Building of Images

[Nefastos]

Part of the process of magic both conscious & sunconscious is one's active building of images, and as a result we also have that inner "building of images", which is the outer shape of our kâma rupa, the "Red Astral" body.

Lately we have discussed mostly the receiving part of imagination: fairy tales, dreams, games, masks for psychological semi-entities. But how about dynamic part of imagination, conscious building up of clearly shaped images? Do you practice such methods? If so, how exactly? To what ends?

By "images" I have in mind a very formal and ready-cast meaning here. The images that live within us without our own conscious summoning could be said to be the Red astral bordering on Black, a bit different thing.

[Nefastos]

Since my own chosen area of work is in words rather than pictures, the images are built for me rather than drawn in mind in a technical fashion. A metaphor that comes to mind is making up concentration in the air and turning it into clouds, which after that will naturally rain down to earth to form the pools where images are reflected. In this way, it takes a while before things come to the level of mental pictures, but when they come, they are quite irresistible – being not made up, but born.

More common form in practical occultism is to summon forth or even consciously construct pictures from the lower astral light. These can become like conduits to reach the heavenly concentrations, rather than the other way around. Should there not be some of the "irresistible raining down of images", one would feel no urge – inspiration – to create a technical astral image, however. Thus the latter practice is in some ways necessarily tied to the former, although these two might have different authors.

Some examples of the artificial image building include: Classic meditation (building images in order to make them, and the mental things they represent, disappear). Golden Dawn style magic that builds up an inner astral theatre. Loyola's spiritual practices of the Jesuits. Working on Tarot images. Pictorially self-constructed dreams.

[Smaragd]

I do practice this. There’s at least two ways I can see this happening in my own practice. First there is something that works from the basis of the Red astral bordering on Black, or rather the other way around, which comes usually in times when I’m getting myself in to surroundings that allow the unconscious to remind me of some strong images within the soul. Then sometimes words start to pour from these images after which the more dynamic and more clearly Red approach must be found a relation to because the words are often too scarce to form a whole enough skeleton from which the light of the image could be shined through. I often sort of fumble in the dark, or ride the intuitive forces with fiery self-confidence to seek what is around this initial central image to make points of reference or gather wood as a circle around the center point for a balefire. (I wrote this before reading your second post. The bonfire and the cloud raining down could be seen beautifully complementary metaphors I think!)

To what ends? For the light to shine through. As such strong currents start to leak through for me, it is my duty to create something out of them that honours this force of nature. But for me, living in this culture this process has been very arduous and long one where I feel I’ve still been unable to honour them enough and it has been hard to find the right place, right exotericism to do these things. On more individual and esoteric practice the building of images has served practical needs for devotional surroundings and seeking the meaning and individual relation towards certain symbols, religious scenarios etc (”conduits to reach the heavenly concentrations”, aye). This brings me to the second way of mine, where there is some concrete idea calling and I start to find pleasing ways to bring it to the center of my soul, where I begin to discover the idea in some visual form and deepen its concepts and how some archetypal forms and symbolic manifestations of the natural world, different species, and other things belong and connect to this particular idea. Such building of images creates connections between the two worlds and lights up the manifestations of the world in the subjective experience in to greater blaze.

Golden Dawn style magic that builds up an inner astral theatre.

I'm not sure how Golden Dawn approached this, but I have pondered doing something similar and actually tried it for a little while. The idea was to built more concrete and personally powerful connection to archetypal forces. To make a balace where there is seven rooms. Moving certain object from one room to another would be quite intimate and powerful inner ritual work.

[Insanus]

I think creating images and allowing them to sink into subconscious is a useful trick for personal changes. Some people like to have pictures relating to their goals around for the same reason. It's this semi-magical simulation-process of "fake it 'til you make it", intuiting affinity with the spirit of the meaningful goals and then incarnating it. I have trouble visualizing things vividly though, so I prefer other methods.

[Nefastos]

Some people like to have pictures relating to their goals around for the same reason. It's this semi-magical simulation-process of "fake it 'til you make it", intuiting affinity with the spirit of the meaningful goals and then incarnating it.

Taken in a wide sense, this seems to be quite universally intuitive method for working of human mind. The sympatic magic, where one & one's atmosphere naturally becomes more & more saturated by the objects of one's desires. From a shaman wearing the bird-costume all the way down to our cultural plenitude of copied images. (The nowadays common tendency to furnish in minimalistic style & yearn for the beauty in simplicity can perhaps be seen as a desire to get rid of this exploded plenitude of kâmic forms, a form of anti-form by itself.)

