An age-old and condemned philosophy that makes you look at the (Western) world in a radically different way

Last week, the online quality Dutch newspaper ‘De Correspondent’, published an important article about Hermetics. The article is written by Bregje Hofstede. In the article Bregje gives us a skilled summary of the Hermetic Philosophy, and in this newsletter, I want to give you a translation of the most important parts of her article, together with some comments of myself.

The topic of explaining what Hermetics are is complex. The journey that I made myself throughout its history: skipping between its original sources and its deformations by Christianity, combined with a lack of understanding from the side of translators that crippled the original philosophy, testing the mental techniques by practicing them: has been a journey with pitfalls for me, that lasted the last 35 years. Practicing Hermetics is a wonderous journey, filled with the most illuminating experiences that one can imagine, a Knowing from deep within. From that angle I can testify of the results of practicing Hermetics, of its healing aspects, the development of consciousness, the development of a connection with something I can only describe as Cosmic Consciousness. But now, lets go into the article of Bregje:

Hermetics is a spiritual movement that flourished in Egypt between the second and fourth centuries AD. I picked up the book Hermetic Spirituality and the Historical Imagination, by Professor Wouter J. Hanegraaff.  I didn’t expect that I would recognize myself, or rather: us, as we live now, in that text. But I did, and I was shocked by what I saw.

A Way Out of a Dark Age

The Hermetics are a collection of texts from late antiquity, written by followers of the mythical philosopher Hermes Trismegistus. The best-known text is the Asclepius. This is a Latin translation that is probably quite far removed from the original, which has been lost. Many Hermetic texts have come down to us through early medieval Byzantine copies, but the Christian scribes probably greatly purified or ‘clarified’ the texts in the light of their own Christian worldview.

This is the translation problem I pointed out in my intro: words, concepts and principles have been mistranslated, because of a lack of understanding, or for political and religious reasons.

Egypt, long under the thumb of Rome, suffered from this chaos. Local religion also suffered: Christianity began its hegemony, other spiritual knowledge was criminalized and disappeared, or had already disappeared. The Asclepius warns of the disastrous consequences of this: the gods will depart, and the future is dark; men will behave like sleepwalkers, and the world will collapse. Sound familiar?

The lessons that Hermetics are all about are mainly practical

The Hermetic followers feared to be the last generation to know what was important: the truth, for example. Delusions would prevail. “The people who come after us will be seduced by cunning sophistries and will be alienated from the real, pure, holy love of wisdom,” said the Asclepius.

Because of the ignorance of humanity, “the reverent will be taken for foolish, and the irreverent will be honored,” it says in the Asclepius. “The universe will no longer be admired […]. [Instead] [the people] will despise her, this beautiful world, created by Divinity. […] As for the soul and all that is connected with it […], all that will be considered ridiculous and ridiculous.”

To avert these catastrophes – if that is still possible – you must practice the ‘Way of Hermes’ (Trismegistus). Its purpose is to free you from negativity, and to open your eyes to the beauty of existence, by connecting you to the androgynous, ultimate divine Source from which all life, the Good and the True originate—so that you can be a channel for it, and let those things flow into the world.

This practical Way of Hermes is a journey of mental exercises, that need to be practiced on a daily basis to become effective. Its practice gives you the mental discipline to deal with disasters at the moments that they need your attention, but to also park those very same disasters and enjoy the beauty of the world around you during the times of crisis.

A metaphor for this ability, is that the mental exercises are comparable with learning how to surf on the waves of the sea. When you start, you end up in the water with every wave and have to climb aboard again. Gradually you are able to brave more powerful waves. And the well-trained surfer can conquer the waves at the coasts of Hawaii while keep standing upright. In a similar way the mental training of the Hermetic tradition helps you to keep upright and inspired under the most extreme circumstances of life.

