This is part 2 of a three part article that is the introduction to Magical Shadow Work and Ordeal XV. I will be writing a book about this ordeal in the future. Here is the basic understanding to this masterful challenge that all adepts must face in their magical and spiritual career.
While our personal shadow typically remains nameless and undefinable, the archetypal embodiment of this shadowy and mysterious individual does have many names and qualities as defined in our culture and our social world. In the west, including the middle east, that personage is the Devil or Satan, the ultimate antagonist and representative of all that is rejected in our societies. He is seen as too prideful or too despicable to be suffered as having any kind of important role or even to be acknowledged except as the repository of the sins of humankind. The social polarization of good and evil has created an archetypal personage that holds all the evil that has ever been committed by humans in the world, whether minor infractions and deviations from the expected norms or massive crimes against humanity and nature. Yet he is also the polar opposite of the Deity in monotheistic religious traditions, taking on the attributes of punisher, stern judge, and wrathful avenger as the dark side of the cultural Godhead. Since God is above and beyond the evil that afflicts the world, then it is up to God’s Shadow as the Devil to meet out justice and retribution.
As we learn by painful experiences, so too do we gain insight and wisdom through the struggles and critical ordeals that life presents us. Knowledge is often gained by bitter disappointments, and a life without struggle, resistance or pain is one that is devoid of constructive self-knowledge and self-improvement. Behind such lessons of life is our shadow, who seems to guide us as a primary instigator into and through life’s travails and difficulties. The shadow is both a guardian barring our way and a guide who instructs us in how to proceed, overcoming obstacles. Our greater lesson is to learn to be aware of the shadow’s psychic intuition and to listen to its teachings. As practitioners of magic, this is a crucial lesson to master.
The same holds for the cultural or world shadow as the archetype of the Devil, who shows us the darkness that we refuse to see, and instigates disruptive chaos against the seemingly mindless and the unwitting people who fail to hear and realize his warnings. Thus, Satan is both the punisher and also the teacher, indirectly overseeing the paths of the mage and the sage. Since the true aspect of the Deity is its unity, then the Devil, who is God’s shadow, represents that polar opposite which is necessary for the union of light and darkness to be fully realized. It is the joining of God and Satan into a single supremely paradoxical being that opens the doorway to true enlightenment and the realization of the One.
Yet to only acknowledge the good Deity and to ignore or disparage its shadow is to create an even greater paradox, which is splitting the Deity and fostering a destructive duality that cannot be logically supported or resolved, since it denies the inherent unity of all things, material, mental and spiritual. We can see the damage that Christianity has unleashed on the world by passionately adhering to a dualistic spiritual perspective that divides the world into the faithful good and the unfaithful evil. Such divisions are always a precursor to religious oppression and then followed by violent persecution. Religious wars are the most destructive kind of civil violence humanity has ever unleashed or experienced. The balanced path between the archetypal agencies of light and darkness is the only path to peace and constructive interaction. In order for that state of peace to occur we must all accept the fact that there are unresolved paradoxes and mysteries within the soul of humanity and the Soul of the World. It is imperative that we accept them as they exist and not to try to resolve them through religious interdiction.
As magicians we travel the path of transformative initiation, ever mindful that such a milestone is achieved when we encounter our shadow self in a land of shadows, our psychic underworld. At the zenith of this powerful psychic process, we meet two personages: our shadow opposite with whom we must unite, and our image of paternal authority with whom we must gain approbation. This stage where we meet our shadow occurs as a kind of wedding or Hieros Gamos where opposites are ceremonially united, to be followed by a new dynamic of empowerment. The next stage in the hero’s journey is known as “Atonement with the Father,” which represents the realignment that must occur once the self is made whole again. This is the stage where the hero must take on the laws and judgements of their culture and social position. It is only when there is a new balance established between the light and darkness of the self, mitigated by the laws, ethics and social graces of the archetypal image of the hero’s home, that he is released from bondage to become the apotheosis of humankind.
While our personal shadow typically remains nameless and undefinable, the archetypal embodiment of this shadowy and mysterious individual does have many names and qualities as defined in our culture and our social world. In the west, including the middle east, that personage is the Devil or Satan, the ultimate antagonist and representative of all that is rejected in our societies. He is seen as too prideful or too despicable to be suffered as having any kind of important role or even to be acknowledged except as the repository of the sins of humankind. The social polarization of good and evil has created an archetypal personage that holds all the evil that has ever been committed by humans in the world, whether minor infractions and deviations from the expected norms or massive crimes against humanity and nature. Yet he is also the polar opposite of the Deity in monotheistic religious traditions, taking on the attributes of punisher, stern judge, and wrathful avenger as the dark side of the cultural Godhead. Since God is above and beyond the evil that afflicts the world, then it is up to God’s Shadow as the Devil to meet out justice and retribution.
