The Middle Pillar Read online

  It is repression, the unconscious process of thrusting things out of sight, which is the dangerous method. It is dangerous because repressed emotions and feelings lock up memory and power in the unconscious. Because ideas become associated with each other, forming definite complexes, there is, if repressed memories begin to grow by association, a splitting off of one side of the mind at the expense of the other with a consequent locking up of energy and vitality which should be available for the entire personality. The conquest of repression proceeds as with the conquest of internal conflict previously described.

  There is no need to live an anti-social or vicious life, one of self-indulgence or of degradation as so many people think. To be free from a repression does not argue that one should have behaved like “a young man about town.” Though that is not to say that a reasonable satisfaction of the instinctual life should be eschewed where this is at all possible. But the frank realization and acceptance of the human personality as many-sided, and a refusal to blind oneself to experience no matter of what kind, will go far towards relieving the partition erected between the unconscious and the conscious, and removing resistance and repression.

  To restate the attitude expounded in this chapter, I conceive of analytical psychology as the spouse of the ancient system of magic. For psychology has succeeded in evolving a system which can be applied to almost any individual who wishes to know the several departments and constituents of his own personality. Possibly for the first time in the history of civilized thought, there is a technique which is of inestimable value to the average man. It is of supreme value to the student of magic and mysticism, who, too often, labors under several delusions of what it is that he hopes to accomplish, and in what length of time he will do so. A study of analysis will prove first of all that he cannot proceed quicker than his own unconscious permits him. This will prevent gate-crashing, and an irrational enthusiasm and desire for speed. Secondly, through the elimination of erroneous ideas as to himself, the phantasms of wish-fulfillment and insensate day-dreaming, he will have obtained a more comprehensive account of what magical and meditation systems can accomplish, and what degree of achievement in these spheres is open to him. He will be entirely less subject to delusion and deception because his attraction to magic will not have been caused by the unconscious desire to escape from the pressing problems of his immediate existence with which he finds himself unable efficiently to cope.

  Moreover, he will have familiarized himself with the true extent of his own sense of inferiority. The compulsive necessity of becoming unduly aggressive because of an imagined or pathological inferiority will no longer urge him to an intolerable sense of deficiency. Being acquainted with the fundamental problem of insecurity which every thinking individual is bound to have, since man is so apparently insignificant and unimportant when compared to the vastness of the universe, he will not be liable to adopt extreme religious or scientific notions from so-called spiritual experience or laboratory experiment to buttress up his own desire for some one thing which is secure and reliable.

  Analysis is the logical precursor of spiritual attainment and magical experiment. It should comprise definitely the first stage of spiritual training. Were it possible, and were there magical schools in existence, it would gratify me enormously to see magical training preceded by six or twelve months of application to reductive analysis, pursued by sympathetic physicians or lay-analysts who had long and intimate experience with clinical work. The magical schools must open a department of analytical psychology, if their own systems are to attain public prominence worthy of attention and patronage. Such schools, though offering courses of training considerably prolonged, would eventually develop such a type of individual that the public would eliminate “dangerous” from its association with magic, and be obliged to take cognizance of the soundness of its technique. This union of two systems would, for magic at any rate, build up psychological credit, and a sense of great reliability and prestige would accrue to it.

  One of the greatest obstacles to success in magic, to any kind of worth-while result in the mystical sciences, is that the psycho-emotional system of its average student is hopelessly clogged with infantile and adolescent predilections which have not been recognized as such. The ego is compelled to extreme courses of action, as though by compulsion. And underneath his every activity lurks the unconscious spectre—fear. It is precisely with these monsters of fantasy that analytical psychology can deal effectively, and it is from such absurd obstacles that the magical students is a confirmed but unconscious sufferer.27

  By associating magic with analysis, we should be able to avoid the pitfalls into which our predecessors fell so headlong. The production of genius—more specifically a religious and mystical type of genius—ever the goal of magic, should be more within our grasp than ever before, and considerably more open to achievement.

  These ideas are mentioned not because a systematic union of magic and psychology will be here presented, but in the hope that this effort will spur some psychologist acquainted with magical and mystical techniques to attempt such a task. Whoever does succeed in welding the two indissolubly together, to him mankind will ever be grateful. For such a union comprises the marriage of the archaic with the modern, the unconscious with the conscious—the precursor of the birth of the Golden Flower not for any individual alone but for mankind as a whole.

  Endnotes

  1 Other helpful books on the subject include Hatha Yoga by Theos Bernard, and Yoga: A Scientific Evaluation by Kovoor T. Behanan.

  2 Aleister Crowley adopted the medieval spelling of magick with a “k” to differentiate the psycho-spiritual science from stage magic. The magicians of the Golden Dawn, as well as countless theurgists before them, spelled magic without the “k.” Like Regardie, we see no reason to surrender the word “magic” to the arena of the stage magician.

