.:. 4 .:.

Time to throw in a practical example! Well, this one actually might go to show how not to approach your vertical ascent. And yet, I guess, it does shed a light on how easy it is to step away from subjective filters through mystical practice...

In the late 90s my now wife and I were on a vacation in Tuscany/Italy. I was deep into my studies of Kabbalah at the time and - knowing my wife and that this was meant to be a vacation - I also knew I would only be allowed to take with me a fraction of the books I wanted to. Thus amongst a few other books I selected a thin volume on the 72 genii.

A few mornings into our vacation I began to practice on one of the 72 genii. Somehow randomly I had selected ___.

That morning we had actually stopped at the ruin of an old farm house, my wife to take another morning nap in the car and me to sit down on a stone in the fields and call to the angels. After all they were angels - how bad could their effect be? See, one of the filters that 'had' me back then and that I can see clearly now, is that my preferred method of occult research at the time was to hold a up match to anything. If eventually 'the thing' lid up and took fire, it clearly seemed to work. True to the spirit of vertical development I needed to get myself quite badly burned and thoroughly stuck, before I could break free from this bias before I ruined myself.

On that September morning sitting out in the golden Tuscan morning sun, things clearly caught fire. Yet, this fire's flames were cold as ice. I called for the angel ___ for roughly half an hour. First in a prayer, then constantly repeating my adoration and its name in the low grumbling of a swirling mantra. I felt the first effect then, yet it took me a few more days of practice to fully get me into trouble.

I guess it was in the second week that I realised I had grown completely cold inside. Surely this was meant to be the best time of the year, the time I had looked forward to for months. And yet here I was, dis-interested in everything, standing next to myself, an observer to my own life, while all the glory and richness of the Tuscan autumn was waiting for us. All the things that normally made my heart sing seemed to have gone quiet. I was eating the food I normally loved, I smoked and drank more than I normally would have just to taste life again - and yet everything tasted bland and numb.

And in that coldness I began to see things I had not seen before. For no reason it felt like I had fallen out of love with my wife. In the absence of all romance, I realised every morning she actually looked differently. What had seemed like a single person - and one I had loved madly just days ago - suddenly seemed a changing hive of possibilities, like a glacier changing its formation and colour almost invisibly over time. A friend visited us, and even he looked differently. Over long car rides he shared many of his life problems at the time - and I could see through them in a way that was astounding to both him and I. The world presented itself in a crystal clear, sharp light that seemed to pierce through all love and emotion. And yet I could see through things in almost uncanny ways. With the help of the angel I had stepped away from all filters, none of them 'had' me anymore - and yet in doing so I had also stepped out of the world that had been 'mine' before, including the love to my wife.

Reflecting on this episode I still feel conflicted. My wife and marriage mean a lot to me - probably more than anything. And yet here I was - discovering the boundaries I wasn't prepared to over-step. If this was the level of 'transcendence' required to further ascent on the vertical ladder than I would have to drop out. I stopped calling to ___ and concentrated on the mundane and re-awakening my emotional body. It took several painful weeks before I could see my wife again in the light of love that I had lost. If this was a subjective filter that now 'had' me again, then so be it. It still was the best thing that had happened to me in my life, and no mystical promised land could convince me to let go of it.

I hope this personal example helps to illustrate this in particular: the path of the mage and the mystic are intertwined. Looking at the difference in their workings - one aiming towards immanence, the other towards transcendence - we cannot be led astray to make an either-or choice between the two. Or else we'll loose what makes us both human and divine at once.

What we are presented with here is one of the most essential polarities of the Western path. We depend on both: the stability of the immanent human self, as well as the de-stabilizing effect of pulling us out of our world and even our own skins in following our divine nature. One hand holds on to, the other one opens up to let go. One foot on the ground, the other one raised to move on. That's how we walk. One swing, one step at a time.

Only the hermit in the cave, only the monk in seclusion can afford to open both hands at a time, to lift both feet off the ground - and to fully let go of their human selves. For most of us who want to stay grounded in their own heart, in their love for families, food and friends, we have to hold on with at least one hand to what makes us human in the end - as flawed and limited as these things might seem under the angel's cold gaze.

As magicians this means we are aiming to balance our attachment to chthonic as well as celestial spirits - as both form the substance of our bodily and mental cells. If we do not want to rip the being apart we have incarnated into then our service has to nourish both of our natures: the mage and the mystic, the goetic and the theurgist, immanence and transcendence, stability and liability, the circle and the triangle.

Unsurprisingly we find the same need for an 'and' decision through the lens of vertical growth. The polarities have different labels here of course. Instead of ‘chthonic and celestial spirits’ or ‘immanence vs. transcendence’ we simple speak of the rhythm between struggle and truce.