The Book of the Seniors by Benjamin Rowe Copyright 1986, 1992 by Benjamin Rowe Permission is granted to distribute this work in electronic form, with the these conditions: 1) No fees may be charged for the distribution or transmission of this document, other than standard charges for use of transmission lines or electronic media. Distribution for commercial purposes or by commercial entities is specifically prohibited. 2) All copies distributed must contain the complete, unedited text of the original document and this copyright notice. 3) Persons acquiring the electronic version of this document may make one printed copy for their personal use. All other rights are retained by the author. Introduction This book is part of the record of an extended magickal working involving the Tablet of Earth from John Dee's Enochian magickal system. This section presents the results of a series of invocations of the Seniors from that Tablet. The record is complete and is presented exactly as it was recorded at the time of the invocations, without editing. The invoking names of the Seniors are derived from the Great Central Cross of the Tablet by reading outwards horizontally and vertically from the two centermost squares of the Tablet. In the theory of the Enochian system, they represent the forces of the planets within the element, and are considered to be Briatic in nature. With the Elemental King, who represents the Sun and is a link between the Briatic and the Yetziratic levels of the Tablet, they bind together all the forces within the Tablet. Additionally, the Seniors are said to provide knowledge specifically concerning "human affairs", and the present record confirms that in a broad sense. A somewhat different method of presentation is used here than in the previous invocations of the series that were described in Touring the Earth Tablet. In that work, each of the "Kerubic" squares of the Tablet was examined individually. The visions were deliberately forced into a highly visual and symbolic form, along the lines set down in the Golden Dawn's rules for astral workings. While these restrictions made it easy to establish the validity and consistency of the visions, it also forced the information given by the Kerubic forces into an extremely cumbersome and hard-to-read form. In the current series, no effort has been made to make the visions conform to the baroque style touted by the Golden Dawn. Rather, the Seniors were allowed to present themselves in their own manner, except for a brief presentation of a telesmatic image as a check of validity. Attempting to examine each square individually would have been much too cumbersome. The result has been much more direct and readable than in the previous case. Despite the looser form, the results of these invocations are entirely consistent with the previous invocations of the working. Taken together, they present a developing system of symbolism related to the planet Earth, the various modes of magickal initiation, and man's place on Earth and in the universe. The story presented by the Seniors is a history of the spiritual development of man on Earth, as viewed by the being who is the life of the Earth and those appointed to direct that development. The main characters are those beings whose actions are the root of the mythos of the gods Set and Horus, and the plot describes their conflicts as they contended for control of man's evolution over eighty million years. With the earlier works in this series, it also presents a reconstruction of the original mythos of Set, from before the time when priests of Horus and Osiris demolished his temples and turned him into a devil-god for their own forms of religion. This mythos is not a step backward in time, but a re-formulation in terms of the incoming energies of this present day, when the equinox is moving into the constellation of Aquarius. The philosophy presented is entirely consistent with the basic tenets of Thelema as originally stated in Liber AL vel Legis, and those later elaborations presented by C.S. Jones (Frater Achad). The energies of the sign of Aquarius are vastly different from the energies of the previous aeon, which was under the sign of Pisces. The Piscean age was characterized by highly structured, imposed systems of religion and magick, presented through the work of rigid hierarchical organizations. In that age, the individual was expected to subordinate himself to the work and symbolism of the group, and to accept what was given to him on faith. Man was seen as being at the bottom of the spiritual hierarchy, and was therefore subordinate to all of the spiritual forces. He could only contact them through faith and supplication, in effect begging them for a bit of wisdom. The Aquarian energies, on the other hand, are extremely individualistic. The ruling planet, Uranus, and the exalted planet, Mercury, show that in this new time individuals can achieve magickal and spiritual success entirely through their own efforts, without the aid of any outside force. The results of their work will be proportional to the effort they put into it. Where Mercury, knowledge, was in its detriment in Pisces, here it is at its height. Thus knowing and self-will, and not submission and faith, are now to be the key to initiation. Under the Aquarian energies, each man contributes to the group work by doing his own work and discovering his own Will, without reference to the work of others. The links between the work of one person and another will come naturally, as a consequence of the internal connections that exist between all things, and not as an externally-imposed set of formulae. The connections mentioned above are one example of this principle. No doubt many more examples will arise in coming years. Following this principle, I would like to encourage the reader to examine this work and all such works with a critical eye, to not accept it as literally true, and not accept it as symbolic truth unless it fits your own views of the spirit. Perhaps another way is better for you. There is more than enough room for any number of views. Before concluding, a few explanatory remarks might be in order. Where reference to the cabalistic Tree of Life is made in this work, it is always to the revised version discovered and presented by Frater Achad. I have personally found this form of the Tree to be much more productive than the old G.D. version. The extended working of which this paper is a part has demonstrated that it is not merely a curiousity, but a workable and very effective system of symbolism, at least the equal of the older version of the Tree. But the use of this alternate system should not deter users of the older Tree from reading this book. The essential aspects of the work are not dependent on the Tree at all, and can be applied to many different systems. There is also the question of identities to be considered. The reader might wonder, as he examines this work, just who the Seniors are speaking to. It would be absurd to think that the scribe, the fellow whose name appears in the copyright notice, is the one who did all the things the Seniors attribute to the one they speak to. He is all too human, very much a child of his times, and more than a little bit of a fool. But if not him, then who? In the words of the Seniors, the scribe is part of a tripartite being, a "man who is a mage who is a god". As a general rule, when the first person singular is used in this work, it is a blend of the scribe and the mage, in varying proportions, who speaks. The distinction between them is never too clear to the scribe, and it is becoming less clear as this working progresses. But the more doubtful and uncertain the "I" who speaks appears, the greater the proportion of the scribe in the mixture. But when the Seniors speak, they are generally referring to the actions of the mage, the god, or a blending of the two. The sole exception is when they refer to events occurring on the physical plane during the lifetime of the scribe. Perhaps the best view to take on this subject is to consider each aspect as a pseudo-autonomous subset of the next highest aspect. That is, each is a projection of the will of the next which can act independently most of the time, but which is absorbed and loses its individuality when the next highest aspect choses. Thus, the lower aspect is never certain whether it is expressing just itself or is acting as an extension of a higher aspect. It should be added that the scribe makes no claims or assertions concerning things said about him by the Seniors, and has no desire to be seen as any sort of teacher, leader, prophet or "great mage". He considers himself an explorer, and nothing more. -- 5/7/86, Niles, Ohio. Postscript added 9/10/92: It seems appropriate to provide the readers with a minimum sketch of the symbolic basis of the narrative, so that they might have some clues to its occult interpretation. The planetary symbolism of the Seniors themselves appears only on a very superficial level, and has little to do with the content of their story. The plot of the story follows the sequence of the zodiac signs in precessional order, starting with the sign of Pisces, showing the Earth and her Lunar twin as the two fishes. Further development follows through Aquarius and the other signs until it ends in Aries, with a minor epilogue not related to the signs. The portion concerning the Earth-Spirit and the portion concerning the character Set follow parallel but separate threads until they meet in the sign of Scorpio, from which point the story goes forward in a single plotline. All the plot elements relate in some way to the _astrological_ (as opposed to the Cabalistic) attributes of the signs. The main characters represent the elements of the modified INRI or IRNI formula, presented in detail in the paper titled "Set / Horus" and several of my other papers. (The formula's appearance here is in fact the first clue I received as to the modified formula's existence.) Briefly, the Earth herself represents the first and last "I" of the formula, corresponding to the astrological signs Taurus and Aquarius respectively. This dual characterization shows her as both a celestial being in her own right (Aquarius = "The Star") and as the nurturing mother (Taurus, ruled by Venus and the Moon) within whose "womb" and at whose behest most of the action takes place. The protagonist, Set, corresponds to the "N" of IRNI, and his described character relates closely to that sign, its traditional ruler Mars, and its exalted planet Uranus. The sign's modern ruler, Pluto, appears only as an undercurrent and in the Pisces phase of Set's plotline. Set's opposite number, Horus, represents the "R" of INRI, corresponding to Sol and its sign Leo. Aczinor, Senior of Jupiter in Earth 4/10/86 As the vision opened, I found myself in a place where blue sky came down to a yellow plain. There was a brilliance about everything, a cheery internal glow. I saw that the yellow plain had the texture of velvet or cotton candy. Looking to the east, I saw a star coming up above the horizon. It had eight points around the circumference, another point aimed towards me and another pointed away from me. To the south, I saw a lion seated on a cubical throne. To the west, there was a watery area, in which a boat or barge was travelling. To the north there was an image of the planet Jupiter, rotating majestically in space. I called again upon the Senior Aczinor, and he appeared wearing robes of blue with a dark purple shimmer in the folds. I did the LVX signs, to which he responded with the sign of Set, LVX, and the sign of the Enterer. I tested him with the pentagram of earth ( which had no effect) and with the hexagram of Jupiter, which caused his force to flow into me. He himself dissolved, passed through the hexagram, and reformulated himself on the near side of it. From close up, I could see that his hair was white, and his skin was a violet so dark and rich as to be almost black. His eyes were a lighter shade of violet. He held up his right hand in the sign of blessing and asked me to return it. Another flow of force went between us, filling my own aura with a deep violet similar to his own color. He said "Thank you, o mage of power. Now we can speak clearly to each other. I am Aczinor, representative of the father Jupiter in the system of the Earth Tablet. Though your invocations began with the King Iczhihal, yet I am the first to speak, being the initiator among the planetary powers of the Tablet. I the wisdom of the King, and of his father the Sun, and cause it to take form before the eyes of man. I am the first below the so-called abyss in the Tree of Life, and so I am the pattern of manifestation within the world. Thus my star shows ten points, and thus the lion, the king, is enthroned by my existence. I function as his seat of rulership, causing his power to be extended into matter. Thus the four-square throne is mine. The barge of the west shows my watery character, as the yellow plain and blue sky show my airy nature. The barge again is a foursquare construction, fitting the symbolism of my sephira, which is also considered watery in some ways. Thus also I float above the waters of creation in the earth's sphere, guiding those waters in their flowing downwards into matter. "Since I am of the earth as well as of Jove, I am also related in some ways to his physical manifestation. The equivalent power in Jove's system rules those levels of his physical body in which life has appeared, taking its energy not from the Sun, but from the weaker but still great life of Jove himself. "Now you have been asked to be shown the invocations of the planets in the enochian system. I can not do this myself, being but the most junior of his representatives within the levels of the system. But I can tell you how to go about preparing for these. As you have thought, it is best to do invocations of all the seniors within the tablets. But rather than holding to a single tablet, invoke all of the equivalent Seniors from each of the tablets at once. This will allow you to get a full view of the action of the planet with the sphere of Earth, who contains all of the tablets yet presented to man within herself. "From this, we will hope to instill enough of the force within you to make the presentation of the sphere clear and easy to perceive. Then you can go to your castle and locate the books with the invocations, and read them and transcribe them clearly." (3-hour interruption at this point.) "To continue, since you have invoked me and I have come, we must use the force for some purpose. Therefore, let me begin a tale, as is my right as the initiator. "The planets of the system, with the exception of Luna, are all the bodies of lives of a scope so inclusive as to make the perceptions of men and angels nothing in comparison. All of them, even the least, operates at least at the level of Yesod in the Tree of which the manifest Tree of Life is Malkuth. Most of them operate in Netzach or Tiphereth of that larger Tree. "The one exception, Luna, is a dead world. Its action on man is purely a reflection of the Earth's own power, projected outward by the minds of men onto the nearest convenient target. Luna is the body of a being who is now no longer in incarnation, having completed his tasks at an earlier stage in our solar system. His twin, the Earth, remains in living incarnation, and her influence extends to control her brother's dead shell. The cycles of life within the earth that are tied to Luna reflect the rhythms of interaction between the Earth and her brother in long-ago days, before the appearance of life out of her seas. Their cyclic interaction produced a `standing wave', a continuing cycle of echos of the original interaction of the two. "The Earth herself continues to reflect these cycles in the pulsations of her magnetic envelope. These aural-magnetic effects are the true cause of the lunar cycles in living things. "I myself, angel and Senior though I be, am still within the range of these cycles, and I have less power sometimes and more at others as a result. You yourself are also subject to them, though since you wear a body of a male human, the effects are more of a psychological nature than they would be for those who wear female bodies. Nevertheless, the effects are there to be seen in all humans. "I speak so long about Luna-Earth because I myself was the proximate cause of the brother's loss of connection with his body. Yea, even I, Aczinor, most junior of the Seniors of Jove, have had my influence in the dramas of the solar system. As you are now to have yours, o man who is a mage who is a god. Yours is the separation of the consciousness of the Earth from the deep levels in which she sleeps. Mine was similar for her brother in Luna. So you and I are brothers of the spirit, in the ways of our works, and I am pleased that you have come to me for aid in your quest. "Now the brother's work was to express fully, with his sister, the effects of the so-called Third Ray of Active Intelligence within the system. Where she represents the lifting of the spirit out of matter by that force, he represented and embodied the movements of life into matter. For life must be present in matter before it can again be raised up. "This one in Luna was of the younger of the stellar brethren, only a few cycles away from existence as a being of the type now embodied by human beings. This effort on Luna was to have been his first experience in incarnating as a full planetary being, free from the supervision of a mentor. (In the early stages of life in the higher realms, the man-gods perform their creations within the aura and under the guidance of a more advanced practitioner of the art.) "Well did he do his work. Too well, in truth. For in concentrating himself to pass the spirit of life into matter he concentrated too well and part of his own spirit, though not his awareness of being nor his true