PART I
This article aims to support both the magician on his earlier steps and the experienced magician, using the symbols of the moon and the sun individually and interposed in equilibrium, some analogies and practical applications being given.
Naturally, a lot has been said and written about the Moon and the Sun, in art, literature, philosophy, magic, mysticism, religion, theology and science. They are the divine providers at the immediate disposal of the mineral, vegetable, animal and symbolic kingdoms. What each of these areas of human knowledge and research have to state on both heavenly bodies can be summarized by way of analogy. But because our aim is not to write a treatise on the subject, we will have to move forward to the considerations that match the brief intent of this letter.
In art and literature the moon has been associated with somnambulist states of wonder, anguish and trance, it is connected with desire, especially a desire beyond conscious control, and romanticism has given it the crown of being the heavenly body that can lead the human being beyond himself, uniting him with the powers around him but having him adrift and lost in the end. The sun generally represents fullness, individual realization, firmness, and sometimes hell, as is the case of the promethaic tradition of literature, where the conscious mind of the characters digests the subconscious constantly and endlessly. Philosophy considers the sun as the place of the Logos and the home of reason, and the moon to be the abode of the subconscious. Magic and mysticism have the moon to bring understanding of the mechanics of the world and its living magnetism, including our own nature, and the sun bringing forth enlightenment, knowledge and conversation with one’s innermost light. Religions have a mother in the moon, a father in the sun, and science knows the sun gives warmth, light and moves the winds, while the moon reflects light and rules the tides. In terms of polarity, the sun is the active pole or the active agent and the moon is the passive component or ingredient. This is a gross resume, but may do for what is required.
In lore, both have been known to heal and to curse, but as ours is the craft of balance and magical equilibrium, we aim for that alchemical marriage between them. In order to do that one has first to try and look at the moon and the sun as symbols through different angles. While below, the moon is mostly a rebellious desire and the sun is of a conscious intention, above, the moon represents that orderly heaven where everything moves by divine grace alone, and the sun the rebellious force that moves independently according to a conscious will, or to the obtaining of a conscious will, and to some sort of creative unbalance. In the space where above and below meet, the sun becomes the expression of being itself, divine radiation, while the moon becomes the knowledge of the divine. This can be understood by meditation, and we are not to expand on it too much. It suffices to say that at one grade desire must be mastered by intention, so that intention is to be able to transfer itself to the body of desire and become enlarged. When by fusion both curves become a single line, magic happens and creation takes place. At another level divine order and individual will must come to perfect terms, so that each gains endlessly by the expression of the other. And, thirdly, our knowledge is to be the knowledge of what is in detriment of everything that is not, so that our being knows itself.
We are born under a father and a mother, generally. We do not know our fathers as actual persons when we are yet infants, they are providing forces. We can not get to things for we are too small, we cannot acquire new things unless they are given, we cannot even feed ourselves. And we know nothing but existence. Our parents seem immortal for we know not death, omnipresent for they are near us at all times, omniscient for they answer all, and omnipotent for they can do all that which we cannot. When we grow and understand that they don’t actually have a grasp of our inner worlds, they lose this configuration, but the sun and the moon keep being omnipresent and a never ending source of life, strength and inspiration, and no darkness can cut them down.
On a fight or flight perspective the sun becomes the conqueror, its courage has beaten death and the void itself, and its emanation has become pure, but once there was fear, it grew against it. The moon never grew up, it kept having the sun to give her light, and therefore it never knew death, It is innocent. While the sun has owned its immortality, the moon was ever eternal. Franz Bardon tells us that before reaching the sphere of the sun one has to go through the moon, and this key prevents the mistake of trying to have the heavenly spheres be conquered by pride, for the gate is the gate of innocence, even if innocence has its own crones.
While this may be true one has yet to figure out the dual aspects. On the outer the sun can become a representation of authoritarian power, it is the imposition of conscious order against the most nourishing aspects of the subconscious and against the freedom to grow through the interaction of the conscious self and the subconscious, where the soul experiences itself on the outside in order to expand. Examples of this are the Romans, the Nazi party, etc, all working under the sign of the sun. While this outer sun works through the fear of the unknown, it abolishes its concept, so that to the beholder it expresses itself as something that can be known and feared, the fear of things human. But on the inner realms, it gives protection, security and has light to itself and to everyone else.
