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16 October 2013
So called “Mysteries” are clear, scientific secrets. What is a science? The linguistic root is knowledge – self knowledge by experiment. What is a secret? Something which desires to be known – and known in the heart. What is the laboratory? A life-work in my soul and body, tried and tested and ongoing.
I do not relate much to projections upon Count Saint-Germain – Master R – as a glamorous, mysterious figure. The Mystery there is set upon an altar, and does not alter things for real. From him is purported to come much new age channeling. I read a little of it, some of it seems excellent, some of it is platitude, and as I have not studied those writings comprehensively, I am not in a position to comment. I got involved in a St Germain society about ten years ago, for a while. Some of it was good, but the medium became corrupt and demanded a large house and income. The lesson I drew from this, is never to rely on someone else’s version for verification. See into my own life as given. It is all there – hands to the plough: seabirds hover and swoop.
The Hermetic Table of Alchemy states: Visita Interiore Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem – “Journey into your own centre (earth) to put things right, and discover the hidden Precious Stone.”
The seven initials – one for each chakra – spell “vitriol” – an alchemical paradox. Vitriol is sulphuric acid, and it also means “a harsh criticism”. Alchemical vitriol is that same power to turn inward, “without hatred or envy“, and – from brewing the wisdom of the ages – to see outward and adjust our world according ! The art is performed with sulphur, salt and mercury … Hokhmah, Binah, Kether.
Vitriol transforms to Elixir. (see http://www.crcsite.org/printTabulatext.htm – Interpretation and Explanation of the /tabula smaragdina hermetis, in The Rosicrucean Archive). Alchemy is homeopathic, transmuting toxins and eliminating the rust. Upon sound psychological observation the Chariot of the Spirit is drawn. Psychology is the wheelbase of all occult and esoteric study. Self knowledge is the essence.
“Rocky” – The second in a series of paintings (1986) where the trail opened inward, rather than upon outward portraits of life. In the centre are pilgrim and cloven footed gate keeper. To the right is a train with all my current acquaintances and friends as passengers. On the rocky cliff is a mythic Greek bull, myself naked, and a mother trying to protect her baby from the sea. The man clinging along the cliff to save himself, is a conductor – the personal ego. The ship out to sea is the vessel. It was a mixture of dream images in the pot.
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My relationship with Master R – who counsels civilizations rather than single students – is based on my working interest in Alchemy – a chosen, pragmatic focus. At such moments I become attuned to some of “his” way of seeing things, and my patterns of life then verify it with subtle rhymes that I recognise with my life pattern. It is a working relationship of the soul, rather like duet playing. It takes practice. Willingly keep practicing!
This Master is not an individual. He is a way of seeing things trans-personally. It is a way which subtly alters the environment from within. I have a whole article yet to write, about how I discovered a way to contact him and the other great teachers in his plane, by drawing, waiting tentatively – a kind of surrender to the unknown – and then having to do it myself.
A hallmark is that I am not told what to do. When in great difficulty, I try something, leave it open, and then the smallest nudge indicates: right or left. Open or close.
Piano duet 1999 – I am the left pair of hands, and all ear for my friend who is a much more competent pianist. It is autumnal and tumbling. He had an attractive curiosity about life.
This morning’s plan is to copy his first full painting in the Trinosofia, like I did the 12th. It prefaces Section Two in the Trinosofia, because Section One is introductory, and written from a prison – the human dungeon. Section One warns the reader against abuse, indiscretion and the Inquisition. Section Two is an inner liberation. It takes us into the interior, deep under Mount Vesuvius.
However, as soon as I sat down – after a long search for my sketching paper – words started to come. “He” wanted to say something about scientific attitudes. I have the gist of lifetimes in my bone and blood. I ploughed my talent into the secrets of the universe, and discovered it is one and the same. I only write down “his way of inspiring me”, by having toiled and verified the same for myself. I get annoyed with trendy young Professors on TV who declare “astrology is a load of rubbish” without the courtesy or discipline to study the basics for themselves. Theirs is NOT scientific thinking, it is belief, and belief takes ignorant short cuts.
The problem with scientism is when it fails to incorporate the observer who is “real science” by genuine trial and error. The problem is the practitioner’s failure or unwillingness to incorporate the Heisenberg principle – (that the observer’s consciousness influences the experiment; that a wave particle may be detected in position OR in motion, never both at once). The Heisenberg principle is the observer, inseparably. The problem is the false separation. As J.Krishnamurti knew and said, “The observer is the observed.” But what academic ambition could tolerate that?
The Table of Hermes also states, “Let all obscurity fly from thee.”
