Time continues, but cycles end. Cycles are ending and beginning all the time.
Given our age, the era and the place we are born, we belong natively to certain cycles. This is part of the relative subjectivity to our DNA, our ancestral trauma, our families and our societies and the belief systems, patterns and wounds they are enacting which people call “Fate”.
In the way farmers interact with the natural world, there are waves of harvest, every Autumn is the season for harvest.
Spiritually, there are levels of growth and transformation, which we can ripen towards, integrate and advance into, like levels or stages in a game.
Integration of the lessons of the last level are like save-points, below which we cannot easily fall back—which give us the courage and freedom to “play” in the new level, without fear of easily regressing and losing the experience points and stats we have accrued in the form of Essence, Will, Consciousness and Understanding.
The attainment is akin to Actualisation. Following one’s own star in the sky, answering the call of Actualisation, is what people term “Destiny”. The consolidation of its capacities and responsibilities is Integration.
The thing is, time is continuous and eternal, but our organic vehicles have limits, and our budgets of vitality, energy and attention are subject to their tidal/season/cyclic ebb and flow, even forms of ending, transition and rebirth.
That said, time is continuous, but cycles end, and with them, our windows of opportunity. It is not that the way becomes shut completely but if we equate our journey to finding our way forward, the bridge to the next level lengthens and narrows as our cycles end. Also, there are more and less optimal times to engage in activities of beginning, divergence, peaking, convergence, ending and transition. This is the essence and nature of Flow.
Just as years have solstices, winters, snowmelts of Spring and the leaf fall of Autumn, and the death of Winters, our spiritual biomes have a seasonality, some of which track, in alignment to the seasons, but some which are longer arcs of relevance.
Astrology is an allegorical, symbolic study of the clockwork of these cycles, describing our individual and collective moments of opportunity, and adversity as they wax and wane, ebbing and flowing like currents of probability in which we are all adrift and paddling our way towards the tomorrow we will inhabit.
Like migratory turtles or salmon, we are called to periods of ‘quickening’, where something in us heeds a signal and heads for a shore we cannot remember leaving. Not everyone answers the call, and there are seasonal currents and tides one can time to make the outcome more or less certain. The Way is never closed completely, but when the moment passes, the way becomes harder, and we can miss the call, so to speak. This is not unlike trying to ride a wave into shore as a surfer. There are times, and places, where the current, the tide and the impetus of the mounting wave might conspire in one’s favour and times when all those same forces reverse their flow or flow orthogonal to our direction of movement and the resistance of the same exercise is increased.
There are not exactly wrong or only times, but there are better and worse times. There is a right time.
Also, we do not level up evenly; we might be ready and ripe in one aspect of our self-mastery, and more ‘green’ or ‘unripened’ in another. There are many ways of describing this project and its aspects, and each school or system has a different language and framing with which they articulate the work.
If the seeker/student makes the mistake of picking one system or framing above the rest, they advantage themselves in some ways and disadvantage themselves in others. This is the trap which misapplied devotion to Religion and Teachings can result in a ‘losing of The Way’.
The nature of each individual being is configured uniquely, and is in a different arc, following a slightly different vector in its Actualisation journey. These differences account for why certain souls are drawn to certain systems and forms of practice and why others are not called at all.
The committed seeker/student does well to develop a broad grasp of key language and concepts across several ancient traditions.
Consider as an example, the entirety of the internet, with all the hardware, the servers and clusters—both physical and virtual—electricity, operating systems, software, patches, protocols, interfaces, browsers and access points. We know that it is made up of discrete parts but also classes of objects, with multiple generations of the same object, simultaneously in use and under iterative development all the time. We also know that all the energy and objects, despite being discrete in one sense, exist only to connect and interact with all other aspects and objects, and conspire to form what we collectively call ‘The Internet’.
Furthermore, there are disciplines and specific fields of focus and practice that are devoted to every conceivable niche aspect of understanding and mastery from networking, to security, to modulation and demodulation of packets, to storage, to computation, to rendering, to parsing, to specific tasks and functions too numerous to list.
Expertise in one aspect of the entire technology stack, for example, electrical engineering, gives one some, but ultimately insufficient scope and understanding to effectively master the communication or networking fields.
