Concerning Reverence

It can't be helped that the student will notice an intense feeling of reverence within the Golden Dawn teachings.  "Glory be to Thee, Father of the undying," says the Heirophant in the Neophyte ceremony, "for Thy glory flows out rejoicing to the ends of the Earth. . . Frater Kerux, I command you to declare that the Neophyte has been initiated into the mysteries of the 0 = 0 Grade."  Someone not accustomed to the uppity intonations of Hermetic ritual, would probably think, "You command him?  Who do you think you are!"  And yet, many people are drawn to such flowery prose.  Some of them are naive.  And then again, some--who think magically--are aware of its power.   Dramatic words can be used to raise a spirit of reverence.  Almost anything can be used in that way.  What may appear as a worn out, broken antique to the man on the street may be a powerful talisman to someone else.  As a student of magic, the aspiring magician changes his perception of everything, and through this process of transformation, his awareness of reverence changes with him.    The magician has learned to feel it from moment to moment in a state of mind epitomized by children and quite often mistaken for naivety.

 It is very much a sign of the times now that irreverence  is a supposed virtue.  Just read a movie review column.  There are  many dramatic devices used in acting and directing that are viewed by critics as hokey or outdated simply because they are not complex.  For instance, the following is a recent quote from the local paper:  "The picture ends up chasing its own tail, with a final con that's both too obvious and too abstruse."  Many reviewers turn their appreciation for drama off, almost as though by an automatic switch, if the writer isn't smart enough to surprise them with a plot twist.

Our intellects today are required to be so shrewd as to not let in the slightest bit of awe if we can outsmart the director and predict what is coming next.  Such a habit can become an acquired curse of the mind that renders one incapable of utilizing the power of emotion.  

Here are some tests to see if you are habitually irreverent.  

1. When someone asks you if you like a song playing on the radio, do you first respond by trying to find out who the artist is?  In other words, do you let your past experience inhibit your experience of the present?  (This is a good example of how Karma works) 

2. Another test:  Watch an old science-fiction movie, one with outdated special effects.  Do you dismiss the whole movie because the effects are not convincing?  How much good drama might you miss because it is not dressed up to meet your acquired standards?

3. Without being condescending, can you express respect towards children?  How about awe?  

4. Are you a novelty junky?  If something has been done before, does it bore you?  Can you experience enthusiasm for routine activities?

Here we come to the task of the student of the occult.  He is leaving behind naivety (neophyte) and moving through genuine adulthood (outer order grades) towards the eventual mastery of his incarnation (adeptship).  His goal is fearlessness.  And yet, one of the marks of an enlightened being is his apparent innocence and awe before the events of his life.  How can that be a mature, spiritual state of mind?  The innocence of the child and the innocence of an enlightened being look alike, but what is the difference?

The enlightened being has control over his sense of awe.  He is not gullible against his will, nor is he afraid. Events don't intimidate him and overpower him as they do a child.  He willingly jumps into the torrent, unafraid of appearing small before the titanic forces of life. The fear of the roller-coaster ride has been transmuted from a terror into a thrill.

The requirement for being able to let go in the above manner is none other than the surrender of the ego's control over the experience of emotion.  When profound reverence or awe threatens to overwhelm and subdue the ego, the average person resists, fights, or hides.  Just start singing in front of someone and watch their body language.  The magician has learned to surrender his sense of self to feelings as they arise.  The self has no inherent reality anyway, being a combination of various forces pretending they are of one essence.  There is nothing real to be lost in giving way to powerful feelings of drama.  Emotions are beasts that are to be nurtured, fed, and harnessed to pull the magician's chariot.

But then it may be remarked that there are plenty of people around us who are bad examples of giving in to emotion.  Desire makes them poor, fat, or unfaithful to their mates.  Fear makes them violent, inactive, and repressed. Pleasure makes them forget to pay the rent.  We fear these results of surrender to basic urges, and it keeps us estranged from our feelings.  How can we let our emotions out of their cages and not end up doing foolish things?

