As we continue in our exploration of the many mysteries encoded in the Twenty-two Arcana of the Kabbalistic tarot, we arrive at the profound mystery of the number fifteen.
The Fifteenth Arcanum has been symbolized in a great variety of myths and stories, in ancient tales. And contained within each religious allegory, we find the central truths necessary for the initiate, the aspirant to the path. In order for us to grasp the wisdom, the light, which radiates from the heart of cosmic understanding, we have to purge from our own mind those filters, those inheritances which we have received in our traditions. When our minds are clouded with preconceived notions inherited from our traditions and our families, from our culture, these lenses can obscure the comprehension that we require in order to make real progress on the path of initiation, or in other words, the path to realize the nature of ourselves.
The myths and religions and stories that we learn are necessary in the same way that the child requires storybooks and fairytales in order to begin to gain some grasp of the nature of life, and the child learns to write letters and shapes in order to formulate, eventually, a greater understanding. Myths and stories, religious narratives, are the preschool of the path to initiation and in order for us to grasp that, to understand that, we have to perform a comparative analysis and look to the universal nature of the teachings that exist on this planet.
Throughout the creation myths that we find in any religion, there are always consistent themes; we always find that primordial womb, the great waters of the Mother from which life emerges, and that womb is always a vast deep or a great darkness. The primordial darkness, the womb of the Divine Mother, is the Ain, the Nothingness, which is in itself pure potentiality, beyond conceptual notion, beyond definition. It is that which is uncreated; this is "darkness." From that darkness is born light, and all the great myths, all the great religions, express the manifestation of that light with similar terms, similar symbols.
The vast womb of the Divine Mother becomes impregnated; it is fertile. From that fertile water emerges light. This very basic concept contains within it an exceptionally profound truth, the nature of which must be comprehended level by level, step by step, and it applies directly to the development of our own soul. This is not simply some theoretical concept of the creation of the universe, this refers directly to the creation of our own Self-realization, to our own soul. Therefore, as a student who seeks that realization, we look to ourselves to find that water, that womb which resides within.
How is that light born? From where does the light emerge? We know very well, when we close our eyes and we enter into meditation, all we perceive is darkness. This darkness within is not the darkness of the womb, the darkness we have within is another kind. But nonetheless, the same allegory applies, that within the darkness of our own mind a light must be born, a light must emerge. Consider this very carefully, that in all the creation myths, light emerges from darkness. The darkness comes first, the darkness is there before the light. This understanding, this very notion, challenges the basis of many modern day theologies which state that the light is first. But the scriptures do not present that: scriptures present that the darkness is first, and from that darkness emerges light.
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. - Genesis 1
So what is the primordial darkness? How do we comprehend that? In the same way that we read these scriptures and stories to comprehend how creation has arisen, we read these stories to comprehend how to perform creation in ourselves. So the very basis, the very foundation of the emergence of light, is darkness itself. In some way we can say that light is a manifestation of darkness. So to know how to create light you have to know what the darkness is, you can not ignore that. This is the basis of the book of Genesis upon which the whole tradition of Judaism and Christianity rests.
The very first couple of sentences state that from the darkness the light emerges. What is the darkness? Where do we find this darkness? In the second line of the first book of Genesis we read, "Darkness was on the face of the deep, the earth was without form." It was formless, there was no form to the earth, "and darkness was on the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, and God said, "Let there be light." These brief sentences contain an entire structure upon which you can comprehend the nature of true Self-realization, but you have to penetrate beyond the literal meaning, beyond the very simplistic child story that we learn. There is a very potent science contained within these passages.
In the Book of Dyzan, an ancient Asian text discussed in great detail by Blavatsky in the Theosophical tradition, and also recognized by the Tibetan Buddhists as an important scripture, we find this line,
The darkness that breathes over the slumbering waters of life, darkness radiates light and light drops one solitary ray into the waters.
So here we find, from the darkness emerges the light. In the same manner as it is presented in the book of Genesis as written by Moses. The waters are the letter Mem. Mem is the character we discussed from the Hebrew alphabet which is related with the Arcanum thirteen, and as you remember, thirteen is the Arcanum of Immortality, or the Amrita, whose character Mem symbolizes water. From this comparison, looking at the Arcanum Thirteen we can infer and understand that immortality itself, the Amrita (ambrosia), the nectar that we require, is within the water. The light itself emerges from the water.
The light is that which gives comprehension, that which gives understanding, and of course in Gnosis, in Kabbalah, we know that this light is called Chrestos, Christ. It is the three in one, Trimurti, the trinity of light which emerges from the darkness. The darkness of the primordial impregnated womb sends forth this burst of light, a ray.
In all these ancient traditions we know that the arising of the sun is always heralded, is always worshipped, venerated. When the Sun God emerges from the night to illuminate the Earth, this is a key and critical point of doctrine, a point of attention in all the exoteric religious practices, that is, those religious observances performed by the lay person. The ancient peoples of every tradition venerated the arrival of the Sun, because the sun is what provides life. So the dawn, the Aurora, is the arising of this light from the darkness. This is when the Sun, Apollo, or in other words Ra, from the Egyptians, arises to illuminate the earth.
In other terms, the earth which is without form has light arrive, and when the light arrives, then the formation of the earth can begin. Again we have to note this: if the light does not arise, the earth can not be formed.
In Gnosis we understand that "the earth" is symbolic: it represents our own philosophical earth, which is ourselves, which is Malkuth, the person, the individual creature who seeks to become a real individual, in other words a Human Being. But that earth must be elaborated with the light of the Sun. The Sun must arise, the light must appear to provide life. So the darkness, we could say, is the root of the radiance which emerges into life.
In Christian terms we say that Christ is the Sun, the light which illuminates the world, but this terminology is simply derived from Egyptian terminology and from Greek terminology, who described their Solar Gods in the same way, as "the light of the world." This term originally referred to Apollo, Ra, these solar heroes.
When we take a step back and look at our Tree of Life, we can see and infer, and understand, that this structure of ten spheres is the structure of a vessel. It is a vessel which is elaborated in order to receive light, to receive and transmit light. The light is one thing, the light emerges from the darkness in order to provide life, the light fills a vessel. On the macrocosmic scale, the universal scale, we say that that vessel is all the different degrees of nature, of matter. One of the most dense is this physical matter that we perceive with our physical senses, but there are many other levels. But the same light fills them all.