In the same way, several spiritual, mystical or wisdom traditions each hold certain keys, which their innovators, developers, pioneers, and specialists refined over centuries. The obvious challenge for seekers and students is always how much of each, to pay attention to and to what depth. The more subtle challenge is that each of those frameworks, their language, symbolism, practices and premise is not only different, but laden with cultural bias, and subject to primitive vestigial psychological, anthropological and scientific legacy code that our societies have gradually rendered redundant over time. Spiritual Systems and Religions, however noble in their intention, also have a ‘Fate’ . That is to say, they also have influences and biases, local to their space and time of creation and practice which infuse cultural distortions and rely on cultural premises that are not explicit or included by design, but by accident. This means as the spiritual or wisdom system or Religion travels in space and time, as the cultural window shifts and evolves, the system or Religion ultimately includes in its kernel redundant code and language, which future students, practitioners and devotees are at a loss to identify, interpret or distinguish from the deliberately included code. This is exactly how the nature of ‘Fate’ works for individuals as well.
This is exactly why Hermetica Reiterated exists. To adapt and reiterate Hermetica for a modern context to this place and time, and to thresh and disintegrate the kernel from the chaff.
That being said there are three cardinal paths.
Three Paths
In no particular order:
The Path of Alignment of Will to Nature;
The Path of Surrender of Will; and
The Path of Actualisation.
From our current modern psychological paradigm, the Self is synonymous with Ego. This is only partly correct. Ego is the aspect of “Self” that is driven by Fear.
There are two Primary Vectors: Love and Fear. As per the diagram below, Love in this sense is not the small notion of romantic emotion between lovers. In one sense it the Prime Cause. Love and Fear form one of the Fundamental Dualities of Existence (there are several, which will be discussed in detail in a later article).
The nature of Love is cognate with principles such as Expansion, Growth (in harmony with Other), Curiosity, Connection, Harmony and Continuation, that is to say, what is conducive to Being, Life and Actualisation. Love is in Resonance with the Consciousness, Will and what is considered Divine.
The nature of Fear is cognate with principles such as Contraction, Avoidance, Constriction, Growth (out of harmony with Other, such as viruses and cancers), Disconnection and Ignorance, that is to say, what is not conducive to Being, Life and Actualisation. Fear is out of Resonance with Consciousness, Will and what is considered Divine.
Stance is the word that signifies which Prime Vector is Chosen. The default is Fear. Love must be Chosen, by Will, either by Surrender of Choice or Surrender to Discomfort in the service of Love.
The above diagram depicts The Locus of Man, the dual nature of Man, and the heart, as the inflection point.
The Path of Nature
The Path of Nature is where Will is surrendered to the superior Intelligence and Will of Nature, that is to say, the Consciousness and Harmony of Nature and the natural world. This is mastering the Ego in the service of alignment, in which the spiritual psychology matures, in terms of cooperation and appreciation of ‘Other’ and of Nature, but remains relatively infantile in relation to the archetype of The Mother. This is the domain of Nature Worship and Shamanistic practices in the legacy expressions which are making a resurgence and being adapted and innovated by spiritual practitioners.
Many are called to this path. These people are in Service to Nature. The project includes enduring discomforts in the practices, and life choices, such as diet, regulating their consumption and waste as forms of expression of service.
The Ceremonial practices are observances of Natural cycles, solar and lunar calendars, mushroom and plant medicines. Adherents of this Path would do themselves great service to understand the relationship between our Solar and Lunar cycles, their meanings, and the wider context of Astrology and factor these into their ceremonies.
The Path of No-Self.
The Path of No-Self is spearheaded by Buddhism, and specific sub-projects of Hinduism, where the focus is largely on the negation of Self through practices such as Zen Meditation, Transcendental Meditation, Dzogchen, Vipassana and ascetic practices to achieve Nirvana or Satori.
Various subprojects of Hinduism and Tibetan Buddhism include forms of “selective Surrender” such as Fasting, Devotion, Yoga, and Breathwork collectively referred to as Tantra.
Of a piece, are a form of “Surrender” called ascetic practices which include but are not limited to fasting, complete sexual abstinence, self-imposed poverty, sleep deprivation, and secluding oneself in the wilderness.
There are many sub-projects to Hinduism, which include vehicles to Actualise as societies, but in the main, the project is to achieve Moksha, by among other things following one’s Dharma. Following one’s Dharma, answering the call of Actualisation, is what we call “Destiny”.
Moksha and Nirvana are similar but different. Nirvana is a state of enlightenment to free oneself from suffering, whereas Moksha is the liberation of the immortal soul from the cycle of life, death, and rebirth.
Nirvana as the goal is the Path of No-Self, wherein one via the application of Love, Consciousness and paradoxically Will, in order to dissolve one’s Will, wherein the consciousness is merged into the ocean of Consciousness, and Will is surrendered to the Will of Life.
