Copyright © 2008 by William R. Mistele

The Spirit of 26 Degrees Virgo in the Earthzone

Note: I will be working on this spirit repeatedly for the next month or so.

Bardon names this spirit Hyrmiua but apparently the names in the book, The Practice of Magical Evocation, are not correct for the spirits of the earthzone. I am not the best with names so you will have to find someone else to come up with the right name. I am good with describing energy so the descriptions and interactions that follow are the result of my clairsentience and basic telepathy.

A number of individuals I know who practice magic and many others I have met have various kinds of mental problems. In order to try to intervene and bring back mental clarity to some of these individuals I have turned to several spirits for assistance. This is one such spirit who is close to our world and who specializes in restoring mental clarity.

Magic, by its very nature, involves altering one’s consciousness so that you can operate outside the safe and familiar boundaries of ordinary life. Doing so, however, always involves risk. It is easy to make an assumption, take something for granted, proceed too quickly beyond one’s limits and so suffer from various kinds of dissociations or encounters that interfere with your ability to return to ordinary life.

It is hard enough in this day and age to attend to one’s every day responsibilities. It is a challenge to strive both for success and for happiness. Add to this the nearly incomprehensible mysteries and wonders and horrors that magical exploration entails, and it is easy to overextend oneself. This spirit draws one quickly back into a state of mental clarity, stability, and soundness of mind.

Obviously, someone who specializes in this area can render great assistance in alleviating the suffering for those who are less fortunate and without luck when it comes to functioning in a normal way in our world.

The sign of Virgo in the earthzone: it wants to do things right; it keeps itself pure so it can focus on task.

26 degrees Virgo: this vibration has a strong mental stability

The Spirit’s Domain: he is a protector of mental stability; he offers assistance.

Outer Aura: This spirit has a very strong, clear mental vibration. His mind is vast.

I asked the spirit for a better grasp of this energy. He pointed out that perceiving with great clarity is also to have great understanding and wisdom.

I asked for a visual image. I got an image of Michigan Central Station as an example. Looking out the window of the now abandoned building--to understand this edifice I have to look back and see the intentions of the men who built it, the economy and railroad system that brought it to life, the ways in which it operated successfully, and the obstacles the planning failed to consider. To see clearly is to understand history.

I asked the spirit’s perspective on my project on undines. He replied that the image of a woman at the edge of the sea shore represents a gate between the planes and realms. You are getting a woman to embody the sea so an undine can easily step inside of her and say, “Yes, this is what it is like to be inside of a woman.” And you are getting women to dance and express undine sensuality so a woman can say, “Yes, this is exactly what it is like to be inside an undine and to feel and perceive with her sensuality and magical abilities.”

To get a woman to do this is then to be able to project inside her as a man and to enter fully into the astral plane experience. And once you do this it then is easy to put aside the images of women and undines and to simply become the magnetic fluid. You become a human/merman with all the astral, sensual, and magical/spiritual abilities associated.

This you can already do. But to share this with the world you must get art to express what you perceive and feel in your self. It is worth doing and essential for those who would learn true magic. It is not a grandiose public presentation, but rather a study in a magician’s imagination.

I asked for a thought that expresses his outer aura: It is like a mirror or crystal ball--what you perceive you see with perfect clarity.

I asked for a sensation: You feel very safe and secure so that all obstacles, problems, and conflicts are calmly explained and understood so they are resolved to your complete satisfaction.

Inner Aura: we are our experiences and our memories. The spirit has great sensitivity to the individual’s experiences in life. The mind is woven into the stream of body, emotional, experiential, and mental life.

Part of the mind is often entangled with circumstances. At a certain point when the mind is strong enough, its clarity becomes independent of circumstances. So the individual perceives what is going on around him independently of his relationship to it and his past history with it.

Seeing clearly and objectively what you are involved with is the first step in strengthening the mind.

