THEURGY 6

Know Thyself is revelatory, non-linear, discontinuous; it is like a painting, a lyric poem, biography thoroughly gone into the imaginative act."  --James Hillman, HEALING FICTION 

A FUZZY REVOLUTION?

We can read the progressive theories of leading-edge science as modern myths.  They both create and reflect changes in collective consciousness and the global worldview.  These new myths permeate culture, fomenting change and opening new conceptual territory for exploration. The "new myth" seems to be one of "guiding fictions," even "healing fictions."  

Mythic consciousness and its practice, ritual life, requires a telos to create momentum--the dynamics of consciousness.  The fictional carrot dangles, ever-present before us.  As a culture, we are in the position of having to take ritual fictions (including scientific theories) seriously, while recognizing their status as fiction at the same time.  This means being in two ontological "places" at once, facilitating the development of new ways of thinking about the nature of knowledge, being, and reality. The myths are bigger than any one of us.  

Yet through Creative Mysticism we can enter the imagination, not as an exercise in "doing our own thing," but as a disintegration of the reference points that make it possible for the archetypal energies to live through us.  Thus radical deconstruction of ego leads beyond the paradoxes of yoked opposites.  Dogmas dissolve and merge on their own.  The surety of fact melds into psychic reality.  The new myth is not one of polarity, but plurality--panoply. Given these choices, each of us is faced with a struggle to acquire an authentic sense of identity.  We have been saddled with a cultural mandate to "pick one" and sustain a strong ego identification at the expense of empathy, compassion, and perspective.  What for one is a liberating experience is terrifying for others, or leads to the despair of cultural disenfranchisement.  

Our sense of identity impacts us individually, socially, and existentially.  Broadening those boundaries opens us to an expanded sense of self. In my own search for identity, I first became aware of the notion of paradox as a teenager.  I was given a button with the cryptic message, "Have you been to the Paradox?"  Puzzling over its meaning, I finally found out it was a music club, which I subsequently patronized.  On the broader scale, I became aware of another club--a "Reality Club."  I continue to visit "the Paradox" as I define and refine myself, through opening not only to the opposites but to all degrees of interpenetration between.  

At this "inn between," I've many times found the thread of my chaotic trajectory through life. Traditionally logic and chaos have held sway in two separate camps.  But what of that boundary domain where the two meet and progressively meld into one another?

In this "twilight zone," two threads of the new science revolution have come together in a "sacred marriage" between logic and chaos.  Ian Stewart (1993) gives an example of dynamic logic: "You take the train of thought involved in assessing the truth value of a set of self-referential statements and convert it into a dynamic process.  Then you can apply all the techniques of chaos theory to that process.  The escape-time plot is inspired by exactly the same method that creates all those wonderful multi-colored images associated with the Mandelbrot set: swirling spirals, sea horses, cacti, stars, and so on." 

This statement could also be read as commentary on the self-referential consciousness process expressed as "Know Thyself."  This Apollonian dictum is the utterance of the ancient god of logic Himself.  The Jungian method of "Know Thyself" means a radical activation of imagination.  It calls to us, echoing through the aeons--urging us to turn our consciousness back on itself, assessing and experiencing the relative "truth" of what we find within. Jung's solution to this injunction is summarized by Hillman: We have already been given the clue in the instructor's manual as to how this third realm traditionally called 'soul' can be re-established--and by anyone.  

Jung says he treated the figures whom he met "as though they were real people."  The key is that as though; the metaphorical, as-if reality, neither literally real (hallucinations or people in the street) nor irreal/unreal ('mere' fictions, projections which 'I' make up as parts of 'me', auto-suggestive illusions).  In an 'as-if' consciousness they are powers with voice, body, motion, and mind, fully felt but wholly imaginary.  This is psychic reality... "

Hillman points out that we can remember, associating backward and downward into the forgotten and repressed.  And in psychic reality we find a multiplicity of answers to all major, archetypal, sorts of questions--relative answers.  Each archetypal perspective has its way of self-knowing. In alchemy the multi-state paradigm is known as multiplicatio, which touches all points of the soul, all channels of images.  According to Hillman, it is "spirit's self-knowledge in the mirror of the soul, soul's recognition of its spirits." 

