Outer Energy: Saturn is sometimes viewed as a nightmare. There is sadness, sorrow, grief, loss, disgrace, shame, failure, suffering, and pain. Saturn’s voice speaks not of Jupiter’s opportunities, good fortune, adventures, and new horizons. Instead, the energy is dense, heavy, and filled with the spirit of oppression.
Saturn is a time when you are held back from moving forward - when getting what you want is confronted by overwhelmingly opposition. You are beset by darkness and cannot find a path to follow. Nothing around you seems to express or reflect the desires of your heart. All opportunities for expanding your experience, for feeling alive, and getting the most out of life come crashing down. Your hopes are dashed to pieces, dreams shattered, your life shipwrecked.
Saturn’s vibration destroys false attachment, eliminates waste, removes inefficiency, and dissolves inertia. It basically says, “Do not be distracted or compromised. Remain focused. Stay the course. Accomplish the work set before you.”
Yet amid Saturn’s demands is a knowledge of equilibrium and balance. Its serenity is so refined it can restore harmony to anyone who has lost his path or any soul which has fallen into darkness. You will know when you have made a good start working with Saturn. You will find in your heart, (quite separate from the events in the outer world), inner strength, inner peace, and complete freedom.
Saturn’s inner energy simply asks, “Did you learn what you were meant to learn and did you do what you were meant to do?” Your status in regard to these two questions determines how Saturn views you.
We can look back briefly on other sephiroth. Take Netzach/Venus. Its outer vibration is very familiar. It is overwhelming attraction and desire. The five senses are continuously bombarded with pleasure, bliss, and ecstasy. Every unfilled longing rises up saying, “Here. With this person, you can find complete satisfaction and fulfillment.” And the intellect concurs, saying, “With this person, you will find a lifelong friend, companion, and lover with whom you can feel one.”
But in spite of that whirlwind of sensations and feelings, even with the high learning curve that accompany knowing another person, erotic attraction offers no path that leads to mutual understanding. To get to oneness you are going to need maturity, real skills in relating to another person, profound empathy, and unselfishness. There is a time of decision with Venus in which you must decide—Do you seek gratification or do you want to learn the divine arts of love?
Saturn offers a similar process. When Saturn in its full force enters our lives, something of great value has been taken from us. And it is never to be found again. And so there follows sorrow, grief, and loss.
Saturn also requires a decision. The inner vibration of Saturn says, “We exist here in this world under great limitations. Yet in our souls we are divine beings and in our minds we are free. You are not here by accident. You have things to accomplish—create love, establish justice, assist others in their time of need, and transform yourself. Do not fail in this endeavor.”
(For a story introduction to Saturn, see The Temple of Saturn at the end of this essay.)
Virtue: A judicial temperament, establishing justice, superhuman patience, diligence, implacable will, equanimity, equilibrium, recollection, contemplation, discipline, unshakeable self-esteem, humility, conscience, protector of all spiritual paths, mentor, thankfulness, accomplishment—producing works of enduring value.
Vice: Negligence, fixation, rigidity, failure to take responsibility, inattentive, preoccupied, lack of conscience, anguish, corruption, treachery, criminal enterprise, degradation, oppression, conspiracy, feeling abandoned, alienated, estranged, lack of self-reflection, ungrateful.
Negative: A lost soul. Feel as if you are among the dead. A wasted life. Incarcerated. Obsessive. No opportunities. Stuck. Groundhog Day. Madness.
Understanding the sacrifices others have made so that we are alive and enjoy the freedom and opportunities that we have.
Yet whatever your circumstances, your consciousness has no form or image. No tradition defines who you are or expresses your essence. We are surrounded by immense possibilities.
Take hold of your limitations. Find ways to learn from them and to overcome them.
The voice of Saturn says, “Experience life to whatever extent you can. Discover what makes you happy and brings you satisfaction. Find some things worth doing that are right for you and totally captivating.
Yet also discover your deepest lessons in life and then take the time and make the effort to learn them.”
These lessons are whatever holds you back, whatever limitations you are to overcome, and whatever interferes with your attaining harmony within yourself. Make the study of love, wisdom, will, and conscious your passion, your daily meditation, and a permanent endeavor.
What keeps you from being happy? What family karma has been passed down to you from previous generations—prejudice, false assumptions, bias, selfishness, greed, arrogance, abuse, fear, hostility, domination, vulnerability, ignorance, etc.
What stands in your way preventing you from attaining something great or pursuing your dreams or attaining your destiny? What is missing from life that no one else sees or seems able to address?
For Saturn, life is a school, a college. You signed up for the human experience. You would not be getting your money’s worth if you do not make your best effort.
Consider the basic components of life in terms of the hermetic tradition:
The element of fire is will power. But for Saturn divine purpose is
essential otherwise will power falters and produces disasters.
The element of air is wisdom. But for Saturn, your mind must be as open as the sky and as clear as a mirror. All boundaries and limitations must be left behind otherwise you live as if you are blind.
The element of water is love. For Saturn, you must become one with another without a trace of attachment, possession, or grasping. Fail in this endeavor and you are like a sailor on the open ocean without a home port.
The element of earth is consciousness. Do you have something to accomplish? For Saturn, the works that we do in life must be of such value that that they endure through all ages of the world.
On a personal level, I needed to free myself of a fiery will that had been implanted in me. At times, I had incredible anger.