Medicine for the sick soul

That sounds abstract, and there is a lot to read about that Source and the many forms of Divinity, According to Hermeticism, humanity is a unique mixture: an earthly god, with a body and a soul, tangible and intangible. Human beings are “embodied gods, whose job it is to take care of the world through their bodies, while their spiritual part remains connected to the divine Source.” Wouter J. Hanegraaff, ‘Hermetic Spirituality and the Historical Imagination’ (2022), p. 64

But the lessons that Hermetics are all about were mostly practical. They were supposed to give people access to a spiritual experience that cannot be captured with language or logic, and that was meant to be medicine for the sick soul. The knowledge and skills required for this healing, passed on in small groups, include spells, intoxicating incense and light effects.

There are people who belief that the Hermetics might have used hallucinogenic plants, but the evidence of this opinion is rather slim. In my personal experience this is completely unnecessary, since the exercises produce such strong effects on the endocrine system, that the ‘hallucinogenic effects’ can be induced on purpose and under full mental control. The expansion of consciousness takes place during the meditations by means of a dialogue with the ‘Teacher Inside’, and deepens by full interaction with the natural world in daily consciousness.

During the translations of the original Hermetic texts, the philosophy was translated, but the mental exercises were omitted because scholars thought them to be ‘magic and superstition ‘masses of rubbish’, according to the classicist Walter Scott, who published an influential English-language edition of the Hermetics in 1924, which omitted ‘astrology, magic, alchemy, and other forms of pseudoscience’.

This is of course an opinion, and has nothing to do with what Hermetics is all about. But this is the reason why Hermetics were regarded taboo, until even 15 years ago, and were shunned even in Academic circles who study ancient texts.

Academics preferred to focus on the ‘serious’ Platonic theory that can also be found in Hermeticism, rather than on ‘magic’, according to the pattern: rational Greeks versus pagan, superstitious Egyptians. Hanegraaff reverses this logic: it is precisely the practical search for enlightenment that is at the heart of Hermetics.

An ecological spirituality

This preference for reason and mind over practice and body is still the norm in the West today. But that default duality: thinking in opposing concepts, such as body-mind, man-woman, in which mixtures or fusions are considered impossible, is completely dismantled in Hermetic. That’s exactly what makes it so fascinating. Body and mind are not separated, the body is not base and sinful. The world is not a vale of tears in the face of a distant, unreachable heaven.

This is, you could say, an ecological spirituality. Contempt for the earthly is alien to Hermetic; For a long time, Hermetic spirituality was interpreted by all kinds of academics, Hanegraaff shows. For it is very easy to see in a strange mindset only what you recognize, and to interpret the strange in the light of the familiar. On the contrary, “the whole cosmos is a temple.” Source: Wouter J. Hanegraaff, ‘Hermetic Spirituality and the Historical Imagination’ (2022), p. 270 The task of humanity is to take care of this, by bringing the good and true into the material world, so that it becomes the perfect reflection of its divine Source.

All the magic that is written down in the original Hermetic Texts, including the even older Egyptian source materials are aimed on self-improvement, healing, understanding of Cosmic Truths, balancing the practitioners in a chaotic world. The difficulty is that the ancient languages work with metaphors and i-magi-nary images. This is a language that needs to be learned and understood. It is a method to communicate with one’s subconscious mind, and becomes increasingly meaningful during years of practice.

That Source is constantly trying to bring forth life, and producing life is never a bad thing. It also follows that women are equal. There is little explicit about gender in Hermetics. But the lack of fear of the body also implies that there is no curse on the people responsible for the embodiment – those with a uterus. We also know that women also taught this spiritual knowledge; for example, we know by name the Egyptian teacher Theosebeia, from the late third century.‘

The Hermetic meaning of the concept of Divinity is that it is single and plural at the same time, male and female. Every divine force is dual, otherwise materialization is impossible. It is stunning that even today, scholars use the world ‘God’ only in the male sense, although it is an established fact that in the original ancient texts, it was a combination of male and female, even in the Bible!

