von Hermann Hesse
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Musik des Weltalls und Musik der Meister
Sind wir bereit in Ehrfurcht anzuhören,
Zu reiner Feier die verehrten Geister
Begnadeter Zeiten zu beschwören.
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Wir lassen vom Geheimnis uns erheben
Der magischen Formelschrift, in deren Bann
Das Uferlose, Stürmende, das Leben
Zu klaren Gleichnissen gerann.
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Sternbildern gleich ertönen sie kristallen,
In ihrem Dienst ward unserm Leben Sinn,
Und keiner kann aus ihren Kreisen fallen
Als nach der heiligen Mitte hin.
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“The Seventh Ray of Ceremonial Order or Magic
Special Virtues:
Strength, perseverance, courage, courtesy, extreme care in details, self-reliance.
Vices of Ray:
Formalism, bigotry, pride, narrowness, superficial judgments, self-opinion over-indulged.
Virtues to be acquired:
Realization of unity, wide-mindedness, tolerance, humility, gentleness and love.
This is the ceremonial ray, the ray which makes a man delight in “all things done decently and in order,” and according to rule and precedent. It is the ray of the high priest and the court chamberlain, of the soldier who is a born genius in organization, of the ideal commissary general who will dress and feed the troops in the best possible way. It is the ray of the perfect nurse for the sick, careful in the smallest detail, though sometimes too much inclined to disregard the patients idiosyncrasies and to try and grind them in the iron mill of routine.
It is the ray of form, of the perfect sculptor, who sees and produces ideal beauty, of the designer of beautiful forms and patterns of any sort; but such a man would not be successful as a painter unless his influencing ray were the fourth. The combination of four with seven would make the very highest type of artist, form and color being both in excelsis. The literary work of the seventh ray man would be remarkable for its ultra-polished style, and such a writer would think far more of the manner than of the matter in his work but would always be fluent both in writing and speech. The seventh ray man will often be sectarian. He will delight in fixed ceremonials and observances, in great processions and shows, in reviews of troops and warships, in genealogical trees, and in rules of precedence.”
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As I may have mentioned before my personality ray is ray seven. If you look closely you will be able to see the influence in the blog content.
The incoming ray is this ray ceremonial order or magic. Inherent in this is a major challenge for humanity, which so often is disorganised and in disarray. Winging it, is not seventh ray. The seventh ray may be précised as “the ray of having your shit together”. This is a long way from higgledy-piggledy and in some ways anti-hippie but in other ways it is the ray, par excellence, of natural rhythm. Everything should be in synch and on time with natural law and rhythm.
Yes, ritual traditional magic, craft, and mantra are a part, but only a small one.
Organisation, vivification, and energising are what proper order brings. An organism needs to organise and carry out its given physical plane learning. Karma can be thought of as residual “shit” that you have to deal with. Hence in working off your shit you get your shit together, less new karma, debt paid off.
Many people resist being organised and have never experienced the slick and the smooth of all cogs working in unison. People who are self-obsessed are separative and do not view themselves as part of the holistic whole. ME is a luddite spanner in the works. It causes discordance and discord, dis-chord, the sound jars.
The challenge of the incoming ray is to eradicate this notion of self and alchemize it into the holistic-whole, or ONE. The one humanity.
To say to a sloppy ill disciplined person, who is fond of the weird and the whacky, that they need to have their shit together is to ask for resistance.
“Hey man, that is not New Age!”
“Yes, it is! Get a haircut and pull up your trousers. You need to focus and stop being so dissipated!”
If one meanders and only cherry picks the easy fruit off the tree of teaching, then one will not taste the golden apples higher up the tree, which need more and continued effort to attain. Many choose only those teachings that are strap-on to normal life. Few want radical change. One could say people want to keep their cherry pie and eat it.
The seventh ray is also the ray of constant evolution and application. This is because Synthesis takes new learning and incorporates it with the knowledge heretofore garnered. Knowledge is never complete, because of constant synthesis one could say that knowing is a present participle synonym of evolving, knowledge relates to evolution. True knowledge cannot ever be concrete and finished.