I also had a gradual realization that Christianity had for two thousand years engaged in a coverup. For political and psychological reasons, it denied the possibility of spiritual training and spiritual perception. I had to work through and beyond that tradition. I did so in part by studying spiritual anthropology—a detailed first hand examination of the training exercises in various religious traditions and the results they achieved.
I also had tremendous mental tension. My mind was far more developed than my emotional life and I had no internal practices involving being aware of my body other than sport’s activities. I was also overzealous in trying to learn new things. And I had no sense of my own profession or career.
Rather than focus on investment counseling, something I might have excelled at, I went all in on spiritual quests. It would have made more sense to succeed first in business which would then have enabled me to pursue my spiritual interests from a position of freedom. It would have been easy then set up organizations that assisted me in my research.
But the external conflicts were secondary. The lessons I needed most to learn involved mastering the five elements inside myself. In the end, I had to change myself before trying to change the world.
The element of water, for example, with its super human empathy and healing power, is completely missing from Western culture. I had to do original research and quite a few interviews with astral mermaids and incarnated mermaids to discover how it operates. And then I had to figure out how to adapt what I learned so it was helpful to me.
The water element by itself can destroy your survival instincts and place you in a narcissistic state of bliss where you lose interest in the external world. The love that mermaids experience in their astral kingdom is for the most part worthless in our world. It has too much enchantment along with a kind of cocaine high and not the kind of practical application that changes people.
And the fifth element of akasha remains an incredible challenge. In Tibetan Buddhism there are practices identical to what Franz Bardon calls in his Kabbalah the cosmic letter U or the void. I had to take that pure meditation and work on the applications to geopolitical issues around the world.
But I was not supposed to just get the sense of void as being a second “home,” that is, mastering it like say a sixth or higher ranking Don in aikido. I am meant to master it as if I am an incarnated earthzone spirit, a being authorized to use akasha in overseeing human evolution.
It made perfect sense that early on I would find myself living in a Buddhist monastery where I was initiated by the head of the oldest Order of Tibetan Buddhists. These lamas had what I needed to learn. But due to their culture and feudal outlook on society they had absolutely no sense of how to apply their wisdom so it is useful for individuals living in a postindustrial, pluralistic, and democratic society. And they have false assumptions that the external world is unreal which diminishes their curiosity and learning curve.
It would take me twenty years of magical practice before I understood the significance of first mastering the five elements. Bardon himself once appeared to me in a dream and demanded I stop studying the auras of spirits and focus on the elements. My journey has resulted in books such as The Four Elements and Lessons from the Realm of the Water Spirits.
A perspective on your deepest life lessons can be found in your natal chart’s North and South lunar nodes. You can use an on-line program to cast a free natal chart on one of many internet sites. This will usually include your north and south node locations. You can then find a simple interpretation by searching, for example, “north node Sagittarius south node Gemini.”
The South node represents areas of experience from past lives in which you have excelled. It is something you are good at or take for granted. In the movie, Lord of War, Nicolas Cage plays a weapons dealer named Yuri Oriov. He is very good at what he does and so he keeps doing it even though he ends up losing his brother, his wife and child, and his parents.
You could say his South node involves making deals with terrible people and succeeding at it. His North node would be the opposite— helping disadvantaged people survive and start new lives. Often the excessive experience you have in your South Node position is utilized in a positive way by redirecting it through the North node position.
With my South Node in Sagittarius, to say the least I have an excessive amount of conviction and certainty about what justice is and a flair for searching out the truth of the universe. But it is a disaster if I were to spend my life engaged in these same pursuits. All the same, by focusing on communicating what I know inside myself, I can open up paths for others and enrich their lives. In this case, it is about service to others rather than seeking an ideal or a vision.
Gratitude, thankfulness, appreciation, and celebration of the gifts of the past. To be able to look back and say, “My life was all it was meant to be.” In which case, we can also say, “Saturn was my spirit guide. She was tough at times, even incredible hard on us. But she did what she had to do in order to produce something wonderful.”
For some people, the past is like a warehouse. There are crates and boxes lying about, misplaced, or lining long rows of shelves. The air is dusty. The place is downright boring.
For some, the past is like an old museum filled with relics and exhibits that have no relevance to today. You do not enter here to renew yourself or seek knowledge of what shall come to be. It is not a happy place.
And for some each moment in the past continues to live on. The discovery of fire, domestication of animals, agriculture, architecture, trains, cars, flight, computers, art, and jurisprudence is still filled with wonder.
For some the past is as real as the present moment. And the future is here too, for the past and future are well-connected, each defining and fulfilling the other.
If you want the feeling that best enhances our experience with Saturn, be thankful, appreciative, and grateful for what you have been given. Take nothing for granted.
The magical virtue of Binah is to take “the void,” a vast, empty state of mind, and meditate on it until it feels like home.
The new born infant who would later become Buddha (Roughly 583 BC to 483 BC.) was given the name Siddhartha (Pali: Siddhattha), meaning "He who achieves his aim". Buddha attained complete enlightenment solely through his own efforts. He had no gurus or spirit guides to assist him because there was no one within Hinduism or in India that possessed the degree of enlightenment he attained.
