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Unlocking the Observatory: Figures, Mirrors, and the Great Mirror

May 11, 2022 By in occult Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Where were we? We’re in the middle of discussing the obscure Telescope of Zoroaster (ZT), a manual of divination and spirituality originally published in French in 1796 (FZT) at the close of the French Revolution, which was later translated into German in 1797 (GZT) and then again in an abridged form as part of Johann Scheible’s 1846 Das Kloster (vol. 3, part II, chapter VII) (KZT), with Scheible’s work then translated into English in 2013 as released by Ouroboros Press (OZT).  Although OZT is how most people nowadays tend to encounter this system, I put out my own English translation of FZT out a bit ago as part of my research, and while that translation was just part of the work I’ve been up to, there’s so much more to review, consider, and discover when it comes to this fascinating form of divination.  Last time, we talked about the 112 (or 113) tiles used for divination, what each needs to have on it, and what each means in divination. If you need a refresher on what we talked about last time, go read the last post!

※ For those following along with their own copy of ZT (get yours here!), the relevant chapters from ZT are the “Second Step”, “Fourth Step”, “Seventh Step”, and “Third Supplement”.

Alright!  As of the last post, we now have the toolset required for divination; in Tarot terms, we’ve taken a good look at all the cards (so to speak) and know what they are, what they represent, and the like.  What comes next is how to make use of such tools, and just as Tarot cards get drawn and arranged into spreads, so too are the tiles of ZT drawn and arranged into…well, there’s a bit of terminology we have to go through and sort out first, I suppose, because ZT was trying to innovate its own terms in a time when such terms were still in the process of taking shape and becoming standardized.

  • Figure: A geometric shape composed of tiles, named after the shape that it forms.
  • Mirror: A whole figure that is used for divination.
  • Tablature: “The reasoned and just enunciation of what a Great Mirror gives to read”, i.e. the interpretation and reasoning of a divinatory session (especially, but not necessarily, making use of the “Great Mirror”—more on that term later).

In order to form a figure from tiles, one composes a figure by arranging successive tiles in an outward spiral, starting from one tile then proceeding counterclockwise, with the second tile always to the lower left of the first then proceeding outwards from there.  Tiles within figures are always densely-packed, meaning that there is no space between them and tiles are pushed together against their own edges and corners.  In this way, given the hexagonal geometry of the tiles, figures can be formed in shapes that are overall triangular, quadrangular, or hexangular.

There are four kinds of triangular figures that ZT allows:

  1. The 3-tile triangular figure, also called the “small triangle”.
  2. The 6-tile triangular figure, also called the “simple triangle” or “hollow triangle” (because its center is a meeting of three tiles at a vertex instead of a whole tile itself).
  3. The 10-tile triangular figure, also called the “full triangle” (because its center is a whole tile).
  4. The 15-tile triangular figure, also called the “large triangle” or “double triangle” (because its center is another whole triangular figure).

There are three kinds of quadrangular figures that ZT allows (which it calls “lozenges” or “diamonds”):

  1. The 4-tile quadrangular figure, also called the “small diamond” or the “hollow diamond”.
  2. The 9-tile quadrangular figure, also called the “medium diamond” or the “full diamond”.
  3. The 16-tile quadrangular figure, also called the “large diamond” or the “double diamond”.

There are three kinds of hexangular figures that ZT allows (which it also just calls “hexagons”):

  1. The 7-tile hexangular figure, also called the “small hexagon” or the “orbital hexagon” (because the outer six tiles form an orbit around the center tile).
  2. The 19-tile hexangular figure, also called the “medium hexagon” or the “double hexagon”.
  3. The 37-tile hexangular figure, also called the “large hexagon”, the “triple hexagon”, or “the totality” (because it includes all other possible figures that are permissible according to ZT).

ZT gives a lot of precedence and eminence to the large hexagon, because it forms the basis of many of the divinatory processes and cosmological models used in its “Great Cabala”.  Although that is one of the reasons the large hexagon is called “the totality”, the other is more in the sense of a limitation.  One might wonder why we might not make larger triangles or diamonds by adding in more tiles and continuing the spiral; ZT disallows this by saying that only the figures that can be contained within the large hexagon are permissible for use in divination.  Thus, one cannot make a triangular figure out of 21 tiles or a quadrangular figure out of 25 tiles because they wouldn’t be able to “fit” inside the large hexagon.

This leads to a distinction that ZT makes between what it calls “real figures” versus “ideal figures”:

Any isolated figure is called “real”; it therefore forms a picture, a mirror. Any included or contained figure is called “ideal”.

In other words, a whole figure that is composed from tiles and seen as a whole is considered “real”, while any subset of tiles within such a figure that could also be composed as a separate figure on its own is called “ideal”.  Let’s say that we draw three tiles and form a small triangle; this would be a real figure.  If we draw another 16 tiles and, with all the tiles put together, make a medium hexagon, then this is another real figure.  However, if we look at the bottom “pie slice” of that medium hexagon (tiles 1, 2, 3, 9, 10, and 11), and note how those tiles form a sort of sub-figure in the shape of a hollow triangle, then this sub-figure is an ideal figure, because it is not a figure on its own but is part of a larger figure that it is found within.  In that light, a real large hexagon contains all other possible figures as ideal figures within it; thus, although one might consider the large hexagon to be the goal of being built-up from smaller figures, ZT takes the opposite approach and says that the large hexagon is what “came first” in a sense, from which the smaller figures could be broken out.  Although this seems like an odd distinction to make, it forms the basis of a powerful interpretive technique later on, so it’s good to start paying attention to the possible ideal figures that might occur within a larger real figure.

When it comes to the structure of the large hexagon, it helps to consider it in terms of its general structure as having one center and three “belts” or “zones:

  1. Center: house 1 (also called the “focus”)
  2. Inner belt: houses 2 through 7
  3. Middle belt: houses 8 through 19
  4. Outer belt: houses 20 through 37 (also called the “frontier”)

With all that out of the way, we’re finally able to talk about ZT’s main approach to divination: the Great Mirror.  This is a large hexagon formed in the usual way, but each tile-position (what I’ll call “house”) in the Great Mirror has particular cosmological signification.  As a result, ZT also talks about the large hexagon as using the “astronomical aspect” or “sidereal aspect” (in contrast to the “temporal aspect” or “chronic aspect” which is another use of the large hexagon we’ll get to later).  In many ways, the Great Mirror is the ZT equivalent of the Celtic Cross spread in Tarot or the Grand Tableau in Lenormand.

The above diagram is a reproduction of ZT’s own Plate III, which includes a bit more information than what’s shown above but which we’ll get to in a bit:

The Great Mirror is generated the same way as with any large mirror: counting in an outwards counterclockwise spiral starting from the center and proceeding to the lower left.  The Great Mirror is broken down into four regions based on its overall structure:

  1. The center, which is the single house 1 in the middle of the Great Mirror.
  2. The solar belt, which consists of houses 2 through 7 (i.e. the Great Mirror use of the inner belt), immediately around the center.  This belt is also called the “central belt”.
  3. The planetary belt, which consists of houses 8 through 19 (i.e. the Great Mirror use of the middle belt), immediately around the solar belt.  This belt is also called the “sidereal belt”.
  4. The zodiacal belt, which consists of houses 20 through 37 (i.e. the Great Mirror use of the outer belt), immediately around the planetary belt.

Of special significance in the Great Mirror are houses 1, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, and 19, because these are the houses given (respectively) to the Sun, Mars, Venus, Jupiter, Mercury, the Moon, and Saturn.  All the other houses are said to be “in the orbit” of one or two planets; thus, when we look at Mars (the “inner corner” of the Great Mirror on the lower left), then we can say that house 9 is Mars itself; houses 21, 22, and 23 are houses exclusively in the orbit of Mars; house 10 is in the shared orbit of Mars and Venus, house 2 is in the shared orbit of Mars and the Sun, and house 8 is in the shared orbit of Mars and Saturn.  Note how, while all the non-solar planets have three houses that are in their own orbit exclusively, every house in the Sun’s orbit is shared with another planet.  Thus, if we consider a planet together with that planet’s orbit, then what we’re doing is effectively considering an “ideal small hexagon” within the larger Great Mirror.  This is why the other term for a “small hexagon” is “orbital hexagon”, because it represents a single planet in one of the focal points of the Great Mirror and the six houses that surround it.

And yes, we’re being bumped back down to seven planets here, not to nine planetary intelligences.  As opposed to a 9-fold system of numerology, we’re using a 7-fold system of geometry here, which necessitates that we talk about seven places of interest and not nine.  To that end, it would be inaccurate to say “house of Adamasto” or “orbit of Seleno” (rather “house of Mars” or “orbit of Moon” respectively), because the Great Mirror focuses on planets and not planetary intelligences, even if the intelligences have their seats in their own planets.  Thus, both Genhelia and Psykelia share the same orbit of the Sun, just as Seleno and Psykomena share the same orbit of the Moon.  (It gets a little more complicated later, but that’s later, not now.)

