Arcanum 12: The Apostolate

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We have arrived at Arcanum 12. In this series of discussions, we have been elaborating upon the progressive path of the soul, of the consciousness, as it gains experiences and insights into its true nature and the nature of divinity, as well as the specific steps, ordeals, difficulties, sufferings, that any disciple on the path of initiation must face in him or herself.
 
In Arcanum 6: Indecision, we discussed how the soul is caught between two women: the virgin and the whore; chastity and fornication. When the soul is immersed in desire, caught between the two, not knowing which direction to turn or what to do, that soul experiences tremendous pain, suffering, when we recognize how psychologically, we wish, we yearn, to be with our Being. We understand what chastity is and the serenity that is born from it, and then, when we confront ourselves, we see. We have lust, desire, which pulls us and pushes us to look with desire in lustful ways and to act in lustful ways. There is a great ordeal of suffering in that soul, indecision―caught between the two paths: the solar and the lunar.
 
Likewise in the 7th Arcanum: Triumph, we discussed how the soul suffers when fighting not only against one's own egos, but against the black lodge. For those who are not familiar with the black lodge, it is the organization of demons, souls, which seeks to propel humanity into the abyss, into deeper states of suffering, to convince people to practice the fortification of desire, of animality, of lust.
 
So when we enter this path, we have to fight very hard. When we are practicing meditation, having dream experiences, we have to learn how to protect ourselves, because we face many entities that do not like what we are doing. They battle against us in the internal worlds, seeking to pull us from this path, to enter the lunar way, to be a demon, to continue being an animal. We have to fight very great battles and this produces, of course, suffering, as Arcanum 7 teaches us. But at the same time there is victory in that arcanum, especially if you are working with ז Zayin, the sword, the power of the Kundalini.
 
Arcanum 8: Justice is also another tarot glyph, which indicates patience in suffering, ordeals, that we have to face in this physical world with patience, with serenity, because we face many problems in life that seemingly cannot be resolved and that are against our will. Yet because of karma, we have to patiently bear the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Arcanum 7 teaches us how “to take arms against a sea of troubles,” “to oppose and end them” according to Shakespeare. But Arcanum 8 is to be patient because there are certain things we cannot change, and if we can't change them, we have to learn how to suffer as Arcanum 1: The Magician stipulates.
 
Arcanum 9: The Hermit taught us that the entrance into the initiation, the doorway into the path itself, is very difficult. When in the internal worlds we seek to enter the temple of mysteries but are blocked at that gateway, we feel tremendous pain, loneliness. Arcanum 9 is a very lonely card, because it is a hermit walking in the wilderness, living day by day, moment by moment, event by event, seeking to know God, seeking to incarnate God. In this physical plane, because we reject the ego, people reject us, whether it be through our family, our friends, our coworkers, who see that we psychologically don't vibrate at that level anymore.
 
People turn against us. We face that loneliness, but also experience loneliness because people in the physical plane reject the disciple. Internally, it is the same case because we are filled with ego, with desire. We cannot enter the higher mysteries until we are purified, and so divinity closes the door. It seems that divinity rejects us and that we cannot enter into those higher planes with consciousness.

​We experience many nights of the soul, like Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. If you remember in Arcanum 9, there is a symbol of a sun and a moon as we discussed.
 
Arcanum 10: Retribution is the sufferings initiated in this physical plane as a result of return and recurrence: the cyclical repetition of events, which in Sanskrit is संसार Samsara, cycling, churning, repetition. In the physical plane one suffers a lot in this work because certain events and ordeals repeat themselves again and again, mechanically. We face certain people at our work, certain friends, our spouse, whoever it may be that produces certain conflicts that are repetitious, that return, recur, daily.
 
Of course, there is a type of boredom and suffering associated with this, but as we explained, in order to escape this wheel of recurrence, you must learn to become an initiate: to answer the riddle of the Sphinx, which Oedipus the King, I believe, in Sophocles’ play taught. 

​The Sphinx asked, “What is that which walks on all fours in the morning, walks on two legs in the afternoon, and then walks on three legs in the evening?” Oedipus answered, “It is man, a human being, because a child walks on all fours in the beginning. A man walks on two feet in his adulthood, and then in his elderly age, he walks on two feet and a cane.”
 
Now if we read this literally, it is very obvious it is a man, but there's something more psychological here. What is a real man? A human being made into the image of the divine? In the beginning we walk on all fours. We are learning to control the four elements: air, earth, fire, water―air in the mind, fire in the heart, water in sex, earth in the body―the three brains of Gnostic psychology as we discussed.
 
When an initiate is a man, a human being, has reached the Fifth Initiation of Fire in the perfect matrimony, walks on two legs, because he has incarnated his soul and also because he is working with the occult science, Arcanum 2: The High Priestess, the Divine Mother. The mantra of the Divine Mother in kabbalah, in the world of תפארת Tiphereth, the heart, is אלוה ודעת Eloah Va Da’ath, goddess of knowledge, יהוה Iod-Havah. That is what it means to walk on two feet, because you are a bodhisattva at that point. Samael Aun Weor mentions that a bodhisattva is a master who has incarnated Christ, is walking the direct path, the straight path. He says in The Gnostic Bible: The Pistis Sophia Unveiled that a bodhisattva has to learn to balance the two forces of good and evil in himself and go to war against everything: his mind, the planet, people, but doesn't mean physical violence. It is psychological, and that is the path of Arcanum 9, the loneliness of the hermit who walks in the wilderness of life―really, not a member of any one, but still a light unto himself, that gives light to humanity.
 
What is that being that walks on three legs at the end? It is an elderly man with a cane, but to be an elder in esotericism means to be a master that is perfected―the Elder of Days, כתר Kether, who is a old man in many cosmogonies with a beard, but a powerful figure, a symbol of the power of כתר Kether, of the divine, the Father. To walk on three legs is to walk with the three primary forces incarnated in you. That is a superman.
 
So, we are, in the beginning, a child. Then we learn to become a bodhisattva by fulfilling the requisite steps. Then at the very end of the path, you become a superman, a Christ man, a Solar Logos. Arcanum 11 teaches us persuasion, how to be serene in order to work with the Lion of Judah as we explained in our previous lecture, to balance those forces with purity of mind, stability of mind, especially within sexual magic.

Description and Significance of Arcanum 12

Arcanum 12 is an extension of these previous arcana because Arcanum 12 is The Apostolate, the one who persuades. An apostle is an initiate who knows divinity at his level or her level and is one who is working and sacrificing for humanity. This card is also another card of sorrow, for Arcanum 12 teaches us the path of the initiate. When seeking to help humanity, one faces many trials, ordeals, sufferings.
 
For as Friedrich Nietzsche wrote in his Thus Spoke Zarathustra at the very end of that text, he describes how Zarathustra is in a cave talking to his 12 disciples, which is a mock allegory of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus, which is related to this card and we will be discussing this in depth. But Nietzsche was talking to his disciples through his fictional Zarathustra saying, “You have suffered because of yourselves. But you have not known how I suffered for helping man.” So the distinction there is that in the beginning, as disciples, we suffer a lot because of our own mind. We face problems in ourselves that we do not like to confront and we feel a lot of pain. But someone who enters into the path of mastery, an initiate, faces many more ordeals which are very burdensome, painful. To be an apostle is precisely to be like in the image of this card, which is typically associated in some decks as the hanged man. 

We see in this card in the waters of this glyph the pentacle of Solomon, which is a variant of the six-pointed star of David. If you remember in Arcanum 11: Persuasion, we talked about דוד David as being a symbol of or literally meaning “boiler” in Hebrew, the symbol of the athanor, the sexual organs, but also the crucible of alchemy. The six-pointed star reminds us of Arcanum 12, which is sexual magic and the work of the apostle who must suffer the consequences of having fallen from the heavens above, symbolized in the Gnostic myths of Pistis Sophia.
 
But this apostle suffers a lot because he is hanging by a thread and his hands and his head are facing towards the abyss, indicating that this apostle is in this world but only touching it with his thoughts, not identifying with it, because in this card, as an apostle, one has to face ordeals and sufferings in which one is persecuted, one is gossiped about, one is confronted, criticized, condemned, persecuted, hated. So he suffers because he is in this world but not of it. He has ego and therefore he is rejected from the heavenly hierarchies. He is hanging by a thread because that connection between him and his Being is, while strong, very subtle.
 
As we study self-observation and self-remembering, we realize from experience that remembering God is very subtle, is a dynamic that changes moment by moment, instant by instant. That thread also represents the very difficult sense or connection that we must establish and maintain with our inner God in the process of hanging above an abyss, the waters of this card, in which we see the six-pointed star or the pentacle of Solomon, a variant of that six-pointed glyph. We can say that this image represents in its three upper points, the three traitors of Hiram Abiff, the three traitors of Jesus. We can say they are Judas, Pilate, and Caiaphas. Judas is the demon the desire, of lust, relating to the motor-instinctive-sexual brain. Pilate, the demon of the mind is related with the intellectual brain, thought. Caiaphas, the demon of evil will, relates to the emotional brain, the heart.
 
Judas sells his Lord, his inner Christ within us, our ego sells our inner God to the authorities to be persecuted for thirty coins of silver. Thirty reminds us of the three primary forces, but since these are silver coins, it is lunar. So he is taking the three primary forces from heaven and selling it through identification with lust, with desire, with fornication. To sell our Lord means to identify with Judas, with lust, which doesn't have to be physical, but mental too. Identifying and spending our creative energies, those three primary forces in any defect, is to be tempted by Judas. Pilate is the demon of the mind who always justifies himself, washes his hands clean saying “I didn't do this. I am not guilty. I am innocent of this man's blood.” But of course, the worst demon is Caiaphas who hates the Lord. It is an ego or conglomeration of defects which know how divine the light is, but yet loves darkness, desire, ignorance.
 
So the apostle is one who is sold by humanity into the arms of the authorities. Many apostles, many masters have been persecuted, which we can read scriptures to know about. But especially in these times, Samael Aun Weor was an example of that in which he had people who not only adulated him and wrote letters of praise, but he had many death threats and he was warned internally to escape out of certain countries, to get out because people were going there to kill him as he was still in his process initiatically. 

​Any one of us who enters this path and reaches the heights of initiation is a hanged man, because we see here that this image represents a cross and a triangle. The cross of the legs, vertical and horizontal uniting together, symbolizes the four elements: earth, air, fire, water. Or physicality, the earth; air, the mind; fire, the heart; and water, sexuality. The triangle represents the three primary forces represented by the head and the two hands which are hanging facing down. It indicates that in this initiate, the ego which dominates those four elements in us, is predominant, is in command. The three primary forces which are facing towards the abyss have to be raised up through the work.

​So this hangman must learn to turn himself around, to transform his situation. The way that he does it is through patience, through faith. Faith does not mean belief, to believe in God, to think and feel that something is true. It is to know from experience what Christ is. We notice in these two pillars, the white and the black, Jakin-Boaz―which are reversed here to indicate that our perspective is from the inside of the temple―that we are from God's perspective looking from in the temple to out, showing that this apostle is still outside the door of initiation, or better said, outside of the doorway into entering the mysteries of perfection.
 
But these two pillars have nine gradations indicating on the left with Jakin, the nine heavens, the white pillar. But also the black pillar has nine gradations as well indicating the nine infernos. If we want to enter the nine heavens symbolized in kabbalah, as we indicated in Arcanum 1, we have to descend to the nine hells. For every time you descend into an inferno, a lower level consciousness in order to confront certain animal egos we contain within, we work on them. We eliminate them. We extract the light, the fire, from those elements in order to reascend up to its respective heaven in the Tree of Life, with power, with glory, with initiation within the Being, because the Being is the one who receives initiations.
 
The human soul is just the hangman. He does his part. The apostle does his or her role. The human soul has to work, but it is the Being who receives initiations and powers and riches and honors. So the apostle is, of course, very humble, because he recognizes or she recognizes his or her own worthlessness, not from a sense of shame of self-flagellation, but from consciously seeing how degenerate the mind is. This is, of course, why the Apostolate is filled with sorrow. So this is again another painful arcanum because the apostle, in his process, an initiate in the process of working with teaching humanity, faces many ordeals.
 
So how do we make this triangle of the spirit, the Logos: כתר Kether, חכמה Chokmah, בינה Binah, symbolized by the head and arms to be returned upward, so that the cross is controlled? So that the four elements are dominated? One does this through chastity, through purity. 

​The Significance of the Number Twelve

​So let us talk about some of the significance of the number 12. It is a very prominent number in the Bible, in esotericism.
 
There are 12 zodiacal signs, 12 apostles, 12 saviors in The Gnostic Bible: The Pistis Sophia Unveiled.
 
