1.15 - In the Domain of the Spirit Beings

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object:1.15 - In the Domain of the Spirit Beings
class:chapter
author class:Franz Bardon
book class:The Practice of Magical Evocation
subject class:Occultism

In the Domain of the Spirit Beings
Before describing a true magical operation and evocation I must make the reader acquainted with the spheres of the beings. A genuine magician is not allowed to do anything unless he knows fully what he is doing and unless he has a clear picture of what he intends to achieve. As the magician will have learned from the preceding chapter on the book of formulae, it is extremely important to know the correct handling and analogies of the magical implements, for without this thorough knowledge their analogies and symbolism it would be impossible to get any positive results. Further, the magician would not be able to find the genuine attitude for his meditations and to rise his spirit into the right sphere of consciousness. His magical implements would become an illusion and he would be lowered to the level of a common sorcerer. He could neither make his magical authority work on the beings, nor could he influence them in any way. The genuine magician does everything consciously; he has laid down each procedure systematically in his book of formulae before his operations, and his mind, his consciousness, is connected with his implements, their faculties, loadings etc. He must be just as well informed about the spheres of the being with which he wants to work. He must be able to pass a clear judgement on the existence and doings of these beings. His own experience will help him a great deal in this respect, for he will have visited, with his mental body, various spheres as suggested in "Initiation into Hermetics".
The following discussions are therefore a short summary of the magician's experiences on his visits to the said spheres.
Only the confirmed materialist, who, with his physical senses, does not perceive anything else but the material world and who only believes in what he sees, hears and feels, will doubt that there are other spheres beside this material world. The genuine magician will not give any judgement upon a materialist and will not try to dissuade him from his views. The materialist is in the state of maturity, in this physical world, which corresponds to his personal development. The magician will therefore make no effort to teach a materialist better, for the latter will always end by saying that he has never seen a spirit and therefore only believes in the things he has been able to perceive with his physical faculties, that is to see, hear or feel. The materialist does not deny the matter, he agrees that the material and power in which he lives must exist, but to believe that there exist other, more subtle spheres of material or power goes beyond his horizon. Therefore the magician never tries to influence the belief of another human being, for the non-initiate will always have his individual opinion of higher facts, and will always judge from his own point of view.
Just the same as our physical world exists in three different states: solid, fluid and gaseous, so exist, following the laws of analogy, certain states of aggregation in a more subtle form, which are not accessible to our normal senses, but which are, however, connected with our physical world. These states of aggregation are called, from the hermetic point of view, planes and spheres. In these more subtle spheres the same things happen as in our physical world, and there, too, the Law of the Hermes diagram is valid: that which is above is as that which is below.
The same powers are in action there, just the same as on our planet. Here as well as there the same kind of influences work.

Therefore, in every sphere we have the same play of elements, the electric and magnetic fluid, which is maintained and controlled by Divine Providence according to the Akasha-principle. The person relying only on what he perceives with his five physical senses has only one sphere open to perception: the sphere corresponding to his physical senses, and he is not able to procede beyond it. Everything else must remain inconceivable, incredible and supersensual to him. The genuine magician, who has refined and developed his senses by mental and psychic training, will only consider this physical world as the starting point of his personal development and will never deny the existence of higher spheres because he is able to convince himself of their existence.
That these spheres are more subtle and more compact states of aggregation has long become obvious to the true magician by his own personal experience. The magician will always be able to visit with his mental body the sphere corresponding to the state of development of his mental body's senses, and to be active in it.
He must always bear this in mind when practising the magic of evocation. Naturally, these more subtle spheres are not subject to our ideas of space and time but go into one another in our terms, so that for instance, in a space which, in our imagination, is always somehow bordered and furnished with limits, many different spheres may be present.
Depending on the grade of subtlety or density, there are innumerable spheres and intermediate spheres. To name them all here would be impossible. I will only mention those which are of importance for the practice of magic. Their graded density is called hierarchy. Before a magician plans to work on these spheres he must have a conception of their hierarchy, and must be well acquainted with the sphere in which he intends to work, first theoretically and later, of course, also practically. But, above all, he must have a thorough comm and over the physical sphere before he proceeds to the more subtle one next to it. Each of these spheres of hierarchy have their particular influence on our physical world according to the laws of analogy. With regard to the planetary spheres astrologers have discovered a somehow workable synthesis, but unfortunately the astrologers of today uses this chiefly only for mantic purposes, and it is hardly known that astrology actually only gives a partial explanation of the influences of these spheres, of planets and zodiacal signs. The astrological part of the higher spheres will not be dealt with here, for it does not come within the scope of this book. The true magician, however, will find a much closer relation between the individual spheres, if he deals with astrology, and will notice that astrology shows the true influences of the relevant spheres on our physical world, in their causes and effects.