The moon is yet uterine. When an unborn child is in the womb he listens to the sounds and trepidation outside as if coming from the darkness, like an omnipresent mysterious mass of things unknown ever revolving. Because the unborn child doesn’t even know what a human being is, this is not a fear of human things. It is through this state of consciousness that H. P. Lovecraft came to connect with monstrous and abominable cosmic forces from the void, such as Cthulho, Nyarlatothep, Yog Sottoth, the Crawling Chaos, etc. Yet on the inner, while the sun has scorched a devious and cannibalistic world into a desert to obtain divine sovereignty and establish order and law, the moon is yet the oasis of innocence, where the muses dance with a light without beginning or end, a light that never had to be conquered and that has never been taken away and never will. If you look beyond the psychic shells that compose the Lovecraftian Mythos, shells charged with an ancient and primordial human fear, you might find these fair, royal and delicate dancers and muses of innocence beyond the horror of frailty, constantly restored by the light of the sun and sublimating immortality into eternity, for the way up and the way down are inverse mirrors, and even if it is the immortality of the sun, as a guardian, that provides the eternity of the moon, a mortal knows eternity and only then, to become its guardian, can he claim immortality.
Now, while this comes as an introduction, let us not rush to the wedding before knowing the groom and the bride properly.
The Sun and Moon Within, for those Training Initiation Into Hermetics by By Franz Bardon (Steps 1-10).
When I was training with the accumulation of the elements and manipulating the electric, the magnetic and the electromagnetic fluids, my initiator showed me again a pop culture video, where the character from Lord of the Rings, Gandalf, had left Gandalf the Grey to become Gandalf the White, and he was shining with a golden-silver light, resulting in some form of white radiance. Then my initiator taught me to gather the elements, as can be learned by Bardon, layer by layer and later merging them, compressing them and having them flow into one another, into a single quintessential fluid composed of dense electromagnetism, To this one would add a layer of electric fluids and merge it with the ON, the golden solar fluid, followed by a layer of magnetic fluids and merge it with the silver light oscillation of the moon. Again, one would press the two layers together and have them flow into one another to glow with a white aura while healing physical, emotional and mental wounds, traumas and vices.
The magician may find similar results if he enlivens his mental body with the solar fluid, his astral body with the lunar fluid, his head with fire, chest with air, the abdomen with water and the limbs with the earth element.
On earlier steps let also the magician put on his sunglasses and gaze at a spot near the sun, so that the sun is standing between his brows and at the level of the forehead. Let him fix his mind on the sun for ten minutes, His progress will quickly become unobstructed, for it will strengthen his mind.
But let him, too, sit near the water at night, under the glowing moon, and practice some zen painting, with one or two strokes coming quickly and graciously from a first feeling with no image attached. After a while, let him gaze at the moon directly and allow his mind to become vacant and to flow freely. The tensions of his training and the wounds of his daily life will heal and the soul will clean. It may be that some fears will emerge, or a sense of pressure followed by a headache, but if the magician is accepting, not holding and not identifying himself with it, breathing, eventually he will feel relaxed and a loving sensation will rush in to fill him.
With time and progress, when the magician has mastered transferring his consciousness he may, if he is ready, transfer his consciousness unto the sun, to the extent of his capacity, so that it will enlarge the magician’s consciousness but also adapt to its size. This will render him capable of controlling from collective thoughtforms to influencing destinies, just as the sun influences the movement of the winds, and that as long as it is in accordance with the laws. He may attract other persons or situations or have them banished from his path. At any rate, perfect reason will come to his aid.
On what concerns the moon, he will be able to attain the gift of prophecy and enchantment together with artistic gifts.
Again, at the later steps of IIH he will manage to work with the four divine qualities and the assumption of God, and he can actually evoke the sun and the moon directly, with all their beings inside, as a singing miasma, into the triangle. And if he manages to merge the two and conjure the intelligence that is inside, he is almost as near as it gets to meeting God face to face.
Again, if the magician is exploring the spheres he may consult PME and deepen his knowledge on the nature of the light oscillations of each planet. If he practiced with the Tattwas well enough, he will understand that just as he discovered his mental body and also an astral body, so as he concentrated each of the four elements in himself in such a way as to become, with his mental or astral body, made of that element, and similar to an elemental. This is a body made of the fluid of an element, just as the mental body is made of the psyche and the astral body of feelings and sensations. The same can be applied to the light oscillations, and the magician can practice having a moon body and a sun body, coming to know them well. Most importantly, just as he enters his astral body with his mental body, so can the solar body enter the lunar body, explore the cosmos, and, once solidified, inhabit the physical body.