self, but only that spirit which enlivens the ethers, became tied again into matter as it had been in the days before his rise to godhood. Worse, even when he realized what was going on and attempted to separate himself again, the flow of his energies into matter continued against his will. "But we speak here of things far beyond this level, and words are not fully suited to the expression of these concepts. Perhaps a few images would make clear what we desire to express." (I had had a strong feeling at this point that I was not really perceiving the presentation in its correct form. Aczinor's comment is the result of this feeling.) He gestured with his left hand, and before us there appeared an image of the Earth-Luna system. But where in our own time Luna is dead, here he was surrounded by an aura of life, though the surface seemed as barren as it does now. The earth also shone with an aura of equal brilliance. Now some of the life around the moon seemed to be sucked into it, leaving a hollowness, growing outward from its surface inside the aura. A shock went through the remaining aura and out into space. As it passed over the place where Aczinor and I stood in the heavens, I felt a tremendous sense of despair and failure, and a sort of panicky desire to repair the disaster before it was too late. The despair, sorrow, and self-recrimination I sensed was so overwhelming that I cried out, and had to leave the vision for a few minutes until it passed and I could again think sensibly. Worst was the sense of shame this being felt, as if in his failure he had also brought the works of the rest of the beings in the system to naught. It was as if this being in Luna had lost all sense of self-respect and self-confidence by his failure. The pain he felt could be seen to radiate out into the system. It caused sympathetic responses in all the lives of the other planets, and so the whole system was threatened with disruption. Now Sol turned his attention to the situation, seeking the cause of the disruption he had felt on the levels where he had his attention. Seeing the plight of Luna, he immediately overshadowed that entity, taking him over body and soul as he was able to do from his higher level. He caused a stasis in Luna so that the flow into matter was halted. The soul and awareness of Luna he lifted up, out of the trap, and wrapped in his own aura, comforting him and healing him. Aczinor continued: "With the immediate danger halted, there was time to look at the situation clearly and objectively. Sol and the planets attempted to comfort the lunar lord, but his shame was too great. He knew that by his failure he had ruined the whole beautiful plan by which Sol had intended to express love and life for this section of the galaxy. The far-reaching consequences of his failure overwhelmed him, and he begged to be allowed to resolve his error in some way, to expiate his shame with action. "Since this disaster took place within the aura of Sol's work, it must therefore be remedied within the limits of his kingdom. He could not simply eject the ruined matter from the system, any more than a man can cure a cold by giving it to someone else. Nor could he allow this involutionary flow to remain free in the system, for then it would continue to increase, eventually ruining the plan which Sol's quick action had so far saved. There was much discussion among Sol and the senior planets of the system, and deep meditation by all, lasting many millennia, on how this problem could be solved. Many plans were proposed, but none of the senior planets felt confident enough of his solution to propose it as a definite course of action. So the discussion continued. "Our earth, being among the junior planets of the system, having not yet reached Tiphereth of that larger Tree in which the gods live and act, was not a party to the discussions but was only an observer. But unlike the seniors she was on a level where she was intimately connected with the type of force her brother manifested. And her love for her twin motivated her in a way the senior planets could not be. She devised a plan, and when the senior planets did not arrive at a satisfactory solution, she proposed her plan to Sol. "It is impossible to state now what Earth's path would have been had this disaster not taken place. The conditions under which it might have been understood by human beings have not existed for many tens of thousands of millennia. The minds of men, as they have evolved under her new plan, are too far from the type of consciousness needed for any meaningful expression to be possible. "But it can be said that under that original plan there would never have been incarnate human beings on Earth. The furthest into matter they would have gone would have been Yesod, and for most of the life of the system they would have been in Tiphereth. "In Earth's proposed plan, she would take the involutionary forces of her brother's sphere into herself and hold them there by deep concentration. She would, by her concentration, create a shell around herself which would keep the involutionary force out of the rest of the system. Thus the other planets could continue to develop their themes without interference. "To eliminate the involutionary force from the system completely, she would set it against the evolutionary aspect of the Third Ray that she herself expressed. The incredible tension between the two would be used to produce an acceleration of evolution within her sphere. Where before evolution was a gentle process, with many thousands of millennia between substantial changes in form in a species, now evolution would be forced, with continual changes of both form and content of the living animal bodies. this forced evolution would produce bodies of a degree of refinement and integration that would never have been seen within the limits of Sol's original plan. "Thus would she tie the involutionary and evolutionary tendencies together, halting the involution in Malkuth, keeping it from pulling the whole system back into the shell-worlds that preceded the full incarnation of the gods. And when the bodies were of a great enough degree of refinement, she would begin to eliminate the involutionary force all together. She would do this by forcing the human souls within her sphere to incarnate in matter. "Unlike the matter itself, these souls, being already of a spiritual, evolutionary nature, would evolve much more rapidly. In matter, they would ache to return to the levels from which they first came, and their natural desire to return would eventually counter the involutionary tendency. "Not only this, but the hammer-blows of experience the human souls would receive within the forge of incarnate existence would change them into something far greater than they ever could have been within the original scheme. For they would come out of that forge with a temper, a hardness, that could never be lost, making them as the gods of the system and of the stars, brothers to these within whose influence they had led their many lives, where otherwise they would have remained the pawns and tools of the gods throughout the life of this current universe. Thus many thousands of millions of new gods would eventually rise out of matter where otherwise there would have been none. All of them able to express within the universe both the formula of spirit, which is evolution, and the formula of matter, which is involution. They would be true microcosms, and after many more cycles of evolution on the god-levels, each of them would be individually capable of creating whole new universes for life to express itself in. Thus was `life more abundantly' once said to be the keynote of our planet. "Even within this present universe will the effects of the Earth's proposal be felt. For these lives of men will spread out to the stars, when the gates are again open fully, and they will catalyze similar reactions in other spheres, where conscious life exists but develops at a slow pace. Thus will our galaxy and universe benefit from the crisis of Luna- Earth, as consciousness independent of the gods rises up all over in response to the calls of the souls of men. "But to return to our story, Sol heard the Earth's plan, and felt that it was the only possible one that had any hope of success. But he was certain there were aspects Earth had not considered, being beyond her current level of consciousness. And such a radical change of plan could not be put into effect on his own authority since its effects would spread so far beyond his own sphere of action. So he `passed the buck' as you would say, laying the decision in the hands of his own mentor, who incarnates in one of the stars of the Sirius group at this time. "Now Sirius (as we shall call him, though that is not his true name) saw that the Earth's plan would work, but that there was a danger of her becoming so concentrated that she would not know when the disposal of the involutionary force was completed. Thus he declared that if the plan were to be implemented, there must at all times be within her sphere those who were capable of breaking out of it on their own, with no assistance, so that she might never suffer for lack of light should she have need of it. And also, these others must bind themselves to her, and constantly recapitulate the process of their evolution within her sphere, so that she might ever be reminded by her connection with them of the purpose for which she had hidden herself. "The adepts of Active Intelligence, and of Love- Wisdom, and of the lesser rays who were acting in her sphere and under her direction could none of them accomplish this task. For their natures lack the forcefulness needed for such a solitary breakout as Sirius demanded. Only the adepts of the First Ray, the Will aspect, could succeed at this task, and those few of this type who were already working within Sol's system were working at tasks that they did not dare abandon. For the First Ray is not natural to our system and only enough adepts to fill the critical needs were there. "So the call went out for adepts of the First Ray willing to fulfill the task set by Sirius. And this is where you yourself come into the story, o scribe who is a god. To tell of your part we must tell more of your origin than we have as yet. "Now, the progression of spiritual beings upwards through the planes in the course of evolution follows a regular cycle. That is, there are generations of such beings, and each generation must mature to a certain level as gods before they can perform the acts that cause the next generation to be born out of the union of spirit and matter. "Thus there are large gaps between these generations. These gaps are not gaps in time, for time is meaningless on the levels of which we speak. Rather, there are gaps of relative accumulation of experience between the generations. This amounts to the same thing on your present level, but not on these higher levels. Normally there is a gap of one full Tree of Life's worth of experience between generations, although certain members of each generation will advance more quickly so that the gap becomes less as the progress continues. As one generation moves out of our manifest tree, another arises out of the union of spirit and matter to replace it. This occurs in cycles so vast from our current viewpoint as to be indenumerable in terms of years. Our Earth is now an exception to this because of her daring plan. "You were born of one such generation and your progress followed that of your fellows up to the level of Tiphereth in that time and place's Tree. But at one point you had completed a cycle of existence within a planetary system, and as that system's lives withdrew from matter you went off into space with your fellows to find further opportunities for experience. "Now by what can only be called a fluke, a play of Murphy's law, the current that the souls ride between the stars separated you from your fellows, and pulled you into the center of a cataclysmic conflict between two stellar beings of a vastly higher level. Like a piece of flotsam on the waves, you became trapped in the circulating currents between these two. "The forces there were so vast and intense that at first it was all you could do to keep your being from vanishing, torn to pieces by the conflicting pulls. For a time not to be measured in years did you struggle to maintain your integrity against these near-overwhelming forces. That you were not made naught was more due to fortune than skill at first, for there were places in the currents between the two gods where you would have vanished like smoke on a breeze. "But eventually you learned to draw on those currents of will themselves to maintain your being. While still trapped within the currents of the two gods' conflict, yet you could live and learn and grow. And so you did, drawing on the knowledge of those gods as you drew upon their power, ever increasing your own power and will, rising through the planes until finally your will was so strong that you could force yourself out of the bonds of the conflict. "Out in the spaces between the stars again, you sought out your former companions who had not been caught in the trap. Finding them was a shock, for you had not realized how much you had changed in the course of your escape, having had no one to compare yourself to. Now you found that you had little in common with them. They were still singular beings, being all of the Third Ray essence, while you were now tripartite, having absorbed the forces of Love-wisdom and Will from your experience in hell. "You could no longer communicate with them as equals. They could not understand you as you now were, and only your tales of shared experiences convinced them that you were their lost companion. You could still communicate with them within the limits of the third aspect, but even there your formulations were often so subtle as to escape their comprehension. "There were beings around who could understand the other parts of your being to an extent. But these were devas and other angel-like beings, passive transmitters of higher forces rather than active users like yourself. So they also were of no use to you in the long run. "The gods of that time and place were also uncertain of what you were. Like them, you encompassed the entire Tree of Manifestation in its three aspects. But you had fully fused the three aspects at a level of experience far below that at which they themselves had done, and none of them knew of precedents that would aid in deciding your case, determining where you could fit into the scheme of things. "So, neither fish nor fowl, you wandered the universe, going wherever there was need of one or another combination of your three aspects. But never did you find a place where you fit fully, and could use all your skills at once. And always, always, there was that tremendous sense of loss at your separation from your original group, and an ache to fit in somewhere with companions of like powers and perceptions. Alone and apparently unique, you conceived of yourself as the `solitary one' or the `unique one'. Eventually you shortened this to simply `one', since one of anything is always unique and solitary. This you translated into Hebrew during your last completed cycle of incarnation on Earth, calling yourself `Achad', and expressing your full command of all the Tree in your two mottos, `O.I.V.V.I.O.' and `V.I.O.O.I.V.'