So, as you might have predicted, each house in the Great Mirror has its own set of meanings, its own contextual or semantic field, just as the twelve houses do in an astrological horoscope or each of the card positions in a Tarot spread.  When a tile is placed in one of these houses, the meaning of that tile is to be interpreted in the scope of the house it’s found in.  Thus, there are 37 such houses, each with their own meaning—but again, there’s a system behind this.  Recall how when we were talking about the Intelligences and Numbers how, although each Number has its own signification, the significations didn’t have to be memorized but rather “generated” based on their smaller digits?  A similar approach is used for the meanings of the individual houses of the Great Mirror.

Take a look at the layout of planets on the Great Mirror: we have the Sun in the Middle, Mars to the lower left, Venus to the lower right, Jupiter to the right, Mercury to the upper right, the Moon to the upper left, and Saturn to the left.  Each planet has its own orbit of six houses, but if you consider things at a grander scale, the large hexagram is a collection of seven orbital hexagrams in the same geometric arrangement as an orbital hexagram has seven houses, kinda like a fractal.  If we consider a smaller “fractal” of the Great Mirror…

…then we can overlay this on each orbit of the Great Mirror as a whole to get a sort of “main planet vs. sub-planet” arrangement.

Consider house 24.  This is a house in the orbit of Venus, but it’s to the lower-left of this planet, which is the “fractal direction” of Mars.  In this light, we might say that house 24 is the house of “Mars of Venus”, so even though this house fundamentally has something to do with Venus, it’s about the Martian aspects of Venus’ domain.  Thus, this house has the meaning of “intense or violent passions and senses”.  By taking the overall planetary layout of the Great Mirror and applying it on a smaller scale to an individual planet’s orbit, we can arrive at a specific context through pairwise planetary interactions—not unlike the how we paired together the tens-digit vs. ones-digit of the compound Numbers to arrive at a specific indication through pairwise interactions of the primitive Numbers.

What about the planetary houses themselves?  Well, they have the “fractal direction” of being in the center, which is the house of the Sun: thus, the “Sun of whatever-planet” house is just that planet itself; just as the font of all power in the solar system is the Sun, the font of all power within a given planet’s own orbit is that planet itself.  Thus, house 9 (the house of Mars itself) is given to “military status, valor or bravery”, and house 13 (the house of Jupiter) is given to “high wisdom, science”.  The system checks out pretty well in this case.

What about houses that are in two orbits at once?  Consider house 7: this is a house in the orbit of the Sun, but it’s to the left of the Sun, the “fractal direction” of Saturn.  Thus, house 7 is the house of “Saturn of the Sun”, so this house is about the Saturnine aspects of the Sun’s domain.  Thus, this house has the meanings of “advanced age, health”.   At the same time, house 2 is also in the orbit of Saturn, to the right of the planet and thus the “fractal direction” of Jupiter.  The indications of “advanced age and health” can be thought of as much as the Saturnine aspects of Saturn’s domain as it is the Jovian aspects of Saturn’s domain, in this regard.  Likewise, if we consider house 10, the house between the positions of Mars and Venus, this house has the meaning of “romantic adventures” (again, “romantic” in the sense of being chivalrous and novel-worthy events).  From the perspective of Mars, house 10 is to Mars’ right in the “fractal direction” of Jupiter (so “Jupiter of Mars”), but at the same time, it’s also to Venus’ left in the “fractal direction” of Saturn (so “Saturn of Venus”).  Sure, it might be about “romantic adventures”, but the different perspectives here can shine a different light on that same topic.

So, in that light, here’s what ZT gives as meanings for the 37 houses of the Great Mirror, along with what the planetary considerations are of each house.

  1. Grandeur, power. (Sun of Sun)
  2. Strength, triumph, glory. (Mars of Sun, Mercury of Mars)
  3. Beauty, happy love. (Venus of Sun, Moon of Venus)
  4. Genius, great reputation. (Jupiter of Sun, Saturn of Jupiter)
  5. Treasures, gains of all kinds. (Mercury of Sun, Mars of Mercury)
  6. Domestic prosperity, inheritance. (Moon of Sun, Venus of Moon)
  7. Advanced age, health. (Saturn of Sun, Jupiter of Saturn)
  8. Severe bodily injury. (Moon of Mars, Venus of Saturn)
  9. Military status, valor or bravery. (Sun of Mars)
  10. Romantic adventures. (Jupiter of Mars, Saturn of Venus)
  11. Good fortune. (Sun of Venus)
  12. Marriage, pure feelings. (Mercury of Venus, Mars of Jupiter)
  13. High wisdom, science. (Sun of Jupiter)
  14. Magistracies or judiciaries, equity and fairness. (Moon of Jupiter, Venus of Mercury)
  15. Finance, trading or business. (Sun of Mercury)
  16. Maladministration or bad management. (Saturn of Mercury, Jupiter of Moon)
  17. Family, sedentary or domestic life. (Sun of Moon)
  18. Melancholy, weak health. (Mars of Moon, Mercury of Saturn)
  19. Envy, sorrows, setbacks or reversals of fortune. (Sun of Saturn)
  20. Birth, candor, inaction. (Mars of Saturn)
  21. Infancy, playfulness or mischief. (Saturn of Mars)
  22. Puberty, turbulence, quarrels or squabbles. (Mars of Mars)
  23. Adolescence, sympathy. (Venus of Mars)
  24. Intense or violent passions and senses. (Mars of Venus)
  25. Debauchery, infidelity. (Venus of Venus)
  26. Tenacious passions, constancy. (Jupiter of Venus)
  27. Celibacy, marital fidelity. (Venus of Jupiter)
  28. Moral perfection, maturity. (Jupiter of Jupiter)
  29. Prudence or caution, good philosophy. (Mercury of Jupiter)
  30. Bad faith, decline. (Jupiter of Mercury)
  31. Illicit and perilous fortunes. (Mercury of Mercury)
  32. Travel, hectic life. (Moon of Mercury)
  33. Inconstancy, wasted or lost time. (Mercury of Moon)
  34. Ancestors, old age. (Moon of Moon)
  35. Apathy, waning of fortune. (Saturn of Moon)
  36. Infirmity, indigence. (Moon of Saturn)
  37. Ruin, death. (Saturn of Saturn)

The list of meanings above makes sense, given the structure of the Great Mirror and these “fractal directions” that allow for different planets to overlap their meanings.  According to ZT’s own admission, however, the table given above is intentionally limited and limiting:

Be extremely careful to not take the Table that follows for a fixed indication of the significations of each of the 37 boxes from which the Great Mirror is composed. This Table is only a vehicle by which the Candidate should orient themselves, especially in the approaches which have as their goal only the ordinary career of human life.* However, if the Candidate has retained well all that we have established as precepts up until this point, then they will soon regard this Table as of little use, since there is not a single piece of the Great Mirror which does not modify, either for weal or for woe, the box assigned to it—and here we say “modify”, not “distort”.

* It will be seen, for example, that this table would furnish nothing to whoever would occupy themselves with the future destinies of empires, nations, &c.

What ZT is saying is that, even though it gives this table of contextual and semantic meanings for each of the 37 houses, it’s meant for illustrative purposes only as regards an individual human’s life, and as such, the indications above aren’t really valid for whole groups of people, the governments of nations and state, companies or industries, and the like—because the indications of table above were generated using that “sub-planet of main-planet” approach only for the scope of an individual human.  ZT, given that it is “only a key and not a treatise”, does not give tables for other scopes, but it gives us the means to come up with such tables using the same underlying method as this one.

For instance, say we’re in a battle with some army, and I want to know something about the tactics and strategy I should engage with in order to emerge victorious.  Understanding the difference of “strategy” (overall battle plan) and “tactics” (individual steps + logistics), I would want to turn to houses 2 and 5.  If we consider the table above, these two houses have the respective meanings of “strength/triumph/glory” and “treasures/gains of all kinds”, which…yeah, kinda work, I guess?  But if we look at the planetary considerations, house 2 is both “Mars of the Sun” as well as “Mercury of Mars” (the planning and direction of battle, i.e. strategy), and house 5 is both “Mercury of the Sun” as well as “Mars of Mercury” (the attacks and drives of planning and plotting, i.e. tactics).  By doing this, we can expand the indications of each house in the Great Mirror from the scant description given in ZT by understanding the overall method and then extrapolating from it as necessary and as befits a given situation we might be faced with.

Personally?  I think this is a really ingenious and elegant system of dividing up a situation into its many different aspects based on particular considerations.  Just like with the compound Numbers, a few basic principles are used on general ideas to produce a wide variety of specific ones.  Of course, just like with the compound Numbers, this is a lot to take in all at once, or so it’d seem—but the trick behind it is that we don’t need to take it in all at once, but rather just need to understand the method behind the madness.  While the table as given above is great for readings at the level of the individual human being, we yet have a method to expand on that to any level or field or context.  That said, we’re not done talking about the Great Mirror yet, because there are a few more considerations we have to work through, first.

First, when it comes to drawing tiles to compose the Great Mirror, the process works much as we would expect with Tarot cards or runes: individual tiles are drawn from the Urn without replacement (i.e. a tile can only be drawn a maximum of once), and it is placed in the first available house in the Great Mirror, not skipping to any later house nor replacing the tile in any earlier house.  While this makes obvious sense to us modern folk (you don’t take the first Tarot card you draw for a Celtic Cross spread and put it anywhere else but the first position, nor do you take any later card and swap it out with a card in an earlier position), I assume that ZT makes this point explicit because of how new the idea might have been and to reduce any chances of people “making their own fate” by fiddling with the order tiles come out of the Urn and thus how the Great Mirror ought to be composed.

