Interview with André Consciência – Discussing Beyond The Veil of Illusion Series

1.Falcon Books: The series does not describe a conventional ascent from Earth towards increasingly elevated planetary spheres. Instead, it traces a descending triangle from Jupiter through the Sun to Mars, “inviting God to the Earth.” What fundamentally changes when initiation is understood as a descent of divine power into embodiment rather than an escape or ascent away from material existence?

AC: I should start by clarifying that this series is a series on initiation against illusion, rather than initiating the beginner. The books may be wonderful in theory, for beginners, and help them navigate the universe cognitively, but in terms of hardcore magical practice they are somehow advanced. Furthermore, the question presupposes that there is a movement towards separation between ascent and descent. However, wherever consciousness goes, opposites as such move together. Consciousness does not ascend or descend, it is rarified by polarity, not dragged around. Should it be dragged around, it is not awareness, or consciousness, that we obtain, but ignorance and obscuration.

That being said, ascent through the spheres such as in mental wandering brings down powers, virtues and knowledge, and thus a movement of descent. As we put these to practice we become further elevated. So, the deeper question must not be about ascent or descent, for in the path of equilibrium, they contain each other, no matter if we are working upwards or downwards.

I think it is equally unfair to treat ascent through the spheres as an escape from material reality. In truth, Franz Bardon was a materialist, and so were most magicians, regardless of being spiritualists. A chemist or physicist learning the invisible laws of matter is not attempting to escape material existence, but to understand its fundamental forces, and so is the magician when he ascends throughout the spheres.

But, in fact, we are not practicing here any kind of ascent through the spheres via mental wandering, although each book prepares for mature communication with the beings of the corresponding spheres, as opposed to immature communication. Two entities that know algebra can discuss algebra. Should only one individual be literate the discussion will be more or less fruitless.

What these books truly do is work the wisdom of the spheres in this very material and daily life. 

2. FB: Within the Paroketh formula, Mars is attributed to water, the Sun to air, Jupiter to fire, and the Zone Girdling the Earth to earth. These correspondences differ from the elemental associations many readers would instinctively make. What operative logic governs these assignments, and how do they shape the practical relationship between the three grades?

AC: I could no longer find this original statement of mine online (except in my own substack). I will, therefore, quote it for context:

Qabalists call the veil of illusion by the name of Paroketh. In Hebrew, the word means “veil” or “curtain”. In the Bible, it appears veiling the Most Holy Place in the Tabernacle. The Veil of Paroketh is said to exist between the Moon Sphere and the Sphere of the Sun. The word contains the Hebrew letters PRKTh, in which Peh is Mars, Resh is the Sun, Kaph is Jupiter and Tau is the Zone Girdling the Earth. In this formula, Mars is the water element, the Sun is the air element, Jupiter is the fire element and the Earth is the earth element. While this veil, seen from below, separates the conscious from the subconscious, when we pierce it to stand in its hall, it yet separates us from the super-conscious. Beyond the veil of illusion, the Sun and its two pillars, Mars and Jupiter, yet veil God. But by being veiled, is God revealed. We draw, starting in Jupiter, going to the Sun and closing with Mars, that descending triangle that invites God to the Earth.

Traditionally Jupiter is water, Mars is fire, and the Sun is air. However, sitting in the right column, Chesed (Jupiter) is electric and Geburah (Mars), sitting in the left column, is magnetic. And then, Kaph is extensive and moist, the kind of air and water that moves the Wheel of Fortune. Peh is fire as we know it, like the fire that burns The Tower. Resh is the radiant and dry heat of The Sun. Yet these letters are also these planets. Nothing is black and white, and more important than knowing the dogma and its theories, is knowing the reason behind the theories.

For instance, the other day I was discussing with a student the differences in the elemental Hindu theory of the tattwas and Franz Bardon’s theory.  

In Franz Bardon I consider olfaction the sensory organ most attached to the Akasha. In Hinduism, the Akasha is connected to sound. Bardon also uses Akasha for clairaudience in the fluid condenser.

In Hinduism olfaction connects to the earth element because it is dense and holds the particles. In Bardon’s hermetics it makes sense to connect earth to touch since it is solid.

Hinduism connects touch to air because wind can only be perceived by touch. In hermetics, the quintessential sense of smell is where one connects more immediately with the akasha: it feels more subtle than anything else and without any barrier you literally fuse with the thing you inhale by absorbing the particles. By smelling I can immediately understand the quintessence of anything.

In Hinduism akasha is sound because sound travels in empty space. There is a part of each element in all the senses anyway. Sometimes we touch with burning desire. Sometimes we touch lightly. Sometimes our touch is heavy. Sometimes our touch is sweet. Analogies are built on rationale.

What I am really saying is Jupiter ignites our path within the series, the Sun mediates, and Mars builds the flow, nurturing regular life.

3. FB: The Grade of the Sun is structured around forty-eight cosmic operations, moving through principles including creation, emanation, equilibrium, transformation, and dissolution. Do these operations describe a single complete cycle of cosmic consciousness, or are they independent powers that can be entered and combined according to the practitioner’s development?