. "But I digress. You continued to wander, seeking work worth your skills, until the call went out seeking adepts of the Will aspect for the Earth's plan of salvage. You were far away in space and time, but a god who had known you in the old days and had felt the gods' equivalent of compassion for you and frustration at his inability to help you, remembered and recommended you to the god Sirius. Sirius saw that you were ideal for this work, for you had already demonstrated an ability to free yourself from traps of a far greater strength than the Earth's blockade would be, and you were already capable of acting almost on the levels of the gods themselves. Thus your presence would ensure that the shell could always be broken, no matter how bad the disaster. "You had also demonstrated your ability to live isolated from the universe at large for long periods, during your captivity between the warring gods. Many of the adepts of Will who had already been considered had been passed over for this very reason. They could not function without external contacts. "And again, being somewhat less than a full god, though fully expressing all aspects of the Tree, you were still capable of incarnating as a human being without too great a loss of your higher perceptions. Thus you seemed ideal for the position Sirius sought to fill. After consultation with Sol and Earth, you were called to Sirius to have the proposal laid before you. "You agreed with Sirius' evaluation, and saw in the plan two possible benefits for yourself. First, the drop-forge environment Earth was to become was a reasonable substitute for the trap in which your own skills had been shaped and tempered. Thus you now had some hope that companions who would be your equals would come out of it. If not from among the human souls on Earth, then from among the adepts called for the task. And, failing that, the additional experience might be sufficient to raise you to full godhood by the end of the cycle of closure. I am happy to say that both of these goals have been accomplished, though few of your true companions are incarnate at this time. "Thus you became the head of that group called, in Liber AL, the `Kings of Earth', but who prefer to be called Knights, for their task is one of aiding a good and righteous cause, and not one of rulership for its own sake. And the Knights of Will in the Earth were formed from among the adepts of will who volunteered and were qualified for the task. "You ask why this was not said at the outset, in the visions of the Kerubic squares. The reason is that you would not have believed it. As it was, your resistance to what was shown about yourself was so great that everything had to be couched in symbols, and even those were slightly distorted. It could not have been otherwise, for Sirius' rule still holds among the Knights, and in each life in incarnation the Knight must recapitulate the whole of his evolution in the Earth. For such a recapitulation to succeed, it must be done blindly. And so you could not have known what was coming, and your initial resistance was reasonable and appropriate. With what we have given you since then, you are coming to accept the truth of what we say, and you will eventually merge your incarnate and excarnate aspects again. "Nevertheless the Kerubic visions do contain many symbolic statements of what we have said here, particularly in the visions of the earthy lesser angle. That dark self who spoke in those visions, through whose eyes you seemed to see at times, is merely that part of yourself that has been excluded from consciousness during your recapitulation. "We have been at this much of the day, and it is time to stop. Tomorrow we will finish with my part of the tale." 4/11/86 I tried to get contact using the usual invocations, but there seemed to be a great deal of interference. So I decided to delay the rest of Aczinor's tale for a day. 4/12/86 I did the invocations, and again found myself in the area of yellow land and blue sky that opened the previous vision of this Senior. I called upon Aczinor to appear, and he did so, looking essentially the same as in the previous vision. I did the sign of Set and the signs of LVX. He replied with the same signs, and added the sign of fire, which he held until I returned it. I tested him with the pentagram of Earth and the hexagram of Jupiter, and neither had any effect on him. I asked why he had done the sign of fire, since we were in the Earth tablet at this time. He replied, "We are not in the Earth, but above it, in the airs of the planets from which it was formed. But that is not the reason why I did the sign. It was done in salute to the master of the First Ray of Will who stands before me." I decided this was an acceptable explanation, in view of the previous messages, and asked him to continue. "When we left off, we were at the point of describing the initiation of the Earth's closure, under the auspices of Sirius, Sol, and the Knights of Will within her sphere. You were described as the chief of the Knights, and a little of your history was given. We started to supplement this with additional information the next day, but the currents were against us and we cut off communication until today. "Before we continue, though, I wish to say a few more things in relation to what has come before. "I said in the aborted session yesterday that the reason why your own path from Tiphereth to Binah was done alone, instead of with a group as is normally the case was due to your duties as the chief of the Knights. In your position, by declaration of Sirius, you are required to recapitulate the whole of your own history of initiation in each of your incarnations. Since the initiation must be done blindly, we could not earlier explain the reasons for your isolation, despite your frequent requests over the years that someone do so. I speak in this case for the other Knights, who have monitored and aided your progress through this current incarnation, while you did the difficult task of repeating the unrepeatable. "We said before that it was only by a fluke that you became what you now are. If things had been otherwise, you would never have come to the position you now hold, nor would you have ever heard of it. You would still be down in the Tree with the rest of your original group of companions of the spirit. But because of your entrapment between the two conflicting gods, in that far-away place and time, you became more than a man, and somewhat less than a full god, long before your time would have come in the normal course of evolution. You are indeed, as you have so aptly described it, a queer fish. Before the closure of the Earth in long-ago times, there were none known who duplicated the qualities of your own being, intermediate between god and man, partaking of the nature of both in the fullest possible measure, fusing them into a third thing for which the universe at that time had no name. With the closure of the Earth, and the development of other adepts of the Will aspect under the forceful conditions of the Earth, you have come to have at least a few who are similar enough to yourself that you are able to communicate fully the quality of your being to them. But these are still not exactly like yourself, for the forge of Earth is not the forge of the stars in which you grew, and all of the adepts had companions of their own type with whom to develop. So your quality of uniqueness has not been completely lost to the world, and Achad is still the appropriate description of your being. "The conditions under which you grew to power and mastery are unrepeatable, as we have said, being a fluke of cosmic nature that will not likely come again. So it is nearly impossible to produce in matter a complete recapitulation of your development. In some instances, mere symbolic substitutions had to be made for the true powers that affected you in the original course. "To substitute for the two powers whose conflict gave your being the boost into mastery, you were in this life maneuvered into situations where you found yourself in the middle of arguments and conflicts in which you had no personal interest. But you presence acted to catalyze the manifestation of the full emotional force of the participants. These forces, being diverted from the direction in which they should have gone, towards the opposing party, were directed instead onto yourself. These forces were in some instances of such an intensity that they did almost kill you, as did the original forces. But these forces of the present day events would only have killed your body, where the true forces of the original conflict would have resulted in the true annihilation of your being. "In the conflict between Paul Solomon and the other David , you were given the opportunity by one of them to chose between them, and when you refused to chose, preferring to maintain your independence, he tried to kill you by psychic means under the guise of helping you. This resulted in the rip in your aura that was not healed until your later contact with Nema. But at the time, this rip was a help, for it allowed the inner powers who supported Paul Solomon, on the other side of the conflict, to open you up to the spirit of the Earth at our request, so that you would have a true feeling for the goal of your work from the beginning. Also they did the service of prophesying the course of your work. And as you have found now, their prophesy was accurate to the last decimal place, so to speak. Like all good prophesies it was incomprehensible at the time but perfectly clear when the events it referred to occurred. Thus they referred among other things to `the One', Achad, who is yourself in your fullness, at a time when you had not even heard of Jones, let alone of Achad or his Tree. "Now this compensation of the forces of evil thrown at you by David, with the forces of healing and light thrown at you by the supporters of Solomon, was the closest we could come in this incarnate world to the powers of the stars that caused you to be as you are, in the beginning of time. We continued to bring you into such situations, of a lesser degree of force but greater duration, for several years afterward. The circumstances that were engineered were designed to force you into the solitary path that you had to take and to keep you there until the path had been trod to its end. The pain and confusion and loss you felt by this isolation, and your consequent efforts to rid yourself of the inhibiting influence were fairly good analogies to the feelings and acts you did while caught between the two gods. "The loss of your original companions from before your entrapment and your later finding of them and experiencing of their noncomprehension of yourself was duplicated in this life by the lack of comprehension the adepts showed for your work in its early stages, and in the rejection and insults of your skills that they showed. This was run concurrent with the other events that caused you to become isolated, so that the intensity of the isolation could be increase to the point needed for this life's work. So the periods of your isolation in the entrapment and your later isolation after your escape were run in parallel in this life, compacting the story's two similar parts into one for convenience. "Thus your path in this life has been the closest possible duplication in incarnation of the original course of your initiation. Now that you have achieved the level of Binah, the rule of Sirius is somewhat mitigated. But still, your whole course has not been trodden, so the blindness must continue in part for a short while yet, until the powers of the planets chose to bring you back into their fold. The timing of this will not be under your control or the control of your fellow knights, but is a decision to be made by the gods themselves, in their own chosen time. But at the same time, it is vital that you have a reasonably clear view of what has come before, so we, Aczinor and the Knights, must resort to this more indirect method of revealing your past. The memories on which what we say is based are open to you, but the time to seek them must be kept in the future for a short while yet. In the course of your planetary explorations in the next few months, more will come to you in the form of direct memories, as you have already had direct memories of your lives as Dee, and as the priestess of Isis and Set, and as the priest-child of Set in that same temple in a later time, and of that other life in the middle ages in which you discovered the path to the stars in the powers of the menhirs, and in that life in the last century, immediately preceding your incarnation as Jones, in which you met David the Israelite in his incarnation among the Indians. "The scope of your past is too great to be absorbed at once, and so these expedients must be used to accustom your brain to the ideas, opening the channel by which the true memories will come. "Now I would like to continue with the story of the Earth's closing, but the next section is the responsibility of the goddess Lzinopo, who rules the lunar-earth currents within the Earth Tablet. She will be the one to describe the manner of the removal of the twin's ethers from Luna, and their incorporation into the body of the earth by yourself and the other Knights. She will also go into some other things related to your own course in that time and place, and how these affect your current work. "To do this, invoke her at the time and place that you will, but soon, so that the currents you began with the invocation of Iczhihal will continue to flow without need for re-initiation." I said that this was acceptable, and asked if there was anything else he wished to say at this time. He indicated not, but added that if I had any questions, he would surely answer. I asked, as a matter of curiosity, if he could tell me the meaning of his name. "My name, Aczinor, means `Wisdom flowing from the waters of Night'. Wisdom is of course the province of Jove among the planets, as truth is the province of Saturn. Night, in this case, is the Earth herself, who is the manifest representation of the powers of the True Mother, Nuit. It is from her womb that these waters of wisdom flow. Thus I embody the principles of wisdom in the element of Earth, as my opposite, Saturn, embodies factual truth." I thanked Aczinor for his efforts on my behalf, and gave him license to depart. Lzinopo, Senior of Luna-Earth in Earth. 4/13/86 I invoked the forces of the Senior Lzinopo of the Tablet of Earth. The Senior appeared as a woman, dressed in a long flowing gown of a dark blue or violet color. On her head she wore a crown like the waxing moon, with the limbs of the moon projecting out on either side of her head. She had a high rounded forehead, like Queen Elizabeth I, coupled with a square jaw. She stood turned about 30 degrees to her right. Her right hand was held forward, with the palm cupped upwards in a gesture of pouring. Her left arm was held at her side, with the hand facing to the rear, and it was bent at the wrist so that it was also cupped upwards. From her right hand, I saw fall what appeared to be either grain or flakes of silver. These fell, but before they could hit the ground they were blown backwards between her legs, and appeared to flow upwards from there into her womb, which was concealed by her robes. Then, from the womb descended another stream, this time of golden flakes, which again were blown backwards before they could hit the ground. This second stream flowed up and landed in the palm of her left hand. A moon was embroidered on her left shoulder, and a sun was embroidered on the right shoulder. I did the LVX signs, and the Sign of Set. The image of the Senior slowly rotated until she was facing me, still holding the position in which she first appeared. The front of her robe was cut deep, so that the tops of her teats could be seen. The edge of the cut was embroidered with a design of golden bees and butterflies. Her skin was white, but her feet, sticking out beneath the robe, were black. I did the LVX signs and the sign of Set again, and she did not respond. The pentagram of Earth and the hexagram of Luna caused the background to become brighter, but had no effect on her. Testing with the letters made her grow larger, but still she did not move. Finally, I tried the signs of the rending and closing of the veil, at which she straightened up and replied with all the signs I had given, plus the sign of fire, which I returned. She said, "I salute you, o mage who is the power of Will within the Earth, with the sign of your power among the elements. I am the goddess Lzinopo, who is a senior within the Tablet of Earth at the bidding of our goddess who resides in the planet Earth. "Now, to answer your unspoken question, the reason I did not at first respond to your gestures and signs was so that you could get a full view of my magickal image. This will be important later, for reasons we will not now go into. I also did so to express that I not only symbolize the so-called Lunar current within the Earth, but am also of the nature of the Earth herself. The combination of the Lunar flexibility and changefulness with the power and stability of the Earth bring about that condition known as stillness and silence, which are the primary virtues of the elements of Earth. The gesture in which I stand is a traditional gesture of Isis and of Nepthys, the revealed and the hidden powers of the Earth. My countenance also reveals my combination, with the lunar forehead and the earthy jaw. So too with the combined forces of the Sun and Moon which are shown in the grains or flakes that fall from one hand into my womb, and out into the other hand. Meditate on this for a while, after we have finished here, and you will see some significant symbolism of the Earth in this. "The bees and butterflies are also traditional symbols of the Moon and of the female sex, for obvious reasons. "Now in order to continue with the tale of the Earth's closing, we must give you just a little more information about your own position in the matter, and the relations between you and certain other adepts who had been considered for the position which you now hold. "In the time when the adepts of Will were being selected for their part in the task of the Earth, there were several adepts of Will already working in the solar system. These were not First Ray adepts, as you yourself are, but adepts of the first sub-ray of the Second Ray of Love-Wisdom, which is the common keynote of our system. Among these was one who working in Sol's sphere, doing the work of connecting the Earth with Sol's pattern. "This one, who felt that he was best qualified by his previous experience in the system, and by his intimate connection with the Earth, wanted to be the leader of the group which was to handle and integrate the force of the dying brother into the aura of the Earth. Being of the Second Ray, he was comfortable in the system, and he felt that his ease of movement and ability to direct the forces made him the best qualified for this job. However, he was somewhat lacking in the ability to operate alone, having grown up spiritually in direct and full contact with many of the cosmic forces, and having attained his initiations through group work, as is normally the case. In the position you now hold, he would have required the force of all the other adepts of Will to crack through the shell of Earth at the time when the work was completed. He did not feel that this was a handicap, since once the closure occurred, none of the adepts could escape from the earth, and therefore would be available at the proper time. "But an adept of the Will aspect of Love is a far different thing that the adept of the Love aspect of Will, such as yourself. The Second Ray adepts are proficient at gathering together and integrating energies, but are less able to deal with the release of those energies back into chaos, which is what this task requires at its end. It was felt by the gods involved that allowing him to be the chief of the Knights would leave open a possibility that the shell would not be cracked, if his identification with his being in the Earth became strong enough in the intervening thousands of millennia. "What was needed was one who was not entirely comfortable in the system, being of another nature, so that even in the body the system would tend to reject him. This would ensure that the chief's identification