Nietzsche: On the Tarantulas

Behold, this is the hole (infraconsciousness) of the tarantula (pseudo-esoteric spiritual person or so-called "gnostic missionary").  Do you want to see the tarantula itself?  Here hangs its web (deceits and lies); touch it, that it tremble!

There it comes willingly (to persecute you with its fanaticism): welcome, tarantula! Your triangle and symbol sits black on your back (representative of the three traitors: the demon of desire, the demon of the mind, and the demon of evil will); and I also know what sits in your soul. Revenge sits in your soul: wherever you bite (criticize and gossip), black scabs grow; your poison makes the soul whirl with revenge.

Thus I speak to you in a parable—you who make souls whirl, you preachers of equality (because the so-called "gnostic" missionaries, who pretend to be initiates, are filled with supreme spiritual envy towards their superiors, those initiates who know how to have internal experiences from daily meditation, even when such initiates are only students in these spiritual groups).  To me you are tarantulas, and secretly vengeful (because you are jealous of those who actually succeed in the Great Work; you have no direct knowledge of the truth, so you hate those who do). But I shall bring your secrets to light; therefore I laugh in your faces with my laughter of the heights (because I have internal development and a higher Level of Being born from the rigors of the initiatic path). Therefore I tear at your webs (your false beliefs that you weave around yourself and which you use to inhibit, repress, and trap your students), that your rage may lure you out of your lie-holes and your revenge may leap out from behind your word justice (since the hypocritical gnostic pharisees use the words of Christ in order to condemn Christ; see Samael Aun Weor's Gnostic Bible: The Pistis Sophia Unveiled). For that man be delivered from revenge, that is for me the bridge to the highest hope (Kether), and a rainbow (of קֶשֶׁת Qesheth, the path which leads from Malkuth to Kether on the Tree of Life) after long storms (ordeals and karmic suffering).

The tarantulas, of course, would have it otherwise. "What justice means to us is precisely that the world be filled with the storms of our revenge"—thus they speak to each other (they want revenge because they are in despair; they lack conscious knowledge and direct experience of the internal worlds). "We shall wreak vengeance and abuse on all whose equals we are not"—thus do the tarantula-hearts vow. "And 'will to equality' shall henceforth be the name for virtue (which makes such people very small in comparison to the giants of initiation); and against all that has power we want to raise our clamor!"

You preachers of equality, the tyrannomania of impotence clamors thus out of you for equality (you are impotent because you suffer from nocturnal pollutions or are unable to command the sexual energy): your most secret ambitions to be tyrants thus shroud themselves in words of virtue (you pretend to be a great initiate when you cannot even meditate).  Aggrieved conceit, repressed envy—perhaps the conceit and envy of your fathers (from the times of Jesus)—erupt from you as a flame and as the frenzy of revenge.

What was silent in the father speaks in the son; and often I found the son the unveiled secret of the father (because we live on in our descendants through return and recurrence; the hypocritical "gnostic" missionaries are simply the return and recurrence of the pharisees from the Piscean Era when Christ taught).

They are like enthusiasts, yet it is not the heart that fires them—but revenge.  And when they become elegant and cold , it is not the spirit but envy that makes them elegant and cold (they criticize the solar initiates and belittle them with many inhibitions and so-called rules; they believe they are the only legitimate gnostic movement or school in the world and that the rest are of the black lodge).  Their jealousy leads them even on the paths of thinkers (the great prophets and meditators); and this is the sign of their jealousy: they always go too far (they take what was taught by Samael Aun Weor and distort it), till their weariness must in the end lie down to sleep in the snow (of chastity, since such hypocritical gnostics may practice transmutation, and for a few moments their hypocrisy may go to sleep, only to reawaken later).  Out of every one of their complaints (that they cannot be chaste, abstain from drugs, meditate, or transmute) sounds revenge; in their praise there is always a sting (because they recognize their worthlessness before the humble presence of the solar initiates), and to be a judge seems bliss to them (because in the gnostic congresses, such pharisees demand to be president, in command, at the head, so as to enjoy the spiritual envy of their subordinates).

But thus I counsel you, my friends: Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful. They are people of a low sort and stock; the hangman and the bloodhound look out of their faces. Mistrust all who talk much of their justice! Verily, their souls lack more than honey (transmuted sexual seed and direct knowledge, the sweetness of the soul).  And when they call themselves the good and the just, do not forget that they would be pharisees, if only they had—power.

