Living in the fish eye lens, caught in the camera eye;
–Limelight by Neal Peart (Lee/Lifeson/Peart)
I have no heart to lie.
I can’t pretend a stranger is a long awaited friend.
I’ve always been something of a non-joiner. That’s not to say I don’t form associations, friendships, and work with groups or teams of people for a common goal. But I don’t do it often or easily. I am what is currently called a solitary practitioner.
For my part, being solitary was initially just a fact of life. My own innate weirdness formed a barrier to developing relationships as a child, even inside family. Absent the internet, which we are both lucky enough to be on at this moment, “finding my tribe” was a virtual impossibility. At most I might have developed close relationships with three or four people, and even in that context, some things were just not discussed (and considering what was discussed, that says something very significant about the local community’s stance on things occult).
In later life, and in a wider world, I now choose to keep my light under a bushel, though I am sharing something of it here. Witness the beam that escapes from the door of yon Hermit’s lantern. But like the Hermit, the journey I am on is a personal and lonely one. And so, I will wager, is yours.
Despite parapsychological assertions and perhaps rare glimpses, we cannot live inside each other’s heads. It’s probably a constriction of being tied to these meat bags we walk around in, but on this plane and in this life, we’re more or less in solitary confinement. At least, that’s true for most of the time.
And even if we’re not, our psychological makeup hides things. We bury the dirty secrets. We put a big mask over our fears and vulnerabilities. We cover our outrageous libido, our kink, our fetishes. We reign in the rage and hatred. and derision. We wallow in guilt for all those things we hide, and we hide that we wallow in guilt. And that makes us feel even guiltier.
And then there’s the unconscious. As Samuel L. Jackson would put it, “the shit we don’t know that we don’t know”. The things we keep hidden from our own brains, that haunt us in dreams, that drive a hundred little neuroses, that pile up like a heap of discarded toys in that dark attic of our minds.
So, please, when you make telepathic contact with your closest dearest friend and lover, be sure to let them see all that.
Yeah, I didn’t think so. I am not even sure if we are liberated from the physical if we can unpack all that.
Well we all have a face
That we hide away forever
And we take them out
And show ourselves
When everyone has goneSome are satin some are steel
–The Stranger by Billy Joel
Some are silk and some are leather
They’re the faces of the stranger
But we love to try them on
The goal of Freudian psychoanalysis was to open up and integrate all the dark secrets of the unconscious mind into a functional and less guilty whole. His star pupil, C. G. Jung, coined the phrase Shadow Work to describe this process, which he felt was more an internal journey than an external therapy.
This phrase seems to drip from almost every witchcraft book and blog these days. And it seems, at least as far as I can determine, that it is being applied in Jung’s context, as an aid to spiritual growth and the healing of the psyche.
And that’s not a bad thing.
But when I hear Shadow Work, I immediately think of dastardly deeds done in the dark. Things that ought not to be done by light of day. “Black” magic, curses, hexes, and other maledictions. But then I have been walking the lonely road a long time, and perhaps that’s tainted my perspective a bit.
For the record I have met my inner demons. We get together for drinks and dinner every now and again. That is, I have not cast out those demons, nor do I live in a world of Love and Light. That does not mean that I have not learned from the experience. And continue to do so. It’s cheaper than therapy. As to whether or not it is more effective, I couldn’t say, but it works for me personally.
Let’s take a look at that Hermit card again. He is standing alone on the mountaintop, his right hand lifts a lantern that glows with the light of a hexagram. But he still holds his staff with the left hand. His head is down and his face is a mask of weariness. Yet he seems poised to step forward and continue his journey. This is not resolution, but resoluteness. The road goes ever on.
Is he carrying the light back down into the world, or is he headed for that next mountain top in the distance?
This card has been my significator in personal readings for many, many years. My earliest instructions on Tarot specified that if a male, one should choose the Magician, and if a female, the High Priestess. This thinking, aside from being difficultly binary, also seems a bit arrogant to me.
Imagine a young inexperienced reader (I was seven when I started) assuming the role of a Magician -a Maker. Presumptive to say the least. Later texts indicated that the appropriate card for the novice would be the Fool, but then, esoterically the Fool is an even more powerful Maker than the Magician (but that’s another show). It was not much longer after that, however, that I started making my own interpretations and associations of the cards, and very frequently the Hermit felt right.