The grading of the spheres according to their grade of density and their qualities is called, in Quabbalah, the quabbalistic Tree of Life. The analogies and their practical application from the quabbalistic point of view will be dealt with by me in detail in my forthcoming book: "The Key to the True Quabbalah". This book is to rouse the readers interests in the spheres of the quabbalistic Tree of Life as far as they may serve magic purposes, that is as far as their beings are concerned. The spheres in their correct order are:
1. The physical world as the starting point for the work of the magician, in which every human being, no matter whether initiated into hermetics or not, lives and moves with his senses, his spirit, his soul and his body.
2. The next higher sphere existing above the physical world is the earth zone, the zone girdling the earth. This zone has various grades of density, so-called sub-zones into which man proceeds after having put off his earthly shape. This is the so-called astral world; in its lower grades of density dwell the average persons in their astral bodies after their physical death, in its higher spheres are also initiates, depending on their state of maturity. The more mature, more developed, more ethical a magician is, the more subtle is the zone layer in which he comes after his death. His place in the astral world will depend on how far he advanced during his life in this physical world. There is no heaven or hell in the astral world; these are merely the outcome of silly religious opinions and the object of the teachings of some religions which, due to their ignorance, separate life in the astral world into life in heaven or hell. If one regards the lower, rougher spheres of the astral world as being the hell, the brighter, higher spheres as the heaven, part of these religious beliefs could be true. The magician who knows how to interpret such symbols and ideas will find his own explanation for the expressions "hell", "heaven" and
"purgatory" .
It would go too far to tell the reader all about life in the astral world. Many books could be written on this subject. I will, nevertheless, give a few hints of interest to the magician. The magician will have experienced during his mental and astral wanderings, when his mental and astral body was split off, that in the astral sphere the ideas of time and space do not exist for him, so that in one single moment he is able to travel any distance and on his way there are no material hindrances which he would not be able to penetrate with his mental and astral body. Every human being will have the same experience after his physical death. The initiate, however, has the advantage of getting acquainted with this fact during his lifetime, and that already in this material world he is liberated of one sorrow: the fear of death. He knows well in which astral sphere he will live after his death, and for him the putting away of his physical body is only a transition from the physical world into a more subtle one, similar to changing his place of re~idence.
The magician will experience yet another thing here on earth: all interests that are normal with an average, that is an undeveloped, non-initiated person in this physical world, will cease in the astral plane. Therefore it is not at all surprising that a genuine magician, who is equally familiar with the conditions here and there, that is in the physical and the astral world, loses his interests in this physical world, as far as he does not regard it as the means for his personal development. He will already learn here on earth that fame, honour, riches and all other earthly advantages cannot be taken from here to the astral world and are therefore useless. A true magician will therefore never cry for mortal things. His interest will constantly be directed to using the time which he has at his disposal in this physical sphere to the best of his abilities for his personal development.
It is therefore quite clear that all bonds like love, fidelity etc. which might keep a human being in this physical world come to nothing there. People who have loved each other here, but have not kept the same pace in their psychic and mental development cannot, after dying, live in the same sphere and they will no longer feel the same affection for each other as they have done here. If, for instance, a man and a woman are equally developed they can move in the same sphere of the astral world after their death and will be connected by an inner band of sympathy to each other, but, in spite of this, they will not experience the same kind of love as they did in the physical world. In the astral world there exists nothing like the instinct for self-preservation, the instinct for carnal, sexual love and sexual lust. In the higher spheres a different feeling of affection than on earth connects two equally developed beings by a subtle band of vibration. In our physical world the sympathy or attraction of two beings is usually caused by external stimulation and maintained by the same factors.
Naturally, this is not so in the astral world. The idea of beauty in the astral world, too, is quite different from the idea of beauty in this physical world. Since a deceased person is no longer subject to time and space when entering the astral sphere and thus in that world loses the means to measure its degree of perfection, it longs to return to the earth. The human being not only longs to return because he must equalize, by force of the Law of Karma of cause and effect, the errors he made during his lifetime but he also longs to come back to have another chance of development in the physical world and to gather further experiences, in his spirit, for the higher spheres of the astral world.
Every human being, after having died, will realise yet another fact in the astral world: having only a low degree of development, he will not be able to communicate with beings who, during their lifetime, have reached a higher degree of development, because these beings will stay in a higher, more subtle sphere of the astral world, and he himself will not be able to travel to their sphere of light. Even if he were able to move to those higher spheres he would not be able to stand the elevated vibration there and would drop back, that is he would soon find himself transferred to that astral sphere in which he belongs on account of his degree of development. A person with a high degree of perfection, however, is able to place himself into a lower sphere by accomodating the vibration of that sphere in his spirit.