There is no single way of knowing thyself, even though psychology has favored the method of introspection and insight.  According to Hillman, "Know Thyself terminates whenever it leaves linear time and becomes an act of imagination.  A partial insight, this song now, this one image; to see partly is the whole of it.  Self-understanding healed by active imagination." 

Our unique method of knowing ourselves is through our own epistemological metaphors which reflect "how we know what we know" about ourselves.  They are the result of our personal experience of archetypal experiences--our direct experience of the nature of reality, expressed as image.  The non-linear co-relationship of simultaneous cause/effect means that archetypes become embodied as specific, yet dynamic, imagery.

The imperative to know ourselves challenges us to reflect on our identity, beliefs, assumed truths, interpretations, and even our archetypal experience and self-understanding.  This dynamic recycling of consciousness creates/reveals the dynamic flux of holistic feedback patterns.  It establishes a patterning matrix--a strange attractor--reflective of the organism's relationship to the whole, through a unique relationship of chaos and order.  

The whole brain approach to existence is both/and chaotic and logical--logically chaotic, chaotically logical.  It is a holding of the tension of the opposites between the logical and natural mind. Complex systems, such as human beings, manifest emergent properties which tend to be non-linear.  They are sufficiently context dependent that they become unpredictable under normal circumstances.  

The reason has to do with the fact that sufficient context dependence leads to self-reference.  That is, insofar as one part effects another part, which in turn effects the first, the first can be seen to be effecting itself through the mediation of the second.  Multiply the parts and the system gets really out of control, at least as an object of modelling.

Godel proved why such self-referential systems are inherently unpredictable.  Any finitely axiomatized formal system rich enough in entailment to manifest self-reference displays true theorems not deducible from the axioms.  Since all mathematical modelling systems can be formalized as axiomatic systems, and since the project of such modelling is the essence of deterministic reductionism, it follows that systems capable of self-reference cannot be reduced to deterministic causality.  They can be modelled, but they become descriptive of organization, rather than predictive of future states (Naser, 1993, Bridge-L). Like a fractal, the individual embodies the whole, to a greater or lesser degree, depending on the initial conditions of existence.  The physical body is conditioned by physical laws.  

At the mesocosmic level, we either exist or we don't, we're alive or dead.  But the flow of our essence within the whole is not so black and white.  We remain ourselves, despite the loss of discrete body parts or faculties of perception. At the quantum level, our atomic "matter" merges with the environment and the vacuum of non-existence.  The I-Not I dichotomy breaks down in pure consciousness.  Our physical constituents remain, even after death, with their own molecular and quantum perceptions, but the genetic information becomes obsolete.  

We all decay according to the same biological process. Free of the gravitational valley of corpo-reality, consciousness can soar unfettered.  When consciousness flows into an "escape-time plot," we experience the boundary-dissolving transcendence of cosmic consciousness.  An increased sense of freedom comes with liberation from the gravity of literalism.  Yet we are neither exclusively biological nor psychospiritual beings.  The nature of our existence is both/and--psychobiological.
https://ionamiller.weebly.com/paradox.html

PSYCHE EXISTS AS A SOURCE OF KNOWLEDGE
Iona Miller, (c)2015

…nature exists without human aid, can deal with her processes herself, has everything in herself to bring about transformations, to move from the depths to the heights and down into the depths again. ~Jung, Modern Psychology, Page 42.

We can experience gnosis not as a medieval religious belief but because
it happens to us unsought and unexpected. Gnosis is not Gnosticism. It doesn't require belief, scripture, or Apocrypha. The transformative perspective, observable in its real effects, unlocks the hermeneutics of the creative imagination. The life of the unconscious goes on within us without our conscious knowledge.

Gnosis is an emergent property, not merely an introverted religious attitude. Embracing gnosis does not mean embracing Gnostic dogma or medieval doctrines -- participatory convictions based on personal desires and fears. The secret is inside the creation and based in the study of nature and our own nature. We become more integrated by bringing more of the unconscious and mythic into consciousness.

