Gnosis and the Magician

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We are going on a trip to an unknown place, and in order to get to that destination we need to know the way. The gnostic methods that have been passed down to us by teachers across time will be our guide to reach that place, but it is important to understand that every step of that journey we have to take with our own feet. The gnostic work requires effort on the individual’s part. As much as a teacher or a scripture can give us instructions, we have to be making that effort on our own in order to reach the goal.

For that reason it is important to always reflect on our purpose for being here. Why are we studying gnosis? What are we hoping to achieve? Each of us has a personal goal. By not losing sight of that goal, we should be able to reach the end without giving up. As difficulties come up, we should always be holding onto our purpose, and what we are seeking will help us to accomplish that goal.

But in addition to all of our personal reasons for being on this path, there is also a cosmic purpose to the gnostic work. All of us have the opportunity to become fully developed human beings, if we know the methods, if we apply the science. The human being has an important role in the cosmos: to be a caretaker of all living beings, to be a servant of divinity, a vehicle through which divinity can express within creation, but that is not something that we currently have. That is our goal. That is what we are working toward. In order to achieve that goal, there are a few things that we have to understand.

Our Focus

Today we are going to learn about what gnosis is. What does it mean when we say gnosis? That type of knowledge is distinct from the knowledge that we learn in school. Most of our education nowadays is just to educate the intellect and the mind, and to stuff us full of information. So, we are going to understand today a very clear idea of what gnosis is and how that knowledge is different.
 
Also, what is the goal of the gnostic work? Why do we apply this method to ourselves? Why do we undergo the struggles of working with a spiritual method? What is the goal? What is the purpose of that?
 
Secondly, we are going to learn about consciousness and the role that consciousness plays in helping us to reach our spiritual goal.
 
Finally, we will apply a spiritual principle to ourselves in a practical way to understand how we can have the right foundation for beginning the gnostic work. ​

​The Definition of Gnosis

​So γνώσις gnosis is a Greek word for “knowledge.” It is the knowledge that we acquire through our own experience, as opposed to knowledge that we are told or believe in. This is different than our intellectual theories or our beliefs, right? Many of us may have theories, may have theories about spirituality or religion. We may have deep beliefs that we feel very emotionally attached to and have held onto for a very long time. But gnosis is a knowledge that we gain by living through something directly. That direct experience is completely different than just having information in our minds.

I think that a good analogy for this is considering a person who reads a lot about a topic, let us say the topic of war. They read many books about war. They might watch films about war, or look at movies, and that information that they gain helps them to develop their own opinions about war, their own concepts or theories about war and why it occurs. They may even have very strong beliefs about war based off of the limited information that they have been exposed to. They may believe that war is justified, or they may believe that war is evil.
 
That kind of knowledge is very different from the experiential knowledge of someone who has lived through and fought in a war. That person deeply knows in a very profound way what war is, the effects of war, whether it is good or evil. That person has lived through it, and has been forever changed by their experience of war.
 
If we compare that with spirituality, that is the kind of distinction that we are making when we talk about gnosis being experienced.
 
You can read many, many books about spirituality. Nowadays, they are abundant. You can watch YouTube documentaries. You can develop many complicated theories about how you think the universe is, what you believe God is. You may even have beliefs that you have been taught from an early age in your religion that you hold onto very tightly, that you really believe in your heart are true, but when you actually live through a spiritual experience connecting with divinity, experiencing that directly, it transforms you entirely. That kind of experience can change your life forever. That type of experience is gnosis.
 
In the same way, even our mundane experience of life can be transformed into a spiritual experience of life, if we learn how to awaken our consciousness, to really experience directly and with the full intensity of our Being our day-to-day existence. That is why the founder of this tradition, Samael Aun Weor, wrote that:

Initiation is life itself, intensely lived, with rectitude and with love. ―Samael Aun Weor

Spiritual initiation, the beginning of the spiritual work, is occurring within our own life, but we have to live our life not in a theoretical way, not just filled with beliefs, but really consciously directly experiencing our life and observing what is really happening in our lives, really looking at who we are, our behavior in life, really trying to understand reality in a conscious, deep, and profound way.
 