Buddha’s mind is like a clear mirror—it perfectly reflects without distortion or blur anything that appears before it. Consequently, Buddha’s mind also embodies perfect empathy. With this mirror like awareness, it is easy to know another’s experience as if it is your own. With Buddha mind, you can think, act, evaluate, perceive and make decisions without using thoughts or images. You can feel but there is no need to direct, shape, contain, or define those feelings. Feelings too are another kind of energy that you can be fully aware of from beginning to end.
For Buddha, an enlightened mind is identical to absolute freedom. You perceive in each moment a path of action that is free of obstacles or hindrances. If you meditate in the vibration of Buddha’s mind, you feel completely relaxed and yet fully awake, clear and detached yet fully engaged.
What Buddha has done is make the void his identity. He never loses that sense of prefect, mirror like clarity and an awareness that anything being experienced is itself part of the void.
Here is a brief review of the enlightened mind we discussed under the Mystery of Hod. Take a breath. Now imagine a void, a vast space without light, no day or night, no form, no substance, no matter of any kind, no electronic or magnetic vibrations, and no gravity.
It is like a very big room filled with shiny black light, a room with nothing in it. And because there is nothing in it there is no time or space because time and space require form and movement as a reference.
If you practice this, then you get good at it. It is quiet. It is peaceful. There is no disturbance of any kind. There are no interruptions or distractions. It is the nature of mind itself when it is still—it has the ability to be perfectly receptive, reflective, and clear like a mirror. There is nothing here to feed ideas that require desire, need, ego, selfishness, insecurity, or greed in order to survive. Put simply, if your mind embodies nothingness, you have stepped outside of the stream of history and of the flow of linear time that we reply upon so much to get through the day.
10. A void is your space. There is nothing to weigh you down. There is no one telling you what to do. There are no limitations. No obstacles. No barriers and nothing to overcome.
9. In the void is infinite peace. We are surrounded by hundreds of billions of galaxies. The void embraces and supports everything.
8. The void is where you can create and dissolve any feeling. Try it. Imagine anger and hatred. Now imagine a very hot, burning ball of fire in front of you. The heat is radiating in all directions.
Now imagine this ball of fire gone. It has vanished. It has dissolved into nothing. Anger and hatred are energies and, like a ball of fire you have conjured up through imagination, they can cease to exist if that is what you wish.
Imagine depression, sorrow, and sadness. Now imagine a very heavy, dense ball in front of you as if it is made out of lead. Imagine that ball gone. The weight has vanished. You can do the same with the feelings that weigh you down. The void amplifies your imagination.
Recall or sense anxiety or obsession. Now imagine a ball in front of you like a sphere filled with the blue sky. Except this sphere has dark clouds like a hurricane or tornado inside. Now imagine the ball dissolving into nothing. No more disturbances in the atmosphere. No more feelings of anxiety.
Imagine greed, jealousy, and possession. Imagine a ball of water in front of you that is sticky, impure, or contaminated. Now imagine the ball gone. The same meditative action applies to greed, possessiveness, or jealousy. They are gone. They are no more. There is nothing here in the void to grab or to be attached to.
Emotions and feelings are energies in your body. You can reflect on them and process them. You can get to know them in every nuance and aspect. But, in the end, they arise and appear in the void—the vast open space of your awareness. You are free to guide, transform, or dissolve them according to your purposes and volition.
7. The void is wisdom and understanding. You can capture in one gaze the past, present, and future of what you are looking at. You can experience things from the other’s point of view. You can imagine likely outcomes and opportunities that can be seized upon. You can comprehend the way the world is and also the way it is meant to be.
6. The void specializes in modifying and changing karma. Again, think of sitting in a dark theater where a play is being performed on stage. That play is your life and there was a script written for you to act out before you were born.
Every time you have been angry, depressed, lonely, sorrowful, needy, or hurt—all those feelings were waiting for you to experience as you walked into different scenes in life and acted out different scripts. But you can decide if you want to continue playing your assigned role with its assigned feelings, thoughts, and identity.
Imagine sitting there in the theater and calling out to yourself up there on the stage—“You already did that too many times. Find another response.” And the you on the stage hears this shout from the dark theater as the voice of his own conscience speaking to him from inside.
5. The void allows you to identify with the original source of anything that has come into being so that you develop the insight into why things exist as they do.
4. The void is omnipresent. If you think of someone, then that person is right here, now, and present with you in the void. There is only you and that person.
To be aware of another from within the void is to be one with that person since nothing else exists in your awareness.
3. The void is silence. As silence, here is where you can cherish and nourish in your heart your highest dreams and ideals. Your dreams and ideals are always near to you and a part of you.
2. The void is a divine workshop. If you wish to create a future, to manifest a dream, here is where you see it, envision it, enter it and live it so it is so real that you embody its vibration and feeling. This is because there are no barriers to imagination in the void. Nothing prevents you from experiencing “here and now” as being completely real whatever it is that you seek to fulfill.
Creative artists and genuine prophets make the void a second home because they enjoy the freedom and the stimulation to their imaginations to which the void gives rise.
1. And of course the void is the experience of perfect enlightenment. Free of all attachment because here there is nothing to which one need be attached. There is no assigned identity or set of predetermined responses because you yourself are the original source of perception and experience.
You see the world as it is because you mind is reflective as a perfect mirror that sees without bias, blur, or distortion. Whatever occurs you perceive in your awareness according to what it is without the mind imposing a meaning or interpretation on it.