The vessel is a vessel of clay, which is us, the vessel of earth, which the Spirit of God forms. The earth is without form: we are without form, we do not receive and transmit the light of God. In order to receive that light and transmit that light, the vessel must be formed, the potter must shape the clay. Then the light can radiate as a lamp in the beginning, and as a Sun in the end.
But how is that formation achieved? How does the potter form the clay? How does the blacksmith form the metal? How does a craftsman perform his art? With fire. Without fire there can be no creation: the fire is the light, the light that emerges from the darkness. "And God said," or more precisely, "and Elohim said, let there be light." The Elohim "said," with the throat, with the word, with the power of Daath, the Tree of Knowledge, and this pronunciation releases light.
In the book of Dyzan we read,
Behold, disciple, the radiant child of the two, the unparalleled refulgent glory, bright space, Sun of dark space who emerges from the depths of the great dark waters, it is OEOAHU, the younger. He shines forth as the Sun, he is the blazing divine dragon of Wisdom.
This is the Christ, clearly; Osiris, the Chrestos, Apollo. The Solar God who emerges from the dark waters. The fire of the Christ is a creative force, an energy which fills and illuminates the Tree of Life and provides the capacity for creation to occur in all levels.
Within ourselves we have some limited power to create, and the root of that power comes from God, it comes from our own inner divinity. In other words, within us, within our own selves, we have our own individual Apollo, our own individual Jesus, our own individual Osiris, that Divine Father, that Christic light which flows downwards from heaven and gives us the capacity to be alive, to perceive, to hear, to listen, to feel. Our senses are inflamed by the power of Indra, the Divine Father we have, the celestial God, within our own selves.
Again we emphasize the necessity to comprehend: God is not an outside force, God is inside. There is no purpose in religion if we do not realize that which we worship is within. As long as we consider that God is some external force, we can never understand what religion really is. A religion is a science to reunite the essence that we have, our own consciousness, with its source, our own Ain Soph, our own light. When we discuss these mythological representations, Apollo, Jesus, Buddha, remember that he is within you. He is outside too, but our primary concern has to be what is inside. Our goal is to reach, comprehend and become one with that which is inside. We have our own inner Christ, our own inner light.
Unfortunately, we make mistakes. We are presented with all the representations of life which arise and appear to us through the windows of the senses. We see images, we smell different sensations, we touch them, we taste them, we hear them. All of these abilities of perception - and the ability to imagine - are powered by the light of Christ (in the ultimate sense). Without God, these things would not be. But the critical point is this, how do we use that? How do we use the capacity to perceive? How do we use the energy that we are given? How are we using the energy of thought, the energy of feeling, the energies of sensations?
In each instant, in each moment, the vessel that we have now, although unformed, does have some light. It is a light that is descending into us along our own inner Tree of Life. But how is that light being filtered, being directed? It is directed by will, by our own will. But how do we enact our will, and upon what basis do we make our decisions? Do we ever question the impulses that arise in our own mind, in our own heart?
In ourselves, our own Sun is actually in darkness; we are in a cosmic night, psychologically speaking. The Sun, our own inner Christ, which has the power to illuminate all the worlds of space, is in darkness. In all the ancient mythologies, we always see the symbol of the passage of the Sun through the sky and how the Sun rises in the morning at dawn, passes through the sky and then descends back into darkness at night. This is something very obvious, but symbolically it represents a cycle, in other words, a path which is well explained in the Song of the Lord (Bhagavad Gita) which Krishna explains to Arjuna when he says, that there are two paths, the Solar and the Lunar.
Fire, light, daytime, the bright lunar fortnight, and the six months of the northern solstice of the sun; departing by the path of these gods the yogis, who know Brahman, attain nirvana.
Smoke, night, the dark lunar fortnight, and the six months of southern solstice of the sun; departing by these paths, the righteous person attains lunar light and reincarnates.
The path of light and the path of darkness are thought to be the world's two eternal paths. The former leads to nirvana and the latter leads to rebirth. - Bhagavad-gita 8.24-26
These two paths represent two states of consciousness, two places for the Sun to reside, for the light to exist. Through the implementation of our own will we have chosen to direct the light of our own experiences, of our own thoughts and feelings and our own actions, into the creation of certain kinds of vessels in ourselves. We who choose to empower our anger by feeling our anger, by going along with our anger, by feeding it, by giving it life, we build a vessel called anger, and that vessel is in the mind itself, and it has reality, in a sense, because it is a form of matter, but not physical. It is a form of matter that exists in a more subtle level of nature, but it is nonetheless matter, and it is matter that holds and contains energy that we ourselves put there: this is called Karma. When you act you produce a result, that potential result forms matter and until that result is satisfied, it exists within.
The mind that we have, which is full of passion, full of anger, full of pride, full of lust, and is dark, without form from God's hands; that mind is in darkness, this false darkness. The light of God can not enter into us while we inhabit that realm. In other words, from another point of view we say; we, the sinning Adam, those who have betrayed our own inner Lord, have created a vessel called Klipoth which means "empty shell," empty of life, empty of the Lord, empty of God; but nonetheless perceiving, like a phantom, like a ghost. The Klipoth is the shadow of the Tree of Life, and it is our own mind, our own subconscious, unconscious and infraconscious levels within which we dwell, identified with our fears, our desires, our passions, our prejudices, our traditions, our histories, our memories. All of our attachments are in themselves our own personal Klipoth.
In other words we can say, when the light of the Christ descends through our own personal interior Tree of Life, we, through willpower, through being identified with desire, cause that light to continue to unfold in the inverted form. In other words, that light falls. It still creates, it is the same light which creates all the upper levels of Heaven, but through our own will, through our own lust, through our own envy, we create Hell, and the light which illuminates that Hell is Satan. But let us understand something important; the light itself is not Satan, Satan is formed through desire, but the light itself is Lucifer.