We have the 12 tribes of Israel.
 
We have the 12 hours of Apollonius, which refers to the process of alchemy, purifications, within the inferior metals of the psyche, to transform the lead of the ego into spiritual gold.
 
We also have 12 spiritual faculties and there are 12 planets associated with our solar system, of which modern science does not typically know of yet, which involve the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Vulcan, Persephone, and Clarion.
 
There is also the Hydrogen Si-12, the synthesis of the sexual force itself within our body, of which we'll talk about today.
 
So the process of alchemy itself, the great work, is about creating an amalgamation within the human being, whereby we unite the cross with a triangle and invert the triangle with the cross, so that the spirit dominates within the human being. What is that amalgamation referred to in the Bible, in the New Testament? The Son of Man. The lower qualities of the soul, including נצח Netzach, the mind, הוד Hod, the emotions, יסוד Yesod, the vitality, and מלכות Malkuth, the physicality, are dominated by תפארת Tiphereth, willpower, in which the powers of this triangle refers to the middle triangle of the Tree of Life as well: חסד Chesed, גבורה Geburah, תפארת Tiphereth. So Son of Man is a Being who has incarnated Christ, who has that middle trinity developed, but also has the Son of God, the Logos, חכמה Chokmah, incarnated.
 
The way that we learn to reverse or ascend with the triangle above our legs, the cross, is by working in alchemy. So while this cross, this path of the matrimony between husband and wife is difficult with Arcanum 12, it produces a very beautiful synthesis, because 1 + 2 = 3. The Magician plus the High Priestess equals the Empress, as we have explained previously, the divine soul. 

​Chakras, Mantras, and Spiritual Senses

The number twelve also relates with seven chakras, five senses. We have the seven churches of the Book of Revelation relating to our spinal column.
 
The Church of Ephesus or Chakra Muladhara in the base of the spine. This chakra or church has four beautiful petals at the base of our dorsal spine.
 
The Church of Smyrna in the prostate or the uterus has six petals. So, Smyrna relates to the Chakras Svadhisthana, relating to waters of life, of Genesis.
 
Pergamos in the solar plexus has ten petals. Pergamos relates to that Chakra Manipura in Hinduism.
 
Thyatira, the heart, has twelve petals. That church relates to the Chakra Anahata in Hinduism.
 
The Church of Sardis relates to the creative larynx, relating with the Verb, with the Akasha, the pronunciation of the sacred fire which we work with when we do runes. We work with the Church of Sardis, but also the seven chakras themselves, the seven churches, whenever we vocalize the seven vowels as we did at the beginning of this lecture. So, Sardis, the  chakra of the throat relates to the Chakra Vishudda in Hinduism. This has sixteen petals.
 
Philadelphia in the mid brow, the church of brotherly love, is the capacity for clairvoyance, of perception. This has two petals relating to clairvoyant, sight, imagination, the Chakra Ajna.
 
The Chakra Sahasrara or the Church Laodicea has one thousand  petals. It is a church of omniscience.
 
So as we explained, the vowel I [as in “ee”] vibrates in the crown, in the third eye.
 
The vowel “eh” in the throat.
 
The vowel “oo” in the heart.
 
“U” [as in “you”] in the solar plexus.
 
“Ah” in the lungs.
 
“M” in the solar plexus, and “S” in the coccyx.
 
So the Church of Ephesus grants the capacity for dominating the body, controlling its forces, its powers.
 
The chakra of the prostate or uterus grants one the capacity for astral projection, the power of the waters, the vowel “M.” The chakra of the solar plexus relates to telepathy, the science of reading thought, understanding the minds of others, because the solar plexus is a receptacle in which you receive the brainwaves of others, which enter our solar plexus and then reach the brain. The brain is a tower and it is recognized in modern science now that the mind, its thoughts, is a form of energy. It affects matter.
 
The vowel “O” in the heart, the Chakra Thyatira, the church of the heart, also grants one the capacity for astral projection, to control the emotional body, the astral vehicle in dreams. It also grants one the capacity of jinn science, of learning to take the physical body and put it in the internal worlds, as explained in The Yellow Book by Samael Aun Weor.
 
The vowel “Eh” in the throat, the chakra of the larynx, grants one the capacity of clairaudience, to hear mystical sounds in meditation and in the dream state, as well as the capacity to understand scripture, understand the meaning of religious texts.
 
The third eye relates with imagination, to perceive non-physical psychic imagery.
 
The crown of the saints, the Chakras Sahasrara or the Church of Laodicea, is omniscience. If you learn in meditation to project yourself through your crown chakra, you can experience the very height of the Tree of Life. So if you are meditating, you awaken in the astral place and meditate in that state. Project yourself out from the crown chakra. If it is the will of your inner God, he may take you through that chakra to experience the very height of the Tree of Life, the heavenly realms. 
 
So, the chakras are awakened. The churches are activated with fire. It is good to practice runes very early in the morning when the sun rises so that you receive all the solar effluvia from the heavens, from the atmosphere, the prana, so that it enters your body, your mind, your heart, your lungs, your nervous systems. 

​You vocalized those seven vowels that we did, and for those who are listening to our lectures online, there is a link to the seven vowels, the seven runes as provided by glorian.org or Glorian Publishing, in which you learn to channel through the runes those forces, so that they descend down from heaven into you, into your heart, your body. 

​Then those seven chakras help you to take the image of this man and reverse it, because you assimilating the three primary forces such as with Rune Os, Othila, which we saw with the hands, above our head. That energy goes into the heart. 

​But first, Is, or عِيسَى Isa in Arabic, meaning “Jesus,” is the descent of that Christic light into the mind, the crown chakra, then into the throat, Vishudda, the larynx, then Anahata, the heart. Notice that when your hands, again, are above your head, you are forming the image of this hanged man, but upright, because with the powers of the heart, the powers of the apostle, is how you are going to reverse the negative flow of energies in yourself, of the ego, so that you transmute, make the energy flow upward from without to within in a centripetal way rather than centrifugal, meaning from inside-out through lust.
 
The mantra “Ah” is associated with Ario, vibrates the lungs. So the prana become saturated in your lungs themselves, the pulmonary chakras, so that fire accumulates in your breath because Ario helps to awaken the Kundalini, or for single practitioners, sparks. Ar reminds us of אור Aur, in Hebrew meaning “light” “Let there be light, and there was light” (Genesis 1:3). That energy continues to descend.
 
Notice that with the progression of the seven vowels, the energy is going down, but in a conscious way, so that from the crown Chakra Sahasrara, the Chakra Ajna, the Chakra Vishudda, the Chakra Anahata, the Chakra Manipura, which is relating to the Rune Ur (ᚢ)―in which we bend over with our hands towards the Earth―we receive the energy from Mother Earth through our feet and through our hands so that it circulates within the abdomen, awakening the fires of the abdomen―Ur, אור Aur, light.
 
Then the Rune Man [or the position of the Rune ᛉ Algiz], the vowel “M,” and then those waters begin to receive all that energy, which came from the heavens down to your body and to your semen, whether it be of man or woman, the sexual fluids. The vowel “S,” if you notice when you do the Rune Sig (ᛋ) with your buttocks on top of your heels, your back straight, you now awaken all that power in you with the vowel “Ss.” Notice that all the energy came down from heaven into you. But now with that vowel “S” you are taking all that power which descended, send it up through the Hebrew letter ז Zayin, the power of the Divine Mother: Sulu Sigi Sig, the “Victory of the Divine Mother.” So, the runes take the energy from the cosmos, charge the chakras, until they reach the base of the spine in order to awaken sparks of Kundalini, so that that power then returns back up to the Divine Mother, which as we did with the Rune Is (ᛁ) if you noticed, is the vowels ISIS.

​The vowel “I” takes the energies of Christ above and send it down. The vowel “S” circulates that energy back up so that you are like a tuning fork and your chakras vibrate with intensity. That is how you make this Apostolate, who is hanging, to be upright.
 
Question: Which book are these steps you described?
 
Instructor: Well, the seven runes, the seven vowels themselves, were not taught in the books, to my knowledge, but they were given by Samael Aun Weor to his students which we provided a video online to help students understand how to do those seven positions themselves.
 
But notice that when you work with the seven vowels, you take all that power from above, from the cross, from the four elements, and you take the trinity and return it up to heaven, to the divine, so that the Apostolate is no longer hanging but has returned to the divine. With the runes, you are working with that flow of energy in yourself and with practice you begin to see how with greater concentration and will and visualization, you see and sense more of that energy descending, ascending, and circulating through you so that you become transparent. In the beginning, often, students struggle with the mind, with the defects and the intellect, emotions, and the motor-instinctive-sexual brain. So with runes it is good to do that daily, so that you are training your body to cease from circulating the energies in a negative way.
 
Typically with the ego, as I said in our previous lecture, the energies of sex go from in to out primarily through our breathing. Because with the breath is how we learn to control the seminal force. Most people who begin sexual alchemy, tantrism, they have to learn how to control their breath and work with mantra because with too much passionate breathing, as we stated, with exhalations, and the breath pronounced outward, the energy is going from in to out within the couple. But by learning to inhale more profoundly and vocalizing the mantras themselves, you learn to dominate the fires of sex and make that continuum of energy flow from out to in.
 
Question: Would it have to be both partners practicing to do this?
 
Instructor: No, it is good if the couple can do that, but sometimes some people are married and their spouse doesn't want to practice. So in that case, one should practice mentally, because with mental japa recitation, you still will control the energies. But it is good if both husband and wife cooperate. 
 
Question: Right. But doing runes, is it okay doing them silently?
 
Instructor: Well the runes are a little different because the runes are a means of not only channeling subtle forces but activating the glands. So there is a physical component and an energetic component. But with the runes, the power of that exercise should be vocalized. The power of that practice is through the pronunciation of the mantras themselves and training your body and making the glands to vibrate, the thymus gland, the heart, the liver, the spleen, the pituitary, the pineal glands. All those glands that are essential for our endocrine system vibrate are charged.
 
Question: So you need the sounds in order to activate them?
 
Instructor: Yes. 

​White, Gray, and Black Tantra

​This process of working with runes and the sexual energy relates to tantrism. We have here an image of Padmasambhava with his consort in sexual union performing the mysteries of alchemy. When talking about the Apostolate, we have to talk about tantrism because the word tantra means “continuum,” “flow,” consciousness, energy, movement of forces within the universe and within the human being. So there are different forms of tantrism. There are different forms of working with the continuum of energy from the universe and related within the sexual glands. 

​We talked in Arcanum 8: Justice about the caduceus of mercury, the two serpents rising from sex to the brain in the form of two serpents, which we see in the symbol of medicine. Or in Hebrew, ו Vav and ז Zayin; Adam-Eve; Solar-Lunar; male-female; יהוה אלהים Jah-Chavah.
 
Runes are a form of circulating those forces which is emphasized in tantrism. But of course, there are different forms of tantra from the East which are have been brought over into North America. So it is good to study what forms of tantrism exist, because we emphasized in this school that we are a school of white tantrism.
 
White tantrism refers to abstaining from the orgasm, from lust, from the expulsion of the sexual energy in any physiological or energetic way. So there are many people in the East who think that because they are conserving the semen, but still practicing the orgasm on an energetic level, that they are performing positive tantra, because the problem is that there are people who know how to engage in the sexual act without physically losing semen, but still energetically, they lose it through the mind, through lust, through desire. But white tantrism primarily is defined by the comprehension and annihilation of lust, whether it is physical, emotional, mental. We learn to harness that energy in order to develop purity. That is a qualitative state we have to determine in ourselves through practice, through concentration, through experience. 
 
There is gray tantrism, which is the sexual union with occasional orgasm, in which the couple sometimes transforms the energy and sometimes expels it through lust. So the problem with great tantrism is that it very easily degenerates into black tantrism, which is when the couple unites sexually and uses that energy to feed lust, to feed desire, to feed animality. So even if one does not physically ejaculate the semen, but still has an orgasm, has an explosion of energy, in oneself, but also uses that energy to feed desire, it is still black. It is still negative. People who practice black tantra awaken power in the animal mind, the ego. They learn how to astral project in a negative way through the ego, awakening powers within hate, lust, pride, desire. They feed their desires and intentional forms, whether it be physical, mental, emotional, etc. So this is a very dangerous path to follow, which is why Padmasambhava stated that "Lustful people do not enter the path of liberation."
 
So we talked about the runes, we talked about circulating energy. So, in preparation for alchemy, couples can learn to work with those exercises as an introduction in order to learn how to control the fire in a more potent way. 