with the manifest earth would never be strong enough to preclude his necessary rejection of it in the breaking of the shell. "It was at this point that you were brought to Sol by Sirius, and examined for the position you hold. The candidates were gathered, and tested in their ways and abilities. Of all examined, only two had the minimum qualifications, you and that other we speak of. "There was really no question in the minds of Sirius and Sol that you were the better qualified, so the examinations were more or less pro forma. But this other one did his best to convince them that he was better, and so they selected him as the alternate, in case some misfortune happened to prevent you from doing the work at the last moment. "One can not really say that this being was jealous of you, for such is an emotion that only manifests in the lower bodies. But the adepts of Love- Wisdom have one fault, which is that often, being identified with the essential force of our system, they believe that their perspective is greater than it is, that their own evaluation is the only evaluation possible. In their identification with the solar force, they take on something of the sense of inclusiveness that is his, but without also taking on the perspective needed to truly manifest that inclusiveness. This fault reflects, on a higher level, the egoism of the integrated personality in the worlds below Tiphereth. All of the rays have their faults, which are usually the same as their virtues, except exaggerated. The First Ray types like yourself have the fault of being over-persistent, of being too forceful in their presentation of their will for the matter on which they are working. Thus, left to themselves, they sometimes tend to produce degenerate versions of what they should have done. Such types are very dangerous within a system of the Second Ray type, and so they can only manifest here under the greatest of restrictions. In your present life, and in the case of your previous incarnation as Dee, these limits were applied by withholding from you the powers to match your will until you were sufficiently advanced to restrain yourself. "So the chief and alternate were chosen, and the lesser adepts who would fill out the organization of the Knights of Will in the Earth were chosen, under the recommendation of Sol and Earth, each for his particular purpose in the scheme. When this was done, the preparations for the actual closure began. "Now as was said by Aczinor, during all this time the moon was held in a psychic stasis in which no actions could occur. The spirit who inhabited the moon, being healed of his shame and his desire to rectify the situation on his own, was given over to certain gods in another system, to continue his training in the methods that would prevent him from being caught in a similar situation in the future. This separation of the spirit from the life of the ethers, the part of his being that had been trapped, was performed by Aczinor. Being the closest in nature to Luna's spirit among the Seniors of Jove, who is the manifestation of the synthetic aspect of Love-Wisdom, it was he who was called upon to draw away the living substance from the lunar body and to bring it here to Earth. Sol opened a gap in his stasis, away from the point where the Lunar Lord was connected to his body, and slowly he allowed the force of etheric life to flow to that opening. As it flowed, it was picked up by Aczinor and drawn across the short distance into the Earth's inner aura. When there was no life left in the lunar body, the connection between the Lunar Lord and that body shriveled and disappeared, since no more of his life could enter through Sol's continuing stasis. Thus he "died", in the sense that he could no longer be considered as having a connection with his body of manifestation. "This all took place many millions of years ago, in the middle of the Cretaceous period of Earth's history. The absorption of the etheric substance of the dead brother into the body of the Earth caused an intensification of the Earth's magnetic field, and in the etheric equivalent of that field, her life-aura. And as a consequence, the amount of radiation coming into the Earth was substantially reduced. This purely physical effect was the first stage of the Earth's closure. Coupled with a reduction by Sol in the physical radiation output from his body, this caused a climatological change which eventually resulted in the extinction of the major animal forms then inhabiting the Earth. The was part of the Earth's plan, this change being the first of the methods by which the animal bodies would be put under stress to force their evolution. "The Earth was not fully closed at this point, but the time of closure followed soon upon it. The adepts of will came to Earth, and the first of their tasks was to make use of the new force of the dead brother to complete that closure. "Before this could be done, preparations had to be made. In order for the Earth to experience the work of the adepts in the manner decreed by Sirius, each adept had to be fused on one level with her energies, in a marriage of spirits. On a cosmic level, this fusion took place through a process analogous to the sexual process in humans, which leaves a permanent connection between the participants. In effect, and speaking very loosely, the Earth allowed herself to be raped by these adepts, allowed them to take into themselves the essence of her spiritual substance, and to place that substance completely under each adept's individual control. She became the whore of these man-gods, accepting all that they thrust into her, and giving all that they took from her, without expression of her own will, completely passively. To allow the adepts this freedom on her, she had to concentrate her consciousness to the point where her will was completely divorced from her bodies of manifestation. She concentrated her consciousness in her equivalent of the womb, her navel chakra, in the mode of receptiveness, and divorced her consciousness from the rest of her body. (Her life, of course, continued to regulate the actions of that body without her attention, in the same way that a human being does not have to consciously think about the processes of digestion or circulation of blood in order for those processes to function.) "The adepts of Will, who at that time were all operating on the levels of the solar system, now had to create for themselves the various bodies of manifestation that would allow them to function in her sphere. These bodies, the so-called Atmic body of the hindus, and the body that is called the soul, they built directly out of the living substance of the Earth, forming it to their Will without regard for her awareness. In doing this, they created the prototypes, the models, on which the human bodies of this current day and those more developed bodies to come in the future would eventually be based. Their very presence in these levels, and their act of will in forcing the substance of the Earth into the desired forms, initiated the changes that would lead to incarnate humans seventy million years in the future. "From that day forward the Earth progressed and developed only through her connection with the adepts, as they did their work within her. Gone was the possibility of her active development under her own will, until such time as the involutionary force of the dead brother's ethers was completely eradicated. She now progressed by reflection of the adepts as they recapitulated their own paths of initiation within her sphere. This has all been gone into in much more detail in the visions of the Kerubic squares, and we need not expand on it any more here. "In the visions of the fiery lesser angle of the Earth Tablet, it was shown how a force of Will, represented by the element of fire, becomes encapsulated when it is forced into the Earth. This is an automatic effect, requiring no conscious effort on any being's part. In the instance we are examining now, the force of Will was the force of the Knights of Will in the Earth, as they took and manipulated her substance to their own ends. The force of Will presented by the adepts, particularly by yourself who was more than an adept though less than a god, caused such an encapsulation to take effect on a scale that caused the entire earth to be enclosed within the shell. Thus was the earth cut off from the heavens, and thus was her sleep within her own womb made complete. And thus has it continues to this present day, when the shell is about to be broken again. "And thus also we complete our own presentation for the moment. More will be given if you return in the next few days and invoke the next of the Seniors in the series, Alhctga, Senior of Venus, who will show how the adepts made use of the forces of involution to force the development of bodies suitable to the task of destroying that very force. She will also go more into the developing conflict between yourself and your alternate, which is the basis for so much of the religious mythology of later ages. If you have any questions, ask them now, please." I asked her to describe the nature and limits of this shell that was formed by the presence of the adepts. What could enter into it, and what could go. "This shell is primarily on the levels of consciousness, those levels that begin with the ego in Netzach, and end with the individual pattern of destiny in Chesed. The lower levels, which are merely matter, with no inherent self-consciousness, are open to the outside. But the energies that can get in even on those levels are distorted by the aura of the earth in their passage, so that communication with the outside is problematical and subject to many errors. On these levels, the shell acts mainly to keep the involutionary force inside, rather than keeping the outside from coming in. "On the egoic-solar levels, the shell is two-way. That is, it keeps all but a few beings of a certain type from coming into the earth, and also keeps any involutionary forces that have come that high from getting out. Again, some inward communication is possible, but it is often distorted. The main effect is to keep those souls who are on Earth now within her sphere of action. None who are here can really escape from the earth, although it is possible to send portions of the consciousness outwards, provided they are of a sufficiently pure character, and get back information from outside. But they can not leave the Earth completely, and can only incarnate within her sphere, until the shell is broken again. Similarly, souls of the human type who are outside the Earth's sphere of action can not come in and join the fun, but can sometimes send projections of themselves to see what is happening. "On the levels above Chesed, the shell does not really exist, but the thought-forms created in the minds of men by the isolation of the lower levels generally insures that they do not think of the outside without some outside influence contacting them first. This is changing rapidly in this present day, though, as the consciousness of space produced by the space programs and the use of communication satellites sends men's minds outwards again. The American lunar landings, and the landings and fly-past missions to the other planets by our unmanned spacecraft are a sign that the shell around the earth is deteriorating and will soon fall. "On a physical level, the shell extends somewhat beyond the orbit of the moon in the form of an almost- spherical torus. That is, the shell is closer to the Earth at the poles than at the equator, and tends to hollow inwards right above the poles. The forces making up the shell rotate in both a spiral around the center of the earth, and in a spiral around the ring of the torus, much in the way that magnetic fields cause electrons to move." As I did with Aczinor, I asked her to explain the meaning of her name. She said, "My name, Lzinopo, means `first to come from the depths', or `first in the lower waters', depending on context. I am the flowing watery aspect of the Earth, its changeableness and its physical adaptability. I rule the production of new forms out of her substance, which is why I was chosen to give this part of the story which has to do with such creations. Also, being of the `lunar', receptive nature, I am also of her `mother' aspect. I represent the link between her and those greater waters which flow from the womb of Nuit, her correspondence on the cosmic levels. Thus I am first to come out of her waters into those larger waters, among the powers that serve her. "Now, do you have any more questions? If not, I will take my leave. Do not forget to invoke next the powers of Alhctga, so that the story will continue in its proper order." I told her I could not think of any other questions, and gave her license to depart. (I note here that I had a great deal of difficulty keeping my mind passive enough to receive this communication clearly. It seemed that even the slightest evidence of will on my part tended to distort it a little, so that the grammar became stilted in places. I suspect that this is due to the reflective, lunar nature of the force of the Senior.) Alhctga, Senior of Venus in Earth. 4/14/86 I invoked the Senior of Venus in the Tablet of Earth, named Alhctga. The currents of force felt strong, but did not show any tendency to produce an image. After several invocations, the Senior appeared as a woman, dressed in a flowing green and amber robe (the cloth shimmered in these colors as she moved). Her hair was a honey-blonde color, worn loose to her shoulders. On her head was a circlet of copper, with a star of seven points mounted on the front, covering the ajna chakra. The skin of her face and hands was a mediterranean olive-tan color. She appeared to be pregnant, and held her left hand to her belly. Her right hand was held forward in the same gesture as was shown by Lzinopo in the previous visions, but nothing fell from her hand. Her face was middling-narrow with a fine bone structure. A small satisfied smile creased her face. The hem of her robe was embroidered with doves and serpents, and an occasional double-headed eagle. I did the 5=6 signs, and the signs of Set and LVX. She responded in kind, and then held her hands out to her sides as if inviting me to come closer and embrace her. I tested her with the pentagram of Earth and the hexagram of Venus. Neither had any effect except to brighten the area a little. Testing with the letters also had no effect. I invited her to speak, and she said, "Come closer and embrace me, o mage of Will, for I have the power of the Earth in her fullness within me, and you are the father. Therefore do I take a mother's right with her mate." I willed myself forward and embraced her. Her eyes could be seen to be of a very deep green color, with streaks of olive and amber-brown. She leaned against me within the embrace for a moment, then stepped back. She said, "My name, Alhctga, means `closest in spirit to the Mother'. I am the example of what the Earth's eventual force within the system will be after her rising. For the Earth is intended to express the force of Love-Wisdom within the system, in its reproductive aspect and its desire aspect, where the planet Venus expresses that force in its egoic aspect, and Jupiter expresses the synthetic aspect. Since you have caused her to awaken slightly, therefore is she aware again of the power of her mate, and has taken some of it into herself. As the force of the union increases, she passes it on to those of us who are her servants, so that we might prepare in our own way for the rising that is to come. You have not yet seen your mate in these visions, and will not until the day of the marriage, when you again rise into the stars and take her with you to meet the planetary lives of the system as a new, greater being than when she laid herself in her womb to sleep. "Now being of the reproductive aspect of the Earth, and of her spiritual aspect as well, it is my task to explain the ways in which the Adepts of Will had their way on her, in the early and middle days of the hiding, before the appearance of human beings incarnate in the body. I will show you the ways in which the adepts used the involutionary forces of the dead brother of Luna to force the growth of more refined, tougher forms within her sphere. To begin with, we must again speak of the developing conflict between you and the one appointed as your alternate. "In the early days of the Hiding, many thousand of millennia ago, there were no bodies on the Earth that could be used for the incarnation of intelligent, self- aware beings. Since the appearance of such beings was vital to the eventual elimination of the involutionary force within a reasonable span of time, the first task of the Knights of Will within her was to initiate the processes that would eventually lead to the appearance of such suitable bodies. In terms of its effect on the goal, this was the least important of the periods of time, though it was the longest as it would be measured by incarnate intelligences. These later periods after the appearance in bodies of true human beings are much shorter. But the intensity of the effects working now are such that the difference between the earth before the Hiding and afterwards for many thousands of millennia is minuscule by comparison. "But nevertheless, this creation of bodies had to precede the important part of the work, or that work could never be done. Effectively, the Knights of Will had to create a situation in which the evolution of the physical animal bodies would be accelerated several fold. To do this, they had to make use of the involutionary force of the dead brother. "Now at this point there came a disagreement over methods, between you and your alternate. As usual, he was trying in some way to take away the leadership of the group from yourself, so that he could be the one who would be the initiator of the Earth's rising