The name Lucifer is Latin and means "the bearer of light, the carrier of light." The components are "Fer", to ferry, to carry; and "lux", "lucis", light: Lucifer. In Gnostic terms we call him Christos-Lucifer. Lucifer is grossly misunderstood. In modern times, people call him "the devil" and some worship him as if he were an arch-demon and Satan, and could give them powers, etc. And in truth, he can deliver powers to us, but there is a gross misunderstanding.
If you look back into the histories regarding how Christianity developed, you discover, firstly, that originally the name Lucifer did not occur in the Bible. It was introduced into the Bible by a bishop named Jerome, but where did he get the name Lucifer? This person, Jerome, translated many of the old texts to form what is known as the Latin Vulgate. When he was translating this book, he reached the book of Isaiah, and there is a passage describing the king of Babylon as the Son of the Dawn:
How are you fallen from heaven, O Shining One, son of Dawn! - Isaiah 14:12
But Jerome, in his interest in battling politically against another bishop whose name was Lucifer, a Christian bishop named Lucifer, Jerome translated the name of this king of Babylon as "Lucifer," as an attack against the competing bishop.
How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! (King James version)
The original text does not say "Lucifer," it says "Son of the Dawn." So this is a gross mistranslation with catastrophic consequences.
Not only that, but how curious it is that there was a Christian bishop with the name Lucifer. Why would a bishop be named after the devil, if indeed that is who Lucifer truly is? It seems more likely that any bishop would only be named after saints and high figures, so why is he named after Lucifer?
The original passage in Hebrew says, "The brilliant one, son of the morning, son of the dawn." Who is the brilliant one that we see in the morning at dawn? Venus.
Unfortunately, the Christians began to add things throughout the Bible and massaged their own concept of the doctrine, and little by little we find, over the course of the centuries, that this character of Lucifer was transformed into Satan, into the devil. So nowadays if you say the name "Lucifer," people freak out. Their minds close immediately, because they have had centuries of indoctrination of a false interpretation of the doctrine.
This is related to the preschool level of understanding religion. To comprehend Christos-Lucifer requires that you move beyond preschool, because Christos-Lucifer is quite complex and requires a sophisticated ability of comprehension.
The reason for this is that we as souls are trapped, we are trapped in our own karma. No one did this to us, no outside force made us lustful, no other person made us proud or forced us to become vain or envious or jealous. We did it, individually, by our own will. Therefore we have to answer for our deeds, the Bible states that very clearly, Jesus states that very clearly.
Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.
For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.
Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven. - Matthew 5:17-20
Jesus states that he did not come to change the law, but to fulfill it. But how does he do it, how can he save us, if at the same time he must fulfill the law? He does it by teaching us how to not make those mistakes again. But how do we learn that? By memorization? How does a child learn to not touch the hot stove? By telling the child? No.
When a child is burned by touching a hot stove, it will never again touch the stove, unless it is stupid (and there are stupid kids). We are stupid, because we do not realize time and again that we repeat actions that harm ourselves, which harm others, so very stupidly we persist in creating karma, we persist in elaborating false creations in the mind called egos, psychic aggregates, or in other words "devils." We term them things like pride and envy, but really those structures are karmic structures which are intimately related with how they were made.
So how can Christ save us from that, by what means? Well, first of all, out of compassion. That light, the Chrestos, sends his messengers, sends his embodiments in order to present to us steps, as teachings. We know those teachings today by many names; they all come from the same place, but in our darkness, in our confusion, in our attachment, we confuse them, we add to them, we manipulate them, we castrate them.
The second way that he helps us is by putting our nose in it, the same way you train a dog, the same way you train an animal. This is why Christ says, "I come with a sword," and why he says he is the fire which will burn up everything. But nowadays the theologists have made the figure of Jesus into an effeminate, weak, very meek and mild half-person. We know that the Master Jesus was not that, and we know that in all the other traditions that the great solar savior was a great warrior, a very compassionate warrior, but a fighter nonetheless. Christ fights on our behalf, but against what? Against who?
The fire, the light, which illuminates the nature of the ego itself is a derivative of God. When with our will we build pride, we want to feed our pride, we are giving that pride energy, and then that pride begins to talk to us, begins to say, "Hey, I'm hungry, feed me a little more. I want to look good, I want people to respect me, I want people to admire me, I want them to envy me, I want to be noticed, I want, I want." That is also Lucifer. That is Lucifer the tempter, in other words Satan, our own creation, who is utilizing the light of Christ filtered through the desires of our own mind, through our own karma, tempting us to continue in those wrong actions, and most of the time we go right along, and so we become enslaved by the dragon.
We become the servants of our own inner demons. When lust wants to be fed, we feed it; when our envy wants what someone else has, we get it to feed the envy, to feed Satan. When our fear wants to find security, it looks, it finds it, outside, in theories, in schools, in a membership, in a master, in a degree, in money. The search for security is the devil itself, tempting us through fear, to abandon our own inner God.
In the story of Faust, we find a beautiful representation of Lucifer. Dr. Faustus was a real person whose life became allegorized in the same way as other initiates like Buddha and Jesus. Faustus was a man of great learning who had achieved all that he could achieve in the material world, and was a pious man, a religious man, that he knew that there was something more, and in his search for knowledge, his desire to understand, he became involved with Mephistopheles. And of course, interpreting the story of Faust from the point of view of Gnosis, we know Mephistopheles was none other than Faust's own mind, his own inner devil, which he himself made. Faust began to be tempted and made a deal with the devil. Of course, nowadays many fanaticized people reject this story and refuse to even read it because they think it is about devil worship. What they fail to recognize and realize is that in the end Faust becomes liberated, Faust overcomes. He suffers, but he must suffer. He must suffer, because there is no other way to learn what is right and what is wrong. He has to feel the burning stove and recognize that suffering is produced by ones own action.
In other words, to become a Master, you have to know what you are mastering. Being a Master is not related to study of books, it is being a Master of oneself, a Master of the transformation of impressions, a Master of the utilization of consciousness. So that in each moment, as the light descends into your own mind, you know how to use it in the right way; that is Mastery.
The same story is told in the Bible in the book of Job. You can read in the book of Job that all of the divine sons of God were gathered, and who was among them? Lucifer.
Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan (the Adversary) came also among them.
And the LORD said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the LORD, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.
And the LORD said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil?
Then Satan answered the LORD, and said, Doth Job fear God for nought?