The Myth of Sisyphus 

​It is important to understand the distinction between these three forms of tantrism. As I said, gray tantrism leads to black tantrism because people identify with the pleasures of the orgasm and continue to indulge in those habits. Now, gray tantrism was referenced too in a Greek myth, the myth of Sisyphus, in which certain philosophers and commentators wrote about [the nature of repetitive suffering], such as Albert Camus, an existentialist author wrote a book called The Myth of Sisyphus. But regardless of that reference, what this myth really signifies is gray tantrism. 
 
In the myth, Sisyphus carries a boulder up a hill, up a mountain, and of course, it is very difficult and painful to do. But when he gets to the top, he decides to let the stone fall back down to the very depth. So that stone rolls back into the mud, into the filth, and then he goes back down, carries it up that boulder to reinitiate a new journey, getting to the top again, drops the stone, and repeats, repeats, again, and again. Certain philosophers like Camus use that symbol in a very materialistic way to refer to the repetition, the absurdity of life, but the real meaning is someone who works in alchemy, who is carrying the stone of יסוד Yesod up the mountain, up the spinal column, and then when reaching the crown―having achieved some form of equilibrium in himself or herself―lets that energy be expelled again, and then loses everything. They start over again from the bottom of the hill, the base of the spine. So of course, this is very problematic because one gets nowhere and one suffers a lot more and more by repeating again, working sometimes and then letting oneself fall other times. This will eventually lead into black tantrism.
 
So in relation to the arcanum of the Apostolate, the only way to make those energies remain within the heavens, within one's psychological universe, is to maintain chastity, maintain purity. 

​Alchemical Planets, Influences, and Sexual Magic

​Let us talk about the alchemical planets in the Tree of Life in relation to Arcanum 12, sexual magic.
 
When talking about the influences of the cosmos in oneself, we have to talk about astrology. In the Age of Pisces, during the times of Jesus up until the 1960s or so, people have been primarily dominated by a conservative sense in relation to sexuality. The problem with this type of conservatism is that it easily degenerated into a very foolish form of asceticism, in which people such as the Victorians developed a very profound distaste for sexuality, ignoring that that energy has a very different usage than lustful satisfaction, than desire. So, people in the Age of Pisces who didn't know the mysteries of alchemy would repress themselves, and that of course developed many problems, because that energy has to act. It has to circulate. If the power of the cross doesn't move, then it dominates the mind. Instead of being a hanged man, one is severed and falls into the infernal worlds because that energy has to be used. It has to be directed. If it is not controlled and used daily, that energy saturates the mind with lust, with desires, with animality.
 
But the problem with the people in the age of Pisces is that they had this wonderful sexual impulse, this energy, and yet, they didn't know how, or the exoteric public didn't know how to take advantage of that power. So many cults and groups developed in the world that focused around repression of sex. But sex doesn't have to be repressed. It has to be understood, because that is the divine birthright of the human being, man and woman together sexually but with purity. Or in the words of Paul of Tarsus, to be married but to act as if one is not (1 Corinthians 7:29), meaning, to be connecting sexually but acting without lust, without desire. 
 
So in this Age of Pisces, there are many cults that developed relating to the demon Lilith. If you remember from the Bible, the Zohar speaks that Adam, after his fall, had two wives: Lilith and Nahemah. Lilith is a demon of sexual repression, pederasty, homosexuality, hatred towards sex. Nahemah is the demon associated with adultery, fornication, fatal beauty, temptation. The infernal worlds are governed by these two forms of psychology. There are those who passionately indulge in sex through Nahemah and there are those who fight against that sexual impulse, such as the castrates or certain cults that would mutilate themselves. Filled with their own passions and desires, they sought to repress those elements in themselves but by hating sex, not understanding that that energy has to be used and can be used with balance, as we talked about on Arcanum 11: Persuasion, the two unities: one man, one woman controlling the jaw of the lion, not being devoured by it.
 
There was a cult in the Caucasus in which cults castrated their sexual organs, their breasts. They even ate human flesh. So obviously this is a very demonic and very disgusting cult which ignored the beauties of the Holy Spirit, of a marriage. There even was another cult according to Samael Aun Weor who crucified people because they wanted to remember Jesus. So obvious this was a very demonic, destructive, degenerative path, the path of demons.
 
But the middle way is much more different. But people in these times confuse tantrism with fornication because that is their mental state. They look at sex and all they see is their desires, their lusts, or as Jalal Al-Din Muhammad Rumi taught, if you thirst you look into a cup, and if you thirst for God you will see His reflection in it. But if you are filled with your own desires, you only see your own face.
 
That is the meaning of how people look at relationships, at a marriage. So, in ancient schools even during the age of Pisces there were people who knew how to work with the fish, the waters, the semen, the ovum in a marriage. They had many monasteries in which those groups, before they were exposed to the public, many of them, would practice, husband and wife in certain chambers. But of course, they were not lustful like we were, which in these times it would be very stupid to try to have a monastery in which people could, with their wife, practice alchemy, because in these times people are too degenerate. But that was very ancient epoch.  But these ancient schools taught about genius, Lucis, to generate light, which is a term that Samael Aun Weor uses to describe alchemy. With the union of male-female, we generate light, or through the Lance of Longinus, the spear that wounded Christ and the Holy Grail, emblems of male-female; man and woman.

​In a relation to talking about these astrological influences, we talk about the Tree of Life, the ten sephiroth. Each sphere is governed by a planet or series of planets, which relate to psychological qualities in us. So from the Age of Pisces, we moved from conservatism to the Aquarian dialectic: the way of disseminating this knowledge publicly to humanity through the work of the apostles, the teachers, the missionaries, the instructors.
 
So each sphere, each heaven above מלכות Malkuth, this physical body, relates to the planets, and as I stated at the beginning of this lecture, the two pillars Jakin-Boaz have nine gradations, signifying nine heavens, nine hells, each which are governed by those planetary influences:
 
The Moon relating with יסוד Yesod and הוד Hod.
 
Mercury relating with נצח Netzach.
 
Venus and the Sun relating with תפארת Tiphereth.
 
Mars and the Sun relating with גבורה Geburah.
 
Jupiter and Mars relating withחסד Chesed. 
 
Jupiter and Saturn related with בינה Binah.
 
Uranus related with חכמה Chokmah, and Neptune relating with כתר Kether. 
 
In order to ascend to these heavens in us, we have to first descend into the atomic infernos, meaning our own mind, our defects. We have to confront them, not only just physically, but in the internal worlds where we gather data about our most ancient defects. 

​We do not have it included in this glyph, but there are nine hells referenced by Dante, which are the inverted reflection, the shadow of the Tree of Life that we see presented before us, relating to each sphere, to one planet: Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune―descending in more complicated manifestations and expressions of laws, forces. Hell becomes much more complex and dense the further you descend from מלכות Malkuth.
 
If you remember in our previous lectures, we talked about how from the heights of above, the heavens, the energy of Christ is very rarefied. It is pure, unconditioned. There are very few laws that are acting there. There is just the pure potentiality of the divine that is active, that is manifest. We will talk about how those laws relate to the Tree of Life, how they become more complex the further you descend down this glyph until you reach the physical plane and then into the infernal worlds.
 
But to ascend this Tree of Life, to conquer the heavens, we must learn to conquer our own mechanicity, our desires. So, liberation is obtained level by level, degree by degree. In order to ascend, we have to first descend. Confront the ego associated with each of the inverted sephiroth. It is interesting that the Qur’an teaches that the hell realms are known as زقوم Zaqqum or the Tree of Zaqqum. Zaqqum is a type of tree in Arabia. The leaves are very bitter to consume, very disgusting, a reference to the psychological qualities associated with the inverted worlds. But of course, in order to ascend up this Tree of Life, you have to extract the consciousness trapped within that inverted tree, within the inferno. This is how you develop light, planet y planet, degree by degree. Or as the Qur’an teaches in Surah 24, “Light upon light!” [24:35]. Or as the Book of Genesis says, יְהִי אֹור וַֽיְהִי־אֹֽור Yehi Aur Va Yehi Aur, “Let there be light and there was light” (Genesis 1:3).
 
It is interesting that in our previous discussions, we talked about the planet Uranus which relates to חכמה Chokmah on the Tree of Life, with Christ. In this glyph or in this second sephirah of the Tree of Life, Uranus descends into the heart, תפארת Tiphereth, the human soul.
 
To reiterate this dynamic, the powers of this glyph, we have מלכות Malkuth, meaning “Kingdom,” our physical body.
 
יסוד Yesod, our vital energies, the vital body, meaning “Foundation.”
 
We have הוד Hod meaning “Glory,” the astral vehicle, the emotional body, the world of dreams.
 
We have נצח Netzach, the mind, meaning “Victory,” the intellect, the mental body.
 
We have תפארת Tiphereth, the human soul. תפארת Tiphereth means “Beauty.” תפארת Ti-phe-reth, אור Aur, light, resides within the heart, which descends, of course, from above, from the top trinity.
 
But of course, we have גבורה Geburah, relating to the divine soul, our spiritual consciousness, which never enters into degeneration. תפארת Tiphereth, our willpower, can be infected, can descend into lower states of materiality, into defects, desires. That will can be Christ will or evil will like Caiaphas.
 
We have חסד Chesed, our spirit, our Innermost God, our Inner Buddha.
 
But above He has His inner God which is בינה Binah, the Holy Spirit, חכמה Chokmah, the Second Logos or Christ, and כתר Kether, the Father.
 
So Uranus relates to חכמה Chokmah, the power of Ur-Anas.
 
Comment: Da’ath is kind of highlighted in yellow for a reason…
 
Instructor: In דעת Da’ath is precisely the mysteries of alchemy, because the power of Uranus, Ur meaning “light” or “fire,” and Anas in Chaldean means “water,” descends to the power of the throat through alchemy, and you create the spiritual human being, the apostle by working with the fire in the water through דעת Da’ath. That energy descends from the trinity into the heart, the human soul, so that this hanged man who is caught within נצח Netzach, הוד Hod, and יסוד Yesod, and מלכות Malkuth, can take the powers of these lower sephiroth―נצח Netzach, the mind; הוד Hod, the emotions; יסוד Yesod, the vitality; and מלכות Malkuth, the physical body―and ascend them up the Tree of Life. Control those forces. 

But Uranus is an interesting myth among the Greeks because Uranus was castrated by Saturn or Kronos. So people are usually fascinated with myths without knowing the meaning, but the meaning is that Saturn, the Holy Spirit, בינה Binah, castrates the powers of חכמה Chokmah, meaning through chastity. Saturn is related to the mystical death, the 13th Arcanum: Immortality. Saturn is the god of death itself. Through castrating animal desire, the genitalia of Uranus falls into the waters of the ocean, which refers to יסוד Yesod, the vital waters, the sexual energy, in order to give birth to many deities and gods and giants and figures―most notably, Aphrodite, who is Venus. Venus-Aphrodite is the Divine Mother Kundalini who relates to תפארת Tiphereth. Notice that בינה Binah, the Holy Spirit―whose wife is אם אלהים Aima Elohim, the Divine Mother―finds his equilibrium within the heart, תפארת Tiphereth. תפארת Tiphereth is governed by Venus and the Sun because Christ, חכמה Chokmah, descends into the heart, but likewise the power of Venus, the power of the Holy Spirit, of Saturn, gives birth to divine love.
 
Now, the mantra, as I said of תפארת Tiphereth is אלוה ודעת Eloah Va-Da’ath י Iod ה Hei ו Vau ה Hei. 
 
Comment: According to one occult authority, one mentioned that Tiphereth―you can use that―but there is a shorter version that is just as effective, IAO…
 
Instructor: Yes, IAO is the latinized version of י Iod-ה Hei-ו Vau. י Iod is כתר Kether, ה Hei, חכמה Chokmah, and ו Vau, בינה Binah, which all circulate and find their balance within the heart, תפארת Tiphereth. That תפארת Tiphereth is the hanged man, the apostle who through chastity and mystical death learns to  return to the heavens above. 
 
So in the Aquarian Age in comparison to the Age of Pisces, we learn to take the sexual impulse and transform it with enthusiasm―according to the words of Samael Aun Weor―to learn how to approach sex with divine love, with purity and that is a state you learn in yourself as you practice, with experience. But, it is absurd according to Samael Aun Weor to hate sex just as it is to abuse it. So these are the two extremes: justification, repression. The intelligent way is to learn to appropriate these forces in their in their natural way as they are intended by the divine.
 
Man and woman complement each other: Jakin-Boaz, the two pillars of the temple. The Pillar of Mercy on the right, Jakin, and the Pillar of Severity, Justice, Boaz on the left, are harmonized through the middle pillar, which is categorized by מלכות Malkuth, the Earth; יסוד Yesod, our vital energies; תפארת Tiphereth, our heart, our human will. Through דעת Da’ath, we take the energy of יסוד Yesod and return them up towards כתר Kether, the Crown, the head. Runes do this in a very basic way, but a marriage is much more powerful. This is how you work with the philosophical stone, אזות Azoth, as we explained in our previous lecture, or INRI, Adam-Eve.