Inner Source of Inspiration: the divine emits an energy, light, and vibration that fosters and creates perfect clarity. I am the custodian of this light. It focuses in and through me to assist human beings.

It is one of the wonders of creation that created beings are able to attain perfect enlightenment. This vibration that offers the path and attainment of enlightenment extends throughout the entire universe.

Note: I find that the inner source of inspiration is very important in working with a spirit. It gives you the best means for aligning your self with the spirit and gaining in an effortless way its full cooperation. If you meditate on and join yourself to the very thing that inspires the spirit, then you automatically reflect to the spirit its own purposes and what it wishes to accomplish through its work.

It is kind of like, “This is what you seek to do. Let’s us work together in this specific way so that your purposes can be fulfilled.”

This may not sound like it is much, but if the spirit is inspired by Divine Providence, in effect, you are joining your self to Divine Providence as well as you seek to accomplish the spirit’s work on earth through the very thing that you want the spirit to do for you. Asking for something and asking in the right way are incredibly different when it comes to getting results.

Commission: as custodial of the light, I assist those who have lost mental stability to gain it back. And I assist those who have suffered mental weakness or various degrees of loss to regain their clarity. My assistance depends on what the individual has in the way of past experiences and present resources that I can utilize to accomplish this endeavor.

Sigil: the sigil of this spirit, a graphic image, (in the Practice of Magical Evocation and also found at various sites on line) embodies the vibration of a very strong and stable mind possessing great concentration.

If you have the sigil, technically speaking, you do not need the spirit’s name. You concentrate on the sigil, imagining the lines to embody the spirit’s qualities and also putting some energy into it, in this case, brown light, and you have in effect a phone number for the spirit. The sigil is in itself a mini evocation of the spirit.

Akashic plane

I work at bringing the spirit down through the planes.

Condensing light into a sphere on akashic plane and drawing the spirit into it. I then enter the spirit. In this case, I am using the brown light that is appropriate for the sigil also. The result is that I understand something in all phases and aspects, from beginning to end; all changes and transitions; all details in terms of every turn and every stage of unfolding. I grasp everything all at once.

Mental plane

Repeating the procedure of drawing the spirit and the energy of a sphere of light down to the mental plane, I again enter the spirit. I get a sense of great oversight. I am alert, vigilant, and sharp. My Priorities are perfectly clear yet always ready to adapt and modify to facilitate the process. I feel very sensitive and supportive but always focused on task.

Astral plane

Moving to the astral plane, this spirit’s energy here creates a sense of being very relaxed, warm, and supportive. I feel like I am in a completely protected environment. The spirit creates situations where you are best suited for generating your own insights. You are surrounded by positive people who are uplifting and supportive and inspiring to you.

You feel very good and have a deep sense of well-being.

Again, you can gain these things for your self or create them for others who are in need.

Physical plane

Drawing the spirit to the physical plane produces a very strong, personal identity. You gain a great sense of pose and always present yourself extremely well. You feel charismatic, persuasive, kind, considerate, but always in charge of what you are doing. It is clear to others what you want and what you are about.

The spirit develops in people great social skills. He is a master of human interaction and produces great leaders.

Common difficulties/imbalances: People tend to have general mental capacities which they rarely utilize or explore in full. When they have an intense conflict, the strength and clarity of their minds are tested. At that time, they may develop new habits such as learning to be investigative, shrewd, or using more foresight and planning. But generally, even after intense conflicts, they return to their old mental habits of running on default or just taking things as they come. They do not explore or conscientiously develop their mental clarity and strength.

Those who conscientiously train or develop their minds as part of a system also fall into snares. They tend to become involved with the content of their specific training curriculum and fail to directly develop mental clarity. They are in effect problem solvers or task managers looking to use the mind in specific ways to accomplish specific objectives rather than increasing the quality and strength of the mind itself.