As one reads through ZT, it establishes the rule that, even though there are 112 (or 113) tiles in the whole set used for divination, no more than 37 tiles are to be used in any given reading, because the large hexagram (i.e. the Great Mirror) has only 37 houses.  However, that is not technically entirely true, because ZT also has the rule that the two Principles are never used in a Great Mirror.  It’s not that they’re separated out from the Urn and can’t be drawn, but if one or both are drawn in the course of composing a Great Mirror, then they’re placed outside it entirely:

Sisamoro (the Good Principle) is placed at the zenith of the Great Mirror, at the top vertex of an equilateral triangle with the leftmost and rightmost corners of the Great Mirror.  Senamira, likewise, is placed at the nadir of the Great Mirror, below it in the same sort of arrangement.  ZT is, perhaps unsurprisingly, unclear on the exact signification of the Principles if they should appear in a Great Mirror, just that it makes such a divination super notable:

The presence of a Principle, whether one or both, imparts to the Great Mirror superlative properties, the development of which is not the responsibility of a Key. The Pure Spirit then must speak, or the student remains more embarrassed than enlightened by the intervention of these extreme influences; it is even worse when there is conflict [i.e. when both Principles appear]. On the contrary, the true Cabalist is never better served than by those effective extractions where Fate majestically reveals its most admirable decrees.

The only concrete advice that ZT gives us is this, along with what to note when considering when an Intelligence is drawn and put into the Great Mirror as well:

  1. Let us observe at which junction in the laying out of pieces for a Great Mirror where a Principle or Spirit appears.
  2. Let us pay great attention to the quality of two numbers by which an Intelligence, drawn from the Urn, follows and precedes, and also how, in the Great Mirror, such an Intelligence is surrounded, and whether it forms a full orbit in its placement or a truncated one.

That latter point is especially interesting when it comes to the Intellligences.  If an Intelligence is drawn, then it has a meaning just like any Number tile, but it also forms a sort of incidental planetary house of its own, and thus the houses that surround it form a sort of accidental orbit—but if such an Intelligence appears in the outer belt of the Great Mirror, such an orbit will necessarily be “truncated” and, thus, incomplete.  If such an accidental orbit is a full/complete one, then that might give an extra planetary consideration to each of the houses according to its “fractal directions”; if such an orbit is a truncated/incomplete one, then not all planets would get to be represented in such a way.  It’s a really neat idea to play with.

Astute readers will note that I’ve avoided talking about the inclusion of the signs of the Zodiac in the Great Mirror.  For the most part, the signs of the Zodiac don’t matter all that much for the overall indications of the houses.  However—and we’ll get to this more in a later post—the signs of the Zodiac are used by ZT to relate to the various stages of life that one undergoes, starting with Aries as birth and ending with Pisces as death.  Each of the sides of the zodiacal belt relate to one of the “six divisions of life” according to ZT (childhood, youth, adulthood, middle age, old age, senility), and so the signs of the Zodiac within them correspond to particular aspects of that growth (which is why house 20, given to Aries, also has “birth” in its indications, 21 “infancy”, 22 “puberty”, and so forth).  Beyond that, however, ZT doesn’t really do a whole lot with the Zodiac here, although that doesn’t say that one couldn’t feasibly find some way to work it into the system (even if ZT might discourage doing so, given its anti-astrology bias).

One last topic to round out this discussion on the Great Mirror.  Although ZT says that the planets are all equal and aren’t ranked among themselves in the planetary belt of the Great Mirror (the only planet with primacy being the Sun in the center), ZT also notes that it doesn’t have an account for why the planets are positioned on the Great Mirror the way they are: it notes that it does not appear to have anything necessarily astronomical about it nor anything that is particular astrological, either, just that it’s something that (it claims) is “of such antiquity sunk deepest into the darkness of the past; sub judice lis est [the case is still before the judge]”.  Admittedly, I’m not sure where ZT might have gotten this planetary arrangement from, either.  When it comes to hexagonal arrangements of the planets, one might be more inclined to recall the planetary hexagram…

…which is, of course, a development from the qabbalistic Tree of Life, like that of Athanasius Kircher in his Œdipus Ægyptiacus from 1652, and later used for any number of Hermetic or Western occultists who make use of the so-called “Kircher Tree”:

Of course, given how distant ZT’s own “Great Cabala” is from anything properly seen in kabbala of any sort, to say nothing of how much it would caustically say about established traditions anyway, I somehow doubt that this would have been an influence here along these lines.  However, if we compare the qabbalistic planetary hexagram with the hexagram formed by the Great Mirror, we see the same planetary triangles (Saturn-Mercury-Venus, Mars-Jupiter-Moon), just with a different rotation/reflection applied.

That being said, wherever the pattern of planets here came from, there is a logic and order in it.  If we proceed through pairs of the planets counterclockwise around the Great Mirror, we see two kinds of patterns arising of similar pairs and dissimilar pairs:

  1. Similar pairs arise between Venus-Jupiter (the benefics), Mercury-Moon (the neutrals), and Saturn-Mars (the malefics).  This has the result of making the horizontal rows of the Great Mirror form pairs as well: the middle row (Saturn-Jupiter) represents the greater planets (the greater malefic and benefic), the lower row (Mars-Venus) the lesser planets (the lesser malefic and benefic), and the upper row (Moon-Mercury) the neutral small planets.
  2. Dissimilar pairs arise between Mars-Venus (male/female), Jupiter-Mercury (king/servant or philosopher/sophist), and Moon-Saturn (creator/destroyer or youth/elder).  This suggests an awareness of the opposition of particular zodiac signs and extending that to the planets, e.g. how Mars rules Aries and Scorpio, which are in opposition to Venus-ruled Libra and Taurus.

As of this writing, I’m not familiar with any source that arranges the planets in the way ZT does; while ZT definitely has a logic that suggests a good awareness of basic astrological principles and zodiacal correspondences, I’m not sure if that’s enough to trace it to any particular origin, especially when such arrangements have usually been more magical than astrological.  This is another of those unanswered questions I have, and it may be that this arrangement is unique to ZT.  If you have any notion of where such an arrangement might have an antecedent or any similar leads for further research, dear reader, or if you spy any other insights or patterns in this arrangement, do let me know in the comments!

Unlocking the Observatory: Planets and Numbers

May 4, 2022 By in occult Tags: , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

Where were we? We’re in the middle of discussing the obscure Telescope of Zoroaster (ZT), a manual of divination and spirituality originally published in French in 1796 (FZT) at the close of the French Revolution, which was later translated into German in 1797 (GZT) and then again in an abridged form as part of Johann Scheible’s 1846 Das Kloster (vol. 3, part II, chapter VII) (KZT), with Scheible’s work then translated into English in 2013 as released by Ouroboros Press (OZT).  Although OZT is how most people nowadays tend to encounter this system, I put out my own English translation of FZT out a bit ago as part of my research, and while that translation was just part of the work I’ve been up to, there’s so much more to review, consider, and discover when it comes to this fascinating form of divination.  Last time, we talked about how ZT considers its own notion of the “Great Cabala” and why it’s not what people think at first glance. If you need a refresher on what we talked about last time, go read the last post!

※ For those following along with their own copy of ZT (get yours here!), the relevant chapters from ZT are the “Third Step”, “First Supplement”, and “Third Supplement”.

We’ve covered enough of the preliminary big things in these first few posts that clear up (at least some of) the literary and contextual concerns about ZT.  While there’s certainly plenty more to discuss the overall cosmology and spirituality of ZT, we need to talk technique first to make any sense of it.  We’ll start with the actual method and system of ZT today, beginning with the basic symbol set that we use for our tools.  If you’ll recall from back in the first post of this series, dear reader, I mentioned how I consider a good description of ZT to be “numerological sortilege with an astrological flair”.  This wasn’t an exaggeration: every form of divination that involves sortilege (i.e. some variation on casting lots, obtaining random symbols from some store of such symbols), like Tarot or geomancy, requires some symbol set, and for ZT, the symbols used are the nine planets and the numbers 1 through 99.

And yup, it’s nine planets, at least in a sense.  ZT makes use of a nine-planet model based on the traditional seven from the usual Western esoteric systems we all know and love.  In ZT, there are still the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn (just as we’d expect normally), but the Sun and Moon get treated a little differently: while astronomically there is just one of each luminary, in the Great Cabala of ZT there are two: a material Sun and a spiritual Sun as well as a material Moon and a spiritual Moon.  For this reason, ZT draws a distinction between planets and planetary intelligences, and for the purposes of divination, it’s the planetary intelligences that form part of our symbol set.  (I know, I know, I’m upset that ZT doesn’t make use of the North and South Nodes of the Moon, which would be more traditional for Western astrological practice, but then, ZT is very much dead set against astrology and how Western esotericism does stuff anyway, so whatever.)  It’s important to note that ZT makes use of the term “intelligences”, which those who are familiar with grimoiric or more “high church”-kinds of magic are familiar with for being another term for a spiritual entity.  In some texts, though, “intelligence” is not representative of all kinds of spiritual entities.  In his Three Books of Occult Philosophy, for instance, Cornelius Agrippa draws a distinction between planetary intelligences and planetary spirits, the former being in charge of the direction, throttling, and manifestation of the power of a planet, while the latter is more in charge of the actual flow, presence, and activity of a planet.  In the case of ZT, however, where “intelligence” is a super common term encountered in general, it may be assumed that when ZT talks about “intelligences” it’s talking about celestial or heavenly entities in general.

Also, a small side-point of clarification here about the ZT text in general: the author of ZT likes using the terms “physical” and “moral” to distinguish between different aspects of things.  The former makes sense to us as-is, but the latter doesn’t mean something like “pertaining to matters of correct or acceptable behavior”. Rather, the author of ZT uses “moral” to refer to all things spiritual and ethereal, just as “physical” also refers to all things of matter and corporeality.  Maybe this is just a trend in how people spoke back then, so I might be making a mountain out of a molehill, but I at least find it notable from a translator’s perspective.

So, nine planetary intelligences, alright.  Each of them has one or two names; in all cases, at least one name for the intelligences is based on some sort of Greek-like name (which is the name used throughout ZT).  For seven of these nine intelligences, an alternative name derived from Greco-Latin is also given for some of the intelligences (these latter names being claimed to come from “another work, probably more modern than the one which guides us”, which may well be a literary deceit). As with the ZT text itself, we’ll stick to using the primarily Greek-like names given first (and given below in bold) for our study.

  1. Genhelia (matter-Sun ☉), whose name can be derived from Greek γενηλια genēlia “sun-born”.  Alternate name is “Physia” (variant of Greek φυσις phusis “nature”).
  2. Seleno (matter-Moon ☾), whose name can be derived from Greek σεληνος variant of σεληνη selēnē “moon”.  Alternate name is “Hydrogaeo” (male variant of a combination of Greek words for “Water-Earth”).
  3. Erosia (Venus ♀︎), whose name can be derived from Greek ερωσια erōsia variant of ερως erōs “love”.  No alternate name given.
  4. Panurgio (Mercury ☿), whose name can be derived from Greek πανουργιος panourgios “knave, ruffian”.  Alternate name is “Ruffieno” (“ruffian” or, more literally, “pimp”).
  5. Lethophoro (Saturn ♄), whose name can be derived from Greek ληθηφορος lēthēphoros “Lethe-bringing” or “forgetful-bringing”.  No alternate name given.
  6. Aglaé (Jupiter ♃), whose name can be derived from Greek αγλαια aglaia “splendor, shining”.  Alternate name is “Fulgida” (Latin for “shining, flashing”).
  7. Adamasto (Mars ♂︎), whose name can be derived from Greek αδαμαστος adamastos “unsubdued, unconquerable”.  Alternate name is “Gorgonio” (a play off of the Greek Gorgon and a name used for several Christian martyrs).
  8. Psykomena (spirit-Moon ☽), whose name can be derived from Greek ψυχομηνη psychomēnē “soul-moon”.  Alternate name is “Phosphorina” (variant of Greek φωσφορος phōsphoros “light-bringer”).
  9. Psykelia (spirit-Sun ◎), whose name can be derived from Greek ψυχηλια psychēlia “soul-sun”.  Alternate name is “Celsina” (variant of Latin celsus “tall, high, prominent”).

Before we continue, a note on the symbols used for the planets.  As with usual astrological tradition, the glyphs used to represent the non-luminary planets of Venus, Mercury, Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars are the same as expected in any text.  Genhelia (matter-Sun) is represented by the usual solar glyph of a circle with a dot in the middle, while Psykelia (spirit-Sun) is represented with a circle with another circle inside (which may or may not have a dot in the middle of its inner circle).  Seleno (matter-Moon) and Psykomena (spirit-Moon) are both represented with crescent moon glyphs, but Seleno has the points of its crescent pointed towards the right and Psykomena’s towards the left.

ZT doesn’t just stop at giving the high-level information there, however.  A description of the domain, nature, and activity of each intelligence is also provided:

Genhelia ☉
This Intelligence presides over birth, growth, and the formation of the organs; over health and all good natural affections; and over family ties, from parenthood to the most remote affinity. She is sympathetic, serene, gentle, active, and willingly favorable.

Seleno ☾
This Intelligence presides over all the same things as Genhelia, but is an Intelligence that is filthy, selfish, temperamental, and lazy. He disputes with his rival over all the habits of the body which contract through the concurrence of secondary causes. What Genhelia strives to improve or change through education, Seleno willingly corrupts.

Erosia ♀︎
This Intelligence exclusively governs love, either as a passion of the soul or as a universal mode of reproduction. She knows all the joys and all the sorrows that love involves, all its pleasures and all its pains, and of all its moral and physical excesses. She is a burning Intelligence, but a good, magnetic, and vital one all the same.

Panurgio ☿
This Intelligence presides over the agility of the body, its tricks of skill and strength, and the finesse of the mind and spirit. He governs and protects all kinds of industries, is prodigiously active, and his most commendable qualities are in interpersonal skills and eloquence in language. However, he is selfish, insensitive, cunning, prone to deceit, and humanity is directed through him towards the earning of wealth, illicit or otherwise, than towards success which results from thoughtfulness.

Lethophoro ♄
This is the only essentially evil Intelligence, who presides over all the afflictions of humanity from melancholy to despair and from discomfort to death. He distributes all causes of failure, ruin, disease, and dying; he is weak, unfeeling, jealous, and resentful; he hinders all virtues and serves all the disorganizing passions of the social order.

Aglaé ♃
This Intelligence has essentially the same field as that of Panurgio, but purifies and ennobles everything of which its rival makes ill use. She fertilizes all virtues and all useful or estimable talents, restores what is proper to the arts and sciences, and inspires in humanity a disinterested ambition which directs one towards public esteem and fame than towards opulence. Aglaé is frank, fair, and noble, and she distributes literary success, honors, dignities, and all rewards of true merit.

Adamasto ♂︎
This Intelligence presides over any violence, whether merely intended or actually done. He governs war in general and quarrels in particular, and causes the shedding of blood; however, he is generous, open-minded, and incapable of resentment. Adamasto willingly submits to the influence of Erosia who tempers and tames him, as well as to the influence of Aglaé who constantly shows to Adamasto the danger of disgrace, as well as to the influence of Psykelia who spurs Adamasto on to glory. Adamasto’s faultless work is tireless, and his crimes are of his primary movement, but without any stain of baseness or betrayal. Adamasto is, in short, more tempestuous than dangerous, and is only incidentally destructive.

Psykomena ☽
This Intelligence can be called the “Overseer of the Whirlwind of the Immoral World”, who presides over all errors and follies, and who distributes to all indiscriminately all shortcomings, ridiculous non-issues, and all the innumerable strivings for trivial perfections that result in no real use in the final result of a thing. She inspires false steps, dictates frivolous productions, draws up vain projects, and constantly excites humanity into the chasing of some chimera or other. Though libertine and insensitive, she is without gall, a night without malice, serving as she does without generosity. She is especially influential over very young men, old people, and the female sex in general.

Psykelia ◎
This Intelligence is as transcendent in good as Lethophoro is in evil, and sows happiness on all careers open to humanity. She increases the influence of auspicious Intelligences and corrects the malignity of harmful malicious ones; she prepares all great fortunes and unexpected illustriousness. Opulence, victory, and triumph attach themselves to wherever she looks. She renders sublime all good sentiments; she exalts fidelity, constancy, friendship, love, and courage. She maintains the fire of genius, pulling humans out of their worst steps and purifying them to be able to reach for the highest degree of perfection allowable by human nature.

All in all, the natures of the intelligences are about what one would expect for their respective planets, though with a much dimmer view of the lunar intelligences and of Saturn than I would have expected, and a much more realistic and frank one of Mercury than is often encountered or appreciated.

It is on the basis of these nine planetary intelligences (hereafter just “Intelligences”) that we can then proceed to the Numbers.  In the system of ZT, each of the numbers from 1 to 99 is given a set of significations that build up numerologically from simple principles.  Those principles are themselves the Intelligences, each of which is given to one of the “primitive Numbers”, or the single digits 1 through 9, in the same order as the Intelligences are shown above: 1 to Genhelia, 2 to Seleno, 3 to Erosia, 4 to Panurgio, 5 to Lethophoro, 6 to Aglaé, 7 to Adamasto, 8 to Psykomena, and 9 to Psykelia.  It should be stressed that the Intelligences are not numbers themselves, but receive these numbers as a lord does a vassal; in other words, the Intelligences are on a higher ontological level than the primitive Numbers, and the primitive Numbers act as representatives of the Intelligences.

After the primitive Numbers come the compound Numbers, which are double-digit numbers that are themselves composed of the primitive numbers plus the null digit (0).  Each compound number falls into a group of numbers established by the primitive Number it reduces to: the standard numerological procedure of “adding up all the digits until you get a single digit number” is the process here, such that 45 → 4 + 5 = 9, 66 → 6 + 6 = 12 → 1 + 2 = 3, and so forth (or, more mathematically, take the number modulo 9, i.e. divide the number by 9 and take the remainder, replacing a 0 result with 9).  To keep track of all this, ZT provides a table of numbers which maps the 99 numbers to the planetary intelligences.  What’s neat about this, though is that because there are 99 numbers and we add another 9 to them (the Intelligences), if we plot out each series of 9 on separate rows, we get twelve rows total (because 99 + 9 = 108 and 108 ÷ 9 = 12).  What ZT does with that fact is that it allots each consecutive set of nine symbols to one of the twelve signs of the Zodiac in order, as below:

Aries ☉ ☾ ♀︎ ☿ ♄ ♃ ♂︎ ☽ ◎
Taurus 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Gemini 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
Cancer 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27
Leo 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36
Virgo 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45
Libra 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54
Scorpio 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63
Sagittarius 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72
Capricorn 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81
Aquarius 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90
Pisces 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99

This table is originally given (and far more beautifully rendered) in ZT as “Plate 2”.  While there are a bunch of other elements on this illustration which we’ll get around to covering, let’s just take a look at the table of numbers itself:

When we take a step back and look at all the Numbers, we can divide up the Numbers into several groups:

  • Primitive Numbers: numbers composed of single digits (9 total)
  • Compound Numbers: numbers composed of two digits (90 total)
    • Simple Compound Numbers: numbers composed of two digits where both digits are different and nonzero (72 total)
    • Double Compound Numbers: numbers composed of the same digit twice, i.e. a primitive number multiplied by 11 (9 total)
    • Tenfold Compound Numbers: numbers composed of one primitive digit and one zero digit, i.e. a primitive number multiplied by 10 (9 total)

As I said earlier, each of these 9 Intelligences and 99 Numbers has their own set of significations and meanings.  That said, we don’t have to memorize meanings for them all, because there’s a trick to it: you only really need to learn the meanings of the Intelligences and the primitive Numbers, and the rest all fall along in a nice, convenient pattern.

As an example, consider the primitive numbers 3 and 7.  3 is the number of Erosia (Venus), and has the meaning of “object of the heart, fecundity, fertility” (under Erosia’s general signification of “love, the universal magnet”).  7, likewise, is the number of Adamasto (Mars), and has the meaning of “military status, chiefs, sometimes competitors” (under Adamasto’s own general signification of “the strength of soul and body, violence, the element of fire”).  Now, if we take 3 and 7 and combine them into a compound number, we get either 37 or 73.  In both cases, these numbers reduce to 1  (3 + 7 = 10 and 3 + 7 = 10 , but 10 → 1 + 0 = 1), which is the number of Genhelia (matter-Sun).  Because of this, both 37 and 73 have something to do with Genhelia’s general domain.  In the case of 37, the meaning is “burning senses, amorous passion”; in the case of 73, “rapt in love, romantic/novelesque adventures” (with “romantic” used in the older sense of fantastic stories of chivalry and nobility”).  Note how both 37 and 73 retain their basic Venereal and Martian qualities (their single digits), but permuted in different ways within the general contextual scope of matter-Sun (their reductions to a primitive number).

To hammer in the lesson, let’s also consider the numbers 5 and 8.  5 is the number of Lethophoro (Saturn), and has the meaning of “ruin, fatal illness, secret enemy” (under Lethophoros’s general signification of “death, darkness, the element of water”); 8 is the number of Psykomena (spirit-Moon), and has the meaning of “the feminine being, the social whirlwind” (under Psykomena’s general signification of “mistake, vanities, inconstancy, foreign countries”).  The compound numbers 58 and 85 both reduce to 4 (5 + 8 = 13 and 8 + 5 = 13, and 13 → 1 + 3 = 4), putting both these numbers under the domain of Panurgio (Mercury).  58 has the meaning of “deceived wife, sometimes her death”; 85 has the meaning of “treacherous woman, sometimes testament”.  Again, note how the compound numbers retain their basic qualities of Saturn and spirit-Moon (according to their single digits) but play out in different ways according to the context of Mercury (their reduction).

We see these things touched on in the list of advice and considerations given towards the end of ZT:

  1. Let us never tire of reflecting on the attributes assigned to each Intelligence, and what about these attributes are respectively analogous to each other or incompatible with each other.
  2. Let us deeply penetrate into the primitive quality that each simple number has, inasmuch as it is often the representative of its own planet and recalls it everywhere it may be.
  3. Let it be ingrained that whenever a simple number appears joined with another to form a compound number, each of the two digits still preserves something that is primitively proper to them, wherever it may fall in some mirror or in some orbit, even one most foreign to its planet or angel.

In general, if we look at the meanings of the compound Numbers, we see a pattern arising: the basic planetary concept expressed by the tens digit acts upon or makes use of the basic planetary concept of the ones digit (e.g. 85 = spirit-Moon on Saturn = woman making use of ruin, but 58 = Saturn on spirit-Moon = ruin falling upon woman).  We just have to remember that each compound Number is bound by three things: the two separate digits it is composed of and the single digit it reduces to.  Thus, although one could conceivably come up with any number of things that 37 might resolve to being “Venus acting upon/making use of Mars” for weal or for woe, we have to remember that we are bound by the semantic limitations of these things falling in line with the general field of matter-Sun (because 37 reduces to 1).

At least, that’s the general idea for understanding the compound Numbers in general, but that works especially for the “simple compound Numbers” (e.g. 78, 29, 32), where a compound Number has two nonzero digits that are different from each other.  What about the other two kinds of compound numbers?

  • For the double compound numbers (aka “doublets” where both digits are the same, i.e. a primitive number multiplied by 11 like 22, 33, 44, etc.), it’s a similar deal as before: take the single digit, compound it upon itself, and interpret it in the context of the primitive number it reduces to.  For instance, consider 6, the primitive number of Aglaé (Jupiter), which has the meaning of “prudence, wisdom, great magistracy” (under Aglaé’s general signification of “fame, arts and sciences, the element of air”).  If we double the number (or, more accurately, multiply it by 11) to get 66, then this number reduces to 66 → 6 + 6 = 12 → 1 + 2 = 3, the number of Erosia (Venus).  As a result, 66 has the indication of “legal marriage, social concord” (Jupiter acting on Jupiter within the context of Venus).  Likewise, using numbers we’ve already encountered before, if we take the number 7 of Adamasto (Mars) and double it, then we get the number 77 which reduces to 77 → 7 + 7 = 14 → 1 + 4 = 5, the number of Lethophoro (Saturn); 77 has the indication of “severe physical accident, violent death”.  It’s the same process as before.
  • For the tenfold compound numbers (aka “nilled numbers” where the ones digit is 0, i.e. a primitive number multiplied by 10 like 20, 30, 40, etc.), the result is a little different.  In the system of ZT, even though zero is a digit, it is not a primitive Number, and so has no Intelligence associated with it.  In this case, a nilled number will always appear in the same column as the primitive number of its corresponding tens digit (e.g. 70 will always appear in the column of Adamasto/Mars because 70 → 7 + 0 = 7).  Such a compound Number has a general indication of the privation, diminution, or depletion of its primitive Number’s general idea.  Thus, 70 can be read as “weakening of Mars”, and thus has the meaning of “weakness, discouragement, cowardice”; 30 can be read as “weakening of Venus” → “celibacy, chastity, monasteries, insensitivity”; 40 can be read as “weakening of Mercury” → “aborted wealth, empty plans or intrigues”.  This is a slightly different pattern than the rest of the compound numbers.

That’s all there is to it: by understanding what the basic meanings of the digits 1 through 9 are, we can permute them and reduce them to come up with a rather specific set of meanings in a well-defined semantic field.  In this way, ZT has its own sort of “astrological numerology”, and rather than having to memorize a set of indications for every Number from 1 through 99 in addition to the nine Intelligences themselves, one really just needs to learn the nine Intelligences and the nine primitive Numbers and then how they can all fit together.  It’s actually a really neat way to generate meanings—which is why we see warnings throughout the ZT that the tables of indications provided for meanings and significations like this are inherently limited and limiting, given that they’re only a few words long and are only meant to illustrate possible meanings that fit the tens digit/ones digit/reduction digit trifecta of symbols, rather than trying to flesh out all possible meanings.  ZT, after all, “is only a key, not a treatise”.

All the same, to fill out the understanding of how the basic symbols of the numbers come together, here’s the list of indications for each of the Intelligences and the Numbers given in ZT (according to my translation of FZT).  The following list of indications comes from the “First Supplement” in ZT, but note that, due to HTML/blog platform restrictions, I’m not able to put in the Unicode glyph for the list element representing the Intelligence itself; instead, the Intelligence is represented by a negative single-digit number, e.g. “-2” represents the intelligence of Seleno, while 2 is the primitive Number that pertains to Seleno.

Genhelia ☉

  1. Existence. Physical soul. The homeland.
  2. The male being. The people. Birth.
  3. (The male child will live only for a short time.) Short duration.
  4. Noble origin. Ascent of the individual.
  5. (A girl will be born.) Acquaintance with a woman.
  6. Burning senses. Amorous passion.
  7. Great profits. Acquisitions. Tutors. Education.
  8. Natural death. (Sometimes bankruptcy.)
  9. Losses. Trials. Legal practitioners.
  10. Rapt in love. Romantic adventures.
  11. Maternity. The mother. Productive causes.
  12. Great age for a man. Experience. Consideration.