On a broader canvas, modern science – which in Quantum theory approaches the vision of the Vedas – is divorced from the medium which is Gaia – ourselves – our Earth and biosphere, weathers, oceans, creatures and volcanic interior. The whitecoat is divorced from the laboratory bench, because he seeks to manipulate a new toy, something commercially viable for the tiny humanosphere. Whereas, an Alchemist IS the bench, the laboratory, the elemental table, as handed down through thousands of years and the distillation of many civilizations.
Trinosofia figure 2, photo of the facsimile on my computer screen.
De Givry said of this figure: “It represents a man gazing into a prophetic cup forming a magic mirror. The conjoined signs of the Sun and the Moon are seen against the pedestal of the table; at the top, a super-position of different coloured rectangles indicates the phases of the Work, and the double sign of the Lingam in a circle emblematically recalls the Hermetic male and female. An inscription in Greek letters and made-up characters gives a formula for the composition of Gold/the Sun King, by means of a mixture of gold and silver regenerated by vital mercury. Linked to the blue rectangle giving this formula, is a red rectangle inscribed with the rule for the furnace fire in Hebrew characters.
“The Hebrew letters in the red panel are translated: ‘On account of distress, they shall cling to the Bestower. The wise who are wearied with worldliness, shall turn to wisdom, the bestower of all good things.’ “
“The letters in the circle are Greek and translate to “the Light of revelation”. The inscription in the blue rectangle describes the quickening of the soul seed (Aries) and of the breath upon the waters. The number 62 appears, with an admonition to open the holy gate (clairvoyance) with the aid of the vessel or cup … adepts drink the water by which the soul remembers its own substance and origin …”
Alchemy, Freemasonry and the esoteric schools of Europe, were Master R’s hobby when he dressed as a diplomat among kings and nobles. When I feel him – or who? – drawing near, it is like a river flowing into my back from behind, and over my shoulders … playful, pleasurable and awesome: joy, truth and tearful. The connection with him is my natural Yes. My years of refining my tools and studies in his working channel are the current: apprenticeship. The Master goes away to attend to his stuff on the inner planes, and leaves the apprentice to work things out. The Master outside and embracing space and time, dips into it at will, condenses himself to a heavier medium of thought for a quick visit, dissolves back into light, presents a countenance through the sky colour changing clouds which his apprentices recognise. The light rejoices the fields.
The Master comes to the way of love, because love always meets its own, and “truth agrees with itself” as Paul Foster Case has said. “Love, and you shall know.”
Right now, we are carpenters, builders of furniture and carving at a bench, and both wear leather aprons. The Master is better known, however, as a jeweller. In this drawing, his profile and left eye looking down, is across the upper right corner, and when I drew it, those were planetary orbits coming near, and detailed chippings into the soul, releasing gems.
It was 1988: I did not know then, that Saturn, Uranus and Neptune were conjunct, entering Capricorn.
Jeweller 1988 – or gem maker from planet orbital planes
His eye has compound vision – multi dimensioned – yet is deeply attentive to one thing. The shared lens is “concentration”. Those may be cones of sight, or simply one-pointedness.
Having hinted at what a Science might be – the expression of a path of knowledge – let’s look at Mystery. Any so called Mystery which stands in front of the mystery of why am I here at all? Why aren’t I you? Why is the nose on my face like this? Why do the flowers grow that way, and how do the lambs dance out of their mothers? … is a camouflage. It conceals and congeals. Mystery is the “plain to see,” or as a friend once put it – “the Miss Trees”. Because life and the economy are hard, many of us prefer to go to the cinema or stare at a smart, smart phone, and be frightened of robbers. The Greater Mystery is nude.
The figure on the right was drawn when I was seven or eight. I guess this post is inspired by my classic dream last night of walking up Finchley Road and talking to people and then discovering I had no clothes on at all, which up till that moment, felt perfectly natural. There was nothing to cover myself with – my aging defects and blemishes – but a large book, which was inadequate. That tells reams !
The Mystery – a hidden treasure which loves to be known – resides perhaps at the heart of all the conventional interpretations of being stark naked in a dream. I feel the connection. In my dream as I woke up, I found some transparent nightwear in a small shop, to go home in, which did the job less effectively than Aphrodite’s hair! My dreams poke fun at me. I love it.
Revenons a nos moutons. It is time to tackle that new drawing.
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Not knowing Greek, I had to guess at the letters and shapes in the blue rectangle; also the online reproduction of the facsimile blurs them. The coloured planes behind it are the elements. I gave it a grey background, to suggest the cave.
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What fun I had with this!
