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https://web.archive.org/.../herebedrago.../dragontree-1.html The word “aether” means “shine” in Greek, and the fundamental reality of such an unseen, fluidlike source of universal energy has long been a hallmark of the world’s secret mystery schools. The works of Greek philosophers Pythagoras and Plato discuss it at great length, as do the Vedic scriptures of ancient India, referring to it by several names such as “prana” and “Akasha.”
In Asia, it is often known as “chi” or “ki,” and special emphasis is placed on its interactions with the human body. The ancients claimed we could essentially link individual and universal fields through resonance by breathing in this 'subtle' energy as a form of nourishment for the energy body. It is the ancient root of Qabalistic practices such as the Middle Pillar Exercise.
In THE DRAGON LEGACY, we learn, "The ability to ’shine’, a phenomenon which can still be subjectively experienced, is the result of a transcendent, balanced state of mind related to certain processes connected with cellular rejuvenation. The ability is rare enough and is an innate genetic capacity manifested in the outworking of certain ’shamanic’ exercises related to ’climbing the Tree of Life’. . . If you have realized to any extent that you are of the Clan, you will know that from the very beginning the fairies were called the ’Shining Ones’.
This stems from the Sumerian era when ’The Controllers of the Fate of Men’ were known as both the Anunnaki and the Anunnagi, the former meaning "those who are manifest when Heaven meets Earth" and the latter meaning simply ’Shining Ones’ or Star Children. The two mean the same thing and refer to the nocturnal habits of our ancestors as much as anything else. These habits are directly related to the production and maintenance of certain hormones, which then relate to the core meaning itself. In particular the epithet ’Shining One’ was appended to Prince Shamash, brother of Erishkigal, Queen of the otherworld. Shamash was the Uncle of Lilith and was also called the ’Prince of Justice’.
We All Shine On... Like the Moon and the Stars and the Sun...
The Elven Gods were called Shining Ones for their shamanic ability to shimmer or glow radiantly. In ancient Scythian the Asuras were called Devas or "shining ones", also related to the Neteru, Vedic Nagas, and the "Fairies" -- all Dragon royalty. Nicholas de Vere claims the high strength of their morphic energy field, maintained by the DNA blueprint, "gave the Albi-gens, the Maidens of the Grail, the perceptible "glow" that earned them the Epithet "The Shining Ones". The Flame of Life burned brighter in them." He links it to the concentration of energy in the chakras or sephiroth that supercharge the endcrine glands. He says this faculty can remain dormant until we resonate with the genetic memory of other dragonkin descendants.
Accelerating Transformation
We are waking up to our true gifts - and stewarding the emergence of a new era. We're evolving new forms infused with integrity, authenticity, generosity and virtue. And we're living more purposefully and finding ways to serve a cause greater than ourselves. It's not an easy path. We're learning as we go - transforming our past, exploring our inner truths and expressing our strengths in new ways. We're learning to lead boldly without dominating, feel fully and freely, and use our power to protect instead of destroy. And we have further to go - both for the sake of our liberation and the world's.
Over the past decade, the amount of information available to us all has accelerated, stimulated by advances in technology which enhance the exploration of both our inner and outer environments. Mystics say that this process is increasing due to the dropping of the veil between the dimensions of reality, bombarding our consciousness with those things previously hidden in mystery until all is revealed.
Are we ready? Will we be able to tell the difference between our awake and asleep state? How will we redefine ourselves as the psyche expands to envelop all dimensions of existence? Faced with a cornucopia of opportunities the individual must steer a clear path to achieve their life’s purpose; yet who is at the helm? More than ever before it is important to tap into the pulse of the soul, know our authentic self and live in integrity.
Life seems to be moving faster than ever with the "stage" changing daily both at home and around the world, creating the feeling we are living on the edge of chaos unsure of which structures will survive and which will be swept away in the next wave of consciousness. And yet this place -- the creative edge -- between structure and chaos is a powerful place of growth and transformation. Here intentionality can become highly focused allowing all energy to be used to create our reality from the deepest part of our being, benefiting all concerned.
Dragon Vortex, by Iona Miller The image of the serpent has been corrupted by the will of man, yet beyond the scope of his vision, it readies itself at his root, preparing to return him to the Godhead upon his death. --C.G. Jung
Apophenia is the method of understanding Uroboros. Uroboros is the Coil Power of Torsion Fields, so in the area of Torsion Fields the Chaos and Synchronicity can be importand tools to create events, realities and life forms. Alchemy is the Art of Psychonauts -- the "Nautonniers" of Apophenia. Apophenia derives from Apophis, the Egyptian Uroboros, Ophis! --Georg De Vere-Limburg
Primordial Vortex
The vortex is the primary icon of the Dragon peoples from time immemorial. It is the first icon in the universal language of symbols. Originally creator god-kings/queens, Dragons became the model of sovereignty for later human rulers. They were called "rulers" because they knew the mystery of ancient metrology. Only those who claimed Mandate of Heaven were considered emperors in Asia.
A Ruler with royal ancestry is typically called a deified King or Queen, dependent on gender. A Ruler without royal ancestry may also be called an Overlord. The Sumerian word for ruler, "excellence" is lugal, which etymologically means "big person." Vampire or oupere is European and uber is Turkish and thus from Upari, we discover that originally Uber - Vampire - meant Overlord. The term for a witch was Uber meaning Overlord. A guardian - a "Watcher" - is an overseer, and from this meaning we obtain the Scythian word uber, meaning a vampire or Overlord (by association, we also obtain from "watcher" the word Nefilim, which relates to the Anunnagi or Anunnaki).
In Sumerian ME means Lord or Master (an Overseer or Overlord) and in Gaelic Mor means ’high’ (also related to mountain and thus ’dweller on the mountain’, one who soars to the heights - a druid or Merlin) and is used as a suffix to the names of Scotic chieftains or kings as in - ’The Conor Mor’ - the High King (or Overlord) of the Clan Conor, for example. If Sumer means guardian and thus overlord, then so does sumaire and the SU component thus means ’the Power’ - the Sidhe or Siddhi. ME is also, it seems, specifically related to wisdom and knowledge (the Aryas) and in both senses therefore the ’sumer’ or ’sumaire’, being one and the same thing - is a derkesthai, a dragon. Sumer and Sumaire mean therefore - Lord of the Powers - SU.ME.
Thus, the ruler (divine sovereign and measuring rod with rolled string) became a symbol of power and divine order. The oldest preserved measuring rod is a copper-alloy bar was found by the German Assyriologist Eckhard Unger while excavating at Nippur. Two statues of the priest-king Gudea of Lagash in the Louvre depict him sitting with a tablet on his lap, upon which are placed surveyors tools including a measuring rod. The "ruler" is thus symonymous with the universal standard of measurement.
Sacred geometry is the language of shape, developed from our Ancestors' original measurements of Earth and Sky over pre-historic millennia. All cultures speak of a time before the fixed form and order of today’s world, and of powers dwelling in the world that predate humanity in both sentience and insight. The Dreamers are the architects of greatness. Their vision lies within their souls. They never see the mirages of Fact, but peer beyond the veils and mists of doubt and pierce the walls of unborn Time.
Many of these archetypes still exist in the human species memory, and are reflected in our own consciousness even if the original presence seems to be gone. Our genetic memory can be viewed as "Mem-Ori" -- literally, a golden braid of liquid light -- metaphysical fiber optic cable. "Mem" = "Water" and "Ori" = "Light" in ancient Hebrew, ie: Memory is Liquid Light and our brain is 90% Water. We need to assert sovereignty over our own consciousness. Dragons were one of the most influential creatures of the terran "dreamtime". Seeing with Dragon Eyes is a non-stop fugue of symbolism and meaning that plunges you into the Vortex of glowing consciousness.
