A Condition In The Sky
The Occlulense
You need the light.
You need the light to see.
You can pick out nothing not
You or me, without the light.
What light?
Its an odd thing to listen to people use language, use definitions without anything but a cursory sense of what they mean. But this is common, right?
Dionysus the Areopagite, Pseudo Dionysus apparently left some writing behind when he was shipped off to never never land. His case is an interesting one, because no one can prove that he was an Areopagite, a lawspeaker in Greece. For that matter no one has the slightest idea who this Dionysus actually was at all, so some smart asses call him Pseudo Dionysus, because they like that.
Therefore its particularly interesting that this unknown figure provided the mystical structure of Christianity, up until the arrival of Aquinas, who managed to get ahold of a copy of one of Dionysus’ pieces from an Arabic source, and declared it utterly Pagan, which of course is the worst thing possible. Thus, Christianity was faced with the evident reality that the mysticism it had supported and endorsed for around 1,000 years was well-not Christian, to put it politely. There was another issue, and that was the little document that gave Catholicism its authority, The Donation Of Constantine, from which all Papal legitimacy was derived, was as phony as silicone tits.
I mean, they're fine if you like them, but they are a feature of cosmetic surgery for a pretty shallow purpose, just like the Papacy.
Since then, a number of scholars have combed the record to get to the Real Christianity we’re all told about, and have concluded that nothing in Christianity is actually Christian. It all dates back to those nasty Pagans.
Touche’
We all know that Christianity bravely dealt with its crisis of truth by pretending said crisis didn’t exist, and quietly flushing Master Dionysus and his mystical theology down the toilet. We will cover this in the future-hopefully-but until then its super duper important to understand that your proud Christian tradition is just a pair of silicone tits.
So, what does this have to do with the light?
Quite a bit, actually, because the very teaching of what light ultimately is, and what it means within the genuine mystical record is preserved herein. The ultimate source of light is Divine, and Divine Light-the explanation-derives directly from the writings of Master Dionysus.
So, the astute reader now notices that I refer to him as a master.
Yes, because he was a master in the great western mystical tradition. If you are curious, there was a very long, deeply convoluted mystical tradition in western civilization. This tradition includes many apparently separate movements, such as Gnosticism, but it was larger than any one of them. The western mystical tradition began with a simple precept: That mankind has a spiritual nature, and this nature can be exercised with the point towards a transcendence of the conditions of incarnation.
Those of you in the know will already understand that this is a principle in most sects of Christianity, and now you know how it got there.
Master Dionysus, because he mastered both the philosophical and experiential facets of the western mystical tradition, mastered them and provided an ostensibly Christian clothing for them that allowed them to live until the likes of Aquinas entered stage left. Lets just review briefly a couple of assertions our master makes, and lets see how well they jive with those nasty Pagan world views.
Master Dionysus stated unequivocally that the spiritual world had levels, planes of manifestation heavily populated by sometimes fantastic beings. Hmmm-Archons, anyone? No, then lets have us some Angels, bro!
The basis to ancient mysticism around the world is that there are levels to reality. The Mayans advanced this thought, and the Chaldeans, and the Aryans in general to name a few, so it seems our master was in pretty good company. He brought this understanding to the upstart religion, and the thanks he got was the boot. Fairness lives-uh sorta.
How about another one, just for fun?
If we are going to talk about the spiritual reality being heavily populated, why we see the same experience in Tibetan Bon, with the Jivaro Indians, and in fact in the Skaldic record. So, yep, it seems our natty dread Pagan master was actually quite orthodox when it comes to the essential basis of understanding the world from a mystical point of view.
Well imagine that. Of course, if any Christians are still reading, which I doubt, take heart, this means your original mystical system harmonized deeply with the human experience, and isn’t that cool?
The Master also told us about the reality of practice. He told us about Sunthema. Sunthemata-the tokens, that were placed there long ago, and to watch for them, because they have an anagogic capacity. He said his rituals included physical reminders, so you could remember what to look for in that vast spiritual expanse. Pretty smart, eh? This is a fancy way of saying that the great mystics who traversed this path before even the master was born left us with markers on those spiritual planes. Do you think this is fantastic, impossible, an invention? It is an invention of sorts, yes, but when you understand that the nature of reality on the spiritual planes is supported by participation in those finer forces, you can perhaps grasp that the Sunthemata arise from the friction, the interaction with those forces. So, what you have here is a coherent structure with which to hang your mystical impulse upon, Mystical Theology.
This may surprise some, but the Western Mystical Tradition, as I like to call it, is the mystical, ritual, and experiential structure behind Master Dionysus’ Mystical Theology.
Yep to Neoplatonism, Theurgy, Visionary seeking as mystical phenomenon.
Since we have the Gnostic Monad, the Neoplatonic Good, and the Christian Father all suggesting a first principle, source, we can now understand that a primary goal of such mysticism is communion with the overflowing source of everything.
It is an alignment.
Plotinus, through his own juices was able to descend up the spiritual planes to progressively brighter and finer levels, until he reached that source, participated in it, got to know it, for some six times during the course of his life.
Where did he get this idea, after all? I’ll answer that question right here: The Western Mystical Tradition for millennia had offered teaching to worthy students. Much of this teaching was in Egypt, as Iamblicus documented, and Plotinus, he was taught his stuff in Egypt.
Master Dionysus agrees in principle with Plotinus on everything that matters, including the ascent through the spiritual planes to the Ineffable. Of course, we see the same exact thing in the Gnostic scripture, where the Great Power sends forth, and mankind answers the call, ascending the varied hypostases, each ruled by their Animal Headed Archon, to descend to the Treasury, the Pleroma, the Ineffable.
The Gnostics wrote quite a bit about the light as well, as did the Norse, in referring to the gleaming plane. The modern take seems to be, when anyone considers it at all, to basically dismiss it as an allegory, but is it?
Light isn’t an allegory because light is both profane and divine, energy and understanding, vibration as in song, and the phenomenon that completely orders our visual perception. Light, to our physical senses literally constructs the world. Oh, you ask, but what about a scientific understanding, aren’t I including that?
No. For our purpose it is purely the instinctive, rational, emotional, awesome wonder of light that we wish to meet.
The Manicheans devoted hefty amounts of scripture to the afterlife journey on board the ship to the realm of light. The modern mind responds by kind of shrugging. And so this is the gulf, the limit to understanding, and conversely the basis of the requirement to develop and cultivate the muscle and inner faculties to the point where light can be met without attachments and laws and regulations, just one and the light.
Immediate.
Timeless.
Apparent.
Beyond words.
More than physical vision.
I mean there might be a more difficult path in this modern world than a mystical one, like maybe trying to be fair, but there aren’t many as challenging, and none other, not one that will get you to a working realization of what light actually is.
Master Dionysus left in his record the account of what light actually is, and it is Darkness.
Darkness.
Darkness.