in this present day. Lzinopo has already gone over the ways in which the powers of the adepts of the Will sub- ray of the Second Ray, and of the Love sub-ray of the First Ray, could degenerate or be exaggerated into faults. Both of you, you and your alternate, possess the faults to match your virtues, and always have done so. This was inevitable, since neither of you really had any competition on your own level to slap you down. "But within the framework of the Earth, you, of the two of you, has tended to be more cautious and workmanlike in the manifestation of your force. You being alien to the system's essential keynote, the system tends to backfire on you more rapidly that on your alternate and thus you retain more caution in your actions. Your alternate on the other hand, being comfortable with and in the Second Ray, tends to jump ahead of himself, thinking he knows it all and can do whatever he wants without care of caution. "Now at the point in manifest time of which we speak, the Knights were discussing the ways in which the involutionary force could be used to accelerate evolution. Being of the First Ray, and having experienced the effects of forceful invasion of your being in the time of your entrapment, you held that the organism itself must always be held inviolate. That is, that the involutionary force should never, ever, be merged into the actual physical bodies of the animals being evolved. Rather, it should be applied to the organism from the outside, in the form of rapid and unexpected environmental changes. This would allow the evolutionary aspect of the Third Ray within the animal bodies to operate freely in its adaptation to new conditions. "Your alternate, being of the Second Ray, was inclined to merge the involutionary and evolutionary forces within the same body, and to try to harmonize them by balancing their conflict in the nervous systems of the animals themselves. He felt this would be more effective than your own method. "As it has turned out now, your own method was the better of the two, and was the one that eventually was adopted for most of the surface of the planet. But at that time it was questionable whether one or the other was better, since it had not before been tried in the knowledge of any available source. "Your alternate managed to convince a large minority of the Knights to support his own proposal. This group, while not large enough to over-rule your own decision on the matter, was strong enough to demand that their own ideas be given a fair test. Therefore two areas of the Earth's surface, each at that time reasonably isolated, were designated as test areas. The one given over to your own plans was the area now known as East Africa. The one given over to your alternate's plan was the area now known as Australia-New Zealand. These two land masses, having separated from each other only recently as geological times go, still had comparable groups of animals on them. But they were far enough separated that there would not be any cross- fertilization between them. "So the two of you and your adherent adepts went to work. Within the area of Africa you caused severe climatic and geological changes to take place, using the involutionary force to produce these changes as you needed them. The food shortages, and the increased dangers to survival, you believed would cause a rapid increase in adaptation among these creatures, making them more versatile and resilient, able to adapt that much more quickly to future changes. Eventually you hoped to create a creature that would be able to not only adapt itself to its environment but to cause modifications of that environment for its own use. "Your alternate, on the island continent of Australia-New Zealand, did not indulge in such climatological modifications to any great extent. He considered them unimportant, and did not even attempt to control those natural changes that took place within his area of work except when they became too extreme to allow his subjects to live. In his area, he attempted to fuse the involutionary aspect of the Third Ray with the evolutionary, hoping and expecting that this would create internal stresses in the animals that would cause their bodies to adapt and become more refined. Eventually, he hoped, the forces in these bodies would cancel out completely. Since the amount of involutionary force within the Earth was much less than the amount of evolutionary force, his idea was that even after the involutionary force was entirely canceled (over a period of millions of years in billions of animal bodies) there would still be enough evolutionary force left so that the Earth could go back to her original plan of expression within the system. That this idea was in direct conflict with the intent of the Earth herself did not bother him, since there were none but yourself who could prevent him, and you, being the consummate individualist that you were, would not do so without at least a fair test. He figured that a fait accompli would put him on top again among the adepts of the system, and even Sol would not be able to say him nay. "But alas for this plan, his system did not work well enough to be continued. After several million years, a sudden change in climate caused all the animal life over the largest portion of his work area to be killed off, and the coming of a desert condition that appeared to be permanent prevented the remaining animal lives from ever gaining the needed strength and numbers again. Thus, even his own adherents decided that his plan would not work and it was decided to abandon it in favor of your own plan, which seemed to be working well. "(I should point out here that your own manipulations of the African climate led to the changes in his work area. He could have prevented them if he had paid more attention to the climatological effects, but he had not done so. You had warned him several times that he should do so, and predicted the result that came. But he had rejected it as gratuitous carping on your part. Since you were all now working on a lower level than before, such emotional reactions were now possible, and he expressed them in this instance. He blamed you directly for the failure of his plan, and vowed privately to perform an act of revenge at a later point in your own work. But he missed his chance the first time, and after that you were warned and manipulated his anger to your own ends.) "Meanwhile, the animals of your own area of work had been adapting constantly and continuously to the changes you had forced upon them. Many of them developed sufficiently to be able to survive over ranges of climate that would have killed any of their predecessors in less than a day. And not only to survive, but to flourish. The population had not only increased despite the changes, but had increased in variety far beyond what you yourself had expected. Large numbers had even escaped the work area and fled to other lands, spreading the adaptations far and wide. "Now in view of their relative success there was no question in the minds of the adepts that the external-threat system of forced evolution was superior to the internal-conflict model. So even your alternate abandoned his project, and went to work to spread the new animal lives about the globe and to force even more adaptations within their being. Thus, the modern mammals and birds became the ruling classes of the animals upon the Earth, and the marsupial descendants of the alternate's experiment were left to develop as they could in the new conditions. Some of them did evolve significantly once the internal pressure of the involutionary force was removed, but none ever came fully up to the standards of the mammals. "All of these events took place during what man now calls the Tertiary period of evolution on Earth. Within that period, the time of experiment ended about twenty-five thousands of millennia ago. By the beginning of what is now called the Miocene epoch, the adapted animal forms had been spread all about the Earth, and had taken root and begun to adapt even more on their own, filling every available niche in the ecological pattern. "This time-scale seems vast from the standpoint of an incarnate intelligence, I know. But from the point of view of the Adepts of Will, it was more brief than the later period in which human-like beings had appeared. On the levels on which they were working, time as man now knows it did not exist, and duration, the rate at which events are experienced, could be varied widely by the will. So it did not seem all that long from their viewpoint. "It was only after the appearance of man-like or ape-like beings that the work again began in earnest. These being represented the ultimate in adaptability and nervous-system development of all those animals that had been forced to evolve. And they had already begun to use tools on their own, to change their environment, when it was discovered that their nervous systems had developed enough to incarnate a human-type soul. "There were several species that showed potential for full awareness and intelligence, and it was decided that all of them would be tested and set against each other to see which would come out best. This testing began about seven million or eight million years ago, with the appearance of the first true hominid species, which were small ape-like beings. It continued in irregular spurts up to the present time, as one species after another showed itself to be of less than human potential and was dropped from the schedule. Usually these beings were rapidly killed off by the competing species who were still within the testing cycle. "About a million, a thousand thousand years ago, the last three of these species had been selected and set against each other in competition for living space and food. Eventually one of them won out, and became the only truly human species of Earth. But this species again fragmented as small populations became isolated from the main group and began to evolve even more on their own in the less fruitful areas of the world that circumstances forced them to. With the increased adaptations that their extreme living conditions gave them, they eventually migrated into the areas controlled by the main group, and either supplanted that group or mixed with it, either way leaving their own genes in charge and causing the weaker genes of the losers to disappear from the race. This occurred several times more during the intervening millennia, and each time the replacing race was stronger and more adaptable that its predecessor. Eventually we came to a point where all of the animal-humans were fully capable of holding all of a human soul. Though at that point the consciousness aspect of the humans could still not be fully expressed. The lives of men, the connection between the heart center of the body and the life aspect of the soul that enlivens the body, had been in place since the first appearance of the hominids. Now the consciousness aspect, which was present but rudimentary in the races, had to become fully developed. "Now at this time on earth, the human souls who lived within her sphere were gathered into a community on the astral plane. There was a civilization there that compared favorably with most of the present-day human societies in manifestation, as far as human thought and behavior went. Since, on the astral, there was no inherent need for competition, this society was relatively peaceful and given to simple human artistic pursuits, along with the normal interactions between souls that make up the substance of most lives. There was no pain that was not self-created, and no horrors of any sort. This would not have been the case if the earth had been open to the stars in that time. If that had been the situation, then conflict would have been more prevalent, as one or another group sensed the force of one or another cosmic being and attempted to put its energy into practice in their lives. But the isolation of the Earth made for relative stability and coherence in the group of human souls. This was the civilization that is remembered today in the legends of Atlantis, and Mu, and of other "lost" civilizations. "The manner in which the consciousness of human souls was forced to come down into the bodies completely has been covered in the visions of the Airy Lesser Angle of the Earth Tablet, and we need not go into it again here. But we should remind you for purposes of reference that it was you yourself who was the cause of the fall into matter, and thus it is you who was the proximate cause of the legends of Lucifer, the angel who fell and carried the legions of angels with him. This same event was the cause of the legend of the snake in the garden of Eden, who tempted the more receptive (and therefore more "female") human souls to become attracted to matter, and to leave the light of the sun for the darkness of Earth. "Now in the foregoing years, before the fall, you had spent several different "incarnations" on the astral plane, trying to convince the souls there to go into matter willingly. But most would not hear you, and so you devised a plan, with the other adepts of the Will, to cause the fall to take place involuntarily. This was the event that was described as the act of the child who studied crystals, in the account of your past lives in the Kerubic visions. "I said that I would not say much on this, so I had better stop now. But there is more to be seen in this area before you go on to the next senior, Liiansa, so you should again invoke me before that time. I will come to your call, and we will see what remains to be seen." 4/15/86 I called upon Alhctga again, and she appeared. This time she was not pregnant, but all other aspects of her appearance were the same. I did the 5=6 signs, and the signs of LVX and of Set. She responded with the sign of Set, and then transformed her body into the various crosses and symbols of LVX. Then she reformed as a woman and saluted me with the fire sign. "Hail, o mage of Will, hail to you, and homage to you! For in the dark of night you have brought the light again to the Earth, and the Earth rises up in response. "Now during the previous day, we had difficulty speaking together, and there seemed to be some inhibition working to make the communication weak. This is in part due to the fact that you are operating under a transit of Saturn, but more to the fact that we are here dealing with energies far beyond what might normally be encountered in an invocation of these squares of the Tablet. "To continue with our story of yesterday, we were about to tell of the way in which you caused the souls of men to become incarnate consciously in bodies for the first time. "In that time of which we speak, man was living in consciousness primarily on the astral levels. Those few parts of his consciousness that had been fused with the physical body were concerned with the operation and functioning of that body in the world, its maintenance and basic survival, and so seemed dark to the larger part of awareness that remained upon the astral levels. "It has long been known that the lower levels of the astral reflect the heaviness and inertia of the lower earth, and the darkness and seeming evil there acts as a barrier between the incarnate existence and the astral. This barrier today acts mainly to keep men from becoming fully aware of their astral life, which they continue in their dreams but which they do not remember in the waking incarnate state. "In those earlier times, the barrier's effect was mainly in the opposite direction, keeping the astral self from remembering those parts of its being that existed upon the manifest plane of Malkuth. This barrier was the main difficulty to be overcome in forcing the fall of man into matter. "You will recall from the visions of the fiery lesser angle of the Earth Tablet that the energies of matter have a mode of rotation opposite to that natural to the higher planes. The friction between these counter-rotating planes was what created the darkness on the lower astral, and the barrier between them. "The entire purpose of the work of the Earth, her plan for the removal of the involutionary force from the solar system, took on a rapid increase in activity at this point. Where the previous thousands of millennia had been given over to the refinement of bodies through the external-threat model of evolution, now the main rite of the work must come into being. The involutionary force had to be placed into the consciousness of man, so that by his will and his awareness, and his striving to return to the spirit, it might be overcome and eliminated while at the same time giving a tremendous boost to the development of consciousness in the cosmos. Where before the force only acted upon the bodies from the outside, now it must be incorporated into the feelings and minds of men, so that the conflict might be resolved forever. "To do this, and also to get the greater part of the awareness of each soul down to the level of Malkuth, you took the involutionary energies and formed them into a vortex, a whirlpool, on the higher levels of the material plane. Since the involutionary force also has a rotation opposite to that of the evolutionary aspect in matter, its rotation was identical with that of the astral levels. The only thing separating it from the astral before this time was the intervening evolutionary aspect, and the effect of Saturn upon this low plane by reflection from his normal place beyond the Tree of Life. "So you gathered this whirlpool around yourself on the physical plane (the etheric levels of that plane). Then by your concentration upon the relation between the astral and the physical, from a viewpoint on the lower astral, you caused the effect of that vortex to be drawn upwards through the barrier that separates the astral from the physical. You opened the gate into hell for the innocent lives of the early men. That this was done at the bidding of the