​The Twelfth Key of Basil Valentine

​Basil Valentine, a great alchemist, depicted the 12th Arcanum, the 12th key, in his art. We see an initiate standing before an athanor, a furnace, in which the sexual fire is burning. Most notably we see an image of the Sun and the Moon, male-female, Adam-Eve, man-woman.
 
There is a lion to his right who is devouring a serpent. This is the Lion of Judah we spoke previously about. So the serpent is devoured in order to become the flesh of the lion, which refers to how Devi Kundalini, by rising up the spine, is eventually swallowed by Christ, or we also say, the Holy Spirit, because in the process of working with the full elimination of the ego, we learn to become swallowed by the serpent, to marry our Divine Mother, בינה Binah, the Holy Spirit: אם אלהים Aima Elohim. But remember that the Holy Spirit also is masculine, יהוה אלהים Jah-Chavah Elohim as we say in Hebrew.
 
Upon reaching those heights, one is then incarnating the Holy Spirit in its masculine aspect after the process of resurrection, which only occurs when the initiate has fully died to his defects. How does one die to one's defects according to the alchemists? We have to learn to work with the fire, the athanor, the spinal column, but also the sexual glands, and to learn to transmute the vile metals of the animal mind, of desire, of lust, of passion, into serenity, conscious love, patience and faith. So the vile metals are the ego. The “I” must be transmuted and fermented through alchemical putrefaction, which we'll be talking about in Arcanum 15: Passion, mystical death, immortality.
 
Gold is fermented, and we know from the process of fermentation, there has to be a certain type of decay occurring within a substance. With the fermentation of the ego, the ego has to die. That metal, the vile impurities of the psyche, have to be purified, transformed by the serpent. 

​Notice that in this image above the flowers of the soul we see an image of Mercury because the Mercurial science, the work with Hermes, the energies of the sexual glands between husband and wife, between the Sun and the Moon, it is how the flowers of the soul germinate, how they blossom, how they bloom. These are the virtues of the soul, but also the chakras. The chakras are flowers that open up within the spinal column, in the spinal medulla, as we practice in a matrimony.
 
Question: By making the serpent rise, does that automatically negate the work?
 
Instructor: Degree by degree, because as you gradually work on raising the serpent up the spine, you face ordeals each step of the way. Remember that with every ascent into the heavens, you have to first descend. So every time you confront an ego in yourself, comprehend it, and eliminate in alchemy, you slowly rise that serpent because that serpent rises when we work on the vile metals, the vile qualities of the soul. 
 
So, vertebra by vertebra. “With patience possess ye your souls” (Luke 21:19). Heaven is taken by assault, meaning assaulting one's ego, confronting one's desires. These are the mysteries of Arcanum 12 because the 12th key of Basil Valentine teaches that through our marriage and through the balancing of the mind and heart, we obtain the purification of the soul.
 
Notice that there is a scale on the far right which reminds us of karma, cause and effect. If you wish to enter the higher mysteries of the Tree of Life, you have to vibrate at that level of causality by enacting certain causes and conditions that will allow you to vibrate at that level nature. If you want to ascend up the mountain, you have to purify all the garbage. You do that degree by degree in accordance with the merits of the heart.
 
As Samael Aun Weor states in The Perfect Matrimony, the Kundalini is not a mechanical force. It doesn't emerge, arise, from the base of the spine to the head in just an instant or without work in an absurd, mechanical fashion, which is what many people in black tantrism believe in. They believe that through fornication, you can acquire powers, which is true. They attribute that to the Kundalini, but they ignore that it is the kundabuffer, the tail of the serpent, the negative serpent of the demons. But if you want to ascend that serpent, you have to do it very slowly, degree by degree, in accordance with your heart. If the heart is filled with adultery, fornication, desire, hatred, thievery, lust, it is very difficult and it will be impossible to ascend to the superior worlds.
 
Question: With the runes... will they help purify the mind?
 
Instructor: Yes, runes will help you initiate that process. But the fire that you need to fully dominate and transform the light of the personality is required within a marriage. As I said, “with patience possess ye your soul,” because the soul is a flower that vibrates under the force of Mercury. You have to be patient. It is very difficult in the beginning to recognize that we are filled with lust, but little by little you make changes until gradually, those flowers which were once a seed, become a stem and a blossom and then finally a Tree of Life. Nature does not take leaps, but it is a process of patience and faithfulness, so that when the ego is fully dead, from the ashes the Phoenix can arise from the extermination or elimination of desire.

​The Kabbalistic Musical Scale and Hydrogen Si-12

​This process is very beautifully explained by, again, kabbalah, but also the different laws that govern the nature of the mind, the heart, the body. We are going to talk about the transformation of energy in relation with Arcanum 12.
 
As we stated in our discussion of the runes, those forces descend from the top of the Tree of Life down into our physicality, and these sephiroth or spheres are governed by different laws. From the Absolute: the אין Ain, the אין סוף Ain Soph, and the אין סוף אור Aun Soph Aur, or the Nothingness, the Limitless, the Limitless Light, emerges the trinity. The אין סוף אור Ain Soph Aur is the Christ undifferentiated, prana in its pure form, unmanifested. That light has to first emerge into the universe by dividing itself, expressing itself in the form of three, a trinity. By unfolding into the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, that energy can conjoin back into a specific point in order to generate, to create.
 
We find in the trinity the law of three within all the cosmos in different forms. We have the Father, the masculine force, affirmation cited within the school of Gurdjieff, the Fourth Way. We have חכמה Chokmah, the Son, Holy Negation, the Christ. Then we have בינה Binah, the Holy Spirit, reconciliation. We discussed affirmation, negation, reconciliation in depth in Arcanum 3: The Empress, but those three forces need to work together so that they can create the rest of the Tree of Life.
 
When we work in a matrimony, we work with those three forces in our mind, our heart, and our body, because the power of כתר Kether is in the head. The power of חכמה Chokmah is in the heart, and the power of the Holy Spirit is in sex. So when husband and wife are united, those three forces vibrate intensely and create a unity, which, if that power is expelled, can create a child. But instead of wasting that for us, we learn to re-concentrate those three forces in us by controlling our mind, our emotions, and our sexuality. We generate the golden child of alchemy.
 
Through דעת Da’ath, the mysteries of sexual knowledge, those three forces unfold into the next trinity in the Tree of Life relating to six laws: חסד Chesed, גבורה Geburah, תפארת Tiphereth.
 
In the world of the [top] trinity, there is a lot of freedom. It is a very free and pure realm of dimensionality, expression, consciousness. But when that energy unfolds, it complicates itself in more dense forms of matter and perception unfolding into six laws, doubling itself.
 
When those laws descend into the mind, six becomes twelve. It complicates itself. The mind is formed, is governed by 12 laws, נצח Netzach, the world of the mind itself.
 
In the world of הוד Hod we have 24 laws, the astral vehicle.
 
In the world of יסוד Yesod and our physicality, we have the world of 48 laws. We know from modern science that there are 46, I believe, genes associated with the sperm and the ovum. But they ignore that there are two other genes associated with the energy of the sperm in the ovum [in the 4th dimensions], the child, forming 48. So there are 48 chromosomes, I believe, 48 chromosomes. There are two that are not known by modern science [because they are etheric]. They typically say there are 46, but in alchemical science and the knowledge of the Tree of Life, we know that there are 48 laws that govern יסוד Yesod and מלכות Malkuth.
 
Notice that these forces descend from the top of the Tree of Life into our physical body. In the world of 1 law, the Protocosmos, we have world of abstraction, which is the אין סוף אור Ain Soph Aur, the Limitless Light.
 
In the world of the Ayocosmos relating to the top trinity, we have the world of 3 laws, the Logos.
 
In the world of the Macrocosmos: חסד Chesed, גבורה Geburah, תפארת Tiphereth, we have the spiritual world, the ethical triangle associated with 6 laws.
 
We have the Deuterocosmos associated with 12 laws, the mind.
 
The Mesocosmos is associated with the heart, the emotional body, the world of 24 laws.
 
The Microcosmos, which is the world of 48 laws associated with our body, is both physical and energetic. Remember that the vital body is the double of the physical body. Our physicality would not exist if it weren't for the penetration of those vital forces in us, moment by moment.
 
Notice that the descent of these forces occurs in the law of seven. There are seven cosmoses associated with the seven notes of the musical scale.
 
The Protocosmos vibrates with the note Do. The Ayocosmos with the note Si. The Macrocosmos with the note La. The Deuterocosmos with the note Sol. The Mesocosmos with a note FA, and the Microcosmos with the note Mi. Beneath the physical plane, there is the infernal dimensions associated with more dense laws in nature, which complicate themselves more and more the further you descend. Those are associated with 96 laws and more, associated with the note Re.
 
Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Si. If you are familiar, again, with the runes, we work with those seven notes in us, vibrating the forces from the Protocosmos, from Christ above, the Absolute, into our Ayocosmos, our head. Followed by the Macrocosmos relating with the heart. The Deuterocosmos relating with the mind. Mesocosmos, the heart, the astral body, and the Microcosmos, our vitality and physicality. Seven notes, seven cosmoses, which relate, but should not be conflated with one with the other.
 
Question: How come they unfold with the musical scale?
 
Instructor: Because with the musical scale, first those forces descend from Do until reaching our body. But then, in order to reinitiate that journey, we take the forces from the Protocosmos and make that energy rise up the musical scale, which is up our spine. So remember with the runes, we take all that energy down into our body and with the vowel S, we initiate the journey up. So: Do Re Mi. Do from above, descends into our body, and then we take the energies that are trapped in the infernal worlds, we raise it up our spine―Re Mi Fa Sol La Si until vibrating with the cosmos.
 
We also talked about how our energies vibrate with these different laws in nature. The sexual energy is the most condensed form in the human being, because from it emerges all of humanity. Our energy, our semen, is formed by the food we eat, the thoughts we think, the feelings we have, the actions we make, the air we breathe, the impressions we take into our mind. All these psychological factors transform the quality of our seminal energy. So it is good for the sake of having strong virile power to eat good food, to think good thoughts, have positive emotions, and transform impressions by feeding one's mind with good things, good literature, good books, good music, good art, because these things help to vibrate and saturate our consciousness with good influences.
 
We will be going to see the opera Turandot, which is a way of transforming positive impressions that will feed the consciousness, the heart, of which we will be giving a lecture in the near future [see The Secret Teachings of Opera]. 

​But that energy is transformed in us by the food we eat, which is represented by the musical scale again. We have solid food with the note Do, vibrating at 776, you can say, laws. We have Re, masticated food relating with 384. We have the stomach chyme related with the note Mi, 192. We have the spleen, the liver, the note Fa, 96. The note Sol, the pancreas, the colon, 48 laws. Finally La, 24 laws, the blood and then Si-12, the sexual energy. So solid food is more dense governed by more forces and laws until our body, our internal organism, breaks down these elements through mastication, through the stomach, and during the spleen and the liver, being filtered by the pancreas and the colon, entering our bloodstream as nutrients, as forces, as vital principles, and then becoming the sexual energy, the semen.
 
Question: What is the second one from the bottom?
 
Instructor: The second one from the bottom is masticated food, the note Re. 
 
Question: What is the significance with mastication?
 
Instructor:  So when you are masticating your food, you are forcing the first transformation of that solid matter into a form of spiritual force. That is why it is important that when we eat, we do so with consciousness, with prayer, because the way that you masticate your food and break down that element, whether it be water or food or whatnot, you are learning to teach your body and transform the energies in that element, so that you can extract the spiritual principles, so that they benefit your seminal energy and the formation of it.
 
Comment: Mastication is so important. The slower you eat, the better.
 
Instructor: Yes, and even more so, with prayer, because your inner God is going to take the elements you break down in your mouth, extract the energy, the vital force, into your consciousness, into your Being.
 
Question: What is the bottom one?
 
Instructor:  It is the note Do, relating with the number 768, solid food.
 
So from the blood emerges the semen because, I believe it is stated, that it is like 80 drops of blood to form one drop of semen. So, people who expel the semen itself are losing blood. They are literally expelling the life of their own body, because the blood is what carries the secret letter ‎א Aleph, the prana, the wind, the Christ force. To channel it into the condensation of our most potent energy, the hydrogen Si-12, we learn to take that energy, the sexual force and to transform it so that in different levels, you can say, in accordance with the musical scale, different octaves, we create what is known as the solar bodies.
 