Now let’s examine their alchemical connection further and how it operates. First, there is a direct link between the element of the earth and the element of water with the moon. I know a menhir at a cromlech that when the moonlight falls on it, it ignites the previously invisible inscription of a moon, put there in neolithic times. Inside that stone and its blessing gnome I can feel the flowing tides of the moon zone with its eyes and intelligence. The moon came from the earth, and the two dream of each other. Some gnomes are great alchemists and magicians and from the different components of matter they can attract akashic and planetary beings, which gnomes are usually unable to see directly and still they learn to operate from their emanations. On the body, the neurons at our brain make the neurons at the nervous system move. Neurons at the nervous system, in turn, send signals to the neurons at the brain. The brain is to the nervous system what the moon zone is to the earth, but also the earth is to the moon what the nervous system is to the brain, and this happens through the elemental kingdom of water. Signals are traded and almost all the queens and kings of the water element are not only aware of it as they operate with it. I know a water elemental that specializes on the sun and the moon simultaneously, he is also described at the Way of Abrahadabra:
Wualwin is a merman capable of creating light through magnetic substances. He absorbs and densifies through water the moon rays and the sun rays, creating elixirs capable of different prodigies according to the active and passive intentions of the magician. He is also a great singer and teaches inspiration through rhythmic incantations, and also how to communicate through rhythms instead of through words of different languages.
He brings the right kind of solitude to the mind, ecstasy to the soul and shared joy to life.
His keyword is:
All is the word and the self is nought.
His motto:
I attract and bind love and am the disciple and the child of its actions.
His sigil is that of a sea-green disc, with a golden spot inside, under the disc there is a silver crescent with three silver discs standing below that crescent. Above the whole figure is the shape of three sea-green waves, each one at the top of the other.
The winds are to the sun as the waters are to the moon, the air elementals, by having a mind so open and vast, kings and queens of the air can perceive the heads of the sun sphere as abstract forces and principles with which they are able to communicate. And deep inside the core of the earth there are salamanders so fierce that if they concentrate their vision on the sun they obtain answers directly from divine providence, and if they aim at the cosmic void they can fabricate the quintessence of akasha, even if they cannot become akashic beings themselves, they can transmute another. .
How does it all work together?I explore some metrics for conjuration at the Way of Abrahadabra that might again come handy to the topic at hand:
We are to consider that under an animistic logic, linguistics would find all parts of speech to be alive and moving forward, not just the verbs. To the system of grammar we apply the analogies of the middle pillar in the kabalistic Tree of Life. The magician is the verb, for it is through his perception that all things manifest. The earth elementals or gnomes are the articles – a, an, the – for they are by indicating what is, and therefore do they worship consciousness. The water elementals or undines are the conjunctions – and, or – for they unite and gather all things under their sensibility. The air elementals or sylphs are the nouns, for a thing starts to be of its name only when uttered in the air. The fire elementals, salamanders or djinns are the interjections, for they are as if an exclamation made intelligent. Yet we move further, to the adjectives, to the adverbs, and to the prepositions, that is, to the sun, for the light of the sun showers the universe with qualities, to the moon, for the moon is responsible for the rhythm with which these qualities express themselves,……………The Moon arranges the qualities offered by the Sun through hierarchies, and the elements articulate it, while the magician – through which microcosm and macrocosm interact – is the playground. The reader may have noticed by now that this structure is also eight-fold, like that of the Sacred Emanations described by the planets, and it too can be made into a quadripolar volt.……
In practical terms this translates as the volt of the sun and of the moon to be anchored accordingly at the abdomen, giving the chest to the sun and the zone around the sexual organs to the moon. Now, to anchor these energies at such regions of the body does not imply that their radiation is confined to these areas, instead, it should glow several feet long and permeate the body – physical, astral and mental – as a whole. The sun’s astral fluid is hot, incorruptible and aware, it is of a golden color while the color for the moon’s astral fluid should be silver, and cool, sensual and dreamy in substance. The magician should inscribe the energy of the sun with the desired quality and the energy of the moon with the desired quantity.
Now we push into the moon fluid the fluid of the earth, contracting it, and into the fluid of the sun we push the magical fluid of the water, expanding it. Then we add the air element to the back of the neck and embue it with the desired concept, and accumulate fire into the base of the spine with a sense of exclamation. So that when both spheres grow wide and the fire touches the air and an explosion is set forth and all the forces therein conjured combine. The magician then activates the area of the throat, forehead and above the head, removing time and space from the subconscious. He then vibrates his intention. While he utters a conjuration according to his analogy, he should be pulling with all is strength the vital force he has so far manifested. The volt is to become so small and concentrated that it disappears at the point right at the centre of his body, having been blown into the world of causes only to come back as the desired effect.
To be continued in Part II……….
Stay tuned next week Andre will explore the Sun and Moon within beyond Initiation Into Hermetics and discuss working with these forces in terms of evocation and the use of kabbalah in PART II.
To find out more about André, please visit his profile page. He also has an in-depth interview discussing his journey through Bardon’s 3 books. André’s forthcoming title, Through the Soul Mirror to the Sphere of the Sun will take you through the soul mirror work, utilising these forces to aid you. You can also purchase his book, Way of Abrahadabra
Please view below our links to our latest titles including The Moon Zone by Nenad Dordjevic -Talerman and Kadiliya Ali.