Moreover, Hanegraaff argues, Diotima is important for hermetic thought, the visionary who taught Socrates what he knew about erotica and ‘showed him the way’, as he himself said. Diotima stated – very briefly – that humanity does not have to strive to escape from the material to absolute beauty (say: crawl out of Plato’s cave), but that it was all about bringing beauty into the material world (the cave): ‘giving birth in beauty’. Giving birth could be about human children, but also metaphorically about the creation of art or just laws. Wouter J. Hanegraaff, ‘Hermetic Spirituality and the Historical Imagination’ (2022), p. 106 and sex is not dirty, but rather ‘the ultimate mystery of birth and creation’.

Here I want to add something important. Sex was not only ‘not dirty,’ it was a sacred act. In the ancient temples the Hieros Gamos was performed, a sacred marriage act where the King and the Land were married in a sacred ceremony. The priestesses who took the role of the Goddess, were revered with great honor. It was only in the time of Herodotus, where this method of worship was compared to prostitution; an act of blasphemy of a competitive religion!

Imagine for a moment that this view, and not the Christian one, Christianity, in the form that eventually became dominant, has not turned out to be very female-friendly or sex- and body-positive; and in terms of ecology, the consequences are not very rosy either.

With a less toxic image of women, that half of the population might have been able to play a very different role than it has been allowed to do for the past two thousand years. And if we believed that our sacred task was to take care of this world, instead of expecting salvation in a distant afterlife, we might not be so deep in ecological shit now.

Everything starts with wonder

The core of Hermetic spirituality, according to Hanegraaff, is a fascination with physicality. How can you understand body and soul as one? In Hermeticism there is no difference between matter and (divine) ‘soul’ or spirit. The two dimensions of reality (the physical and the spiritual) are in fact one, but our limited minds cannot experience it that way until we have attained the ultimate understanding – ‘gnosis’. Wouter J. Hanegraaff, ‘Hermetic Spirituality and the Historical Imagination’ (2022), p. 3How can you find salvation, not only after death, but while living in your body?

That experience does not start with the contradiction between ‘soul and spirit’, but with the concept that death does not exist. Everything is alive, also the deceased are alive. And there is a parallel ‘Otherworld’, a world of the Spirit, that is causal to the manifested world. In this sense the concept of reincarnation is also not alien to the ancient world.

In Hermetics, the body is not the problem: what happens in the body is the challenge. As an embodied human being, you are plagued by an incessant stream of unreliable impressions (phantasmata) that you receive through your senses, and that fills a large part of your conscious and subconscious. “What we think of as normal human consciousness is in fact an altered state of knowledge: a delusional state of mental alienation and deep confusion,” Hanegraaff sums it up. Wouter J. Hanegraaff, ‘Hermetic Spirituality and the Historical Imagination’ (2022), p. 155

This phenomenon of Phantasmata is fundamental concept that Hermetism shares with Zen Buddhism, called Makyō. These are the phenomena–visions, hallucinations, fantasies, revelations, illusory sensations–which during practicing meditation are experienced at a particular stage.

In the meantime, you are also thwarted by ‘daimons’ or powerful forces that reside in the body, such as anger, envy and possessiveness. These can be exorcised by inviting opposing, positive forces; through wisdom (gnosis) ignorance will be chased away, through generosity, avarice, etc. There is a special ritual for this, which Hanegraaff discusses in detail in his book.

Two points are of interest here; the word ‘daimon’ was often wrongly translated for ‘demon’. One can imagine how this translation error dramatically changes the meaning of a text and the emotions of the person interpreting the content. The next word that causes misunderstanding is the word ‘exorcism’. In our mind we see the Hollywood movies, with priest fighting with devils. But the word ‘exorcism’ in this context simply means ‘transformation’. Something a lot of people do nowadays, working through traumata with the help of their psychotherapists.

If you don’t feel a sense of wonder at the beauty of the world, you’re not open to the ultimate enlightenment

As a result, the central hermetic virtue comes under pressure: namely, wonder. It all starts with wonder. Those who do not feel wonder and gratitude for the beauty of the world are certainly not open to the ultimate enlightenment: a saving spiritual insight into how the world really is, which is called ‘gnosis’ in Greek.

