The Great Work

Satan and the Angel

Satan and the Angel

“Whenever I want you, all I have to do is dream, dream, dream, dream” … We all know that classic Everly Brothers song, a nice wee song about dreaming about someone you want to have sex with. Here’s a fact about the Everlys, they had a 10 year falling out once because one of them showed up at a gig hammered and couldn’t remember song lyrics. Some fisticuffs broke out and the band broke up for about 10 years. We know history bounds in cycles, so y’know Oasis fans we might well see them getting back together. Actually, there’s little doubt Oasis will reform for huge money in the future. If you can get the Eagles to reform (those lads had cocaine-fueled arguments involving chainsaws) you can get two mouthy Manchester brothers back together.

The Devil, SatanBack to dreaming though, today’s article is thanks to a breakthrough I had after watching some recent Bernardo (Brendan) Kastrup videos concerning Carl Jung’s idea of synchronicity concerning a dream I had involving Lucifer and some dallying with an angel called Yahahel (Iahhel in some guides).

At the time of the dream I had been going through a period of a few weeks of mini-awakenings. I’ve not had any ground-breaking massive awakening experiences in a while; I’m not too confident of them every happening again I can’t shake a feeling that the big ones are done now and it’ll just continue to be smaller ones as I continue on up that  Rudolf Steiner idea of an upward spiral. I’m not too convinced on full realisation either; I’m lucky enough to be able to tap into non-daulity now just by calling it up but I don’t believe that it will always there. It is always there but only when called upon, it’s not always always there. I don’t think it is always always there for anybody. How in the name of God would you be able to drive a car if you were always in a state of non-duality? Badly, badly is the answer.

Mini-Awakenings

So there I was and these mini-awakenings were happening. But let’s examine them, or at least give examples of what I mean. Basically, they are becoming aware of a shadow that has lingered for a long time concerning some prior issue and the awakening involves realising why a situation unfolded in the way that it did. Nine times out of 10 it’s because you’ve reacted in the way you did at the time because of some false bias that clouded your thoughts on it and you acted out in an archetypal manner rather than in a more moral or ‘truer’ manner.

It’s like for years you’ve felt you were wronged by someone and now finally you come to the conclusion that you felt that way because at the time the event happened your mind was clouded by anger, or fear, for example, because you were carrying baggage from something earlier or because of some preconceived, at the time, projection you were putting on to the other person involved in the event. It’s a lovely little feeling that something can just be chalked off and you can say to yourself, ah that’s why that happened in that way. And then you can spend a moment on it because you’ve learnt something new and hopefully can take this new information onboard and continue to become a more moral, just and overall sounder person.

I was going through a few of these events anyway and then one night I had a very, what can I saw, epic dream. I use that word with trepidation because it’s been ruined by gamers and content creators and the like but it was epic in the true sense of the word, at least the true sense when it’s taken as an adjective; heroic.Wieliczka Salt Mine, Poland

I found myself in a cave, a massively, deep chasm within a cave very, very far down beneath the earth. I felt puny, absolutely tiny but I also felt ready for a fight. This was going to be a boss battle and it had to be won. But who and where was the boss? It was dark as hell but there was something in the cave walls that caused it to glitter, it was salt. Just like the famous Wieliczka Salt Mine just outside Krakow where you can literally lick the walls and taste salt. And yes, of course I did that when the tour guide suggested it, as usual the only idiot who would and then he asked me to think about how many 1000s of people had done the same thing. Not to worry he said, the salt will have killed the germs. Thanks Pawel. Wieliczka is awesome though, if you’ve ever around Krakow do visit it. So here I was in a dark, cavernous scary cave with walls that sparkled. I was waiting. Waiting and waiting and waiting but knowing something threatening was going to show up.

Big, Scary Satan

From my right side the cave began to shake and boulders began to break away from what would be the ceiling and just like that scene in the first Hellboy film, shockingly enough called Hellboy, where his horns are growing back and he’s devilish and scary as Hell… it was something like that and this huge, gigantic beingemerged from the ground as the ground grew higher and higher and I was just standing them, mouth agape and feeling terrified. When the cave finally stopped shaking there he was, the hideous Dark Lord himself, Satan was staring at me.

I lost the plot. Like an angry terrier barking at a pitbull even though there’s a gate between them, I wasn’t going to show this son-of-a-bitch I was scared even though I very much was. So I just tore into it, giving him a ton of abuse, I want nothing to do with you ya cunt, fuck off ta fuck and get the fuck away from me. I don’t want anything to do with you ya prick, fuck off and leave me alone. Suck my fucking dick. Ya get the picture, I’m not 100% sure of what I said in my dream but it was along those lines. And then he was gone.