If, therefore, a spirit with a low degree of development wants to get into contact with a spirit of a higher degree of development, the former must ask the latter, by force of imagination, to come to his sphere. Whether the higher developed being will fulfill the wish of the lower being, always depends on the purpose for which the lower being calls the higher one. This clearly shows that a lower being is not capable of moving to the higher spheres of the astral world. The contrary, however, is quite possible. A magician with a good degree of development is able to place himself iilto any sphere, for he is capable of accomodating and creating every kind of vibration and any form of every sphere he wants to get into touch with. Many a reader will here remember the words of the Bible and perceive its meaning:
"And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not".
The experienced magician knows that the physical body is sustained by food (that is: condensed elements) and that the breath connects the astral with the physical body by the so-called astral band. Therefore he is also aware of the fact that as soon as, at the moment of dying, a person's breath stops, the separation of the astral and mental body from the physical body takes place. He will also find it quite logical that whenever, due to his magical training, he consciously separates not only the mental but also the astral body from his physical body, he will be put into a state of ecstasy or apparent death during which his breath has also stopped, with the only difference that his physical body, during this state of ecstasy, is not subject to decay, and a connection is still maintained with the mental and astral body. Since the magician can have power over life and death, if approved by Divine
Providence, he is able to restore this connecting link in order to make a dead person live again, similar to the saints, who, as we know from history, have been able to do the same. I have already dealt with this matter in detail in "Initiation into Hermetics".

If the magician has experienced his physical death, there is no reason why he should return to the physical world, and he is not desirous of restoring the band between the material and astral worlds. Of course, there are also magicians and sorcerers of lower degree, who consciously try, from the astral world, to build again the link between their astral and their physical bodies. But because they lack the necessary perfection enabling them to condense the light sufficiently, their success must remain a partial one. Usually such beings, clinging to their physical shape, try to evade the pre-conditions for such a realisation and vampirise the electro-magnetic fluid (vital energy) from living bodies in order to accumulate it in their abandoned physical bodies, assuming that in the course of time they will be able to revive them. The physical body laid aside by such a being in the manner indicated may be saved from decay for centuries. History gives us many examples of the conservation of deceased persons, and science cannot yet give any satisfactory explanation for this. Such vampires are, from the hermetic point of view, to be pitied, and the religious belief of those days did well in destroying such bodies which did not decay. Usually only by this destruction, such a body was usually pierced with a wooden spear or its head cut off and the body itself burned, was the spirit of such a body freed from its bondage. The sagas of the werewolves, too, can be explained from the hermetic point of view. The procedure was the same, only that at the moment of vampirizing, the astral body took on the shape of an animal in order to evade recognition by the possibly sensitive person who was vampirized.
In summing up: in the physical world the physical and the astral bodies are kept together by food and breath and all the three parts - body, soul and spirit - are streng thened from the higher spheres by more subtle material elements during the sleep.
In the astral world, on the other hand, the astral body is enlivened by the impressions it gets by material vibrations in the astral sphere. If a human being is returning from the astral world into the physical world, then the band between the astral and the mental bodies rends so that the being dies there to be reborn in our physical world. The act of dying there is similar to physical death; the astral body is no longer fed by the mental body with impressions from the astral world.
The process of decay of an astral body takes much longer than that of a physical body, and an astral body may go on to exist for many years, according to our chronology, without being maintained by the respective spirit. Other beings, usually demons, like to take possession of such corpses in order to play tricks with them. During numerous spiritistic sessions the astral bodies of dead people have appeared which were abandoned by the spirits of those dead people a long time ago and have since been controlled and used by a demon. Only a well trained clairvoyant who is able to distinguish an astral body from a mental body by the help of his well developed mental senses can discover the truth. Such demons like to fool people, play tricks on them and make all kinds of mischief. All imps and spooks, phantoms, hobgoblins, and the like, proceed in the same manner.
I have already discussed this matter thoroughly in "Initiation into Hermetics". Normally, an astral body slowly dissolves to its elements, the so-called astral corpse is sucked up by the elements, becomes more and more transparent, similar to a sieve, until it finally totally decays into the material of the individual elements.
Besides man, who after his death betakes himself to the astral plane, many other beings dwell in the earth-zone. Apart from those already mentioned, for instance elementals, larvae, phantoms, goblins, there also exist, in that zone, the beings of the elements. I shall deal more with these individual beings of the elements and their heads in the chapter dealing with hierarchies.
Each spirit which wants to declare itself in one way or another must pass through the astral world, regardless from which sphere it comes, even if it should live in the highest spheres. For the zone lirdling the earth is the first zone beyond the physical world. In quabbalah, this zone is also called Malkuth; that means Kingdom.
I shall have more to say about this in "The Key to the True Quabbalah" .