The vortex is the meta-pattern of the universe and an elemental image. It is an archetypal symbol embodying above and below, in the Cosmos, Earth and our own microcosmic nature. Galaxies, Earth, the quantum realm, and the human energy body share an essence -- vortex energy. Earth's magnetic field protects all life on the planet. Our DNA has a helix/vortex configuration. The nonlocal vortex field generates and regenerates matter.
Jung's two greatest works on Alchemy are Psychology and Alchemy and Mysterium Coniunctionis, the latter representing his final summing up of the implications of his long preoccupation with alchemy. In this last summary of his insights on the subject, influenced in part by his collaboration with the Nobel Prize winning physicist Wolfgang Pauli, the old Jung envisions a great psycho-physical mystery to which the alchemists of old gave the name of unus mundus (one world). At the root of all being, so he intimates, there is a state wherein physicality and spirituality meet in a transgressive union.
Synchronistic phenomena, and many more as yet unexplained mysteries of physical and psychological nature, appear to proceed from this unitive condition. It is more than likely that this mysterious condition is the true home of the archetypes as such, which merely project themselves into the realm of the psyche, but in reality abide elsewhere.
While the tensional relationship of the opposites remains the great operational mechanism of manifest life and of transformation, this relationship exists within the context of a unitary world-model wherein matter and spirit, King and Queen, appear as aspects of a psychoid realm of reality.
The ever-repeated charge of radical dualism leveled against Gnostics and their alchemical kin is thus reduced to a misunderstanding by this last, and perhaps greatest, insight of Jung. The workings of the cosmos, both physical and psychic, are characterized by duality, but this principle is relative to the underlying reality of the unus mundus.
Dualism and monism are thus revealed not as mutually contradictory and exclusive but as complimentary aspects of reality. It is a curious paradox that this revolutionary insight, impressively portrayed by Jung in Mysterium Coniunctionis, has received relatively little attention from psychologists and metaphysicians alike.
Alchemical interest and perception permeate many of Jung's numerous writings in addition to those devoted primarily to the subject. His workPsychology and Religion: West and East, as well as numerous lectures delivered at the Eranos conferences, all utilize the alchemical model as a matrix for his teachings. Time and again he pointed out the affinities and contrasts between alchemical figures and those of Christianity, demonstrating a sort of mirror-like analogy not only between the stone of the philosophers and the image of Christ, but between alchemy and Christianity themselves.
Alchemy, said Jung, stands in a compensatory relationship to mainstream Christianity, rather like a dream does to the conscious attitudes of the dreamer. The Stone of alchemy is in many respects the stone rejected by the builders of Christian culture, demanding recognition and reincorporation into the building itself.
It is here that some of the considerations outlined at the outset of our present study appear once more. Alchemy is not a phenomenon sui generis, but rather a phenomenon of attempted assimilation proceeding from Gnosticism - or at least so Jung believed. Even the chief sacrament of Christendom, the Holy Eucharist or Mass, was regarded by Jung as an alchemical work connected with a Third Century Gnostic alchemist Zosimos of Panopolis, in whom he placed the historical point of the convergence of Gnosticism and alchemy. (These considerations were explained by Jung in his Transformation Symbolism in the Mass, first published in the Eranos Yearbook 1944/45, and later included in Psychology and Western Religion, Princeton University Press, 1984.) Years later, one of Jung's academic associates, Prof. Gilles Quispel, came to coin a phrase reflecting Jung's point of view. "Alchemy," the Dutch scholar said, "is the Yoga of the Gnostics."
Perhaps one of the most significant contributions along these lines was given to us by Jung's singularly insightful disciple Marie-Louise von Franz, who devoted herself to the translation and explanation of a treatise first discovered by Jung entitled Aurora Consurgens and attributed to St. Thomas Aquinas.
This renowned saint, so the legend states, had a vision of the Sophia of God after meditating on the Song of Songs of Solomon and, following the command received in the vision, wrote this alchemical treatise. The Aurora differs from most other alchemical works inasmuch as its format is predominantly religious and filled with biblical references, and even more importantly, because it represents the alchemical opus as a process whereby the feminine wisdom Sophia must be liberated. Written in seven poetic but scholarly chapters, the treatise traces the liberation of Sophia from confinement by way of the alchemical phases of transformation.
It is thus through the agency of a brilliant woman disciple that the great project envisioned by Jung in 1912 came to a renewed emphasis. Led by the rediscovered words of the "angelic doctor" Aquinas, contemporary students of religion and psychology were confronted once again with the Gnostic task of alchemy. Published in German in 1957 and in English in 1966, Marie-Louise von Franz's work brought Jung's gnostic-alchemical vision in to full view once more. While at the individual level alchemy may assuredly be concerned with the redemption of the Lumen Naturae concealed in the psycho-physiologica l recesses of the human personality, the Aurora and also Jung's Answer to Job appear to point to a yet larger and more universal opus.
Crying from the depths of the chaos of this world, the wisdom-woman Sophia calls out to the alchemists of our age. Depth-psychology has indeed served as one of the principal avenues through which this redemptive project has been made known. The time may be approaching, and may in fact have come already, when potential alchemists in various disciplines and spiritual traditions may address themselves to this universal task of alchemical liberation.
In 1950 Jung was greatly encouraged when Pope Pius XII used several manifestly alchemical allusions, such as "heavenly marriage", in Apostolic Constitution, "Munificentissimus Deus", the official document declaring the dogma of the assumption of the Virgin Mary, (the Catholic Sophia). In our time alchemy has come into its own, and beginning with the most recent two decades Gnosticism has begun its return journey also. The stone that the builders rejected is moving ever closer to the structure of Western culture.
The term Desposyni (from the Greek δεσπόσυνοι, plural of δεσπόσυνος, meaning "of or belonging to the master or lord" refers to blood relatives of Jesus. The term was coined by Sextus Julius Africanus, a writer of the early 3rd century. Scholars argue that Jesus' relatives held positions of special honor in the Early Christian Church. Christians of the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Oriental Orthodox traditions, as well as most Anglicans and some followers of Lutheranism, reject the idea that Jesus had blood siblings, as their churches hold the doctrine of the Virgin Mary's Perpetual Virginity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desposyni
The closely related word (despotes) meaning lord, master, or ship owner is commonly used of God, human slave-masters, and of Jesus in the reading Luke 13:25 found in Papyrus 75, in Jude 1:4, and possibly in 2nd Peter 2:1.
In Ebionite belief, the desposyni included his mother Mary, his father Joseph, his unnamed sisters, and his brothers James the Just, Joses, Simon and Jude; in modern mainstream Christian belief, Mary is counted as a blood relative, Joseph only as a foster father and the rest as half brothers or cousins.
If Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, a controversial belief which was held by the Gnostic sects, and which is indirectly corroborated by the apocryphal Gospel of Philip, their child or children would have been the most revered among the desposyni.
According to author Malachi Martin, every early community of Judean followers of Jesus, whether it was Nazarene or Ebionite, was governed by a desposynos as a patriarch, and each of them carried one of the names traditional in Jesus' family but no one was ever named after him.
As some asserted their descent from both king David and the high priest Aaron, all male desposyni could have laid claim to both the throne and the office of high priest of Jerusalem.
However, the Roman occupation of Palestine, with the collaboration of the Judean establishment, made any attempt by a desposynos to rise to or seize political and religious power impossible or limited in scope.