Seleno ☾

  1. Kinship. Common interest. The Earth.
  2. Second causes. Society. Clubs.
  3. Sympathy. Dependencies. Twins.
  4. Breakups. Solutions of interests. Hearths.
  5. Whirlwinds of the Great. Courtiers. Falsehood.
  6. Woman giving in. Seduction. Adultery.
  7. Passive attacks. Debates. Outrage.
  8. Happiness crossed. Aborted success. Widowhood.
  9. The Savior. The Avenger. The Peace.
  10. Advantages by strength or skill.
  11. Woman in love. Hysterical passions.
  12. Powerful help. Protectors.

Erosia ♀︎

  1. Love. The universal magnet.
  2. Object of the heart. Fecundity. Fertility.
  3. Reproduction. Amorous enjoyment. Success.
  4. (A son will be born.) Nascent bond.
  5. Celibacy. Chastity. Monasteries. The insensitive object.
  6. Illustrious gallantries. Fortune through love.
  7. Illicit unions. Theatrical overreactors. Wanderers.
  8. Jealousy. Disasters by love.
  9. Legal marriage. (Sometimes social concord.)
  10. Unlucky passion. Corrosive feelings.
  11. Insidious woman. Perverted young man.
  12. Circle of delights. Fortune of chance.

Panurgio ☿

  1. Wealth. Trade. Travels. The seas.
  2. Discoveries. Intrigues. The opposing party.
  3. Aspirant. Talents to be treasured and cherished.
  4. Happy association. Friendship. Letters.
  5. Good fortune for a clever man. Chickens.
  6. Aborted wealth. Empty plans or null intrigues.
  7. Eloquence. Orators. Ascending.
  8. Deceived wife. (Sometimes her death.)
  9. Great success by talent. Enterprises.
  10. Works for glory. Monuments.
  11. Treacherous woman. (Sometimes testament.)
  12. Sublime talents. Mechanical virtuosos.

Lethophoro ♄

  1. Death. The night.The element water.
  2. Ruin. Fatal illness. Secret enemy.
  3. Bad faith, people thereof. (Sometimes doctors.)
  4. Orphans. Bastards. Those bound to misfortune.
  5. Incestuous passions. Shunned pleasures. Vices.
  6. End of a man. Violent thieves. Lawsuit lost.
  7. End of a loved one. (Sometimes ruin avoided.)
  8. Death of a great person. Public disaster.
  9. Dangerous enemy. Hypocrisy.
  10. Severe physical accident. (Sometimes violent death.)
  11. Hospitals. Women dedicated to the service of the sick.
  12. Perversity. Powerful enemies. Great crimes.

Aglaé ♃

  1. Fame. Arts and sciences. The air.
  2. Prudence. Wisdom. Great magistracy. Embassies.
  3. Skillful chemists. Friends of humanity.
  4. Family of merit. Grand establishments.
  5. Virtuous and constant love. Meeting of lovers.
  6. Social utility. All honest professions.
  7. Death of a sage or a friend. To be condemned.
  8. Desertion of good ways. Dangerous actors.
  9. Illustriousnesses. Titles and orders of merit.
  10. Passion for women. Poetic enthusiasm.
  11. Great virtues of women. Heroines.
  12. Great protectors. Virtuous path.

Adamasto ♂︎

  1. The strength of soul and body. Any violence. The element fire.
  2. Military status. Chiefs. (Sometimes competitors.)
  3. Great courage. Obstinacy. War.
  4. Family in discord. Tasks. Civil unrest.
  5. Careful and firm conduct in love. (Success.)
  6. Ascending through feelings. Beloved superiors.
  7. Loss of a parent or associate. To be gone.
  8. Father. Benefactor. Blessings. Favor.
  9. Weakness. Discouragement. Cowardice.
  10. High ranks. Military honors. Generalship.
  11. Pairs. (Sometimes feminine discord.)
  12. Strength and power. States. Armies. Public wealth.

Psykomena ☽

  1. Mistake. Vanities. Inconstancy. Foreign countries.
  2. The feminine being. The social whirlwind.
  3. Nonsensical passions. Punishable enthusiasm.
  4. Public criticism. Gossip.
  5. Quarrels between lovers. Absence.
  6. Maladministration. Shame. Correction.
  7. Loss of the most cherished being.
  8. Family authority. Prohibition. Poverty.
  9. Disturbed brain. (Sometimes an effeminate man.)
  10. Short life for a female being. (Sometimes murderers.)
  11. Great lady. Sovereign woman. Influential woman.
  12. Remarkable extravagance. Crazy and mad people.

Psykelia ◎

  1. Perfection. Heavenly soul. The light.
  2. Nobility. Elevation. All kinds of success.
  3. Household protected by fortune. Fortunate lineage.
  4. Authority over the nation. Public respect.
  5. Conjugal love. Happiness and virtue.
  6. Legacies. Success on critical occasions.
  7. Death of an enemy. Triumph. Lawsuit won.
  8. Loves favored by public opinion. Religion.
  9. Family strength. Federations.
  10. Extreme old age for a woman. Prejudices.
  11. Abdication. Retreat from the whirlwind. (Sometimes degradation.)
  12. The height of prosperity. Sovereignty. Papacy.

If this all seems like a lot, it’s because it is—but at least we know what’s generally going on.  Rather than having to memorize each of the 108 indications given above as being something fixed and immutable, we just need to recognize the pattern and learn from these indications as being more like illustrative examples.

To wrap up this discussion, there are just two big questions on this topic left that we should consider.  First: if you recall that Table of Numbers from before (given in Plate II), there’s not just the Intelligences and Numbers on the table, but also the signs of the Zodiac.  What role do they play in establishing or fleshing out meanings of the Intelligences or Numbers?  Bluntly speaking, I can’t see that they do; if we read the numbers across the table, there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot that ties in the significations to any given Zodiac sign, and ZT never brings these up at all when discussing their meanings.  While it’s not outside the realm of possibility that one could involve the Zodiac signs as an extra consideration or another semantic boundary to establishing the meaning of a given Number or Intelligence, and while the relatively free approach to generating meanings might well be permitted by ZT, I don’t think ZT actually does this.  In short, based on my understanding of ZT, I don’t think the Zodiac signs matter (or should matter) at all for the purpose of establishing, generating, or understanding their meanings.  The signs of the Zodiac, rather, have a different function which we’ll get to later on in describing periods of life of humans and illustrating some temporal concepts, but don’t have a strong symbolic presence in the system of ZT.  While one could feasibly work in the meanings of the signs of the Zodiac somehow into the overall meanings of the Intelligences or Numbers, I don’t think ZT actually implies that this should be done, rather sticking to a purely numerological approach to develop meanings.

The second (and more historically interesting) question: where is ZT getting its system of numerology from?  That is a great question, frankly, and one which I struggled with for quite some time.  There are many systems of numerology that involve the planets in one form or another, but it’s not as common to find one that doubles the Sun and Moon, and less common still to find any set of numerological meanings like what ZT uses.  Either ZT is literally making its own system of numerology up (in the sense of giving certain numbers to certain planets), or it’s taking inspiration from some other obscure source.  I have my suspicions about where it’s coming from, but it requires more context to justify and explain, and we’re not quite there yet; we’ll cover that in a future post.  On the other hand, if you, dear reader, are familiar at all with similar systems, do say so down in the comments; you might be helping everyone trace the development of the system of ZT here in the process (and helping to make up for my own limited research), or at least spurring people on to research more leads to that end!

Thoughts on Incarnation

May 2, 2020 By in hermetica, philosophy, whining Tags: , , , , 2 Comments

“What does incarnation mean to you?  What does it mean for you to be incarnate?”

A straightforward question, I suppose, posed to me by one of my spirits, yet one that is anything but straightforward for me to answer.  I’ve been mulling over the question for over a week now, and coming up with any semblance of a coherent answer is challenging.  I mean, by definition, incarnation is literally to be born in a physical body, right?  Etymologically, it’s a Latin derivation, from in- plus caro “flesh”.  We’re spirits having a material experience, to use the new age saying, but there’s so much more to it than that, isn’t there?

I’ve been mulling over the Hermetic canon a lot lately, and I suppose I could pull bits and pieces out from that about the role of the body and the relationship between the body and the soul, and why humans are born in bodies at all to begin with.  There’s plenty in the Corpus Hermeticum and Stobaean Fragments and other parts of the Hermetic canon that talk about the fall of mankind in one sense or another, the proving-ground that is incarnate reality to obtain Mind and practice devotion and piety, how Fate affects the body but not the soul unless the soul permits it to affect it, and the like, but…something about that approach seems false to me to answer this question.  It’s all informative, sure, but something about this question posed to me necessitates a more personal exploration that integrates that information into a real, substantial answer rather than just regurgitating what I can pick up or gleam uncritically from the old texts.  It may not be enough to come up with a good answer, but maybe if I can come up with just an answer, it’ll be enough to start with.