Note: For more on the void practice, see my manuscripts, The Perfection of Wisdom and How to Speak Saturn at williamrmistele.com
A representative government of the people, by the people, and for the people puts in place laws, judges, bailiffs, courts, prisons, etc. The executive branch, on a national, state, and local level, hires police, probation officers, lawyers, etc. to insure that laws are enforced and citizens protected. In general, those who are a threat to others find their rights are increasingly restricted until they are removed from society.
And yet there is always a tradeoff. Too much freedom and lack of regulation and some individuals harm and take advantage of other individuals without any recourse. On the other hand, if society exercises too much control and monitoring of individuals, then freedom is lost and the society becomes oppressive.
The divine virtue for Binah is a Saturnian or spiritual judicial system. Perhaps it is activated when negative people overwhelm positive people. All the same, issues concerning fairness and justice are usually left to societies to address. As governments evolve, we can see judicial systems becoming more effective.
Perhaps it is more accurate to say that the spiritual world takes an interest in human affairs when spiritual development itself is in danger of being compromised. We might imagine that magic itself can be so abused that it is possible to close down all paths of spiritual development in a society.
In this case, the spiritual world might intervene directly and place severe restrictions on a society or else simply eliminate a nation, a society, a religion, etc. In other words, Saturn’s method of education is primarily associated with restricting or taking away. When something is gone, then at last its true value can appear.
If you want kindness, mercy, generosity, good fortune, benevolence, and inspiration, then look to Jupiter or the Sun. If an individual or nations shows up in the court of Saturn, things have already gone far enough that only the most severe remedies are available.
This issue of a spiritual judicial system is seen most clearly in regard to wars. Human beings are permitted to have wars. A strong leader says to himself, as many corporate CEOs also say to themselves, “If I can put forth my hand and take something, then that is the right thing for me to do.” And so we have Enron, WorldCom, and Bernie Madoff in the corporate world taking everything they can from others.
And in history, we have Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin, and Mao looking around and saying to themselves, “Let me see. I can easily take this and that. But I wonder how much more can I take? Perhaps the entire world. Maybe I will give it a try.”
“All power is given from above,” says the prophet. So where is “the above” when it comes to the barbarian cruelty and the hideous suffering of wars? Obviously, the spiritual world leaves issues concerning justice in the hands of humanity, in our hands. If you do not like something, then fix it. Do not sit around whining and complaining.
We might suppose that in religions the saints, sages, and holy men would address this issue. But they do not. They leave issues concerning justice and power in the hands of evil men to decide. Worldly power apparently has never been part of spiritual training. Perhaps at this point in history we should seriously study how power “given from above” so often ends up in the hands of dictators and evil men.
In perspective, then, this divine virtue of Saturn—of dissolving malice, hatred, ill-will, and negativity—is relevant. We are at a point in history where a few individuals can damage the entire planet. Let us consider this matter of dealing with the negative first on a personal level.
I have already described the enlightened state of mind and the void. You imagine a big empty space with nothing in it. Call it the void. You put off to the side everything personal about yourself. Your role in society, your feelings, your thoughts and opinions, your biography, your religion, and your social identity. Put it all in the closet it so to speak and close the door. Now here we are. We are in a psychological and spiritual state of mind where even space and time are not present.
The void dissolves negativity because the negative principle requires something present to attack, to possess, or to flee from. But these things are not present in the void.
You can do this when you are with a negative person or else imagine a person in front of you. He or she is in your void. Nothing else exists than you and this person.
Now imagine that the negative energy in the other person dissolves. You can actually sense the hatred, malice, and desire to dominate draining out of the other’s body until it is completely gone. If you can imagine a vast void around and inside of others when you talk to them, then you may notice that they attend to be calm and reasonable when you do this.
This may work on a personal level with people who you know who are negative. But highly dynamic and powerful individuals have often made a lifelong study of how to control, dominate, and exploit others. Your meditation that you have worked on for five hours over a few weeks does not compare to the decades in which they have refined, tested, and perfected their negativity. To be effective on a geopolitical scale, then like them, you have to make dissolving negativity a lifelong commitment.
The reason this can be effective is that this empty void of pure receptivity is free of all false attachment. The void supervises, oversees, and has authority over will, feeling, thoughts, and conscious actions. This is its nature—it is the voice of Saturn, of conscience, of freedom, and of enlightenment in action.
Of course, people remain free. But if you succeed in dissolving the negative energy in an individual, the negative principle no longer leads to success. A person remains negative, but the influence of their negativity is greatly reduced. In effect, you have saturated another’s aura with the void that diminishes the influence of negative actions. The power another holds through fear, domination, and manipulation dissolves.
(Note: I intend to write a book in the next year or two on ending wars utilizing the above method. I have spent 42 years meditating on dictators and world leaders. But one person can only do so much. It will take a dedicated and trained spiritual community to establish justice on earth.)
Akasha is a spiritual plane and also a state of awareness. What happens tomorrow—where the stock market opens, the speech the president will make, a war that flairs up, a mass shooting, a scientific breakthrough, an asteroid shooting past the earth or a volcano erupting—the events of our physical world are already registered in akasha.
If you are sensitive and still your mind, you may be able to sense something of the future. Once a year I have a lucid dream in which I wake up in the future. I look around and try to memorize everything I see. I take notes when I awake because I have just seen the future that is to be.