Can we find the absolute in the depths of our soul -- the very source of symbols? Even physics declares our personal experience is profoundly subjective. There are two principle attitudes -- devotion and gnosis. Gnosis is not a philosophy, nor a way to rationally comprehend the world.

All that is knowable is our immediate subjective experience. Our most personal "I" is our core subjective experience which is identical to awareness. That awareness is the ground where the objects of awareness -- sensations, thoughts, images, memories, and emotions -- fluctuate and intermingle. Fundamental awareness has no intrinsic form, content, or characteristics. So awareness is less about the dualism of mind and matter, light or dark, or polarized good and bad, but more about the dualism of awareness and the contents of awareness.

Gnosis is not a ready-made religion but a more comprehensive view allowing psyche to speak for itself in dream, active imagination, synchronistic phenomena, premonitions, mythic living, and creative expression. "Self-redemption" is an arduous path that leads through self-deception. Insights in self-understanding come through grace, not labor or merit.

Gnosis is a spontaneous personal event of primordial psychic experience. Empirical experience of the psyche may appear in modern dreams. Experiences of the collective unconscious may be reflected in gnostic literature, but are not derived from it. Those lacking such experience can never understand it, but that does not nullify its existence. Getting it conceptually is not the same as knowing it experientially, thus, all "esoteric" secrets remain concealed from the uninitiated.

Continually recurring fundamental ideas can arise from the archetypal potentials of objective psyche. Generally similar ideas are modified by era and context. We can recognize their archetypal core. We live in archaic identity with the absolute unconscious. Archetypes are the psychophysical interface of emotion and energy, linking inner and outer realms.  The form of opposites become distinct but conjoined as they enter consciousness.

Such numinous assertions and feelings produced by psyche may or may not express universal 'truths'. We perceive the psyche with intuition, but not everyone has discriminating intuition and clarity. Our universal vision is as limited as our rational and irrational human vision. Intuition exalts and redeems us through connection with our core -- the midpoint of our internal Cosmos.

True gnosis is an expansion of consciousness. But according to our concepts, beliefs, and assumed truths (psychological presuppositions), intuition can produce understanding or danger and destruction. Jung observed that belief is transformed into gnosis by individuation. Eternal knowledge or perennial wisdom is not intellectual.

We imagine we are imagining "the real" but such consciousness can be used correctly or incorrectly. Because the psyche and archetypes are bi-polar they can produce either wisdom or utter nonsense. There is the path through the labyrinth that is a descent to the underworld, but there are also false paths, deceptions, and dangers on that path. Each must beware of spiritual pretensions and gnostic inflation, careful not to mistake ego for the interior Light, which helps us realize our own darkness.

Rationality cannot eliminate the irrational but is part of the same phenomena. Beliefs arise from lack of experience and knowledge of psychic dynamics. More than one heart has been misled. The naive take the manifestations of the unconscious -- this natural psychic activity -- at face value, mistaking them for the essence of the world or revealed truth. Insights appear as natural revelations. Numinosities appear paradoxically true and untrue.

Some manifestations are simply misguided inner authority or inferior notions, ideas, images, motivations, emotions, and the disturbances they create. A sense of certainty is no guarantee of accuracy. Experience is mythic, projective, and subjective. All of it adds up to nothing without psyche's infusion of value and meaning -- living psychological process. Conscious and unconscious comprehension are united by myth, which is preconscious and therapeutic.

We must be modest, not mistaking 'our truth' for 'the truth'. Yet, it remains important to continue to pursue the search for truth in our lives. We are led inside ourselves by the assimilation of myth -- an inner journey. Sapientia Dei is revealed through the archetypes. The Gnostics considered themselves members of a new aeon marked essentially by the rise of spiritual man. Trusting their own spiritual powers, they plumbed their spiritual depths.

