will leave that to you.