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The Mysteries Continued

Part II, Chapter 3

This chapter moves from the Lesser Mysteries to the deeper initiation. Atwood argues that once the senses are dissolved, consciousness is carried beneath them into a dark, image-haunted region, the poets’ Hades and the “Black Saturn of the adepts” (II.3 ¶18). A firm rational will passes it by a willed death of the soul’s bond to the body. It ends in the vision of a formless inner Light, which she identifies with the Hermetic Stone (II.3 ¶37, ¶46, ¶52–55).

The hidden descent

Atwood likens the Lesser Mysteries, “the only popular initiation open to all,” to mesmerism, which works “in the same matter” (II.3 ¶3–4). Ways of entrancing the senses, of dissolving the “sensible medium” of ordinary awareness, are known. The next step was concealed: “to translate the consciousness underneath this medium by obscuration, towards the Central Source.” Its entrance is “dark, delusive, and dangerous” (II.3 ¶5). Hades is not the body but “a state of vital submersion” in “the penetralia of its first life” (II.3 ¶7). Since the return is hard (II.3 ¶8), the purified will must hold “a motive purely rational” against the deeper sphere’s temptations (II.3 ¶9). Atwood reads the golden bough as “a ray of living light,” Lully’s Brancha Spiritualis: intellect penetrating to Proserpine, “that lapsed soul of ours” (II.3 ¶11). The heavy cave at the entrance is “that appearing corruption that precedes the mystical death and regeneration” (II.3 ¶18).

The phantoms of Hades

Psellus calls the apparitions of the rites, such as “superinspection,” a light in some form, “mere appearances, having no substance”; the oracle forbids heeding them (II.3 ¶20). Atwood explains: “it is the imaginative spirit which is the maker of these images, as in dreams, only more intense.” The soul’s subtle vehicle, grown “humid and condensed,” throws up apparitions as moisture forms clouds. Quoting Proclus, she says mystics meet these forms first and only the unmoved receive illumination (II.3 ¶22). Porphyry says a soul leaving nature “becomes a dry splendor”; Atwood glosses this as striving “to penetrate centrally without exploring the intermediate spheres” (II.3 ¶27). The “earth” hiding the Stone is “our dark divulsed chaotic life from sense,” and its unpurified moisture is “the Purgatory of the wise” (II.3 ¶29). The “re-entering Light of Reason,” the adepts’ Sulfur, causes the shifting scenery. In the purified extreme of this life “the Seed of Spirit is at last found” (II.3 ¶30).

The mountain allegory

Atwood applies a letter of the Brethren of the Rosy Cross to this stage. A hidden central mountain, guarded by beasts, is sought on the darkest night, with prayer, courage and a guide (II.3 ¶31–32). Wind, earthquake and a fire that “will consume the earthly rubbish” follow, then calm, the day-star and a gold-making tincture (II.3 ¶33). A note reads the fire as obliterating the “strains” that generation lays over the immortal principle (II.3 n40).

Death of the natal bond

The Lesser Mysteries ended “on the borders of the Stygian lake in view of Tartarus” (II.3 ¶36). A record preserved by Stoboeus likens the Grand Mysteries to death: darkness, horror, then “a miraculous and divine light.” Porphyry describes a second death, “peculiar to philosophers, in which the soul is liberated from the body.” Atwood glosses that the soul may “dissolve her own conceptive vehicle” and return to life “under the dominion of another law.” This is the “happy gate of blackness,” the “head of Hermes’ crow”: the fixed “sensual compact” is dissolved and renewed, “all without destruction to the mortal body” (II.3 ¶37). The Hermetic process takes natural life apart “stone by stone” down to “the true alkaline original of life” (II.3 ¶41). Apuleius testifies: “At midnight I saw the Sun shining with a splendid light” (II.3 ¶45).

The formless Light

The goal “can only be attained through the identical experience”; the soul “knows herself as a Whole” (II.3 ¶46). In Psellus’s “Introspection,” unlike the Superinspection of Hades, the initiate “sees the Divine Light itself without any form or figure” (II.3 ¶46). Atwood rejects explaining these lights as orreries (II.3 ¶49). Quoting Plato, she says that after long converse and a conforming life a light is suddenly “enkindled in the soul”; sight turned inward finds “that other light which is the substance of its own” (II.3 ¶50). This is the “internal spiritual Sun,” the Saturnian Salt (II.3 ¶52), Apuleius’s midnight Sun, Zoroaster’s Prester, “the Fire Spirit of Life” (II.3 ¶54), “that Power which is hidden in man” (II.3 ¶55). Reporting “our doctors,” she says the Art’s perfection was “to multiply the Prester and place him in the most supreme Ether,” “no longer a Consuming Fire” (II.3 ¶56).

The Work in this chapter

  • First dissolution: “dissolve the sensible medium” (II.3 ¶5): entrancing the senses (stated).
  • Descent: “translate the consciousness underneath this medium by obscuration” (II.3 ¶5): consciousness sinks below sense toward its source (stated).
  • Operator: “a motive purely rational” (II.3 ¶9); the “wisely simple who have subdued their will to the Law of Wisdom” (II.3 ¶55) (stated).
  • Agent: “Light of Reason … that Sulfur of adepts” (II.3 ¶30) (stated).
  • Impediment: images of “the imaginative spirit,” to be passed unmoved (II.3 ¶22) (stated).
  • Blackness: “happy gate of blackness”: the soul dissolving her bond to the body (II.3 ¶37) (stated).
  • Signs: corruption “is a signal of Art” (II.3 ¶37); the formless Light “will not deceive” (II.3 ¶46) (stated).
  • Result: the Prester placed “in the most supreme Ether” (II.3 ¶56) (stated).

Terms introduced

  • sensible medium — ordinary sense-consciousness, dissolved in trance (II.3 ¶5).
  • Hades — consciousness submerged in its first life; unpurified moisture of life (II.3 ¶7, ¶29).
  • golden bough / Brancha Spiritualis — the penetrating intellect (II.3 ¶11).
  • Proserpine — “that lapsed soul of ours” (II.3 ¶11).
  • Black Saturn — the blackness before mystical death (II.3 ¶18).
  • superinspection — insubstantial apparition in Hades (II.3 ¶20, ¶46).
  • pneumatic vehicle — the soul’s subtle vehicle, image-making when moist (II.3 ¶22).
  • Sulfur — the re-entering Light of Reason (II.3 ¶30).
  • Seed of Spirit — found in purified chaotic life (II.3 ¶30).
  • gate of blackness — the soul’s willed dissolution of her bond; “precious death” (II.3 ¶37).
  • sensual compact — “that which was fixed” (II.3 ¶37).
  • Aquaster / Fire World — regions passed; not defined (II.3 ¶16, ¶41).
  • Salt of Saturn — the Stone’s dark, deepest principle (II.3 ¶41).
  • Introspection — inward vision of formless Divine Light (II.3 ¶46).
  • Prester — “the Fire Spirit of Life” (II.3 ¶54).

Authorities cited

Virgil’s sixth Aeneid, the main allegory (II.3 ¶6–19); Porphyry (¶2, ¶27, ¶37, ¶43); Lully (¶11, ¶30); Plato (¶12, ¶50); Proclus (¶13, ¶22, ¶50); Psellus and the Chaldaic oracles (¶20, ¶26, ¶46–47); Basil Valentine (¶23); Hermes (¶27, ¶52); Vaughan (¶30, ¶52); the Brethren of the Rosy Cross (¶31–33); Stoboeus via Warburton (¶37); Apuleius (¶45, ¶50); Deuteronomy, the Zohar and an Indian record (¶48); Zoroaster and St. John (¶54).