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The word, ‘Heretic’, so often associated with spiritual rebellion and even sorcery, literally means the much less alarming, ‘One who chooses’. This article, which is derived from my new book of the same name, is intended to allow you, the seeker into occult and magickal lore, to peer through the cracks in the façade of normality that has been constructed to conceal many dark and frequently uneasy truths concerning the human condition. Doing so deserves some timely words of warning and caution and you should consider your position very carefully. As the opening quotation by Nietzsche states, ‘if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you’, and indeed it does as many who chose the rocky path to truth and enlightenment discovered.
At one stage in the history of our race your instinctive curiosity would have automatically condemned you as the heretic of the title and your route to official ‘salvation’, (if it was even offered), would have been short, brutal and frequently agonising. It is curious to learn that salvation and forgiveness frequently equated with death and your path to a hypothetical pardon was often glimpsed through the flames engulfing you at the stake. While there are currently no official proscriptions denying the natural instinct of curiosity, you should keep firmly in mind that history is cyclical, and because of this humanity, in spite of all its abundant talent, is almost guaranteed through inherent stupidity, pride and intolerance to repeat its mistakes.
Among the first things your quest will unearth are the unmistakable links between magick, the occult and religion and in spite of continuous repudiations and denials by the religious authorities we find that these subjects tread similar paths and in the past have even worn the same shoes. All religions from the very earliest times were founded on a ‘revelation’ in one form or another made to an individual and this revelation frequently came from what was considered to be an ‘angel’ or some other supernatural agency. Is it likely that these wondrous entities had no religious provenance whatsoever, and both they and their agendas may have originated in some murky and far off, invisible ‘otherworld’?
Could this entity have been one of the beings also allegedly unleashed in recent times by such relatively modern magicians as the notorious Aleister Crowley, Jack Parsons and L. Ron Hubbard the inventor of Scientology; and indeed, are they still among us? The inclusion of Hubbard in the same company as known magicians may seem unlikely, but this individual was, along with Jack Parsons and to some extent the notorious Crowley, responsible for ‘The Babalon Working’, which was a ritual intended to open a portal in the fabric of reality to allow an alien entity, in this case the goddess Babalon, access to this planet. In fact Hubbard has much in common with a series of unlikely messiahs who either began as magicians or had that title bestowed upon them.
In bygone eras for example is it not strange that the prophet Mohammed encountered an ‘angel’, Gabriel, from who he learned the precepts of Islam, or many centuries later that Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, had a very similar encounter with an ‘angelic’ being called Moroni? In both cases the precious metal, gold, was involved, Gabriel presented Mohammed with a ‘golden tablet’ commanding him to read it and Moroni gave Joseph Smith ‘magical spectacles’ called ‘Urim and Thummim’, with which to translate texts written in an unknown language called ‘reformed Egyptian’, these texts were also written on ‘golden plates’. Why specifically gold? Was this because its intrinsic value implied great wealth and therefore lent the story greater significance, or might it simply have been a factor of the electrical properties of the metal? Does this hint at the possibility that properties inherent in magick and the occult may be a factor of the electromagnetic spectrum? An even earlier instance of initiation comes from the gnostic mystery school of ‘Manichaeism’. In this case, at the age of twelve the founder, Mani, encountered a being that he referred to as ‘The Twin’. This being imparted a great secret, which revealed that evil had continually influenced the human race and that there was a continual battle throughout the cosmos between the opposing forces of good and evil.
This mystery school was quite widespread and even counted St Augustine among its many initiates. Another apparent connection between the early church and magick involves Bishop Clement of Alexandria, who taught his advanced students what he called the ‘disciplina arcani’ (lit. secret disciplines), which were, in effect, magickal practises and techniques. This supposed cosmic battle finds a strange resonance in claims from sections within the UFO community suggesting that there is a battle currently raging in the cosmos concerning the takeover of planet Earth and its inhabitants. In this scenario a race known as ‘The Nordics’, (who seem to conform to the western angelic stereotype being attractive, tall, blue-eyed blondes), are on the side of humanity, while enemy have all the characteristics of demons etc. typified by images of greys and reptilians.