In the astral world of the zone girdling the earth the same powers exist and are at work as in the physical world; they are, however, more subtle. Also there dominates the element of the fire with its salamanders or spirits of fire, the element of water with its water-spirits and undines, the element of the air with its fairies and sylphs or spirits of the air, and the element of the earth with its gnomes or spirits of the earth. All the beings in the astral sphere of the earth-zone move about in their respective elements just as the fish in the waters of the earth moves about correspondingly in its element. Each element has positive and negative beings so that we may talk of good as well as of evil salamanders.
The same is true of the beings of the other elements. In reality, however, there exists neither good nor evil, for Divine Providence created nothing bad or inharmonious, it is only a human comprehension to assume this. From the hermetic point of view the one kind of beings have good the other bad influences, thus have its good and bad effects respectively. These beings are, in the astral world, the tools for the things that happen in our physical world. They are the cause of all effects in the astral body of each being, no matter whether initiate or non-initiate.
The actions and doings of the element of air and the element of fire in the astral sphere cause the astral-electric fluid; the actions and doings of the water-element and the element of the earth cause the astral-magnetic fluid. The beings use the fluids in order to create the effects, or, better said, the causes in our physical world. The Akasha-principle of the astral sphere keeps all the elements of the astral sphere in harmonious equilibrium. If a being of the astral sphere wants to influence our physical world, no matter whether it be a spirit of the elements or a human being, it must be capable of condensing both fluids, the electric as well as the magnetic, in such a manner that they are realized in the physical world. A well-trained magician who has a good comm and of the elements and fluids is able to carry out this act of condensing quite by himself, by the help of the imagination.
When taking no active part in the work himself, he may have the condensation carried out by a medium from whom in this case, the spirits will extract, like vampires, the electric and magnetic fluid necessary to bring about the desired effect.
As is well known, the difference between a being of the elements and a human being lies in the fact that a being of the elements consists of only one element, whereas a human being is composed of all four elements, plus a fifth one: the Akashaprinciple. An elemental being can only work with the element and the fluid to which it appertains; a human being, however, may become acquainted with all powers and may learn to control them. But in both cases, whether being of elements or human being, Divine Providence or the Akasha-principle is the determining factor. However, a human being is capable of incarnation, a being of the elements is not able to do this by itself. The astral body of a being of the elements breaks up into its element; a human astral body dissolves into the four elements. Another difference is the fact that with the moment of death an elemental being ceases to exist, for its spirit is mortal; man, who is something like a small macrocosm, possesses, since he has been created in
God's image, an immortal individual spirit. Although it is possible to make, out of a being computed of only one element, a fourelement-being by special magical operations and to give it an immortal spirit, a true magician will do this very seldom, and never without special reasons which must be valid enough to be justified before Divine Providence.
The Akasha-principle of the astral sphere determines also the re-incarnation into the physical world of a human being living in the astral world. The astral material of light, usually called astral light, is the most divine emanation in the astral world. To initiates who see the divine principle of the astral world this lightprinciple appears as bright as the light of the burning sun or as the sun itself, provided they were in the physical world able to behold Divine Providence in the Light without having their deity transformed into a particular shape. The individual religion of a person has its due place in the astral world insomuch as he has attri buted a certain shape and name to his deity according to his religious views in the physical world. Atheists feel no necessity for a God even in the astral world and are therefore not able to form an idea of the deity there. Nevertheless, they long for something higher, much like a thirsty man longs for water. People who have believed in several religions or deities during their existance on earth will find chaotic conditions. They will have a difficult time there, if they are not able to make up their minds to follow a certain form. However, during their course of development in the astral world their conception of God will be clarified so that finally they will believe in the deity which was really best for them. This conception of God then usually determines the place of their re-incarnation.
A magician having explored during his lifetime, the astral sphere of the zone girdling the earth will know from his own experience, how the powers and beings of the astral sphere operate and what they do, but he may also learn it from those beings with which he is working magically.
Just the same as the not yet fully developed magician in the physical world uses a spiritual guide for his training and likes to be taught by him, either by passive communication or automatic writing etc., a not yet perfect human being too will find his guides in the astral world. These guides will teach him from time to time and assist him whenever necessary. Highly developed spiritual beings of the zone girdling the earth condense themselves in their appropriate astral sphere and thus become the guides of individuals, or of groups of individuals, and initiate the astral beings of lower perfection into the higher laws. Such guides must never be compelled to do their work in the astral world; they are commissioned by Divine Providence to offer assistance to any astral being, depending on its maturity and state of perfection. In the astral world, the guide, one may also call him genius loci, not only teaches his protege the laws, but assists him in his whole development. It sometimes happens that an astral man wants to do something at his own accord, but is warned at the critical moment by his guide or genius not to do anything arbitrarily. The genius will intervene especially in those cases where an astral human being with a low degree of development is about to do something contrary to the laws of Divine Providence. The guide informs his protege about the laws of the physical world and prepares him for his rebirth. This clearly shows how necessary it is that the magical development of a human being during his time in the physical world leads him towards perfection in order to be prepared for life in a higher sphere.