Hast not thou made an hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side? thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his substance is increased in the land.
But put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face.
And the LORD said unto Satan, Behold, all that he hath is in thy power; only upon himself put not forth thine hand. So Satan went forth from the presence of the LORD. - Job 1:6-12
This is Lucifer as the tempter, as "Satan," which in Hebrew is "the adversary."
Why would the Bible call him a divine being, called to the presence of God, to the service of God, if he was some devil for us to curse? The Bible does not say that. In fact, in the book of Job, Lucifer is serving God, performing his role under the guidance of God. It is right there in the Bible, and demonstrates that modern theology has lost its way.
What is the role of Lucifer in the book of Job? To tempt Job, to test Job, to put him into the furnace and temper him like a sword, to make him strong, to make him perfect. No one can do that but Lucifer, because he is the bearer of fire, he is the bearer of light. No one can perfect the disciple but Christ, but Christ as Lucifer, as the tempter.
This is beautifully illustrated in the New Testament when Jesus is tempted, and he goes into the desert for forty days, related to Mem. Remember Mem is related to the number forty. When Jesus is in the wilderness, Lucifer appears, and here you see the beautiful dual nature of Christ; Jesus and Lucifer, Christos-Lucifer, they are one. And Lucifer tempts him, and Christ overcomes. But how does he do it? By remembering God. By remembering God. By always remembering God, his own inner Father. He does not conquer Lucifer with quotes from scriptures, or with theories, or with nice ideas; he conquers him with Faith, but real Faith, not belief. Faith as Self-remembering, as the remembrance of the one true Self.
This story is also beautifully illustrated in Egyptian symbolism. When you examine the fantastically complex mysteries of Egyptian symbolism, you see that Osiris and Isis have a brother, and his name is Seth. Seth is also known as Typhon among the Greeks, and you may have remember that Apollo, the solar God, conquers Typhon, the serpent. In the Egyptian myths, Seth also becomes a serpent, the tempting serpent of Eden. Of course, Osiris is a symbol of the cosmic Christ, Isis is a symbol of the Divine Mother, Seth is Lucifer, the brother of Christ, the twin.
We find the same symbol in the Aztec and Toltec mythologies with Quetzalcoatl and his twin brother, so this is not something invented in recent times, this is ancient, these are ancient laws, ancient truths, which our modern theories obscure.
But returning to this story of Seth, there are many symbols in the story of Seth. In one of the earliest we see that Osiris and Isis have a son. In Kabbalistic symbology, we understand that this son, Horus, represents Chesed, our own Being, our own inner Spirit, Atman, but in the Egyptian mysteries Horus is the brother, the twin god of Seth, so you have some complex overlapping symbols here. But you will see in Egyptian myths the figure of a god with two heads, one of a falcon and one of an unknown creature. This is Horus-Seth, Christos-Lucifer, who bears within his symbol the essential duality of the Christ unfolded across the Tree of Life. Horus as the symbol of light and Seth as the symbol of darkness.
Nonetheless, in the pyramid texts, one of the old Egyptian texts, we find that Seth is the helper of the dead. When the dead, the deceased, the one who has destroyed the ego, who is psychologically dead, is ready to ascend into heaven, he is lifted up a ladder and assisted on either hand by Horus and Seth, one on each hand. At the same time we see that Seth is the god of "evil," the god of trickery, the god of deception, but how is it he is the one who is assisting the initiate to ascend into Heaven? In the same way that Mephistopheles assists by tempting, by testing. Seth and Lucifer are the same, the same one.
In later stories, we see that Seth is the murderer of Osiris, the Christ. How is this? Throughout the Egyptian mythologies, Seth and Osiris wage war with each other, in other stories Seth and Horus, but in synthesis we can say it is the same thing, it is the two parts of Christ that war within us, that part of Christ related to our inner Being who is the pure light which we can receive assistance from if we know the science. And then there is the other part of Christ which is known as Lucifer, trapped within our own mind, caged, chained like Prometheus to the rock.
Prometheus is also Lucifer. Prometheus in fact is the one who steals fire from the gods in order to give it to the men who he created, because in the Greek mythologies Prometheus creates man, but he takes so long to form man that all of the gifts of Zeus which would normally be given out to all the creatures, have been exhausted and given to all the other creatures of nature, so man gets nothing. So Prometheus says, "Alright, I will steal the fire of the gods to give to man." That fire is the light of Christ, the light that we need in order to illuminate our own understanding.
In the story of Seth, we find that in the same way that Prometheus is punished by the gods and enchained to the rock, Seth kills Osiris and is cursed. The same way that Judas betrays Jesus and is cursed. What we in religious preschool do not grasp is that Seth, Judas, Lucifer, is doing his job. If the Lord does not die, he cannot resurrect.
The oldest myth of resurrection that we have on this planet is that of the resurrection of Osiris, not Jesus. Seth, in other words Lucifer, does battle with Osiris, kills him, and dismembers his body into fourteen pieces; this is important. And he spread these fourteen pieces all over the place. Then Isis, the wife of Osiris, the Divine Mother, in mourning, takes a long journey to search for all the pieces of her dead husband. She finds them all except one: the phallus, which Seth stole and dropped into the waters where it was swallowed by a fish, the fish of number fourteen, the Arcanum fourteen related to Nun. In other words, the creative power of Christ, Osiris, is within the water, is within the fish, the mysteries of Jonah, the mysteries of the water, the mysteries of Leviathan. Who is the lord of the waters in Egyptian mythology? Seth. Who is the lord of all the creatures who dwell in the waters? Seth.
When Isis recovers all the parts of the body except the phallus, she has to form the whole body in order to resurrect him, so she forms a new phallus out of gold. This is alchemical; this is a symbol of how the husband and wife transmute the waters to take the lead, turn it into gold, and elaborate the spirit. This is how resurrection is achieved.
Who forms the new body of Osiris? The son of Seth; his name is Anubis. Anubis is the God of the Dead and the Lord of Karma. You see here an enormous collaboration, a beautiful mystery. Yet we, with our simple minds, blame Seth and curse him, but nothing would happen without Seth.