As we learn by painful experiences, so too do we gain insight and wisdom through the struggles and critical ordeals that life presents us. Knowledge is often gained by bitter disappointments, and a life without struggle, resistance or pain is one that is devoid of constructive self-knowledge and self-improvement. Behind such lessons of life is our shadow, who seems to guide us as a primary instigator into and through life’s travails and difficulties. The shadow is both a guardian barring our way and a guide who instructs us in how to proceed, overcoming obstacles. Our greater lesson is to learn to be aware of the shadow’s psychic intuition and to listen to its teachings. As practitioners of magic, this is a crucial lesson to master.
The same holds for the cultural or world shadow as the archetype of the Devil, who shows us the darkness that we refuse to see, and instigates disruptive chaos against the seemingly mindless and the unwitting people who fail to hear and realize his warnings. Thus, Satan is both the punisher and also the teacher, indirectly overseeing the paths of the mage and the sage. Since the true aspect of the Deity is its unity, then the Devil, who is God’s shadow, represents that polar opposite which is necessary for the union of light and darkness to be fully realized. It is the joining of God and Satan into a single supremely paradoxical being that opens the doorway to true enlightenment and the realization of the One.
Yet to only acknowledge the good Deity and to ignore or disparage its shadow is to create an even greater paradox, which is splitting the Deity and fostering a destructive duality that cannot be logically supported or resolved, since it denies the inherent unity of all things, material, mental and spiritual. We can see the damage that Christianity has unleashed on the world by passionately adhering to a dualistic spiritual perspective that divides the world into the faithful good and the unfaithful evil. Such divisions are always a precursor to religious oppression and then followed by violent persecution. Religious wars are the most destructive kind of civil violence humanity has ever unleashed or experienced. The balanced path between the archetypal agencies of light and darkness is the only path to peace and constructive interaction. In order for that state of peace to occur we must all accept the fact that there are unresolved paradoxes and mysteries within the soul of humanity and the Soul of the World. It is imperative that we accept them as they exist and not to try to resolve them through religious interdiction.
As magicians we travel the path of transformative initiation, ever mindful that such a milestone is achieved when we encounter our shadow self in a land of shadows, our psychic underworld. At the zenith of this powerful psychic process, we meet two personages: our shadow opposite with whom we must unite, and our image of paternal authority with whom we must gain approbation. This stage where we meet our shadow occurs as a kind of wedding or Hieros Gamos where opposites are ceremonially united, to be followed by a new dynamic of empowerment. The next stage in the hero’s journey is known as “Atonement with the Father,” which represents the realignment that must occur once the self is made whole again. This is the stage where the hero must take on the laws and judgements of their culture and social position. It is only when there is a new balance established between the light and darkness of the self, mitigated by the laws, ethics and social graces of the archetypal image of the hero’s home, that he is released from bondage to become the apotheosis of humankind.
Yet the father figure that demands atonement is characterized, in my opinion, by the Tarot trump the Devil XV. I have made this analogy in previous writings, and it is based on my comparative mapping between the hero’s stages and the trumps of the Tarot. It is the Devil who has a central role to play in this cyclic process of psychological death and rebirth. While the shadow represents to us the individual that tests and challenges us so that we might gain a unified psychic wholeness, it is the Devil who orchestrates this process and who rules the underworld.
If we examine the Tarot trump the Devil, we see depicted on it two horned individuals with pointed tails, a naked man and woman, loosely (voluntarily) chained by their necks to a rock-like altar pedestal, jointly worshiping their diabolical master. In the center of the card stands the archetypal image of Satan in all his terrible glory. Upon this pedestal, he demonstrates in his pose the ultimate mystery in the words “solve et coagula” tattooed on his arms, one raised above pointing to the heavens and the other pointing to the ground. These words mean to dissolve and conjoin, which is the very process that the hero undergoes to achieve transformation. This Tarot trump is the mirror image of trump VI, the Lovers, representing a different kind of union of opposites. The Lovers VI is where the hero and his shadow join in the fusion of light and darkness as directed and sanctioned by a god, and the Devil XVI is where that union is tested, rectified and made whole. So, it would seem the entire mystery of our shadow work leads us to psychic union and transformation, where we receive the “devil’s mark” as a sign of our achievement. The two Tarot trumps are the key to this mystery, but first we must meet the Devil to determine our fate in this greater transformation.
Frater Barrabbas
No comments:
Post a Comment