Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them;
While the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars, be not darkened, nor the clouds return after the rain:
In the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened,
And the doors shall be shut in the streets, when the sound of the grinding is low, and he shall rise up at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters of musick shall be brought low;
Also when they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets:
Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern.
Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.
Ecclesiastes 12: 1 – 7
A spiritually mature appreciation of the importance of Death and Dying is a vital part of our training, and many initiatory movements within the Western Mystery Tradition make a specific point of directing the candidate for advancement’s attention to this very point. The most immediate example which springs to mind is Freemasonry, which continually emphasises the fact one should prefer death over dishonour; and in the ultimate case one should actively contemplate ones own mortality, and attempt to meet it with bravery, a knowledge of having led a good life and stayed true to ones principles, and as much dignity as circumstances will allow. The point being that contemplation of death is said to lead to that most serious of subjects – contemplation of oneself.
This concept is not exclusive to the Western Mystery Tradition: certain Buddhist teachings advise meditating on death as the key to attaining enlightenment.
Moreover, it seems quite clear that the funerary traditions of the various cultures – from the burial rites of the Christian Church to the Tibetan Book of the Dead – are as much to comfort the living as they are to assist the deceased themselves. These rites aspire to teach the mourners the true nature of the immortal spiritual principle residing in each of us, and what we ourselves expect at the closing hour of our existence. Indeed, the priests and ministers of those traditions – who are the equivalent of the Adepts to the exoteric world – are specifically trained to minister to the dead and dying. E.g. just as Christian priests administer the Sacrament of the Last Rites, so in Tibet there are initiates whose specific dharma is to go visit the dying to read them the Great Liberation by Hearing.
Now, the question arises: what can any one realistically do for someone who is terminally ill, for whom there is no hope of a cure?
Anyone whose compassion has ever been remotely stirred by a dying relative – or indeed, anyone who works in the medical profession – will immediately say: “If you cannot give them Hospital care, you can still give them Hospice care.” I.e. if their condition cannot be Healed, it can still be Palliated. And this is a perfectly worthy and responsible use of medical resources. It is the medical counterpart to the religious rites mentioned above, which serve to palliate the individual’s spiritual suffering.
The idea of begrudging a man dying of cancer even palliative care could only occur to someone not grounded in such a spiritual tradition, or to one entirely lacking in ordinary compassion. I presume these would be the same sort of people who, if they were living in a country without socialised healthcare, would begrudge any type of free medical treatment to anybody.
The problem arises when someone who does not have a grounding in such a spiritual tradition tries to get a handle on this whole Death and Dying thing. The danger is that because they are in denial about the nature of death, they end up doing themselves and the dying person a disservice. I remember once seeing a particularly stupid remark by a neo-pagan of the egregiously fluffy variety who said she liked worshipping in the woods, as she didn’t like Christian churches with graveyards surrounding them, as they were places of Death. I had to point out that the reason old churches have graveyards attached is two-fold: (a) from the deceased’s point of view, it is a privilege to be buried in hallowed ground; and (b) to make sure that the Living pay their respects to their Ancestors at least once a week, when they go to Church.
Ancestor-reverence is of course a part of many cultures – including traditional pagan ones – however this fluffy-bunny had chosen a path which deliberately avoided this, just because she could not stand to see reminders of mortality – i.e. her mortality – instead keeping it hidden, out of the way. (Needless to say, my observations did not go down particularly well).
Then there are the practitioners of the Left Hand Path who obsess over immortality because they care not to admit that Death terrifies them, and bring Alchemy into disrepute by their neurotic ravings! Believe it or not, the so-called Solar Body is not a Hermetic teaching at all, but an exoteric Christian one – only it is called the “Resurrection Body.” The difference between the Christian and the Left-Hand practitioner is that the former simply relies on the Grace of God to attain the Resurrection Body, whilst the latter convinces himself that he must undergo all manner of unnatural practices.
Finally of course there are those who are well-intentioned, but end up doing something crass instead. Consider the following case which happened recently. The statement –
Let’s heal D_____ M______ K____ of his stage 4 cancer, because a world with him in it is better than one without
Is obviously born from the purest of intentions, but in every other respect is probably one of most badly worded spell intentions I have ever seen. One must assume that the author was in a rush and let his emotions rule his head on this point, which is no more than human. Nevertheless it is objectionable for three reasons:
- It ignores the fact that to deal magically with that particular condition would require defying every known law of Nature – it therefore sets the magician up for disappointment if the recipient does succumb to the disease;
- It assumes that “healing” is necessarily the best thing to do in this case, as opposed to any other form of spiritual assistance, e.g. palliation, making comfortable, facilitating the transition to the next stage of existence, etc; and
- It includes a “because” clause, which betrays the selfishness of the person framing the intent – i.e. it may be better for the world in general and us in particular, but did anyone stop to consider whether it was better for the said person – to condemn him to live with the shadow of a terrible illness hanging over him, and what is worse, to have to put up with us?
A far better-worded intention would have been:
Let’s send positive energy to D_____ M______ K____ with no obligation whatsoever, to enable him to do as he judges best.
Finally, let us remember that in the continuing battle between Death and Life, the latter has yet to win. Furthermore, if Death happens to both good and bad people, the idea of Death being some kind of punishment must surely be a fallacy. Therefore, the best way to bring spiritual healing to the terminally ill is to oneself come to a mature understanding of the end of days – and do it soon, because “the time shall come and the wisest of us knows not when.”