In order to achieve that kind of conscious awakening, in order to learn the methods by which we can experience life in that profoundly different way of perception, we have this tradition, the Gnostic tradition, which embodies the core wisdom or knowledge of humanity. This is a spiritual tradition that has been preserved for thousands of years. It has come through all of the mystical branches of religion. It has come from ancient Egypt, and the Greek mysteries, Roman mythology, the Rosicrucians. Many esoteric groups have preserved this knowledge and the techniques needed in order to awaken our consciousness and develop the full potential of a human being.
 
We remember that the goal of the gnostic work is to develop the full potential of our soul, to become a true human being with power over nature and with the ability to serve God in a virtuous way. So, our goal is to become gnostics, people who have that direct personal experience of divinity, people who are transformed in their lives by their living connection with divinity.
 
Gnostics are also individuals who embody the highest ethical and spiritual values, such as temperance, diligence, humility, chastity, generosity, and more.
 
When we think about our goal, are we aligned with this idea of a gnostic?
 
Are we merely seeking experiences or entertainment or curiosity, or are we actually looking for a profound transformation of ourselves and our lives?
 
Are we looking for a way to become virtuous, to connect and serve divinity?
 
That is really important that we understand that this method is intended to take us to the heights of spiritual development and purity, to really crystallize an ethic in us that is so profound that it transforms our life and our Being.
 
Samael Aun Weor also stated that:

The hour has arrived to abandon theories and go directly to what is practical. ―Samael Aun Weor, Practical Astrology: The Zodiacal Course

That is why gnosis is not a theoretical kind of teaching. We can make it theoretical, if we all do is read some books or articles and then we never apply them to our lives, but in truth, gnosis is supposed to be practical. These are teachings that we use upon ourselves to transform ourselves in a real way. ​

Consciousness in Life

We need to use consciousness in order to practically apply the teachings of gnosis to our self. Consciousness is awareness, perception of our life and our selves, our inner states and our external environments, perception of what we are doing.
 
One definition of consciousness is “an alert cognitive state in which you are aware of yourself and your conditions.” Now, most of use have some degree of consciousness, right? We are awake right now. We are listening to this talk, but how conscious are we really? Do we have periods of our life or periods throughout the day where we zone out or we become totally distracted for several hours and then we look back and we were not conscious of what we were doing? In fact, we cannot really remember much of what we were doing.
 
We need to work with consciousness and try to strengthen that muscle to perceive, to really be aware of what we are doing in the moment.
 
The reason we need consciousness for gnostic work is because that conscious perception is what allows us to attain experiential knowledge. We want gnosis of ourselves, so that means that we need to be conscious of ourselves: “what am I thinking, feeling, doing, saying?” We need gnosis of our life, so we need to be conscious of every situation that we are in. The more conscious that you are, the more information that you can receive from that experience, and that is why working strengthening your consciousness, really paying attention to yourself and to your environment through out the day, is a foundation for developing gnosis.

In addition, our quality of consciousness, our level of consciousness, will determine our trajectory on the line of being. You can see here in this graphic that there are two lines. The horizontal line of life is all of our mundane activities: we are born, we grow up through adolescence to adulthood, we age, and we die. That horizontal line of life, all of us are pretty aware of. We are focused on making it through, meeting our needs, reaching our material goals on the line of life, but are we very aware that there is a second line, a line of being that intersects the line of life at every moment?
 
In this present moment, not only are you living on that horizontal line of life, but you are also existing somewhere on this vertical line of being. Higher states of being are elevated states of consciousness, pure states of consciousness. When you live in a virtuous way, when your character is integrated and connected with divinity, you can ascend to those higher states of being. You can live in a heavenly state. Even if you are here on Earth, you can be surrounded by positive situations, positive people, and you can radically improve your circumstances by elevating yourself on the line of being.
 