I have trouble visualizing things vividly though, so I prefer other methods.

Personally I have always felt that building these images technically in one's mind – as opposed to flowering them everywhere – is somehow fake, superficial. But this is most likely more than a little just my personal temperament. I can quite easily imagine (heh) different people who feel their mentally self-constructed pictures as vivid as I feel those that "rain down". I think this has to do with one's pace, the rhythm of the dance between the mental and astral configurations.

I often sort of fumble in the dark, or ride the intuitive forces with fiery self-confidence to seek what is around this initial central image to make points of reference or gather wood as a circle around the center point for a balefire. (I wrote this before reading your second post. The bonfire and the cloud raining down could be seen beautifully complementary metaphors I think!)

And I was thinking, when reading the beginning part of your passage, how our souls seem to work balanced on different sides on the Red astral: mine on the side of aetheric White, yours on deep-conscious Black, but both doing similar work on those different areas of thought. I consider using these kind of balanced acts very important (and uplifting) in any brotherhood workings. People who are different but find their uniting center in the middle form quite unstoppable force together, and this effect is luckily quite common in the SoA occultism. And considering our emphasis on doubly polarized working, this also should be our forte.

I'm not sure how Golden Dawn approached this, but I have pondered doing something similar and actually tried it for a little while. The idea was to built more concrete and personally powerful connection to archetypal forces. To make a balace where there is seven rooms. Moving certain object from one room to another would be quite intimate and powerful inner ritual work.

Since these kind of practices have been temperamentally distant to me, I have not done them much. But in the Graal working, I have to take also this end more into consideration, and these kind of practices will be encouraged (or straightly put) for the members. First taking some time to form basic geometric shapes, then quite soon starting to use them as a topographic symbols in archetypal mountain. The Graal mountain as a whole can be taken as a this kind of practice, constructing mentally a vivifying & yet steady form for the emblematic journey.

[Angolmois]

Since my own chosen area of work is in words rather than pictures, the images are built for me rather than drawn in mind in a technical fashion. A metaphor that comes to mind is making up concentration in the air and turning it into clouds, which after that will naturally rain down to earth to form the pools where images are reflected. In this way, it takes a while before things come to the level of mental pictures, but when they come, they are quite irresistible – being not made up, but born.

Funny you should mention this "raining down"; I just recently started adding to my prayer through the elements - which I say after each prayer and spell - a last part where I invoke "healing and heavenly influences raining down from the higher waters" (from buddhic levels), after I have ended the theurgic practice of visualizing the elements uniting in the upwards pentagram and "raising into the heights".

I do build images also otherwise constantly, but I haven't developed any specific formulas for it has always been so intuitional. Maybe some structuring around the building of images would be a good idea.

[Polyhymnia]

I'm not sure how Golden Dawn approached this, but I have pondered doing something similar and actually tried it for a little while. The idea was to built more concrete and personally powerful connection to archetypal forces. To make a balace where there is seven rooms. Moving certain object from one room to another would be quite intimate and powerful inner ritual work.

I never did progress enough within the Golden Dawn to partake in the more advanced exercises, but the earlier exercises do involve the visualization of geometric shapes, as Nefastos said, and the dissolving of them in the mind's eye. And awareness exercises, which I have taken with me into my personal practice outside of the Hermetic sphere. I found that the awareness exercises heighten every sense, and over the years that has culminated in powerful and sometimes overwhelming images, especially during periods of trance/meditation. I'm assuming they're pulled from a visual encyclopedia in my mind of all the things I've specifically paid special attention to, and work their way into my visions as per the astral energy around me at the time.

I have also started giving myself permission to go deeper within my images. If something comes to my mind's eye, I no longer try to push it away on grounds of it being too taboo. I like the idea of moving a certain object from room to room. I don't know if I yet have this much control over my images, so a similar practice would probably be very helpful at having a little more control.

[Smaragd]

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Smaragd wrote: ↑
09 Oct 2020, 17:51
I often sort of fumble in the dark, or ride the intuitive forces with fiery self-confidence to seek what is around this initial central image to make points of reference or gather wood as a circle around the center point for a balefire. (I wrote this before reading your second post. The bonfire and the cloud raining down could be seen beautifully complementary metaphors I think!)