For Master R’s writing of the inner journey, see my new Page in the title bar – Trinosofia Texts. I particularly love where he says, “Without reproach of the past, without fear of the future, I went on.“
FROM MY JOURNAL, 17 October – Yesterday was interesting after the naked dream. I began a new Master R post in Aquariel, tugged into writing about science, a hobby horse of “his” – and I began to realise the naked dream was coming up through it with an alchemical meaning of its own … and at last began the new Trinosofia drawing. It took a very long time, as the two figures in the original are clumsily drawn, and the anatomy is very difficult to copy. The original in colour is online, and though much better than the xerox in my book, the repro is low-resolution and the lines are fuzzy. The two figures are naked, but she wears a peculiar black skirt or shawl round her waist, and black boots. I made her skirt an indigo velvet colour (saturn).
He wears nothing but a pair of red strappy sandals with yellow soles, (mars-mercury colours) and is very muscular. He bends over the blue “table” on which stands a golden cup and a lance-head/sword. He gazes in his feminine mirror. With a turquoise wand – the scorpio force – she touches his third eye, making him an Initiate. In the painting she lays it across his left shoulder as if knighting him, but in the text it says clearly, his third eye, his forehead, so I decided to follow that. I also altered the position and shape of her legs.
They are an extremely dynamic couple. They ignite an alchemical Great Mystery – a fire self-combusts on the night-sky floor, near where the sun and moon conjoin, and it bends towards him. This is the secret fire, which quickens him. I worked on through the evening, with time off for my friend H’s visit (during which I wept, as we talked of painful stuff) and watching Grand Designs on TV and then I fell asleep on the floor for an hour and a half – final session midnight until about 2 am, I filled in most of the panel detail, background etc.
It is beautiful to copy and savour the precise Alchemical Colours, the reds, blues, yellows, green, violet, indigo, knowing what they signify. The Mystery throbs to life. It is right that he is muscular, for this is the tonicity of Mars. Her breasts and upper body are plump above her dark skirt, and she has an earnest expression. She is Isis, with long flowing brown hair, curly, and she looks like Morgan in Dion Fortune’s Moon Magic. With the robes on she would be regally dignified; with the absurd concealing skirt and boots, she isn’t, she is rather a comedy – just like I feel if caught undressed – but she presses on with the job. She represents the man’s encounter with Mother Nature, himself mother naked, from birth, as he will be, in the grave. Above them are beautiful plaques hanging, red and blue, with alchemical letters. I’ve done the red one/hebrew letters, and have just the blue one to do, this morning.
I love the way the colours so unexpectedly come to life and sing together. It is the good Prang crayons I use, and the long practice with the Tarot Keys. Alchemy releases the inner rainbow, and Master R’s art did the same, in his day. The “originals” in Trinosofia are actually copies of his work which disappeared. He said to the Cases in 1947, that they are good copies.
The cross depicts the deep room the neophyte came to. The doors leading from it are red (faith and universal medicine), sky-blue (purification/elixir of life), black (labour, making material gold) and white (philosophers’ Stone). On the north wall over the black door by which the neophyte entered, was hung the painting.
As well as Science, I touch on Mystery. I said the real Mystery is “existence” – more so than anything put on an altar. But I fib, because I am unable to bathe in the Mystery, with all my worries taking up the space. Nevertheless I know that an Initiate does bathe in it and is washed clean. With the drawing, something of the Greater Mystery is touched and unveiled: the keys which deeply nourish the soul and link with Eternity. The Greater Mysteries, as far as Master R is concerned, have an essential ceremonial in them – something is at first blindfold, then unveiled – viz the symbolism of me going naked up Finchley Road.
Always it is an exchange of man and woman – as demonstrated in colour in the drawing, for the blue plaque is above the man and the red plaque above the woman – hers is a right-pillar active role; he, like Gevurah on the Tree’s left pillar, receives. The man who is about to be initiated into the Greater Mysteries, strips and bows to Her.
Passion does not fulfil the heart. Life softens and ripens the fruit of love.
“When the heart is deeply moved, it likes a little ceremony.”
Up came my Nakedness in Public. I have been struggling with my worry about A … I have tried to keep cool and okay and not think about it. But I decided to talk to H, who is always inviting me not to bottle things up but have it out with him. And alas alack – the emotional pressure, my thick voice, my tears in eyes – all the work I have done on myself seems useless. And how foolish I feel then about my esoteric studies – to non-esotericks like H, they must seem to be my escape route. On and on I go with this traumatic pressure inside unchanging.
None of us, he said, live our lives without making significant mistakes. They make us grow. He began to outline a few of his own. We live with them for the rest of our life, but it is not negative, because of what we do subsequently. It is our responsibility.
I live with my feeing of having done wrong … Address this, because otherwise my expectation that bad things might happen, materialises. I am wise when silent and writing of it, and I am a mad merrygoround when trying to drive the chariot with someone else; when trying to speak of it. It is so frustrating.