Such things as sitting at a desk surrounded by electronic devices that allow you to communicate with others around the planet; big mechanical machines that are programmed to water farm land; a Starbucks latte that has a different taste with each sip; and a war between two nations that must not be allowed to happen. Things like that.
These “causes” in akasha—events that are to be—have their own shape, activity, and emotional force built into them. They are as yet immaterial and invisible but, like gravity, they already weigh upon our world. When the pandemic began, I could see in advance people rioting in the streets, but I did not know why. In the future, the stock market will fall 30% or more. That is certain. But the question is when and why and how quickly will it recover.
Causes in akasha take time before they manifest in our world. An individual has a biography. He rises in power. He is then in a position where he makes a decision that affects millions of people and the history of his nation.
Another individual is torn and twisted inside. He searches for remedies. In a moment of clarity, he forges for himself a path of healing that frees him from the torments of his past and enables him to be a healthy and creative individual within society.
History is shaped by three things—necessity, desire, and dreams. Some things are beyond our control. At least until science and technology give us power over nature.
Some desires motivate individuals, driving them to seek satisfaction. They approach the future as an extension of the self they already know. And with some luck and if they work hard, they may well succeed in getting what they want.
And some events in the world are brought about through what we dream. In a dream you can remake yourself into something wonderful that is completely beyond the limitations of your present desires and wants. This is a divine mode of dreaming.
The future is malleable, open to suggestion, and totally receptive. For any conflict, you can dream a future in which the conflict is fully addressed, resolved, and a state of harmony and where lasting peace exists between all parties in a conflict.
In akasha, nothing prevents you from experiencing “here and now” as being completely real whatever it is that you seek to fulfill. If you want to place a “cause” in akasha, your dream needs to be compelling, persuasive, and relevant. Your vision must become like a living being, something that is fully alive. This vision then overrides and reshapes others’ dreams, desires, and images that also are seeking to manifest.
The Dream for Binah is of being able to place a “cause” in akasha, within these spiritual realms surrounding us. This cause is so dynamic that in spite of all opposition and all limitations it manifests.
In magical terms, you enter a deep meditation or state of trance. You imagine you are in akasha, such as the void which I frequently describe—a state of awareness outside of or prior to space and time. And then you envision exactly what you wish to become real as if it is already real right now in every way.
You are providing a clear and very refined vision of the future. And you are imbuing it with energy—the emotional force, a mental plan of action, a spiritual purpose to be fulfilled, and an entire visualized network of supporting cast to assist it manifesting.
I could be one of the richest billionaires on earth or a very powerful diplomat. In which case, I might be able to present a persuasive plan that would get the prime minster of Israel and Gaza to sign onto an enduring peace plan. All of this accomplished independent of the U.S. State Department which never seems to grasp the reality of opposing states.
On the other hand, what if I were more skilled in placing causes in akasha? I could synchronize the vibration in the minds of these opposing leaders such that they themselves then possess an unshakeable and electrifying vision of peace that overwhelms all opposition. That would be placing a cause in akasha. That cause then operates independent of me and does not stop until the vision within it becomes real.
The take away from the Dream of Binah is that, with the help of our imagination and concentration, we can enter the divine workshop in order to alter reality and remake the world.
“Without a vision, the people perish” says Solomon in his book of Proverbs. The dream in each sephirah offers hope. It makes the sephirah feel alive. In a dream, you can experience now what you wish the future to be.
Saturn offers the vision that your mind and imagination are not superfluous. They help shape reality.
The play, Our Town by Thornton Wilder, won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1938. Edward Albee describes it as “the greatest American play ever written.” The play tells the story about Emily Webb who dies giving birth to her second child.
After her funeral, Emily finds herself among other dead people. Although she is warned not to fixate on her past life, Emily decides to go back and relive her 12th birthday. She can see but not interact with the living. And she knows what will happen in their future.
Realizing how unaware the living are of how special it is to be alive, she turns to the stage manger and asks,
“Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?—every, every minute?” The Stage Manager replies, “No. Saints and poets maybe …they do some.”
When we lose something we cherish or depend on, then the loss and grief hit us. But Saturn does not go away and then return after thirty years for what is called a “Saturn return.” Saturn is with us every moment.
The Initiation of Saturn is not some abstract, metaphysical realization of a sage, saint, or Bodhisattva. It is an artistic sensitivity like the experience of Emily in Thornton Wilder’s play.
Can you seek to be fully alive in every moment while also being aware of life as if you have already died and are looking back at it from the other side?
Is there an inner peace and serenity that embraces equally both life and death? Can you embrace life with tenderness knowing that joy and sorrow, love and hate, and wonder and horror walk side by side in our journey through life?
Can you be touched by evil, broken, abandoned, and alone and yet be so open and receptive that in each moment you are ready to let go of the past and enter the light?
Do you have the purity of will to make the best of any situation you enter regardless of the extent of the unknown that looks you in the face?
Have you been anointed by divine grace in the depths of your heart such that you have unshakeable faith that love will triumph over separation, darkness, and loss?
Saturn has given you this sacred gift if you can sense how special, precious, and beautiful each moment is.
Blessed are those who create love where love does not exist, for they have past the final test and have attained cosmic freedom.
Saturn would like us to learn all we can about life here in the physical world. There are tests, difficulties, ordeals and many things to accomplish. But if you want to reduce all that Saturn requires down to one test, then this is it: When you are placed in a situation where there is no love present, where there is no support or backup, can you create love where love does not exist?