In effect, clarity of mind is a divine virtue: it is meant to be developed in and of itself as a reflection of divinity within oneself. The goal then is to embody an aspect of Divine Providence and not to embody the virtues of a specific religion, historical tradition, or simply master a set of training procedures. The reference is Divine Providence as to what is to be reflected and mirrored within oneself.

There are countless ways the mind can become weakened. Other than for medical reasons, it is usually the set of circumstances involving emotions or kinds of problems that confront an individual. Due to lack of preparation or experience, the mind is weakened by being over stressed and challenged beyond its ability to operate successfully in dealing with circumstances or in solving problems.

Note 1: over the years I have met various practitioners from different traditions who utilize a similar procedure. They embody in themselves through long practice some specific healing methods. And then they project their minds or consciousness inside of another person and simply do the same practice inside this other person. In a number of cases, these individuals simply carry this out spontaneously because it makes sense to them and works for them. They get results.

In the Bardon system, projecting one’s mind outside of one’s body and into any number of things from inorganic objects, to animals, and to people is so basic and so systematically developed that it is an ordinary operating procedure, that is, if you have done your beginning training. In addition, developing a strong thought in one’s own mind with the accompanying astral feeling is also basic training. It is so natural to the system that it is a standard and essential practice.

It is quite easy then to project one’s mind into another person and meditate so that this person possesses the specific kind of mental clarity that is needed to bring about healing. Of course, you can do the same just by visualizing or in some other way sensing that the person embodies what is required. You have to discover what works for you.

However, in working with a spirit, you can ask the spirit for specific recommendations as to what specific mental vibration or qualities are needed within the person. You can gain from the spirit its perspective on how the problem developed, what the karma is, and what the range of remedies might be.

You can condense energy as I describe above and bring the spirit down through the planes and instruct the spirit to work for specific changes in an individual. Or you can be more active join yourself simultaneously with the spirit and also with the mind of the person who is in distress and work from within. Again, if you have trained over years and have worked with a large number of partners practicing by projecting inside of each other and observing the effects, it then becomes quite easy to do this for the sake of a healing endeavor.

If a problem that has developed in an individual over years and is now very serious, it may take extensive work to overcome. You may get immediate improvements in an individual but to stabilize and to return an individual to a normal life may take repeated efforts. You observe your results and modify your methods accordingly.

Again, the advantage of working with a spirit is that over time you develop some of the spirit’s qualities and powers in your self as well as its understanding and wisdom. You can specialize.

At some point, your goal should be to be able to do this kind of work without relying on the spirit. The spirit is there as a teacher and a counselor. You can use the spirit as a paramedic and for crisis intervention. But you do not want to become dependent on the spirit when the goal is to learn for you self how to do these things on your own.

Note 2: Karma, An example.

For me, put simply as a functional definition and as in terms of psychology, karma is a function of the elements operating in the astral body. If you have positive and/or strong elements in your astral body, you get positive results in your experiences with the world. Not always, but there is a general tendency to do so.

If you have negative and/or weak elements in your astral body, you get negative experiences in dealing with the world. The task is to strengthen the four elements when they are weak and work to make them positive when they are negative.

Take two individuals who have the same astral configuration, say, great vulnerability due to the weakness or negative aspect of the air element. One individual, however, grows up in an environment in which he is exposed to very creative and stimulating social interactions. He is encouraged and repeatedly exposed to situations in which he gains knowledge in how to problem solve, finding his own solutions and cooperating with others in accomplishing various projects.

A second individual with the same vulnerability has none of the above exposure. He is never in a supportive environment. His creative activities are mostly in the area of fantasy and rarely involve working with others. In fact, he has individuals present in his life who knowingly or not act to destroy the integrity of his emotional life.

Placed on their own, without the support of their families of origin, the first individual manages to cope. He reviews his situation, figures out what his needs are and moves to gain the basic support he needs in order to succeed.

The second individual, placed on his own, has no such survival or coping abilities. He ends up withdrawing and retreating from reality. He fails to evaluate his own needs. He fails to gain any emotional support for himself. And he fails to estimate and evaluate in a realistic manner the difficulties confronting him and the time frame and effort required to succeed in his chosen area of action.