I suppose that, in many ways, coincidence is more of a false myth than most of magic is: if things happen, they happen because something else happened, and there’s typically a reason for it happening.  Sure, there are some things that just arise from the craziness of the world as a logical consequence of it, and at a shallow level we might call that “coincidence”, but as a magician/priest/spiritualist who believes that the whole of the cosmos is full of spirits, there’s always stuff happening at every level, and even if we humans—puny, fragile, expendable mortals that we are—can’t see all that deeply into the waters of the cosmos, that doesn’t mean there’s no root cause to something.  So, it’s reasonable to me to think, then, that if something happens, there’s both a reason why and a cause by which it happened.  It then follows that, because incarnation is something that happens, then it happens for a reason; because my incarnating into this body happened (and continuously happens, I suppose), it happened (and happens) for a reason.  After all, consider the Mahābhārata or so many of the Hellenic myths of the gods taking on mortal form—incarnating, in one sense or another, especially in the Hindu myths of Viṣṇu where he’s literally born, lives, and dies as a god in mortal form, as well as the myth of Jesus being God incarnate.  They all do so for a purpose, according to a plan executed through incarnation for some greater goal or aim.  Granted, I’m no god, and I’m not nearly as aware as anything so grandiose to be attained by means of my own incarnation, but perhaps the logic can be extended: we’re born for a purpose, not as some chance and meaningless happenstance of the mechanics of the cosmos.

That we’re phrasing it as “incarnation” at all supposes that there are two elements here: an immaterial soul and a material body.  Incarnation, then, is the inhabiting of the body by the soul—or some other aggregate of consciousness and awareness, depending on the system of belief and cosmology you’re looking at (like Buddhism, which professes anātman as there being no unchanging, permanent self/soul/essence in phenomena, which is why there’s generally only a notion of rebirth in Buddhism as opposed to reincarnation).  As a Hermetist, I take the existence of the soul as a given, which means that for my soul to have been incarnated in this body, there should be a reason.  So that means that there’s a purpose for my being incarnate in this world.  Relevant bits and pieces from the Hermetic canon along these lines state things related to this that do inform something about this:

  • (SH 2B) In order to live one’s life well, one should show devotion to God, which is the highest height of philosophy, and without philosophy, it is impossible to reach the heights of devotion.  The goal of devotion, then, is to “know the place of truth and its nature”: to learn the “nature of reality, how it is ordered, by whom, and for what purpose”, for one who learns these things will show thanks to the Creator as “a good father, a kind provider, and a faithful administrator”, for one “who learns about its own Forefather holds fast to passionate love, forgets all its ills, and can no longer stand apart from the Good”.  In doing so, one will “live well and die blessed”, since this informs the soul “of where it should wing its upward flight”; this is how one can attain the Good.
  • (SH 6) It is impossible for someone incarnate to obtain the vision of God; it can only be done in a discarnate state, but in order to do so, one must “exercise one’s soul down here first to arrive up there where it can behold and not stray from the path”.
  • (SH 18) Soul is composed four things: mind (Nous), reason (Logos), intellect, and discursive thought.  Discursive thought itself is composed to opinion and sensation, but are changeable, and “experience excess, deficiency, and non-identity”; these alone vary and mislead, but when governed by discursive thought, they result in valid judgments about the world.
  • (SH 19 and 20) Soul is inherently bodiless, and is the cause of existence of other things, i.e. the body, and so is prior to the body.  Souls have reason and mind, which bodies do not have on their own, and endow a body with reason and mind by virtue of the soul within it, which provides it life.  Souls receive such bodies as agree with the soul, although the body itself is tempered according to its nativity.
  • (CH 3) As we noted before, the heavenly and divine powers “created every soul incarnate” to do eight things: to contemplate Heaven, to contemplate the paths of the heavenly gods, to contemplate the works of God, to contemplate the working of Nature, to examine the things that are good, to know the power of God, to know the whirling changes of fair and foul, and to discover every means of working skillfully with things that are good.  This is in addition to the seven things that the gods bid us to do with our bodies: to know the works of God, to be a working witness to Nature, to increase the number of mankind, to master all things under Heaven, to know that which is Good, to increase by increasing, and to multiply by multiplying.
  • (CH 4) God did not give mind (Nous) to all people (despite the wording of other parts of the Hermetic canon, but as we know, they’re neither held to be nor needed to be internally consistent as one’s progress on the “way of Hermes” advances), but “put [Nous] between souls…as a prize for them to contest”, daring/commanding humans to “immerse yourself in the mixing bowl [of Nous] if your heart has the strength, if it believes you will rise up again to the one who sent the mixing bowl below, if it recognizes the purpose of your coming to be”.  Those who did, good; those who didn’t are considered to be “people of reason” (as opposed to people of reason and mind), and “do not know the purpose or the agents of their coming to be”.  What that purpose of coming to be is not here specified, except in broader terms related to knowing God and creation in general, and seeking that knowledge is the Way.  Consider that famous saying attributed to Socrates: “the unexamined life is not worth living”.  To allow the soul to flourish means to divert attention away from the body; “unless you first hate your body…you cannot love yourself, but when you have loved yourself, you will possess mind, and if you have mind, you will also have a share in the way to learn”.
  • (CH 10) The vice of the soul is ignorance, which makes the soul to be “shaken by the passions” of the body, making it a slave to the body, being ruled by the body instead of ruling it (which is proper); the virtue of the soul is knowledge.  By pursuing and integrating knowledge, the quality of a human’s soul becomes more and more refined until it enters into the “troop of the gods”, which is the “soul’s most perfect glory”, enabling it to look on the beauty of the Good.  This deification, however, which is “the changes that belong to any separated [i.e. discarnate refined] soul”, is not possible “while in a human body”.  This is tied up in the “only deliverance” for humanity, “the knowledge of god”, which is equivalent to the “ascent to Olympus”.  The soul tends to forget, which leads to its vice of ignorance, once the body drags the soul down to a material level, though before the body could do so, the soul was considered pristine and beautiful, closer to the very soul of the cosmos without being “sullied by the passions of the body”.  The whole vehicle of this deliverance of the soul is mind (Nous), because “without mind, soul…can neither say nor accomplish anything”, yet mind “often flies out of soul” because the mind “cannot endure” in a “sluggish soul”, unlike the soul which can not only endure but is outright entrapped by a body.
  • (CH 11) “To be ignorant of the divine is the ultimate vice”, for one who has “shut your soul up in the body and abase it” has nothing to do with God.  “To be able to know, to will, and to hope is the straight and easy way leading to the good”.
  • (Asclepius 12) “…this is the payment for those who live faithfully under God, who live attentively with the world.  For the unfaithful it goes differently: return to heaven is denied them, and a vile migration unworthy of a holy soul puts them in other [lesser] bodies…it seems that souls run a great risk in this earthly life regarding hope of eternity to come.”

And on and on.  The general idea from the Hermetic canon regarding the function of incarnation (if not its purpose) is to train the soul to become more fit to more fully understand, comprehend, and know God, and thus come to know ourselves more in the process, because knowledge is the virtue of the soul.  But, if the soul is weighed down by the body, and if the soul is more pristine and more and closer to divinity when outside the body, and if the soul only becomes forgetful when bogged down by the body which leads it into ignorance which triggers a negative feedback loop upon the nature of the soul, then why should souls be incarnated at all?  Why should we have been incarnated to begin with?

I should mention that most of the final Stobaean Fragments (SH 23—26), more commonly known as the Korē Kosmou or “Virgin of the World”, does touch on a “Hermetic” fall-of-mankind story, and I can see why it’s Hermetic, as anyone else can, given that Isis is considered to be a pupil of Hermēs Trismegistus and passes on his wisdom as interlocutor to her son Horus.  But…so much of the Korē Kosmou is of a radically different tone, style, and framework that it’s hard to reconcile it cleanly with the rest of the Hermetic canon.  Not to say that I discount it, but taking it in with the same level of gravity is…a little awkward at best for me, especially given how far it departs or how much it conflicts with other Hermetic accounts of cosmogony and how much it personalizes God in a way that the rest of the Hermetic corpus doesn’t.

But there is certainly a fall-of-mankind story even in the usual Hermetic texts, not least of which is in Book I of the Corpus Hermeticum.  The general notion, starting from there and following the rest of the ideas throughout the Hermetic canon (Korē Kosmou excepted, I suppose) goes like this:

  1. God makes the cosmos, within which is the material realm of the world.
  2. God makes the ideal humanity (soul) within the cosmos.
  3. The ideal humanity beholds the world, and the world beholds the ideal humanity.
  4. The gods and/or the world makes the material humanity (body).
  5. The ideal humanity enters the world via the vessels of material humanity, becoming embodied as incarnate souls in the process.
  6. Once embodied, some souls remember their divine origin and focus on divine existence, and some souls forget it and focus instead on embodied existence.
  7. At the time of death (the dissolution of the body and the retreat of the soul from it), the souls who remember their divine origin leave the world behind and return to their divine origin, but the souls who do forget their divine origin suffer death and incarnation over and over, as if embodiment were an addiction to them.
  8. What causes forgetfulness is the divine mind of the soul which ascends being fought against down by the drive and desire of the soul which descends, which necessarily arise as a result of the embodiment of the soul.  The ascending portion of the soul, if it conquers the descending portion, free themselves; otherwise, the soul is reincarnated.