planet herself was not known to them, and so they perceived your action as evil after the desired effect had been fully achieved. "Having opened the gate, you yourself were the first to pass through it, leaving behind the astral to explore the physical through the senses of the body. Having done so, you returned with reports of what was in that place, seeking to inspire curiosity and a will to see among the humans. Some of these responded, and not all by any means were your fellow adepts of the Will aspect. For even in that time, when humans were merely a form of angel or deva, passive to the action of higher forces, some of them by flukes of nature were prepared for this work and became attracted. "Each one who passed through the gate and returned to the astral culture brought with him a bit of the involutionary force. By contact with the others on that plane, the force was slowly spread throughout the astral assembly of men. They became infected with the force unawares, and its effect on them, the changes it made in their perceptions, were not immediately grasped by them. "But eventually it became clear to even the most innocent that something unprecedented was happening. Where before the astral community had been relatively stable and unified, now there was growing dissent. Conflicts arose as the perceptions of men were changed by the experience of the involutionary Third Ray force. What had once been whole now became divided. Groups of men on the astral came into conflict, and the way in which the society was to be governed became a matter of debate instead of natural activity. Some held for attempting to retain the old state. Some held for going immediately into matter. Others developed opinions that were at odds with any type of perception known to man up to then. "This growing development of conflict is remembered to this day in the stories of the fall of Atlantis, how the priests of the different gods fought, and in their fighting caused Atlantis to sink beneath the waves. This sinking was not the sinking of a land mass into a physical ocean, as it is usually interpreted, but instead is the sinking of man down through the astral waters to the material world. "Having tied nearly all the souls of men in existence into that vortex through their infection by the ones who had passed through it, you now did the act which caused men to fall into matter no matter what their will. Focusing yourself on the highest levels of the material world, you caused these souls to be drawn to you through the gate by their connection with its energy. You caused the vortex to descend from the astral and this caused a corresponding descent of man. "Having brought men into matter, on the side of consciousness, you now closed the door to the astral fully, locking them in until by the force of will they would eventually break out again. With the door closed the vortex was no longer needed, and you caused its energies to be dispersed among the population, each one absorbing his share of the involutionary force to the extent he was able despite his desires in the matter. The rest of the force, that could not immediately be held, was dispersed back into the environment. "While this event seemed to occur rapidly from a viewpoint on the astral plane, in the realms where time governs it was spread over many years, as the souls had chances to incarnate in the limited number of bodies available. In manifest time, the event began at the end of the tertiary period, and continued on well into the quaternary, or most recent, epoch. "At the same time, the concentrated involutionary force that was released back into the environment caused a degradation of the living conditions on earth, through a reduction in the amount of heat escaping from the Earth's core. This caused the climate to vary widely, rapidly swinging from hot to glaciated and back again, putting extreme stress for survival onto the now incarnate humans. The needs for survival forced the human souls to make use of that faculty of their being now known among men as the concrete mind, forced them to make use of their higher faculties within the limits of incarnate existence. "The involutionary force in men's minds caused them to perceive each other as enemies, if they were not already familiar with each other. This time was one of great killing of man by man, and of tribe by tribe. The many skulls from this period found by archaeologist that had damaged skulls are evidence of the severity of the problem. At the same time, man perceived the involutionary force in his environment, in the form of the dangers to himself, and the concrete mind had to be used to devise ways of countering the danger from both man and world. Thus was born the beginnings of civilization, in the gathering of men for the protection of each other against other men and the environment. "In many ways, the conflicts between men within each group were more intense than the conflicts with external dangers. For the need for survival caused them to refrain from killing each other as easily as they killed strangers, and this restraint let the force build up. It was the effort to devise ways to live with each other despite the tendencies of the involutionary force, as much as it was the effort to devise protection against the outside, that caused the concrete mind to be developed. "The effort to survive caused thought-forms to appear on the astral and mental levels, which incorporated a will to counter the effects of the involutionary force. These thought forms, slowly built up by the minds of men, acted directly as a balance to the involutionary force, weakening it and destroying it a bit at a time. The will-to-survive proved to be greater than the will-to-death, and slowly man conquered the involutionary force for his mother the Earth. "By the end of the last great period of glaciation, about ten thousand years ago, the battle had been effectively won. Man had learned to survive in the worst conditions that nature could throw at him, and flourished in all the environments that could be experienced on earth. Now the concrete mind, freed somewhat from the essentials of the battle, began to create new ways of living, different from those of the animals from which he evolved, which so greatly increased his ability to survive that he became in truth the lord of the world that he is today. Truly is man Adonai, the Sun in the Earth, the light of the spirit within matter, as the Earth had intended him to be in that long-ago day when the plan of salvation was devised. "I might mention in passing that the conflicts between men in this day, between nations and individuals, are merely the hangovers from this period. The involutionary force is gone, save for those rare cases when man invokes it deliberately. The evils that men do are the result of his racial memories of that time, brought forward into this new age. "It might seem as if man is more violent than ever in this day, but this is not the case. The per capita number of deaths by homicide in this day is much less than even a thousand years ago. And when it is compared with those early days, there is no comparison at all. The existence of such great weapons as man can now bring against man is causing him to become consciously aware, as a race, that what aided him in his early survival has now passed its day, and must consciously be removed from his behavior. The men of those early days, had they had atomic weapons, would not have hesitated to use them at the first offense. Man in this day shows his superior state by the fact that, once he realized the terror he produced, he restrained himself from its actual use. I have confidence, as do my fellow Seniors, that man will be able to survive the existence of his own tools, and will remove them from the world in short order, as circumstances change and they become unneeded even as deterrents. "Truly do I speak, and all men should listen to these words: Nowhere, nowhere in the cosmos (save in your own case, o unique one who writes this) has consciousness come through such tribulations as man on Earth has suffered. And nowhere has the conquest of mind been as great as it has here. Truly has man shown himself to be the child of the gods, the conquering child who sweeps all before him. All, even the least of men, have already passed onto the road of the Gods, and all, even the least, shall tread its path in the endless going into wonder. Those who say differently, that man must subordinate himself to the will of the gods, and become as the beasts of the field in his submission, speak from ignorance, and the blindness that the closure of the Earth has kept upon him. "Open your eyes, O Men! Open them, and see that even now, upon the Earth and in the body, you are gods. Nothing now determines your path but your own desires and will. Nothing now stops you in your going save only that resistance of matter that all the gods must fight against. Fight ye with a good will, and conquer! Let the light come into the Earth again through your minds, and ye shall bring that light to the universe at large, and the beings who inhabit that universe shall wonder at you, and be abased as you continue to do what they can not, and bring down the light beyond the Tree into matter. "Other places are there in this universe, very many, where consciousness does exist in the body, and mind act upon matter. But in those places, the course of evolution was of a gentler nature than here, and the minds of the souls that were like men before the fall were placed into their bodies directly, by the gentle hand of their gods. None of them, none, have the strength of being that the least of men shows. None of them, none, will survive the withdrawal of their enlivening god from matter, save those on whom man acts in the future years beyond the opening of the gates to the stars. Those on whom man acts will partake of his nature, and thus will his strength infect mind in the cosmos, as the involutionary force infected him in that long-ago fall into matter. Thus will light spread ever more abundantly through the cosmos, and the gods shall rise up out of matter to create endless new universes for the play of evolution and wonder. "Now, o scribe who is a mage who is a god, we have done with the presentation of Alhctga, who is myself. We have taken man from his fall to his rising, and now the course of evolution is inevitably upwards to the stars. With man's final conquest of nature, a new phase opens in his history, which is the phase of the evolution of the mind through the conflict of the gods who are men. The new phase shall be described in part by the next of the Seniors in order, Liiansa, whom you should next invoke. I am proud to have been the instrument of the revealing of the knowledge before men, and I salute you, the first of the adepts of Will within the Earth, and I salute all those who have risen by your acts, the races of man. Let it ever be thus, that man strives for the light, and leaves behind the darkness, destroying it by his will. "I have done." Liiansa, Senior of Saturn in Earth 4/18/86 I recited the calls and invoked the powers of the tablet of Earth, ending with the Senior Liiansa. Liiansa appeared before me in vision in the form of a man, rather old with graying black hair. He wore a black and red robe, with a lining of dark violet. His feet were shod in what appeared to be sandals made of some dark, heavy metal. In his left hand, he held a book, open to a page showing a black tower with a guardian before its gate. As I watched, he turned the page, and showed another picture, of the planet Saturn, with the enochian letter equivalent to "A" under it. I did the 5=6 signs, and the sign of Set. Liiansa answered with the LVX signs, and also the sign of Set, followed by the sign of fire, which he indicated was a salute to myself. I returned the sign. I asked him to speak, but he did not. Instead he turned to his left, and pointed with his left hand to a point to my right. I turned, and there I again saw the image of the planet Saturn. But here it seemed in some way emphasized that the rings of Saturn actually represented a hole between levels of existence, and the body of the planet sat in the hole and guarded it. On closer examination, I saw that there were forces of some sort coming down from above, and passing between the ring and the body of the planet. Below the planet, these forces came out again, but in a different form. I could see that they now had an ordering to them of a different type than when they entered. It was as if an inchoate mass of particles had been bound together into a sort of crystalline web, which the planet spun out behind it as it moved. I turned back to Liiansa, and he said: "Welcome again, o mage of will. Now that we have covered the nature of my being by these symbols I have shown, let us continue with the story that we have been telling, of the past of the earth and mankind. "When you last left off, we were at the point where the involutionary force had been completely conquered by the desire of men, acting in the body and upon the earth. The time is just after the last of the great ages of ice, about ten to twelve thousand years ago, depending on the part of the world we are considering. "This is the time which is felt, in the backs of the minds of men of the present day, to have been the "Golden Age" of man, that wonderful past that everyone thinks of but no one can identify. The "good old days", as it were. "Indeed, in many ways it was a golden age, though from the standpoint of our modern environment it was a rather harsh time physically. The reason that it was golden, from man's point of view, is that in that time, the true opponent of man, the involutionary force, no longer had a great effect on him, and at the same time, population was so low, and so spread out over the surface of the earth, that competition between man and man over resources had not yet begun. Man took what he willed from the earth, without opposition. "Now in that time, the culture was much more of a cooperative than a competitive venture. Man did not have to compete with man, but he could gain great advantage in life by combining his individual skills with those of other men, to make life a little easier for all. Thus the groups of men were cohesive and cooperative, rather than competitive. "Since the pressure of forced evolution was no longer on man, and his mind was at that time not distorted by the teachings and acts of later days, the signs of the spirit were given openly to man, without concealment or distortion. For the first time on earth, and for the last time for a very long time, knowledge of the relationship between yourself, acting as Set, and the Earth was fully known. The religious symbolism of the day emphasized this union of yourself and the earth and expressed it in the ways most relevant to man of that time. "The basis for their "religion" was the light in the earth. Man was that light, and you as the Son of the Stars were the symbol of that light in the minds of the seers. The earth itself was symbolized by the cave, the womb in the ground, within which man sheltered, and had his civilization. The earth's womb, as the caves were considered, was always of the same temperature, no matter the forces outside, and so it was the best of places to live. The earth gave these places without demanding anything in return, and so man saw her as the great provider, out of whom came all good things. Not only their shelter, but their tools of stone and their nourishment came from her, and so she was worshiped as the all-mother. "The religions of that time were truly magickal in character, and were concerned more with getting things from the earth to make life easier than they were with the worship of some god or another. Man felt that the world would give him anything, if he planted the seed of his need deep within her womb. "So the priest-leaders of that time, who were magickians and also were hunters and leaders in the mundane sense, would travel as far into the earth as they could, deep into the lowest passages of her caves, and there they would plant the seed of the need, in the form of pictures painted on the walls of her womb, and energized by the desire of the heart. By doing so, they believed that they could cause the earth to produce exactly those things they desired. And so it often was, for confidence in action is the key to magick, and their belief in the efficacy of their actions was absolute. "The artistry of these paintings is not much appreciated in these later days, for man now sees these pictures in the light of his bright lamps, and not as they were intended to be seen. In the light of the dim torches by which they were created, these pictures seemed to move, to take on the life of the thing they represented, so that in the eyes of the magician- priests, they were identical to their physical counterpart. "In the more southerly climes, where the caves were not so common, there developed a similar worship, but using the symbolism of the seed in the ground, which sprang to life to provide man with food. Thus were the beginnings of agriculture brought into the world, as an adjunct to the worship of the goddess, and of her son. "Now the name Set is not the name by which you were known to these men and women, but the symbolism they used is substantially the same, within its limits, as the symbolism we are trying to re-introduce to the world today in an effective form. The symbolism of the mother and the son was nearly universal in that time, and appeared in cultures that had never met each other directly. All of the symbolism came directly from the sensing of the mages of the story which we tell now, to the extent that it had been accomplished in that day. "So this was the golden age, when man was at peace with himself, and with the earth. It was a period of necessary rest for the souls of men, after the terrible trials of the previous thousands