First of all, I think this goes to show how handy a tool it is to have these Sanskrit terms for the seven principles. To give words to abstract matters, which our native languages has no precise vocabulary, helps us to reach to the obscured invisible.Nefastos wrote: ↑Sat Jan 21, 2023 9:59 am
It is very important trait for an occultist to learn the difference between kâma (astralism), kâma manas (formal reason) and manas (formless creative intelligence). If this important difference isn't grasped, all study is based on sand of easy assumptions. The names of the Sanskrit principles hold a clue. Even though kâma feels in the beginning a lot like pure manas and is often confused with it, manas is actually reached by removing kâma from kâma manas and not adding it to it. Only when one's "merciless" intelligence is tortured to the point that it can no longer have foothold in any physical or emotional dimension, it learns to fly to(/in/as) the higher triad.
Secondly, on the point of this topic where we can reach to the invisible through visible symbols, this notion from fra Nefastos reminds me of the well known motif of the Birth of Venus. Usually there is the Sea, a shell wherefrom Venus arrives and Venus in female form. Feel free to share your thoughts about the details and vaster concepts present in different art works made in the study of the Birth of Venus.
In the above quoted process there is first a confusion marked by the chaotic state we human beings are in regarding the matters that are yet to be claimed as purified tools of the Magician. Continuing an interpretation from here, in the motif this chaos is marked by the sea as a totality of its waters and raging and calm waves impressed on it. The water in the sea could be seen that which Nefastos spoke as kâma, a substance which readily takes in it impressions and forms and reacts to them. The winds howls and the waters follow, rising up tempests.
The shell in this interpretation would then be one of the concrete forms built by Saturnian powers from the archetypal images impressed on the astral waters of the Sea. As such, in the human constitution it corresponds to the Saturnian tool of kama manas. But the shell is not kama manas per se for with its formal language it represents feminine attributes of birth-giving. Still in the context of the motif and our interpretation, it represents kama manas in the conjunction of Moon and Saturn.
And finally, when in the process we start to separate and order our kama with our formal intellect (kama manas), we begin to recognize actual differences more clearly and putting our reason in to a test through years of self-reflective journaling, public forum writing on occult topics (where our reasons objectivity will be tested) we become more and more capable for interpreting our feelings and affects. This means our kama manas becomes increasingly free from the dross of kama and the silent voice of manas' is allowed the guiding position towards kama manas. Thus Venus is given birth to as the Luciferian manas.
We could say this process with kama is not that of getting rid of it, but allowing it to be our teacher rather than our unconscious enemy. In the below attached image the base of sea is infact represented by a fish, a teacher from the sea - Dagon - if you will. This fish can be seen as the intuition we recognize, but it is yet to be claimed wholly by the formal intellect and consequently opened in to its revelation as isbthe case in the form of Venus.
Although classical Greek sculptures were allegedly painted during their time, I like how the tradition of sculputre is often to leave them without additional colours, leaving also their eyes blank as if beholding the the world from the perspective of the profound uncreation. This added to the body language of pure, newborn perspective of Venus in 'Venus with a shell' by James Pradier, and Salvator Marchi, 1844, is hinting of manas' nature.