Taoism is a harmonic blend of the Path of No-Self and The Path of Nature.
The Path of Self or Selfhood
There is an inherent paradox to the notion of Self and Selfhood, namely that this path although it is the path whereby one develops Will, is accomplished by developing an appreciation for the Will of the Divine, which we perceive as the Seven Hermetic Laws, and alignment with the Will of the Divine, in so far as the vector followed is Love, not Fear.
That which is Divine is by definition, eternal and so does not fear Death.
The lower part of the human experience is the animal experience, governed wholly by nature and by definition, subject to death, decay and entropy and so must fear it to provide the necessary resistance of the spirit to want to stay alive.
This is the only mechanism by which Nature can keep a packet of consciousness and will be invested in the project of survival and regeneration, so as to afford the Soul an opportunity to grow and experience, while participating in the long process of evolution and reincarnation, to advance the species, Life, and all of Creation.
That is, until the soul (collective or individual) can learn to align to the vector of Love and until it becomes configured for ‘Receiving in order to Give’, marching towards the ultimate likeness with the Creative Principle of Love which is ‘Giving free from the Will to Giving in order to Receive’.
Several forms of growth and alignment are implied by definition. This includes growth of Will, Consciousness, Discernment, and Stillness.
Discernment is the effort to align inner understanding with outer reality. And thereby to align inner reality with outer reality. It is to become more whole by striving for congruence with the whole.
Discernment is what allows the Initiate to tell Fear apart from Danger. Danger exists, but not all that is Feared, represents actual Danger. Similarly, Pain is not Injury and Discomfort is not Violation or Loss.
Similarly, Vulnerability is not Powerlessness, Equanimity is not Indifference and Surrender is not Passivity.
The understanding and integration of these core discernments allow the Initiate to navigate “The Neck”, that phase of transition between reconfiguring the nervous system, the psychology and the predictive models away from the heuristics of Fear and Non-Being, towards the Heuristics of Love and Being. Being and Non-Being here are NOT synonymous with the Buddhist terms of the same name, but refer to that which is conducive to the essence and nature of Being: Divine and Natural Harmony and that which is not, respectively.
The original colours in Chess and the archetypes of the geomantic figures Albus and Rubeus, the designations of Vishnu and Shiva, and the White and Red queens in Alice in Wonderland, the Lion and the Unicorn—are all allegorical representations of Being and Non-Being.
It bears noting that neither is inherently ‘Good’ or ‘Bad’; they both simply have exultant and shadow expressions respectively. There are positive and negative aspects to both Order and Chaos principles and both are essential for Creation and Existence. Existence at the Manifested level of Spacetime and Nature is only possible due to “ongoing creation”.
Stillness and Surrender as practices are essential to Discernment and are akin to removing distortion and interference when one is trying to receive a radio signal.
“The Neck” is also known as “The Birth Canal”, “the Bridge over the Abyss”, the proverbial ‘40 Days and 40 Nights in the Desert’ and is the same motif as the sojourn up the mountain. It is why mystics so often withdraw from society and seclude themselves to live as Hermits, so that they can invest all their energy and attention (our two primary budgets), in other words, their Love and Consciousness in order to build their own Will and thereby draw down their divine inheritance of Understanding. They seclude themselves and submit to protracted practices of surrender and stillness in order to isolate “the Signal”.
This is what Siddhartha Gautama was doing under the Banyan tree. He was crossing “the Neck” in order to fulfil his Telos, his Dharma, of both achieving enlightenment and downloading the Understanding through which he reasoned and articulated the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path of Buddhism.
This is what Moses was doing up the Mountain, and what Jesus was doing in the Desert. This is what Orpheus was doing in the Underworld, and ultimately what the motif is that echoes in every hero’s journey.
The core of all these projects is Actualisation via trial, in the service of Other.
Actualisation in order to be of Service to Other, be that humanity, the village, is another way of saying being of Service to Self as a means to be of Service to Other, and pursuing the Service to Other as the pathway to Actualisation.
Each Harvest is where souls are activated, inspired, called, in waves, to participate in a kind of evolution or upgrade, not unlike a system migration where users—or in this spiritual analogy, individual souls—are transitioned onto a new platform.
This migration occurs with varying degrees of consciousness and willingness, but it does require Readiness.
Some individuals actively seek this growth and are aware of the changes they are undergoing, akin to users who participate in the migration process and are attuned to the new features and systems they're adapting to. There are always some super-users who are invited to be first adopters. They have to struggle the most, but they end up ahead of the curve and are often on an ambitious path of growth and acceleration for which the struggle is par for the course.