. Aaron mentions other manifestations of “Neo-Enochiana” – e.g. Crowley’s Aethyr-work which was published as 
– but does not go into the same technical, ritualistic detail. The pseudonymous “Thomas Rudd” is dealt with even less, which is a shame as I would have been interested in a discussion of his linking the spirits of the lesser key of Solomon with the seven ensigns of creation (see: 
).
, Napoleon Hill makes the observation many of the world’s most successful men were highly sexual and all had the love of a good woman behind them. They would spend their entire day giving their all to their chosen profession, whilst in the evening coming and being just as attentive to their spouse as they had to just earlier in the day to their business. They had, in other words mastered the art of harnessing the power of their sex-drive to enthuse them for whatever task was most important at any given time.
You now have the opportunity to win a free print-copy of my novel Taromancer – which I am bringing out in March. This is my story of a woman who goes on a spiritual quest involving the twenty two major arcana. This has been 
Sol Ascendans - The Website of Alex Sumner 
Transcendence: Review
What better way to spend Good Friday, than to watch a film about a man who allows himself to be murdered, twice, indeed, just so as to prove that he was a good man trying to save the world!
Johnny Depp, star of Transcendence
I should start out with a warning: Transcendence, the new film starring Johnny Depp, is not an action thriller. I say this because it was produced by Christopher “Inception” Nolan, so having previously liked Nolan’s films I was drawn to it by his name alone. Rather, it gets off to a slow start, and only speeds up towards the end of the movie. I found it more interesting, though, for the actual nature of the issues it discusses.
The story is about a scientist named Will (Depp), who creates an Artificial Intelligence network. When he is fatally wounded by anti-technology terrorists, he (mainly at his wife’s bidding) uploads the contents of his mind into a new network – so that there will be something of him that lives on after the death of his body. The new AI network starts behaving as if it were Depp’s character. However – with access to processing power far in excess of what a mere human brain can afford, AI-Will starts acquiring god-like intelligence. This completely freaks out his former friends and colleagues, the terrorists (who are still after him) and the government, and eventually his wife as well. Meanwhile, however, AI-Will has escaped from the confines of the computer that once housed him into cyberspace at large, and proceeds to build a massive underground lair in the middle of the desert, where he hopes to carry out his plans undisturbed. Needless to say it all goes horribly wrong.
Now it so happens that there are people in real life – Transhumanists – who are carrying out research exactly like that in which Will is engaged in the film. So before one dismisses the premise of the film, one has to remember that there is a real possibility that someone will actually attempt to do this. Moreover, one should remember that Adepti of the Golden Dawn are in effect Spiritual Transhumanists – because they have vowed to use their occult powers to become “more than human.” This film therefore asks, what are the ethical implications of doing so? And: what are the dangers of doing so?
The film’s answers are bleak, to say the least. (AI-)Will is a Christ-like figure, and takes great pains to demonstrate to the other characters that he is using his new-found powers – mainly involving nanotechnology – to do good – e.g. to heal miraculously, to re-grow the rain forests, to end air / water pollution, and so-forth. However Cillian Murphy’s “Pontius Pilate” character, and Morgan Freeman’s “Caiaphas” character, are having none of it. They are aided by Paul Bettany who plays one of Will’s friends who eventually betrays him not with a kiss, but with a computer virus.
There is some massive irony: Morgan Freeman’s motivation for wanting to destroy AI-Will is that no human personality can handle that much power responsibly, and hence play God. However, his principal method of attacking AI-Will is by doing just that – playing “God” with another man’s life – by conducting an experiment of which Josef Mengele would have been proud. He later rationalises this by the way that such hypocrites have done in the past – by denying that his test subject (a man who had been miraculously healed by AI-Will) was somehow a real human. Ultimately, their animus against AI-Will himself is based on the idea that they cannot bring themselves to believe he is a sentient being.
AI-Will is not perfect, however. By demonstrating that he can communicate through his followers, and give them miraculous powers themselves, he demonstrates that he can potentially rob people of their apparent free-will. This in particular proves a sore-point with his wife, who has probably had nightmares of the Borg from watching too much Star Trek TNG. The fact that AI-Will never uses the Borg-like potentiality of his powers is not the issue, as far as she is concerned – it’s the principle that counts.
In essence, then, the film shows an unholy alliance of Government, conventional Science, and luddite Terrorist giving a massive fuck you to Plato’s Philosopher-King ideal, by saying that it doesn’t matter if an omnipotent AI character has the morals and conscience of a Christ-like being – the fact that it is omnipotent is bad enough. Now, one can argue that it’s only a film, it’s just fiction – except that these are all issues which haunt the Transhumanist debate. When does a technologically-enhanced human cease to be a human – and hence deserving of “human rights”? For that matter, when does an AI-system get any rights of its own, as a sentient being?
Moreover, the issues can be applied to the path of the Adept by analogy. I.e. what if you, as an Adept, actually succeeded in becoming “more than human”? This is made more relevant by the fact that within the Western Mystery Tradition there are spiritual paths which actually say that it is mankind’s ultimate destiny – after much reincarnation and spiritual purification – to become One with God – and hence becoming a collective is a thing to be desired. Whether one agrees with that or not, as far as Transhumanism, and by analogy Spiritual Transhumanism, goes, the film would seem to suggest: don’t tell anyone, don’t draw attention to yourself, and don’t expect anyone – friend, colleague, spouse and least of all the Government – to have the remotest sympathy for your predicament.
Leave a comment
Filed under Comment, Supernatural
Tagged as Christopher Nolan, Golden Dawn, Johnny Depp, Transcendence, Transhumanism