The solar vehicles need to be created through the Hydrogen Si-12, through that sexual energy, that force. When you learn to conserve your energies in your mind, your heart, your body, you have the basis upon which you can create the solar bodies, because you have the Hydrogen Si-12, the sexual energy, which can give birth to the soul. Hydrogen Si-12 relates to 48 laws in the physical plane, creates a physical body. The Hydrogen Si-12 could also create an astral body in the world of 24 laws, the emotional vehicle. The Hydrogen Si-12 can also create a mental body, a solar mental vehicle in the world of 12 laws. Then, the Hydrogen Si-12 can create a solar causal body in the world of 6 laws.
 
You can create these solar vehicles in different octaves. You save energy, Hydrogen Si-12, and you learn to raise it up the spine within those different vehicles in different octaves, because if you remember that the law of the scale, the law of the number seven, associates with working with the spine, the seven notes, the seven chakras. When you raise the Hydrogen Si-12 in those bodies, you create those vehicles. When that energy is at a surplus, when you raise it up the spine, you have created and raised the fire of the Holy Spirit within the physical body, you learn to work with the vital body but also the astral body. You create a solar astral vehicle in the world of 24 laws. Of course, raise the fire of Kundalini in the physical body, the vital body, then you create a solar astral body. 

Right now we do not have an astral body that is solar. We have a lunar body belonging to nature. Plants, animals, minerals, receive the lunar bodies and they develop along the path of The Transmigration of Souls, as we discussed, in different ages and aeons. Those are vehicles that nature gives us at that level so that we can exist physically, but also in the world of dreams. When we reach the humanoid state, we have the potential to create solar bodies, solar vehicles, within ourselves, because right now our emotional body is not solar, but lunar. It is a desire body. It is like a ghost, which Nietzsche said is like a mixture between plant and ghost in his Thus Spoke Zarathustra. 

​The human being is a phantom in the astral plane. You look at people in the astral plane who are asleep in cities, doing their jobs or walking or driving their cars in that dimension, you look at them and they are typically very dark. They have lunar bodies. They don't have solar bodies. Solar bodies generate light. You meet a master, they are illuminated, Christic, have a lot of force, power. That could be very terrifying because they are channeling all the power from the אין סוף אור Ain Soph Aur through them and into the universe.
 
But all of us in our beginning of these studies have lunar bodies, lunar vehicles, animal bodies, which we first received when we were a mineral, developed as a plant, became an animal. Until finally, we became a humanoid creature, an intellectual animal, animal with intellect. But a solar man is very different―has solar astral, solar mental, solar causal bodies. These are vehicles that transmit the light of the Christ, the divine.
 
When you raise the fire of Kundalini within your lunar phantom, you create the golden child of Christ in you, the solar astral body. Then you raise the fire of Kundalini up the lunar mental body, because as I said, your mind and heart, typically, with most people, all of us, have a lunar mind, lunar heart, lunar astral body, lunar mental body―Kama Rupa, Manasa Rupa―desire body, mind body according to Theosophy. When you raise the fire of Kundalini up the lunar phantom of the mental body, you create a solar mind, a solar mental body, a Christ mind, that vibrates with the world of 12 laws. When raising the Kundalini up the embryo of the human soul, we create the soul. We create a causal vehicle, a body of willpower which vibrates in the world of 6 laws. Of course, that energy rises in surplus when you raise and conserve that power within the physical body. It rises to the vital body, then to the astral body, the mental body, the causal body. 

​Psychological Digestion and the Transformation of Impressions

After creating those bodies, the solar vehicles have to be nourished themselves, which is nourished in us by learning to transform impressions. There are different forms of impressions that are governed by different elements or different complications of the element hydrogen. When we refer to hydrogen in Gnostic studies, we don't refer to literal matter that is associated with hydrogen, but to its esoteric sense. These are laws are forces in principles relating with hydros-genesis, to “generate life through the spiritual waters.” These are spiritual atoms, spiritual forces, not literal hydrogen itself. 
 
In our previous lectures we talked about transforming Impressions, which means we go home after a day at work, our responsibilities. We meditate. We introspect and look to understand what egos acted in us throughout the day, and even in those previous moments or during the moments of our daily activities, we learn to take the impressions of life without identifying. So if someone says something negative to us, curses us, calls us names, we receive that impression with gladness, meaning, we don't respond or retaliate with anger. Verbally, we may not say anything, but psychologically, we see a reaction emerge. But instead of letting that reaction take hold of us, we comprehend that that anger really is unnecessary, is negative.
 
So in a moment, there is a transformation of that impression because someone insulted us. Our ego of anger was about to respond and yet we controlled our mind. We didn't say what that ego wanted us to say to do. It was a transformation at a very basic level, and that liberates energy, because the way that you receive impressions of life relates to how you feed your consciousness. Remember that we talked about how the consciousness is fed with energy, with understanding, with insight. You do that by comprehending the ego in yourself, and by receiving the impressions of life and learning to take those impressions with consciousness, and not react, but to respond with kindness, with serenity, with love.
 
Then we are at home, we review our day. We seek to transform those impressions in our mind. We go deeper, asking our inner Divine Mother to show us the root of those defects so that we can learn to take the impressions that our ego, our defects, our desires, and transform them in their root, and eliminate them through comprehension and prayer to our Divine Mother.
 
So, I have been talking about transforming hydrogen in relation to impressions, which relates to how we feed the solar bodies. The way that you nourish your internal bodies is by transforming impressions, because when you transform impressions of life―you don't identify with the body, with criticism, with sarcasm―we develop and transform the hydrogens related to these these different vehicles.
 
Hydrogen 48 relates to life within the physical plane.
 
Hydrogen 24 relates to the superior emotional center, as we discussed in our courses on Gnostic Psychology. 
 
Hydrogen 12 nourishes the superior mind, but don't confuse Hydrogen 12 with Hydrogen Si-12 because Si-12 is the synthesis of the sexual energy, but Hydrogen 12 is a form of impressions that we transform to nourish our vehicles [specifically the mental body].
 
Comment: In relation to this, you talked about the outside impressions. Rudolf Steiner said in his six attributes or exercises that if you do not refrain from criticizing, everybody and everything, that kills the energies in the chakras. It prevents the flowers from growing. So it is hard to do sometimes because criticisms go against the development of the chakras.
 
Instructor: Yes, which is why Prophet Muhammad said “You criticize your neighbor?” in the Qur’an. “Would any man enjoy eating the flesh of his neighbor?” (Qur’an 49:12]. But that is what we do when we criticize. But by refraining from criticism in the heart, in our emotional states, we transform Hydrogen 24, we nourish the astral body because the solar astral body needs food just as a child needs food.
 
Each vehicle is a car, is a machine, that processes and channels energies. If you don't transform impressions by working on negative emotions, we cannot feed our solar astral body. Likewise, if we don't refrain from criticism in the mind, we can't develop Hydrogen 12 to nourish the solar mental body and then with conserving and transforming impressions in a higher octave, we develop and control and work with Hydrogen 6, which can nourish the solar causal body, the body of willpower. Because those vehicles: astral, mental, causal bodies, are our cars, and you can't drive your car without gasoline. So if you want those vehicles to be filled with force in you after they have been created, you need these hydrogens.

​The Zodiac and the Twelve Tribes of Israel

​So the Arcanum 12 also relates not only to the Hydrogen Si-12, but how that energy develops in us in accordance with the 12 zodiacal signs.
 
So the 12 tribes of Israel relate to the zodiac, which are forces in the cosmos that help the development of the soul. Humanity develops in different zodiacal signs. Each of us, I believe, develops in 108 humanoid existences, 9 times in each zodiac, which numbers 108 total, in order to give the soul necessary experiences for its well-being, so that it is well-rounded. Each zodiacal sign transmits forces that are necessary for the development of the soul. So Arcanum 12 is precisely the Apostolate, one who works with the zodiac, with the different constellations, which are developed in us by working against the ego associated with the different influences in us. 
 
But the Apostolate, the apostle, in the Bible receives the seal of God in relation to these 12 tribes of Israel, these 12 zodiacal signs, especially within the Book of Revelations where we find beautiful explanations about the seal of God. People usually interpret the seal of God as meaning God's approval within us, but people don't understand or explain how that process is developed in the human being.
 
So what is the seal of God? The Hebrew letter associated with the seal is ת Tav, and God is light, אור Aur. If you remember from the Hebrew word תפארת Tiphereth, we find two ת Tavs and a letter אור Aur in the middle, the two seals, either the seal of heaven above or the seal of hell below. We receive the seal of divinity, the redemption of the soul in accordance with how we work with our heart, the human soul, our willpower.
 
But of course, our willpower needs to work with whatever zodiac is predominant in us which is in this present life. The 12 tribes of Israel relate to these 12 signs as stipulated within the Book of Revelation, chapter 7, verses 4 through 8:

And I heard the number of them which were sealed and there were sealed a hundred and forty and four thousand of all the tribes of the children of Israel (1 + 4 + 4 equals 9, יסוד Yesod, the work with the sexual energy). Of the tribe of Judah were sealed 12,000. Of the tribe of Reuben were sealed 12,000. Of the tribe of Gad were sealed 12,000. Of the tribe of us Asher were sealed 12,000. Of the tribe of Naphtali were sealed 12,000. Of the tribe of Manasseh were sealed 12,000. Of the tribe of Simeon were sealed 12,000. Of the tribe of Levi were sealed 12,000. Of the tribe of Issachar were sealed 12,000. Of the tribe of Zebulun were sealed 12,000. Of the tribe of Joseph were sealed 12,000. Of The tribe of Benjamin were sealed 12,000. ―Revelations 7:4-8

​So what does it mean to receive the seal of God, as I said? It is to purify your willpower, to receive אור Aur, “light,” from the top trinity. You have to work with your heart, Arcanum 12, so that the hanged man is standing upright, has pulled himself up. But of course, this process as explained in the Book of Revelations is occurring as a result of great cataclysms.
 
​Revelations, the Apocalypse, is associated with the end of the world. While this has physical relevance to us today, more importantly, psychologically, we need to undergo a specific cataclysm in ourselves. These are ordeals, tribulations, sufferings, so that we confront our ego, see our errors, comprehend them and eliminate them in alchemy. That is how you melt the impure metals in the alchemical crucible of your marriage, of a matrimony. But of course, it is very painful as I said. No one likes to have the mud from the bottom of the lake stirred up, but that is what we have psychologically inside. We have to look inside through ordeals and sufferings. 

​The Ordeals of the Apostolate

​The Apostle is the precisely an ordeal of suffering, and I will relate to you an experience I had many years ago relating to Arcanum 12.
 
I was associated with a gnostic group when I was first studying gnosis. This is with a one of the Spanish-speaking schools. I won't say which. I dedicated myself to that group for a long time because I was having a lot of experiences in the astral plane, a lot of beautiful samadhis―things that even my instructors didn't have―and so there was a lot of jealousy, spiritual envy. This can be very negative, very terrible, because you come to a group, you expect the missionaries and the instructors or even the students to respect each other and help one another. But in this group I felt betrayed when they wouldn't let me into this school, at one point.
 
I left driving my car. I was very upset and in a lot of anguish. I was praying to Samael Aun Weor to help me because I was saying to myself, “If this is how gnostics behave, I don't want to be a part of this group.” Then later that night while I was meditating, I awoke in the astral plane and I remember I invoked him. It was a very cloudy sky, very dark, indicating my mind. I invoked, “In the Name of Christ, by the Power of Christ, for the Majesty of Christ, Samael Aun Weor!”
 
He didn't come down to me. So I decided I wanted to fly up to him. I flew up towards the sky, but then I felt his magnetic pull. That force from his Being, gently, but firmly, took me and put me back down on my feet, which is a very beautiful symbol. If you want to ascend, you have to first descend in the astral body.
 
Afterward, he showed me a machine with a giant keyboard that was asking for a password with 12 digits. I intuitively knew that if I didn't enter in that code, the end of the world would come. I won't relate the rest of the experience. It is a little personal.
 
But what I realized with that experience is that when you are working in the Apostolate, you suffer a lot. The worst sufferings occur in spiritual groups. There are a lot of spiritual groups that are filled with envy, with gossiping, with lying, with stealing people's ideas, because the ego is present. Not every group is like that, but if there is ego, there is always going to be conflicts of some kind, maybe minor, maybe major. In my case it was very major. I was in a lot of pain because I felt betrayed and I wanted to be helped, but Samael was showing me, “You want to ascend to me, to the Logos? Walk on your two feet. Pay attention to what you are doing now.” Then he was showing me a machine. “You want to escape the great cataclysm?” He was showing what I had to enter in, what actions I need to do in my physical body in order to escape the great cataclysm that's approaching, physically for humanity, but also psychologically, because humanity has reaped its full experiences in accordance to the zodiac.
 