Historical Accounts
Hegesippus (c.110-c.180) wrote five books of Commentaries on the Acts of the Church. They are now lost, but a few fragments are quoted by Eusebius in Historia Ecclesiae, 3.20. Among them is the following relation, ascribed to the reign of Domitian (81-96):
"...There still survived of the kindred of the Lord the grandsons of Judas, who according to the flesh was called his brother. These were informed against, as belonging to the family of David, and Evocatus brought them before Domitian Caesar: for that emperor dreaded the advent of Christ, as Herod had done."
So he asked them whether they were of the family of David; and they confessed they were. Next he asked them what property they had, or how much money they possessed. They both replied that they had only 9000 denaria between them, each of them owning half that sum; but even this they said they did not possess in cash, but as the estimated value of some land, consisting of thirty-nine plethra only, out of which they had to pay the dues, and that they supported themselves by their own labour. And then they began to hold out their hands, exhibiting, as proof of their manual labour, the roughness of their skin, and the corns raised on their hands by constant work."
Being then asked concerning Christ and His kingdom, what was its nature, and when and where it was to appear, they returned answer that it was not of this world, nor of the earth, but belonging to the sphere of heaven and angels, and would make its appearance at the end of time, when He shall come in glory, and judge living and dead, and render to every one according to the course of his life."
Thereupon Domitian passed no condemnation upon them, but treated them with contempt, as too mean for notice, and let them go free. At the same time he issued a command, and put a stop to the persecution against the Church."
When they were released they became leaders of the churches, as was natural in the case of those who were at once martyrs and of the kindred of the Lord. And, after the establishment of peace to the Church, their lives were prolonged to the reign of Trajan."
In "The Ecclesiastical History", Eusebius records an account by Julianus Africanus recorded the following concerning the family:
"...For the relatives of our Lord according to the flesh, whether with the desire of boasting or simply wishing to state the fact, in either case truly, have banded down the following account...But as there had been kept in the archives up to that time the genealogies of the Hebrews as well as of those who traced their lineage back to proselytes, such as Achior the Ammonite and Ruth the Moabitess, and to those who were mingled with the Israelites and came out of Egypt with them, Herod, inasmuch as the lineage of the Israelites contributed nothing to his advantage, and since he was goaded with the consciousness of his own ignoble extraction, burned all the genealogical records, thinking that he might appear of noble origin if no one else were able, from the public registers, to trace back his lineage to the patriarchs or proselytes and to those mingled with them, who were called Georae."
"...A few of the careful, however, having obtained private records of their own, either by remembering the names or by getting them in some other way from the registers, pride themselves on preserving the memory of their noble extraction. Among these are those already mentioned, called Desposyni, on account of their connection with the family of the Saviour.
Unlike Jung’s stress on the intrapsychic experience of the self via the image or symbol, Kohut’s concept of the selfobject implies that selfhood is most fully experienced within a relationship that provides for the person what is otherwise missing. However, this apparent dichotomy must not be upheld too rigidly. Kohut stresses that the selfobject is an intrapsychic phenomena, not simply an interpersonal process, whereas Jung is aware that the self may be experienced between two persons.
Jung suggests that at the core of the transference phenomena is a factor he calls "kinship libido," or the seeking of human connection: "relationship to the self is at once relationship to our fellow man, and no one can be related to the latter until he is related to himself" (p. 234). In other words, "inner structure must be created and then led back toward kinship and relationship with other" (Schwartz-Salant, 1982, p. 24). Jung associates the experience of the self with the discovery of meaning. According to Jung (1969b) only meaning liberates; neurosis can be understood as the suffering of the soul that has not discovered its meaning.
Intuition is not vision. We are all born with it as a guidance system. It only operates when you have enough self-esteem to trust yourself without others' approval. When you allow small changes in your sensing or experiencing, these changes may open a flow of intuitive information and deeper meaning. Not all humans can sing, and not all Dragons can psi. Some have clearer Vision than others. But it can be developed.
Mutual Interpenetration
Dragon kin exist in a unique social context, whether unawakened and isolated or intentionally interactive with other relatives of varying closeness in terms of most recent common ancestors. Dragons are morphologically similar to the general population, but "wired" differently in their endocrinology, with unique features in energy production/use and extraordinary human potential that we distinguish as Homo Lumen. These ultra-terrestrial capacities can be activated and amplified by interaction with one another through the hive-mind of collective consciousness.
Recent research on neuroplasticity and psychosocial genomics lends compelling support to the theory that psychosocial forces shape neurobiology through gene-expression. Investigations of neuroplasticity demonstrate that the adult brain can continue to form novel neural connections and grow new neurons in response to learning or training even into old age. This means under facilitating circumstances, we have the capacity to awaken undreamed of potential within ourselves, moreso if Dragon subculture supports and reinforces such emergent capacities.
The transformative imperative is a a mystic marriage or union, symbolized in alchemy by the coniunctio -- conjunction of conscious and unconscious. Individuation is Jung's term for the process by which a person integrates unconscious contents into consciousness, thereby becoming a psychologically whole individual, in an emergent or steady state of self-realization or self-actualization. Mysterium Coniunctionis ("mysterious conjunction"), the "royal wedding" is the final alchemical synthesis (for Jung, of ego and unconscious, matter and spirit, male and female) that brings forth the Philosopher's Stone (the Self).
Its highest aspect, as for alchemist Gerard Dorn, was the unus mundus, a unification of the Stone with body, soul, and spirit. The unus mundus is a perfect synthesis of conscious and unconscious. This "one world" is the physical-psychological, transcendental, "third thing" continuum underlying all existence -- the metaphysical equivalent of the collective unconscious. Mercurius. The Dragon's "treasure hard to attain" is the experience of the archetype of unity -- the self.
The structuralist paradigm in anthropology (Claude Levi-Strauss) suggests that the mental superstructure of human thought processes is the same in all cultures, and that these mental processes exist in the form of binary oppositions (Winthrop 1991). Some of these oppositions include hot-cold, male-female, culture-nature, and raw-cooked. Structuralists argue that binary oppositions are reflected in various cultural institutions. Anthropologists decipher underlying thought processes through kinship, myth, and language. This hidden reality exists beneath all cultural expressions. Structuralists aim to understand the underlying meaning involved in human thought as expressed in cultural acts.
Structuralism emphasizes that elements of culture must be understood in terms of their relationship to the entire system. This notion, that the whole is greater than the parts, echoes the Gestalt school of psychology, holism and the holographic concept. Essentially, elements of culture are not explanatory in and of themselves, but rather form part of a meaningful system. As an analytical model, structuralism assumes the universality of human thought processes in an effort to explain the “deep structure” or underlying meaning existing in cultural phenomena.
We all begin our dragon lives as the raw prima materia: the common, elemental substance or "first matter," "found in filth," the "orphan" sought by the alchemists in their attempt to create the Philosopher's Stone. The original "chaos" or "sea" constitutes all matter. Alchemist Gerhard Dorn saw it as a substance within man: "Transform yourselves into living philosophical stones!" Jung interpreted the prima materia ("lead", "Saturn") as an unconscious content ready to surface with the "heat" of awareness to cook it into a conscious experience.
The Akashic records (Jung's "collective unconscious") are an energetic pattern, a hologram or a frequency like a tuning fork vibration. Holographic images are pictures captured in light and hold the feeling of events and emotions so they may be viewed again as a learning tool. We can "consult" with our ancestors beyond time. In recent decades modern science has verified what the ancient traditions intuited long ago. In both tangible and mysterious ways, we are all interconnected, and any one of us can have a profound effect on the whole.