We don’t even have a term for it, because we usually assume that the visible and measurable encompasses the whole of reality. Even though that is objectively nonsense: we know that there are many things that we humans do not perceive (think of X-rays, infrared light or sound at certain frequencies). But ‘gnosis’ goes far beyond that. It is the ultimate truth, which is of a very different nature from the sensuous, and which can only be perceived with a special spiritual sense, a kind of built-in mystical intuition, for which again we have no word: ‘nous’.

Beauty, Wonder and Mystery are the keywords for Hermeticism. Nous is something that one develops during years of meditation practice. The subconscious mind becomes able to contact and communicate with the superconscious mind, and in this dialogue, Nous is communicated, Cosmic Wisdom, comparable with the Kabbalistic concept of Da’ath.

When you see the Light, you immediately understand that there is no difference between the light and yourself: ‘You are divine light looking at divine light.’ That light or source is also called ‘nous’, and you perceive it with your ‘nous’. To put it bluntly: you perceive the great Consciousness with your Consciousness. You might imagine that you have a magnet in your heart, without knowing it, and only feel it when it reacts to another magnet. Before that moment, you didn’t know you were observing magnetism at all. Wouter J. Hanegraaff, ‘Hermetic Spirituality and the Historical Imagination’ (2022), p. 166

In other words, like the Egyptian God Horus says, on his search for his deceased father Osiris; ‘Be silent, a god speaks to a God’.

Suppose this was our worldview, I keep thinking. Suppose we hadn’t separated body and soul, and then erased the soul from the picture, leaving only bare matter. Hermetics, as I read them, whispered promises of a world in which you look for beauty here and now, not in some distant, abstract or digital world. In which reality is more layered and richer than we think.

It’s not that these ideas are so strange; it’s that they suddenly make your normal ideas strange. But the remaining thought is simple. That’s how different you can see the world. And – if we all did that – how different would the world be?

 Well Bregje, if you want to know how different the world can be, you could sign up for one of our online video training courses. The Book of Thoth of The Egyptian Journey

I would like to ask you to click on the original article by Bregje, so that her excellent article gets a lot of clicks:

Link to the original Dutch article:

It has been a while ago since you received a newsletter from me, I have been very busy developing training materials. Now is the time to share exiting news with you!

The last years I have been mostly teaching by means of webinars. This resulted in a series of video lessons, which I will now start publishing online. These lessons are for everyone who want to get a more in-depth grip on the Tarot, the Kabbala on Astrology and the connected mythological stories. 

This material is unique! The webinars about the Tarot, the Kabbala and Astrology together create one storyline in the form of meditations: which I call ‘the Online Journey’. Storytelling is a very powerful method: when skilfully applied in meditations, it can bring about lifechanging inner experiences! 

The guided meditations of the Online Journey enable you to easily get a grip on the deep wisdom teachings of the Hermetic Mystery Tradition. Because you learn in the form of inner experiences, the Wisdom Teachings become a part of your inner world, a world of beauty, wonder and mystery, which get you into increasingly closer contact with your Inner Light, step by step through the series. 

With these video lessons, it is possible for everyone around the world to access a high quality training in the Hermetic Mystery Tradition, from your home, on the times that are the most comfortable for you. Meanwhile you can benefit from the knowledge of our trainers and supervisors, who are happy to give you advice and feedback on your Online Journeys.

https://vimeo.com/895551442

Let me show you how you can find these Online Journeys.

• First of all you go to the website lms.hermeticartsandsciences.org
• Then you click on Online Journey . Now you enter into the Online Academy.
• When you make a personal account, you get access to the ‘Free Webinars’, here you find a small series of teaching sessions to try out.
• You also see The Descent – Online Journey 1. Behind this title you see a little key. Under the titles of the guided meditations you find a button ‘Buy this training’. When you click on this button you are taken into the shop. 
• When you order Online Journey 1, you will receive an email with the instructions how to get access to the video lessons, and then you can login and access the video’s.

For me it was an intense and beautiful journey to create these online lessons. For the students who are already working at the Academy, and who made this journey, it has been an adventurous road of self-discovery, that brought them practical and powerful mind altering techniques and realizations.