However, the reverse is also true. If you perform harmful actions, if you are always thinking negative thoughts, if you find yourself confronted by lots and lots of problems, then you can be living in a lower level of being. We call these hell realms, and even here on Earth many people are living in hell and suffering terribly. Even if someone has a lot of material wealth, we could say that if they have a very low level of being, if they behave in a degenerated manner, if they are dominated by their passions and desires, they could experience states of hell because they will not be happy. They will always be continually torn by negative states of existence.
 
One thing that I want to note is that we may have some mystical experiences from time to time. We may be able to astral project or really gain a valuable insight in meditation, and that is all good, but our goal with the gnostic work is not just to collect those kinds of experiences but really to radically change who we are, so that we are permanently living in those higher states of being.
 
Currently, if we have an experience now and then, we are like spiritual tourists. We go up to heaven for an evening and then we come back and we are faced with the same problems. We are still caught up in our own desires and negativity and egotism from day to day. That shows us that we have not fully integrated that kind of gnostic advancement that we are looking for. We want to really be changing as people and using consciousness and spiritual teachings to transform ourselves, so that we are continually arising up on the line of being. This means that we need to use spiritual teachings in a very practical way. ​

The First Arcanum or Spiritual Law of the Mysteries

You may have noticed that many spiritual teachings come to us in the form of mysteries. They come as parables, myths, koans, or even arcana in the case of the Tarot. We might ask ourselves, "Why are the spiritual teachers always giving us so many symbols? Why don’t they just teach us in a very direct way? Write out a couple of sentences clearly in English so that we can understand.”
 
That is because the teachings that we receive are developed for our consciousness. A symbol, like this Arcanum 1: The Magician, can encompass far, far more knowledge than a couple of sentences written on a page. However, that knowledge can only be accessed with our consciousness.
 
That is why working with consciousness and really trying to understand what something means and then applying it in our daily life is the first step of entering into the spiritual mysteries. The spiritually initiated people had to begin by transforming themselves first, developing ethical purity, not just by reading a lot of books, but by really undergoing a psychological training in order to become ready to receive these types of mysteries.
 
I thought it would useful for us today to look at this teaching, the Magician, Arcanum 1, the very first mystery of the spiritual work, and to try to apply it to ourselves. So although this card holds many, many levels of meaning that we cannot discuss today, we are going to look at its most basic sense. We are going to try to understand why the Magician is the first step in the spiritual work, why understanding this mystery is required before we can enter into any of the rest of the mysteries.
 
On its most basic level, what does it mean to us that we have to master this principle, this principle of the Magician, in order to really begin our spiritual journey? Let us ask ourselves, let us apply this in a practical way to ourselves, “Are we currently the magician?” “Magician” comes from the word magush, which is a “priest,” a very highly developed spiritual person, a person we assume has some level of mastery, right?
 
In fact, Samael Aun Weor taught us that this arcanum gives aptitude in order to resolve problems.
 
Do we have the aptitude to resolve all of our problems?
 
Samael Aun Weor also said it grants power, as much for awakening as for dominating passions in the physical world.
 
So if we look at ourselves, do we have the power to awaken consciousness in a radical way currently?
 
Do we have the power to dominate our passions, our selfish desires in the physical world?
 
Those two are very closely intertwined. By learning how to dominate our desires, by learning how to transform ourselves from an egotistical and selfish person into a virtuous and selfless person with all of those great qualities that we spoke about earlier that gnostics possess, we will awaken consciousness. Also, conversely, by awakening consciousness, by being more aware of ourselves and our behaviors throughout the day, we will also gain the knowledge, the insight, and the comprehension of ourselves currently that will help us know how to dominate our passions, how to change. ​

Are We the Magician?

​Let us look at three qualities of the magician and see how these apply to ourselves.
 
Firstly, the magician has knowledge of real reality, objective reality.
 
All of us think that we perceive reality, but do we really perceive reality clearly?
 