If you accept the perennial mystical teaching that, at the level of consciousness, we are not only interconnected, but are actually one Self seeing through many eyes, then it should be clear that, like it or not, in the way we conduct our inner and outer lives, each of us is in fact always having an effect on the whole. What would you do if you realized that the entire human endeavor, the evolution of consciousness itself, depended on your willingness to transform your own consciousness?
Dragons living in isolation from one another tend to keep to themselves. Some anecdotally report feelings of alienation toward those they commonly encounter, with attendant depression and defiance. "Feeling different" inhibits social interaction, and divergent thinking may lead to reductionistic, antisocial behavior and negative feedback.
Social anxiety is emotional discomfort, fear, apprehension, or worry about social situations and interactions with others. It may involve intense feelings of fear in social situations, especially those that are unfamiliar or involve evaluation by others. Some feel anxious just thinking about them and will go to great lengths to avoid such situations. Social anxiety can become a habitual reaction, or a chronic syndrome.
The Plenum can be modeled as a holographic realm, either with or without string theory, which may or may not be an accurate reflection of the true nature of Reality -- the total field of direct experience.
Theories must be examined for their phenomenological and metaphysical utility. Nature turns herself inside out in quantum zitterbewegung -- negative energy states -- resulting in our realm of Light, Energy, and Mass. It is the Source of our Being, of all Being. As electrons zip through the vacuum, the lightest known fundamental particle, they display a super-fast trembling motion, a perturbation of vacuum fluctuation. Seething behind a mask of emptiness, this force is greater than all of the energy composing the visible or manifest universe. Infinite luminosity literally radiates existence, a process which continues utterly irrespective of any Observer Effect required by the Standard Model.
Is the Copenhagen Interpretation a 'scientific' example of magical thinking that holds emotions and thoughts are always active in nature? Is such a belief supportable? Are all things in the cosmos, past, present, and future, actually or potentially interconnected, with connections are affected by people’s behavior, emotions, and intentions? Such controversies highlight the fact that there is no consensus in mainstream physics. Scientists may try to approach the field scientifically, yet their perceptual probing is subject to their conventional and unconventional beliefs about the nature of reality. People and atoms are not things.
ll contemporary models [Transactional (quantum handshake), Quantum Field Theory (QFT), Many-Worlds (decoherence), M-Theory (strings), Copenhagen (wave-function collapse), Holographic (frequency domain; resolution), Implicate (hidden information), etc] are essentially philosophical, or colored by the psyche and philosophy of their originators. Imagination has to cross the boundaries of disciplines to somehow find links between the observable and unknowable. Both matter and psyche are in a constant state of redefinition.
Source Mysticism
This Quantum Vacuum is more aptly named the unmanifest Plenum, whose vast energy density some consider the source of sentient Being. The dynamic discovered to be the very substance of the Plenum of space is light itself, the spectrum of fluctuating electromagnetism called the Zero Point Energy (ZPE). The "Quantum Vacuum" points to the fact that it is not a vacuum - an emptiness pure and simple, but rather is saturated with vibrant potential energy and is in fact a highly energetic medium, an absolute fullness of potential energy, the dynamic modification of which actually "emanates" what we call mass, matter or material form. Qabalistic creation stories say much the same, describing three Veils of Negative Existence.
This correlation between Source Mysticism and leading edge physics yields many interesting ideas for exploration that recontextualize science. The Secret of the Universe is that it is alive with energy, an endless space of pure potential and dynamism. The groundstate of nature is the heart of matter. Our nature is radiant scalar energy, the nonobservable yet roiling cosmic ocean of vacuum fluctuation, the disassembled roots of all being, the true primordial soup. The Heart Sutra claims that all form is nothing but Void and quantum physics agrees.
"To let each impression and each embryo of a feeling come to completion, entirely in itself, in the dark, in the unsayable, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one's own understanding, and with deep humility and patience to wait for the hour when a new clarity is born: this alone is what it means to live as an artist: in understanding as in creating." --Rainer Maria Rilke
Concealment & Revelation: The Western esoteric tradition represents a distinct form of spirituality extending from Hermeticism, Neo-Platonism and Gnosticism in the early Christian era up until the present. Diffused by Arab and Byzantine culture into medieval Europe, these esoteric currents experienced a marked revival through the Florentine neo-Platonists of the late fifteenth century. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, esoteric spirituality was carried by Renaissance magic, Christian Kabbalah, Natural Philosophy (proto-science), astrology, alchemy, German Naturphilosophie, theosophy, Rosicrucianism, Freemasonry until the modern occult revival in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, in which Theosophy played an important role.
Alongside and within this Western tradition, Arabic and Jewish currents have played a major role since the Latin Middle Ages. Arabic astrology, alchemy and natural science entered the medieval West through southern Italy and Spain from the tenth century onwards. In the fifteenth-century Jewish kabbalists in Spain and Italy assisted the Christian assimilation of Kabbalah, which henceforth became a major strand of European esoteric spirituality and thought. Accounts of spiritual ascent, angelic hierarchies and religious experience evidence strong commonalities between the Jewish, Christian and Islamic esoteric traditions.
Esotericism, as an academic field, refers to the study of alternative or marginalized religious movements or philosophies whose proponents in general distinguish their own beliefs, practices, and experiences from public, institutionalized religious traditions. Among areas of investigation included in the field of esotericism are alchemy, astrology, Gnosticism, Hermeticism, Kabbalah, magic, mysticism, textual hermeneutics, interpretations of ritual/liturgy and art. Esotericism draws a distinction between the theosophic and esoteric. 'Occult' simply means 'hidden.'
The modern term “Western esotericism” is used as a general label for a great variety of religious currents and trends in Western culture – from Antiquity generally, and from the Renaissance to the present more in particular – characterized by their belief that true knowledge of God, the world, and man can only be attained by means of personal spiritual experience or inner enlightenment. The first English usage is found in Thomas Stanley, History of Philosophy(1701), with reference to the mystery-school of Pythagoras who divided his disciples into the "exoteric" (under training), and "esoteric" (admitted into the "inner" circle).
Faivre's differentiation in Access to Western Esotericism (p. 23 & 33-35) is given as follows:
* Mysticism: Direct, often revelatory knowledge (Gnosis) of the Divine, mainly without intermediaries. * Esotericism: Gnosis through intermediaries, symbols, initiatiory practices, (rituals, theurgy), etc. * Occultism: Practices or actions deriving their legitimacy from esotericism (where esotericism is theory/worldview and occultism is practice/action that derives from it).
Magic can be religious but it does not equal religion. There are two types of magic - Theurgy and Thaumaturgy, the former being magic as worship, and hence religious, and the latter being magic to do things, which may also be religious or may not. Among the things magic can do is potentiate our higher consciousness, and this is its most suitable use. Nature directly reveals her Wisdom.
Such ceremonial magic relies heavily on symbol system manipulation, identification and dialogue with archetypal forces, with similar results to Jungian amplification, using ritual instead of free association. It makes manifest that which was formerly concealed or hidden from the conscious mind of the participant, leading to experiential knowledge of primordial forces. It builds awareness of the higher vehicles, including the etheric, subtle or energy body, mental body and Light Body. True ritual and ceremonial magic, involves Words of Power, consciousness-altering sounds, gestures, postures and Sacred Movements; means of activating centers and energy systems of the subtle bodies; subtle body diagnosis and healing; methods of attack and defense; metamorphosis and transformation of the bodies; psychospiritual alchemy; philosophy and theology of Cosmos and Chaos.