Do you want to learn how Tarot, Astrology, Kabbala and Mythology fit together, do you long for mental techniques that expand your consciousness and heal your soul, wisdom teachings that you can implement in your own life, then this is the training for you!

I am very happy to share this journey with you, and I wish you the same Beauty, Wonder and Mysteries, that these meditations brought me.

In LVX

Ina Cüsters-van Bergen

Regression can cause progress by reversing the target. Go back in time to enrich your future with wonder, beauty and mystery!

Do you like theatre or re-enactment? Do you dare to step out of the box? Do you long to take this one step further and experience the spiritual dimension of ancient Mystery plays?

Imagine yourself belonging to the Egyptian priesthood, worshipping the ancient Gods through mythological drama. Find yourself floating down the river Nile on an old-fashioned  sailboat in ancient Egypt. Above your head a clear blue sky and a bright hot sun. In front of you,  gigantic temple buildings loom up, their majestic forms vibrate in the heat; are they fata morgana or real buildings? The air smells heavy of herbs, you can scent the intoxicating aroma of the blue lotus. Next to you on the boat sit Egyptian priests and priestesses around the coffin of a holy man. Join us, together we will remember our heritage, worship the ancient gods and submerge ourselves into the secrets of the Egyptian Mysteries during a weekend retreat.

Let me tell you a little bit about my own experiences with Egyptian Mystery plays. Although a  strange and unfamiliar experience at first, I quickly noticed how deeply it touched me to re-enact the ancient Egyptian myths in ritual drama. I felt a whole different world opening up inside of me, a world which is strange and familiar at the same time, which deeply moved the core of my heart. I experienced how my innermost essence unfolded like a flower and a mystical dimension opened up deep within me.

In our upcoming workshop “Journey into the Egyptian Mysteries” we will dive  into the heart of the meditative techniques of Egyptian Mystery play and ancient Egyptian myths. Together we will discover the meditative dimension of ritual drama. Especially for this workshop we decorate our working space as if it were a hall of an Ancient Egyptian temple. We all wear Egyptian ritual clothing and in our imagination we journey back to a time filled with beauty, wonder and mystery.

Join us and experience how your own innermost being opens up like the sacred Lotus flower. Taste the sweetness of the nectar of the Gods on your lips! Sign up to become a fellow traveller. Journey with us through the mists of time and let the golden light of Horus illuminate your heart.

Enrolment for this magical weekend retreat starts now! The places of this workshop are limited, so be quick to ensure your place!

For Whom: This retreat is of interest for everyone who wants to engage in Egyptian Mythology, who wants to participate in mystery play, meditation and ritual drama, or who wants to experience the mystical level of re-enactment.

Dress code: Long white robe with either a black wick or a Nemhys headdress, and temple sandals.

Where: Kloster Drübeck, Klostergarten 6, 38871 Ilsenburg, Germany

When: We start our weekend retreat on Friday, the 27^th of October 2023 at 19.30 pm. The workshop lasts until October 29^th, 17.00 pm.

Costs:

• The price for the workshop plus the workshop book is € 295,00 Euro, of which a non-returnable deposit of € 150,00 must be paid in forward to ensure your reservation. The payment of the total sum of € 295,00 must be made no later than 30 September 2023; one month before the start of the retreat.  Early birds who complete the payment before August 31 2023, will receive a discount of € 25,00.
• Bed and board, based on a single room for two nights is € 206,00 Euro. Bed and board for a double room is € 338,00 for the weekend. The costs for two nights bed and board (2x breakfast, 2x lunch and 1x supper) have to be paid directly to Kloster Drübeck.

If you cancel less than a month before the workshop, you owe 30% of the total cost to Kloster Drübeck. For this reason we recommend you to take out a travel cancellation insurance.   

Rooms in the monastery are limited to 15 participants. If you book late, you run the risk of having to find an accommodation nearby. We can assist you in booking either the Kloster or another hotel accommodation.

I will soon start a series of webinars called the ‘Hall of the Mountain King’. A series of lessons and meditations about the Minor Arcana of the Tarot. Some sages in the past called the wisdom stored in these images ‘The Beginnings of Wisdom’.

The Tarot is a greatly underestimated training tool. Many see the cards as a tool for fortune telling or as a tool to solve personal problems. But they have no clue how to use the cards, other than picking them at random and let their phantasy run wild.

Initiates of the Western Mystery Tradition know that the cards are keys to unmeasurable treasures of the mind. They are a training tool, an aid to open the mind to the deep layers of meditation. Used in the correct way, the cards train you to apply mental techniques that turn problems into opportunities.

The Tarot is sometimes called ‘The Book of Thoth’, and that is spot-on. The Book of Thoth is an unsurpassed magical treasure, it is the key to important mental powers.

The Book of Thoth is not easy to find and most certainly not easy to handle without the right knowledge:

“The Book is at Koptos in the middle of the river.
In the middle of the river is an iron box,
In the iron box is a bronze box,
In the bronze box is a keté-wood box,
In the keté-wood box is an ivory-and-ebony box,
In the ivory-and-ebony box is a silver box,
In the silver box is a gold box,
And in the gold box is the Book of Thoth.

Round about the great iron box are snakes and scorpions and all manner of crawling things, and above all there is a snake which no man can kill. These are set to guard the Book of Thoth.”

Of course this is all ancient symbolic alchemical language. When you are able to unlock the different boxes – this means that you are able to apply the knowledge from the Book in the correct way – When you are able to read the first page, you will;

 ‘Enchanted the sky, the earth, the abyss, the mountains, and the sea. You can understand the language of birds, fish, and beasts.

When you are able to read the second page, you can:

‘See the sun shining in the sky, with the full moon and the stars, and the great shapes of the Gods themselves; and so strong is the magic that the fishes come up from the darkest depths of the sea.

How to find the Book of Thoth?

How find the Book of Thoth and unlock the different boxes that protect its secrets? Many people are aware that there is ‘something more’ to life, a hidden depth that makes life meaningful and sacred. But first you need to develop the right mindset. With the help of the Minor Arcana cards we will discover these hidden treasures, mental techniques that help to develop your mind to reach the layers of magical an mystical consciousness, who enable you to enchant the ‘fishes’, so that they will come up from the ‘darkest depths of the sea’ of your subconscious mind.

The images of my tarot deck ‘The Book of the Caves’ all serve as a spiritual guidance tool, for establishing sacred space and as an aid to meditation and trance induction.

Every magical image represents the spiritual journey, starting from the outer world into the inner core, through layers. Every tarot card unlocks the cultural spiritual and magical legacy of generations and generations of ancestors. Every one of the cards is accompanied by in-depth meditation exercises and magical techniques. All the cards together tell the story of the Soul that develops and grows towards the Light.

How can I participate?

I have developed a series of webinars. Together we will go through an entire Circle of the Year to experience the energies of the Hall of the Mountain King, card by card, image by image. Every week we will meet on Zoom. This makes it possible for everybody on this globe to participate in this exciting adventure!

In order to make this more accessible for people who want to join, I have divided the webinars in four series of each twelve lessons. In case you miss a lesson, you will always be able to catch up.

Don’t hesitate and enroll for this adventure NOW!!!

---

For Whom  For everyone who wants to deepen their insight into the Western Mystery Tradition and who loves Tarot, Meditation and practical magical work.

What   During twelve hours of webinars about the Minor Arcana, we will journey through the first quarter of the Hall of the Mountain King, plus one hour of individual coaching on your spiritual development.

Where   Via Zoom on Wednesdays, from  19.30 – 20.30 o’clock CEST/CET (Amsterdam time zone).

When   Start October 19 2022. The exact dates of each lesson can be found on the Calendar of the website.

Price per quarter 12 Lessons of each one hour € 269,00 plus one individual coaching session of one hour via Zoom.

Don’t hesitate and enroll for this adventure, and add to basket

 

As many of you know, I am working on my tarot deck ‘The Book of the Caves’. ‘The Book of the Caves’ is an imaginative book that contains 78 magical images. All these images serve as a spiritual guidance tool, for establishing sacred space and as an aid to meditation and trance induction.