Are we actually seeing what is really there?
 
You can think as an example of a time you might have met someone and from your first impression had a bad opinion of them, believed that they were a certain way, but then later on as you got to know that person, you realize that your opinion of them in the beginning had been completely wrong. This happens to us all the time, and we should realize that this is evidence that we did not perceive reality, right? The first time we met a person we thought we knew them. We thought that we had a sense of who they were, but over time we discovered that we had been wrong.
 
We cannot trust that our perception is accurate. In our current state of being, because of our sleeping consciousness, we are not really perceiving reality, and so we are not like the Magician in the sense that we have already the knowledge that we need in order to pursue spiritual development. We need to begin by just truly deeply reflecting on ourselves and observing ourselves and our situations throughout the day, in order to gain that kind of insight and knowledge that will help us to change.
 
For most of us, we see reality upside down. Most of us believe that the real “me” is this terrestrial personality: “my name, my job, my race, my social status, my appearance.” We are very attached to these things, and we spend lots of time and energy on trying to take care of the concerns, problems, and desires of that terrestrial personality. When it comes to the soul, obviously we consider it important because we are in this type of study, but our actions and our use of energy and time shows that we do not really believe it is the most valuable part of our life. In most cases, we are spending 90% of our time and energy, or more, investing in the terrestrial self and very little time, just whatever time is left to develop our soul.
 
Again, this shows that we have a fundamental misperception of reality because in the cosmic scheme of things, the terrestrial self is a very temporary state. We are only going to be this person for a very short time, but the soul is very, very important. Developing the soul is what will determine all the rest of our existences and where we will go after death.
 
The soul is the reality. The soul is our connection with God. Without God, we cannot live a single minute and yet we never remember God. We are always distracted by our desires in the physical world.
 
Another quality of the magician is that he is a master of himself or herself.
 
Are we masters of ourselves? Well, we might think that we have a lot of self-control or insight, but in reality, most of the time we find that we are consumed by negative states. We have a lot of problems, and we get upset about things. We take for granted that our feeling is correct, is accurate. “I should be angry. I am justified. I should feel proud. I did a great thing.” Instead of questioning these types of states, we just accept them, and that shows that we are kind of asleep because we do not have insight into the harm that those states cause for us and for others.
 
In the same way, we have a lot of desire, a lot of selfish desire. We spend a lot of time serving that desire. In a way, we are slaves to our desires, and we do not have the freedom to truly choose a virtuous goal and willpower to follow through and achieve it.
 
Eliphas Levi said that the magus is a microprosopus: he is a master of his own little world. So the first step that we need to take if we want to enter into the spiritual work is to become a master of ourselves, to learn how to confront those negative states and really understand them and where they come from. That will give us the power to choose how to respond. This is not just to put a false positivity over the negative state and to repress it, but to really sit with it, to meditate on it, to reflect and understand where that comes from, and also to see the effects of that type of negative state or that type of desire, and then, through that comprehension, to choose a different way.
 
Finally, the Magician has power over circumstances.
 
Well, for most of us we feel that we are victims of our circumstances. Everything in life just seems to happen to us. As much as we try to fight against the circumstances, we often feel that we do not have much power or much control. We are just trying to react and react and react to the next problem that comes to us in life.
 
In this state, it is very hard to gain a spiritual development because we do not feel that we really have power. We are always trying to confront problems. On the other hand, if we take the Magician as our archetype for beginning a spiritual work, the Magician takes responsibility for himself and his life. That is the first step. We have to take responsibility for how we respond to life. Although we cannot control the circumstances that may come our way, we can control our responses to those circumstances.
 
If we remain unconscious when negative situations happen to us, we will interpret them very negatively and will respond to them negatively and will end up creating more problems. Someone insults us and because we are unconscious, we get angry. We sit in that anger. We allow that anger to infect the people around us as we may gossip about this person, and then we insult that person and the problem goes on and on and on.
 