Synthesis is an antithesis of Idealism and Devotion, the departing sixth ray. Sixth ray separates, cleaves and divides, seventh ray heals, stitches the rent wounds of division and stirs its synthetic pot of alchemy in search of the new.
The seventh ray is unlike the division with which our current world is so very badly scarred!!
It is time to synthesise and not cleave, the synthetic cauldron of inspiration must overcome the axe of cleavage.
It is not uncommon for a hullabaloo to result when things do not adhere strictly to expectations. If the world differs from how it “ought” to be, how it “should” be people get all dramatic and there is suffering because how the world “is” does not conform to preconceptions. In fact people sometimes struggle to see and understand how the word “is” because the lenses of “should” and “ought” are so very thick that they prevent the clarity of actuality. People cannot see things how they are because they do not want to.
The shoe-horns of “ought” and “should” can struggle to get the foot of reality into the cobbler’s shoe of how the idealism, bias and prejudice have determined the world to be. There can be a disconnect between physical plane reality and an “idealistic” world view.
For example people are having trouble accepting that the “ideal” of Brexit in no way lives up to the hype with which it was miss-sold to the public. Brexit, in England, is almost a taboo word and Bregret is now being bandied about. Not all cunning “plans” work out. It was not even a plan, it was hyperbole, hot air, based on an faded jingoistic “Britannia Rules the Waves”, outdated illusion.
Now people have their blessed blue passports and can wait at immigration in the airport with the Bangladeshis and the Iranians.
I am picking up the “we are only making plans for Nigel {Alan} vibe again”.
Clearly people know best what is right for me and may even come to a consensual view of what that looks like. However, there is a lacking foundation stone. No bugger has asked me. The house is therefore unsteady.
It is so typical “they” get together and have a chat about how to “manage” others. Thank God for their omniscience. Where would we be without it?
I have no drama about my way of life. It is what it is. Others may deem that it did not “ought” to be like this. Why not?
In the news when someone dies it is often termed a “tragedy” especially if they were “well liked”, popular and below the age of 83. This drama over mundane reality is strange. Loads of people die in their fifties, so why are they “tragically” taken from us before their time?
There is a disconnect between “should”, “ought” and is. A hand wringing hullabaloo can result when someone dies of natural causes because the “should” have made it to their eighties.
Why, to be an added burden on the health services?
When the time comes, it comes. Why all the drama?
People have a real knack of making a big hullabaloo when is differs from “should” and “ought”.
It is a form of suffering caused by wanting to have life on one’s own terms, terms dictated by the lower self. The universe must comply with our desires and expectations.
{It is not fair mummy.}
Unfortunately shit happens, life goes on and then you die. Life does not comply with our required terms and expectations.
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In many ways I am glad that I no longer work in higher education and pastoral care in particular. This is because the socio-political consequences of pronoun misuse have inter alia reached ludicrous levels. I have read of a teacher being fired for refusing to call a biological male she because said penis owner insisted on being called, she. If you think about it for a little an experienced teacher, full of knowing, is fired because the thought police deem that it has to call a teenage, and hence an emotionally volatile being, by its chosen pronoun.
It is so out of balance, so coercive and well, silly.
Thus we have so many people walking on eggshells and going through the motions of compliance with these dictatorial norms required by socio-political conformity.
Pulling down statues of slave owners like say Julius Caesar, does not change history. Are we to close the great pyramid of Giza, because the Egyptians had slaves. Must we empty the British Museum of all of its artefacts?
How long before we are burning books because they might “trigger”?
When and where will the burning stop?
Are we obsessed with groundhogs?
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Who is the arbiter of this brave new world of coercive socio-political conformity?
We have started watching “The Handmaid’s Tale” and in that the main protagonist is walking on the most delicate and dangerous of eggshells. Is this the kind of future we envisage for ourselves, a future of intense coercive socio-political conformity. At present that conformity is enforced by exclusion and the cancel culture, how long before it is the bullet or the noose? A future where we are terrified of what we utter in public?