A Christmas Carol is a novella by Charles Dickens. It tells the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, an elderly miser. On Christmas Eve, he encounters his old business partner Jacob Marley who has previously died. Marley tells him he is to be visited by the spirits of Christmas past, present, and future.
Without his consent and as if in a lucid dream, three spirits take control of Scrooge dreams for one night. Scrooge experiences his own past, present, and future as if he is actually present witnessing the events as they unfold. Finally, with the spirit of Christmas Future, Scrooge realizes that his life is without significance. Through this life review, Scrooge is transformed—
“Spirit!” he cried, tight clutching at its robe, “hear me! I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must have been but for this intercourse. Why show me this, if I am past all hope!”
The spirits did not put these words into Scrooge’s mouth. Scrooge, on his own initiative, adopts their point of view. The implication is that if you give someone enough one on one attention, you can have a remarkable influence on him. When done right, there is a blending of minds. The spirits perceive what Scrooge experiences. At the same time, Scrooge experiences what each of the spirits perceive.
This process entails a very high level of empathy. In A Christmas Carol, the spirits control what Scrooge experiences without interfering with his free will. In the process, they manage to imbue Scrooge with a different spirit. We could say that in a matter of hours Scrooge relived the major events from his life. He saw the choices he made. And he was able to sense how things might have turned out if he had made different choices.
Under the Zen of Love exercise in Netzach, we learned to do something similar to what occurs in A Christmas Carol. You sit with a person, meditate on the other, so to speak. You put on the other’s body and wear it as if it is your own. You feel what the other feels. You think the other’s thoughts. Your review the other’s life as if his experiences and memories are your own. And you do all of this while retaining a very high level of mental clarity and detachment.
After all, as a Venus spirit might ask, “What is love and friendship if you do not feel you are within the other person living that person’s life as if it is your own?”
The outer life of Venus carries with it all sorts of crazy and, many times, overwhelming attractions. The inner spirit of Venus simply is attaining a state of oneness with another person. There is the mad dance and then there is the calm, nearly divine feeling and perception of being one with another.
The Zen of Love exercise can be used with friends, lovers, and people of significance in your personal life. The level of empathy is such that you know other’s lives equal to or better they know themselves. Saturn’s approach, on the other hand, is more universal in scope and power.
The Judges of Saturn can say, “We create limitations so that in overcoming them you can attain cosmic freedom.” There is an authority and finality present. “If you want to attain cosmic freedom, then there is a final test.”
Here is the difference between the Zen of Love and the Saturn approach. With Saturn, you bring realizations, feelings, insights, and experiences of all ten sephiroth to the meditation you share with the other person.
If he needs inspiration, then you are the inspiration of the sun. If he needs self-mastery, then you are the will and power of Mars. If he needs faith and conviction, then you are the electrifying certainty of Mercury, a voice of thunder, awakening the truth in the core of his being. If he needs serenity and inner peace, then you embody an inner peace with the universe of Yesod that is inexhaustible and without end.
On an astral and mental level, you are so close and so connected that you experience what he experiences and he experiences what you experience. Without interfering with the other’s will, you are 100% there for the other person, with the other person, and, in a sense, a part of the other person.
To conclude, Saturn might turn to anyone and ask, “How can you say you have learned all there is to learn about the physical world unless you can accomplish this simple task—to create love where love does not exist?”
Lili enters Uri’s office at the university. He gestures for her to sit down. “How can I help you?’ he asks. She says, “How do I do what you do?” Uri replies, “What do you mean?” Lili says, “You are like Anthony Hopkins. You become 100% the character you are playing. This is more than art. You are doing something else.” Uri says, “Why do you say that?” Lili says, “Actors use various tricks to get into their part. They study the role, the script, the subtext, and they do field research. They get to know someone who is like the character they are playing. Then they construct a careful backstory for their character.” Uri looks questioning at Lili. Lili goes on, “Spies give the same attention to detail in constructing their backstory. When Eli Cohen was asked where his parents’ graves were, he immediately gave a plot location in a cemetery. His cover included minute details about his past.” “And so?” says Uri “At night, Eli had dreams that were not his own but those of his assumed identity as Kamel Thabaat. Yet I think you get more into a role you play than any spy or actor.” On the verge of surrendering, Uri puts his elbow on the arm rest of his chair and rests his chin on his palm as he looks down. He then says cryptically, “Where there is power, there are secrets.” Lili says, “You are sworn to secrecy? Is there a Jewish form of the freemasons? The hidden knowledge behind the blowing of the shofar on the Feast of Trumpets? Perhaps kabbalah, something only passed down from father to son?” “Not exactly,” replies Uri. “I discovered this on my own. While doing research for my Ph D, I found a manuscript from the twelfth century in an archive in Rome.” Lili leans forward and smiles expectantly. Uri goes on, “It may sound weird to you, but it is about music. Lili says, “You do tone magic?” Uri sits quietly staring at her. Lili quotes a line from the chairmen of the Department of Theater at the local university, “From the beginning of mankind, people have been singing, dancing, and producing tones from reeds or sticks.” Lili goes on, “You carry on an ancient lineage. Yet you can talk to me about this and not others?” Uri replies, “Yes. Because you understand. If I say a name to you of someone you do not know—Nimrod Barkan—what can you tell me about him?” Lili pauses for a moment and then speaks spontaneously, “He is Jewish and in politics. From a young age he