A healing colour combination, the other day. The blue is meant to be indigo, but my camera saw it differently. Indigo is Saturn, root chakra, Orange is Sun, the heart, and Red is Mars, navel chakra. Tarot Keys the Lovers and the Sun are both in the solar orange frequency: the tone is D-natural.
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The core problem is Worries. The habit of worrying about anything I depend on, like my bike making funny noises, or my laptop behaving oddly. if it seems not to work properly, guilt slams in, and a sick tension inside, I did something wrong. This must be seen to, because it is a chronic condition, and it may get worse as I get older. It says I have let someone down. I neglected. I didn’t look after her. I had a fantasy, a playground, and it wasn’t true. I let down even the Great Work.
So that is also the inappropriate naked feeling in the street – suddenly uncomfortable where I was insouciant. The guilt feeling is so backed up, that when I speak of it to anyone, it makes it worse, the sound of it, the stuck wheel.
Enter Art Therapy! My dreaming re-booted, because of this plan: I shall go to an art therapist to explore this thing in clay and collage, hands on, rather than struggle with speech. It feels somewhere refreshing and discharged, to have dreamed busily again last night. I dreamt of a wacky commune by the sea. They had a huge communal bath-tub outside the house, and the rooms inside were like Mick Jagger’s in the “Performance” movie. I had long conversations with wild hairy drop-outs and old acid-heads, and am amazed at their colourful personalities and their faces – how did my mind invent them in such detail, and their life-stories? Then I dreamed of a complex citadel or town of many levels, and suddenly I saw through a window, the rocky summit of Mont St Michel, just outside. My way forward would traverse the peak.
I felt relieved, after what my friend H said – about what we do with our mistakes – but the turbulence takes time to settle, and I made supper – brown rice and lentils, tin of spiced sardines, some beetroot, tomatoes, coriander and cress and a bit of curry powder, golly how delicious – and went straight back to my drawing. The rice and lentils boiled dry and burned on the bottom.
The turbulent location takes relief in its stride, it is a circuit of tension and relief, it is self-important and doesn’t move. This is the substance to address.
The Inner School isn’t concerned with time. It doesn’t make immediate changes, it chimes up the process which then takes time to clear – many years, as I now know – or lifetimes – being human. Facing grief – turning to face the wind.
Therapy with the Inner School opens spectacular insight, and the feeling of great seismic shifts and clarity and progress – and then a bewildered disappointment on discovery that the situation in the surface has not eased. The emotional upset – the trauma deep down – is as intractable as ever.
Remember: the seismic shift is REAL. Deliverance is certain. But the Karmic stuff remaining – the slow fuel – takes time to consume and release. Many years of Capricorn.
This is also the meaning of the fire under the Initiate, which blows towards him. His legs and body glow. He is being speeded up, confronting the fire directly, even as he drinks the water of life and is touched by Isis. Life isn’t easy.
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A strange image! It heads this section II of Trinosofia. The reproduction I copied it from is itself blurred, so I don’t know what the figures are at the “tunnel” entrance. Or is this a convex shape? I left my perspective deliberately a bit awry. A portal of some kind … to an underworld or interior realm – it doesn’t anywhere say “abandon hope”.
I had a dream of bricks looking watery, like an Irish or Highland stream with its .autumnal glints – the flow of “snake water stone”. I may work on this a bit more, sometime.
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And I have an aim. I want to be and live like an Initiate, discreetly camouflaged to the social terrain of today, because this is the real way. It is like “toning” the colour in a painting, to a plant or stone in the hedgerow. I want to work with persons.
It seems to take decades to weather the raw Stone. I must NOT appear as a wild occult loon, or have sticky opinions about it – and that is tricky, because the juice of the inner School ignites the personal ego to burn-off. Dignity and discretion! What layers and layers of training there are – and how far off this ideal still seems, even if – like my glimpse of the rock and lichens of Mont St Michel last night – i can almost reach and touch it.
This morning I read and reblogged Lissa’s wonderful article about Trauma. Her insight and her “damascan discovery” reach right in to my Trauma zone, and illumine the subconscious strata from which my habitual worries sprout: for give.
We give to each other the Fruit of Life.
Orpheus. Note the strata of the soul, behind him. He rises like trees, from the core of the Earth and ancient hieroglyphic history.
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Peace, peace. The opening phrase of this Sonata by Master R, is beautiful and gentle. And the finger-friendly pair of Minuets at the end!
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Aquariel – an angel of the waters and of the air through the woods of life.
COPYRIGHT – All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012-2013. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address https://janeaquariel.wordpress.com/
The altar in which the secret fire burns is Philo Sofia, a lover of wisdom.
Aquariel 