Descent of the Gods & Candle of Vision

Excerpt from Descent of the Gods & Candle of Vision by G. W. Russell-A.E.

“Truth did not come into the world naked, but it came in types and images. The world will not receive it in any other way.” - Gospel of Philip

“A.E., a Celtic mystic and poet, dwelt in the ordinary world, but from his youth he witnessed elemental life and alchemical operations, subliminal patterns and archetypal matrices of pure potentiality. He perceived correspondences between the concrete world of the psycho-physical senses, the invisible 'world of faery', and formless immaterial potentia. Where the soul moves on to ever higher planes of its own being, there must be many transformations of the psyche. Something goes with it from this world to that other. (”The gods feed upon man.”) Something comes back with it from above to below. (“The gods nourish us.”) There is, I believe, some commerce between this world and that other.

“The ascent and descent of the psyche is the illumination of the soul at different levels. The psyche aspires; the nous inspires. As our aspiration is, so is our inspiration. The higher nature—Self—takes our fragmentary knowledge, thought, experience, and our aspiration, which is sacrifice, and it is transfigured, made whole and returned to us. Much must be lost of that transcendental lucidity and beauty of the gods—consciousness—when the psyche sinks through murky clouds of desire back to the body again. But something returns. The transient ascents of the psyche are not merely ephemeral events, for the illumination of the psyche works a change in its nature. Just as the alchemists toiled with encrusted gold, repeated rapprochement of the psyche with the ‘divine root’ clarifies its obscuration so that it reflects the true Self more adequately.' Our in-spiration will be as our aspiration.’ Memory fades before a deeper recollection of the hidden roots.”It is most difficult at first to retrace our way, but if we persist, the past surrenders to us. I found, when I had made this desire for retrospect preferable in meditation, that an impulse had been communicated to everything in my nature to go back to origins. My moods began to hurry me back to their first fountains.

“To yearn to undertake the task of uncovering the fountain-source of consciousness and poetry, one must presuppose a common root which nourishes all consciousness and sustains every creative effort. Aristotelian logic cannot allow for the derivation of a fundamental standpoint either from empirical observation nor from rationalistic principles. If the alchemical reduction is persistently applied until all discontinuities in consciousness are dissolved, the unitary condition of consciousness is experienced. In a universe suffused with intelligence, the psyche emerges from the involvement of mind with some matrix of matter and activity. Psyche is drawn towards the world of increasingly complex forms, images and desires as well as towards an abstract, formless realm. We may sense a duality in our mental nature, and hence in our actions; on the one hand, a crystalline and ethereal beauty which seldom descends below the loftiest level of dreams, on the other, an opalescent and material reflection which barely rises above the turba of images. Yet the two are nourished by the same impulse as the sun and moon shine with the same light. The creative act is the link between these two; poems are oracles of the divine. A.E. held that these oracles were transmitted through a medium of psychic substance which tinctured the messages. Whether the higher or lower psyche is dominant at any given moment is of utmost importance in discerning the true meaning of the oracle. Desire discolors, while aspiration purifies. But the two may blend in an elusive alloy and 'they are the fortunate who know what dark passion may be hidden by the cheat of loveliness.’ The process of individuation as a prelude to union with the higher Self demands the elevation of the psyche and the drawing near to spirit in consciousness so that spirit may descend into the world.

“I have found this duality in everything in my life, and I can only surmise some wisdom, above the outworn heart and an eager heart.

“Paradoxically, as we individuate we become more universal. The persona is restricted to particulars, but the individuated being is not identified with it.”

“The risen soul thinks naturally in terms of self-transcendence and its duty to humanity. There is as great a mystery about our lesser motion as there is about our whole being. We are affected by the whole cosmos as a singularity. ’Thou canst not stir a stone without troubling a star.'Let us still life to the utmost quietude and what we feel in the stillness is pregnant as if there were multitudes in that intensity of loneliness.Mystic #individuation is the eruption of full self-consciousness, universalization through #SoulAwakening, and altruism is its natural ethic.By emulating that transfigured state in our present condition, by degrees, we pass into it.Even if we do not come to unity there is a great gain from this meditation in which we try by a divine #alchemy to transmute the gross into the subtle and pure, for very soon our whole being begins to circle around an invisible Hieros Gamos, Self, and we are drawn more and more to it; and though it may be aeons before we come near it.” (Raghavan & Iyer)