The Age of Aquarius has begun. Pisces has ended. Now we are initiating a new zodiacal journey through the cosmos, in which great cataclysms occur, because Aquarius is a revolutionary sign. In the age of revolutions, we have to face many ordeals, experience a lot of pain. It may be in the case that with Arcanum 12, you have that experience when you work as an apostle. You get betrayed. People turn against you. People give you a lot of suffering, and personally, after that experience, I felt very comforted, because here I am having experiences with the head of the Gnostic movement and certain people that I have been dealing with who are supposedly Gnostic, have no idea. I mean, it is sad. You have people working at their level, and also there is a lot of backbiting, people criticizing. I personally have been a victim of many gossiping and lying and criticism from spiritual groups. It is sad. Instead, what that taught me is that I can't rely on anyone. You can't rely on anyone. You have to rely on your Being.
 
I knew from experience that if I didn't know Samael Aun Weor personally, I would have left the knowledge, because there is a lot of politics going on. But the way that you escape the cataclysm is by enduring your own karma. Obviously what I went through was my karma and your karma may be different. It we will be different according to your level of being, but the apostle has to suffer a lot.

​The Celestial Jerusalem and the Zodiac

The 12 zodiacal signs which are developed in us relate to the celestial Jerusalem, the 12 gates of the heavenly city. Jerusalem or in Arabic, Darussalam, the city of peace, is the crown chakra, the crown of omniscience, which is where you receive all the forces of the zodiac, initially. They descend into the different parts of the body, which we will be talking about in our courses on astrology.
 
But the 12 gates of the heavenly city relate to the 12 faculties of the human being, the 12 faculties of the Apostolate, because an apostle is someone who develops their faculties.
 
Samael Aun Weor mentioned that in order to be an initiate, you have to know how to astral travel. There are people who don't know how to travel in the astral body and get identified too much physically with politics, with people saying, “I am Master So-and-so,” and then people get fascinated. “I want to follow you.” But Samael Aun Weor was very specific. He said, “Don't follow people in the physical plane. Learn to receive our instructions for you in the astral plane.” Then you won't have to depend on anyone and then you will know what's right from what's wrong. You won't be fooled.
 
An apostle learns to develop those 12 faculties relating to the zodiac. Of course, there are four gates associated with the 12 zodiacal signs, relating to the four elements.
 
Fire relates to Aries, Leo, Sagittarius.
 
Air relates to Gemini, Libra, Aquarius.
 
Water relates to Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces.
 
Earth relates to Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn.
 
If you look back at the image of this card of the tarot, we have Taurus, an earth sign relating to the hangman, because what is a bull, a Taurus? It is the power or אור Aur within the ת Tav, the cross, which is your body. Your body is a cross in which light can be generated. So if you want to escape the fate of the infernal worlds and the Earth devolving into degenerated animal, plant, mineral states, you have to work with the power of your body, your bull, Taurus.
 
Question: Is that Taurus?
 
Instructor: Yeah, and it does relate to the Earth because the Earth is your body. As above, so below. Those forces are above, but also within our physical body, because מלכות Malkuth is the kingdom that receives all the heavenly forces above. Now we have to return it back up by raising the triangle of the spirit above the cross.
 
The Bible states in the Book of Revelation:

And there came unto me one of the seven angels which had the seven vials full of the seven last plagues, and talked with me, saying, Come hither, I will shew thee the bride, the Lamb's wife.
 
And he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain, and shewed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God,
 
Having the glory of God: and her light was like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal… ―Revelations 21:9-11

​…which reminds us of the heavenly city of Oz, the Emerald City, which is the crown chakra, Oz, עץ Otz in Hebrew, עץ החיים Otz Chaim, the Tree of Life and עץ הדעת טוב ורע Otz Ha-Da’ath Tob Vau Ra, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

And had a wall great and high, and had twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and names written thereon, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel:
 
On the east three gates; on the north three gates; on the south three gates; and on the west three gates.
 
And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and in them the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. ―Revelations 21:12-14

So working with the zodiac is working with Arcanum 12 and by working with sacrifice, overcoming the negative impulses of our own mind. When we receive the negative impressions of our fellow men, we transform it. So it is a very good card. Even that experience that I mentioned to you, I was suffering a lot, but I realized I cannot judge these people who are persecuting me, but instead be patient with them and leave it into God's hands. Let them be judged by God, not me. It helped me to transform those impressions at that level, so that I was able to conserve a lot of my emotional energy, because it was a very traumatic, a very painful experience. 

I worked with the magic of the roses in order to be healed of that, which was easily resolved because I was saving my emotional energy enough to have that astral experience.
 
So if you want to have astral experiences, you need hydrogen 24. If you want experiences in the mental plane, you need hydrogen 12. If you want experiences in the causal world, Nirvana, you need hydrogen 6. So save your energies through great cataclysms. When you are confronted with ordeals, face them patiently and don't be frustrated with other people, but work on yourself. That is how you work with the Hebrew letter ל Lamed. 

​Psalm 119:89-96

​So the Hebrew letter ל Lamed initiates each verse from 89 to 96 in the Psalm 119. ל Lamed is a beautiful mystery relating to the 12th Arcanum.

לְעֹולָם יְהוָה דְּבָרְךָ נִצָּבבַּשָּׁמָֽיִם׃
לְדֹר וָדֹר אֱמֽוּנָתֶךָ כֹּונַנְתָּ אֶרֶץ וַֽתַּעֲמֹֽד׃
לְֽמִשְׁפָּטֶיךָ עָמְדוּ הַיֹּום כִּי הַכֹּל עֲבָדֶֽיךָ׃
לוּלֵי תֹורָתְךָ שַׁעֲשֻׁעָי אָז אָבַדְתִּיבְעָנְיִֽי׃
לְעֹולָם לֹא־אֶשְׁכַּח פִּקּוּדֶיךָ כִּיבָם חִיִּיתָֽנִי׃
לְֽךָ־אֲנִי הֹושִׁיעֵנִי כִּי פִקּוּדֶיךָ דָרָֽשְׁתִּי׃
לִי קִוּוּ רְשָׁעִים לְאַבְּדֵנִי עֵדֹתֶיךָ אֶתְבֹּונָֽן׃
לְֽכָל תִּכְלָה רָאִיתִי קֵץ רְחָבָה מִצְוָתְךָ מְאֹֽד׃
 
89 Oh Iod-Havah your Word is settled in heaven forever.
90 Your fidelity is to generation and generation; you founded the earth and it still stands.
91 To this day, they stand according to your judgments, for all are your servants.
92 Unless your law was my delight, then I had perished in my grief.
93 I will never forget your precepts, for through them you gave me life.
94 I am yours save me, for I have sought your precepts.
95 The wicked waited for me, to destroy me; I will consider your testimonies.
96 I have seen an end to all perfections, your command is exceedingly broad.
―Psalm 119

"Oh יהוה Iod-Havah, your Word has settled in heaven forever. Your fidelity is to generation and generation; You founded the earth and it still stands." What is that generation from generation? Each sephirah on the Tree of Life is a generation. So when the Bible talks about the generations of Adam or the generations of Abraham, it is talking about the sephiroth as you ascend higher and higher, through your lineage, your genealogy, your genesis―the genius Lucis, generation of light.
 
"And you founded the earth and it still stands (meaning your body is being trained for alchemy; your bull, your taurus is where you extract אור Aur, light). To this day, they stand according to your judgments, for all are you servants. Unless your law was my delight, then I had perished in my grief."
 
So I give you an example of this. If it wasn't for my love of the Gnostic doctrine, my Being, I would have left. I would have perished in grief. But fortunately I had Samael Aun Weor to help me. He was a great blessing.
 
"I will never forget your precepts, for through them you gave me life." So when we are hanging over our own abyss as a hanged man, we learn to remember the precepts of alchemy because through them we have spiritual life.
 
"I am yours, save me, for I have sought your precepts (of alchemy). The wicked (the ego) waited for me to destroy me. I will consider your testimonies (because remember that testimony relates to testes, testicles, how you work with the stone of יסוד Yesod, because if you give testimony of God, it is because you experience it in its most genuine sense from meditation, from astral travel). I have seen an end to all perfections. Your command is exceedingly broad."

​The Hebrew Letter ל Lamed

In relation to the apostle we talk about the Hebrew letter ל Lamed. We will begin this discussion on ל Lamed through an excerpt from the Book of Revelations, chapter 2, verse 2 about the apostle. 

I know your works, and your labor, and your patience, and how you cannot bear them which are evil: and you hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and have found them liars. ―Revelations 2:2

So what is an apostle? Someone who has the sacred fire of the Kundalini raised to their head through the sacrifice of the power of ל Lamed. 

Notice that this Hebrew letter looks exactly like the hanged man with the feet hanging above and the head below. ל Lamed relates to the descent of forces from the top trinity to the middle trinity to יסוד Yesod, our sexual organs, because the Hebrew letter י Iod is a dot we discussed in Arcanum 10: Retribution, within which emerges the force of כתר Kether, descends as a Hebrew letter ו Vav in the spine until entering כ Kaf, the crown, the head. ל Lamed refers to that descent of that power.
 
Question: Is that a י Iod at the top?
 
Instructor: That is a י Iod, and so that י Iod is the power of God that ascends from the tenth sephiroth on the Tree of Life, כתר Kether, down the ו Vav in the spine until יסוד Yesod, the sexual organs. So an apostle has the fire of Kundalini raised up to the head, a serpent upon the head. So people who call themselves apostles without having that fire inside of them are liars. That scripture teaches us, “I know your works and your patience,” because people who have those experiences and have that development don't really talk about it. When people go around saying they are soldiers of Christ or people of God while they are fornicators, is really absurd. So “I know the disgust you feel as a person who practices chastity, towards those who say they are initiates, but are not.”

ל Lamed symbolizes aspiration and the descent of forces, not only within the head to sex, but to our heart, as we see in this image of Christ with the Hebrew letter ל Lamed transposed over the heart. We also have the Hebrew letter ‎א Aleph of which we will talk about. ל Lamed is the only letter that when you place it on the invisible transverse line, when you read Hebrew from right to left, is the only letter of the alphabet which ascends above that line, signifying that י Iod, כתר Kether from above, enters, descends down the Tree of Life until reaching our human heart as well as the spiritual heart.
 
ל Lamed refers to how the force of the Solar Absolute, the Christ: כתר Kether, חכמה Chokmah, בינה Binah, enters the bodhisattva represented by Jesus. A bodhisattva is a master of the fifth initiation of fire who incarnates Christ. बोधि Bodhi means “light.” सत्त्व Sattva means “essence of,” “incarnation of.” Bodhi can also mean “heart,” the heart of धित्त chitta, “heart mind of wisdom.” The light of the אין סוף אור Ain Soph Aur emerges from, what we can say in the Book of Genesis, שמים Shamayim. Remember we talked about:

בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָֽרֶץ
Bereshit Bara Elohim At Hashamayim Vay’at Ha’aretz
In the beginning, Elohim created the heavens and the earth. ―Genesis 1:1

בְּרֵאשִׁית Bereshit: “In wisdom,” “In the beginning.” בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים Bara Elohim: “Elohim created.” At Hashamayim: “the heavens,” and, וְאֵת הָאָֽרֶץ Vay’at Ha’aretz, “and the earth.”
 
שמים Shamayim is the fiery waters of heaven. מים Mayim means “water.” ש Shin means “fire.” So שמים Shamayim translated as “heavens,” really means “fiery waters,” the mysteries of דעת Da’ath―how you transmute the energy of מים Mayim into fire so that you create the heavens, the heavenly states of being in you. So that מים Mayim is the waters of life that received the ש Shin, the fire.
 
We talked about the Hebrew word מֶ֖לֶךְ Melech: מ Mem, ל Lamed, כ Kaf. מ Mem receives the fires from above which descend from the heavens through ל Lamed until reaching your כ Kaf, your head. מֶ֖לֶךְ Melech is a king that is united with the Solar Absolute. ל Lamed, also, when it is upside down, if you invert it, indicates that י Iod is in our sexual glands as the sperm or ovum, which needs to rise up the ו Vav until reaching our כ Kaf, our head, the crown.
 
In order to work with ל Lamed, we work with the prana, life, the spirit, which is ‎א Aleph. ‎א Aleph-ל Lamed together is אל El, meaning “God,” because of how you work with your spiritual force. ‎א Aleph which is made of three י Iods, the three primary forces, and through your ל Lamed, your speech, is how you work as an apostle. Because ל Lamed can also refer to speech, the tongue, through which ‎א Aleph, the prana, the wind, the spirit, is expressed.
 