If one conceptualizes magic as coming from, or through, a god(s) then all magic could be considered religious. If on the other hand one considers magic as either a phenomena of the natural world or a skill of humans, then one might not consider it magical, although if one admits that a deity(ies) created the manifest universe then arguably one might argue that all magiic is religious as it has its source in a god(s).
Magic is totally separable from religion. An atheist magician might well take this position. One who has integrated physical body, conscious mind, and the unconscious already can be distinguished functionally from less developed human beings by consciously inhabiting a wider spectrum of imaginal dimensions of experience. Symbolic meaning is created on the path of individuation. Symbols appear in myths, fairy tales and rituals, as well as dreams, active imagination, and projection. They activate the transcendent function in psychic life and become a primary motivator of change, of transformation. We learn to intuit the past as well as the future to amplify and deepen the present.
Alchemists sought the experience of Unus Mundus, the one world united through material, emotional, mental and spiritual aspects. Science illuminates the spiritual quest, and spiritual tech illuminates the deep nature of matter and our nature. Paradoxically, when we look into the depths of matter, we look into the depths of ourselves. Scientists and mystics report similar phenomena in their models and phenomenology.
Spiritual technologies, the software of sacred penetration and amplification, virtually predicted the fine nature of matter as nothing but a complex illusion - what we have come to understand as a hologram. Existence is simultaneously real and unreal, as quantum physics reveals. Mystics have also always emphasized the primal nature of Light, and claimed that we are in fact made of light itself. Science has confirmed this in numerous ways. We now speak about the mystics Law of Vibration in terms of resonance and field theory.
The Philosopher's Stone may be equated with the Body of Light (Photonic Body; Scalar Field Body), the Resurrection Body, or the Immortal Body. Alchemy strives for the experience of spiritual rebirth through the union of opposites, or the sacred marriage. The Philosopher's Stone is also a symbol of the embryonic Self. It is the product of the sacred marriage, which has been characterized in alchemy as the Hierosgamos, Royal Union of the Sun (+) and the Moon (-). The symbolism conceals the Great Mystery. It cannot be known without being experienced.
Magic is therefore not necessarily under the umbrella of religion, and might be conceived as an ancient method of self-potentiation and self-development. Dragon Mysteries, as a current, historically ran parallel to religion. It is a worldview and there are many schools of thought. Dragons are neurologically hardwired for magic, whether they choose to pursue it, or not.
The Dragon Mysteries emphasize potentiating the subtle and endocrine systems of clan members, to enhance visionary and illuminative states. Integration of body and mind opens the way to exploration of the unconscious, deepening the meaning of life. The inner void opens into a Plenum. Ultimately, the spiritual domain merges with the mundane into a unified experience of Awareness.
The Grail is light, just as woman is light, and both are the light of the 'Sun'. Transcendent consciousness, (symbolized on the Tree of Life by Tiphareth, the solar Sphere), is embodied in the ancient 'Great Rite' of the Dragon families. The 'hierosgamos' is a symbolic and psychophysical act with neurological and meta-genetic effects. Discovered in the paleolithic era, shamanic sexuality is the legacy of the Great Goddess cultures.
Rock womb-tombs were memorialized as megalithic monuments from the 11,000 year old labyrinth of the stars, Gobekli Tepe in Turkey, to the neolithic subterreanean Hypogeum of Malta, and later Delphi, whose root is δελφύς delphys, "womb". Vagina-shaped ritual caves are found globally. Kashmir has a sanctuary called Garbhagriha, the house of the womb, where regeneration is effected and the higher self of the devotee is reborn. At Mycenæ, so-called “beehive” tombs were constructed as wombs of stone to receive the dead. The Sumerian word sal, means “vulva,” “womb,” and “woman.” Also, the Latin matrix carries the meanings “female cavity,” “womb,” “matron,” and “mother.”
Fire in the Belly
Nenkovo, a vagina-shaped ritual cave in Bulgaria illustrates the central Mystery. At noon the sun penetrates into the cave through an opening in the ceiling creating a phallus of light on the floor. It progressively grows longer, reaching toward the womb altar. In Winter, with the sun low on the horizon, the phallus elongates to reach the altar and symbolically fertilize the womb. The Hawara labyrinth in Egypt was decorated with reliefs of the Dragon god Sobek. The womb temple is a place for rebirth. The circle of life and the circle of breath are related through "womb breathing." Universal energy underlies the process of transformation, as the basis of life. Through vase breathing we simulate the state of a baby in the womb. The energy body feeds on light which enriches, energizes and stabilizes all parts of the body.
The etymology of labyrinth has two interlinked variations: 1) derived from labrys, a pre-Hellenic word said to mean ’double headed axe’, 2) derived from the Latin labia meaning ’lips’ or ’folds’. The double-headed axe was sacred to Zeus, the Grecian Thor, whose hammer was a variant of the labrys. The spinning hammer formed the shape of the swastika as it flew through the air, whipping up the whirlwind. This whirlwind and the spiral swastika that symbolized it were the figurative progenitors of the stylized maze, labyrinth or Vortex. Nevertheless the hammer, shaped like two opposed crescent moons was, like the labrys, a female emblem.
At the highest level, the labyrinth symbol works on several different but interconnected levels:
The Folds of Time, The Spiral Cosmos, The Folds of Human Self Deceit, The Journey of Life, The Brain and Spinal Column, The Womb. The Tomb or Creachaire, The Vortex or Sumaire
The fire of Prometheus is not the fire of Kundalini going up the spine to the brain, but the fire of wisdom moving down the spinal column to the womb to become Starfire, which when shed is drunk in the royal ’Rite of the Vampire’. Starfire potentiates, amplifies and accelerates a fuller consciousness that turns the void into a pleum of gnosis.
The double triangle labrys design, identical with the one found in the labyrinth of Knossos but without the handle, was used up until medieval times to denote the womb. The genital symbolism is therefore quite clear. Whether the word Labyrinth is derived from labrys or labus, it strongly indicates the maze or labyrinth was originally a graphic symbolic representation of the womb and vaginal channel.
The Teli in the universe is like a king on the throne; the Cycle in the Year is like a king in the province. Teli serpent or dragon is closely linked to the galag ('cycle').
Andrew Scharf writes that the physical notion of the T’li is taken from Samuel’s araita (Universe of Shabbetai Donnolo, 36). In Pirkei d’Rabbi Eliezer, a creature like the T’li supports the entire world on its fins. The notion of the T’li is comparable to the Ptolemaic axis mundi; T’li is compared to bariakh, a piercing, or a central bar or girder for the earth.
Thus in Sa’adya’s interpretation of the Sefer Yetsirah he tries to intervene in its magical
treatment of symbols, to situate its speculative aspects in the context of Biblical traditions, and to replace its astrological doctrines with astronomical ones. In this way he excises its magical qualities and stifles the theosophic attitudes embedded in its melothesic (zodiacal) modeling of the cosmos. These interpretive tendencies are apparent in his treatment of Hebrew letterforms, and the astrological entity, the T’li, or the dragon.
As a philosopher Sa’adya is faced with a real problem in interpreting the Sefer Yetsirah, because it is at odds with the creation narrative of Genesis. Sefer Yetsirah narrates creation through letters and numbers, while Genesis explains that the world was created by means of the divine voice. Sa’adya tried to reconcile the creation narratives with his doctrine of the bat kol, the daughter of the divine voice. He quotes from Nevi’im (the book of the Prophets) to insist that the Bat Kol was the first created thing, followed by the visible air, in which the Creator formed ten numbers and twenty-two letters. In this way he uses the Nevi’im to assert that divine speech precedes the creation of the letters, and that the letters are the agents of divine speech rather than of the divine body, which reestablishes the primacy of the divine voice as it appears in Genesis. This, then, is an interpretation that treats letters as a mediation of mediation, rather than as divine artefacts or material objects.