  3 Keep in mind that this book was first printed in 1938, over a decade before Gerald Gardner published Witchcraft Today and started the religion of Wicca, which is positive and life-affirming. Regardie’s reference to “such pathologies as witchcraft”refers to the medieval superstitions, hexes, and general hysteria that resulted in the Inquisition and the Salem Witch Trials.

  4 Unfortunately in modern times the “pathology of demonolatry” has a following among certain individuals who call themselves Satanists. Although many self-proclaimed Satanists are merely practicing a rather juvenile philosophy created out of adolescent rebellion based on the rejection of the religious beliefs of their parents, others are simply unethical, dysfunctional sociopaths who have little or no regard for others. Satanists of the latter sort can safely be defined as individuals who worship Satan (the Christian entity of evil), invoke evil spirits, and practice harmful (black) magic towards others. Thus, Satanism is not a life-affirming philosophy, and it should be soundly rejected by any true seeker who wishes to evolve spiritually. For as Regardie stated in The Tree of Life, 241-242: “Those who employ such methods [of black magic] should be severely shunned by the Theurgist as he would a foul disease.” In the Neophyte Ritual of the Golden Dawn, the candidate swears “...I will not debase my mystical knowledge in the labour of Evil Magic at anytime tried or under any temptation”(Regardie, The Golden Dawn, 123). It should be clear that serious, ethical magicians do not engage in Satanism or black magic.

  5 The two pillars are a major part of the symbolism of the Qabalah, an ancient Hebrew mystical tradition that is the cornerstone of modern western magic and spiritual growth. For more information about the Qabalah, see Regardie’s A Garden of Pomegranates (Llewellyn, 1988) or our own book, The Golden Dawn Journal, Book II, Qabalah: Theory and Magic (Llewellyn, 1994).

  6 In a Golden Dawn temple, that is. Temples of other magical or esoteric groups do not necessarily have these pillars as part of the temple furnishings. (Masonic temples, however, do have two pillars.)

  7 From the Neophyte Ritual. Regardie, The Golden Dawn, 125.

  8 A Hindu esoteric text whic
h emphasizes liberation from the lower, the cultivation of consciousness, and the awareness of the higher self.

  9 From the Neophyte Ritual. Regardie, The Golden Dawn, 129.

  10 See The Secret of the Golden Flower, translated by Richard Wilhelm with foreword and commentary by C. G. Jung (London: Paul Trench and Trübner, 1931).

  11 In Hebrew doctrine this energy is linked to the Shekinah, the feminine “presence” or “dwelling place” of God.

  12 Or Geburah. The Hebrew letter Beth has the dual sound of either “b” or “v.”

  13 Applying gender to something as abstract as the Sephiroth can be a tricky thing. In some schools of thought Chesed is seen as feminine and Geburah masculine. For the most part each Sephirah contains certain aspects of both sexual polarities. No one Sephirah is simply all masculine or all feminine.

  14 The Buddhist doctrine of moderation—the avoidance of extremes.

  15 The system referred to here is Thelema, as envisioned by Aleister Crowley.

  16 From the Adeptus Minor Ritual. Regardie, The Golden Dawn, 237.

  17 A severe mental disorder. Psychoses are commonly characterized by derangement of personality and loss of contact with reality and causing deterioration of normal social functioning.

  18 See Part Two, Chapter Six for a ritual on regression.

  19 From the Adeptus Minor Ritual. Regardie, The Golden Dawn, 237.

  20 Groddeck’s books include The Book of the It (Intl. Universities Press, 1976), and The Meaning of Illness: Selected Psychoanalytic Writing (Intl. Universities Press, 1977).

  21 Any mental or emotional disorder, arising from no apparent organic lesion or change and involving symptoms such as insecurity, anxiety, depression, and irrational fears.

  22 Chronic inflammation of the kidneys.

  23 This is unnecessarily confusing. Regardie’s definition of the Pillars here (the Left Pillar as the side of Mercy and the Right Pillar as the side of Severity) only applies to the alignment of the Tree of Life as it is reflected onto the human body in magical workings, not as it is seen in diagrams of the Tree. These Pillars are almost always described as they are seen in the diagram. That is, the Left-hand Pillar (Binah, Geburah, and Hod) is known as the Pillar of Severity and the Right-hand Pillar (Chokmah, Chesed, and Netzach) is known as the Pillar of Mercy. The two Pillars retain these these traditional titles whether one is looking at or backing into the Tree.

  24 From the Neophyte Ritual. Regardie, The Golden Dawn, 125.

  25 From the Neophyte Ritual. Regardie, The Complete Golden Dawn System of Magic, Volume Six, 13.

  26 In psychology, repression refers to the unconscious exclusion of painful impulses, desires, or fears from the conscious mind.