The first individual ends up functioning normally and successfully. The second individual suffers continuing experience of withdrawal, failure, and social isolation.

Same astral bodies but due to external circumstances we have different results. Can you intervene? In magic, depending on your level of authority, your compassion, your power, your skill, and your ability to oversee another’s life, you can become the equivalent of the external circumstances the second individual was never given.

By magic, you expose his astral body to the positive energies and thoughts that the first individual acquired through external circumstances. This magical intervention is not the equivalent of real world experiences. But is certainly no less than the kind of medication and therapy the individual might receive if he were to undergo treatment. You are, let us say, offering spiritual therapy and medication.

In any case, the task is to get the second individual operating again in a normal mode in the world utilizing effective social skills. This is asking for a whole lot. But the great advantage a magician who specializes in this area has over a therapist is that he can read directly the thoughts and inner emotional life of the individual and work from within that individual with spiritual guidance to produce a variety of remedies.

That is my summation in brief of the nature of intervention in these kinds of situations. The karma of course may vary. An individual may choose to withdraw from the world or wish to not be healthy. But even in this case, you are not interfering with the individual’s choice. You are simply clarifying the positive alternatives that remain open to this individual and exposing him to the advantages and feelings of operating in a positive way.

Even very negative individuals can change their minds as to their goals and inspiration if they are confronted with the call of the divine to become transformed. As a magician, your task is to embody the inner source of inspiration reflecting through your self the light of Divine Providence that offers enlightenment to every being in the universe.

For the record let me insist, there are no limits set on this form of creative activity—the extent to which you may intervene or the power with which you are free to call another to return to the path that leads eventually to perfection.

Note 3: When an individual’s astral body experiences strong or erratic emotions, the connection between the mind and body is weakened. Don’t drive when you are angry or upset. Don’t try to problem solve when you are in a hostile mood and so forth.

Some individuals apparently need to get angry or upset before they are willing to address certain problems. But I am not referring to that. Astral emotions that undermine mental clarity can be overcome to some extent by spending thirty seconds or so in concentrating on each of five senses. You repeat this on a daily basis. Visualize something for thirty seconds. Move on to the other four senses.

This gives you a break from the emotion that has a hold on your attention. And it stimulates different parts of the brain to become active again so that the specific routines that the mind is repeating diminish.

The problem with this method is that in Bardon training an individual can become so mentally strong in concentration that it is also easy to do the opposite: push emotions off to the side that one should try to work through. Mental clarity and strength of concentration are not a substitute for emotional intelligence and having a well-rounded feeling of well-being and of being alive.

For this you need to explore separately such things as contentment, serenity, inner peace, happiness, and so forth. These involve the water element and a completely different kind of focus than what life in our times empowers us to accomplish.

An email addressing this problem:

I don’t know why mainstream psychology does not pursue therapy involving the five sense concentrations. Bardon has students concentrate on each of the five senses one at time.

What this does is that the concentration with a sense strengthens different parts of the brain. Strengthening the brain in this way gets one’s consciousness clearer because it is not relying on ideas and thoughts and the routines they tend to follow.

And the emotions feed on and are stimulated by direct sensory stimulation.

Concentrating on a sense develops a direct mind to body awareness that can bypass the familiar negative emotions also.

In other words, at the time of the exercise, your personality is not important. Your past is not important. The mental or emotional problems you may have are not important. This activity moves freely forward without reference to these other things. You are developing in your self a new kind of awareness.

The problem is to keep it interesting and exciting, as if you are constantly exploring something new.

So, you take each sense—sight, sound, taste, touch, smell—and you concentrate on one at a time for thirty seconds to begin with or longer, whatever is comfortable. Later on you do two then three and then all five sense concentrations at the same time.