When that body is formed, Anubis brings all the parts of the body together with Isis - the Divine Mother and Karma interrelate - the new body is formed and Osiris resurrects, reborn as a God King. None of which could happen without Seth, so of course he forgives Seth. He does not blame Seth, because that was his job. In the same way, Judas performed his duty.
We, in turn, need Lucifer. He is the one which leads us to our own necessary death, the death of the ego, the death of desire, the death of pride, the death of lust. If we do not die psychologically, we cannot resurrect, we cannot be reborn, we cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
But to reach that glory, we have to conquer him, we have to conquer Lucifer. In this way we say, Lucifer is the best friend we have, and the worst enemy. The reason is: He is ourselves, he knows everything that exists within us, because he is us. Our own mind is the tempter, our own mind is the enemy. But without that, there is no Self-realization. Without the demon, where is Mastery? If there is no demon to conquer, if there is no dragon to conquer, what purpose does the knight have, the warrior? He has no function.
Christ unfolds himself into Lucifer to save us. Christ appears to us as Lucifer to save us from ourselves. It sounds odd, but Lucifer wants to be conquered, this is part of the beauty and compassion of God. As hard as our trials will become, as painful the tests, Lucifer will never push us past our limit. If we break, we break because that is our will. Think about that.
Our own inner God wants us to return to him, to become reunited with him. He does not want to crush us, because he could, easy, like that. He is God. God wants us to be perfect, to temper us in the fires of the Forge. And to do that as an expert blacksmith, as Vulcan, he has to temper the metal right to the point of breaking, just to the edge, and then he brings it back. This is the same way you make a sword, the same way you make weapons. You beat it out and you bring it back, you beat it out and you bring it back, and each time it becomes stronger, more resilient, more penetrating, sharper. The consciousness is the same: that is why the Greeks used Hephaestus (Vulcan) as a symbol of that.
We need to face the tests in order to overcome them. If we fail, it is because we want to fail. It is very simple in that way. If we fail on the path of Self-realization, it is because we have not understood our own mind. There is no one to blame but ourselves. But unfortunately, nowadays, everybody wants to blame someone else, so all the religions have the figure they blame. The Christians blame Judas who was tricked by Satan, so they blame Satan. They never realize that the cause of suffering is their own mind, even though Jesus says as much, Moses says as much, all the great prophets teach the same thing: conquer yourself. Yourself, which appears to you as Lucifer, everyday.
Lucifer is always there. That little voice you hear, talking, thinking, considering, planning, wondering, fantasizing, is stimulated by Lucifer. He is in the back, in your mind, saying, "Oh yeah, here is that pride you made, let this pride talk to you for a little while." He stimulates it by bringing it into situations that cause that pride to say, "Hey, I'm hungry. I want to look good. Do this and that. Criticize that person, humiliate them. I've given you the brilliant gift of sarcasm, let him have it, make that person suffer so I can feel good." That is Lucifer, stimulating pride, stimulating anger.
Lucifer says, "Oh yeah, here is that lust you made. Remember that lust you made? It is hungry, you should feed it. You made it, don't you love it? You made this, don't you want to keep it alive, don't you want to feed it, see how hungry it is, see how good it feels to feed that lust?" And we, in our preschool way, think, "Oh, well I feel that, of course I should satisfy it, and the Bible says I should." No, it does not. Lucifer is tempting you through your own mind and causes us to seek justification in scriptures, in theories, in traditions, in our histories, in our memories.
We say, "Well, we have always done it this way." So what? You will keep suffering that way too. Persist in those behaviors and you will keep getting what you are getting: pain.
Lucifer has to be conquered, and this is a symbol of Apollo and Typhon, of Saint George and the dragon, Ahura Mazda and Ahriman, these great archetypal structures. We all know of the great Fighter and the great Dragon. Indra has to conquer Vritri, but how does he do it? With the Vajra, with the thunderbolt of light. Lucifer is conquered with his own light.
Lucifer is the bearer of fire, the carrier of fire. When we find ourselves presented with a temptation, we burn, we suffer, because there in the midst of that painful circumstance is a lot of energy. But that is what we need. That energy is our own, but trapped, inverted, made into the devil, the devil that we created. We return to those places, those karmic, recurrent places in our own mind, in order to steal that fire back, to steal the fire from the devil.
In other words, how are you going to conquer your jealousy if you are not faced with it, if you do not see it, in action, in your three brains? You cannot conquer jealousy just as an idea. You can easily say to yourself, "Okay, I won't be jealous anymore, I won't be jealous anymore, I won't be jealous anymore!" And when you see your spouse talking to someone else you will become insanely jealous.
Affirmations do not work: they never have, and they never will. What works is comprehension, and to comprehend that jealousy you have to see everything about it, and the only way you can see it is if it manifests, if it comes up; that is the job of Lucifer.
Lucifer looks around in your mind, by the guidance of your own Being. Remember the book of Job, God says, "Do it! Tempt him." Your own Being does that, your own Being says, "Do it! Take him and test him. Put his face in the mess that he made, and show him what he is." When that happens, we usually run away. Or, we become totally identified such as with the example of the scene of jealousy. We get mad at our spouse, we get mad at the other person, we start blaming everybody and we become the martyr, the one who has been wronged. It is a lie we tell ourseves, it is all a lie.
The initiate has to conquer Lucifer, has to recognize, "This is jealousy that I made, because I'm dumb. I become identified and don't transform impressions that I perceive. I listen to my doubts, I listen to my fear, I listen to gossip. I did this, no one else is to blame. Not my spouse, not the other person, not even Lucifer. Not even the devil, because I am the devil."
That is what the initiate must do, in every case, in every situation, until the work is finished. As long as there is a hint of blaming others or God, Lucifer conquers us. As long as there is a hint of evasion, of self-justification, Lucifer laughs, "I got you again."
In this way you can say that Lucifer has a great sense of humor, but is infinitely patient. This is why tests are repeated, this is why we always go through the same problems; we repeat the same problems again and again. Some people have the mistaken notion that in their marriage, in their relationship, they have certain kinds of problems, and they just cannot fix it.
"My spouse is just no good, my spouse is flawed. Nothing wrong with me, it is my spouse. My spouse does not understand this work, my spouse does not understand Gnosis, does not understand this and that, my spouse wants such and such and this and that." So we look elsewhere. We do the same with our job, with our friends, with the city we live in. We always justify ourselves and blame the external circumstances.