Sa’adya also works to reinterpret the astrological entity of the T’li, or the dragon, as discussed in Sefer Yetsirah 1:4. In so doing, he also reinterprets the theosophical and astrological views informing the text. I examine here pereks 54-5.
The main portion of 54 describes the creation of twelve sets of four elements by one letter. A typical description proceeds as follows: “there was formed with ‘He’ these: Aries, Nisan (A spring month), the liver, sight and blindness.”11 This passage expresses the theosophic conception of the universe encoded in a melothesic (zodiacal) model. All of these four elements participate in one another via their creation with the letter ‘He.’ The Sa'adya version also shows a belief in astrology.
The passage reads as follows: Three fathers and their offspring, seven dominant ones and their hosts, and the twelve diagonal lines. And a proof for the matter - trustworthy witnesses: the universe, the year, and mankind...12 There is a law of ten, three, seven, and twelve. They are commanded in13 the T’li, the celestial sphere, and the heart. The T’li in the universe is like a king on his throne; the celestial sphere in the year is like a king in his province, the heart in mankind is like a king in war.14
When the universe, the year and the soul are called ‘witnesses’ this speaks to a theosophical view of the universe as a cipher, or a ‘proof’ for understanding divine creation. Each element described here manifests human and cosmological qualities, which emphasizes the relationship between them, and to God. The text shows an astrologically influenced worldview in its discussion of the T’li. In diagrams accompanying the text it was sometimes depicted as a snake eating its tail, and it exercised power over the twelve constellations.15 The writer explains that each of the powers described is ruled over by three intermediary powers - the dragon (T’li), the wheel and the heart.
With the T’li ‘like a king on his throne,’ and the others exercising power at greater and greater distances from the throne, it is quite clear that they are subsidiary to the T’li, and that it holds real power.
Sa’adya reads this passage quite differently, however. He writes: “I understand this to be a place where two orbits intersect… It is not a constellation resembling a dragon or any other creature.”16 Thus, the T’li possesses neither image nor power. It is merely, in contradistinction to the one presented in the text, a human identified set of coordinates on a map of the skies. Sa’adya describes the T’li in contemporary astronomical terms, but his proof text here is Job 26:13, which reads:
“By his spirit he hath garnished the heavens; his hand hath formed the crooked serpent.” Thus, true to Kalaamist ideals, revelation provides the basis for textual and even scientific interpretation. 17 The T’li does not exercise the power granted it in the text of the Sefer Yetsirah. So Sa'adya’s commentary intervenes in two key tenets either expressed in or attributed to the Sefer Yetsirah. First, he delimits the function of symbols, so that letters do not function as magical objects, and so that the story of the Sefer Yetsirah agrees with the creation story told in Genesis.
Next, he argues against the attribution of power to the T’li. While these points of view are inconsistent with the literal sense of the Sefer Yetsirah, they are quite consistent with the Kalaamist views popular in his time and place. These include a desire to delimit the function of symbols in relation to the divine, and a non-theosophic worldview founded not in astrology but in the synthesis of empirical observation with revealed text. Sa'adya’s commentary is polemical.
Next we will consider Shabbetai Donnolo, another tenth Century commentator, but from Byzantium rather than Babylonia. He works between the poles of Jewish midrashic and magical tradition, Byzantine adulation of icons, and Babylonian astrology. This is quite clear in his discussion of his aims in Sefer Hakhmoni, the sources of his scientific knowledge, and the function of the T’li, or the dragon. In this work, his goal was to emphasize astrological themes in the Sefer Yetsirah, to allow humans to interpret the stars to uncover, understand, and map the divine structures undergirding the cosmos. The relations between the shapes of the constellations, the human form, and the divine are among the central foci of the work.
Throughout the work, he treats astrological patterns as the ktavemet - true writing from the hand of God.18 He arrives at this reading by combining Jewish, Greek, Macedonian, and Babylonian science, combined with a Byzantine understanding of signs as presentational. This interesting passage from the Sefer Hakhmoni explains how he arrives at his methodology:
Eventually I found a Babylonian, not a Jew, called Bagdash, who knew this science very well, including how to make calculations for a true understanding of what had been and what was to be. His system completely agreed with Samuel’s Baraita, and with all the Jewish, Greek, and Macedonian books, yet it was absolutely clear and lucid… He taught me the rules of observing the heavenly bodies, explaining which were beneficent, which maleficent, and how, by measuring the shadow thrown by the rod, as written in Shmuel’s Baraita, the planet and the constellation which are lords of the hour can be known, so that any question can be asked or answered…19
Here, he begins with Shmuel’s Baraita, (a Jewish calendrical work written in 776) as his source text. There is a problem with it, because it is unclear. He accepts the other books - the Greek, the Macedonian, and particularly the thoughts of the Babylonian Bagdash, as clarifications of that first Jewish book. In actuality, this is a superimposition as the works he discusses treat similar subjects, but quite differently. Hence he uses all the materials at hand, regardless of their source, to accomplish his goal of reading the heavens, God’s creation, to gain insight into divine providence.
This bent is particularly clear in his discussion of the T’li.20 He asks in the Sefer Hakhmoni: And what is the T’li? When God created the firmament above us, which is divided into seven heavens, He created the T’li from water and fire in the shape of a great dragon, like a great twisted serpent, and made for it a head and a tail and put it in the fourth heaven, which is the middle heaven, the abode of the sun… It is …through learning handed down through ancient books that we can get to know the T’li, its power, its rule, how it was created, its goodness and itsmalignancy.
Shabbetai quite clearly believes that the T’li, created by God, holds real power. It rules, and it exerts influence on events through its goodness and its malignancy. Traditional knowledge (learning handed down through ancient books) will help us to understand the process by which it was created, and the divine source of that power. He continues according to the text of the Sefer Yetsirah to employ a melothesic model mapping the cosmos onto the human form. Shabbetai writes:
The universe has its signs of the zodiac, and those who observe the stars know how to foretell future events. Similarly, man has signs: when a man has scabs but no boils, lice, or fleas, experts in such learning can tell his fortune by it…22
Thus the human body and the cosmos provide an avenue for insight into the ways of the divine. Both can reveal the true structures undergirding the cosmos. Shabbetai’s position resonates in some ways with that of the classical thinker, Philo of Alexandria, who argued that God created the universe as a kind of allegorical icon of itself. According to Philo, images of the cosmos did not represent directly but functioned as an allegory as well,23 pointing through and beyond themselves to something greater.
In Philo’s time, the intellectual elites expressed their superiority through a suspicion of icons. This point of view was formulated in opposition to an overly simplistic, naïve expression of what Moshe Barasch calls an unfulfillable desire - the desire to see God. The intermediary, Philonic position is the allegorical treatment of the universe, in which the universe does not represent directly as an icon might, but as an allegory it does allow some understanding of the divine through interpretation.
Thus while we do not know whether any of Shabbetai’s own manuscripts contained images, his tendency to understand the universe as an allegorized presentational symbol may be due in part to his immersion in Byzantine culture, which was continually involved in a discussion of the meaning of the visual. This culture valued images in a way that was not acceptable to Jewish praxis, and that made it desirable for Shabbetai to take up this intermediary position as Philo did. In this way, two different commentators on the Sefer Yetsirah explicitly rely on non-Jewish sources to reinterpret the magical function of the Hebrew letterform, which provides the undergirding structure for the map of the cosmos it elaborates. Sa’adya lived in tenth Century Babylonia, among the intellectual elites of both the Islamic and Jewish communities.