AC: Right? And The Grade of Jupiter has around fifty one operations and The Grade of Mars has thirty five. In all cases they are progressive and cumulative, except for various examples in The Grade of Mars. So, first, step by step. Then, to be used as dynamic grammar, not only regarding each book, but among all three. A little secret is that the chapters for the most part follow certain fundamental teachings the intelligences of these planets taught me, according to the corresponding degrees of the zodiac in their progression. This is one of the reasons the practitioner will be ready to find common ground with the planetary heads.


4. FB: The solar work begins by observing thought and establishing a distinction between the observer and the created thought, while insisting that this separation is awareness rather than division. How does the practitioner use this distinction without creating a subtler dualism between consciousness and manifestation—and does the observer eventually also have to become an object of observation?

The book says we do not create thoughts but capture them from the cosmos or, in other words, thoughts are an expression of the cosmos. That being said, it also solves the subtler dualism between consciousness and manifestation: “The magician is not that which emanates, nor the fountain of that emanation, for pure awareness stands ever in the liminal regions of consciousness.” But, before we get to this, our identification with the observer must indeed be surpassed, as well as our identification with the vacancy that follows. I have recently described this process in my general students group within the Perseus Arcane Academy community, and will thus quote:

“ On The Hermetic Grade of the Sun, Chapter One:

As the chapter mentions, there are two methods.

THE FIRST METHOD:

Thought observation as we know it. I will not describe it here because I have already done so. Now I proceed to observe this observer. Before I was an activity: observation. Now, since I cannot be an observer, I become the presence that is with observation. Indeed, there are no thoughts. If I use my extrasensory abilities, I can see a kind of spherical matrix nurtured by my existence. A kind of soundless sound tells me it is processing the whole universe (it’s the thing that captures/generates thoughts). This is the observer. But, again, I am telling you this, not thinking it. My presence is nothing but presence, and it is aware. It thinks not of the observer, but is able to be aware of it.

At this point you manage to detach from the presence itself too, not identifying with it: What happens to me is the distance between presence and its awareness of itself collapses and it short-circuits. The whole body is materially flushed by this kind of spiritual fire that is indescribable.

THE SECOND METHOD: is very similar but different in polarity. The first shows up, the second repels. As I repel all thoughts I am left with these unformed impulses, tiny sparks that hit the wall of my concentration and ricochet. They desist. Vacancy. What we call vacancy at the first level is actually an observation of vacancy. I repel the observer too. There is this omnipotent light of presence that reveals itself. This, too, I remove, and now the final result is the same as in method one, but stronger, more raging. At first, I would have to force myself to breathe. Not anymore.

And, finally, back to thought observation as an absolute practice: all of this is just thoughts… they simply run very deeply.
 

5. FB: The experiences described under cosmic emanation involve being seized, lifted out of ordinary stability, penetrated by light or living darkness, and reorganised at the level of perception and identity. What determines whether such an experience becomes genuine solar initiation rather than psychic destabilisation, inflation, or an inability to function within ordinary life?

AC: Solar initiation, in its reorganisation of the psyche, may well cause psychic destabilisation. But what is destabilised is our structural instability itself, since now we are becoming what we are meant to be instead of a semi-dead shell that functions in a somewhat dead societal grinder. I don’t see how the mechanics of the practice can cause inflation, as cosmic emanation is humbling in nature. Now, since the current state of maturity of our species is out of balance, what is usually ordinary is out of balance as well, including an ordinary life. Previous magical equilibrium helps. We must remember The Grade of Jupiter precedes the Grade of the Sun, and it focuses on this. Also, one will fare much better with The Grade of Jupiter with previous magical training, preferably at least step VIII of (Initiation Into Hermetics) IIH, or training throughout ‘Through the Soul Mirror to the Sphere of the Sun’. There is all this background, and then there will be The Grade of Mars to put The Grade of the Sun and The Grade of Jupiter in perspective. The Grade of Mars is all about living an ordinary life in an extraordinary fashion.  

6. FB: Mars was recognised as necessary only after the Jupiter and Sun volumes had revealed the danger of Jovian voltage and potentially consuming solar brightness. Does the order in which the books were received also represent the safest order of practice, or should martial grounding be cultivated from the beginning rather than introduced only after the higher currents have been awakened?

AC: Look, magic and esotericism is not for the faint of heart. If one simply wants comfort and security, there are much better things to do. Mars is not to come first, that, yes, would cause inflation, or else make you almost immune to the Jovian voltage and the consuming brightness of the Sun. We want this voltage, we want this consuming brightness. To understand the water we dive naked, feel the cold, and swim. The order is not the safest, it is the most effective. What is safest is to not meddle in the occult at all. 

7. FB: Mars is called the “plus pole” and the law of equilibrium, yet it introduces still more force, will, passion, decision, and activity. How can an increase in active power restrain Jovian and solar excess rather than amplify it, and what distinguishes equilibrated Martian action from compulsive assertion disguised as magical will?