Then we try to change the external circumstances. We get a new job, or we get a new spouse, or we get a new friend, and then what happens? Those who have a few more years under their belt know very well that the same problems come up. The exact same ones.
Then we get a little confused, "I have a new spouse, I have a new job, I live in a new city, why do these same problems keep happening?" We never think, "Oh. it is me. Ooh, it is me!" We have not comprehended how we ourselves produce our own suffering. Lucifer in his patience keeps putting our nose in it. "Here it is, look at it! Here it is! You are not paying attention."
We have to analyze everything, everything that constitutes our own Klipoth, our own mind. We have to look at it and say, "I'm responsible, how did I create this, how can I change it?" Those who constantly seek to change external circumstances are immature. I do not mean that in a critical way, it is simply that by trying to change external circumstances you really do not change anything, because the experience of life is determined by the nature of your mind. You have to change your mind, you have to change your psyche, to experience change. Self-realization is the result of having revolutionized the mind, of having made it into a perfect vessel for the display of the Christic light.
When the mind that we have is completely dead, Christ is resurrected. Christos-Osiris is resurrected as a God-King: that is our own Being. To reach that level, to acquire that psychological depth, we have to comprehend how Lucifer is tempting us through our thoughts, how Lucifer is tempting us through our feelings, through our instinct, through impulses, but most of all through sex.
Lucifer-Seth hides the phallus in the waters. Isis re-invents it, re-creates it, by transmutation. Isis is the Divine Mother: she is the water itself, she transforms that. But to acquire this development, to achieve it, we must become perfect. All the impurities in those waters have to be removed. To conquer in this way, means to overcome all of our own karma.
In the Pistis Sophia, we see that Sophia becomes trapped in the darkness, and what saves her is the light of Christ. She defeats the dragon, or in other words Lucifer, and is completely liberated because that light, the great light, has compassion and saves her.
The Vajra, the thunderbolt of Indra, the thunderbolt of Zeus, is that sexual power, which Sophia, Wisdom, has to utilize.
On this image of the fifteenth Arcanum we see it is ruled by Neptune, and as we explained in a previous lecture, the symbol for Neptune is formed by the crossing of the phallus and the uterus. In other words, the king of the waters, Neptune, the one who conquers and controls the waters, does so through his trident, which is sexual power. This is how Jesus walks on the water.
What is interesting to note is that this trident is also symbolized in the hand of Seth or Lucifer on the fifteenth Arcanum. You see the three-pointed staff, three points at the top, and a moon at the bottom. The staff is the spinal column. The staff is the spine that we have in our own bodies. In one of the other texts of the Egyptian mysteries, we read that Seth is related to the spine. Even though he is seen as this devil, as the opponent of Osiris and Horus, he is nonetheless the one that the dead one prays to for the spine to be re-assembled and put in its right place. This is because the Egyptian initiate understands that the spine is the ladder to heaven that Horus and Seth lead the initiate up.
The same symbol is in Dante's Inferno. When Dante and Virgil penetrate to the ninth sphere of the Earth, they find Lucifer encased in ice, crying. Why would a devil cry? Why is that? Why would Dante present the devil as crying? Because he suffers. That devil is none other than that impulse of Christos-Lucifer who is trapped in those structures of our own psychology. And those tears are the tears of his compassion. What is beautiful in that story, Dante presents this little phrase where he says,
"When we were come to where the thigh revolves exactly on the thickness of the haunch (in other words the hips, the loins, the sexual force) the Guide, with labor and with hard-drawn breath, turned around his head where he had had his legs, and grappled to the hair, as one who mounts, so that to Hell I thought we were returning. ‘Keep fast thy hold, for by such stairs as these', the Master said, panting as one fatigued, ‘We must perforce depart from so much evil.'"
Where do they climb? Virgil leaves Dante to climb up the spine of Lucifer, and by that stepped ladder, they ascend out of Hell. Of course, Dante was an initiate, and Dante knew that it is precisely through that force, Christos-Lucifer, that the initiate ascends or descends.
The life that descends through the Tree of Life is the same heat and force and life that we utilize in each action. Through each thought, through each feeling, through each action, and it is that harnessing that determines what we become. We are what we are because of what we do. We are what we are because of what we think. In the first line of the Dhammapada, which is a sacred book of the Buddha, he says,
We become what we think.
In other words, the use of the mind determines our future, determines what we are becoming, how we utilize those forces to either become better or worse. So you see in this that many theologies, many religions, instead of recognizing that, that we become what we are because of our own actions, they taught us to blame outside forces, to blame the devil, to blame our husband, to blame our wife, to blame the heathens, to blame the gentiles, to blame the Egyptians, whoever it is that our particular idiosyncratic culture wants to blame as the "bad guy."
That very childish point of view keeps us from recognizing the essential truth of any circumstance, which is: The cause of our own experience of life is within. The cause of suffering is inside. The cause of enjoyment, the cause of bliss is inside, inside of each one of us. The root of that energy is Christos-Lucifer, this force of the Fifteenth Arcanum, which is dual, and which manifests according to the utilization of energy.
This is why we see the character Samech, which is like a great wheel or a great circle. Samech, which in its shape has an outer circle and an inner circle. That structure is how creation itself is elaborated, but it is through will.
By becoming entranced with our own subjective feelings, with our own desires, we become the victims of Mara. In the story of the Buddha, when he is meditating, Mara appears. Mara is the devil in Buddhist symbology. And Mara comes and presents many temptations, wealth, women, power, prestige. These are his daughters, who are beautiful, very attractive. But in every case, the Buddha meditates and the Buddha recognizes the essential emptiness of all things. That emptiness is the darkness, the Ain, the nothingness which lies within all inherent existence, and by meditating in that way he is able to conquer desire, to realize, "All of these things that are appearing before me are impermanent, they do not last, they have no inherent existence, why should I become identified with them?"
In that way the Buddha is representing that by the power of that transmutation, by the use of the mind in the right way, the forces of those impressions are transformed, and riding upon that vehicle he becomes pure. Do you see that? If Mara had not appeared, the Buddha could not reach perfection. This is very important, very subtle. The same is true of any solar myth. The solar hero is always tempted.