As noted, I am solitary. Check one. I am on a personal journey of discovery. Check two. I have obtained certain knowledge through this experience, a small portion of which may shine out through the crack in my lantern. Check three. If we want to go for four, I actually do have that outfit.
It’s important to understand that the Hermit’s light is limited only because so much of it must be personally experienced, personally known, rather than handed down, written out, or posted on Instagram. Clearly I have no problem writing extensive tracts, and I could go on and on and on about a wide range of subjects, many of them enlightening and helpful. But in the end, you have to walk that road yourself. You have to stand at the crossroads in the middle of the night. And you have to go alone.
Jason Miller in his Consorting with Spirits talks about the Lonely Initiation. While the description is somewhat vague, those who have experienced this can immediately identify what he is talking about. It is a transformative event that forever alters one deep down. One emerges with a changed view of the world, a view that is often more broad and more subtle, than what was held before.
Miller says that this process can occur several times during the course of a lifetime. In fact, given his parameters, the transition from Life into Death can be seen as one of these Lonely Initiations. We all make that journey by ourselves. Even when there are guides, they aren’t having the experience.
So the journey of the Hermit is this exploration of our selves. When one is alone in the Wilderness, who else is there? Maybe there are gods, but maybe not. That’s one of the questions that comes up. Internal contemplation inevitably brings us face to face with whether we can trust external reality.
Descarte’s old solution that since he was not self-created, there must be an external world, doesn’t always hold up. If he were self-created, would he even have that knowledge? He wasn’t present at his creation, only afterward. So awareness of that demiurge is by no means a given.
And if we have self-created, who’s to say that everything else we perceive and respond to as “real” is not also a creation of our own consciousness.
This is the shaky ground on which the Hermit walks. It can lead one down endless rabbit holes of speculation, it can be identity destroying, cause madness, addiction, and even self-destruction. The biographies of many famous and infamous practitioners bear witness to this. Those who are shocked and appalled by the actions of people like Aleister Crowley should consider he may have plumbed too deeply the Waters of Darkness, and the inevitable void in his soul led to his debauchery and depravity.
Viewed through the lens of the 21st century his racism and misogyny are heinous, but he would not have raised an eyebrow among his peers. While it is true that he was addicted to opium and cocaine, the same could be said for a number of his contemporaries. His more or less open bisexuality, and the frankness of his texts on sex magic, caused condemnation and controversy in tightly-laced, largely hypocritical British society. The “wickedest man alive” epithet originates from his taking of male lovers, rather than anything to do with his occult practices.
That said, he did not live a life of moral virtue by any stretch of the imagination. He had multiple sexual encounters with men and women, prostitutes, and probably young boys. His frequent use of drugs as part of his rituals obscures any relevant results he may have achieved. There is little question that the man had a giant ego that he enjoyed having stroked repeatedly. The attentions of the press when he was riding high were welcomed and inflamed by reports of more lurid details. As his personal star waned, the public couldn’t separate the fiction of the Beast from Crowley the Magus. Even today much is reported based on the tabloid sensation of the Victorians.
Crowley should not be viewed with sympathy, but perhaps with sadness. Sybil Leek wrote about him coming to visit their house when she was a young girl, and how the aura of power and insight surrounded him. The fact that he chose to indulge his Beast instead of cultivate that power is indeed sad.
And a warning to all of us who tread the path.
Crowley can be something of an enigma. Many of us today still study his works, despite the criminal actions of his later years. Still others scoff at his public persona of the Beast and claim he was more a charlatan than magician.
His legacy is part of any serious study of the occult and magic. Even modern folkcraft is tinged with some of the Victorian spiritualist awakening, and Crowley is part of that. He is a key figure in the mystery lodge movement of the late 19th century and must be evaluated as much in that context as for his darker nature.
I do not apologize for the man, but I do think I understand him. I have walked some of those paths and stared into the abyss. I have opened the doors that most people will not open, and seen what lies beyond there.
The difference between me and Crowley is that I chose to shut some of those doors instead of walking through them.. Those doors are still there, and I know how to find them. To say otherwise would be self-deception. Self-deception is a path into the darkness.