So to have God inside is to be an apostle and to express that light. If you remember, we talked about how that force descends to the heart. We have an acrostic relating to the Hebrew word למד Lamed: לב מבין דעת Lev Meivin Da’ath, "a heart that understands knowledge." So what is a heart that understands knowledge, that works in דעת Da’ath, in תפארת Tiphereth, the human soul? When our heart is inflamed with experiences, with light, with wisdom, we also face the ordeals of the heart as well―emotional crises in which the water has to boil at a hundred degrees celsius so those egos which need to be disintegrated can be disintegrated.
 
This is represented by the crown of thorns in the heart of Jesus. It is also interesting that you have a cross above that heart because the heart represents the middle trinity of the Tree of Life: חסד Chesed, גבורה Geburah, תפארת Tiphereth. Or, the triangle of the hanged man. But notice that the cross is above the heart. It can also refer to the apostle because the cross is the legs, but in this case, the heart has been purified so that cross is dominated. The cross has been raised up the Mountain of Initiation to Golgotha, the superior worlds, the head. Golgotha refers to the “place of the skull,” which you raise the powers of the cross from Muladhara Chakra to Chakra Sahasrara.
 
So, אל El is “God.” אלהים Elohim is another word for God in which the ‎א Aleph works through the tongue, because ל Lamed is like a tongue. It looks like it graphically. It also relates to how we pronounce speech. Somewhere, we talked about the Arcanum of Persuasion in which one must learn how to help others with serenity of mind and speech.
 
Question: Doesn't the soul relate to mantras then?
 
Instructor: Yes, and that relates to דעת Da’ath, alchemy, how you pronounce sacred mantras in a matrimony.
 
There is a very beautiful mantra relating to ל Lamed and ‎א Aleph within Sufism: الله هوالله Allah hu Allah. الله Allah is spelled ا Alif, ل Lam, ل Lam, ه Ha―two ل Lams. How the power of ‎א Aleph [ا Alif] enters into you through your visualization, through your prayer, like we did with the runes. Then with mantras, you work with the spirit of the heart, هو Hu, the breath,חסד Chesed, the spirit, in order to pronounce Allah. Allah descends into you and then through your spiritual work, you return that light back to the source. الله هوالله Allah hu Allah.
 
The powers of the crown: כתר Kether, חכמה Chokmah, בינה Binah, manifest through هو Hu or हुं Hum, the Spirit. الله Allah: ا Alif, ل Lam, ل Lam, ه Ha is a four lettered word of God, a Tetragrammaton, which manifest within חסד Chesed, the spirit, רוח Ruach in Hebrew or روح Ruh in Arabic. Then that energy through ל Lamed, through the apostle, the hanged man, through the initiate, returns up back to the source. 
 
The three י Iods of ‎א Aleph we talked about previously relate to three glands in our head, or three centers of energy or atoms of forces in our physical mind, our physical brain. We have the pituitary gland relating to the third eye, one י Iod. We also have an atom relating to חכמה Chokmah, the Christ, relating to that third eye or the pituitary gland. We have an atom relating to the Father, כתר Kether, at root of the nose, the atom Anu. We also have an atom relating to the Holy Spirit within the pineal gland. So those are the three י Iods of ‎א Aleph, because through initiation, by raising the powers of the apostle up the spine, you learn to unite the forces of those atoms, those energies, in your mind together.
 
The aura of your pituitary gland, your pineal gland, your third eye, are charged with solar forces so that they unite before descending from your brain down to your heart. That is the path of the cross, the path of initiation. So through working with the ‎א Aleph, the wind, the mantras, the sounds, you form אל El, God in you. This is how we develop persuasion within ourselves.

ל Lamed and ב Beth in the Zohar

​In order to reiterate these points, I'd like to read for you an excerpt from the Zohar as we have been doing frequently in this course, which talks about the mysteries of ל Lamed and ב Beth, the heart, the house of God.

The king will rejoice in‎ אלהים (Elohim), God (Psalms 63:12). ―Zohar, Pritzker Vol. 1, p. 173

​Who is that king? We say in Hebrew מֶ֖לֶךְ Melech. מ Mem, ל Lamed, כ Kaf, a solar man, a solar master. “Rejoice in אלהים Elohim,” which acrostically hides many mysteries. אל El is “God.” אלה Eloah is “Goddess.” ‎ אלהים Elohim means “Gods and Goddesses.” But, we can also can break this down to say אלה Elah ים Yam. אלה Elah meaning “Goddess,” ים Yam, meaning the “sea.” So who is that goddess of the sea? It is our Divine Mother, Aphrodite-Venus, who was born from the castrated genitalia of Uranus.

When supernal גבורה (Gevurah), Power, is aroused to embrace Him beneath His head, drawing Him close in joy, so that all will be one, then the king will rejoice... ―Zohar, Pritzker Vol. 1, p. 173

​So when גבורה Geburah, our might of our consciousness embraces him beneath His head,‎ אלהים Elohim, בינה Binah, through the left pillar of the Tree of Life, holding him close in joy, so that all will be one, then the King will rejoice. This is a reference to how the left pillar of the Tree of Life in the Zohar is a reference to גבורה Geburah, holding the head of the Divine Majesty―firm, referring to justice, severity.

​Then likewise, you have the right hand which caresses the divine spouse, referring to the right pillar of the Tree of Life, mercy. Both together form Jakin-Boaz. There is even an image of Buddhism, I didn't include that, but there is an image in Buddhism of certain Buddhas in sexual union, whereby the left hand is holding up the head, גבורה Geburah. The divine soul, the feminine soul, is holding up the head of the Buddha, Shiva, with the left hand holding the head firmly, and then the right hand caresses, referring to kabbalah, severity and justice, male-female.

…the joy of a stream issuing through a single secret, hidden channel [that is, when the king rejoices], flowing into him. ―Zohar, Pritzker Vol. 1, p. 173

So what is that secret hidden channel? It refers to the spine, an energetic nadi known as Chitra Nadi in Hinduism wherein the Kundalini rises. It also refers to how that secret channel is ל Lamed, that force descends into you first and now you have to return it back to your Being.

ב (Bet), two, who are one, and so the world is consummated in existence. ―Zohar, Pritzker Vol. 1, p. 173

​So that secret hidden channel is ל Lamed descending through the Tree of Life with those forces and then entering the heart, your ב Beth, because the Hebrew word for heart is ל Lamed-ב Beth, לב, Lev, which is where you get words like לְבָנוֹן Lebanon. The Bible speaks about the cedars of Lebanon. The cedar, Samael Aun Weor explains in Igneous Rose, relates to your spinal column. The elementals of the cedar can help you raise that fire if you are working in chastity. Also, לְבָנוֹן Lebanon relates to leb-anon, לֵב leb און aun, the לֵב (lev) heart and און aun, the strength of chastity, as you find in the name סםאל און ואור Samael Aun Weor. סםאל און Samael Aun, “strength, virility,” ואור Weor, “and light.” 

The king will rejoice in‎ אלהים (Elohim) (בינה Binah, in chastity)―the lower world rejoicing in the upper, deep world, a joy streaming forth. ―Zohar, Pritzker Vol. 1, p. 173

​So what is that upper world? It is the Logos, the logoic triangle as well as the ethical triangle in which you have the spirit, the divine soul, the human soul. The lower world is יצירה Yetzirah in kabbalah, the world of form: נצח Netzach, הוד Hod, יסוד Yesod and מלכות Malkuth―mind, heart, sexuality, and physicality. It is also known as the triangle of priesthood, how you become a priest, a mag, a magician. So by working with the four elements relating to the lower quaternary: mind, heart, emotion, and sex, you learn to take that power and return it up to the higher world.
 
That is how “the lower world rejoices in the upper, deep world, a joy streaming forth,” when that energy flows in you as a fountain of eternal life according to Jesus. “Truly I can give you a water,” he says to the Samaritan woman at the well, “a fountain that springs to everlasting life.” And then she asks him, “Where is that well? I would like to drink from this well.” He says, “Go, call thy husband” (John 4:7-16). Call your partner because that is the mystery of ל Lamed, you could say. Because those waters of life that enter יסוד Yesod emerge from the heavens above through ל Lamed, through the apostle within the initiate. 

Where does He rejoice? In‎ אלהים (Elohim). In Him, [בינה Binah, the Holy Spirit, יהוה אלהים Jehovah Elohim we can say] He rejoices; by Him, He transmits life to all. He is called “life of the king.” This is the essence of the house. This house built the house of the world, built the world. ―Zohar, Pritzker Vol. 1, p. 173

​What is that house? It is ב Beth. We talked about the house of bread, ב Bethlehem, and the ב Beth of your body is an earth or temple that can harness and hold the powers of God. 

The secret [of this house, we can say] is בְּרֵאשִׁית (Be-reshit), In the beginning―[or] ב רֵאשִׁית (bet reshit), two, beginning, [the house of the solar bodies are built in you through initiation, through] beginning with wisdom. ―Zohar, Pritzker Vol. 1, p. 173

​So speech has to be handled carefully, since דעת Da’ath, the throat, is how we modify sexual energy. It is very easy to see that in adolescence when young men are coming of age, their voice matures. The same thing with women because of the sexual hormones are in action. But, it is important that we are conscious of not only what we eat that, but also how we speak. For in the Book of Matthew, chapter 15, verse 17 through 20:

Do not ye yet understand, that whatsoever entereth in at the mouth goeth into the belly, and is cast out into the draught? But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies: These are the things which defile a man: but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man. ―Matthew 15:17-20

​The heart expresses either the consciousness or the ego. So we must learn to wear a crown of thorns in our heart: control the animal mind. The crown of thorns also demonstrates the sacrifice of the ego through developing Christic will, which you do through runes and many exercises to teach your body, your mind, and your heart to follow the Being. 
 
With ל Lamed, we learn to take certain atoms and forces from above and from below and unite them in the heart. Through runes, sexual alchemy, working with pranayama, we take the atoms of the sexual glands and raise them up to our head, into our heart. Master Morya in his Dayspring of Youth speaks about aspiring atoms, aspirational atoms, which are forces that reside on our seminal system, but also in the atmosphere, which we accumulate as we aspire. We inhale the air and we raise it up the spine to our head, through our heart, and then that way, we unite those forces from below with above. With runes or any of the exercises of transmutation, you learn to transform the psyche by accumulating Christic atoms, forces. 
 
Question: Is that done through pranayama?
 
Instructor: Yes, because with pranayama, you are aspiring, because to be inspired is to inhale, to work with the breath, so that your spiritual life is rejuvenated. Then you aspire because those forces are rising in you. So those aspiring atoms enter through the nostrils, through the root of the nose relating to the Atom Anu, and then enter the heart, because the heart is where we have a very special influence called the Atom Nous.

​The Atom Nous relates to a particle of חסד Chesed, the spirit, which resides in our heart, our emotional center, and which is represented by Jesus with the sacred heart. His heart is illuminated because his Atom Nous, that particle relating to his inner spirit, is channeling and controlling all the forces of Christ in him.
 
The Atom Nous is in the left ventricle of the heart, which channels all the forces from above and below, and unites them in the heart. The Atom Nous obeys the commands of our Innermost God, our spirit, and commands all the atoms of our internal bodies, our physical body as well, to work for the benefit of the Being. But of course, the Atom Nous cannot do anything spiritually with us if we are eating garbage, filling our mind with filth, and being identified with desire. Those aspiring atoms don't accumulate unless we work with breath, prana, runes. It is good to charge ourselves every morning with that force so that our heart is inflamed. We are aspiring to unite with the Being.
 
Question: Would you say that sunrise is the best time?
 
Instructor: Yes.
 
Nietzsche wrote in his Thus Spoke Zarathustra about the power of the Atom Nous. "I love the man who is free in spirit and in heart, thus his head is only the entrails of his heart, while his heart urges him to go under." So what does that mean? Meaning, don't be intellectual, but let your head obey your heart. Learn to think with the heart, feel with the head, according to Samael Aun Weor. 

​The last thing we will comment on is we have this image of Osiris, the Egyptian God known as Christ, Osiris-Ra, the top trinity of the Tree of Life. From him emerges ל Lamed, and on his head he has a serpent raised, which also refers to how the serpent rises up the spine from י Iod in sex, to ו Vav in the base of the spine, in the back, to the head, כ Kaf, forming a Christic man, a solar man, a מֶ֖לֶךְ Melech, a king.
 
As the Book of Revelations teaches, he is King of Kings and Lord of Lords, מלך המלכים Melech Ha-Malachim, or אֲדוֹן הָאֲדוֹנִים Adonai Ha-Adonim: King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

​Advice for Entering Initiation

Some final thoughts from Samael Aun Weor in relation to this arcanum.
 