This is why in the Bible we see, in Revelation, it says,
And he that overcometh, and keepeth my works until the end, to him will I give power over the nations, and he shall rule them with a rod of iron, as the vessels of a potter shall I be broken to shivers, even as I received of my Father, and I will give him the morning star.
Of course, the pieces of the potter are the vessels of the Klipoth, those empty shells, the psychological structures that we ourselves create, which form the nine spheres of Klipoth, and as you know those nine spheres are divided into two great realms of increasing degeneration. That exists within our own mind. Those devils, those demons that have to be conquered, exist within our own mind.
The potential to kill exists within our own mind. The tendency to harm others that we love exists within our own mind, latent, waiting for the opportunity to express. How can we remain passive when we see within ourselves the potential for violence, the potential to create suffering? And at the same time we have within the potential to heal, to do good. That power to harm or heal has to be managed with conscious will.
To acquire the conscious will to control ourselves, to control our mind, comes through meditation, and true meditation is the comprehension of our own mistakes. You can sit and meditate all you want, but that will not necessarily give you the power to control yourself, to command your own mind. To do that you have to conquer your own Mara, your own tempter who tempts you with all the pleasures of the world. If you overcome, it says in the Bible here, "I will give him the Morning Star."
The morning star is Venus who arises in the morning and passes, and who arises in the evening as well. The Morning Star is the Son of the Dawn which is the light of the Sun particularized: Lucifer. Incidentally, Seth is also known as the Son of the Evening, which is the same, Venus, the Morning Star. So in Revelation we also find, it says that,
I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.
By this we understand that Lucifer himself is the entire work, Christos-Lucifer, that force or energy which illuminates our entire mind, whether ascended or descended. So if we defeat Mara, then we can inhabit the internal realm of Samech, the inner circle. But if we become his victims, if we identify with our desires, if we remain lazy, we remain full of pride, full of lust, full of anger, and we remain in the outer darkness, the realm of death, the world of Samsara, which is this wheel of suffering. The difference between the two is will, and that will is defined from moment to moment, by how we utilize our own energies, our own consciousness, in each instant.
Any questions?
Question: Isis is the Divine Mother, and she made the chalice of gold to resurrect Osiris, that fourteenth piece that is missing. She achieves, like progresses to be divine, I mean how did she become divine, to have that power to... You know, the resurrection.
Answer: What is symbolized in that story of Osiris and Isis is the same thing that is symbolized in the story of Jesus and Mary. Mary in the Christian gospels symbolizes the Divine Mother who is that pure feminine force which is the fecundated womb, and from that womb arises the light, the Christ. It is the same concept, it is just presented from a slightly different angle. But Isis and Osiris in those stories are symbolic, they are symbolic of psychological structures, they are symbolic of spiritual structures, both on the macrocosmic scale and the microcosmic scale; there is a lot there. So, unfortunately it can be a challenge to navigate through the complexity of the symbolism, but the essential structure there is basically that through cooperation of the Father and Mother, life emerges. And we see that, even in simple terrestrial life this is true, but all the scriptures also represent that in the spiritual levels you have the same structure, it is the cooperation of Father-Mother, Abba and Aima, Osiris and Isis, Jesus and Mary. The same cooperation which allows the womb to become fecundated and the light to emerge, and the light is that which saves.
Question: What was the name of the book that you referred to in the beginning of the lecture, Dyzan, the ancient book?
Answer: The spelling is anglicized spelling which is something like Dyzan, something like that. But if you look in the Secret Doctrine by Blavatsky, it is there, she goes very extensively into that text, but it is simply a very old manuscript from a monastery in the Himalaya which explains these same Kabbalistic principles of how the light emerges, and there are many things there, many many that she elaborates in a very complex way.
Question: Is there a reason why this... I mean, there is such a huge change of what the normal person would think of Lucifer... Is that just the karma of this planet to have that, I mean, it just seems it turns everything upside down.
Answer: Well, of course it is the karma of this humanity to suffer through that misconception, but it is also intentions which have corrupted the doctrines. This is a very difficult thing to comprehend. The state that humanity is in now is of course due to karma, but that karma is being further modified as more intentions are poured into it, so as humanity persists in ignoring their own spiritual development, those who have some cleverness persist in misguiding them, so the karma gets more complicated. So it is both, karma and will.
Question: There is a lot to understand here, when we free the Essence, are we also freeing Lucifer? Are they the same thing, Lucifer and the Essence?
Answer: They are not the same thing. The Essence is a portion of Lucifer, is a particularized aspect. The Essence is like a child, the Essence that we have, the consciousness that we have, is an embryo, is a seed, which has to be grown. Lucifer is like the Sun and the earth and the water which give the seed the food it needs to grow. I mean Christos-Lucifer, which are all the forces of Nature which give that seed the capacity to become what it needs to become, but notice this: Any seed, as big or small as it is, has to die before the sprout can occur. When the life of the new plant emerges, the seed is dead, so that seed symbolizes something, and as that new life is emerging there is also death happening at the same time, so this is interplay between that two. But what allows that structure to develop is Christos-Lucifer, is that light.
Question: You said before that it is a great mistake that people make identifying Lucifer with Satan or the devil, is there any truth then to a real existence to Satan, Prince of Demons or Prince of Darkness?
Answer: Lucifer is symbolic of many things. Christos-Lucifer is the light that we need to illuminate ourselves. To do that we have to conquer our own devil. But, if Lucifer conquers us, if we succumb to that temptation, we become a devil, we become that. In other words, Lucifer wins and that diabolic intelligence begins to manipulate us in order to further the karma of other creatures, the payment of karma that is. So when you look back into all of the different stories, let us say for example the Mahabharata, the epic story from India, you have there a great war, that is the meaning of the name, between the Gods and the devils, the Gods and the demons, and there is a battle, the same battle happening in us. The key is, we have to choose sides, this is the key to conquering the fifteen.
