Halls of the Hyperboreads

My Vajra Consort and I have just published the first video in our Logos and Dharma project. This video introduces the central concerns of our work and spiritual praxis: rekindling genuine initiation and cultivating a culture of awakening in the West. We believe this is possible through a clear and lucid understanding of the perennial phenomenology of awakening, forged by studying, practicing, and synthesizing the teachings of Platonic, Tantric, and other Non-Dual contemplative schools of gnosis and liberation — re-seen and authentically embodied through contemporary scientific lenses and lived ways of life. Such a rekindling could awaken a new renaissance in the West, which, like the rest of the modern world, has long languished under a crisis of meaning--"the Death of God". From this renaissance, new philosophies, religions, and scientific fields may emerge. In time, new sociopolitical possibilities may open beyond the fixed ideological categories and modes of being that have constrained contemporary human life. History offers us real precedents for this task. The European peoples have, on several occasions, reinvented themselves by reinterpreting Hellenic philosophy and sacred symbolism. And there was once a moment, in Hellenistic times, when the Hellenic and Western spirit synthesized harmoniously with the Dharma: the Greco-Buddhism of Gandhara, the Indo-Greek Kingdom, and the Kushan Empire. What was possible then is possible again. Our work centers on what is called the "West" because this is our immediate heritage and social surroundings, but it is ultimately ecumenical in scope, embracing the interconnected ecological, inter-cultural, and sentient life on this small planet, our shared home in the vastness of the cosmos. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eo_BCH5etbc

“I felt at home in Egypt. I could happily have been a priest. In truth I am a warrior-priest, who marches where the Deity directs, in the service of Necessity and Fate. Nor is such a notion vain or self-infatuated. Consider: Persia’s time has passed. In the Invisible World, Darius’s empire has already fallen. Who am I, except the agent of that end, which already exists in the Other Realm and at whose birth I assist in this one?” — Steven Pressfield, The Virtues of War: A Novel of Alexander the Great

There cannot be another Romulus unwilling to kill his Remus. There will not be an Alexander who would not massacre the Branchidae. There cannot be a Clovis who could not rise above the other petty kings precisely by his systematic assassinations of them, nor a Charlemagne who would not slaughter the Saxons who rebelled against him. These acts that are today called atrocities were in their times and places held by the men who committed them to be unavoidable and more often than not outright ordained by God. That great men crushed the heathens and heretics, rebels and raiders before them is not a fault of their moral ability or a weakness, nor is it a hypertrophy of strength without control or power without reserve. To allow a traitor to stay among one's ranks, to leave an enemy (especially within one's own borders) half-defeated, to allow a neighboring tyrant (even a brother) to corrupt peace and order—these were practically, thus morally, untenable and unthinkable acts to men of responsibility. Those great men, who also knew mercy and generosity and when to apply them, saw no choice but to carry out such bloody acts when they became an unfortunate necessity. They heeded the words of Krishna who, in the Bhagavad Gita, taught the hesitant Arjuna to kill without killing. In the same holy self-sacrifice they fought for the sake of fighting and ruled for the sake of ruling, divinely transfiguring not just themselves but the men who bore witness to them and the domains to which they provided glory and victory. Just as peace cannot be achieved without war, without victory, neither can the righteous rule without blood. For as Heaven is lit by the Unconquered Sun, so it is below even in this fallen world.

"The Card teaches us in the first instance that the Emperor has renounced compulsion and violence. He has no weapons. His right hand holds the sceptre forward, on which his gaze is fixed, and his left hand holds his tightly-fastened belt. He is neither standing nor sitting. ... The shield adorned with an eagle rests on the ground at his side. Lastly, he is wearing a large and heavy crown. The context of the Card expresses active renunciation rather than the renunciation of constraint alone. The Emperor has renounced ease, being not seated. ... He may neither advance in order to take the offensive, nor move back in order to retreat. His station is by his seat and his coat-of-arms. ... He is a guardian bound to his post. What he guards is fundamentally the sceptre. ... The Emperor has therefore renounced all action having pledged his right hand to the sceptre that he holds before him whereas his left hand holds his fastened belt. It is no longer free, because the Emperor restrains himself with it. It serves the function of holding the impulsive and instinctive nature of the Emperor in check, so that it does not intervene and divert him from his post as guardian. ... The shield bearing an eagle rests on the ground at his side. The Emperor does not hold it with his hand, as the Empress does. The shield is certainly there, but it belongs rather to the throne than to the person of the Emperor. This means to say that the purpose for which the Emperor is on sentry-duty is not his but that of the throne. The Emperor does not have a personal mission; he has renounced this in favour of the throne. ... God governs the world by authority, and not by force. If this were not so, there would be neither freedom nor law in the world; and the first three petitions of the Lord's Prayer (Pater Noster): 'Sanctificetur nomen tuum. Adveniat regnum tuum. Fiat voluntas tua sicut in caelo et in terra', would lose all meaning. He who prays these petitions does so solely with the purpose of affirming and increasing divine authority and not divine power. The God who is almightly—not virtually but actually—has no need at all to be petitioned that his reign may come and that his will may be done. The meaning of this prayer is that God is powerful only in so far as his authority is freely recognised and accepted. ... One is free to be believing or unbelieving. Nothing and no one can compel us to have faith—no scientific discovery, no logical argument, no physical torture can force us to believe, i.e. to freely recognise and accept the authority of God. ... Amongst esotericists, occultists and magicians there are many—be it openly or secretly—who aspire to the ideal of the superman. In the meantime, they often pose as masters or high-priests worthy of the acclaim of the future superman. They are, at the same time, singularly in agreement in that they raise God far, very far, to the heights of Absolute Abstraction so that he does not discomfort them by his too-concrete presence, and in order that they have room for themselves to be able to develop their own greatness without the rival grandeur of the Divine to discomfort them. They build their individual towers of Babel which fall, as a rule, according to the law of all towers of Babel, and experience, sooner or later, a salutary fall, as is the teaching of the sixteenth Card of the Tarot. They do not fall from a real height into a real abyss; it is only from an imaginary height that they fall and they fall only to the ground." — Meditations on the Tarot, Letter IV The Emperor

IV EMPEROR

"The third Arcanum, the Empress, is that of sacred magic. Now, there are three kinds of magic: magic where the magician is the instrument of divine power—this is sacred magic; magic where the magician himself is the source of the magical operation—this is personal magic; lastly, magic where the magician is the instrument of elemental forces or other unconscious forces—this is sorcery. The teaching of the third Arcanum ... refers to sacred or divine magic. All magic, including sorcery, is the putting into practice of this: that the subtle rules the dense—force, matter; consciousness, force; and the superconscious or divine, consciousness. It is this latter rulership that the Empress symbolises. ... The crowned head indicates the power of the Divine over consciousness; the right arm (according to the viewer of the Card), which bears a sceptre topped by a cross mounted on a globe of gold, represents the power of consciousness over force; and the left arm, which carries a shield bearing an eagle, signifies the power of energy over matter or the volatile over the gross. The crown is the divine authorisation of magic. It is only magic crowned from above which is not usurpatory. The crown is that which renders it legitimate. The sceptre is magical power. ... And the steady throne on which the Empress is seated symbolises the indisputable and inalienable place which belongs to magic in spiritual, psychic and natural life—thanks to divine authorisation or the crown, to the reality of her power or the sceptre, and to that which she has as her objective or the shield." — Meditations on the Tarot, Letter III The Empress