And I was thinking, when reading the beginning part of your passage, how our souls seem to work balanced on different sides on the Red astral: mine on the side of aetheric White, yours on deep-conscious Black, but both doing similar work on those different areas of thought. I consider using these kind of balanced acts very important (and uplifting) in any brotherhood workings. People who are different but find their uniting center in the middle form quite unstoppable force together, and this effect is luckily quite common in the SoA occultism. And considering our emphasis on doubly polarized working, this also should be our forte.

I assume you referred to the first permutation of the Hieroglyphic Key by the ”doubly polarized working”, or perhaps our Satanism as a whole. I was only thinking the balefire and raining down on the sphere of elemental formation and movement of power within movement and formation of images, but these notions brings indeed another meaningful layer to our alignments and eases my individual connection to the Black aspect which I’ve struggled with. I have seen it too formally which has been very hard to bring to the formless inner experience and surface points, and through these thoughts it is much easier for me to acknowledge some of the closest things I can grasp in my soul are indeed quite close to the Black aspect, as well as some of my more surface personal traits of curiosity that is close to the scientific coldness of not caring too much of the saying ”curiosity killed the cat” in good and bad. These two blacks where the inner has careful and high reverence towards the manifestations, and the outer which is relating to the manifestations quite bluntly but still curiously, are in a bit of a conflict with each others. This I've lately found quite important thing to bridge.

"fake it 'til you make it",

Personally I have always felt that building these images technically in one's mind – as opposed to flowering them everywhere – is somehow fake, superficial. But this is most likely more than a little just my personal temperament.

Just recently before this topic came about, I was thinking about this work of building an image and comparing it to the process Jung talks about in the Psychology and Alchemy, where the images come from within, from the inner process, and by the force the process has behind it. I thought along the lines ”real art, the art of the alchemists, is manifested from there”, so I don’t think it’s purely temperamental thing atleast to notice the problem, but it is a temperamental thing ofcourse how to proceed. My own process has showed me and allowed me to sort of get enchanted by some concepts to such degree that it is possible to build images more artificially yet connecting to the black nucleus. The enchantment gives permission for this, for it includes the unconscious in the work process although initially it might seem like forceful endeavour to do it a kind of upside down way. I very much like the idea of raining the intensity down as reflective surfaces. The more Red-Black approach is for me partly coming from quite demonic area where the vice of impatience still has some rule over, and I’ve had to find ways to work with that.

I'm not sure how Golden Dawn approached this, but I have pondered doing something similar and actually tried it for a little while. The idea was to built more concrete and personally powerful connection to archetypal forces. To make a balace where there is seven rooms. Moving certain object from one room to another would be quite intimate and powerful inner ritual work.

I never did progress enough within the Golden Dawn to partake in the more advanced exercises, but the earlier exercises do involve the visualization of geometric shapes, as Nefastos said, and the dissolving of them in the mind's eye. And awareness exercises, which I have taken with me into my personal practice outside of the Hermetic sphere. I found that the awareness exercises heighten every sense, and over the years that has culminated in powerful and sometimes overwhelming images, especially during periods of trance/meditation.

This is interesting to hear. As we have so much warnings for such practices in the forum and in the articles, I'm not delving further than this to that topic, only making a note for the casual reader. I've been imagining color of each day at appropriate time as a preliminary practice for something else and this practice could be also seen as artificial building of images, for the connections of the colours to the days aren't something that I have straight up received in my inner working. What you described as heightening of the senses by the awareness practices might be someting similar to my experience with the colours: I have been glad to find a new surface of connection to my romantic sensibilities through imagining the colours.

[Benemal]

My drawings in recent years have started to resemble trees, for some reason. This has happened after I started to see them different. For example a spruce/fir tree against a deep blue sky might look symmetrical, from fifty meters away. Almost looking like buildings in Asia. I see a sort of attempt at perfection in trees. Attempted symmetry, because it can't happen, because it would be against nature, a dead lie. I'm sure others have seen or imagined a "grid" or "idea- world" that underlies or overlays this biological physical existence and some forms are repeated, kind of growing out of it. And in macrocosm symmetry is actually natural, which is mindblowing to me. I'm not saying that's the truth, it's just a way of seeing. I can create 3d models in my mind in seconds, but that never happens, when drawing, because it's natural. Repeating such "models" might be useful, if my occupation was designing sex-toys for robots. In the future, when trees can be made to grow in an unnatural symmetrical form, of any color, for purposes of urban decoration, I'll enjoy a stroll around that park, stoned on a summer night.