​My friends, I do not want to be mixed up and confused with others. Some preach my doctrine of life (חַיִים Chaim, transmutation and alchemy) and are at the same time preachers of equality and tarantulas (people who are in the gnostic movement and working as missionaries, yet who have no development and who seek to belittle others out of their spiritual envy). Although they are sitting in their holes (in Klipoth), these poisonous spiders, with their backs turned on life (Chokmah, the Christ), they speak in favor of life (Chokmah, the Second Logos, who is compassion and selfless love for humanity), but only because they wish to hurt. They wish to hurt those who now have power (through initiation, since they lack initiation themselves), for among these the preaching of death is still most at home (referring to those so-called spiritual leaders or instructors who have no genuine hope and illumination within themselves; they say they are in the gnostic movement, but do not practice at all; they believe in futility and the inevitability of the second death, like the soothsayer in the fourth part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra). If it were otherwise, the tarantulas would teach otherwise; they themselves were once the foremost slanderers of the world and burners of heretics (and have returned within the gnostic movement due to return, recurrence, and karma).

I do not wish to be mixed up and confused with these preachers of equality.  For, to me justice speaks thus: "Men are not equal." Nor shall they become equal! What would my love of the Superman be if I spoke otherwise? (since Christ, the Superman, is far above and beyond the degeneration of demons in Klipoth, the intellectual animals, and even the gods of the spiral path) 

On a thousand bridges and paths they shall throng to the future, and ever more war and inequality shall divide them (because the gnostic movement has split into multiple factions and organizations that all fight for political supremacy; such division has occurred in every religion): thus does my great love make me speak.  In their hostilities they shall become inventors of images (eikonon, relating to Eikasia, the state of unconscious sleep without dreams) and ghosts (Pistis, sleep with dreams, which resemble lunar phantoms of the mind), and with their images (Eikasia) and ghosts (Pistis) they shall yet fight the highest fight against one another (they will encounter those who truly understand and follow the gnostic teaching in order to recognize their emptiness and worthlessness).  Good and evil, and rich and poor, and high and low, and all the names of values—arms shall they be and clattering signs that life (חַיִים Chaim, the power of the Holy Spirit within our sexual glands) must overcome itself again and again (through incessant alchemical transmutations).

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Life wants to build itself up into the heights with pillars (of Mercy, Justice, and Equilibrium) and steps (on the ladder of Being); it wants to look into vast distances and out toward stirring beauties (since to see mountains in the internal planes signifies that one is walking the path of initiation): therefore it requires height (elevated states of consciousness). And because it requires height, it requires steps and contradiction among the steps and the climbers (because until the ego is dead, one is contradictory). Life wants to climb and to overcome itself climbing.

And behold, my friends: here where the tarantula has its hole, the ruins of an ancient temple rise (since the pharisees base their hypocrisy in the most venerated traditions); behold it with enlightened (clairvoyant) eyes!  Verily, the man who once piled his thoughts to the sky in these stones—he, like the wisest, knew the secret of all life (the ancient cultures knew the esoteric science of enlightenment in depth: alchemical transmutation). That struggle and inequality are present even in beauty (Tiphereth), and also war for power (Yesod) and more power (in Da'ath): that is what he teaches us here in the plainest parable.  How divinely vault and arches (remind us of the great arcanum, the Ark of the Covenant) break through each other in a wrestling match (like Jacob against the angel Samael, whose doctrine unveils the secret of the great arcanum: sexual magic); how they strive against each other with light and shade (since the white lodge and black lodge fight an eternal war to the death), the godlike strivers (in meditation)—with such assurance and beauty let us be enemies too, my friends! Let us strive against one another like gods (because we must inspire one another to overcome our own egos by confronting each other and having dialogue, which the hypocritical gnostic pharisees are unwilling to do).

Alas, then the tarantula, my old enemy, bit me. With godlike assurance and beauty it bit my finger.  "Punishment there must be and justice," it thinks; "and here he shall not sing songs in honor of enmity in vain."

Indeed, it has avenged itself.  And alas, now it will make my soul, too, whirl with revenge. But to keep me from whirling, my friends, tie me tight to this column (like Odysseus tied to the mast of his ship in order not to go mad with lust from the sirens of the sea, who desired his shipwreck within the Abyss, Klipoth). Rather would I be a stylite even, than a whirl of revenge.

Verily, Zarathustra is no cyclone or whirlwind; and if he is a dancer, he will never dance the tarantella.

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

From Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None by Friedrich Nietzsche, translated by Walter Kaufmann

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Prepare for initiation and the dangers of Phariseeism: