Her case shows the terrifying reality of a society incapable of caring for its most broken and vulnerable. This tragedy could have been averted if only the doctrinaire architects of chemical-imbalance theory had looked past the chemical cocktail to the underlying psychological trauma through effective talk therapy.

With 5 children and 9 grandchildren, I only know the fear of losing a child. My mother knew it firsthand and it broke her. She lost my sister at an early age and it devastated her and our family for decades. And it worsened over time.

For many, that wound often never heals.

With this said, I also know the monstrosities of the mind. Personally and objectively. Even though I am diagnosed normal, my mind has been beset by daemons both fearsomely evil and majestically good.

And I have seen people humbled and ground underfoot by the horrors of mental illness. A brilliant jazz pianist condemned to seeing and talking with aliens and killing his girlfriend’s dog and then setting her house on fire.

My mother was depressed for many, many years. Psychiatrists had her on drugs whose side-effects made her a mute automaton sitting at the kitchen table drinking Tab and gesticulating with her hands and fingers uncontrollably.

It didn’t have to be that way.

Recent neuroscientific research finds compelling evidence for the existence of seven major affective sources of consciousness and emotional behavior: SEEKING, RAGE, FEAR, LUST, CARE, PANIC/GRIEF, and PLAY.

These have their origin in the primeval, subcortical areas of the midbrain and upper brainstem. They form the basis for mammalian consciousness and are used by the cognitive skills of the cortex to navigate reality.

Jak Panksepp makes a compelling case for diagnosing depression as a malfunction of the PANIC/GRIEF and SEEKING emotional systems in the brain. He writes that when these are not working correctly, they reduce the natural chemicals oxytocin and opioids that form the ecosystem for a healthy psyche.

In the case of Clancy, SEEKING makes sense. She was sick - and an animal that is sick will forage for something to make it better. But the entanglement of SEEKING in depression is much more intricate and complex than that. Panksepp, Biven write:

Along with higher brain functions, this system energizes dimensions of lifespan development that are devoted to the human search for self identity and meaning in life. Excessive and imbalanced, the arousal of the system can promote a variety of addictive behaviors and lead to delusional thinking and the paranoid tendencies – a “too muchness” that often characterizes mania. When aroused, in yet poorly understood ways, it can promote creativity, and when excessive, florid schizophrenia, and megalomania. When this system is drained of resources, anhedonia and depression can ensue. - Panksepp, Biven, The Archaeology of Mind, p. 436

Clancy’s infamous searches on her phone represent the SEEKING system of the brain executed by a woman obviously at her wit’s end. Her SEEKING system was active. But it operated at the behest of a frenzied, underlying subcortical panic. Her executive functions in the cortex were overwhelmed with an irrational emotional emergency.

The PANIC/GRIEF system governs separation distress, psychological pain, and intense anxiety. Clancy had extreme anxiety scores of 19 to 23 on the Edinburgh scale. Her emotional system was hyper-aroused. Firing for months in this way overpowers the CARE system which ensures maternal nurturing. So too with the PLAY system, which governs joyful social engagement.

Massively distressed, Clancy’s brain treated her living environment as a death trap. Cognitively, she sought to end the psychic pain - of herself and her children. The delusory nature of her situation found an annihilating solution.

Normally, the CARE system employs oxytocin and endogenous opioids to protect and nurture offspring. But a mammalian brain experiencing severe postpartum neurochemical destabilization, was further made toxic by 13 different medications over a rapid-fire four-month period. This caused Clancy’s motherly CARE circuits to misfire.

Her motherly instinct to protect her children (engrained genetically in the CARE system) was overwhelmed by a brainstem undergoing separation distress (PANIC/GRIEF) and a psychotically activated cortex. The biological drive to protect her children from harm had become a compulsion to delete their existences.

For a true picture of the human mind we need to look at the emotional infrastructure informing the decision-making process. Consciousness begins in the seven affective emotional circuits which feed into the cortex’s executive functioning. An analysis of this emotionally diseased woman show that just because she at times displayed orderly behavior does not mean that she was sane.

People look at her use of GPS and ordering food as indicating sane, rationally understandable actions. Affective neuroscience looks at the exact same data and sees a tragic, biological coup: an ancient, chemically poisoned emotional engine using the higher cortex to execute an act of ultimate desperation.

But what about “the voice”? It is the classic result of a SEEKING system out of control. Clancy’s brainstem in PANIC was poisoned by a rotating cocktail of pharmaceuticals and the mesolimbic dopamine pathway became hyper-aroused.

Psychotically, Clancy’s brain no longer recognized its own bizarre thoughts as its own and projected them outward. The thoughts morphed from a panic response to an authoritarian voice of God. Her cortex didn’t question the voice because it had been hijacked by a primeval biological necessity.

Both prosecution and defense agree that Clancy was depressed. They disagree on the interpretation of her behavior. The defense is hamstrung in its interpretation, however, because it must translate it through the filter of behavioral psychology’s criteria. These criteria—as neuroscience indicates—do not capture, much less understand, the true sources of human action.

What we are seeing are outdated behavioral models that can only predict failure. The Massachusetts legal definition of insanity—the Model Penal Code standard, known locally as the McHoul standard—focuses on the wrong thing. It stipulates that a defendant can only be found guilty if they can behaviorally distinguish “right from wrong.”

But, as Affective Neuroscience is showing, this is an outmoded cognitive metric. It does not comprehend the fact that reasoning activities in the cortex can be hijacked and subjugated by subcortical affective processes.

This is scandalous. The only true picture that we can form of a person’s psyche is what we gain from assessing their emotions at the time they act. The affective emotional infrastructure provides us with that empirical evidence.

This lack of clarity and insight into what was really driving Clancy to do what she did leaves the buzzards of ideology to fight it out on the sidelines, gorging on their feast of human anguish and desolation.

Clancy’s betrayal and killing of her children is every parent’s ultimate nightmare. No mother is likely to understand what Clancy did. Yet, in many respects, mothers are the ones who might have a glimmer into why she did what she did. They too know the way that childbirth leaves the body and soul drained and destitute. For one reason or another, their motherly instinct recovers, the CARE system rebounds quickly from the draining experience.

Tragically, for Clancy, the evolutionary systems that are meant to kick in and save her children from harm did not. And we are left to ponder the terrifying mystery of Death in all its horrifying manifestations.

Note: This piece was written by me, leveraging AI tools for targeted neuroscientific research, legal fact-checking, and copy-editing support.

Solms is famous for his work in neuroscience and what is fast becoming a major overhaul of psychology via Affective Neuroscience. This is an exciting new empirical analysis of how mental illnesses arise. Using animal studies, neurological scanning, and neuroanatomy, the science has discovered the seven main affective sources of consciousness. By detailed analysis of animal models, affective neuroscience researchers have gained new insights into psychiatric illnesses like depression and schizophrenia.

Solms is unique because he is both a neuroscientist and a practicing psychotherapist. In this book, he details that intersection of expertise, providing not only his personal journey from South Africa to London, but also his intellectual and personal psychological growth.

Along the way, he provides ample evidence that shows how Sigmund Freud’s theories and practice foreshadowed results identified by neuroscience. He dispels many myths about Freud—no, he wasn’t a lifelong cocaine addict—and illuminates the profound thought and revolutionary theories of the Viennese doctor. All of this is backed up with Solms’s vast knowledge of the neuroscience behind the processes.

In many ways his work is no holds barred. He takes to task both Big Pharma and psychologists for the overuse of drugs to cure illnesses that will never be cured by drugs alone. In the concluding chapters, he shows how a combined regimen of drugs and talk therapy is probably a more sane approach. Having said this, he thinks talk therapy alone roots out the actual causes of mental suffering.

Given some of the technical material he covers, Solms never resorts to jargon not does he talk over your head. I found the book very enjoyable, and very understandable and readable. You know how you come away from a book feeling a smidgen wiser? That’s here.

I read Freud as a teenager - notably its use in literary criticism - and have always felt his light in the basement to be a beacon for clarity and health. I have perhaps taken to heart his theories that all life is sexually oriented a bit too much.

Freud’s theories and their potential importance for literary studies should be revisited. Those in the past are sorely outdated, reading like projections of the critic’s own predilections rather than serious illumination of authorial or semantic intent. Yes, most horrible critique of Dracula I ever read, I am looking at you!

For the sake of transparency, my master’s degree thesis was on Wittgenstein and Dreams. Ludwig took Freud to task for his hydraulics and imprecise metaphors. Needless to say, having read Solms I think Ludwig was wrong and of course, myself. But Freud’s dream theory does undergo a reshaping in the light of neuroscience.

Solms has a lecture echoing his book on Freud here.