We should learn not to identify with sensual pleasures, desires, emotions, dramas, scenes of life. It doesn't mean we become fanatic and self-flagellating as I said, but not identifying with pleasures. Don't seek them out, but do what you need to do and enjoy life, but it doesn't mean with identification, with desire, with passion. As the apostle hangs from the superior worlds, hanging with his head barely touching the earth, we must learn to be in the world, but not of it, so that we only touch the world with our thoughts, not ever identifying ourselves with it. We should also study, he says, the Book of Alchemy, such as from Paracelsus, Nicholas Flamel, Raymond Lully. He also states:

​You who are searching for initiation, you who read immensely, you who live fluttering from school to school always searching, always longing, always sighing, tell me with sincerity… Did you awaken your Kundalini? Did you open the seven churches of your spinal medulla? Did you incarnate the Lamb? Answer me beloved reader, be sincere with your own self. Put your hand on your heart and answer me with sincerity, are you Self-realized? Are you sure that with your theories you will convert yourself into a God? What have you achieved? What have you received with all your theories? ― Samael Aun Weor, Tarot and Kabbalah 

​Questions and Answers

​Comment: From what I’ve read, Dion Fortune or someone mentioned how the third order of the Jesuits, who were highly occult in all areas, they all got young boys. How they did it, before the libido kicked in and turned them towards lust, and somehow―there’s not a woman involved―the idea was that they’d train to raise the Kundalini there. They were doing it with these boys, teaching them techniques or whatever, to make it rise, since they were pure at an early age. So that’s technically another method…
 
Instructor: Yeah. Individuals learn to awaken sparks. Like with runes, you awaken sparks of that fire in you and with those children, those youth who learned to transmute at an early age, are educated to know what to do. But in these times, youth don't know any better. It is very tragic. 
 
Question: I know I have learned in the books about the mantra Krim [pronounced mentally] while you eat. Is there a prayer you can do too?
 
Instructor: There are many prayers you can do. We have some available in A Gnostic Prayer Book, but one that I do is simply, sometimes “In the Name of Christ, by the Power of Christ, for the Glory of Christ,  please bless this food. I give thee thanks for giving me what I need.” There are many prayers that have been used in different religions, which are all useful, effective. But what matters is that you give thanks to your inner God. “My God, I thank thee for giving me my way of earning my daily bread, so that I can treat my temple with respect and with the nourishment it needs.” That prayerful attitude is what really matters, so that your prayer is what helps to transform your mind state. With a proper attitude, we learn to take in good elements and that is how we purify the blood. The blood itself then becomes the semen.
 
Comment: Steiner said the House of Bread you’re talking about, in order to bring that up spiritually, you have to have your abdominal area clean so that the forces will work better.

Instructor: Yeah, and so the stomach needs to be cleansed for any type of spiritual work to be done, because how we eat determines our sexual energy. How we work with the Hydrogen Si-12. How that element develops in you depends on your gastrointestinal health. So those compounds would be digested in you with greater purity, and the greater quality of food we consume, those hydrogens can help to nourish our soul after we create the solar bodies.
 
Comment: There’s a connection there with the common Tarot where they associate ל Lamed with the Justice card and the scales, which is what we see in some of the decks.
 
Instructor: We can say that how you work with ל Lamed relates with how you work with justice, because there is an interrelationship there. Remember when we looked at Arcanum 12 or the 12th key of Basil Valentine, we found that there was a scale in the background. So is the work with balancing your energies in you. 
 
Question: What is the origin of the arcanum?
 
Instructor: We talked in Arcanum 2: The High Priestess about the mysteries of Islam [and the origins of the tarot].
 
Question: But is it astral projected or is it from this third dimensional world? Where do they come from?
 
Instructor: The tarot means law. These are laws that are in every universe, every cosmos. All of nature in the universe is founded on the laws as we were explaining by the Tree of Life. So the Torah, the Tarot are archetypes which are within the Being emanating from the divine, and they help to organize creation but also establish the path the soul needs to take in order to return to the Being, from Arcana 1 to 22.
 
Question: Who spread this knowledge besides the gnostics?
 
Instructor: So in Arcanum 1: The Magician we talked about Metatron, who originally taught the Israelites the 22 Hebrew letters, but also the 22 Arcana.
 
But the Sufis talk about the origin of the Tarot as a Preserved Tablet. We mentioned that in Arcanum 2 and in that arcanum, in that lecture, we discussed how the law is inscribed in stone. It is a symbol. Originally the ancient masters did that to teach humanity, but when the time came, they had to preserve that knowledge. They didn't give it to the public except for a few people who did, and that eventually formed an adulterated version of what we call the Tarot, which people associate with divination and fortune card reading. But that Preserved Tablet was inscribed in stone according to the Qur’an. The Sufis elaborate that the Preserved Tablet is a scripture read by the angels. It is a teaching of how to unite with God and how to even go higher. It is a law of nature.
 
Question: In sexual alchemy, in order to perform with your woman, you have to be in arousal, so isn't there a fine line between purity of mind and lust?
 
Instructor: From the sublime to the ridiculous there is only one step, because on one path, you are on the razor's edge. You can return to your Being or be tempted.
 
Question: How is that determined?
 
Instructor: The way that you determine that is with a lot of meditation, because the mind is very deep. There are many elements which seem one way on the surface, but then when you go into meditation, you say, “That wasn't love. That was lust.” You discover that in levels as you go deeper. 
 
Question: It is a very fine line is it not?
 
Instructor: And that is why why Swami Sivananda wrote that this is the path of the razor's edge. Very difficult, because to distinguish lust from love requires a tremendous comprehension. Even if you finish the work, if you become an angel, a מֶ֖לֶךְ Melech, you can still fall through sex, because those masters, even though the united with God, they let themselves be tempted.
 
Question: Is appreciating a woman's body lust?
 
Instructor: In most cases, yes, but you learn to distinguish how to train your eye, your vision, with a lot of patience. Samael Aun Weor explained to his students when he was still in his process of developing transforming impressions, he would go to beaches and he said, “I trained myself to look at a woman from the waist up, because it took years to train my eyesight not to look at women with desire.”
 
Question: The forces of nature are not easy to controll It's almost like if you really want to practice this, it's almost better off being with someone you are not physically aroused by...
 
Instructor: That's important. Samael Aun Weor mentioned that in order to perform alchemy, we have to work and resonate with our partner in the spheres of thought, feeling, and will. Relating to physical attraction, liking how one's partner appears as it relates to your vital energy, having that sexual chemistry. Emotionally, third, we need to vibrate with the heart so that there is a type of affinity there.
 
Comment: But you have to be on the same page, equally, in terms of desire, practices, and discipline you have!
 
Instructor: And with the mind you have to be similar in mind, at least have some type of common ground, mentally. In a lot of marriages, some people are in one religion, other people are in another. People's minds don't connect sometimes, but more importantly, the will has to be there too, because one can really love one thing with one's will, but the worst clashes of marriages always occur with the willpower, with the heart. So sexuality, heart, mind, will, should be in affinity.
 
Most people don't begin with the perfect matrimony. It builds, because love develops. It doesn't come out of the clouds like people think, “I am going to meet at this retreat this wonderful gnostic woman and she is going to change my life.” I have known many marriages who are supposedly gnostic and yet they suffered tremendously, ending in divorce, because even though physically they were attracted, energetically, emotionally, mentally, the willpower was against each other. I know one case of one missionary, he wanted to be in one group, the other wanted to be in another group. They were identified with politics so they didn't get along.
 
Question: You mentioned the different phases that you go through. You mentioned physical, attraction, mental, and what was the other one?
 
Instructor: Emotional. 
 
Comment: Dion Fortune wrote about that. She says that unless they are married, in other words, together on the spiritual, you are not going to know how to complete the work…
 
Instructor: And if the wills of the couple are united it is because the spirit is guiding them. So that is why Samael Aun Weor synthesized in relation with the three bodies: solar astral, solar mental, solar causal―feeling, thought, and will.
 
Comment: There has to be an alignment.
 
Instructor: Yeah, and in relation to The Wizard of Oz, the Wizard of the Tree of Life, the scarecrow needs a new mind, the tin man needs a new heart, the lion needs courage―solar astral, solar mental, solar causal. 
 
Question: Any reason why “U” is before “Ah” in the runes? Because when you look at the chakras...
 
Instructor: Yeah, because your solar plexus is receptacle of forces. So when ל Lamed, the powers of above descend through your head, your crown, “I” in the head, “Eh” in the throat, “O” in the heart, “U” in the solar plexus, your solar plexus is a repository of energy from above which you use to project against demons, such as when you conjure. You cover your solar plexus, heels together, and you do the conjuration because you are channeling your energy from your solar plexus in your hand, your body, to outward. The vowel “Ah” relates to the speech. 
 
Question: So it comes back up again?
 
Instructor: Yeah, because with your speech, you are taking the energy you conserved and you are using it and you are projecting it. In that way, in certain conjugations, you defend yourself against witches.
 
Comment: This has to do with the after realm. You were talking about the shadows of most people that are not really practicing... I noticed in my practice when I first got into gnosticism, I got a lot of color and then it went away...
 
Instructor: Colored experiences, right?
 
Question: Color with the luminous, I had experiences with luminous beings and I sort of liked the structure, but I think it was kind of like a gift... Once you come across a luminous being, how do you encounter or initiate something?
 
Instructor: Samael Aun Weor mentions in his books such as The Major Mysteries, when you become competent in astral travel, consecrate yourself into a master, someone who actually is finishing or has finished the work. Not someone in the physical plane, but like Jesus, Muhammed, Buddha, Krishna. Personally for me, it is Samael Aun Weor, and I remember reading his books and feeling very inspired, wanting to practice what he taught. So I started and I started having experiences like I did when I was a teenager. I decided in my heart, “I want to know who this man is. I don't want to just accept what he says, because personally, this is the truth for me. But I want to verify. I want to know.” So I invoked him many times. I had experiences where I remember the first time I met him was in an Aztec temple in the astral world. I met him. He knew what I was there for because he is awake. I was asking, “I want to be your disciple.” He came up to me in this temple after the guardian let me in. I greeted him. They let me in on the sole condition that I was very respectful.
 
They are very severe because they said , “You want to be in this temple, you have to act like an angel.” You know, don't identify with being a demon. So I came in and I invoked him. He came up to me. He was dressed in a suit, appeared to me like his bodhisattva in Latin America. I didn't say anything. He just looked at me. We did a handshake. I shook his hand like that of the Masons, and it confirmed for me, because I was awake and I saw that he was a master, you know. Seeing face-to-face is very different from someone physically telling you, “I am the Master So-and-so. Follow me.” But here, I knew who he was.
 
So for after many years I have been working with him, but you learn that, you develop guru yoga in you, by loving the teachings of that guru and seeing the beauty of how it applies to your life. Then you feel that natural love and longing to know those angels. When you see those angels face to face, I mean, it is really transformative, because nothing compares to that. Personally, I remember one time I invoked Samael Aun Weor. I was walking in the city. I woke up and I found myself walking, so I invoked him, “In the Name of Christ, by the Power of Christ, for the Majesty of Christ, Venerable Master Samael Aun Weor!” He came down, showed me a symbol I won't relate to you right now, a little personal, but he appeared in the form of wearing these white garments. He was radiating so much light that I felt so insignificant. I felt pain because I was telling him telepathically, “I want to be like you at that level.”
 
He just smiled. He said, “Walk with me.” He was teaching me things, telling me things that I am not going to relate now, but you know―full of light, solar bodies, pure. When you see that light for yourself, of Christ, I mean, you feel, you melt. That's love for your guru, your teacher―not physically, but internally [learn to practice Dream Yoga and Astral Travel so as to invoke and experience genuine masters].
 
You develop it through love, and guru yoga is based on love. Certain schools in the Piscean Era had degenerated, like within Sufism, where they believe that your guru has to be physical and you have to tolerate all their mistakes and everything. This is really not the case in the Aquarian Age. But in an ancient times, people developed guru yoga, but of course, it degenerated too. But that is why Samael Aun Weor says, when you look for a teacher, look from the astral plane and then consecrate yourself unto a master of Major Mysteries with supreme respect, someone who is developed, who is an angel.
 
Question: Do they introduce themselves to you?
 
Instructor: Yeah, they come to you sometimes. I mean, I have had many experiences recently where for many years, before I could even invoke Samael, he is already here, because he knows me. He says “I know you are going to call me. So here I am.” That is why Dante's Divine Comedy states that the Divine Mother Mary in Canto 33 often answers the call of the one before he even calls, answers the supplication before you can even get it out of your mouth, because the Being is omniscient, knows.