Surrender most importantly involves not reacting blindly and letting the emotion rule the body, for that is also a form of repression--to numb oneself to emotion by letting it bypass awareness and go directly into action.  The key is to wakefully experience emotion without reacting passively.  The magician does not hide from his feelings, repress them, or let them dictate his actions.  The magician is free, no longer corralled by his emotions.  He has learned to let them out of their cages, to refine them, to bridle them, and to finally mount upon them like a masterful rider.  As it says in a Golden Dawn prayer:  

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And no longer shall we be swept away by the tempest, but we shall hold the bridles of the winged steeds of dawn--and we shall direct the course of the evening breeze to fly before Thee, O Spirit of Spirits...

Such a freedom is bliss beyond anything experienced by the child.  The child is overwhelmed by awe.  He then learns to deny this feeling as a typically ignorant adult.  As a magician he will obtain the most unexpected kind of power: The power of surrender--a knowledgeable return to innocence.

The magician gives up one form of control and appears to gain another.  Or in other words, he surrenders all personal interest, making room for a new non-personal awareness to descend and preside.  This transformation heralds the state sought after in the discipline of magic, the fabled "knowledge and conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel."  

Ritual is the training ground for this transformation of consciousness, and ceremonial magic is said to occur primarily  in the Sephirah, Hod.  Hod is the sphere in which are found faculties that help one repress and channel emotion.  Ritual in Hod acts as a controlling mechanism upon the raw emotions in Netzach.  And in the outer order work of the Golden Dawn, it is the controlling faculties of Hod that are uprooted from the domination of the ego and eventually turned over to the Higher Self.  

The magician has surrendered his control consequently becomes a rider on the forces of his own life, particularly of his emotions.  An individual who can harness that power is impressive indeed.

The state of mind that is the most helpful in achieving the goal of surrender is characterized by the spirit of reverence.

It doesn't take long to realize that the effects of magic largely are felt by the moods and qualities of intelligence that they bring on.  The moods themselves are that very substance of the spirits the magician calls upon, so it must be remembered that the quality of consciousness itself is that which matters most, not the image or symbol used to conjure it up.  Reverence is truly naive when it becomes idolatry.  

In the classic text of magic, The Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage, Abraham the Jew reminds the aspirant to "inflame thyself with prayer."  It is one of the first types of entity that the student of magic is required to conjure up--the spirit of intense reverence.  If he wants to achieve the power of the magician, he must become a master of this particular emotion. Reverence is the most powerful spirit.  If the student is stubborn, refusing to give in, clinging to larger-than-life notions about himself, then the forces of his life will rise up around him and pounce, beating down his sense of self-importance until finally, if he is lucky, in the dust of his own ruin he discovers the power of humility.  Let this serve as a warning to anyone who would, out of arrogance, estrange himself from his own feelings.

Israel Regardie wrote often on the subject of reverence for the highest, loftiest, purest state of consciousness:

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A great deal of attention should be paid to that part of the ceremony demanding the invocation of the Higher. Success herein spells success of the entire ceremony.  That is, there should be a clear consciousness of the presence of the Divine force coursing through the operator.  It is an unmistakable sensation.  So strong and powerful can this become, that at times it may almost seem a physical one.  If this Invocation is slurred over or inconsequentially performed, then a great deal of power must be expended unnecessarily on the remaining parts of the ritual in order to redeem the entire operation from failure.

If the magician fails to subjugate himself before his higher self, the ritual is then contaminated with the "what's in it for me" demon. This is the normal state of the ego which has no place inside the magical circle.  It doesn't even exist in the higher worlds of Briah and Atziluth, so how could it's thought patterns have the authority to make a magical operation work?  Self interest, though not in itself bad, would be more effectively utilized outside the ritual chamber in mundane actions.  

All of the knowledge in the gradework that the student gains about himself--his abilities, his limitation, and the secret inner world of the Spirit--what is he to do with it?  Will he follow the dictates of his biology and instincts, using them to bolster a competitive position against his peers?  Will he use them to serve the needs of his mortal, petty self?  Or will he become a master of those needs, releasing them, refining them, and harnessing them, eventually to offer up his control of them to the Higher Self, faithfully knowing that the Holy Guardian Angel delights in consuming him and diverting him from Earthly motives to Divine ends?