Whether this is my first incarnation or my thousand-and-first incarnation, it would seem that I fell down (or came down) to Earth and, while that in and of itself isn’t a bad thing, and while (despite nothing in the world being good or true, as Hermēs says, which is a pessimistic-dualist view that doesn’t hold throughout all the Hermetic texts) this world is full of pleasures to enjoy and works to do, staying down here in a way that traps me here is what I should be trying to avoid or escape through philosophy (which “depends only on reverence for god” and is “to adore the godhead with simple mind and soul and to honor his works, also to give thanks to god’s will (which alone is completely filled with good)”, according to Asclepius 14).  And it’s my incarnation that better allows me to experience the world and more fully know the creation of the Creator, which would not otherwise be possible had my soul not decided to come on down to the world.

So, what I consider to be myself is really two parts: my soul, and my body, which exist together in incarnation, with the soul being technically independent (though weighed down by the body, at least temporarily) of the body and, yet, as many Hermetic texts say, the body being completely reliant on the soul.  There’s a tension, then, between the soul and the body, and if if the essential “me” is—properly speaking—my soul, then I need to consider the relationship between my soul and my body.  Bearing in mind the notion of reincarnation as a failed attempt at the soul remaining independent and in control of the body, if this is my first incarnation, then what are the risks that this specific body poses to my soul in this life?  And if this is not my first incarnation, then what were the addictions I had in past lives that caused me to reincarnate, and how do those affect this life, along with the risks presented in this current life?

My natal horoscope has quite a bit of Earth in it: ascendant and Part of Fortune in Taurus, Moon and Venus in Virgo, midheaven in Capricorn.  Although my Sun is in Libra, my chart is dominated by Earth, and I do resonate fairly well with materialization and embodiment.  It’s also, as I see it, one of the causes (if not a reason, necessarily) why trance work, dream work, and astral projection-type states of consciousness have always been so difficult for me; while Fr. RO in his Red Work Course recommends doing the White Work (largely consisting of a daily practice of the Headless Rite to come in contact with the Supernatural Assistant) in the astral temple, I did it in my physical temple, because I found that I was naturally more able to focus and draw down those powers into my body rather than have to focus and split my attention on maintaining a presence in the astral (which was really more like mental/imaginal projection more than astral projection proper, to me).  Although lately I’ve been making real gains in dream work, most of my actual work is done while conscious in the body and in the material realm.  This is, perhaps, counter to some of the visionary experiences demonstrated in the Hermetic canon (cf. Book I, “when…my thinking soared high and my bodily senses were restrained, like someone heavy with sleep from eating or too much toil of the body”), and although I’ve been able to make do and get far, I admit that I know I’ve been missing out on a large portion of possibility and avenues for advancement along my path by neglecting the visionary, astral, dream, and trance aspects of spiritual practice.  To an extent, I have to compensate for a lack of ability in one area by doing more in another area—not all people are going to be good at all things, of course—but since so much of the spiritual focus in the Hermetic Way is getting used to getting by without the distractions of the body, it still points out a gap in my practice and skillset.  Figuring out what works for me and what can work for me, and what work I need to do to get it to work, is something I would definitely think would be on the docket for me in this incarnation as a whole.  After all, with my North Node in Pisces, this shows a definite departure from a purely embodied manner of living into a more dissolved, loose, spiritual manner.  And therein lies the challenge, of course, perhaps more for me than for others who might not have such a horoscope.

This isn’t to be a fatalist about my life and incarnation, of course—except in the sense of Fate expounded by Hermetic texts, that Fate rules the body and cannot be escaped, because the body is formed by the very powers of Fate.  Even then, though, Fate does not absolve us of our obligations or responsibilities, since the soul always has the power to choose, because the soul comes from a place above and beyond Fate, and thus is not subject to it.  Yet, because the embodied soul is wrapped up in a material vessel which is subject to Fate, and because the body struggles with the soul for dominance, the soul can be impacted by Fate; thus, the soul can be impelled, but not compelled, to behave in a certain way by Fate.  It just means that my soul is in this body, for better or worse, and I need to learn how to adapt my choices to make the best use of this body while I have it, instead of letting my body make use of my soul according to how and what it wants.  A challenge, to be sure, but not an insurmountable one—and even if it is, could I really not face it or even attempt to?  There are always lessons in failures, after all; maybe one day I’ll be wise on that front, one way or another.

I feel like I’m going in circles with this topic—but isn’t that appropriate, too?  Life here is cyclic: birth, death, rebirth, redeath, rerebirth, reredeath: ad nauseam, perhaps, but not ad inifinitum.  The planets whirl about the heavens in their cycles, as do all the fixed stars together as one, but the planets and stars are immortal and, thus,  it’s right and proper for them to go about doing so.  Not so for us; bodies and life down here, perhaps, may well be endless as far as life can be sustained (before the Restart described in the Asclepius, at least), but our souls don’t properly belong here.  Rather, as Book I of the Corpus Hermeticum says, once our souls are “stripped of the [fate-related planetary and stellar] effects of the cosmic framework, the [ideal] human enters the region of the ogdoad [i.e. the sphere of the fixed stars]; he has his own proper power, and along with the blessed he hymns the father”.  It’s our goal and destiny to break the cycle of incarnation through gnosis and spiritual development and rise up to our proper places above the realm of Fate, at which point:

…Those present there rejoice together in [the ascended human’s] presence, and, having become like his companions, he also hears certain powers that exist beyond the ogdoadic region and hymn god with sweet voice.  They rise up to the father in order and surrender themselves to the powers, and, having become powers, they enter into god.  This is the final good for those who have received knowledge: to be made god.

So where do we break the cycle?  Can the cycle be broken, for as long as there is human life?  That would mean that there would be humans born without souls—but is that even possible?  Although some parts of the Hermetica suggest that humans can’t devolve or change, other parts do say just that, in a very Hindu-like sort of grading where lower forms of souls develop through life into higher forms and are reincarnated into higher forms, as animals into humans, or vice versa if the life was ill-lived.  This might also then mean that the whole race of humanity is a proving ground for all the souls not given immortal forms in the cosmos, in a very Buddhist-like sense, at that.  But the only way to break the cycle, then, is to know the cycle fully.  This does echo the various goals for humanity that Book III decrees, both for the body and the soul of the human: through contemplation of the various creatures of Creation, one arrives at knowledge of ourselves, and having arrived at knowledge of ourselves, one uses that knowledge to know God, and in knowing God, we ultimately become God.  Life and the orbits of the fixed and wandering stars may be cyclical, but for us, it’s an expanding cycle—a spiral.  We start where we are, right here and right now, and we end at the limit of God, and just as God is an infinite circle whose circumference is nowhere and whose center is everywhere…well, quite a few concepts break down once you throw infinity into the mix, doesn’t it?  There is a terminus, that we can see, but perhaps it’s the spiral beyond that terminus in the infinite infinity of God that we truly can’t.

Every point in a cycle can be considered a beginning and an end, and I guess I find myself pretty much back where I started from.  But so long as the experience of that cycle is maintained, the path to be walked in the future is not quite like the path to be walked in the past, and then the cycle becomes a spiral, hitting the same angles from where you started but at a different distance from where you started.  I don’t have a good answer to the question of what incarnation means, but perhaps, in thinking about it, I may have the beginnings of an answer to the question of how to find out that meaning.  Every life lived, and every life that we live, gives us that chance, after all.  Incarnation, then, becomes a way to learn what cannot otherwise be learned, but more than that, a way to earn what cannot otherwise be earned.  If God put the mixing-bowl of Nous down as a prize set between souls that strive for it, then while we might think of this as a trial, it might also be a requirement instead; perhaps it could just as easily be said that God put the mixing-bowl of Nous down amidst incarnate humans because discarnate humans cannot receive Nous; there must be some quality about incarnation that allows us to receive, use, train, and develop Nous that cannot otherwise be simply given from the get-go outside of incarnation as a matter of divine Necessity.  After all, God does not make things in vain, so if God made the world we know composed of elements and bodies what with the Logos descending upon it all, then this material creation has a purpose and a function.  It may well be that this world was made explicitly to complete the process of completing humanity through-and-through.

But the only way to learn that is to, well…to learn, to contemplate, and to know.  Thus our lives—thus my life.  As Socrates is supposed to have said, “the unexamined life is not worth living”, because otherwise what would be the point of it all if you never bothered to learn about your life?  It would make the whole experience a waste from the proper soul’s point of view, bodily pleasures be damned.  By all means, enjoy the body, but be cognizant of what it’s going through, appreciate what’s happening at every step of the way, and why.  Contemplate pleasure, just as one might contemplate pain, because it’s knowing “the whirling changes of fair and foul” that our souls are commissioned to do.

Maybe the question is a trick; maybe looking for the meaning of incarnation is like looking for happiness, where you don’t find happiness when you look for it but you find it when you look for something you want.  If that’s the case, then the meaning of incarnation arises when I find everything else I should be looking for.  And there’s quite a lot to look for—and to look forward to.