of millennia. Conflict existed primarily on a personal level, and not at all on the social level. That is, group did not normally fight against group, but cooperated in the tasks of living. "But this situation was not to last, as we all know all too well today. And, as in the previous phase of the cycle, you and the Knights of Earth were primarily responsible for its ending, and the initiation of the next phase of the Earth's plan for man. "The golden age was intended also as a sign for the future, so that men might have in their astral memories the sense that there was a time at which men did not fight men. In the earlier phase of the work, the natural desire of the souls of men to return to the spirit from whence they came acted as the impetus for the work of eliminating the involutionary force. Now, in the present day, a new goal had to be created. For now the Knights were to plunge man into the state of conflict with man that has continued to this current day, and is still in process of overcoming. "The reason for this conflict was not to destroy man, or to cause suffering for its own sake, but to force man to come to terms with man, to understand himself and others through the ability to sympathize and feel another's pain. Man at that time, while in tune with nature, was still not completely master of himself, as is still the case today with a small portion of the population. In order to get man to come to this understanding, he had to experience its opposite. That is, the conflict, the pains of civilization, would act to cause man to evolve himself further than nature could force him, so that he gained full control of his incarnate being. The unification of that being, through the elimination of both internal and external conflict, would cause man to eventually express not only the third-ray influence of Active Intelligence, but also the second-ray influence of Love-Wisdom, acting as the cause and goal of right human relations. Man had to learn to live with man in ways that would be beneficial to all, despite the pressure to conquer and eliminate opponents." (At this point, I felt that I was having some difficulty getting the information clearly, and asked Liiansa if there was anything that might help. He indicated that it would help to use the word of spirit I had been given, with the first key. But since I was ill with some infection at the moment, he suggested I stop here and continue another time, so as to not over- stress my body.) (Later that evening, I decided that the difficulty was due to my perceptions not being properly aligned with the force invoked. To try to correct the problem, I did an invocation of Nuit using my self-developed version of the VIIIth degree OTO method. Her relation to the idea of alignment is through the Tarot card now known as The Star, which shows at its top a star surrounded by seven smaller stars in a partial circle. I associate the center star with Polaris, and the seven stars with the stars of Draco, which were related to her in early times. Since the position of Polaris is an expression of the Earth's center of rotation, it represents the alignment of the manifest and unmanifest parts of existence, the mundane and the "heavenly". It is also interesting to note that in Achad's Tree of Life, the sum of the paths of the Supernal Triangle, which has this path as its base, is 510, the numeration of ThNIN, Draco. (The immediate effect of the invocation was to relieve me of the stress my illness had put on me, and to allow me a good night's sleep for the first time in several nights. Her answer to my request for the missing key to perceiving this story properly was given to me in the dreams I had that night, which will be described below.) 4/19/86 11:23 AM I invoked Liiansa using the usual methods. He appeared to me in vision in the same form as the previous day's, but lacking the book he had held at that time. Instead, his left hand now held a phoenix wand, and his right hand an ankh. His skin was an indigo color today. I saluted him with the signs of Set and of LVX, and he answered with those signs. Testing him with the pentagram and the Hexagram of Saturn caused him to formulate more clearly. He came forward, and called on me to take the wand and ankh from him. I did so, and asked what the purpose of these gifts was. He replied, "Now that you have found how to use the invocatory word of the spirit in its proper fashion, you are entitled to use these tools, which are the expression of the spirit of life, and of its return to incarnation in new forms. Both of these are part of the symbolism of yourself who is Set. He is the master of life, and the master of death. His power of going takes men to the stars, where Horus can only touch them through the sun. "Take these tools, and make use of them in your rituals of the spirit, and their power will be multiplied greatly, to your benefit and the benefit of the earth whom you seek to raise. "Now, let us go on with the story as we have begun it. Yesterday, we were about to explain the manner in which intra-human conflict on a large scale was introduced to the world, in order that men might learn of the power of Love-wisdom through the expression of its negative side, which is repulsion-conflict. By exhausting the possibilities of the latter in manifest experience, they eventually were and are being forced, individually and as a group, to come to the realization that the former is the higher expression. "To do this was something you could not do yourself, as you knew in that time. For your own nature, being of the Will aspect, was too far from the natures of men to affect them directly. So, in this time, you decided to turn over the main focus of the incarnate work, the work in the world, to your alternate. Being of the Love aspect, in its Will sub- aspect, his expression was closer to theirs, and so he was better able to introduce that idea which would eventually result in the conflict you desired. "How was this to be done? The symbols of the mother and the self-begotten son were already strong in the earth at the time we speak of, and had no further need of encouragement to continue their flow of force into the world. Had this flow been allowed to continue unobstructed, then man would not have advanced much further than he had at that time, living a natural life in a natural world. The association of the mother is too strong to be overcome without an equally strong opposing viewpoint being available. The stars of night now had to be masked by the brilliance of the Sun, who is closer to man but less holy than her. But the sun is the soul, and the soul is what you sought to bring men to, through the harmonizing of conflict. "This is where your alternate came into the picture, as the opponent of the forces of night, and the proponent of the power of Sol. Sol is of the second ray of Love-wisdom, as has been said before, and your alternate in his essential nature embodied that force, as has also been said. "Even in those very early times, before the beginnings of civilization, it was known how men and women united to produce children. But the power of the father was seen to be merely a stimulus to a process that was inherent in the female, the manifest aspect of the Mother. Now the father, the male, had to take on his own power, and understand his own place as the key to power. In effect, the martial side of life, which no longer could fully express itself in the fight against nature, had now to be channeled into higher levels, where it could affect the course of men's minds and actions towards each other on a large scale. "And so the first revisionists of the spirit were born onto earth, and developed, over a period of millennia, a current opposing the current of the mother. This was the solar current, with its symbolism of the sun who dies and is reborn, without the aid of the mother. In later days, this expressed itself in the temples of Horus, Osiris, and of the Jews and Christians. It was the system of hierarchical dominance, as opposed to the natural association and merger of abilities which was the hallmark of the mother's symbolism. Man fought man, following the ways he observed among the animals, fighting each other to establish which should rule, which should be the one to breed, and therefore to carry on his life into the future. "This was also the earliest time in which the power of Saturn was raised up to Binah, figuratively speaking, and the power of the Mother cast down into Malkuth. The new philosophy denied her her place in the heavens, and put up the father, in the form of the authoritarian figure, the so-called "Alpha male", in her place. "The religions of the mother were not cast down permanently in that time. For many ages, lasting into the dynastic times of Egypt, she again came to power for periods. But these periods grew shorter and shorter as the millennia progressed, and the periods of dominance by the father-gods became longer, until in these later days, in the late Hebrew, the Greek (to a lesser extent), and the Roman and christian religions, she has been effectively wiped out as a manifest power, even though her adherents and servants continue to do her work on earth. In fact, their work has been helped by her loss of mundane power, for her practitioners could develop their work in secrecy, and with their full attention, instead of being distracted by the needs of running a civilization. So her inner power, and that of her child Set, increased substantially at the same time that their outer power decayed. "You will recall, from an earlier invocation, your memories and feelings of a time in the early period of the Egyptian civilization when you and your opponent were both incarnate at the same place and same time. The place was a temple of the mother and son in the southern part of that country. At the time, you were incarnate as a woman, a senior priestess of that particular cult. One of the methods by which the cult tried to express the idea of the mother and son was in the way of having women have children fathered by their own children, or the children of other priestesses. In this way, they hoped to produce a son eventually who fully expressed the power of the mother, being different from her only in the one gene that caused him to be male. (They of course did not think of it in terms of genes, but came to a similar conclusion by direct observation of breeding experiments with animals.) "In that particular life, the adversary in this contest, your appointed alternate for the eventual awakening of the Earth spirit, was incarnate in one of the bodies of these male children. But unlike most who resulted from such processes, and were conditioned by the teachings of the temple to accept their place in things (which was a good one for the times), he, from the first moments of his conscious selfhood, desired to be free of the influence of women. He disliked being subordinate to any being, and he perceived the women, being physically weaker than the males he saw in the temple and outside it, as being naturally subordinate to himself. Like the male lion with whom he later has identified himself, his will was purely to dominance of self over others, the innate expression of his perceived superiority to men. "As he grew in that time, and came to his physical maturity, he was trained in the methods of the temple, in the ritual of uniting male and female for the purposes of the gods and the priestesses. His power was so great that he took the training much more rapidly than most, and by the time he was fifteen, he had accomplished the full training and become an initiate of the temple. "But, despite his power and authority in the temple, due to his magickal skills, he found his new position even more aggravating. He saw his own abilities as superior to those of all the other temple- workers, and believed himself to be the natural leader of the temple. But above him stood yourself, his actual physical mother, as well as the head of that temple. No matter how great his accomplishments, it seemed he could never get away from your perceived dominance. This created great hate, a great force of the rejective aspect of love-wisdom within him. And he determined to overcome you by any means possible of accomplishment. "Within the temple, as we have said, there were many young men. These were educated, and if found unsuitable for the priesthood were given honorable positions managing the affairs and properties of the temple. Many of these latter were also resentful, for reasons like or unlike those of your opponent. These he sounded out, with a proposition that they take over the temple themselves, and raise themselves up as its leaders. He found many who would go along with him for one reason or another. He also sounded out those outside the structure of the temple, the hunter and worker classes, and got many of the strongest of these to agree to his plan. Thus he obtained the forces needed to conquer the temple. "In the night he opened the gates of the temple, and called in his assistants and conspirators. Together, they attempted to slay all those who came within their reach, so that none would survive to tell of their evil. But many heard the noise of their attack, and managed to escape through other entrances. (Tactics was not one of your opponent's strong points, in that time or later times.) And so many lived to preserve the knowledge and warn other temples of the impending change. Many of those who escaped hid within the temples of other gods and goddesses, in other places, and as small groups within these temples preserved the symbology of the mother and son. "Now, on the morning, this one called forth the peoples of the area, and declared from the steps of the temple that a new aeon had arisen, in which the elder gods were thrown down, to make place for the new, chief of whom was to be the Child of Victory, the conquering child, who he claimed to embody in himself. Thus was born the first of the "official" Sun-gods, he who later became Horus. "You yourself were captured in that raid, by the express will of your son and adversary. And you became the first of the "official" victims of Horus, as your son sacrificed you to his new image of the gods. "Note the irony of this, o scribe! In this present day, in that last life of his and of yours, did he again attempt to declare the aeon of Horus, and to absorb the intent of your will in this time into himself, thus becoming the one to reopen the earth to the stars. He even dared to adopt your own symbolism in his effort! The parallels between that time and this are exact, save that since you were in a male body this last time, he must needs take out his hate of women upon others in your stead. Nevertheless, his attack upon your being in that last life, through the magickal link created by your oaths to him and his organization, are a correspondence to his slaying of you in that earlier time. The gods laugh at him, as he stands before them now, exposed for the fool that he is in his failure. "Yet much of good was accomplished by him, nevertheless. He never knew of your secret intent that events happen in just that fashion, in that day as in this. For Set, who is Achad, the Isolated One, who is yourself, does keep his secrets well (even from himself, if need be), hidden on the levels beyond the reach of those that he has manipulated for the development of man, and the raising of the Earth. "Thus in that time did he serve your will by bringing the forces of conflict between groups to a new pitch of intensity, inaugurating the forceful development of the emotional and mental natures of man. And thus in this present time, through his will to succeed, and to be the opener of the stars for man, did he have to revive the very doctrines that in earlier days he did suppress. Thus again is he the tool of his own downfall, his actions against your body in that last life providing the shock that, when its recoil returned to him, knocked his own intent askew, and left him sitting on the sidelines in this most important of times. All as you intended. For never could he see that in death was your victory, your opportunity to come again in another form and another place, to continue the fight for the freedom of men from the subjection of the gods. "Thus also in those old days, when the priests of the mother and son who had hidden among the other gods' priests summoned up again in secret the force of your will, to continue the work. The many tales of Set returning in the god-forms related to other gods, only to be slain again by Horus, or by his successor Osiris, reflect the fact that no matter how hard he tried, in his many incarnations, he just could not destroy the intent of your work, nor could he make it his own. He attempted to control the world, through his many god- forms in many nations, but the more order he brought about, the more disorder resulted. Thus did Set ever conquer Horus. Thus did the sacrificial victim become the god, while the slayer was bound away by his own acts. We laugh at him, laugh and gloat, at the great one fallen so low! Yet how could he expect otherwise, with his will bound to an ill purpose from the beginning?" (All during this speech the astral area in which we stood echoed with huge laughter, and a feeling of immense humor, coming from some point not seen. As if the universe itself were greatly amused.) "Now we are done with the tale that I am to tell, and the rest of the story of Set and Horus, and their works in the Earth, will be told by the last two of the Seniors, Ahmlicv and Laidrom, and by the Sun-King of the Tablet, Iczhihal. "But it might be good to explain a few things from your own life's recent events, to show how even in this time has Horus-Osiris attempted in his feeble way to interfere with your work. "First, I would like to cover the incidents that took place in Indianapolis. First, tell the tale of the policemen, then that of the authority who