Deeper layers of the unconscious are independent of culture and time. Myths remain myths even if some people take them as literal revelations or eternal truths. Myths are renewed in retelling with new spiritual language. In psychological insight, knowledge and understanding correspond with symbolic expression of the myth. Myths die when they no longer live and grow.

Gnosis is characterized by the integration of archetypal contents. The holistic perspective on external and internal mirrors the alchemical "unus mundus." Today the same Gnostic or alchemical symbols and motifs arise from the collective unconscious. But the Promethean creative spirit goes largely unnoticed. The chthonic part of the psyche -- undifferentiated consciousness -- is our life-sustaining structure.

Gnosis is a general human phenomena which can appear any time, anywhere, independent of tradition. Experiential knowing is a spontaneous creative phenomenon that reflects a rich reserve of ideas and images absorbed consciously and unconsciously, newly organized in novel ways -- familiar material placed in a surprising and creative context -- an achievement of particular genius.

Man in antiquity differentiated between man's "daemon" and his "own mind". 
~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Lecture VII, Page 50.

The world is an image to us, even when we have a scientific conception of it and assert: "This is so and so", it is still only an image. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Alchemy, Page 62.

But that "the One" should meditate, and that the world should be produced by the spirit in its creative role, is a conception which goes directly back to the philosophy about the Nous in antiquity. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Alchemy, Pages 59-60.






The theurgical practice called τελεστικὴ (telestikê) is a means of ἐμψύχωσις, ensoulment or “animation,” of a sacred image (ἄγαλμα), such as a statue.  It is accomplished by placing in or on the image appropriate sunthêmata, including stones, plants, animals, scents, and figures.  These material sunthêmata are supplemented by immaterial sunthêmata, such as invocations, chants, and prayers intended to “persuade” the god or daimôn to descend into the image.

Of course, as Iamblichus explains (De myst. 47, 6), theurgy does not compel a deity or daimôn; rather it prepares a suitable δοχή (receptacle or receiver).  This is like preparing an object to better reflect a particular color of light; a golden object does not “compel” yellow light to appear, but it allows the presence of the yellow in white light to become manifest.  Similarly, although the archetype is ever present, it is not normally manifest to consciousness.  Therefore appropriate sunthêmata (i.e., symbols linked to a complex or archetype) invite projection of the daimôn or god onto the image, which becomes numinous.  In this way, the theurgist is in a conscious archetypal relation with the divinity, and the image becomes a medium for interaction, that is, for exploring specific archetypes and complexes residing in the unconscious.

A common practice in Jungian analysis is active imagination, in which a person engages in dialogue and negotiation with an archetype or complex (Johnson 1986; Jung 1997).  This is closely related to the theurgical practice of σύστασις, or liaison, with a god or daimôn in order to establish an alliance with it.  As in the previous operations, sumbola and sunthêmata may be used to activate the archetype or complex; often the symbols are suggested by dream imagery.  Σύστασις may also employ a human or nonhuman receiver, including an animal, plant, or nonliving thing, to receive the projections, but no concrete receiver is required.
Encounters with daimôns are more common than those with gods (since daimôns are nearer to the ego), and such daimôns may serve as intermediaries for their ruling god.  Spirits engaged in σύστασις are not always truthful about their identity (or other things) for gods and daimôns are “beyond good and evil.”  Therefore, theurgists are very concerned with discerning the identities of the spirits they evoke (e.g. Iamblichus De myst. Bk. II).  Similarly, one is advised to maintain a conscious ethical stance in active imagination (since that is, in fact, part of the function of ego consciousness: Johnson 1986, 189–95).
Active imagination allows a person to interact with archetypes and personal complexes and to engage them in a critical dialogue concerning their desires, functions, and potential gifts.  In this way one may benefit by living in accord with archetypal reality and avoid futile attempts to deny the archetypes and complexes.  Further, psychological individuation proceeds by conscious integration of these otherwise unconscious personalities.  In theurgical terms, συστάσεις are important for acquiring familiarity with the archetypal realm and for bringing the theurgist into the ἐνέργεια of a god, in order to turn toward its essence and be actualized in it.  In this way theurgists may learn the will of the god so that they may act in better accord with it.  Συστάσεις are also important for negotiating with personal daimôns, who may otherwise possess others or ourselves in undesirable ways.  Finally, a daimôn may be recruited as πάρεδρος (familiar spirit or assistant) to help in various ways, including in the theurgical ascent.