was surrounded by highly successful individuals who were very well connected. And he is involved in operations no one is supposed to know about. Who is he?” Uri says, “He is the Israeli ambassador to Canada. Now your turn.” Lili says, “Aaron Gilon.” Uri closes his eyes for a moment. Then he opens his eyes and says, “This is someone you work closely with. Yet your relationship is so formal it is hard to say you are even friends. And he has an intimate relationship with water—like he is professional scuba diver or else has done extensive surfing. It is like water is a part of him.” “Yes. That is Aaron,” says Lili. “OK. Hit me with your secret. I am ready.” Uri says, “Different notes can be used as a focal point for mediation. Take this note.” Uri very softly hums the note of B. Lili closes her eyes and listens. She hears the note he is humming. Then she hears the note as if it is sung by a cantor or professional opera singer in a huge temple. The acoustics of the temple amplify the note so the air reverberates with the sound and the temple nearly shakes with the vibration. Uri stops humming. Then he says, “The note of B. Sing it in the right state of mind and you enter a mystical space where things are created— where you can perfectly embody in yourself the consciousness of any other person; perfectly express any feeling; and where your receptivity is so great you can produce an emotional response that creates harmony in any situation.” Lili adds, “You use it to enter a deep trace.” Uri says, “Yes. That too. But I have practiced it so much that it has become a part of me. So when I act, there is no me present, only the personality of the person I am playing. A part that is difficult for others to play is easy for me. But spies and actors do not need this level of concentration.” “Who does?” asks Lili. Uri replies, “Power such as this is only for those who wish to create love where love does not exist or else to create justice where there is injustice.” Lili says, “You and the Mossad director share some of the same commitments.” “I suppose we do,” replies Uri.
In times of yore such as in ancient Rome or further back in Greece, nature was too mysterious and diverse for men to feel at ease with its unknown powers or safely interact with its beauty. And so temples were built to celebrate its holy mysteries.
If you wanted to draw near to the sea with its flowing, giving, renewing hope, and endless adaptability, then you might enter the temple of Neptune. If a priest or priestess was worth anything, if you engage in a ritual or festive celebration, you would leave the temple feeling at least for a while that the sea and you had become friends. That vast blue green expanse from horizon to horizon would be alive within you. You would feel your nature is love and that we are in the end all one.
If you wanted to worship the sun with its dazzling light and endless power to imbue the earth with life, then you would enter the temple of Apollo. And there you would be initiated into a great mystery—that in mastering our limitations we shall attain to divine, immortal being while still in human form. Our innermost and true essence is always close to us—within our hearts if we look for it.
Or if you have some great conflict requiring your total will, if you seek self-mastery, or if you are about to go to war, then you enter the temple of Mars. Place a small vial of your blood on the altar. Then pray and meditate. And finally take back the vial and anoint yourself with this blood which now, through the force of your faith and meditation, mixes with the life force of the god. No matter whatever desires and needs may bind you to life, at least for a while you are now ready to give your entire being without distraction to the task or mission to which you are committed.
Mars is like that. It inspires you so you feel the power of the universe is flowing through you. For the sake of your cause, you may end up sacrificing yourself, but your exuberance and inner sense of fulfillment outweigh the needs of your mortal self.
And certainly everyone will at some point wish to visit the temple of Venus. Julius Caesar himself declared his blood line descended from this goddess. War will bring you prestige, honor, and glory. But if you wish to rule an empire or truly lead men so that you capture their imagination and loyalty, Venus will give you an edge. Charisma and personal magnetism are basic foundations of leadership.
All the same, if you enter the temple of Venus, expect the air to be filled with enchantment. Many seek love for its pleasures and bliss. And indeed if you wish to overcome the barriers separating one from another bliss and pleasure are often required in no small measure.
Nonetheless, Venus is the mistress who has mastered ecstasy—to reach beyond the self and become one with another or something greater than you. In love, you transcend life’s limitations while simultaneously uniting with its deepest purposes. When you walk out of a temple of Venus after being initiated into its mysteries, you will finally experience body, soul, and mind for the first time in true harmony.
Ancient Rome. Walk down the street and you can feel the city’s heartbeat. There is order and also brutality. There are men of great power and also always conspiracies. There is hard work, industry, and productivity and also smoldering passions in individuals and raw emotions ready to erupt in the masses.
There is excitement in the air—foreign wars, expanding territories, and also people from many cultures. And there is hopelessness, misery, oppression, and despair.
Then there is the Temple of Saturn. 23 BC in Rome under Imperator Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus—you could walk over to the foot of Capitoline hill in the western end of the Forum Romanum in Rome.
If you are sensitive, even before you reach the staircase, you can sense the aura of the temple before you. It is not the enticement and festivity of the Temple of Venus. No, this is as if you are out in nature. It is overcast. There is no wind and it is silent. It is as if time has stopped. Suddenly your memories are more alive than events in the outer world.
You climb the steps toward the columns and the entrance. And you remember your mythology. You think of Orpheus descending into and returning again from Hades, Psyche crossing the River Styx separating life and death, or Odysseus speaking with the shade of his mother who is among the dead.
But the Underworld is not your destination. You are entering a temple. Nonetheless, you are beginning to view your life from a great distance as if you have suddenly had to let go of everything you know and stepped into the unknown.