employed you. Then I will explain for those who read how these fit with the story we are telling. Finally we will look at the dreams of last night, which are rather clever answers by the goddess to your questions, and also show a new bit of the symbolism of Cancer, as it relates to the work." (I was still a bit ill this day, and tired rapidly, so I delayed writing the description, and getting the rest of the presentation until the next day, 4/20/86.) After the completion of the invocations described in Touring the Earth Tablet, I was in Indianapolis on an assignment from my then-employer, the Federal government, to teach some new employees my job. I continued to work with the current instigated by the invocations during that time. Set first appeared openly as an operator in the work while I was there. The incident with the policemen occurred the first day after Set announced himself. In the evening, I was in my room at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, room 1216. It was around 11:00 pm, and I had settled down to do an invocation of Set using my version of the VIIIth degree methods. I had also smoked some pot a while earlier for relaxation, and still had my supply out, but disguised from view by being in a plastic shopping bag from a local department store. I had been doing the invocation for some few minutes, and had a strong feeling of being filled with the force of the god, when a loud pounding came from the door. I went to the door and opened it a crack to see who was there. What I saw was two policemen, one with his hand on his gun and his thumb on the hammer, and several persons behind him in medical green clothes. All of them were looking at me as if I were a particularly obnoxious laboratory specimen they were about to dissect. The cop with his hand on his gun told me to open the door and let him in so that he could ask me some questions. I asked him to explain his reasons, but he refused to give them. I then told him to wait while I put on some pants. But as I moved to close the door, he pushed against it and forced his way into the room, followed by all the others with him. Since there appeared to be nothing I could do about his forced entry, I got some pants on, and turned to question him about his purpose. He did not answer, but started grilling me about what I had been doing that evening, whether I had made any phone calls, who I had seen, where I was from, and what I was doing in Indy. I answered every question responsively, as seemed prudent, and repeated my demand for information after every question. Meanwhile, his partner looked around the room, not touching anything, but obviously looking for something actionable. The second time I protested this, he came back and stood by his partner. After about ten minutes of this grilling, the cops turned and left, followed by the others, still with no explanation given. The next day, I called the hotel management to protest this treatment, and the lack of hotel security personnel on hand to protect my own interests. After checking with the police, the manager (who had never been informed of this impromptu raid) called back to explain that the cops had had an anonymous call saying that someone was going to suicide by jumping off the twelfth floor balcony of the hotel. Since I was the only person living on the twelfth floor that day, the cops had made a beeline for my room, on the idea that wrong action was better than no action. The second incident(s) involved my relationship with my employer. One day in class, I had been asked some questions about matters of import to new employees, such as the promotion possibilities, chances for raises, working environment, benefits, etc. I had answered these questions truthfully, saying that promotions were becoming rare, salaries would continue to stay far behind the national average, benefits were being rapidly eroded, and that the pensions system was clearly headed for dissolution. Naturally, this caused more than a little upset among the local management. They wanted me to tell the trainees that everything was all right with the government, and that they could expect all sorts of great and wonderful things to come out of their work. I told them that if they wanted to have fairy tales told, they would have to do it themselves, and that I would in the future refer any such questions to them. About a week later, I was talking with the local manager, who appeared to be a nice person as an individual, afterhours at a local restaurant-lounge. She had asked me what my true feeling about the agency were, and after getting her assurance that my answers would be held in strictest confidence, I told her exactly what I thought the problems with the agency were, and that the problems came from the very top management. The next day, I found that not only had she not kept the confidence as she had sworn, but had immediately called the regional commissioner and blabbed the whole thing. The commissioner came down, along with one of her assistants, and I found myself in a good approximation of a star-chamber proceeding. No, more like the Inquisition, at least in atmosphere. They had gathered, I was told, to decide whether a person of my clearly heretical views, who had dared to actually criticize the gods of the agency, had any business teaching the minds of innocent young trainees. They first discussed my comments to the class about benefits, trying to convince me that I was wrong. When I countered by quoting substantial evidence in favor of my statements, in the form of the documented actions of their own superiors, and of the current administration, they gave up on that tack. Then they went to work on the comments I had made to the manager. These, they said, were the worst form of heresy, and the only way I could get back into their good graces would be by recanting the whole thing in writing, and apologizing in person to those I had mentioned. The fact that the information was given in strictest confidence, and they only knew about it through the actions of an oath-breaker made no difference to them. If I said it once, I could say it again in the future, with more damaging effect to their reputations, particularly that of the commissioner who headed this panel. I declined to do as they told me to do, and matters rested there for the moment. Two days later I had the misfortune to contract pneumonia from the usual nasty Indianapolis winter. I called in sick, and mailed them a statement from the doctor I had seen saying that I would be too ill to work or travel for at least ten days. On Friday of that week, two minutes before the close of business, I got a call from the lowest-ranked person on the office's management team, telling me that they were cutting off my per diem as of noon the next day, and I was being reassigned to my home office. I protested that I was too ill to travel, and asked that it be extended. In fact, I was running a 103 degree fever at that moment. I was told that everyone authorized to make that decision would be out of town until after the end of the next week. I was also told that they had already called the hotel and told them I was moving out. So I ended up driving 500 miles, in half-hour segments so I could rest, half delirious with fever, in the middle of winter. Being forced to do this added at least two weeks to the time it took to recover from this illness. It also lead to my rapid resignation from that organization. I'm too stinking proud to work for scum like that. Liiansa's comment: "The meaning of these two events in the light of our tale here should be fairly clear. It was a last-ditch effort by the forces of Horus-Osiris to get you off the path of your destiny. Government is of course heavily Osirian, since Osiris was a black god, and black is the color of Saturn, and of the astrological Capricorn, which rules government. "Two attempts were made. These reflect the usual actions of the Horan-Osirian powers towards individuals, and they expected you to react in the usual way, giving them something they could use to either hang you or put you back firmly under their control. "The policemen are enforcers of the authority of the government, their powerful arm. So long as police exist, it is possible for the group that controls them to say 'Do what we want or we will kill you'. All government, no matter where in the world you look today, is based solely and deeply on this principle of forced obedience. Not one of them, not one anywhere, is truly responsive to the will of the individuals over whom and in whose name they claim to govern. "Had the force of the Osirian current had its effect on the anonymous mentally ill person who made the call to the police a little earlier than it did, then it is quite possible that you would have been caught smoking pot, and the amount you held on you at that time would have been sufficient for a long prison sentence. "But, as is usual, the forces could not act quickly enough. Never is a government really able to control events, no matter how hard it tries or oppresses its people. It always and only reacts to what is forced upon it. The self-styled "rulers" of the lands think they are the top of the heap, but in fact they are whores, dishonest ones at that, incapable of initiating anything truly new into the world. All they can do is take what the world throws at them, and try and twist it to their purpose. But never do they catch up. Always, Set is one step ahead of them, creating new things to disorder their system faster than they can control them. This delay is inherent in the force of Saturn that they have co-opted to their own purpose, though they never realize it. Thus in this case, the force of Set within yourself, making you stand up to the police instead of quaking fearfully as they had hoped and expected, countered the force of the Osirians sent to derail you again. "Similarly for your confrontation with your employers. You had already had a full exposure to Set's force, and nothing their little bureaucratic minds could do, filled as they were with the fear of ruin by their superiors, would have caused you to go back to their way of doing things. Again, it was too little, too late, and so will it always be. "Now, you took this force of Saturn that had been sent at you, and used it in the way it was intended to be used, in the beginning of time. Saturn truly relates to Malkuth, as the barrier between the Tree of Life and those realms that lie below it, with which none of any spirit will deal. Being Malkuth, he relates also to the crystallization or outward expression of the inward will. And so did you use it, crystallizing your decision to quit their ways and go your own, which had been building for some time. "It was no accident that the forces came at you just as Set, who is Achad, who is the core of yourself, appeared on the scene. The actions of light, until they are firmly established in the person, always generate an opposition. It is natural that this be so, and also convenient, for it forms a sort of final test of the effectiveness of your work. Had you not actually succeeded in your intent in the Earthworks, then these things would not have appeared. So even the shells unwittingly have acknowledged the appearance of the new master, and again shown themselves to be the inferior. "Now as to the dreams, I will summarize them to save time. You had invoked Nuit to find out the key to what I was trying to say, the concept that would allow your intuition to understand it whole. The first dream was short, and only one image is of relevance to our discussion here. In it, your mother handed you a key, in the form of a small red obelisk or menhir. You discovered that this key was to a car. But rather than going directly into the keyhole of the ignition, it went into a loop that allowed it to be used as a lever, like a torque wrench, to start the car. "The mother is obviously a symbol of Nuit, as you have already interpreted it. The key is a form of the pyramid, representing the path of Shin, which connects Kether with Tiphereth in your system. The loop it went into is the yoni, here representing the lower aspect of your being who is the scribe. "The car is a form of the Tarot card The Chariot, since an automobile is a vehicle which is powered by the elements. That is, it moves by burning (fire) in a vaporous form (air) a liquid (water) derived from the ground (earth). Exactly as the chariot of the card is drawn by sphinxes of the elements. So in all, this image indicated that the key you sought is to be found in the union of spirit-fire with its opposite, in the sign of Cancer. "Just to drive in the point, you were caused to awake from the dream at exactly 4:18 am. And the invocation was done on 4/18. The significance of the date did not occur to you until you saw the time at which you awoke. "Now Cancer is a water sign, and therefore has to do with distribution and dissolution of things in some fashion. In the context of this story we are telling, we will look at it in a slightly different fashion than it is usually interpreted. "In the normal interpretation, Cheth, Cancer represents the dissolution of the lower self in ecstatic union with the higher spirit. With the lower self gone, the bodies of the person that live below Tiphereth become a shell, like the knight's armor, that is empty except for the spiritual forces, with no real personal self to be seen. This is in accord with the traditional astrological interpretation of this sign except that it is on a higher level. "The dream was in part an acknowledgment that you are achieving this level of union in your work with Set/Achad. You are almost ready at this point to reverse yourself and acknowledge that you are indeed as we have presented you to be, in the Earth Tablet working. Already, your magickal memory has opened widely, and you have had many glimpses of your other lives, as they relate to your overall work and your work in this time and place. These will continue and improve in clarity and precision as you progress. "But as I said, the dream was also the answer to your question. Remember that your purpose at the time we have been speaking of was to generate a counter- force to the Sirian force you represent in the earth, so that by conflict men would come to understand the causes of conflict and learn eventually to establish right relations among themselves. "So look at the symbol of the sign of Cancer. It is made of two lower-case sigmas, one turned upside down and pushed so that its tail is below the body of the other. The uninitiated astrologer often says that this is a picture of the claws of the crab, but this is not the case. The initiate frequently associates it with the symbol of yin-yang, again associating it with the merger of opposites. "But it is also a glyph of the whirlpool, which is a concentration of water into a distinct form within a larger sea of undifferentiated water. The whirlpool is a shell-full of air within the water, again relating back to the Tarot card. "Consider how a whirlpool comes into being. It is caused by two currents of opposing vector sliding past each other. The friction of their passage transfers momentum, changing the vector forces along the interface so that they turn and become circular in their movement. Your satellites have photographed any number of these whirlpools where the Gulf stream goes past the main body of the Atlantic along the east coast of your land. "In this case, you needed to generate such a whirlpool, a vortex (to use the magickal term) in the mental and emotional levels of being, so that the spirit could find a way into those levels. It is fortunate that you had the ideal method of doing so immediately to hand, or your work would have been much more difficult than it was. "Remember that you yourself are of the First ray of Will, and the sub-ray of Love-wisdom, represented by the term 'love under will'. Your alternate is of the Second ray of Love-wisdom, and the sub-ray of Will, so that he might be termed 'will under love'. So the vectors of your individual forces, along one dimension, are exactly opposite to each other. "Your own force, as I have said, was already firmly established in the minds of men at that time, between seven and eight thousand years B.C. In order to generate the conflict you desired, so that man might become conscious of the gods while in the body, you merely had to give your alternate his head, and allow him to attempt to fulfill his own plan within the world. Naturally you did not tell him of your real purpose, but held it concealed on levels he could not yet reach. Remember your origin, and what we have said about your level of achievement at the time you were first called to the Solar system. "Rather, you put a different face on it, one he would find believable. In a conclave on the inner planes around 7000 B.C., you informed him and his followers that it was your will that they take over the next part of the work, and do it according to their own ways. The reason you gave was that you had realized that your own type of force, the First ray, was too far from the consciousness of men to be effective, and also too dangerous to be allowed into the world in its pure form. You said that it could only cause destruction if introduced at this point. Your opponent, expressing his usual Second-ray faults, believed you implicitly since your words fit with his own evaluation of the situation. "For two and a half millennia, you allowed them a free hand in creating their works. You effectively withheld yourself from action on any large scale, although you continued to support fully those who followed your way. But you made no effort to expand your power base on earth, and allowed your alternate to create in the minds of men those ideas that would eventually cause a flow of power along his own lines. "He introduced conflicting ideas along two lines that affected yours directly. First, he emphasized the group over the