Pastoral care was always a minefield. In all honesty I doubt that I would be able to offer the care and support I once did in the current context. I am not phobic of people’s right to live how they wish, I do not wish to succumb if they seek to inflict their dogma on me. People call others transphobic. I doubt many are actually fearful, pitying perhaps, confused and unable to relate, maybe. Phobic, I doubt it.
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In chemistry we have cis-trans isomerism. Which means that cis and trans forms can interconvert, the barrier, the activation energy for this is often not so high. Someone who insists that they are cis can easily, either with or without catalysis, convert back. It is not black and white nor is it written in stone. Cis-trans isomerism is happening right now, in your eyes, as you read this!!
This world of opposites, of dare I say it, black and white thinking, is separative and divisive! The pointing finger soon becomes the carbine.
Why do we need an US and a THEM?
Might we be better as we?
Are we as one humanity really that stupid and ignorant?
There is no idea more cultivated subjectively by humanity than that of the resurrection; when life seems hard and circumstances carry in them no grounds for happiness, and when nothing calls to one of such a nature that one goes forth happily to the day’s enterprises, and when the nights of sleep are haunted nights, the thought of rising up and out of all these circumstances, of leaving all behind and of entering into a new life, carries with it strength and hope. In the West, the Festival of the year which is regarded as of the most importance is that of Easter Day – the Day of Resurrection. Yet two thousand years ago the Christ did not rise out of a rocky sepulchre and reassume His discarded body. He passed through the great seventh initiation which we will consider today, and knew the secret of life, of which immortality is only one of its many attributes. Humanity lays emphasis so frequently upon attribute, quality and reactions, and not upon that which is the basic underlying reality; men deal with effects and not with causes; for instance, mankind is concerned with war and with horrified preparations for more war, and is not primarily occupied with that which causes war and which, if rightly handled, would prevent war. Let us consider some few aspects of the seventh initiation.
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The word “resurrection” has deep significance latent in its derivation and one that is not often emphasized. The usual interpretation has been that the word comes from “re,” again, and “surgere,” to rise, therefore to rise again. Yet a consultation with the dictionary shows that the prefix means “back to an original state” by rising. This return to an original state is pictured for us in The New Testament under the story of the Prodigal Son, who said “I will arise and go to my Father,” and by the story of the resurrection in which the Master Jesus arose out of the tomb; the chains of death could not hold Him. At that time of His “rising,” a far more important event took place and the Christ passed through the seventh Initiation of Resurrection and returned back to His original state of Being – to remain there throughout all the eternities. This is the true and final resurrection. The Son of God has found His way back to the Father and to His originating Source, that state of Existence to which we have given the name Shamballa. The consciousness of the Universal Life is His; this is far more than simply the consciousness of immortality, because the idea or concept of mortality is not contained within it at all. There have been many deaths within the aeonial life cycle of the initiate:
This process of death and resurrection goes on ceaselessly in all the kingdoms of nature; each death prepares the way for a greater loveliness and livingness, and each death (if you analyze it with care) prefaces resurrection in some form or another until we come to this final resurrection and into the position of final attainment.
I will not here elaborate upon this process of constant death followed by constant resurrection, but it is the evolutionary keynote and the evolutionary technique, and only because men love unduly that which is material and hate to lose contact with the form aspect of nature do they fear death. It is wise to remember that immortality is an aspect of the living spiritual being, and is not an end in itself, as men seek to make it. To the Knowers of Life such a phrase as “I am an immortal Soul” is not even true. To say “I am Life Itself and, therefore, am immortal” approaches closer to the truth, but even that sentence is (from the angle of the initiate) only a part of a larger truth. Symbolically, nature is ever portraying to us the essential facts in the annual progress of the four seasons, in the cycles of light and dark and in the wonder of the emergence of beauty or color or useful function out of a seed which has struggled – because of its inherent life – into the light of the sun.