  27 The student of western magic must be especially vigilant against inflation of the ego.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE TREE OF LIFE

  There are then, roughly, the broad divisions of certain principles common to both psychology and to magic. And it will be conceded by all that the problems relating to fear, anxiety, insecurity, and inferiority, in connection with the broad divisions of the conscious and the unconscious, are fundamental to both systems. Therefore, before being able to consider any of the techniques of the methods employed by magic, it is essential that we analyze a little further this classification of the psyche into the conscious and the unconscious. While a simple outlook has certainly its advantages, yet difficulties arise demanding a further subdivision and calling for the consideration of additional factors operative within the unconscious. It is really not so simple as seems at first sight. Magic employs a somewhat more extensive view of the two primary aspects of the psyche. And it is necessary to consider at greater length the intricate nature of man, so that we may realize more or less exactly what it is that in magical experiments we are desirous of achieving.

  It seems to me that the division of the psyche into conscious and unconscious is entirely too simple to prove adequate as a means of explanation. The almost over-used instance of the ice-berg—with one-seventh of its mass above the surface and six-sev- enths below—is all right as far as it goes. But does it go far enough? If that division is to avail us at all in practice, that portion of the psyche which is below the surface of our normal awareness demands more insight into its nature and rather deeper analysis. There is, therefore, some wide realization of the inadequacy of this division, varying with the different schools and systems of practice. Thus in the Freudian school we meet with the primary concepts of the libido, which is defined with particular emphasis on the sexual urge. There is also the slightly broader classification of psychic activity into a triad of the id, the super-ego, and the ego.

  In the system propounded by Dr. C. G. Jung, we meet as before with the libido, though here it is defined not as sexuality but in far more philosophical terms as the sum total of psychic energy and vitality, and its expression is through instinct, desire, and function. The faculties of the mind also are described in a four-fold pattern, operating in a positive and negative way. There are the feeling, thinking, sensation, and intuitional functions of the psyche, each capable of a passive or an active response, depending upon whether the psyche be introverted or extroverted. The unconscious itself is also conceived to have a dual aspect. That part of it which is personal and individual, and that great stream of power, archetype and image of which the former is only a part—the collective unconscious. It is a universal and uniform substratum common to the whole of mankind. We may consider it to be the historical background from which every psyche and every consciousness has proceeded or evolved. It is the primordial basis upon which each race and people and civilization evolves its own individual pattern. It is this that the mediaeval alchemists called Anima Mundi.1

  While having innumerable points of contact with the above psychologies, the magical conception differs in several respects. For one thing, it prefers to use a diagram to express its viewpoint, believing that reflection upon this glyph, which for centuries has been an object of meditation, will yield illuminating ideas associated in the unconscious with its parts. Secondly, it believes that man is a more complex being than the newer schools would allow. The diagram it employs is a Qabalistic glyph called the Tree of Life. This shows the ten spheres or Sephiroth as they are called arranged in a geometrical pattern to form three columns or pillars. That to the left shows three spheres one above the other, and is called the Left Pillar or the Pillar of Mercy.2 The Right Pillar or that of Severity also shows three spheres, while the central pillar is indicated by four spheres one above the other, the Pillar of Beneficence.3 To each one of these spheres is ascribed a different characteristic of the self. That is, the diagram expresses the integral nature of man according to ten quite distinct functions. It is the unity of these ten factors which together comprise what we choose to call man.

  The id, to use the Freudian term, is the most central core of man, the deepest level of his unconscious, being represented on the Tree by the upper-most sphere of the middle pillar. Reference to the chart (Figure 2, p. 28) will elucidate the problem enormously, clarifying my explanations. At the outset, a word or two must be added about the employment of foreign words and an unfamiliar terminology. It is, in my opinion, a regrettable fact that objections should be raised to unfamiliar and strange words. When some new language is to be learned, the alphabet is at first difficult to acquire. This happens in magic, for in most instances there are no terms existent in English to express the idea to be conveyed, and where such a term does exist it does not have the appropriate psychological or spiritual background to indicate what is required of it. It is my object, nevertheless, to co-relate such terms where they do exist with those of the Qabalistic system, to indicate that it has long recognized these concepts now being dealt with by psychology. Not only so, but it has evolved a profound technique whereby such potencies may be brought into manifest operation.

  The magical correspondence of the psychological id, or es as Dr. Georg Groddeck called it, is the Ye
chidah—a word meaning the monad, the self, the paternal ens4 of Light. It is the “essence of mind which is intrinsically pure,” to adopt a definition of an Eastern religious text.5 It is also the Buddha-nature, the realization of which is that alone which differentiates the enlightened man, the sage, from him who is ignorant and unenlightened. Just as in physics, where the electron may be considered either as an electrical particle or as a system of radiations or waves, so this Yechidah may be considered from two quite distinct points of view. It is the innermost kernel of the self, the deepest core of consciousness itself, unconsciousness to our ordinary awareness—while on the other hand it is the life-flow itself, the current of libido, which is the sum-total of our vitality and our life.