A magician on the other hand may be insulted, may be hurt by that insult, but can understand that he needs to choose a wise way to respond, a loving and virtuous way to respond, regardless of what the circumstance is. Through that method he can begin to change his circumstances. A problem that would have gone on and on and on if we had fed into it can very quickly be resolved if we respond to it with serenity and with virtue. 

Applying Spiritual Knowledge

So how can we apply this in practice to ourselves?
 
I find that this quote from Dion Fortune is very practical. It is a really good way of looking at how we take our current situation in life, and we try to become magicians. We try to be conscious of our life and to redirect our attitude towards life.
 
If this is the first step that we need to take to engage in real spiritual transformation, then we need to perform this on ourselves.
 
Dion Fortune says about the initiate, who is a beginner magician:

Knowing the power of concentrated thought, the initiate makes use of it in all the problems of life. His method, however, is not that of direct attack in which he wills the change of the unpleasant condition but is directed to bring about certain changes in his own consciousness, for he knows that it is his own temperament which is the real instrument of karma. It is only through those factors in his own nature which react that karma can affect him. He knows that certain conditions come to him in order that they may provoke certain reactions in his own nature, and according to his handling of these reactions will be his karma, even in this present life. ―Dion Fortune, The Training and Work of an Initiate

So what Dion Fortune is saying here is that a magician is not just trying to go out and externally control unpleasant situations. He is not trying to control other people and force them to do what he wants. Rather, the magic performed by this magician is transforming his own consciousness. Knowing that making changes within his own temperament and his reactions to life is what will produce external changes later on.
 
Karma is cause and effect. If we produce causes that are positive, that are virtuous, the effect is that positive things will begin to occur.
 
Now, we can’t expect immediate results, but we will see these kinds of changes over time.
 
In order to illustrate this in a very practical way, I will use an example from my own life, many years ago when I was first trying to apply this teaching to myself. At that time I was working in a restaurant. I really hated the job, and I was very unhappy with my situation in life. I began studying these gnostic methods and I decided that I would try to apply them in a practical way to myself.
 
How can I make a change in myself to transform a negative quality or an egotistical desire and make that into something virtuous?
 
How can I use my own willpower to make a transformation in myself?
 
I was working in many areas of my life, but I am going to pick the example of the restaurant just to make it very concrete and clear how I applied this teaching. In this restaurant, many of the people had a negative attitude, like me, and did not really want to work there, and so many of us were very focused on just making our own money, taking care of our own tasks and not really supporting the whole team. One thing that was an expectation at the job was that when we had some down time at work, we would help out other team members with some of their tasks, but no one ever did this. Everyone took for granted that no one was going to do this task that we were supposed to do by helping each other out. I myself was guilty of that. I went into work with a really lazy attitude of not wanting to do anything more than bare minimum of what I had to do to get through the day. But taking this gnostic teaching and recognizing, as I observed myself and paid attention to myself at work that I was being really lazy and negative all the time and not living in a virtuous way, not even trying to help people in the most simplest way, I thought this is a really good place for trying to just make small change in myself. “Let me take that laziness and selfish and try to just transform it into a little bit more diligence, a little more helpfulness for others.”
 
One way that I did this was that in the dining room, servers would always stack plates and plates, tons of dirty dishes, and we were supposed to be bringing these back to the kitchen. When you had some downtime, you would help the other servers by bringing their dirty dishes back to the kitchen. No one ever did this, and so one day, I thought, “Well, I will put this in practice. If I am really going to overcome this lazy tendency, one way that I can be diligent and help people, even though it is such a small way to do it, is just carrying these stacks of dishes back” ―and so every day I would go and I would take the stacks of dishes back to the kitchen.
 