Fast forward then a few months and the mini-awakenings were still happening but not so often and I was getting, well, a little bored of meditating and nothing much happening, no major breakthroughs no bliss events or the like so I wanted to speed things up a bit. I was ready and waiting for my next big one, even though I’d said to myself there wouldn’t be anymore big ones but sure why not try and give it a push anyway.

The Angel

Shem Talisman from the 72 Angels of Magick by Damon BrandEnter Yahahel. Yahahel, or Iahhel in some books/guides has the talent of ‘to Obtain Wisdom and Knowledge’ and that’s what I was after. The wisdom and knowledge that comes with awakening experiences. He’s one of the 72 angels of the Shem HaMephorash. So I followed a daily ritual to ‘work with him’. It was pretty easy, say a prayer, look at a sigil, more prayers, another sigil, ask for what you want and then meditate. Easy-peasy. I’ve done these things before and they work. I don’t know why or how but in my experience they do and in the first few days you will feel the presence and receive the answer. Oh boy did I receive an answer.

I was mentally slaughtered. I went through one of the most intense times of mental turmoil I’ve ever experienced. And I’ve been depressed and suicidal before, quite a few times but this was different. This time it wasn’t physically, I wasn’t lethargic or grumpy or sad or miserable, this time my head was just wrecked with thoughts of how fucking terrible a person I am. Just a worthless, useless, loveless, unlovable, horrible piece of shit of a waste of human life. This went on for days and days and days and then a few more days. It was pure, mental anguish. And what was so weird about it was that everything outside of my mindspace was cushty. Love life and marriage was fine, kids; fine, work; fine, family relationships; fine, money; fine, physical health; fine. It was just my mind was awash with these thoughts of self-loathing and that’s where the issue was. I felt physically ready and grounded enough to try to fast forward a ‘big’ awakening event but Yahahel put me in my place and said, hey-ho boyo, your mind isn’t ready yet and there’s work to be done. I needed to learn to love myself and accept myself and while I’d thought I’d done most of that years ago in therapy they were right, I wasn’t there.

Bernardo Kastrup’s Awesomeness

This was all a few months ago now and recently we tackled the issue of what synchronicity is on a recent episode of TaSTA. For my research into it I dug into what I thought would be the best book on it; Bernardo Kastrup’s Decoding Carl Jung’s Metaphysics. My thoughts being that sometimes it’s better to read the book about the person’s thoughts rather than the person’s own thoughts. It’s a great book and it’s all explained very well. I’m a huge fan of Mr Kastrup and really enjoy listening to/watching his interviews on YouTube.

Why God needed Satan

In one of those interviews he talks about the idea of why Satan came into being and why God needed him to be a thing so that Adam and Eve would fall from the grace. Let me try to summarise it quickly knowing that this article is quite long already. Carl Jung believed (knew?) that God isn’t conscious, i.e. he has no self-reflection. We, his tools on this plane of existence, are the ones with self-reflection and by self-reflection He learns more about Himself. Now these are Christian terms of course but I’d rather think of it as the universal consciousness learning about itself rather than a beardy dude in the clouds. So by us being good, moral, just and wise it learns from us but we also have to play our part by actually self-reflecting and trying to better ourselves.

Satan’s role was he was the instigator in this, he was the one that gave us the choice of self-reflection and God created him so that this would happen. God couldn’t just make us self-reflective, He isn’t so he needed something else to give us that choice. Adam and Eve had always been naked in the Garden of Eden but after eating the fruit from the Tree of Life, and sinning, the now knew they’d sinned meaning they had the ability of self-reflection so now they knew they were naked and they felt shame.

Kastrup says in the interview that Satan ‘calls you on your bullshit’. He’s the one who tempts us because he makes us self-reflect, he makes us weigh up options and tempts us to go with either what best suits our animal instincts or our moral ones. With this archetypal Satan appearing in my dream surely this is what was going on. I, the hero, waiting for battle (a massive projection that I see now) and this thing looking at me calling out my bullshit (my desire to take on something evil and scare it even though it has the power of all the evil in the world while all I could do was swear at it). But hey, at least I didn’t back down.

So, Satan was calling me on my bullshit, giving me a choice between going with the option that’s best for me on my animal instinct level and a ‘higher’ more moral choice; to be a better person or to give in to fear. In my dream I obviously gave in to fear. I didn’t see it at the time obviously, I only see it now, all these months later. Yahahel did the same, basically letting me know that there’s still an a wounded child in there and indeed, in writing this article it’s just come to me that that archetype of the wounded, inner child has been appearing for quite a while now so my next mission is to help him work it out.

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