AC: In Jupiter, the universal is becoming personal to the magician. In the Sun, it is embodied. In Mars, it is, the magician being finally ready, the personal that becomes universal. One cannot mistake what is active for what is excessive. Excess is a negative state of dissolution. Whatever active component was in it has left the building and growth towards self destruction kept an automatic and passive cycle. What is active is presence. We are talking about the force of presence, the will of presence, the passion of presence, the decision of presence, and the activity of presence. No automatism, no being pulled around by forces, no being subjected and passive to them.

Compulsive assertion is passive. There is no presence in it, only the decay of substance abandoned by the spirit. We are actually building a fortress against compulsion. In this instance we also abolish terms such as magical will as masks of inflation. Will is will in life, there is no separate realm from life and our actions within it. All such things come from slumber and the hypnotic effects of the minus.   

8. FB: The Mars volume presents total independence as a verb or discipline while acknowledging that embodied existence remains interdependent. What exactly becomes independent in the adept, and how can this independence be developed without collapsing into isolation, refusal of vulnerability, or the fantasy that one no longer needs other people?

I will try to reinforce what I was attempting to say before. What becomes independent in the Adept is his sense of presence. We live without it, it is constantly arrested by all things. A person who isolates out of compulsion is seeking a presence in it that the person does not have in themselves. Or often the person breaks isolation searching for the same. A person refuses vulnerability because vulnerability steals that person’s sense of presence. And a person seeks to be vulnerable because vulnerability awakens a sense of presence. We need others because we need our presence, and we dispense them because we need our presence. That is all negative. No matter what side you pick, the constant is lack or scarcity of presence.

The adept of Mars can isolate in full presence, party in full presence, be entirely vulnerable or impermeable, and he can be present in his need for others or not need them and choose to die climbing a mountain by himself. The question is in a different language to the answer. It talks of dependence all around, fear, calculation based on need, and is completely within the negative pole. The answer talks about owning one’s choices fully and without excuses. So what becomes independent in the Adept, is the Adept. He is not hiding under his own illusions of need. At the risk of being misinterpreted (please don’t), monks self-immulate, hunger strikers starve themselves to death, men go to war to be torn to pieces, they defend an ideal only to be burned alive, so what do they really need if they don’t even need their own lives? If you are not afraid, who is to enslave you? Often, these extremes happen without the full embodiment of consciousness, but these persons will likely be closer to consciousness and presence than the magician who is scared of life and all its wonders and dangers. 

9. FB: The martial grade deliberately includes the body, work, communication, discipline, creativity, passion, and pleasure within magical attainment. How is passion converted into conscious force without either repressing it in the name of discipline or surrendering to it in the name of authenticity—and what role does pleasure play in genuine magical equilibrium?

AC: Passionless magical equilibrium is but stagnancy, exactly the opposite. Magical equilibrium, the elemental dynamo, is the heart of all elements, and it, like any heart, is passionate. Imperialistic Christian upbringing has made people so numb to existence that they think what gives them life and virtue is what kills them and corrupts them. All conscious force is converted by the intellect from passion, from wilful life-feeling, there is no other source to it.

As for discipline, it is often the enemy of presence. Within presence, one is perfect in his affairs. When one is feeble and weak, one has discipline as a travesty of presence to do things for him, to no avail, most of the time. We must indeed surrender to passion in the name of authenticity, but someone told us the tale all upside-down.

When we lose contact with the heart the emotions that were fed by electromagnetic passion start to decay, and they eventually become death-impulses. These have no passion and no presence, they move like a hand moves for a second after being cut. Most people are so asleep this is all they have for passion, and passion it is not. Any vice is devoid of passion, it fills where presence left. It is senseless and deserted.

Now, the role pleasure plays in genuine magical equilibrium is being the symptom of magical equilibrium, its indicator. It makes us distinguish what is good from what is bad. Again, most have become so disconnected with pleasure that they cannot recognise it any longer. They think eating a lot of chocolate gives them pleasure although it torments conscience. This is the description of pain, not pleasure. The description of being enslaved to circumstances and blinded to what is going on. There is no pleasure at all before there is a clear conscience. This seems so obvious to me.

10. FB: The statement that there are no problems for the Adept of Mars, only solutions and fertile ground for solutions, is powerful but potentially dangerous. How should this principle be applied to irreversible loss, illness, injustice, or circumstances that cannot be “solved” without turning Martian optimism into denial or spiritual bypassing?

AC: Mars is dangerous. Mars is for the brave and courageous. Mars is for the free. In irreversible loss it finds irreversible strength, in illness it purifies, in injustice it becomes just and the maker of justice. What can automatically be solved will rarely awaken the force of Mars in itself. Mars rather comes when there is no solution to the whirlwind but the cyclone. When, in the face of something larger than your artificial constructs, for instance in the face of impending death or large disaster, you become fully awake and present.You care not for the spiritual, optimism and negativism: you rise to the occasion. 

Thank you very much André for taking the time to answer our questions. To find out more about André you can visit is Author page and Facebook page.

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