Only after about 2 or 3 weeks, other servers noticed that I had changed my behavior and that I was doing this. Maybe it was out of guilt or compassion for me, but those other servers also started to help. They would take the dishes from me or when they had downtime they would start taking the dishes back. This changed the dynamic of our workplace. It did not become a perfect workplace, but people definitely had more feelings of gratitude towards each other. There was a shift in culture where people had an attitude of wanting to help each other a little more, and definitely people respected me a little more and got along better with me because they knew that I was working hard and trying to go above and beyond what the bare minimum expectation of what the job was, not just by taking back the dishes. I think that is one clear example.
 
In addition to this change that I experienced at my workplace, I also experienced a change in myself. I had more energy. I had more positivity about the job, even though it was still difficult, but I did not dread it in the same way. I felt much more connected to my co-workers and so this small change within myself really did change the conditions around me.
 
Furthermore, a couple of months later, I got an amazing job offer and was able to change careers. I really do attribute it to these small changes that I was making through the gnostic work. So I took a spiritual principle. I applied it directly to myself in a conscious way through willpower, through paying attention to myself and how I behaved in my life, and through that kind of very real and authentic transformation in myself, changes came about in my circumstances. You can say that I rose up one notch on that level of being, and so all of my circumstances around me also were improved by that. People around me were also benefited by that.
 
Even though this is such a simple example, I hope that everyone will start where they are at. Start with the conditions you have around you. Our karma, our circumstances, are our first initiation. If we can transform our current level of being, we can change everything. As we transform ourselves internally, our conscious perception of life also changes. We receive a lot more knowledge, a lot more gnosis, and the quality of that knowledge that we receive is much more profound and insightful.
 
Over time, you will be able to really experience a shift in your whole understanding of reality, but it begins by actually changing in ourselves. This is not a performance. No one else needs to know that you are doing this. I did not tell everyone at work, “Oh! I am going to start trying to be diligent.” You do it for yourself and you do it for divinity. You apply these teachings in a practical way to yourself and you make a change, and that is what produces the effect. ​

​The Magush, Magician of Real Change

​To conclude, I will share one more quote. This quote is about being a magician because as I just described, being a magician happens with every action we take in life. Even internal actions, even changing our inner attitudes, is a work of magic because we are working with our energy, our mental energy, our emotional energy, our physical energy, and we are using it consciously to produce a change. That is magic.
 
So with this final quote, I hope that we will reflect on it.

A magus is simply a man who has a detailed and intimate understanding of mankind and of nature and of the continuous ebb and flow that unites them through the medium of men’s thoughts, feelings, and acts. A genuine magus takes care to use only what is pure and noble and divine in his work because he knows that every word or gesture, as well as every thought or emotion, every act is magical. Whatever helps someone to progress along the path of perfection, whatever brings man closer to God is white magic. Whereas, all that holds man back in his quest for perfection, whatever comes between him and the divine source is black magic. Whether it be conscious or unconscious, it is what it is. With this definition of magic, you are now in a position of magic, you are now in a position to decide what kind of magic you perform. Are you a black or a white magician? ―Omraam

​So firstly, if we are using our energy unconsciously, that needs to change. We need to start paying attention. Our assignment to start off this course is to pay attention to our life and ourselves.
 
How are we using mental energy, emotional energy, physical energy?
 
How are we moving through our day?
 
We need to shift from this kind of unconscious use of energy to a conscious use of energy, so that we gain some of that willpower to produce results and changes that we want.
 
Secondly, we need to perform actions and make changes that bring us closer to God. We are striving for a virtuous transformation. Egotistical desires and pursuing egotistical aims is black magic. Trying to use our willpower to control other people or to get more money or more power in the physical world is a definite obstacle to this work. It is black magic.
 
Trying to use these teachings in order to strengthen our pride and our sense of self and to brag to others or show off is also black magic. That becomes a huge obstacle for us to connect to divinity.
 
Remember that the true gnostic is humble. The true gnostic has an open mind. The true gnostic let’s go of desire and expectation and is able to see reality as it truly is. Those are the steps that we have to take, and the most important thing to remember is that we need to be conscious of how we use energy. Our use of energy is magic. So let us use it in a positive way. At this point, I think that we will end the lecture.