All blows of fate that are apt to purify a man's spirit in the physical world and that will help him to get the kind of experience necessary for his spiritual development are already prepared and determined by Divine Providence in the astral world for each individual according to his maturity and degree of development. The human being knows before his embodiment about the matter of teaching in the physical world and not only agrees to it, but even longs to get through it. At the moment of his rebirth he loses his knowledge about everything that Divine
Providence has planned for him. If an individual living in this world could know in advance everything he has to go through, he would no longer have a free will in the physical world. Such an individual would be equivalent to a mere robot in all his doings or an automaton, and the task which he would have to complete in this world would become impracticable. Only an initiate of higher degree, being master over Karma, that is over cause and effect, and feeling equally familiar with the physical as well as the astral world is mature enough to know everything in advance without having to fear any disadvantageous influences on his free will.
Beings incarnate themselves from the astral world into the physical sphere of our planet, bordered by time and space, in order to work on their development, since the material laws of this plane put far more hindrances in front of every individual than is the case in the astral sphere. The impediments of the physical world streng then the spirit and enable it to grow more rapidly in its development than it would be possible in the astral world. Therefore the human beings of the astral world are urged to achieve re-incarnation in this world as soon as possible, and are ready to accept even the toughest conditions in order to be able to continue their spiritual development.
Every man can reach perfection, for the evolution of the whole of mankind leads towards it. The spiritual guide designated to each individual by Divine Providence for his initiation into the astral world leads and controls the spiritual development of his protege and in many cases carries on with his commission after his protege has re-incarnated in the physical world. The magician should therefore try at the very beginning of his development to get into contact with his genius. How this is achieved has already been told in "Initiation into Hermetics". It sometimes happens that people who have already reached a high degree of perfection here on earth are able to continue their spiritual development in the astral world up to perfection, but these are selected by Divine
Providence to fulfill one or more missions on earth. Such spiritual leaders are then magicians or initiates by birth who at a certain phase of the physical development of their human bodies, usually shortly after the period of puberty, become suddenly aware of their state, their degree of spiritual development, and just need a little more to be mature enough for their divine mission. Such missions need not always be of a magical or spiritual nature, they may also have to do with other aspects of this world.
This explains the birth of human genii and inventors in all fields of material knowledge. The magician knows that all this is planned and controlled by Divine Providence, that is on the principles of Akasha in the astral world, and that nothing can take place which, from the magician's point of view, could not be explained by the universal laws.
This has been a rough sketch of the most important aspects of the astral sphere of the so-called earth-zone or zone girdling the earth, which is the zone next to our physical world. The earthzone is, according to human thinking, not the most condensed form of sphere in spite of its being placed above us, since in it there exist the most various intensities of light, or vibration, in accordance with the degree of maturity of each individual human being. This earth-zone is by no means bordered in any way; it stretches out over the cosmos, not only over the ball of the earth.
The laws ruling this zone have nothing to do with the idea of space, however, as they go for the whole microcosm and macrocosm and their analogous connection. This is the reason why man can only reach his perfection, his ultimate magical maturity, and his genuine connection with the deity, in this zone girdling the earth. This clearly shows that, from the point of view of magic, the earth-zone is the lowest sphere, but at the same time also the sphere with the highest emanation of the Divine Princi86 p Ie. I shall show further that there exist further spheres belonging to this hierarchy which the magician is able to contact, but he is able to live in the earth-zone also as a being of perfection, as the true image of God. In this zone girdling the earth the whole creation from the highest perfection of the deity down to the lowest and roughest form is manifested. A human being may get into contact with all kinds of spheres which lie above the earth-zone, but he cannot become their constant inhabitant, because the earth-zone is the reflecting mirror of the whole creation. It is the manifested world of all degrees of condensation. The old Quabbalists knew this truth and therefore called the earth-zone
"Malkuth", which does not mean earth ball, but Kingdom, by which expression creation from its highest to its lowest manifestation is meant. According to the Tree of Life of the
Quabbalah it contains the quabbalistic number ten, which stands for the beginning of evolution. To the person acquainted with
Quabbalah this number ten is the reflection of number one in its most subtle form, that is, God, for the number ten may be reduced to a one by deleting the zero. The intuitive magician at once sees the true relations between creation and his individual body and realizes that it is not without reason that he has ten fingers and ten toes. The reader will, however, read more about this in the third book of this trilogy "The Key to the True Quabbalah".