Because the ideals of the Kalaam prevailed, with their insistence on the incorporeality of the divine, their fierce aniconic ideals, and their desire to base scientific inquiry in revealed tradition, Sa’adya interprets the Sefer Yetsirah in this vein. Working across the boundaries of religious faith, he reconciles its doctrine of creation with the one presented in the Hebrew Bible, mediates the magical function of the Hebrew letterform, and delimits the mystical signification of the created world. Shabbetai, on the other hand, lived immersed in iconophilic culture of Byzantine Italy, which was unacceptable to him as a Jew.
Thus, drawing on the classical Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria and those like him, on the non-Jewish Babylonian scholar Bagdash, and on his contemporaries who stressed the power of images, Shabbetai was able to reinterpret the Sefer Yetsirah as an astrological work. As an astrological work, it treated the created world not as icons, but as a melothesia, which presented the created world as an allegorical icon, one which, when interpreted correctly, pointed beyond itself to insight into the divine. Thus astrological ideals provided Shabbetai with the tools to forge an intermediary position between Jewish aniconism and Byzantine adulation of icons. In this way the metaphysical models created by each of these thinkers served to map cultural, as well as cosmological configurations.
Andrew Scharf writes that the physical notion of the T’li is taken from Samuel’s araita (Universe of Shabbetai Donnolo, 36). In Pirkei d’Rabbi Eliezer, a creature like the T’li supports the entire world on its fins. The notion of the T’li is comparable to the Ptolemaic axis mundi; T’li is compared to bariakh, a piercing, or a central bar or girder for the earth.
Dragon's Head & TailThe Teli as ihe inclination of the orbit of a planet from the ecliptic. The "dragon," whose head and tail form the two nodes, is then identified as the Teli.
The Dragon is what unites the celestial and earthly plane. Because the Teli is the axis mundi, it is connected to the Cycle of earthly events. The teli is the Pole Serpent The Teli, mentioned in the Sefer Yetzirah, is the imaginary axis around which the heavens rotate. Many philosophical commentaries on Sefer Yetzirah, as well as astronomical texts, interpret the Teli as being the inclination between two celestial planes. In modern astronomy, this is usually called the obliquity, and it usually denotes the inclination separating the ecliptic and the celestial equator, which is the imaginary circle above the earth's equator. Hebrew astronomers also used the term Teli to denote the inclination of the orbit of a planet from the ecliptic, particularly in the case of the moon.
Interestingly enough, according to which version of the Bible you refer to, the translation does not allow to retrieve the true sense of this text. The Leviathan is always mentioned. However, instead of the expressions Pole Serpent or Coiled Serpent, the text says: the piercing Serpent and the crooked Serpent (King James translation). The translation that I utilize is from the Cabbalist Aryeh Kaplan, and is found in his commentary on the Sefer Yetzirah. Mars is the energy of the Terrestrial Dragon, the Coiled Serpent, which had to be awakened from his long sleep. Uranus triggers the Pole Serpent, himself activated by the systemic Dragon (The Dragon or Kundalini of your universe).
Uranus is the masculine pole of the Leviathan, the Dragon who stayed in the masculine frequency of Spirit is waiting to take its function. Uranus is the axle and fulcrum that is connected with the Pole Serpent, with the Ancient Dragon and the Constellation of Draco.
The planes of the ecliptic are marked:
to the north with the ascending nodes or Head of the Dragon
to the south with the Tail of the Dragon
The Tail of the Dragon marks the time of the Fall Equinox. In common symbology, it represents our past. The Head of the Dragon is connected with the Spring Equinox, and we are used to considering the north node as the symbol of the future or the becoming.
The Dragon is the Divine Fire which contains Life or codes issued from the thought or Divine Plan. The Tail of the Dragon symbolizes the non-transmuted fire that lives in the darkness and has to extract itself from density and fly toward Spirit. It is the Terrestrial Dragon.
The Head of the Dragon is the Dragon embraced by Spirit, the Dragon who is transmuted by the Light. It is the Dragon who has retrieved its identity and thus announces the transformation of the Self and the future.
The plane of the ecliptic finds balance around the movements of the Great Serpent or Dragon. Now, at the time of the Fall Equinox, Uranus goes back and forth around the Tail of the Dragon. The Divine Axis, which is moving around Uranus, takes over and slowly replaces the Terrestrial Axis, balanced around Mars.
The Lunar Nodes -- the Dragon's Head & Tail -- which move clockwise and opposite each other, visit each pair of Signs for about a year and a half before moving on.
Axis Mundi
An ancient Midrash, "The Prayers of Rabbi 'In The Beginning,' " tells us that it "hangs (by a thread) from the fin of the Leviathan." This ancient serpent is nothing other than the constellation of Draco, the Pole Serpent mentioned in Job 26:13 -- "By His Spirit the heavens were calmed, His hand pierced the Pole Serpent" -- and in 2nd Isaiah 27:1 -- "On that day (the day of judgment) with His great sharp sword, God will visit and overcome the Leviathan, the Pole Serpent, and the Leviathan, the Coiled Serpent, and He will kill the dragon of the sea." Note that three such dragons are mentioned here. To understand this, we must look up at the stars. We can all find the Pole Star, Polaris in the tail of Ursa Minor, the Little Bear. This marks our north celestial pole and is directly above the north pole of our planet. There is another pole in the sky however. This the pole of the solar ecliptic, the path of the sun through the constellations. The earth is tilted on its axis against the ecliptic, so that the celestial pole above our planetary pole describes a great circle in the sky over time. In 4500 BCE, Thuban, a star in the tail of Draco, marked the celestial pole.
The ecliptic pole however does not change, since the path of the sun through the sky never changes. Around this point, which has no star visible to the naked eye to mark it, the constellation of Draco, the Great Dragon, spirals through all of the zodiacal signs, with the stars appearing to hang, talah, from it. Draco thereby becomes the Teli, which the Sepher Yetzirah in chapter 6:3 tells us, is "over the universe like a king on his throne." This is perhaps an echo of an ancient form of worship, that of the God Most High identified with Baal, that predated the arrival of the Hebrews in Palestine. It is also the serpent of the garden, climbing its way up the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the brazen serpent used by Moses in the wilderness and even Hermes' caduceus staff.
The Gnostic Ophities, who worshipped the serpent for giving us freedom from the Demiurge and thought that Mary Magdalene was one of the founding women of alchemy, formulated the image of a snake spiraling around an egg. In simple terms, this is the serpent of Draco coiled around the elliptical circle made by the celestial pole. The image expands however when we think of the egg as the celestial sphere and the serpent as the spiral connecting the projected spheres of the Tree of Life. The Teli here would be the axis of the ecliptic poles through the head and tail of the dragon at Keter and Malkut, and the center of the celestial sphere. This is the first dragon, the Pole Serpent.
There are however two other ways to interpret the dragon-axis of the Teli. Hebrew astronomers used the term Teli to denote the inclination of the orbit of a planet from the ecliptic. In the case of the moon, this allows you track eclipses, since eclipses occur only when the sun and moon arrive at the nodes, the head and tail of the dragon to the ancient astronomers, at the same time. Solar eclipses were seen as occasions where the dragon caught and swallowed the sun for a period of time. The concept of ascending and descending nodes, the head and tail of the dragon, or Teli, is also used with the other planets. The major nodes for the sun are the vernal and autumnal equinox, the point where the celestial equator crosses the ecliptic. This is the Coiled Serpent.