The last theurgical operation that I want to mention is the most important, the ἀναγωγὴ or theurgical ascent.  In all the preceding, the divinity is experienced as “other,” but in the ἀναγωὴ the theurgist ascends so that their soul, so far as possible, unites with the god; that is, they experience deification.  The union may be with an individual god, especially the Demiurge, or more rarely with the Inexpressible One.  (Porphyry, V. Pl. 23, tells us Plotinus achieved it four times while they were together.)  In the latter case, by this contact with the Higher Self and by uniting with the archetypal Ἄνθρωπος, the theurgist is better enabled to live a fulfilling life in accord with Πρόνοια.  That is, at least for a time, the theurgist experiences themselves as a psychical whole, integrating the conscious, personal unconscious, and collective unconscious minds.

The operation makes ritual use of sumbola and sunthêmata in order to activate the archetypes.  These may facilitate the process of ascent when a more interior, contemplative approach, such as Plotinus advocates, is not effective.  The suthêmata may be classified as physical (substances, scents, and so forth), as audible (such as chants, hymns, and ονόματα βάρβαρα or magic words), and as mental or noetic (such as silent prayers).  All of these are effective for activating the archetypal Idea.
“Like knows like,” so in the ἀναγωγὴ the parts of the soul that are most like the One (or the intended god) must be separated from those least like it.  Therefore the conscious and personal unconscious minds must be quieted; that is, the ego and other personal daimôns must be pacified.  Separation is accomplished by the initiate enacting a symbolic θάνατος αὐθαίρετος (voluntary death), which therefore functions as a sensible sumbolon.  Death-and-Resurrection is an archetypal Idea; therefore, through symbolic death and ascent the initiate participates in this Idea’s ἐνέργεια and actualizes it in themselves (i.e., the archetype manifests in them).
The hylic daimôns, whose office it is to bring the archetypal Ideas into physical manifestation, must be pacified and opposed.  To this end, Heroes, recruited as πάρεδροι or assisting spirits, may be helpful in this reversion.  In psychological terms, properly constellated complexes may lead the way to the archetypes.


http://web.eecs.utk.edu/~mclennan/other-res.html#neurotheol

Archi-writing: Proto-linguisticality 
Derrida argued that as far back as Plato, speech had been always given priority over writing. In the West, phonetic writing was considered as a secondary imitation of speech, a poor copy of the immediate living act of speech. Pharmakon, in philosophy and critical theory, means remedy, poison, and scapegoat.

In Plato's Pharmacy, Derrida questioned this prioritizing by first complicating the two terms speech and writing. Derrida saw this complication in the Greek word φάρμακον pharmakon, which meant both "cure" and "poison". He noted that Plato argued that writing was "poisonous" to memory, since writing is a mere repetition, as compared to the living memory required for speech.

We have to look beyond the repetition of what is spoken out loud or written on a page to find the origin of the words. It is the in-between of what was meant by the writing and what was actually intended by the writing. The inner trace is already at work in speech and writing alike. For example, we find that Babel is 'heart' read in reverse (lebab). Egyptian 'spells' are among the earliest extant writings, and the root of our word 'spelling.'

In the neologism archi-writing, "archi-" meaning "origin, principle, or telos", attempts to go beyond the simple division of writing/speech. Archi-writing refers to a kind of writing that precedes both speech and writing; it differs from empirical writing. Derrida argued that archi-writing is a proto-language that it is already there before we use it. It is already has a pregiven, yet malleable, structure/genesis, which is a semi-fixed set-up of different words and syntax. This fixedness is the writing to which Derrida refers.

For our purpose, we can cite the example of archi -- Divine Names in Theurgy, which stand for numinous forces and the Self, also known as Tiphareth (Sun) in Qabalah. The Aramaic word for heaven or sky in Genesis 1 is Shamya which in Egyptian becomes Shem-re. Shamya in Hebrew is Shamayim.