The Arcanum Fifteen, when you add the one and the five, you get six. Six is the key. Six of course, as you remember from the previous lecture, is related to the lovers, to love, to Indecision, this need to define ourselves between the virgin and the whore, between God and the devil. Of course, to conquer him, our own tempting devil, we need love, but conscious love. Not sentimental love, but conscious love that knows how to act in accordance with Dharma, divine law. If we fail that, if we remain identified with our own subjective feelings, with pride, with envy, fear, then we lose in that ordeal and the devil conquers us, and this is truly the state of most of humanity, ruled by passions. This is why the Arcanum Fifteen is called Passion. Those passions are within the mind of everyone, the passions of lust, the passions of greed, the passions of material acquirement.
So in that sense we can say, what is the definition of a demon? A demon is any creature that is separated from God. Are we unified with God? No. So there are classes of demons, classes of devils. Most of us are the type of demon or devil that is simply ignorant, that is simply foolish. But there are other types that are conscious of being demons, they know, and they actively seek to serve the fallen Lucifer, to become servants of their own Guardian of the Threshold who is the devil inside. And in that way they proceed to develop themselves along the lunar path through the abyss. But unfortunately for those, what they ignore is the nature of the Law of Karma, and even though they gain power, they gain the respect of the world, they may gain wealth, but in the end they generate enormous suffering for themselves and humanity, and they will pay, because that is the nature of Karma.
So humanity at this point is at a very critical stage. We are in the midst of the age of the Kali Yuga, the age of darkness, and in the Bible we see that:
And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. - Daniel 12:2
So in this we understand that it is not the darkness of the emptiness, but the darkness of the Klipoth, so there are many people nowadays who are unfortunately developing capacities of the mind, powers, but in the wrong way, and they continue and persist in manipulating others and creating others. So they do exist, and we would call them demons. They are people like anyone, human beings in a sense, creatures like us, but creatures who have awakened consciousness in the wrong way.
Question: So the challenge that we have is good and evil everyday. How do you achieve to get over to the light of God. I mean, because you said that Lucifer also has the light of fire, and he is the one that tempts us. Now, say for instance today, I am tempted, and I see the temptation and I reject that.
Answer: That is the first step, to see a temptation and reject it is only the first step. You have to go the next step which is to comprehend the nature of that temptation, you have to meditate. The temptation that arises in your life is arising because you have elements in your mind which are stimulated, and those elements are the producers of suffering, so it is a pride, or it is an envy or fear or gluttony, something like that. To reject a temptation is good, it is the first step, but it is not the whole thing. You have to meditate, you have to comprehend. Basically you have to be able to sit within the suffering of that temptation and not act in the wrong way. That is difficult, because many times the temptations arise to act out of anger, to attack someone, to blame someone or to act in vengeance, and that kind of passion inflames the blood. We have passion related to envy, we have passion related to lust, we have it related to fear, and it is not always boiling, sometimes it is subtle, sometimes it is very mild, like a subtle taste, this is why you have to self-observe as well, you have to be present, paying attention. Pay attention, be present, and meditate. The combination of these things with transmutation is what gives you the ability to steal the fire from those temptations. It is within that temptation itself that redemption is found. This can only be understood by experiencing it. So long as you do not face your own demons you can not conquer them, but when you face them you have to have the willpower to not go along with their desires; this is very difficult.
Question: Is that why they taunted Job?
Answer: Yeah, Job had everything taken from him, everything. His family, his wealth, his possessions, the respect of others, everything. He was attacked, criticized, blamed, sick, hit with everything the devil could give him, and in the end the only thing that saves him is his faith, is the remembrance of God and the recognition he is just a humble servant, and that is what gives him the capacity to withstand the trial and to take from it what he needs for his growth, because truthfully that is the role of Christos-Lucifer, to present us with food that we need, but we have to extract from each situation what we need to grow. If instead we react by getting identified with the desire, and lashing out or acting out, or we react by repressing it, in either case we are walking away from the food that we need in order to grow.
When someone is criticizing us, accept it. Accept it and look into the pain you feel, and reflect, "How have I created this pain in other people?"
When someone attacks you, when someone does something harmful against you that hurts you, reflect in yourself, "How have I done this to them? Maybe I did not to it in this life, maybe I did it in a previous life, but I did it. Because if it is happening, it is karmic."
If someone is attacking you, blaming you or criticizing you, it is because you yourself have produced the elements that you feel: the anger, the blame, the shame, the pride, whatever that is. Karma is like that, recurrent, a cycle, so in every case of life you have to develop this capacity: be serene, just rest, do not get identified, reflect, observe yourself, because when you get identified you make mistakes, when you get inflamed with passions of Lucifer, you make mistakes.
Buddha gives the most beautiful example of how to do this: meditate. Observe yourself and you observe the desires arise and then you will observe them pass away, and that observation builds comprehension.
What is important to know here is this: Lucifer is the bearer of fire, right? Fire burns, fire is hot, you have to have the ability to withstand the heat of the oven, and by doing that you can extract the light. But if you run from the fire or you dive into it, either way you are getting nothing. You either get burned, and you suffer and die; or you run away and you stay in the cold. So one way or the other we have to have the capacity to face, to sit, to observe, to feel the heat, to meditate, reflect, do not act. Do not act until you have the confidence in your heart, and with intuition, and with guidance from your Being, that you know what to do.
Act without passion. We always want to act quick, right? "Oh, I've got to fix this now, I've got to fix this situation, I've got this bad problem, I've got to fix it now." Being all inflamed and up in arms like that you are only going to dig a deeper hole.
The Master Samael Aun Weor stated in his book Introduction to Gnosis, "A confused, conflicted, battling mind only makes problems worse." Only a mind that is serene can solve a problem, and the solution to the problem is in the problem itself, but only the consciousness can grasp that, your mind will never grasp it. Your mind always seeks absolutes, "yes-no," "good-bad." That is not the answer. The answer to solve a problem is going to come intuitively when the mind is calm, so do not react. Do not react, be patient, feel the flames burning and just rest, and know that no sensation lasts. You might be suffering; accept it and reflect in yourself: everything passes, nothing lasts. No religion lasts, no church, no house, no child, no family, no wealth, no attachment. The only thing that lasts is the light of the Christ, and even that has cycles of night and day. Do not be attached, observe all things in the same manner, with detachment. Love, but detachment, and that is a great form of equilibrium that only the consciousness can perform, you can only develop that through meditation, not through mental gymnastics.