The fear of death is one of the great abnormalities or distortions of divine truth for which the Lords of Cosmic Evil are responsible. When in early Atlantean times they emerged from the place where they had been confined, and forced temporarily the retirement of the Great White Lodge to subjective levels, their first great act of distortion was to implant in human beings fear, beginning with the fear of death. From that time on, men have laid the emphasis upon death and not life, and have been ridden by fear all their days.
One of the initial acts of the reappearing Christ and of the Hierarchy will be to erase this particular fear and to confirm in peoples’ minds the idea that incarnation and the taking of a form is the true place of darkness to the divine spirit which is man; it is death to the spirit temporarily, and imprisonment. Evolution, men will be taught, is in itself an initiatory process leading from one living experience to another, culminating in the fifth Initiation of Revelation and in the seventh Initiation of Resurrection.
At the fifth initiation it is revealed to the initiate that life in form is indeed death, and he then knows this truth in a manner which my few short words cannot convey. Form dies for him and he knows a new expansion of life and undergoes (if I may so express it) a new understanding of living. The seventh initiation is divorced from all considerations of form, and the initiate becomes a concentrated point of living light; he knows in a manner indescribable that life is all that Is, and that it is this life and its real fullness which makes him a part of That which lies outside of our planetary Life; he may now share in that extra-planetary Existence in which our planetary Logos lives and moves and has His being. This is the “life more abundantly” of which Christ spoke and which only an initiate of the seventh degree can understand or convey.
After the fifth initiation, the initiate has slowly been sensing the nature of this greater Life, the Life of “The Unknown God,” as it has been called, which enfolds all livingness and all forms upon and within our planet and yet remains – greater than our planetary Life, more all-encompassing than is our planetary Logos, and Whose greatness, beauty, goodness and knowledge are to our planetary Logos what His life is to the lowest form of life in the third or animal kingdom. It is only by such inadequate comparisons that one can arrive at some faint comprehension of that great Whole in which our planet and our planetary Logos are but a part. It is this revelation which is accorded to the initiate at this seventh Initiation of Resurrection. He takes this initiation upon what (for lack of a better phrase) we call the “logoic plane,” or on the level of consciousness of the Lord of the World.
At this initiation the Initiator is attended by two groups of Beings; one is a small group of the “Knowers of the Purpose, the Custodians of the Will,” and the other is a much larger group, the personnel of which are known as “The Wise Ones and the Attractive Energies of Shamballa.” I am of course endeavoring to translate certain brief words and intricate symbols into phrases which you can understand and which only dimly convey the true significance of Those Who function on this highest level of the cosmic physical plane. On this level, dynamic electricity is held as in a great reservoir of potency and is directed by these two groups which embody the will and the quality of the will of Deity, called by us the Will-to-Good. They are the directing Agents and are a correspondence to the ajna center of mankind, only here it is the ajna center of the planetary Logos, in the same sense as Shamballa is His head center, the Hierarchy His heart center and Humanity His creative throat center. Motion, planned activity and the seven great creative ray energies are directed into action by Them under the influence of the seven Ray Lords; the Ray Lords are embodied livingness qualified by the seven aspects of Love, but Who are Themselves of so high an order that They cannot function as directing creative Agents but work through Their trained and developed Representatives.
Just as there is a group of Contemplative Initiates, called in the Eastern phraseology “Nirmanakayas,” Who function in deep meditation at a point midway between the Hierarchy and Shamballa, so this much higher group of Ray Lords function in the deepest cosmic meditation between our planet, the Earth, and our sister planet, Venus. You would find it useful to read with care The Secret Doctrine and A Treatise on Cosmic Fire and refresh your minds as to this relationship. A lower correspondence to these two important groups has been forming midway between the Hierarchy and Humanity, and to it we give the name of the New Group of World Servers. All these three groups are fundamentally “transmitters of energy”; the two highest are exceedingly susceptible to cosmic impression and to the vibratory quality of the extra-planetary body of Avatars Who hold Themselves in readiness to function as destroying or building Energies in any part of our solar system and are under the direction of the Solar Logos.