If you come here nearly any day in the late afternoon, you might see on these steps a woman sitting unmoving or a man holding his head in his hands. Though you may sense anguish, strangely they are not depressed. Rather, they feel a sense of relief. As they climbed the steps whatever distress or sorrow held them has suddenly let go. Here strong emotions wane and detachment takes control.
As you approach the entrance, the air is slightly cooler. You smell the incense from within, perhaps Myrrh, Poppy, or Cypress. The scent carries a mixture of feelings—something dangerous, formidable, and yet also like a trustworthy mentor, like a general who has had a bad day and yet is happy to meet with his advisor.
We pass through the entrance. You may feel your stomach slightly tighten and a blood pulse in your head. You take a step forward.
And then again it hits you. To enter the Temple of Saturn is like entering the gates of a graveyard—not as one who comes to mourn but as one who is now among the dead.
It is somber. There is little room for regret or sorrow. There is finality and closure. You carry nothing from your life with you. No possessions, no honor, and no fame.
Saturn is time experienced as nightmare. Life is short and the end comes quick. You sense horror, tension, anxiety, and fear, but there is nothing that seems to define these emotions. They are just there like a nearly invisible mist surrounding you that follows you everywhere.
The temple now appears gloomy, dark, forbidding, and haunting. There is a sense of belonging nowhere. There is sadness, despair, feeling alone and abandoned, without support and without a home. You are on your own.
In the pageantry of life with this mood weighing upon you, you feel you have a small part to play and nothing you do makes any difference. No matter your station in life, the five senses offer no real stimulation. The feelings you share with others contain no celebration. For all the freedom you have or do not have, you might as well be living in a jail cell for all the difference it makes.
Ah, Mamercus, a priest I know, comes to greet us. He is from an aristocratic family named Bassianus. For some reason, he is incredibly relaxed. He walks as if he is strolling alongside a stream out in the woods. We enter a small room with an altar and candles. There is a vase in the center filled with water.
We sit down and he begins chanting. The sounds are hypnotic and spellbinding. But it is not a chant as much as a song. It recapitulates our experiences with life from the point of view of Saturn. This Saturn priest is a bard and he is singing a song of what it is to be alive.
Mamercus could be intoning a chorus of a play in a Roman theater except we are on the stage and it is our lives on display. The priest says, “It is not as you think. Time can be a friend. You begin life. You are given gifts. It is how you use what you have been given that counts.
“Saturn only asks that you find in life something of great value to work at or to accomplish. This can be inside yourself or in the outer world. Make something that endures.
“Rome itself is part of this struggle. There are buildings that we build that shall stand for thousands of years. What emperor can enter this city made of stone and leave it filled with marble? What general can set aside his rank and power and return to his villa leaving behind a tradition of honor that shall guide men for ages in the future?
“Each of us is a part of two worlds—an outer world and inner, spiritual world. We live and operate equally in both even though the outer world seems solid and real and the inner, the spiritual world, feels like a dream. “You will know when you have entered Saturn’s dreams. There are soul to soul and heart to heart connections. What is within others transforms you and you in turn pass on a flame of inspiration to others.
“And yet there is more. Saturn itself can become your spirit guide. In this case, you are not on a spiritual quest. You are not operating as part of some mythic journey of some great hero.
“No. Saturn sets before you work to accomplish on earth that shall endure through all ages of the world and be of value to all races and people.
“You will know when you have undergone the initiation of Saturn. You perceive all men are your brothers and sisters. You see all nations as one community of humanity. And what you do in each moment would and will be honored as a work of the body, heart, and spirit whether it is witnessed thousands of years ago or thousands of years in the future. The words you speak are truth and illuminate like the sun.
“And yet this is not so far away, is it? Who among us has not shined like the sun and the moon to others in a dark night of their lives? To meet another where they are, to be with them and to comfort them, and then to walk by their side to a place of freedom and light—is this not the greatest and most sacred celebration of life?
“We are here on earth to learn, to grow, to experience new things, and
to transform into something more than what we now are.
“And yet Saturn stalks us demanding what even the greatest of world
teachers are hard pressed to achieve -
“To demonstrate that we have learned all that can be learned from life
in the worlds of form we must show that we are able to create love
where love does not exist and that we are able to be clear in our minds
and free in our hearts under the worst and most difficult conditions of
life.
“The voice of Saturn says to each of us, ‘Learn to be as me—weep not when death and fate take away. Renounce regret, sorrow, and loss. Every ending, separation, farewell, and goodbye is a sacred rite in my eyes. It contains my blessing and my voice.’”
For a little while we sit in silence allowing the words of the priest to echo through our memories and to clarify our choices.
And now our time with Mamercus comes to an end. It is ten o’clock at night. We walk out from among the columns of the Temple of Saturn in ancient Rome. We return to our hovel where the rats occasionally jump up on the table or else perhaps to our villa on the hill where we sit by the fountain out back in the garden where there is running water and statues made from marble.
In both cases we know that the life we now live is but a cloak we have put on. We shall take it off and put it on again many times in many different lands and we shall play roles in many different societies; until at last we master the lessons of the physical world and ascend. And then we shall sit in a circle among divine beings that hold in their hands the powers of creation. At which point, Saturn will have accomplished its mission—to insure we attain absolute freedom.