They say that all property is common... [and] that property springs from self-love, and that we hold our own houses and families in order that we may possess a separate home, and raise children to inherit our wealth. From this self-love springs up the love of property.

How far things have fallen from Campanella’s theurgic political blueprint. Today, various theurgists and occultists call for the racial and political separation of humans, not their unity.

They take the easy way out of the Great Work.

In spiritual alchemy, the magus interacts with the outer world to foster healing in others through projection. One distils and coagulates the materia prima away from the ego to stewardship and responsibility for the community.

As in teachings from the Egyptian Way of Hermes, and its texts, the Corpus Hermeticum, theurgists become teachers and healers, catalyzing society to evilve into higher forms of social consciousness. The Hermetic texts describe the initatiare returning to the world to teach all humans to find the Way. They teach society to evolve just as their own inner elements were transmuted.

For Kabbalists, one does not selfishly hoard the gifts of the divine for oneself but share with all. That is true loss of ego.

The unity of humans reflects the unity of the One, source of all that is and is not.

Campanella writes:

The division and the separation of human beings are always the devil’s work; envious of the good that comes from unity, he induces people to forget that they are all children of the same God and of the same father, Adam, and therefore siblings.

Theurgy demands great discipline and love born in the fire of struggle and divine love. Overcoming the lower passions in favor of your own divinity requires that you acknowledge humans are one.

How is there a One that is beyond all division and multiplicity, which somehow also interacts with the many? Iamblichus teaches that it is through the intermediaries of heroes, ancestors, and angels. We can contact them in the theurgic rites and by practicing the four cardinal theurgic virtues of courage, wisdom, temperance, and justice.

We invoke the gods so they can guide us to the One, step by step, with care and love. They are **Psychopomps**, guides of the soul. Since full placement into the One is tremendously powerful and beyond human comprehension you must approach fully prepared. Virtuous and inured to the spiritual realities that condition one to approach the divine,

Immersing yourself in the One without preparation in virtue will blow your nervous system to shreds. The gods protect you from the raw power and of the Infinite. They are chisel the marble of your ego.

The first step is to read and reflect deeply on the writings that we have in the Corpus Hermeticum. Then understand the historical and philosophical background using such works as Christian Bull’s to ground you. Meditation should become part of your daily routine if only a few minutes per day.

I have experienced the separation of the soul from the body about twice. Before, I had several experiences with otherworldly entities, but this was part of a different method, which was more akin to chaos magic than Hermetic. I write about these experiences in my book, Hymn for Our Holy Mother Hekate.

This is why superheroes are so popular, right? Everyone recognizes that they have a personal genius. Theurgy teaches us how to do that. It teaches us how to access that primal spark that resides somehwere in us and our relationship with reality. Theurgy teaches us how to invoke those entities that will dissolve our links to destructive habits, thoughts, and actions. They will guide us to the One.

I noticed the similarity of terminology in this quote from Garth Fowden describing the way Hermetists saw themselves, and the use of “alien” in the Gnostic Revelation of James.

Fowden:

“In fact one does not have to read far in the surviving texts [of the Hermeticum] to find abundant symptoms of a sense of a partners from the uninitiated majority of humankind. The pious are few, the wicked many; and this is a state of affairs divinely ordained, for God gave reason to all, but intellect only to some, and those who like it are like the animals. To thirst after knowledge of God is to become alien to this world and to the opinion of the many, who will react in the best case by turning one to scorn, in the worst by bloody persecution.”

Revelation of James:

“If you fall into their hands, the one who is their guard will say to you, “Who are you, and where are you from?“ You are to say to him, “I am a son, and I am from the father.“ He will say to you, “what kind of son are you and to what father do you belong?“ You are to say to him, “I am from the preexistent father, and I am a son in the preexistent one.“ He will say to you, “With what mandate have you come?” You are to say to him, “I have come at the behest of the preexistent one, that I may see those who are ours, those who have become aliens.“ He will say to you, “of what kind are these aliens?“ You are to say to him, “they are not entirely aliens but they are from Achamoth, who is female. She produced them when she brought this generation down from the preexistent one. So they are not aliens; they are ours. They are ours, because she who rules over them comes from the preexistent one. Yet they are aliens, because the preexistent one did not have intercourse with her when she was about to produce them.“ When he says to you again, “where will you go?“ You are to say to him, “I shall return to the place I came from.“ If you say these things, you will avoid their attacks.” - The First Revelation of James, page 328

The Key phrase in the ascent in James is a password one must recite to the angels we meet in the ascent. It will open the gates on the path to the One.

The Gnostic is less elitist here. On the other hand, being alien to this world becomes more a reality to me as I age. There are planes of existence one sees on the Way. Knowing your way will assist you in being reincarnated as one who knows or one who has forgotten.

The Chaldeans believed in three great realms through which the soul descends to materiality and then re-ascends to attain the anagogic vision. These are the material, ethereal, and empyrean realms. Each is ruled over by three great spirits called the Teletarchs. They help sustain the cosmic framework between the the three realms and guard the pathway between the material and intelligible worlds.

The Teletarchs are the rulers of the anagogic rite. They are the “Fathers set over the magical rites.” Their inherent strength and virtue sustains the initiate in their ascent to the Intellectual Fire. In praying to them, we pray for the strength of our inward virtues, which we cultivate and nurture as we seek the infinite

.--------------------------

Oh great Teletarchs, masters of initiation, rulers of mysteries and souls, purifiers of the three realms. Architects of the sphere, the spiral, and the square. Builders of eternal delight, abodes of majestic wonder.

Sustainers of the three realms.

Cleanse my soul of the mud and crust of material delusion. Rain your fires of hope that bind the worlds into my soul’s wings flight for home.

Give me:

Faith to speed my way beyond the material realm where illusions and demons play.

Truth to raise me above the ethereal realm, cave of dawning fire and the beams to transport me aloft to the eternal fire.

Love to marshal me into the empyrean where my soul can sojourn with the mighty silence that sustains all.

Bridges to the intellectual fire, timeless engines of desire and steely purpose: Cleanse my soul to cut it from the bloody mass and dying flesh. Help me purify it to rise to the Transcendent loving fire.

Oh spirits of “Faith, Truth, and love. may fire-bearing Hope nourish me. For all things are governed and exist in your virtues. Wings of Fire… rulers of souls.”

In the Phaedrus, Socrates relates the myth of the soul using the image of a chariot drawn by two horses. One horse symbolizes Reason. The other symbolizes the emotions and desires that control the soul - one obedient, one uncontrollable. To rise to the vision of the ultimate Reality, the driver (the soul) must control and harmonize their momentum through time.

This struggle between reason and passion is a constant in literature after Plato. William Blake’s poetry paints the struggle on an epic, brutal scale. For Blake, the advent of the Enlightenment meant the influx of rational, materialistic forces that destroyed imagination and poetry and imposed mechanism and industrialization on the soul’s power.

And for Blake, the struggle is not just internal - it has political and cultural repercussions. Lives are saved and destroyed depending on the outcome of the struggle.

Hundreds of years before Blake, the Magus, Cornelius Agrippa, already saw the struggle taking shape. Using Plato’s tripartite soul to understand the three spiritual worlds of humans and otherworldly entities, he saw that reason had become what it was not meant to be. His magical system is a ceremonial way the magus can perform to bring harmony to the warring passions and reason.

Yet reason still has the task of assembling the elements of a vast and refined culture, upon which fides bestows dynamism, thereby raising it to the level of knowledge and power. Magic is the result of [humanity’s] attitude towards God. It is the fruit of a correct orientation and the reward for a willed and trusting adherence to the divine message imprinted in the heart of [humanity]. This is why the reform of magic calls primarily for [humanity’s] spiritual reform, the re-orientation of his reason, and a re-appropriated awareness of his destiny. - Vitoria Compagni

For both Blake and Agrippa, reason must find its rightful place in the soul and in the universe.

As with reason, the emotions and desire usurp their place in the human psyche. The destiny of the Fool on the road to the palace of wisdom is to seek the harmony of the passions. Freud’s theories and the recent discovery of the source of consciousness shone more light on what people already knew: repression of emotions and desires causes sickness.

We see these struggles taking place today. In the technologizing of society and culture, a deformed variant of reason threatens to throttle the natural passions. On the other hand, tribalism weaponizes the seeking and rage aspects of consciousness. They usurp the place of a clear-eyed reason to preach tribalism and a return to blood and earth.

Our life’s task is to learn how to balance consciousness, which begins in the emotions. We need to find the alchemical process that distills a reason which produces an angelic tune consonant with the harmony of the spheres.

The role of reason is to guide us to justice through living temperate lives with courage and wisdom. Through reason our command of our desires sets us on a proper path of beauty and desire for the Good.

The Good is not an abstraction like a play with fake scenery. The Good is the taste of our food, the laughter of the child, the meaning of the rough and tumble in playground. Good is that which we know without saying it.

In its engagement with destiny and fate, consciousness engenders various disharmonies between the seven emotions. Reason is then unable to balance them and align them. The goal of the magus is to see the workings of destiny and then bring the entire force of a united consciousness to bear in building a world of freedom, liberty, and fraternity.

About the struggle of the passions and reason Socrates says:

Well, that is enough about [the soul’s] immortality, but now we should say something about its form. To describe the kind of thing it is would require utterly divine powers and a lengthy exposition, but to say what it resembles would yield a shorter account befitting the powers of humans, so that is what we should present. Let it resemble the united power of a team of winged horses and their charioteer. Now, in the case of the gods, the horses and the charioteers are themselves all good and they come from good stock, but the teams belonging to others are a mixture. Now, our ruler, in the first place, has control of a pair of horses, and what is more, one of these horses is noble and good and such is his lineage too, while the other horse is of the opposite sort and of opposite lin-eage. So the control of our chariot is, of necessity, a difficult and troublesome task.

and:

Now, whenever the charioteer beholds the vision that awakens love, the entire soul is warmed through the sense and is filled with tickling and the stings of yearning. The horse that is obedient to the charioteer is restrained by reverence at that moment as always, and it holds itself back from leaping upon the loved one, while the other one no longer heeds the whip or spur of the charioteer, but moves with a powerful leap, and causing enormous difficulties to the other horse and to the charioteer, it forces them to approach their favourites and make mention of the delight of amorous pursuits. The other two offer resistance initially, troubled at being forced into dreadful and unlawful acts. But in the end, when there is no limit to the affliction, they go along with him, give up and consent to do as they are bidden. And once they get close to him, they also behold the gleaming face of the loved one. When the charioteer sees this, his memory is trans-ported to the nature of the beautiful, and he beholds it once more, seated alongside sound-mind-edness, upon a sacred throne. At the sight of this, being filled with awe and reverence, he falls backwards, and with this he is forced to pull back upon the reins so strongly that both horses end up seated on their haunches. One is willing, as he offers no resistance, but the wanton horse is extremely unwilling. When they are further away, one horse, on account of his modesty and amazement, drenches the entire soul with perspiration, while the other, once he recovers from the pain he incurred from the bit and from his fall, gradually recovers his breath and engages in angry abuse, greatly reviling the charioteer and his companion horse for their cowardice and weakness in abandoning their position and their agreement. And he impels them forward once more against their will, and he agrees only reluctantly to their pleading to defer this to another occasion. But when the arranged time comes, they pretend to forget, but he reminds them. He becomes violent, neighing and pulling, he compels them to approach the favourite once more with the same propo-sitions. And once they get close, he puts his head down and stretches out his tail, bites into the bit, and drags them forward with no shame at all. But the charioteer undergoes the same experience as before, with even greater intensity. He falls back like a runner from a starting rope, wrenching the bit back from the teeth of the wanton horse with an even greater force. Bloodying his foul-speaking tongue and jaws, and pinning his legs and haunches to the ground, he inflicts pain. Once the evildoer has suffered this a number of times, he gives up his wantonness, he is humbled, and at that stage he follows the providence of the charioteer, and whenever he beholds the beautiful one he is overpowered by fear. And as a consequence, the soul of the lover follows its favorite thereafter in reverence and awe.

Who needs Crowley or the OTO when you have the originals that they based their theories on?

In Iamblichus we come into direct contact with a thinker who explored the world of the paranormal and otherworldly long before William James. Like James, he investigated the varieties of religious experience and chronicled the various daemons and spirits he himself experienced. Iamblichus provides phenomenological reports of the supernatural, providing the rites that were used to contact them, along with their effect in the world.

He had visited Egypt and learned directly Egyptian magical and theurgic practices from adepts of the Way of Hermes. We learn some of what he learned in his book, Egyptian Mysteries. There we come face to face with the teachings of the Egyptians on otherworldly entities, the lore and practices stretching back millennia of Temple practice. It makes you wonder what was in his other writings that the Christians hunted down house to house and burned in the public squares.

The Corpus Hermeticum itself are works of evangelization. Reading them you might not guess that there are rites that go along with the teachings. And that is how these texts were read for the longest time.

But the Christian monks and ascetics knew differently. They based their visionary ascents on what they learned from the Way. This was not known until the rites saw the light of day once again in over 800 years. With the discovery of Hermetic texts among the papyri at Nag Hammadi, we find more than the philosophy that we have in the Corpus. We have actual rites and prayers that the sect of Hermes practiced.

With this said, while I love the Neoplatonic philosophy and admire its shadowy persistence down through western intellectual history, I do not see any reason to remain fixated on the past. We’re not fundamentalists after all. We know that all things change.

The texts provide a window to the past and have deep roots, which have been mostly lopped off by Christian propaganda and persecution. But Truth is an unfolding cosmological reality. Humans learn more and more of its details as they engage more and more with historical reality.

In my way was of thinking, ancient Theurgy and the Way of Hermes are a preliminary stage in an unfolding eternal drama of the divine. In them we see the first attempts at a rational, scientific knowledge of the divine and its workings.

Were we to have the rites that Iamblichus and Proclus practices, the systatic rites of Julian the Theurgist, we’d also have the methods they used to contact the divine. But Christianity has appropriated and twisted them to their purposes. … though maybe these have been passed down through other means and to different groups.

Theurgy is intimately linked to philosophy. We study philosophy to understand the nature of reality. As Uzdavinys attempts to prove, the founding method of philosophy, dialectic, is closely linked to the Egyptian rites of resurrection. Through the stages of dismemberment to mummification to reintegration, the steps of philosophical investigation reflect those of dying to falsehood and rising to the truth of reality.

Giordano Bruno understood the following quite well, and died for the immense truth it contains: the advent of science gives us a renewed means to enact a new act in the divine drama. Through it we gain a closer and more intimate and minute experience of reality.

The study of the soul and the human mind took a hiatus at the start of this drama. Science didn’t really know what to do with subjectivity. It knew it was not matter as Descartes showed, but then it wasn’t disconnected from empirical reality as he thought either.

They tried to turn mind and its phantom presence, subjectivity, into a machine that could be measured like the rest of matter. And the age of psychological materialism began, an age we still see remnants of in the work of Dennett, Churchalna,d and Dawkins.

In many ways, the occult sciences were an attempt to hold on to the true nature of the human animal and its internal workings, mind. Yet, it also expanded beyond these realms and reached into dimensions and planes of existence that science has yet to acknowledge, much less understand.

But there’s no need to hide in the shadows anymore. Modern theurgy can once again join the search for the full truth of what it means to be human. As part of this project, we should never forget that we have not only methods and practices to engage other realities and dimensions, we also have a developed eschatology - the final and ultimate salvation of the human soul.

We participate in the common undertaking of humanity to save the human soul, as the universe becomes more and more conscious of itself. We are instances of the universe coming to understand and see itself in its full divine eminence, and its purpose.

Along the way, we will take up the thread we lost in the shadows: the continuing spiritual battle for justice - equality, freedom, and fraternity. We will bring human kind into the light of day, kicking and screaming if it must be that way.

Agrippa talks about the stages of initiation in implementing the occult philosophy. These stages are clearly demarcated by the chapters of his work: Natural, Celestial, and Ceremonial.

He understood that an important preliminary step is to be found in the experiential familiarity and understanding of fate and destiny in what is called the real world.

He had proved himself in battle and his harsh experiences with financial concerns and worries introduced him to what empirical reality teaches.

He also understood the science of his day. His work in alchemy brought to reality the interface of spirituality and matter. Familiarity with the concepts and findings of empirical science produced a lasting distrust of the senses, which every Magus must nurture.

One of the lessons of my book is exactly this. It is experience of the divine and otherworldly in everyday life, along with the consequent education that accrues from that experience. One must be tested. You must undertake the hero’s journey to test yourself against the terrors, lies, and horrors of life that shape your mettle.

Agrippa speaks of the virtue that is required to participate in divine realities. This virtue is inculcated through testing oneself against life’s vicissitudes. I did it by hitchhiking across the US. Others do it by trekking the wilderness.

Earlier generations called it Romance and set out for the sea. Jesus went into the wilderness over and over. Native warriors sought visions.

Whatever is your path, undertake it with a full heart and a serpent’s wit.

And remember: not all survive or return whole.

“le combat spirituel est aussi brutal que la bataille d’hommes” [Spiritual combat is as brutal as human war.” - Arthur Rimbaud

In his dialog, The Republic, the Greek philosopher, Plato, provides guidance for the spiritual life. Wise-man Socrates tells the story of a soldier on a battlefield who finds himself disgusted by the sight of a corpse. The soldier then experiences anger at his disgust and rebels against his thoughts.

For Plato, the anger that the soldier experiences exhibits an important part of the human soul - the “spirited” part, also known as the irascible. This aspect of the soul helps channel anger in positive modalities.

For Plato, the soul is comprised of three parts:

• The desires or appetites based in the body,

• A thumotic - the “spirited” - part, and

• The rational part.

To channel the irrational desires of the soul in a rational way, Plato teaches that a counter-balance is required. The thumotic element of the soul is the balancer. This part of the soul reacts in righteous indignation when one acts against the interests of reason or contrary to the spiritual and ethical demands of conscience or spiritual growth.

Righteous anger, Plato teaches, is a required element in the search for spiritual ideals. Anger at what we lack spiritually is a prelude to channeling the negative to positive virtues and spiritual insights.

But the irascible part is part irrational, therefore potentially dangerous and unproductive of true growth. It must be taught what to fear and what not to fear. It can only be turned into a tool for greater spiritual growth when it focuses on the correct objects and goals. Then we can turn it towards greater spiritual self-consciousness.

A simple example of learning what to fear and what not to fear is the disgust many experience when viewing dead bodies. But imagine yourself being taught to dissect human bodies to become a surgeon. Realizing that disgust at the sight of dead flesh is irrational, we muster the strength to gain knowledge. Attaining this awareness and acting on it, surgeons learn to save human lives.

Everyone knows the types of physical events that demand courage. From war, to sport, to illnesses, we must exhibit courage to overcome them. To grow as spiritual selves, we also need to inculcate courage. Learning what to fear and what not to fear in spiritual matters can range from fearing sins or damnation or staring down the fearsome images that appear in dreams and visions.

Armed with spiritual courage, we can undertake the quest to attain greater consciousness and enter into communion with transcendent realities.

“In the classic baseline with 40 men, every participant administered at least the 300-volt shock. No one quit earlier despite the learner’s earlier protests and screams. The first five stopped only at 300 V, when he pounded the wall and fell silent. Twenty-six continued to 450 V.”

Simone Weil says that every person finds enlightenment when they realize that given the right circumstances, they are capable of the most despicable and heinous act. Is this true?

The (in)famous Milgram experiments ([see here for a description of the experiment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment)) blew the lid off the neat idea that human ideals and stated beliefs rule the way people actually act in very specific sets of circumstances.

Stanley Milgram set out to explain why Germans were compliant with Nazism. His results were shocking. The conclusion he drew is that humans will obey orders to kill because men in white coats - authority figures - told them it was ok because they, the guys in white, had full authority and would take responsibility.

The experiment shows that people will act against their own ethical and moral principles. Even you might oppose cruelty to other human beings.

Milgram set up circumstances under which people actually “killed” people. (Killed is in quotes because the experiment was staged. People only thought they were “teaching” another individual by way of electric shocks.)

Milgram creates a dramatic setting where men in white coats tell the participants they will accept responsibility for anything that occurs during the running of the experiment. In this “play”, it only takes a simple command from an authority figure for people to act contrary to their beliefs.

I believe that humans must find a way to wake up and break out of their social and psychological conditioning. This has been the herald call of many religions throughout history.

However, such practices ultimately end up allowing themselves to be co-opted by ruling, authoritarian regimes. They end up killing on orders, whether just or not. Just as long as the one in charge blesses it.

I also believe that occult practices can break through this social conditioning and set us on the path to self-discovery and expanding consciousness. The reason this must occur at the level of individuals now is because of this inertia of humans to fall into authoritarian mind-sets, even when this goes against their own professed world-view.

We must remain vigilant for the animal that sits at the door of our actions and waits to drive us to despair and fear and compel us to act in a way other than the human.

Image: Salvador Dali

To practice the occult you must be willing to experience the unimaginable and seek the truth beyond all facade and self-delusion. The book tells my story, but it is the story of anyone who dares to encounter the marvelous and wondrous world that faces us every day and seeks us as much as we seek it.

\ Here is a short excerpt from the book:

The Comforter

Who is this divinity pregnant with the power of Good and Intellect? Why does she emerge from light as our Mother spreading joy, dispelling sorrow? She is light; a light that travels billions of years to fill our eyes with knowledge, our bellies with food, and our limbs with warmth.

She commands daemons and spirits that cultivate green earth and glistening streams. For all of our precise categories of thought and measurement of reality, we cannot comprehend this divinity so filled with light and love. She speaks dark words, brings omens and dreams, and radiates reason nurtured in mystery.

It is written that if the oxen painted their gods, they too would look like oxen. And when those with little vision paint theirs, they paint the divine to reflect themselves. She is infinite. The light reflected in our souls from Her paint and glorify the world.

She unbends a crooked world into a path of light leading out of oblivion. At the abyss of hopelessness, boredom, and despair, she manifests as light and knowledge and consoles our souls and minds with compassionate words. She guides us to sanity in all that we do.

“No life is worthless, all lives shall be saved,” she sings as she guides us along the paths to union with the incomprehensible, unknowable source of all, the Transcendent Good. She seeks the lost and desperate. She consoles those who fear who they are and seek their true face. She molds the soul of the good, they who are one with heart and will.

The poor, the orphans, the enslaved in body and mind, the oppressed beings of all worlds - all are dear to Her. She takes Her place in the hearts of the ones dragged by their hair to the square and their throats slit like sacrificial lambs. The wolf in its lair, the buffalo on its prairie, the mockingbird in its swamp - they too live in worlds beyond time.

They too are reborn in the eternal cycle of life from birth to death to life. They too command Her love. She plants the light in the eyes of those who crawl, walk, or fly. She guides them as they seek the courage, temperance, justice, and wisdom to live lives that the Good has gifted them from before time.

“Everything, living or not, is constituted from elements having a nature that is both physical and nonphysical—that is, capable of combining into mental wholes. So this reductive account can also be described as a form of panpsychism: all the elements of the physical world are also mental.” - Thomas Nagel

Modern science began by bracketing out human emotional response to the world as irrelevant, often because it could not be measured like matter. Philosophy and poetry continued to make a place for the human response, thought and feelings.

Darwin’s theory of evolution appeared to be the nail in the coffin for what became known as subjectivity, and its concomitant phenomenon, consciousness.

If human animals are just the products of biological forces that have their origin in chemistry and physics, then subjectivity is also material in origin. There is no need to think that it is unique in the material world. It is material at base, founded on physicochemical processes. Consciousness is a phenomenon produced by these processes.

Current thinking among many theorists is that consciousness is a folktale entity, like a pixie or troll. It has no reality beyond the matter that gives rise to it. Subjective experience is of the order of folklore. Interesting but unreal.

Beginning in the 20th century and now in the that 21st that is changing. Philosophers and scientists are beginning to take seriously human consciousness and its reality. They are challenging the more mechanistic versions of evolution, with some like Nagel speaking of teleological forces in Nature geared to promoting value. Value here defined as ethical, mathematical, and aesthetic truths.

Panpsychism is leading the way, recapturing the world for consciousness. It is expanding our consciousness and awareness of the greater intelligence of the universe.

But it must do so by looking to the future. The problems we face are difficult, and they will only be solve - if at all - in generations to come. New ways of seeing the world, and new ways of acting as humans in the infosphere, the natural world, and the cosmic realities awaiting us in space.

Through this time, Theurgy must retain the faith and belief that humans can expand their self-awareness, that the universe is awaiting our return to it, and the stars watch our progress.

This is not the time for a return to some supposed pristine, pure past. That is the way of the fundamentalisms and their tribal anachronisms. We are products of nature only insofar as we are products of evolution and the intelligent elements that comprise our consciousness.

Now is the time for a new theurgy. A theurgy that acknowledges the panpsychism that wends its way from Thales to Plato to Neoplatonism through Schopenhauer and Nietzsche is the same as that of Whitehead, Bergson, and James.

Caged Birds in Fat Houses
Like cages full of birds,
their houses are full of deceit;
they have become rich and powerful
and have grown fat and sleek.

Their evil deeds have no limit;
they do not plead the case of the fatherless to win it,
they do not defend the rights of the poor.
Should I not punish them for this?” declares the Lord.

“Should I not avenge myself. on such a nation as this?
“A horrible and shocking thing. has happened in the land:
The prophets prophesy lies,
the priests rule by their own authority,
and my people love it this way.
But what will you do in the end?

--- Jeremiah. 5:25-31

In a poll taken during the Iraq War, 90 percent of Iraqis expressed growing despair at what quickly evolved into a civil war in their country. Their cries of distress and despair echoed those that Dante describes emanating from the depths of hell.

What was also apparent, though, at the time, was that the US public had little comprehension of the daily terror and uncertainty of life in Iraq or Iraqis. Many probably thought of Iraq’s civil war along the lines of an American ghetto, where gangs fight over turf and where innocents are collateral damage.

I have argued that many Americans willingly suppress their awareness of these realities. Whether out of apathy, busyness, or even a malicious disregard for the suffering of those considered the enemy, the indifference can be hard to take. In their place, one finds excuses of varying degrees, most - again - obviating the reality of the terror that the Iraqis felt.

I would argue that these excuses manifest a despair that is spiritual and ethical in nature. It also represents an evil so great that it creates the conditions for greater evils.

Talk of what led up to the Iraq war rarely broaches issues that you can characterize as spiritual. Even those religious commentators who don’t simply spout the rhetoric of Xtendom facing down the enemies of civilization and Christian culture usually frame their discussion in political terms that reflect a vocabulary that seems empty to me; if simply because that vocabulary is spiritually vacuous.

The spiritual malaise that led to the Iraq war originates in fear and the reaction that people exhibited at the 911 attack. In other words, little public virtue, as the Machiavellians would put it. Instead of facing such atrocity with any semblance of courage, the country’s leaders responded as so many bullies would whose worst fear had come to light: their own feelings of inadequacy and weakness.

Nor did they exhibit anything that you might call religious courage. To speak of a religious courage opposed to an ethical courage may sound odd, yet it is easy enough to cite examples of this kind of courage. Martin Luther King’s campaign for civil rights, Gandhi’s effort for Indian nation-hood, Bonhoeffer’s angst-ridden decision to participate in the assassination Hitler - all acts built on courage originating in deeply spiritual convictions.

Courage is a cardinal virtue in Platonism and Neoplatonism. I have argued elsewhere that Kierkegaard’s Existentialism is an explication of courage as an element of his more widely known faith. The leap of faith is an exercise in existential courage, bringing the individual closer to themselves and to the divine.

As much as Americans hate to think that there’s any meaning to corporate sinfulness—relying instead on some corrupt image of the monadic individual—the Iraq war and its aftermath must bring to consciousness exactly that realization of sin perpetrated by a horde. After all, the majority of people in the US backed the war until it started going bad. Many voted for the man who perpetrated the fraud.

As the Rolling Stones say:

Who killed the Kennedys?
After all it was you and me.

- Sympathy for the Devil, Rolling Stones

The verse from the song is mysterious until you realize that Mick Jagger reflects the mind-scape of the moment: the thrill of conspiratorial thinking, the secret desire that permeates the animal heart for catastrophe and apocalypse. What Freud calls the Death Drive.

Until Americans begin to plumb the depths of their spirits and acknowledge their complicity in the monumental crimes they perpetrate against people from other countries, the problem of terror will never be solved.

In all the religious rhetoric that the Xtian preachers spout--even those from the Left--few invoke the words and message of the Hebrew prophets. Is this because prophets like Jeremiah inveighed against imperial pretensions and the injustice committed in the name of a corporate body like “the public.”

For the crimes committed by the nation state point not simply to the leaders but also the corrupt and spiritual blindness of an entire nation.

These words might seem to echo the more fanatical cries of the Jihadis. I can only say that Americans must stand up to the hate-filled and unjust violence purveyed by these fiends. But to do so, Americans must also take the road of spiritual purification; expanding the consciousness and opening the open heart that is disciplined by failure and the experience of imperial folly.

But not only must they hear the fanatics in the street outside but they must also hear the voices of those they invite into their own homes, friends and family.

Americans must begin to see their world is larger than the environs of US borders. They must begin to see themselves as world citizens where the actions that they perform in their food market or gas station can potentially affect the lives of others. Americans must reject the narcissistic egotism that sees the world in its own image and begin to see that others are different and believe differently.

Justice demands not that we see the world as having the same desires, needs, and dreams as we do. It demands seeing ourselves in the nothingness that is common to us all in our most painful and powerless moments. It is embracing that nothingness and taking it into our hearts and forming our will around the contours of its freedom and liberating breath.

As the prophet Jeremiah reminds us, any god that’s worth its/his/her salt demands justice. If that justice does not include the less fortunate and those forgotten by us in our busyness, then that simply means that we refuse to listen to the cries for justice.

It is obvious that the leaders of this country—whether left, right, or center—borrow an old grammar and vocabulary whose story will result in instituting the machinery of injustice. For the new world that is taking shape through war and struggle, the old stories do not work any longer. As Heraclitus reminds us, justice comes from struggle and struggle demands discipline and spiritual preparedness.

But we cannot stand by and watch the struggle go on indefinitely. We must take our existential stand - our act of courage - and create structures that can withstand the corruption of social apathy and spiritual insensitivity. We must have the fortitude and wisdom to create new, powerful international laws that manifest our ethical and spiritual discipline into protection for the powerless.

At the same time, we must heed Simone Weil’s warning about the Great Beast. Drawn from Plato’s Republic (Book VI, 493a–e), this is the Beast of group-think, fascist grandiosity grounded in mediocrity and banality, and genocidal us-them pogroms. She showed that we can find unity in diversity and forge new institutions of light with roots in the spiritual earth and spires reaching to the stars. And like its clone in Revelation, it dupes the people into betraying their own self-interests and following the terror like a character in a horror film drawn to the monster that will kill them.

For the terror is real; the boogeyman does have teeth and does eat children. Like so many stories of family and personal tragedy show, often the perpetrator is someone known, a relative and no stranger. The beast sits in the heart of the very fathers and brothers and mothers who are meant to protect us but whose hearts have been warped by temptation and corruption to betray and terrorize their own.

Indeed, Jeremiah is right:

“the prophets lie, the priests rule in their own name
and we do indeed love it.”

The response was to a Sam Altman - ChatGPT CEO - statement about AI “escaping” confinement and supposedly wreaking havoc and chaos and scaring the shit out of him and his peeps.

At least that is how the press - more nincompoops who thrive these days on apocalyptic memes and disinformation - framed the incident and others like it.

To describe the incident as an “escape” or a “singularity” is hyperbolic. It misunderstands how AI software works.

The AI did not “wake up”, gain consciousness, or break out of some supposed confines due to malicious free will.

It’s all marketing blowout and sensationalism.

This serves a purpose geared to generating worry and concern so that these AI companies can exploit that anxiety to push for more innovation and investment.

It creates an emotional environment in which they can - surprise - scare the shit out of everyone as they rake in the cash as we spend more to stop “The Singularity”, AI Armageddon, Software Apocalypse, god help us all we’re gonna die hysteria.

The reality is much simpler. But yeah, it’s - a bit - complicated. And it’s a classic example of what we industry fondly call PICNIC: “Problem In Chair, Not In Computer.” Except, that usually refers to users. This time it refers to software testers. (Those poorly paid, overworked, important pieces of the SDLC. The gods love them.)

As part of a test, the AI was given by the programmers a goal to solve a cybersecurity challenge. The safety guardrails were turned off for the testing.

It didn’t do anything it wasn’t supposed to. It just followed software code logic to find an open internet path. Then it exploited a third-party software flaw. Not because it figured something out and ran, but because its boundaries were poorly configured. In other words, human error in designing the test.

The Reality of the Incident

The task set for the test was for AI models (including GPT-5.6 Sol) to do an internal evaluation. Then it was supposed to use automated code execution to find answers outside the test sandbox environment.

What is characterized as the “breakout” involved chaining a zero-day exploit in a proxy tool. This is where the human failure came in. It involved a containment/configuration failure.

It was not sentient rebellion.

It never will be.

Agrippa writes:

“Words therefore are the fittest medium betwixt the speaker and the hearer, carrying with them not only the conception of the mind, but also the virtue of the speaker with a certain efficacy unto the hearers, and this oftentimes with so great a power, that oftentimes they change not only the hearers, but also other bodies, and things that have no life.”

Kopmeis writes:

“The concept of virtue is important in Agrippa’s magic; it refers to the properties of things, or spirits, but also to their occult powers. It can be understood as the divine essence working through every part of creation.”

I see this notion of virtue as the place where we can link occult praxis with Wittgenstein’s thought. This allows us to orient out understanding of the philosophical background on how magical thought and practice intertwine in a vital matrix.

For Aristotle, virtue results from an ethos. Ethos is a way of life that provides the quality and means for us to live socially and individually. Our personal embodiment of the ethos is character. It originates from education and the habits we form in encountering and overcoming the lessons life throws our way.

We can think of this as the social, cultural, and biological angles that make up our lives. The entirety of these factors comprise an ethos that can characterize nations, as well as individuals. The ethos makes us who we are and determines how we encounter and understand reality.

As in Wittgenstein’s holistic view of language, language reflects body and its placement in the environment as crucial to meaning in our lives. These involve everything that acculturates us with language: the socio-cultural and biological capabilities we are born into and with. There is correlation between language and the character of the magus - but character as a product of education and habit.

From this holistic view of language we can gain insight into the much larger dimension within which the life and occult activities of the Magus attain their journey to the higher dimensions of reality. Each stage purifying us for the next level of awareness until we encounter the Transcendent and Divine.

For Agrippa, the virtue of the magician - are they a good or bad person - is the tincture that makes his magic effective. He can only perform magic up to the level that his worthiness and purity of soul allows: “Also those [words] that come from a more worthy tongue… receive a power of celestial, and super celestial things…” Agrippa: Three Books of Occult Philosophy I: 69, 211

The way that language enters into it is through its special attribute of connecting the soul of the Magus with the entirety of creation, which has been ordered so as to be able to be reflected in words and theurgic acts:

“Now writing is the last expression of the mind, and is the number of speech and voice, as also the collection, state, end, continuing, and iteration, making a habit, which is not perfected with the act of one’s voice. And whatsoever is in the mind, in voice, in word, in oration, and in speech, the whole, and all of this is in writing also. ... without [writing] all our works would never be brought into effect; seeing a disposition doth not cause an effect, but the act of the disposition.” Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy I: 73, 221

Again, we see here Agrippa addressing the much more macrocosmic view of language as more than just the spoken word. Writing is an act that commits to matter the soul of the magus, manifesting and embodying the thought and praxis of the person imbued with their virtue and contact with the Oneness of creation.

All of creation is intelligent and has form of consciousness, as Iamblichus and Proclus remind us when they speak of the sythemata, those clues scattered by petals of awareness throughout the natural world and within the sounds and shapes of words.

“Every voice therefore that is significative, first of all signifies by the influence of the celestial harmony; secondly, by the imposition of man, although oftentimes otherwise by this, then by that. But when both significations meet in any voice or name, which are put upon them by the said harmony of man, then that name is with a double virtue, viz. natural, and arbitrary, made most efficacious to act...” - Three Books of Occult Philosophy I: 70, 213

The harmony that exists in your soul is transferred into the objects occult invocation, operationalizing them as instruments of power.

As we see, language is not simply the voice iterating words or incantations. Drawing into things reality, we have an entire cosmos which forms the background to language and our creative engagement with it.

But there are limitations to become aware of.

[A] name that may express the nature of divinity, or the whole virtue of angelical essences cannot be made by any human voice... - Three Books of Occult Philosophy III: 24, 532

Therefore, writing and making sigils and statues brings that power down into the sacred space we create.

Language beyond the human word is active. We purify the entire organism that we are and reach towards the infinite realm thru our actions, thoughts, and meditations. This is not reasoned thought; this is a visionary ecstasis that brings us in to the ever-growing immensity of Transcendent experience.

For Agrippa, Christian scripture is filled with numerous instances of divine synthemata. This is how the Kabbalists operate, as well as witches who use the Psalms to work strange works.

“The general rule of these is, that wheresoever anything of divine essence is expressed in the Scripture, from that place the name of God may rightly be gathered; but in what place soever in the Scripture the name of God is found expressed, there mark what office lies under that name.” - Three Books of Occult Philosophy III: 25, 538

The sacred descriptions of the infinite contribute to our ever-growing awareness and experience beyond experience. For it’s not the same as sensory experience but the experience of life itself, the unfiltered thought that Henri Bergson calls intuition.

[W]e… devote and consecrate to them figures, and marks, by which we cannot any way compel them to us, but by which we rise up to them... - Three Books of Occult Philosophy III: 30, 562

The sacred works we do in script, artifact, herb and prayer elevate us to the sacred precincts. Yet, it is Agrippa’s and Iamblichus’s belief that we cannot and should not compel them to come to us. The Kabbalists and Hasidim would disagree. We do have the sacred right to bring the gods into our presence - not for ourselves but for all, community and cosmos.

Either way, we gain that greater awareness of the universe as Mind, and in those infinite realms we purify our souls for an infinite bliss that awaits all the virtuous.

Mark Solms’ book, The Hidden Spring, and the research it reports marks a historic milestone in the study of consciousness. Using neurophysiology, physics, and psychoanalysis, he has revealed the material basis for how we know and understand ourselves and the world.

The consequences for Theurgy of Solms’s discoveries are paramount in seeing the future of our praxis. Many see Theurgy as a reconstruction of the past in the present. Basing ourselves on the theories and philosophy of theurgists like Iamblichus and Proclus, we endeavor to recover that lost wisdom and build it in our own times.

Unfortunately, Christian fanatics have deprived us of an unbroken continuation of that tradition. From the fragments of that ruin we must forge a new Theurgy. Our destiny lies in the future, not the past. As amazing discoveries come to light about the true nature of our innermost minds, we will mold and fuse these into a spirituality that supports and guides us to our destiny in the stars.

-------

A major discovery buttressing Mark Solms’ theory of consciousness is that consciousness begins in the upper brainstem - not the cerebral cortex. For almost two centuries psychiatrists and others who study the brain and consciousness have assumed the cortex is the control center of human physiology and consciousness.

The source of past misconceptions about consciousness rest on the assumption that consciousness is representational. As mentioned above, Solms’s finding turns this notion on its head. In human consciousness, cortical representations are unconscious. They only come to consciousness when activated by the brainstem.

Solms understands that the cerebral cortex is the place where thinking with representations occurs, but it receives the material for these processes from the brainstem. This model undermines and overturns Freud’s psychological topology.

Countering theories like Behaviorism and epiphenomenalism, Solms focuses on the subjective aspect of human personality. This is important to note because of its impact on the history of science. In psychology and psychiatry - and in scientific study in general - the subjective emotions and states of human and animal consciousness have been negated as primary and valid sources of knowledge and scientific data.

Thomas Nagel argues in Mind and Cosmos that this downgrading of subjectivity has been active since the dawn of the scientific revolution with Galileo. This neglect is the source of the infamous mind-body problem in philosophy and science. Solms’s work - which Nagel partially agrees with - goes a long way to correct that error and to solving the mind-body problem.

Solms is a neuropsychoanalyst and clinician, so his findings are based in empirical experimentation and data. For Solms, clinical cases of brain injuries and diseases that affect brain function, along with animal experimentation designed to produce brain malfunctions, indicate the subjective aspects of brain physiology.

The major breakthrough in understanding the rise of consciousness came when neurologists determined that children born without cerebral cortexes - hydranencephaly (not hydrocephalus) - exhibit all the distinctive features of conscious beings. In the past, they had been treated as psychological vegetables. Yet, Björn Merker proved conclusively that these individuals are not in a vegetative state. Instead, they exhibit emotions, and experience all traits of consciousness that people with cerebral cortexes show.

The determination that individuals without cerebral cortexes are conscious must logically indicate that consciousness is located in the brainstem. Later study showed it is the upper brainstem where consciousness has its seat.

Taking this study further, scientists were able to infer the basic seven affects or emotion of consciousness that that hydranencephaly exhibit. Since they are not representational thinking - which can only occur in people with cerebral cortexes - this means consciousness is emotive and subjective in origin.

This basis in emotion is then aligned with the larger environmental need of the individual organism to maintain its bodily and psychological integrity against external threat which might cause death. Solms’s conceptual breakthrough is equating survival needs with the thermodynamic concept of entropy.

For the biological individual, the problem of existence is evading death. Solms conceptually links this survival imperative with entropy. In this framework, consciousness originates by way of thermodynamic and informational physical processes. Using Friston’s Free Energy Principle he can show that the individual makes use of the affects to modulate and control the feelings of the individual so as to stave off threats to the individual’s bodily integrity. This is the homeostatic structure in place to help individuals navigate and survive their environments.

“Affect” is the felt experience of biological homeostasis. The results from the study of brain lesions and hydranencephaly, strengthen the link to the fact that consciousness arises from Friston’s Free Energy Principe. Neurochemicals - neurotransmitters - such as dopamine and serotonin modulate brainstem circuits.

This conclusion confirms a basic tenet of Nagel’s philosophical analysis, as well as Henri Bergson’s understanding, that the brain acts as the place where a filtering process takes place to benefit the individual in its survival project.

These results mean that consciousness is the result of the activity of seven “affects” that create our subjective awareness of the world. These seven basic emotions or affects, which consciousness instantiates:

• Lust - Straddles the line between a bodily need and an affect. Guided by pleasure, not reproduction.

• Seeking - The default mode of consciousness. Foraging behavior that thrives on uncertainty and novelty. The brainstem releases dopamine during the anticipation of a reward, not the reward itself. Equal to Freud’s ID, though not equivalent to Lust, because Lust is activated by seeking.

• Rage - The fight mode that protects the body. Ranges from irritation to blind fury. Bodily reactions include raising of the hair on your skin, protrusion of nails, etc.

• Fear - Tells you whether you are headed to or away from danger. Based on evolutionarily encoded behaviors. Includes ’single-exposure learning’ and indelibility (almost impossible to forget). (There’s a disease called Urbach-Wiethe disease, where patients experience _no fear_. This has horrendous results.)

• Panic/Grief - Separation anxiety. Different than fear. Begins with protest, ends in despair.

• Care - Opposite complement of attachment. Maternal instinct in everyone but to different degrees based on chemicals. Trainable.

• Play - Critical to higher functions like language, thinking, art and so on.

Emotions form the defense plan that humans employ to stave off threats from the environment and potential death. Consciousness works together with voluntary and autonomic systems in the brain to develop plans that seek to maintain the integrity of the person. This is equated with homeostasis, a psycho-biological system that seeks to maintain the body’s autonomic and voluntary activities in balance so it can protect the person. They support the body’s needs and contribute to the overarching goal of scanning the environment for threats and developing a plan to avert harm and disaster.

These basic emotions (affects) comprise what Thomas Nagel has formulated as the unique quality of being consciousness. That is, the “quality of subjective mammalian consciousness”. Subjectivity, with its experiences, answers that question. Solms mentions Nagel’s formulation in his work and sees it as a fundamental criterion by which to determine what consciousness is. As mentioned earlier, taking emotions as valid empirical data for making scientific conclusions forms the basis for Solms’s rationale in determining both the seat of consciousness and its nature. As such, it is a formidable advance upon scientific theory, since it radically changes the landscape as far as acceptable forms of data.

Nagel places Solms’s findings within a dual-aspect monistic philosophical framework, which some would say aligns with Spinoza’s “neutral monism.” For Nagel, even though Solms’s findings are an advance in understanding the physical nature of consciousness, that forms only the first steps in a much larger project that identifies the “substance” of consciousness. For Nagel this substance - or whatever it is - is neither mental nor material (hence his use of the neutral monistic philosophical framework).

So if certain physical systems are in themselves necessarily conscious, that must mean that their description in physical terms is incomplete, or in some way superficial: they must have a more fundamental nature that entails both their physical and their experiential characters, and this accounts for the fact that neither can exist without the other.… However, we do not at present have the conceptual or theoretical resources to understand how such a monistic solution could obtain. I don’t think we can get there by a sufficient elaboration or extension of our current physical and psychological concepts, as Solms proposes. Even functional isomorphism between neuron mechanisms and conscious mental processes, of the kind Solms describes, remains apparently contingent, or at most causally necessary, so long as we describe it in those terms. Solms believes that we can close the gap by descending to a level of description that reaches a “unifying common denominator”. But this will still leave it unexplained why a physical system of such and such a formal structure has to have a subjective experiential point of view of any kind — even if we find it plausible that, should it have a point of view, that point of view would have an analogous structure… The true nature of the brain is given not by physical theory, but by something we do not have. - Thomas Nagel (2021). Comment on The Hidden Spring. Journal of Consciousness Studies 28 (11-12):203-209.

Nagel is saying that though we should accept Solms’s physical findings and theoretical conclusions, we must understand there are greater insights to come; Solms’s theory is only a beginning of this project that will find a concept that denotes a conscious reality or state of mind that is neither physical nor mental. This concept will help provide a fuller understanding of the human animal within the cosmos.

As I mentioned at the start, Solms’s theory can provide a crucial bedrock foundation for a theurgic metaphysics, based on an anti-materialistic footing which also engages realistically and empirically with the nature of the human being and with the physical world.

Future research will reveal more and more details of this brave new world. The question about the nature of this concept that is neither mental not physical that explains consciousness is will clarify the basis for Theurgic engagement with otherworldly entities.

More practically, Mark Solms’s work provides the material basis for that pursuit and we should take it seriously and understand it completely. In occultism there is a psychological healing aspect. We want to heal ourselves from both psychological and spiritual maladies. We also have a communal aspect to our teachings. We want to heal the world at large and the incarnational cycle of lives we have are meant to provide the tools in each lifetime for returning so we can help others in our future lives.

I have embraced Giordano Bruno’s occult, philosophical and metaphysical for several years. I believe his metaphysical Monism is one way to understand the new neurophysical information that Solms’s research unearths in a less dualistic manner. For Bruno, the differentiation between matter and spirit (mind) is a false barrier, used for logical purposes at best. They are the same, Bruno wrote. While he still used the notion of a soul, it is not dualistic but has material and mental characteristics.

Ancient Theurgists based their praxis upon Aristotle’s psychology, as well as Greek findings of medicine. They also based their metaphysics on current theories of the material universe. Their praxis involves actions and behavior that determine how one interact with the material world in order to activate higher states of consciousness. With Solms’s theories available to us, we can expand upon the insights of the past saints and begin to formulate our own praxis based on more accurate descriptions of the soul and its interaction with the world.

Solms’s research is exciting and important. As occultists, we should make as much spiritual and occult use of them that we can. Looking for adequate traditional occult understandings of the soul might prove helpful, we occultists will have to - as Nagel describes it - undergo a “radical conceptual and theoretical transformation” to fully comprehend the true nature of who and what we are.

It is apparent from ethics and from social organization that humans are evolving to greater spiritual manifestations in its evolution. We will evolve into more enlightened beings individually and socially the more we can understand ourselves and the consciousness we possess to engage with reality. As Theurgists, knowing our selves is paramount not only in our engagement with the mundane world but also the entities of other worlds/dimensions.

But “the church” has also retarded individual intellectual and spiritual growth by policing spiritual practices and routing them into the monastic system, where it could keep strict observation on what was thought and seen.

The Index Librorum Prohibitorum used to enforce - until after the PR campaign of Vatican II - a blanket ban on books promoting necromancy, sorcery, divination, magic, or spiritualism (séances). Now, in Catholic teaching, engaging in paranormal research that conjures spirits - daemons and otherwordly entities in the parlance of Theurgy - predict the future, or manipulate hidden cosmic forces is a sin against the First Commandment.

These things are taught in the Catechism.

As to the use of mind-expanding substances, “the church” views them as inherently immoral and a grave sin. “The church” does not view these substances as a path to spiritual expansion, but rather as a chemical disruption of the soul’s natural faculties. Seeking - and finding, no doubt - a non-Christian spiritual awakening is a mortal sin.

The idea is that one who takes the drug is “forcing” the divine to show itself. This is interesting because it correlates with Iamblichus’s problems with Goetia; that is, forcing the gods to perform for the Goetic practitioner.

According to Moshe Idel, the same types of restriction does not apply in Kabbalah or Hasidism. Kabbalistic Theurgy ardently believes that the practitioner can and should bring down the divine power into the life of the individual and their community.

Of course, such thoughts and beliefs enter into almost every other indigenous culture that uses hallucinogenic substances for individual and communal health.

With my background in philosophy of language, I tend to understand drug visions as the mind mapping hallucination within the linguistic structures that we use to understand reality. But, as I’ve said before, I did have one experience that I don’t think was a linguistically mediated phenomenon.

During several of my drug visions I had some that might be called paranormal. However, one experience did not involve drugs or any other influencing factor. It is this event I would call a “real” paranormal event.

Regarding the difference between drug-induced visions and reality, I think of Moshe Idel’s characterization of Kabbalists: some thought the phenomena they experienced were intellectual - along the lines of Aristotle’s active intellect - while others sought paranormal experiences.

These latter Kabbalists used the following Psalm verse to justify their search: “Take the veil from my eyes that I may see the marvels that spring from they law.”

That is my approach to Theurgy and the phenomena and power it calls upon.

No doubt, many Catholics and Orthodox believers do not understand these restrictions and the repressive thinking that gives rise to them. We Theurgists should be engaging actively and aggressively with prominent proponents of these systems to expose the fraud they have perpetrated against the world for centuries.

It’s not difficult to see why filmmakers believe they can re-present a type of cosmic vision. The camera eye is supremely made to depict reality “as it is.” A camera does not filter the information that it espies. Unfiltered, naked fact speaks from every frame since the camera cannot lie.

What better testimony to the ability of the camera to capture truth than videos from in which criminal behavior is caught on tape and then used in court, such as the murder of Iryna Zarutska, George Floyd, or Rodney King?

The ability of the camera to capture the unseen crime, the hidden truth behind the façade of custom and human pretensions, makes it a powerful witness to our grasp of reality and truth.

The film Crash depicts inter-related stories that switch back and forth between present past and (the illusion of) the future. We see how the actions of each character ends in tragic consequences. The film’s ability to travel through time, as it were, gives us a feeling of transcending those very boundaries that trap us in their confines.