The intuitive magician will also perceive a certain relation between the earth-zone and the Muladhara Chakra but I will leave it to him to meditate in this respect.
3. Next to the zone girdling the earth comes the zone of the
Moon, with which the magician must become acquainted immediately after the earth-zone.
4. Beyond the Moon-zone lies the zone of Mercury and beyond that zone follows
S. the zone of Venus. If the magician has become sufficiently acquainted with these zones he will have to learn
6. about the zone of the Sun and later
7. about the zone of Mars, then follows
8. the zone of Jupiter, and at last
9. the zone of Saturn.

Many other zones lie beyond the last named, but it will be enough for the magician to get to know the zones corresponding to the planets, and be able to control them well.
The analogies and the hierarchy of each zone are dealt with in the next chapter. Each sphere lying above the zone girdling the earth, between the Moon and Saturn, has a threefold effect: firstly on the mental, secondly on the astral and thirdly on the physical world. Depending on the question in which sphere of the earthzone a certain effect should be caused, the creation of the cause for such an effect must be considered in that zone. Since the zones mentioned above have certain individual influences on our earthzone the magician operating with beings of such zones must have a clear picture of the analogy of the laws of each zone regarding his own microcosm and the microcosm of any other human being. Each analogy of the zones to the micro- and macrocosm must be quite clear to him and he must know how to create the cause corresponding to the analogies with the help of the beings. In the magician's conception each zone will not be a limited plane beyond the earth-zone, but all zones run into one another in the microcosm as well as in the macrocosm. The zones bear astrological names, but do not have directly to do with the constructions of the stars of the universe, although there exists some relation between the stars and their constellations, enabling the astrologers to draw their conclusions for mantic purposes or to find out unfavourable influences. I have already given some hints about the synthesis of astrology.
Each zone is inhabited in just the same way as the earth-zone already known to us. The beings of the zones have their special commissions and are subject to the laws of their zone, as far as causes and effects are concerned. In our opinion there exist millions of beings in each zone. It is impossible to grade these beings categorically. Each of these beings has reached a certain degree in its spiritual development, a certain degree of maturity, and a commission has been transferred upon it according to this degree.
A person without any magical development and without the necessary maturity is not able to proceed beyond this material world in order to get into contact with astral beings, not to mention getting into contact with the beings of superior spheres.
There are only a few people in our physical world, who, with their spirit, are able to penetrate the borders of human existence and to proceed to other zones. People who are able to do this consciously are called initiates from the point of view of hermetics.
An initiate is a selected person who, after many years of spiritual development, reaches the degree of maturity necessary for his commissions. A true initiate is not a philosopher who has reached maturity by mere theoretical knowledge; he is a person who, after constant strenuous training, has worked himself out of the crowd of average persons and has gained his knowledge by practice. Here the saying may well be applied: many are called, but few are chosen. However, nobody need fear any imposed limitations, and a diligent pupil of magic can reach perfection and become an adept after conscientious training. Each human being on this earth can reach the highest degree of perfection.
As said above, only a few people will spiritually traverse the common sphere of the zone girdling the earth to visit the sphere next to it. These people are the leading heads in magic; they are the initiators and teachers with the holy commission and duty to help the individuals below them on their spiritual way. The same is true, by universal laws, within the seven zones lying beyond the earth-zone. There also exist few selected individuals among millions of others living in those zones who, in their development, have reached the necessary degree of perfection to be the leading rulers or initiates there. Also the heads of the other zones have their rank, dignity and title, just as the initiates in the zone girdling the earth are honoured by the post of dignity corresponding to their degree of maturity and their knowledge and take the rank of barons, earls, knights, dukes, etc.
The magician will realize that these names for ranks and titles symbolise the degree of maturity of a being and certainly will not regard them as earthly ranks. Therefore, only the leaders, the initiates of the individual zones, are able to influence, with their causes and effects, our spheres, no matter whether mental, astral or physical. The way in which each individual being may in89 fluence our world will be dealt with analogously step by step in a further chapter on the hierarchy of the beings. Just the same as, in our opinion, there exist in the earth-zone positive and negative, that is good and evil beings, so is the situation the same in all other zones. The good or positive powers and beings are generally called angels or archangels, the negative ones demons or archdemons. The same kind of hierarchy is to be found with the negative beings: there are common demons, barons, counts, etc.