Visualize for thirty seconds, for example, a tree, a sunset, the moon, a lake, a flower, the bird, a car, etc. Anything that has any interest to you. If you are distracted, simply return to what you are focusing on.

Photographers often spend hours photo editing one picture. When you spend that much time with a visual image and all the different ways it can be changed, you become very visual. Later on you observe and visualize a sequence of motion as in body language, how someone moves as they speak.

Perhaps the most “spiritual” group I have ever been in is a life drawing class that has met every week for twenty years. They hire a nude model to hold various positions for five to ten minutes. And then spend three hours or longer drawing her. I call it spiritual because they do not talk during this time. They do not think during this time. They are engaged solely in the quiet rapture of immersing their total awareness in direct, sensory perception with the intent of producing a work of art.

The group creates an inner silence that puts all sorts of monasteries and spiritual groups to shame by comparison. The religious people do not understand internal silence because they think the sacred can be captured though solemn assemblies and self-conscious rituals. So they fail to approach the sacred where it actually appears at the edge of their senses.

A director such as Steven Spielberg can visualize and imagine an entire movie before the movie is shot, including the voices and sound, the casting and actors, the sets, the camera angels, the lighting, along with the emotional impact as it rises and falls, becomes tense and relaxed in different sequencing of scenes and acts, etc.

Then do another sense. Taste. Taste something like a mint chocolate, an orange, a grape, a taste of salt, sugar, etc. Taste and smell relate strongly to the animal brain which we often fail to develop and explore in ourselves. Imagine for example and observe how animals taste and smell. There are occupations for taste such as those who taste coffee or wine. There are classes in tasting wine.

A sound can be a note or a phrase from a song, a bird singing, someone’s voice. Comedians every day practice imitating other’s voices. Music is a long time professional activity among mankind and music works with a part of the brain that is completely separate from thinking and using language.

Touch is like feeling the skin on different parts of the body, different textures on different surfaces, hot and cold, but also the entire set of body sensations such as the stomach digesting, swallowing, breathing, pressure, muscles contracting, etc.

I have noticed that different parts of a woman’s body as I may have mentioned have different feelings they emit. You have to distinguish between the physical sensation and the emotional quality within the sensation to sense this. In acupuncture, they take the pulse in the wrist to diagnose the health of the internal organs. There is great sensitivity involved in touch.

There are endless ways to work with kinesthetics in sports, martial arts, massage, hand eye coordination, etc.

When I focus on different senses one after the other it is like I can sense the different parts of my brain that are active with that one sense perception. In all cases, I am operating outside of thinking, no thoughts or ideas are involved while I am concentrating. The emotions as I mention become alert and more active with direct sensory stimulation.

Shaman like to imagine themselves as animals because with a specific animal there is an enhanced sensitivity and alertness involving specific senses. The sense is tied to different instincts in different animals. Animals often use their senses with far greater concentration than do human beings—they are conscious without thoughts intervening.

The trick is to keep the exercises interesting, enchanting, as if you are always exploring something new. It is the lack of life being interesting, full of wonder, and capable of doing new things that characterizes the dark side. It does not know about wonder, awe, and the mystery of being alive. The higher positive spirits are constantly telling me that there is no end to the exploration of the five senses, to the wonder of being alive, to the splendor of what we may make, and to our ability to create. They perceive love to be everywhere and within everything.

In my writings about mermaids and undines, I have articles that explore the idea of identifying with the images of water in nature. Such as http://williammistele.com/problems3.htm which is under Essays and then Problems in the Study of Magic, the Magnetic Fluid, on my web site

Like I say, your conventional therapists know absolutely nothing about this kind of soul and mind healing. But there are little concessions they make such as “play therapy,” “art therapy,” or bringing a dog or cat into a nursing home or hospital to increase well-being.

So, feed the birds. Observe their actions. Spend time observing or being with animals. Then weave what you learn from sense concentrations into social contexts so your skills enhance your social interactions. The negative can not stand compassion. Do something kind once in a while for someone else.