Yet, much like the intricate processes that occur in the background during a system migration, which the average user may be completely unaware of, there is also a profound transformation taking place at deeper levels of consciousness and existence that is beyond our immediate perception. (The astrologers have some view of this, but even that ancient art is due for an upgrade to bring it into alignment with Hermetics.)
In this spiritual system migration, the 'servers and systems' represent the universal, cosmic and divine forces that facilitate our journey, operating on planes of existence that are often beyond our conscious awareness. This includes among other things the “Soul of Man”, or the “Soul of the Future Human” at a collective scale, and the Higher Self at an individual scale.
Much of that influence is described as Possibility and Potentiality, which is where we cross over into the domain of Quantum Physics, which is deep, complex and will also have to be the subject of another article.
These forces and personalities, work in the background to support the soul's transition into new stages of growth, aligning with the natural cycles of the universe. As we 'migrate' to this new platform of understanding and being, there is a complex interplay of known and unknown factors, conscious choices, and unseen guidance, all contributing to the evolution of the individual and collective consciousness.
As with the migration, if you are so called, there can be better and less optimal times to be part of the first wave. This is a smaller cycle within the larger migration cycle that will come to an end. The larger cycles of migration and harvest will continue to continue, but this one will end. The very first wave of mystics and enlightened humans are through “The Neck” and living a different level of existence to the rest of humanity. To grasp some idea of this, consider being on a version of Spotify from five years ago, or the first version of Spotify. One need only imagine how when the first version came out, we never missed or longed for the one we have today—we simply did not know what we were missing or how good it could be. We were so engrossed in the present paradigm, that we did not long for or strive towards the Possible or Potential. It is like that with the ‘Migration’ or ‘Harvest’. It is like a platform upgrade, in which all the ideological drama and apathy that plagues us today and threatens to tear our societies and civilisation apart, simply seems silly and trivial after the ‘upgrade’.
Maturity sees immaturity as silliness and ignorance, not as crime or sin. The idea of crime and sin still exist but the bar is set very fine and tolerant to the highest extremes. Immaturity defines reality via the lens, the polarising filter, of Story, rather than by Reason.
Remember how Windows or Mac OS used to look.
Before everyone got the new iPhone, a few faithful die-hards were waiting in line overnight outside the store, so they could be first. They are the second wave. The first wave are the ones that got to test the new model and new OS before it shipped.
Some people are still on Windows 95. Over five million years ago, the operating system of what eventually evolved over many iterations into Homo Sapiens, branched from the Operating System that we share with chimpanzees and bonobos. Today humans are living in cities, toying with nuclear fission and decoding the mysteries of quantum physics, and we still have chimpanzees and bonobos. Not everyone gets the call.
The next wave of early adopters are being called now, and just as with surfing, or stock investment, there are exultant moments that arrive in which all the influences and forces are arrayed in your favour.
There is a Right Time.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
As always, some words are deliberately capitalised. These are Archetypal words and convey a profound depth of meaning, like Holograms.
The reiteration and alignment with Hermetica is absolutely essential and key to our evolution as a species. Whether by accident or deliberate intention, we cannot follow the signal without aligning with the signal, we cannot belong to Life without integrating the wisdom of Life. Hermetics is the wisdom of the Perennial. To enjoy the gifts of perennial Life, we have to amend ourselves to the project of alignment and unfolding. This is The Way.
This is a labour of duty and leadership, and an answer to the holding of the deep question: “What would I want / What does Love look like in this moment?”
I am doing my part, you can do yours by taking this material to heart, and by supporting this work with a subscription. All proceeds are invested to further the Cause of the future human and Hermetics via Project Shaduf and Eyes Wide Open Life.
Caveat
The overwhelming majority of wisdom, mystical commentary, esoterica, self-help literature and personality cults that so capture the masses lack the necessary depth, nuance and alignment to actually discern The Way. If you are walking with the crowd, be assured that you are heading the wrong way.
Invitation
As always with my work, this article is a Gift, whereby every True Gift is an Invitation to the deeper Gift. Reach out:
For anyone wanting to know how to apply this knowledge and Understanding in pragmatic ways to a human life, follow my sister-Subtack: The Medicine of Understanding
If you are interested in further esoteric teaching and Hermetic instruction make your way to my website and book time with me: eyeswideopenlife.org/connect
Yours in the spirit of Infinite Love and Gratitude
Rocco