If I was doing planetary initiations from a modern perspective though, perhaps it would look like this:
Aspirant moves to the Lunar Sphere, than to Venus, than to Mercury, than to the Sun. Note that this order reverses Venus and Mercury to set them how they actually are in space in relation to the Earth and the Sun.
After receiving the Solar consciousness the work of the aspirant is than to move outward and re-experience Mercury, Venus, and Earth through the lens of the Solar Consciousness Perspective. Note that on this outward journey you ignore the moon because, from the perspective of the sun, it is no more important than any other planets moon.
Interesting questions arise. Who would be the archangel for earth? Sandalphon? Lumiel? What about the Kamea, Intelligence, and Spirit? You might have to re-investigate the whole scheme and let new symbols surface.
Only after re-experiencing earth through the lens of Solar Consciousness would one then be fit to travel to Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.
Now, since we are doing this based on modern understanding of the Solar System, it seems only natural to include the planets that we now know are there: Uranus and Neptune. Pluto too if you consider it a planet (Yuggoth!). It is sort of amazing that Hermes 8th and 9th and also Kether and Chokma work so nicely if you attribute them to these planets which were unknown at the time. It certainly makes more sense than jumping to fixed stars or the zodiac.
Anyway, this too brings up some interesting questions.
All the classical planets through Saturn were named by people with Astrology and Magic in mind. Not so for Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, all named by scientists that had no real interest in the metaphysical aspects. Are those good attributions or are there better ones? What symbols work for these planets or are they best worked without the use of symbols (my own view). What do they govern? What Metals to use? Uranium?
After completing the journey through the Solar System, what next? Perhaps since we traveled in spirit from having an earth-centric perspective to a solar centric perspective, the next logical step would be to plunge ourselves astrally into the center of the Milky Way and seek to re-frame our consciousness from that perspective.
Again, more questions: Do we jump straight there from the outermost planet or do we jump star to star? It is looking increasingly like there is a super-massive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, so what sort of awareness shift would result?
Of course the Galaxies themselves are circling around each other in groups, which could lead to yet another perspective shift. If we started jumping planet to planet, than moved from jumping star to star, do we jump black hole to black hole? To get to where? Maybe we go THROUGH the hole....
At what point though do you loose contact with earth though? How "far out" can you be and still be effective in life. There are lots of mind-states that are powerful and reality shattering, but unless they can be aligned with our living levels of awareness they dont serve much purpose, at least in this life.
Whew. Sound like a lot of work. Glad I don't do that kind of thing ;-)
13 comments:
Part of the original line upbhas to do with the relative speeds of the planets. There is a mystery there
Because they thought that the speed was a reflection of position in relation to earth. Instead its a refection of position in relation to the sun. Ergo, they got the order of the planets wrong.
During my own magical workings, I have often come to contact with the Galactic Core - of course I happen to have university-level knowledge in astronomy, which makes all such things maybe more meaningful for me than for the average person. For me, the Galactic Core appears to represent absolutely tremendous source of energy (compared to the Galactic Core, the Sun is just an very tiny dot) and symbolizes the source of all creation. This is nothing that I have tried to artificially create, it is just something that has naturally arised out of direct experience.
- Fractal Based Life Form
I've a silly question unrelated to the topic of the post so delete at will. I'm just wondering why you say/type 'than' instead of 'then'? For instance: "Aspirant moves to the Lunar Sphere, than to Venus, than to Mercury, than to the Sun." Shouldn't it be 'then'? No, I am not trying to be anally retentive I just noticed you do this alot on here and in your books. What is this madness?
Heh, its a New England \ East coast sort of thing. Yet 'alot' is not a word; so technically you just misspelled a word that only has one letter. That's gotta hurt:).
To deal with the outer planets and have correct assoiations with them, I think we'd have to chart their effects on life here to get a feeling for how they effect us and everything around them.
Don't forget that swanky new planet that only comes around once every few thousand years!
Heres the deal Martialis,
I have a wife and one year old twins. I have a class to crank out every week and books to write.
I have ritual work for up to ten clients at a time and I have my own work to keep up with.
I love doing the blog but time is short. I have a choice to make:
1. Generate one post a week that is edited and grammatically correct
2. Generate posts whenever I can find the time and trust that my readers can wrap their nimble minds around my admittedly poor grammar.
I have to say, given my liberal peppering of teh for the and use of non-words like alot (you like that one too I see) I am sort of amazed at how many people focus on my misuse of Than and Then.
Uranus is visible to the naked eye under the right conditions, but it moves so slowly that for centuries it was mistaken for a star. It seems only fitting to attach the metal that has been seen for centuries but mistaken for another: platinum, often confused for silver.
For Neptune, I used iridium, identified at roughly the same time and equally striking of character. It's not a classic metal but it seems more apt than brittle bismuth or finnicky antimony.
Pluto, dark and distant, I gave osmium, the densest metal and one of the hardest to work with.
As a sister-metal to iridium and a counterpart to its vibrance, it might make sense to give osmium to Neptune and iridium to Uranus instead, but it lacks the hidden-in-plain-sight aspect that I think is important to capture.
Of course, at this point, one is almost forced to ask what to do with cobalt and antimony, and I typically suggest Ceres and Pallas for them. The other trans-Neptunian Objects (Haumea, Makemake, Eris, Sedna, Orcus, Quaoar) might well deserve some attention, too, if one is to be that level of nitpicky. I'm just lucky that my thought-experiments stopped with considering the ideas, not with feeling it necessary to employ the results.
=n.n=
This is why I don't try to get _too_ much astronomy in my astrology, or chemistry in my alchemy. The symbol sets are wonderful for mapping the evolutions and revolutions of external and internal states, but drawing too much literalism into them can rob them of some of their potency. I have yet to tackle theurgy, but I suspect I've had a few dealings and haven't identified them as such.
I am a huge fan of the widespread Chaote understanding of Uranus as freedom and magic beyond the ability of Saturn to regulate.
@TVMIAC: Ughhhh.
;-(
@Jason I take it you are not! To each his own, I guess, and I can understand distaste for the aesthetic and lack of discipline that goes along with it. However, it bothers me that the highest planet in the traditional Hermetc cosmology is that of limitation. To me the use of Uranus to symbolize the freedom beyond that limitation is an elegant solution.
Of course it isn't clear where that leaves Neptune. Holst's The Planets symphony calls Uranus The Magician and Neptune The Mystic. I don't know if he was reflecting an existing astrological tradition or not. I've been meaning to look into that.
I am all for viewing Uranus as something beyond Saturn in terms of being more subtle and beyond normal perceptual tools. Its the tying it to freedom of chaos that it kind of goes awry for me.
It represents something deeper in the human psyche and awareness, which is why it (and Saturn if we equate him with Kronos) are represented by Titans, not Olympian Gods. That is also the reason that the attribution of Neptune has never worked for me.
I like Holsts description and it makes good sense. I doubt that it has any long history behind it though since Neptune was discovered in 1846 and "The Planets" was composed only 70 years later.
I am all for seeing things in a different perspective and there is value in being able to change your reference point but your statements/question, the "What if", has me torn. If one is just starting this work, how should one go about it knowing that the order is fundamentally wrong?
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