The average person will have a conception of these beings corresponding to his power of understanding. In his imagination angels and archangels will have wings, demons and archdemons will have horns. But the person well acquainted with the symbolism will be able to interpret this conception according to true hermetics. A magician knows that an angel has no wings in the literal sense of the word and will see the analogy in these wings: the wings are an analogy to the birds who move about freely in the air above us. The wings are the symbol of what is superior to us, the symbol of agility, liberty, freedom and at the same time the principle of floating above us in the air, the element which is lightest and penetrates everything. The negative beings or demons are usually symbolized by animals with horns and tails, or by creatures that are half human and half animal. Their symbolism, on the contrary, stands for the opposite of what is good: the inferior, incomplete, defective, etc. The question of whether these beings, positive or negative, in their own spheres actually have the shapes attri buted to them by men, and meet each other in these shapes, may be left undecided to the non-initiate. The magician who is capable of visiting these zones by mental and astral travelling and who is able to influence himself with the vibration of these zones so that for the time of his stay he is like an inhabitant of the respective sphere, will have found out that this is not so. Without losing his individuality, he will find quite different .shapes there, which cannot be expressed by words. He will not find personified beings and their leaders there, but powers and vibrations that are analogous to the names and qualities. If he tried to concretise, from his individual point of view, one of these powers, or give it a shape according to his power of understanding, that power would appear in to him in a shape equivalent to his power of symbolic comprehension, no matter whether positive power, alias angel, or negative power, alias demon. A magician working with beings will make the beings perform the causes in that zone in which he exercises his influence. The work of a quabbalist is different. The latter places himself, with his spirit, into the zone in which a certain cause and effect is intended. Though he, too, masters the laws of the zone, he does not need the interposition of the beings for his purposes, but does everything by himself with the help of the quabbalistic word. There will be more about in my next work "The Key to the True Quabbalah".
The principles of the quabbalist's work are quite different. The magician, however, in his present state of development, cannot, for the time being, do otherwise than go on making use of beings up to the point where he has reached a higher degree of development. Each quabbalist must first have become a magician, in order to be able to work differently and more advantageous by later.
If a magician calls a being whose shape he does not know into the earth-zone or into our physical world from another zone, then such a being, provided it wants to take on a visible shape at all, must take on the shape appropriate to its qualities in order to get into contact with the magician. A common demon, however, is not able to do this, for a demon lacking the necessary maturity is not capable of condensing itself from out of its sphere into the earth-zone or our physical world. Therefore most books on magic conjurations do not even mention simple demons, but talk only of demons with a certain rank and title. But even these are never dealt with in detail.
In this connection, one may raise the question of whether a being living in another zone would be able to call an initiate, a person of spiritual rank, into its zone. Such a question has to be denied from the hermetic point of view, for a human being, and especially an initiate, is a God-like creature symbolising in miniature, the macrocosm and representing the complete authority in the microcosm and macrocosm. A magician can therefore never be forced to do anything by any being, whatever degree of perfection it might have, with only one exception: Divine Providence. All heads, no matter of what rank or from which zone they come, and no matter whether good or evil, are only partial aspects of the macrocosm, of God. Without permission of Divine
Providence no being is able to urge its will on the perfect magician who has reached the connection with God. This again makes obvious to the magician the true value of man, especially of the man connected with God, and his significance within creation.
If a being of another zone wishes to enter the earth-zone or our physical world because Divine Providence has ordered it to do so or because it is its personal desire, no matter whether in a mental, astral or physical way, then such a being or head, irrelevant of its rank, must take on the shape appropriate to the qualities of the sphere from which it comes. An angel, for instance, who has love as its main quality, will appear as a perfect beauty; a being whose qualities are severity and strictness will have to appear in the shape appropriate to these qualities. It is exactly the same with beings of negative qualities: depending on the negative qualities they represent, they will have to take on, when appearing in the earthzone or on our physical earth, the shapes which symbolize these qualities. The appearing shapes of these beings, no matter whether good or evil or from whatever zone they come, will enable the magician who is well acquainted with symbolism to tell their qualities. The qualities of a being, its appearance and symbolic representation, is fully appropriate to its name, and according to the Law of Analogy, so that even a being of the highest rank is not able to give itself a name unsuitable to its qualities.
The magician, especially if acquainted with quabbalah, is capable of thoroughly checking the analogies according to the law of analogy and of determining whether the assertion of a being is true or not. No being, not even the worst and most deceitful type, will ever dare to tell the genuine magician a name which it does not really possess, and it will never dare to appear in a shape other than the one corresponding to its qualities. The genuine magician, however, is naturally free to order the being who has appeared in its true shape to change its shape into one desired by him. He will always be obeyed by the being concerned, for the genuine magician, as repeatedly stated before, is a perfect authority, is a God-man.