The reader we will find a few more synchronous crossovers between magick, religion and Ufology as they progress through the article, is this by accident or design, or does the era, culture and context define reality? Magick and magickal beliefs in the form of animism and latterly shamanism existed long before religion and, in spite of religion’s best efforts to stifle them they have continued to exist in parallel with it and will, in spite of everything, continue to exist; one must ask oneself why? One must also ask why have considerable sums of money been spent by various government agencies all over the world attempting to harness ‘magickal’ forces for their own purposes, the infamous Stargate Project was case in point. Is this possible, is this practical, or is it something that only exists in the tales of wizardry created by writers of fantasy fiction?
Perhaps writers like H.P. Lovecraft may even have succeeded in breaching the gateways, reaching into bizarre and unnameable worlds that exist beside our own, although in the case of Lovecraft the creatures he describes appear to have been glimpsed in some interdimensional version of Hell. In other words, as with many instances involving the occult, the only difference between fantasy and reality lies in the perspective and cosmology of the observer. Might the horrors the writers envision actually exist in some altered reality and gradually drip-feed into their subconscious minds to find a type of specious existence in the written word? Or more worryingly, might the very act of reading about them in some way alter the neural processes in the brain of the reader and present them with the chance to materialise in our world? Is their malign influence the real driving force behind the actions of the serial killers and multiple rapists who prey on our largely passive society? Or are the tales simply words of warning about dimensional entities whose potential for hatred and malice is unknowable?
Other heretical utterances concern the presence of the human race here on Earth. How did we get here and could our moon have provided the means to do so, or was there another method? We find bizarre experiments conducted in 1953 by Millar and Urey to recreate the building blocks of life and even claims that a strange form of life was created, apparently artificially, during the curious Crosse experiment in the mid 19th century. Was Darwin right or did he fail to grasp a much bigger picture simply because the concept required was too vast, conservative religious values to deeply entrenched and the prevailing science was just not up to proving it? The instinctive and repressive influence of religion tried to stifle his breakthroughs and to some extent still does, indeed Creationism casts a long, long shadow and still flourishes in the American ‘bible belt’. But what happens now that geneticists operating at the current leading edge of science announce the creation of the first genuinely artificial biological life form? Dr Craig Venter and his team in the USA have taken the first step and created a single cell that is synthetic.
A single cell may seem like small beer, but this is only the beginning and its eventual benefits are alleged to include the creation of custom made human organs for donation and this is well and good, but what happens when the first entirely synthetic human is finally created; what then? A miracle, magick or science and is there necessarily any difference: the ethical and moral implications and considerations are enormous; might this even be a step too far. When you continually ‘push the envelope’ might the envelope finally tear and if it does what lies on the outside? While not a heresy in a conventional sense, does the fact that we can do something mean that we actually should do it, and are there some areas of research and best left alone? Is this moral and ethical minefield an example of the abyss staring back into us? Never forget that conservative religion is always trying to deny anything that does not fit its self serving and cosy canon of belief even when its dogmas are proven utterly wrong. However, science has had a profound effect on religion, but religion has had little or no effect in science, except as we saw earlier, to occasionally accuse them of heresy and sentence them to death.
Has our race evolved as far as it can or is the future already here, just waiting in the wings until the conditions are right for it to emerge? One thing linking all of these seemingly disparate issues are the subjects that opened this article, the pale, twin spectres of magick and religion, but they now seem to find expression in a number of much more subtle and diverse guises. There is however hope, for although what is suggested here may not exactly induce peace of mind, it just might create a need for greater understanding of what is real and what is not and what has value and what does not, and in that search for knowledge the seeker might find the source of their own salvation. Since to some extent we select our own road in life and the vehicle in which to travel, we should choose wisely.
© Brian Allan 2010
Any thoughts expressed in any articles on this website are the writer's personal views - unless otherwise stated, or implied. All links and articles are provided for your personal consideration and do not indicate Ellis Taylor's agreement with, or support for, all of the material they present.
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This is an article of the same name as Brian's new book, THE HERETICS - Can we now explain the unexplainable? which will be published in June 2010.
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© Brian Allan 2010
“Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster
and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”
(Fredrich Wilhelm Nietzsche 1844-1900)
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