And there is still another way to look at the concept of the Teli. If we think of the Milky Way as the Leviathan, then the Teli, or axis of the dragon of the sea, our third dragon-axis, then becomes the galactic axis, running through the ecliptic from Sagittarius/Scorpio to Gemini/Taurus. Like the ecliptic axis, the galactic axis is constant and unmoving. Within these pillars, or perpendicular axis, the coiled dragon of the equinox, the crossing point of ecliptic and equator, spins slowly backward through time, one degree of arc every 72 years.
A Talmudic example makes this even clearer: "The stormwind hangs (talah) between the arms of God like an amulet." The hanging is of course the Teli, the axis of its suspension. The stormwind is the slowly backward turning spiral of the equinoxes and a metaphor for the mystical experience itself. The arms of the universe are the unmoving Teli, the ecliptic and galactic axis, from which the initiatory spiral of the equinoxes is suspended like an amulet.
The Bahir, in verse 106, announces that the Teli is nothing but "the likeness before the Blessed Holy One," or the face of God. And then the Bahir quotes the Song of Songs 5: 11 -- "His head is a treasure of gold, his locks are hanging, black like a raven." It is somewhat shocking to find the Teli refereed to an image that is so suggestive of alchemical motifs. But, as we will discover later from Fulcanelli, these are indeed very important symbols.
Verse 96 of the Bahir addresses other key alchemical symbols, and may in fact be our earliest mention of that medieval alchemical standard, The Philosopher's Stone. It begins: "What is the earth from which the heavens were graven (created)? It is the throne of the Blessed Holy One. It is the Precious Stone and the Sea of Wisdom." The verse continues to suggest the spiritual value of the color blue, the traditional color of kingship, by associating the sea with the sky, and the sky with the higher light coming from the Throne of Creation.
From the Bahir, we learn that the Tree of Life is actually the Precious Stone whose facets are projected onto the celestial sphere and which is part of the continuous flow of the Sea of Wisdom. John's Revelation is a version of this, with the Tree of Life on the banks of the flowing river, deep inside New Jerusalem's Cube of Space.
But what did in fact happen to the Tree of Knowledge? Is it banished from the perfected schema? The Bahir suggests, in many subtle references, that the Tree of Knowledge forms itself round the axis of the celestial pole, whose Teli or dragon-axis would be the backward spiraling axis of the equinox. The celestial pole, as it circles around the fixed point of the ecliptic pole, first leans in toward the angle of the galactic axis, that is toward the center of the galaxy, and then moves away in a large precessional cycle. The timing of the Fall, when the Tree is tilted away from the galactic axis, and the timing of the resurrection and redemption, the arrival of the kingdom of heaven when the Tree tilts toward the galactic axis, is regulated by the cycles of the intersecting Teli.
The whirlwind, sufah, of our Talmudic reference is the mystical experience of the galgal, or cycle, of the Tree of Knowledge. The galgal is also spoken of in the Bahir as a womb, that is a cycle of time in which the future is born. All of time happens within the Sphere defined by the Teli, and, the Bahir tells us, is revealed in the Heart of Heaven. This is both our own personal spiritual center, the heart, and the heart of our galaxy, pulsating in harmonic fractals of the same wave.
Rabbi Nehuniah and his followers developed a complex system of illumination based on a deep understanding of the cycles inherent in the three Teli of the projected Tree of Life, the Precious Stone of the celestial sphere. The good Rabbi himself died or disappeared around the time of the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, but his students kept the work going until late in the 2nd century. After that point, the teaching of the Bahir went deep underground for a thousand years. In the late 12th century, a manuscript version began to circulate among the Jewish mystical community of Moslem Spain.
Two hundred years later, a Parisian bookseller would find an illustrated copy of the Bahir and come to Spain in search of its meaning. With the help of an elderly Jewish sage, he would rediscover the inner secret of alchemy and the nature of time. Nicholas Flamel was perhaps the most famous and believable of all historical alchemists, and it is hard to deny that he found a transmutational secret of great value.
What happened to the secret during the thousand years it was lost to the west? The answer is simple: What the orthodox Christians and the legalistic Jews rejected, the gnostic Sufis of Islam embraced. One possible derivation of the word Sufi, in fact, comes from sufah, whirlwind, meaning those who have experienced the illuminating whirlwind of the cycle of time. Within the framework of the apocalyptic religion of Islam, the ancient wisdom survived, and true to the process itself, was transformed.
Today, several independent researchers connect both the enclosing serpent and the primordial "sun" to the 'axis mundi' or 'world axis' (axis, as is .... ) (pole shifts, physical and consciousness) a column said to have once risen from the earth to the sky. (Axis, Isis, is is, to exist, to exit)
This suggests that the cross-cultural theme of the glowing serpent and orb might have been inspired by intense plasma discharge in the heavens, perhaps comparable to the aurora, but much more powerful. We know from plasma experiments that such effects would likely include the cosmic thunderbolt described in early traditions.
Axis Mundi goes to the Rod of Asclepius or Rod of Hermes, the symbol of medicine. The similar caduceus or staff is the axis itself, and the serpent (or serpents) are the guardians or guides to the other realm. It is a common shamanic concept, the healer traversing the axis mundi to bring back knowledge from the other world.
The axis mundi connects heaven and earth as well as providing a path between the two. The axis mundi is commonly represented as a rope, tree, vine, ladder, pillar or staff, among other things. In addition to the caduceus, the yin-yang descends from this idea. Sometimes, depending on representation and belief system, the axis mundi is considered explicitly male or even phallic.
Many cultures consider a specific place, almost always a hill, a mountain or a pyramid to be the axis mundi. For example, the Sioux consider the Black Hills to be the axis mundi, while Mount Kailash is holy to several religions in Tibet.
Often, within the same belief system, several places may be considered the axis mundi; in Islam Mecca is said to be the place which was made first on earth.
The Temple Mount, site of the Dome of the Rock, is also holy to Judaism and Christianity. Other nearby sites that are considered sacred and are on hills include the Mount of Olives and Calvary.
The ancient Greeks had several sites that were considered places of the omphalos (navel) stone, such as the oracle at Delphi, while also maintaining a belief in a world tree and Mount Olympus as the abode of the gods.
Many religious structures explicitly mimic axis mundi.
The stupa of Hinduism, and later Buddhism, reflects Mount Meru. The upright bar of the cross is sometimes seen as representing a world axis, while the steeple of a church or minaret of a mosque indicates a place where the earthly and the divine meet.
In Mesopotamian civilizations, the ziggurat works as an axis mundi. http://www.crystalinks.com/dragonaxismundihat.html
Structures such as maypoles in pre-Christian Europe, linked to the Saxons' Irminsul, and totem poles among Pacific Northwest Native Americans also formed local or temporary world axes.
Other times a specific plant is considered the axis mundi.
In some Pacific island cultures the banyan tree, of which the Bodhi tree is of the Sacred Fig variety, is the abode of ancestor spirits. The Bodhi Tree is also the name given to the tree under which Gautama Siddhartha, the historical Buddha, sat on the night he attained enlightenment.
Other corrolaries include Yggdrasil of Norse mythology, Jievaras of Lithuanian mythology, the pre-Christian Germanic peoples' Thor's Oak, the Sefirot of Judaism, the Chakras common to many Eastern religions, and the Trees of Life and Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden.
Entheogens are often considered to be the axis mundi, such as the Fly Agaric mushroom among the Evenks of Russia.