The Avatar of Synthesis, Who is working in cooperation with the Christ, is one of Them. Bear in mind that these extra-planetary Avatars have not arrived at Their high state of spiritual unfoldment on our planet or even in our solar system. Their origin, source and spiritual relationships are a great mystery even to the planetary Logoi – to Whose help They go when the invocative appeal of any planet is adequate. Think not that They come to put wrong right or to arrest evil. A few, a very few, may do so, but They work along the line of the seven ray energies in the solar system and produce certain energy effects desired at any particular time; the constructive work of the Avatar of Synthesis will be apparent to you in the name He is known by; He is coming to the Earth in order to further the manifestation of unity, of oneness and of interrelation, and He comes, therefore, to wield and apply first ray energy. He will charge or galvanize the three groups – the directing Agents in Shamballa, the Nirmanakayas and the New Group of World Servers – with dynamic energy and, in a mysterious way, relate them to each other so that a new synthesis and alignment will be present upon the Earth. All these Avatars embody energy to the extent that any particular planet is capable of receiving it.
These are interesting items of information but are only of value in so far as they convey to you a sense of planetary integrity and of solar synthesis, and present to you a closer spiritual interrelation in which you, as individuals, can share if you are linking your fate and service to that of the New Group of World Servers. Then you will be in the direct line of spiritual descent, of divine energy; in this thought you have the clue to the doctrine (so travestied and misused) of the Apostolic Succession. The details, the personnel and the techniques of the two higher groups lie beyond your ken; They work in cooperation with the planetary Logos Himself, and Those Who compose these groups are all initiates of degrees higher than the fifth. Most of the Nirmanakayas have taken the sixth and the seventh initiations, whilst the group which functions midway between the Earth and Venus have all taken the eighth and ninth initiations. Some of Them, as I mentioned earlier, aid the initiate of the seventh degree; a still larger group of them participate in the activities of the two final initiations.
This seventh initiation gives the initiate the right to “come and go in the courts of Shamballa” as Their work may dictate and Their service may require. It is there also that he goes for the needed periodic or cyclic rechargings which enable him to work.
There is one aspect of initiation which is apt to be overlooked. Every initiation is a process of energy transmission from a higher center of energy to a lower; every initiation charges the initiate with electrical force, and this charging and recharging is related to what H.P.B. calls “the mystery of electricity.” These transmissions of energy enhance the magnetic-attractive force of the initiate, and at the same time are eliminative in their effects. In this fact lies a great planetary truth and the key to the science of planetary redemption. When the spiritual and the electrical charging of the three major centers on the planet – Shamballa, the Hierarchy and Humanity – has reached a high stage of receptive efficiency, a certain cosmic Avatar will “become conscious of the vibratory quality of the little point of light within the solar sphere” and will then “turn His gaze and send His force unto that point of light, and cosmic evil will be driven out and find no more a place on Earth.”
Two more initiations remain to be considered, but so high is their potency and so mysterious their working that I find myself unable to deal with them in any way.
It is not just fictional witches or voodoo practitioners who project malevolence at other beings. Sometimes allegedly sane people who do not get their own way can get mightily annoyed and project malevolence too. They may even plot the harm or downfall of another. Whilst they themselves may not believe in the pointed bone of a voodoo priest, in their fury they can intend harm at a distance, with an equal measure of ill will. Some people harbour grievance and ill will for a very long time and with much bilious intent.
This morning I have awoken with two scratches on my back, one of them is nearly 30cm long and given my lack of flexibility there is no way that I can have done it. The wife says she did not do it.
I don’t think that this was a psychic attack, but I don’t recall how the scratch got there.
People who are not highly evolved can be very envious of others and wish them ill. This projection of malevolence and ill-will is encouraged by the Dark Brotherhood. People like Trump are agents of malevolent and divisive thought forms. The man who was CEO of the company I co-founded was a nasty, mendacious piece of work. He was really unpleasant to the employees and to anyone he, in his paranoia, deemed a threat.