The concept of the Divine Name (shem) is associated with the Sea (yam/mayim) and with fire (esh). Thus the name (shem) of the Divine Sea (yam/yammah) which is especially linked to divine mercy (khesed) became shamayim (heaven) and the name (shem) of the Divine Fire especially linked to divine Judgment (din/dinah) became shemesh (sun).

The Divine Names not only represent, but are the cultic universe. Hieratic “divine words” (medu neter , hieroglyphs) constitute the entire visible world. Multiform images, symbols, and traces of the ineffable, 'unspeakable,' divine principles.

In symbolic language symbols with a transformative and elevating power correspond with what is beyond any representation. They are woven into the very fabric of Being; they are directly attached and unified to the gods, which are themselves the symbolic principles of Being, the theurgic foundation of ancient civilizations  that mythically express the dialectic of the One and the Many.

They become visible through certain images, things, numbers, sounds, colors, omens, or other traces of presence, assuming a communicative meaning. The constants are light, sound, and cyclic dynamics of descent and ascent. Symbols serve as a ladder for ascent to the divine. Chanting out the universe by the Name of everything, back to the life-giving wombs and the ineffable Silence.

Plotinus evokes the soul by describing the Cosmos and World Soul. The ancient hieratic art  is based on the symbolic identity of the microcosmic human body and the animated divine statue. Plotinus in the Enneads (I.6.9, 7ff) describes the process of working on one’s own inner statue. Contemplation and noetic vision play important roles in theurgy. The soul is possessed by the divine and sees through the eyes of a deity.

This ‘demiurgic’ work is simply an interiorization of the ancient hieratic art (based on the symbolic identity of the microcosmic human body and the animated divine statue) that reveals its true esoteric meaning. Inner rituals of contemplation and theurgy evoke the affinities between symbols and intelligible dieties, attracting divine power into the aspirant's soul, a dynamic and conjunctive attraction of an image to its original.

Divine powers knit together the energies of the sun, planets and stars, and ... the various magical and theurgical procedures of which this literature is full. There is a fine line between magic and mysticism, especially in the use of divine names. Thanks to the image, we can grasp the archetype as well. Mysticism and theurgy can degrade into mundane magic, thaumaturgy -- the attempt to influence or control the physical plane. Then the master of the secret "names" himself takes on the exercise of power.

The radiant power of words is a given in ancient Egyptian ritual. Speech makes the archetypal realm of noetic realities manifest in the liturgical realm of visible symbolic tokens and actions. It also enacts theurgical transition and transposition of the cultic events into the divine realm. A relationship is established between the domain of Forms and series  of manifestation.

VOICES OF THE FIRE: ANCIENT THEURGY AND ITS TOOLS
Descending lights and animated cult images—Figures, names, and tokens of the divine speech—The overwhelming Name of God—The descending and ascending paths of Heka—The Silence before the gods and its creative magic—Hekate's golden ball as a rotating 'vocal image' of the Father—The Sounding breaths of the All-Working Fire—The Elevating rays of the resounding light—The rites of hieratic invocation and ascent—The Tantric alchemy and the Osirian mummification—Golden seeds of the noetic Fire—Theurgic speech of the birds and solar knowledge—Tongues of the gods and their songs--

Myth and symbol are what makes the impossible happen—Metaphysics of creation and its images in pharaonic Egypt—Theogonic appearances and animated stones—Theology of images and its esoteric dimension—Privileged habitations for the immortal gods—Beholding the ineffable beauties—Divine bodies and representations in Indian Tantrism—Sense perception and intellection in Neoplatonism—Divine light and luminous vehicle of the soul—Divine presence in images—Living images of the Egyptian gods—To be made into a spirit of light—Rites of alchemical transformation—The opening of the statue's mouth—Mystical union with the noetic Sun—Revelation of the divine face—Divine statues and their sacred gifts—Salvation as return to the divine

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archi-writing