The Magician's Dictionary. Edward E. Rehmus

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      Most authorities are agreed that the first experience after death is total and absolute darkness. Finally, appears a light as the world left behind begins to remember itself. One now enters the “desire world,” or Kamaloka. It is in Kamaloka that the spirit creates the idealized world described above. Sooner or later we realize that eating, drinking, sleeping, making love are merely phantom acts because we have no physical body. At this moment comes a second surrender and we recapitulate our lives backward from death to birth, suffering or enjoying the effects of our actions while we lived in the world. So we experience, for ourselves, the harm we have done and recognize where we must compensate for it. Animals, of course, never get this far, but quickly lose their individuality, such as it is. Family pets may last a bit longer because they have been so strongly individualized.

      At any rate, we are now ready to present this refined and reformed earth-life personality to our higher self (Atma-Buddha-Manas). A separation of “I” and astral body, is the Second Death. The self, rid of ego and earth-impedimenta, now can ascend to the spirit world, as Osiris. The lower self is cast to the serpent, Urekh, to be consumed, while the spirit enters the clear sky of Sekten. The cast-off, ego-shorn astral husk, still contaminated by desire may hang around the borderland where it masquerades as some famous spirit or makes itself available to mediums.

      Devachan is a mental plane in a world considerably higher than the astral, where the “I” then proceeds after its “second death.”

      At the apogee from earth the soul fills with desire (Trisha) for a personality. So we plummet down again through the seven levels. The Dhyan-Choans decide where the wheel of reincarnation will stop — but thereafter it’s up to the individual. Gradually, as one falls into materialization, one forgets his old experiences and focusses on the life to come. At this point we call in karma voluntarilty to help us redress past imbalances. Passing over into the conditional sphere of Space/Time (Samsara), we reincarnate over and over (Samtana) until ultimate deliverance (Moksha). Life is thus a system of checks and balances between Activity (Pravritti) and Renunciation (Nivritti).

      There is a parallel Battle of Armageddon now taking place on the A. P. that is experienced only in shadow on earth — resulting in our breakdown of civilization and planetwide pollution. Eventually, as the war breeches the spirit membrane separating our world from the Astral, the celestial war will break out on earth as well.

      A rather interesting analog of the Astral Plane is given by C. S. Lewis in his Pilgrim’s Regress. Another, more satisfying version, is recounted by Tolkien in his story, “Leaf by Niggle.” There are also Franz Werfel’s Star of the Unborn and Sacheverell Sitwell’s Journey to the Ends of Time. Finally, it must be pointed out that there are many planes, of which the astral is only the first. The magician “rises through the planes,” the astral, the magician’s plane, the alchemist’s plane, the Aethyrs, the God-Planes, to the highest and innermost dimensions. (See DEVACHAN.)

      ASTRONOMY —The most advanced of modern sciences. (Oddly enough, astronomy was the most advanced of all the ancient sciences, as well.)

      ASTROSOME — The astral, “healing” body that can leave the body when not busy and which destroys the body after death.

      ASTROSOPHY — Astrology has frequently been criticized for offering proofs of its validity on single examples, as though it were some sort of faulty science. Astrology, however, does not rest upon cause and effect, but is merely a search for synchronicities and other simultaneous parallels. Mind is the link between the body and the Cosmos. Astrology is the recognition of this connection. When the psyche descends to the sensory world, its celestial planets are drawn inward, i.e. earthed, and they become cramped, distorted and negative reflections, faint echoes of what they were. So the planets become their own inversions. Saturn, for instance, is originally divine intelligence, but in man it now settles for putting ordinary “reason” on the throne of Transcendence. Since Saturn is the heaviest of the planets, its gravity pulls down all the others which in turn become inversions of themselves also. Hence confusion grows on what it feeds and since astrology fights a losing battle in its effort to keep the psyche’s Cosmic connection, it is subject to endless criticism.

      With the dawn of the “Age of Reason,” we imagined that we had found the solution to our problem by rejecting the celestial link altogether and by exalting “Rationalism.” This was the opposite direction from the one we should have taken. Now, feeling the lack of the “Spiritual” we seek it where we can — and, to our regret, now find outside ourselves only “Irrationalism.” With that we now proceed to exclude the natural world as well as the transcendental, pathetically turning to the computer, the robot and artificial intelligence as our highest goals.

      ASURAS —The “sunless ones” who inhabit dark, joyless realms.

      ATHAME — Consecrated, black-handled knife, used for drawing circles to invoke spiritual entities. Implements for performing M/magic(k)al acts must, themselves, be M/magic(k)al. Ordinary tools do but ordinary jobs.

      ATHEISM — Can be divided roughly into two phases — Sartrean Atheism and Post-Sartrean Atheism. For Sartre, raised in the Catholicism of the 19th and early 20th Century, God was the meaning of life and the world. Once God was proved not to exist, meaning also ceased to exist. The universe for Sartre was hence absurd and nauseating. We now recognize that meaning and purpose can be present even if Creation is self-created — either as the original cause of self-creation or as its ultimate result.

      ATHTAR — One of the Arab Trinity, the male Venus, destroyed by Mohammed.

      ATLANTIS — Plato’s legendary continent “West of the Pillars of Hercules” which achieved great technological heights of civilization and then sank beneath the sea. Whether or not we choose to lend credence to its historical reality is less important than what it symbolizes — the incessant rise and fall of civilizations in the past, as “scientifically advanced” as our own. Indeed, many of these are said to have been further advanced than our own by several leagues. Thus, Atlantis warns us to avoid unnecessary futility.

      ATTENTIONALITY — The quality or degree of that which is capable of bringing other minds to attention. From a subjective point of view, anything to which we give our attention becomes interesting. When you begin to understand something, if you deliberately concentrate on the problem more deliberately, that will cause a feedback with subsequent intensification of the attention and understanding.

      ATTRIBUTE —That which is assigned, ascribed or considered as belonging to, as a familiar is an attribute of a witch or the thunderbolt is an attribute of Jupiter. A person’s attribute can be anything traditionally associated with him, such as Don Quixote’s horse (Rosinante) or Hitler’s dog (Blondi), or even inanimate objects such as Thor’s hammer or Mercury’s caduceus.

      ATUM — (Sometimes identified with the Hebrew “Adam.”) Egyptian God often depicted as masturbating, since he is self-created and as he is also credited with pulling the whole of creation out of himself. He also represents the return of the Cosmos to its origins, as the serpent devouring its own tail. By masturbating in Heliopolis, his brother and sister Shu and Tefnut were produced by ejaculation. Sometimes, he was described as “spitting forth” life from his mouth, as though he is himself one entire penis.

      ATUS — < French àtous (trumps) < Egypt. Aat, “mansion,” Aatu, “mansions.” Refers to the Tarot trumps.

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