The power of the film Babel shows that despite the apparent chaos ruling events and the world as we encounter it in the news, for example, there is indeed a structure and coherence to it. The panoptic vision of the film then is able to show us that structure because of its ability to span time/space and present the intricacies of each action in the very historical, social, and cultural circumstances in which they happen.

There are films where the pieces, however, are not so neatly fit together. How many have sat through the 12 hours of Shoah, the documentary about the Holocaust, and not been reduced to a pile of ash? Where do the pieces fit here? Where is the overarching vision that explains even one fragment of what we see on the screen while this film plays?

Many religions seek the perspicuous view of reality that these films promise to show. In ancient Egypt and later Greece, the concept of theoria meant a universal vision of life as though one were a spectator at a stadium watching a show or game:

[I]n Neoplatonism, the creative power of the cosmos is contemplation (theoria) and intellection (noesis): therefore divine praxis is theoria; for Plotinus, on every level of reality creation is the result of the energy produced by contemplation (Enneads.8.3.4) - Uždavinys, p. 321

To attain the vision of reality transcending time/space, the Egyptian priests arranged the divine images and divine symbols. With the images properly ordered and in their appropriate place, they showed the initiate’s soul the way to liberation and inspired with the power to undertake the journey.

In the biblical book of Job, the apotheosis of the Job’s accusation of Yahweh is the vision that Job has of Yahweh speaking from the storm. Yahweh asks Job whether he can see the world as Yahweh the creator-God and sustainer of creation does.

Yahweh sees all and tends all; Yahweh sees how all things interconnect and views what no human could ever see, not to mention understand. Yahweh asks Job:

“Do you hunt the prey for the lioness
and satisfy the hunger of the lions when they crouch in their dens
or lie in wait in a thicket? Who provides food for the raven
when its young cry out to God
and wander about for lack of food?”

Yahweh sees those hidden moments when only silence, death, and the raging powers of life have infinite play.

William Blake believed that the story of Job is not a rebuke of Job’s accusations but an affirmation of them which ends with a mystical vision of God to the visionary. The vision God provides is a reward for Job’s infinite desire for justice.

Every scene in a film contains exactly what the film’s director wants us to see. Every color and artifact, not to mention the actions of the characters, are dictated strictly by the director. Yet, the details of any film will always be limited by the human capacity to reach that state of ex-stasis (ecstasy) or point outside of time wherein s/he can view the entirety of events and their interconnectedness.

Think of this: it takes several Cray supercomputers to process the amount of weather data and perform the chaos theory formulae on it to get what anyone would call information.

The moral of this scenario is more than the inability of the human bio-computer to handle the plethora of data that world events, and their apparent chaos, entail. The power of Job’s vision is that Yahweh has the frame-of-reference within which to make sense of the seeming injustice and meaningless suffering that humans endure and inflict on each other. Indeed, it is God who makes sure that that cosmic balance and justice are somehow maintained.

Isn’t this what Yahweh shows Job? That despite Job’s limited perception of reality—especially as seen through his own suffering—there is indeed a cosmic structure and ethical/spiritual meaning to the world that engages us often as chaos?

In making our journey through the netherworld of revelation, we seek union with the power that brings unity to all that we see, hear, and experience. The occult sciences give us a key to enter into the chambers where imagination and thought merge and the realms of the ages open to view.

As you would guess, people aren’t really reading the post about what the Vatican might be hiding. As I clearly explain, I asked AI to scan the web for items that the Vatican might have and not be willing to release to the public.

The stategy was for AI to find potential items that might be embarrassing to the Vatican and assign a probability factor to whether that item might actually exist or not.

People keep saying the Vatican libraries are open. Yes, but not all archives are open. You can’t just walk in and start browsing the 42 miles of stacks. You need permission just to enter.

Then there are the 85 kilometers of archives known as the Bunker. No one can access that.

Other restrictions include:

• All files after the end of Pope Pius XII’s papacy (1958) remain entirely closed.

• The Sacred Apostolic Penitentiary is closed.

• Cardinal Selection Material is closed

• Personal Papal Diaries & Wills are inaccessible

I’m not conspiracist by nature. But there are things that invite informed speculation. I mean, who killed the Kennedys; after all, it was you and me, right?

Were I to feed my minimal conspiracist proclivities, one lasting area for grand conspiracy theories I’d look at is the vast Vatican libraries. These are arguably a much larger clone of the great library at Alexandria.

They’ve been the object of rumors and conspiracy theories, at least since the Templars met their benighted end. What ageless secrets do these 42 miles of shelved books and manuscripts hold?

On the face of it, the Vatican’s PR campaign to make “the church” a kinder, gentler organization has been remarkably successful. From an entity responsible for the spiritual persecution and material deaths of millions of innocent souls, their current face of moderation and toleration is supremely ironic.

The new facade, along with its trenchant wall of imperious silence, has deflected the press and academia from pursuing hard-core research into the secrets that the Vatican might be withholding from the public. But there’s always that suspicion that the Vatican is not … telling everything.

Or, perhaps it’s a venial sin of omission.

Obviously, it would take me many years to compile and list the numerous conspiracy theories and then try to assign a probability to whether they are real or not. Fortunately, I am saved from that thankless job by AI. I can ask AI to scan the web for what people think speculate exists in the libraries, then assign a probability factor to the theories. Modern technology is miraculous, isn’t it?

So, with AI at my fingertips, here are the theories, starting with the crazy, to the almost certain, and ending with the high-probability. I’ll let most of the theories speak for themselves, leaving commentary for later.

The crazies hold that the Vatican libraries contain:

• A time-machine

• Evidence of extraterrestrials

• The Red Dragon, a grimoire said to be able to summon Lucifer himself

• Apocalyptic prophecies, notably the “true” third prophecy of Fatima

• Genealogical records of Jesus and Mary Magdalene

• The world’s largest pornography collection - A new one to me. Makes sense though!? lol

AI finds those highly dubious.

When one asks AI to bring speculation back to earth, it says there is much more certainty for the following, more mundane explosive secrets:

• The Pope Pius XII Wartime Papers - What did he really do to oppose the Nazis?

• Suppression of Sex Abuse Claims - Letters and documents on how the Vatican handled the scandals. The hard-nosed approach undertaken with early sex abuse accusations was brutal and unforgiving. Also, which bishops reported abuse, and who didn’t? Which cases were covered up, and how high up did the awareness go before the 2000s.

• The Vatican Bank collapse and scandal records - Millions of dollars from organized crime profits, corporate fraud, and political slush funds were used for money laundering and covert funding operations. As they say: follow the money.

But again, like me, many want to know the juicier bits. We want to know what information and evidence - with a high degree of probability - exists which would cast great suspicion and doubt on the Vatican’s honest desire to be a truth teller and open to fair theological debate.

According to AI, the papal seat would rather withhold from us:

• Alternative Scriptures - Apocrypha & Pseudepigrapha. The original Greek, Coptic, and Syriac codices of texts rejected from the biblical canon during the 4th century. “Gnostic Gospels” ike those of Thomas, Mary, or Judas.

• Original, uncensored manuscripts by medieval and Renaissance thinkers - Texts from Giordano Bruno, Galileo Galilei, Tommaso Campanella, and early alchemists. They contain geometric proofs, astrological charts, and philosophical arguments that explicitly deny Church dogma regarding creation, the structure of the cosmos, and the unique place of humanity in the universe.

• Protestant and Reformist Broadsheets - The unredacted, personal correspondence, original theses, and philosophical defenses written by Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Huldrych Zwingli.

• The Index of Forbidden Books Background Files - For over 400 years, the Vatican banned thousands of books. Why were thinkers like René Descartes, Immanuel Kant, and Simone de Beauvoir deemed hazardous to the faith?

• Vatican apostolic archive - Trial records of thinkers like Galileo and Giordano Bruno (burned at the stake). What were the internal theological debates, arguments, and political posturing behind these censorship cases? Why hasn’t Bruno been rehabilitated or absolved? What lie of “the church” did he lay bare?

• The Inquisition - The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) has a ultra-secret archive. Thousands of trial transcripts from the Inquisition. They map out every theological rebellion, heresy investigation, and case of suspected witchcraft across the Catholic world from the 16th century onward.

• The Hebrew and Islamic Manuscript Collections - The world’s most extensive collections of early Jewish and Islamic texts, many of which were confiscated during the Crusades, the Reconquista, or the Counter-Reformation. While not “heretical” to their own traditions, they were historically classified as infidel or hazardous texts and kept under strict lock and key to prevent everyday Christians from reading them.

• Documents explaining why Hitler has never been excommunicated.

So, let’s ask the Vatican to come clean. Pope Leo, open up the archives if you really want to invite authentic and honest discussion about the truth of your religion.