That’s why people fear the magician and the witch and the sorceror. We keep close company with our Inner Darkness. We needn’t fear what we will find when we journey deep into our mind. We can be a danger to ourselves and others.
That’s why the literature is resplendent with tales of mad magicians being carried off by something unsavory. Abdul Al Hazared (author of the quasi-fictional Necronomicon) is supposed to have been torn to pieces in the town square by unseen forces. Grimoires have as many warnings and cautions as spells.
So it is no surprise that instruction, mentorship, and group practice are an alternative to the lone figure on the mountaintop, struggling to harness the winds. But then I am non-joiner, and that’s because of a few things.
For one, I’m just not willing to surrender my will to the will of the group. The practice of magic is very will-forward, and it tends to attract personalities who are strong-willed, self-possessed, and with very clear intentions. If you get a lot of these kinds of people together in a room, you can, for a period of time, accomplish wonderful things. However, long term the individualism that makes these people capable and powerful can tend to create division and conflict. Witness the splintering of the mystery lodges in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and the various “flavors” of witchcraft practice extant today.
Certainly divisive group dynamics is not exclusive to the occult community. Protestantism, after all, was a similar break in the universal Catholic Church, that, once broken, continued to shatter like a mirror hitting the floor. In any situation where charismatic, forceful people are brought together, there is a potential for eventual conflict. I’ve been there and done that, and well, I just don’t find the benefits to be worth the drama. Your mileage may vary.
And there are benefits to being in the coven, lodge, or monastic order. For one, you get to work with others who are going through the same things as you, and be instructed by those who have been through it. A good many of these groups have hierarchical systems that release information only when adepts have attained a certain level. This reduces confusion and protects one against accidents. Akin to this is that the groups usually have some kind of documented tradition that maintains a sense of orthodoxy. Finally, there are things that are open only to members of the group. Together these processes can greatly accelerate the progress of a member toward mastery.
The magical group is symbolized by the Hierophant rather than the Hermit. They are the Keeper of Secrets. The knowledge is there, available, preserved, protected, and disseminated to the faithful/worthy/joiners. You may have access, but you will have to surrender something of your identity in the process.
Well, the same is true for the Hermit, he has surrendered society in search of self. The Hierophant will reduce your self in return for society. Both are valid paths. Some can walk both. Monasticism is a phenomenon that evolved out of structured religion. There is nothing that says an individual is barred from this evolution, or that they can move freely between both poles (or walk casually in the middle for that matter).
If all the books on magic currently in publication were the One True Way, there’d not be all the books on magic.
I personally went looking for the One True Way when I was very young. What had been presented as the One True Way was lacking in certain fundamental ways. In my lifetime, I have found that searching for the One True Way is the flawed premise, that causes all subsequent results to be equally flawed. The journey is the destination.
The Hermit’s lantern contains the same message that the Hierophant has. It does not reside in order or structure, but in experience and experimentation.
This message is “As Above, So Below”,
This is the opening invocation from the Emerald Tablet of the fabled Hermes Trismegistus. This being, a composite of the Greek Hermes and Egyptian Thoth, was worshiped in the Empire of Alexander.
Magical texts of all sorts have been attributed to him over the centuries and the Hermetic doctrines at the root of alchemy and Western ceremonial magic owe a great deal to these early traditions.
The name means Hermes the Thrice Great. The number of the Hermit card is IX – nine, or three times three.
Of course, the Hermit is actually the tenth card, so we have a secret hidden there as well.
The One in ten represents Unity, the First Principle, the Primum Mobile. The Zero represents the Void, the Unformed, the Waters of Darkness which are divided from the dry land to create the World.
As Above, So Below.
To connect “Hermes” to “Hermit” is perhaps a bit of a stretch. The root words are not the same despite the similar sounds.
Consider that Hermes Trismegistus worship originated in Hellenistic Egypt.
The root word that hermit is derived from means “a desert place”. Egypt is a desert place.
The connection is my own, but not arrived at in an unusual manner. There are numerous examples of puns, homophones, and other kinds of word play used to hide information in esoteric writing. The Hierophant resides within the Hermit. As does the Magician.
As Above, So Below.
Thank you for reading to the end. If you found some of the meandering obtuse, well then you actually have gotten the message. It’s the wandering/wondering that’s important. Join me again next week for more confused ramblings.