Each being, whether good or evil, whether angel or archangel, demon or archdemon, from whatever zone it may come, has certain restrictions in its qualities, caused and controlled by Divine
Providence, and depends on these qualities in its zone. A magician will therefore do well in asking beings to fulfill only tasks which they are able to fulfill due to their qualities and which lie within the range of their zone. The magician must then know well all qualities, faculties, causes and effects, powers and influences of each individual zone, and have them under his control in order to avoid making the mistake of asking a being to do something outside of the range of its zone. If the magician does not take this into consideration and if, in consequence, he asks a being for something not lying iri its power, then the best such a being can do is to place itself in another zone and there to cause another being to fulfill the magician's will and desire. The actual effect is, in this case, not brought about by the being evoked by the magician, but by another being. The absolute will of the magician is thus not directly expressed, as the effect takes place without his knowledge. I shall give some more details on the various shapes in which beings normally appear etc. in the chapter on hierarchy.
The magician might also be interested to learn how a being of another zone is able to bring about the desired effect in our physical world, be it mentally, astrally or physically. Since the will and desire of the magician is analogous to the qualities of the zones which he is dealing with, the commissioned being prepares the causes necessary for the effect in the world of causes of its own zone with the help of the electric and magnetic fluid, similar to the procedure of volting, as described in "Initiation into
Hermetics", or directly by word-power (cosmic language) and leads it through the world of causes of the relevant zone into the world of causes of the earth-zone, condensed by imagination, and from here, depending on the kind of effect it should cause, into the mental, astral or physical sphere. This is the actual procedure in respect of the beings capable of making their influence work from their zone into our sphere. A spirit being, however, is not able to do anything on its own accord or by its own will to influence our sphere. Only the strict order of a magician given with his absolute authority enables a being to influence our sphere effectively from its zone; by doing so the being cannot be made responsible for anything; every responsibility lies with the magician. To make it yet clearer: the work done by a being is the same kind of work which a servant does for his master.
Of course, a true magician will never dare ask a being, especially a negative being, to do things causing negative effects, for although he has become the master of life and death, the master of the laws, Divine Providence still controls him, and he would have to atone immensely for evil deeds which he could not account for.
One might now ask why a magician uses an elemental, elementary, astral or physical being mentally, astrally or physically, for his operations in our world or sphere, or in another sphere, and why he does not prefer to work with the power he has himself acquired and so to cause the desired magical effect. He is, in fact, able to cause certain effects when operating in the mental sphere by elementals or volts, that is by electromagnetic fluids, and he is also able to generate a certain physical power by various operations with elementaries and to bring about in this way some physical effect. The difference in the procedure lies in the fact that the powers, beings, elementals, elementaries etc. generated by him cannot operate independently, since they possess no intellect; the beings of any other zone, however, are, because they are intelligent creatures, able to carry out jobs for which a certain degree of intelligence is necessary. In those cases where a magician can do without any such being in obtaining his goal, he will naturally desist from employing a being from another zone to fulfill his purposes. He will, above all, evoke beings in case 1. he wants do demonstrate his authority over the beings and 2. in order to get full information on the zones from which the beings come.
Every experienced magician who leaves the physical world either with his mental or with his astral body to visit the various spheres of the earth-zone, or even to visit other zones, will realize that the beings of all zones, irrespective of their qualities and faculties, speak a universal language, called "metaphoricallanguage", i. e. the language of imagination. This is the reason why all beings can make themselves understood by another. Any average person may moreover experience this the moment he leaves his physical body, for he is then able to converse with any person amongst the dead, no matter to which nation he may have belonged before. If a magician whishes to say something in a sphere lying outside our physical world, that is if he wants to form ideas there, he will also do that by way of mouth, but no sounds will come out of his mouth; in place of sound vibrations pictures manifest themselves which then can be perceived by any being.
If, however, a spirit being is embodied in our physical world, that is if it has left its zone to get adequately condensed in order to be visible and audible, then this metaphorical language is at once translated into the language the magician knows. This means that should a magician call, by condensation, from the earth-zone into the physical world, a person who before his death was of Chinese, Indian or any other nationality, he will find that such a spirit has a perfect comm and of the language the magician himself speaks. A religious person will remember that the apostles and disciples of Christ who, after the death of the
Saviour, were filled with the Holy Ghost, were able to speak in all the languages of the earth. This expression of the Holy Bible
"filled with the Holy Ghost" clearly means that the apostles, the disciples of Christ, were, by the enlightment of the Holy Ghost, at that moment in the astral world and therefore able to translate the metaphorical language into any other desired language. This is no miracle, for it lies in the faculties of every being. Every person who has some idea about hermetics will know that the metaphorical language is the language of the universe, and that the ancient peoples made abundant use of this metaphorical or cosmic language. The hieroglyphs of the old Egyptians are a striking example for this fact. That the words expressed by the metaphorical language had a strong magic effect, cannot be doubted. And it is not without purpose that the people of the
Orient and others made so much use of the metaphorical language, for within the borders of their countries stood the cradle of all hermetic sciences.

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