People who project malevolence are nearly always fearful and paranoid. They tend to use their anger and rage as bullying defence mechanisms. They deem their malevolence fully justified and that they are entitled to project it at the deserving victim. They can fall swiftly into a kind of narcissistic rage, even encouraging supporters to storm the house of representatives.
One does not need the imagined trappings of sorcery, like a wand, eye of newt, bodily fluids or a noose. One can dump a veritable cesspit of malevolence into the web of life without these. As the clip from Macbeth suggests, conspiracy is amplified by companions and so often there are three.
Just as triangles of light can be formed, so can triangles of darkness. When three like-minded people get together the level of projected malevolence is greater than the sum of the parts.
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What do you project into the web of life?
Is it light, love and compassion?
Is it bile, malevolence, envy and ill will?
Aiki, a Japanese budō term, at its most basic is a principle that allows a conditioned practitioner to negate or redirect an opponent’s power. When applied, the aiki practitioner controls the actions of the attacker with minimal effort and with a distinct absence of muscular tension usually associated with physical effort.
In Japanese Aiki is formed from two kanji:
合 – ai – joining
氣 – ki – spirit
The kanji for ai is made of three radicals, “join”, “one” and “mouth”. Hence, ai symbolizes things coming together, merging. Aiki should not be confused with wa which refers to harmony. The kanji for ki represents a pot filled with steaming rice and a lid on it. Hence, ki symbolizes energy (in the body).
Thus aiki’s meaning is to fit, join, or combine energy. However, care must be taken about the absolute meanings of words when discussing concepts derived from other cultures and expressed in different languages. This is particularly true when the words we use today have been derived from symbols, in this case, Japanese kanji, which represent ideas rather than literal translations of the components. Historical use of a term can influence meanings and be passed down by those wishing to illustrate ideas with the best word or phrase available to them. In this way, there may be a divergence of the meaning between arts or schools within the same art. The characters ai and ki have translations to many different English words.
Historically, the principle of aiki would be primarily transmitted orally, as such teachings were often a closely guarded secret. In modern times, the description of the concept varies from the physical to vague and open-ended, or more concerned with spiritual aspects.
Misogi (禊) is a Japanese Shinto practice of ritual purification by washing the entire body. Misogi is related to another Shinto purification ritual called Harae – thus both being collectively referred to as misogiharae (禊祓)
Budō (武道) is a Japanese term describing modern Japanese martial arts.Literally translated it means the “Martial Way”, and may be thought of as the “Way of War” or the “Way of Martial Arts”.
Budō is a compound of the root bu (武:ぶ), meaning “war” or “martial”; and dō (道:どう; dào in Chinese), meaning “path” or “way” (including the ancient Indic Dharmic and Buddhist conception of “path”, or mārga in Sanskrit). Budō is the idea of formulating propositions, subjecting them to philosophical critique and then following a “path” to realize them. Dō signifies a “way of life”. Dō in the Japanese context is an experiential term in the sense that practice (the way of life) is the norm to verify the validity of the discipline cultivated through a given art form. Modern budō has no external enemy, only the internal one: my ego that must be fought.
Similarly to budō, bujutsu is a compound of the roots bu (武), and jutsu (術:じゅつ), meaning technique.Thus, budō is translated as “martial way”,or “the way of war” while bujutsu is translated as “science of war” or “martial craft.” However, both budō and bujutsu are used interchangeably in English with the term “martial arts”. Budo and bujutsu have quite a delicate difference; whereas bujutsu only gives attention to the physical part of fighting (how to best defeat an enemy), budo also gives attention to the mind and how one should develop oneself.
The first significant occurrences of the word Budō date back to the Kōyō Gunkan (16th century) and were used to describe the samurai lifestyle rather than the practice of martial techniques. The word was later re-theorized and redefined to the definition we know today. First by Nishikubo Hiromichi and the Dai Nippon Butokukai when the name of their vocational school for martial arts was changed from bujutsu senmon gakkō to budō senmon gakkō. And later by Jigoro Kano, judo’s founder, when he chose to name his art judo instead of jujutsu.
Traou an Dour 
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