Every magical image represents the spiritual journey, starting from the outer world into the inner core, through layers. Every tarot card unlocks the cultural spiritual and magical legacy of generations and generations of ancestors. Every one of the cards is accompanied by in-depth meditation exercises and magical techniques. All the cards together tell the story of the Soul that develops and grows towards the Light.

The Book of the Caves tarot

Each card is an artwork of its own, a focus point for meditations, as well as an altarpiece for rituals. Every tarot card gives access to transformative powers. The cards are keys that open ‘The Gates of Wonder’.  They open gates of your unconscious mind and they give access to an inner realm, where Magic is real and Miracles take place.   This realm is called ‘The Enchanted Land’.  On the roads that run through to the Enchanted Land, you can find magical treasures and can make huge personal transformations. I want to invite you to join me on this adventure.

The Enchanted Land

A magical journey into the Enchanted Land is an exciting adventure, it is a pilgrimage into the sacred realms of your Deep Mind. It starts with an in-depth research into historical texts, it leads to the  miracle that causes your Inner World to open its richness, to start to blossom. The journeys into the Enchanted Land open your mind to Spiritual Pleasures, to miracles and set the flow of inspiration in motion. They bring true magic into your life.

The Hall of the Mountain King

Our journey will take us through the Minor Arcana cards. Although these cards are called ‘Minor’, there is nothing minor about them. Did you know that all the Minor Arcana Cards are connected to constellations of stars? The Minor Arcana cards are important keys to Stellar Mysteries, Magical Grimoires and Egyptian Mysteries. In the Book of the Caves, the Minor Arcana Cards are called ‘The Hall of the Mountain King’.

Despite their cosmic meanings, the magical images of the Hall of the Mountain King are a reality lived. Because of the relationship that exists in the Caves between the outer world (the Universe) and our inner world (the Enchanted Land), every symbol in a tarot card resonates the connection ‘As Above, so Below, as Without, so Within’. They are associated with the subtle body and with aspects of human consciousness.

How can I participate?

I have developed a series of webinars. Together we will go through an entire Circle of the Year to experience the energies of the Hall of the Mountain King, card by card, image by image. Every week we will meet on Zoom. This makes it possible for everybody on this globe to participate in this exiting adventure!

In order to make this more accessible for people who want to join, I have divided the webinars in four series of each twelve lessons. In case you miss a lesson, you will always be able to catch up.

Don’t hesitate and enroll for this adventure NOW!!!

For Whom  For everyone who wants to deepen their insight into the Western Mystery Tradition and who loves Tarot, Meditation and practical magical work.

What   During twelve hours of webinars about the Minor Arcana, we will journey through the first quarter of the Hall of the Mountain King, plus one hour of individual coaching on your spiritual development.

Where   Via Zoom on Wednesdays, from  19.30 – 20.30 o’clock CEST/CET (Amsterdam time zone).

When:   Start October 19 2022. The exact dates of each lesson can be found on the Calendar of the website.

Price per season: 12 Lessons of each one hour € 269,00 plus one individual coaching session of one hour via Zoom.

Add to basket

 

Many of you know that I have been working on a tarot deck, but few have realized that the cards are only a part of the project. What I have been working on is an extensive magical system, that consists of a multileveled Inner Landscape. I have worked out this landscape completely. Every part of the teaching links together Tarot, Astrology, Geomancy, Magical Treasures, Magical Techniques, guided meditations, background theory, historical research and so on.

From now on I will be publishing teachings in the form of video teachings from each between 45 minutes to one hour in length about the different aspects of the Inner Landscape. The video lessons will be published one by one. Each lesson is a complete teaching. Together they will step by step initiate you into the Inner Landscape through which you travel as The Fool, while trying to find your way through the Labyrinth of Life.

In the guided meditation that I publish this week you will learn to know The Fool and start your journey through the Enchanted Lands …

 

The Call for Adventure – Pathworking

‘I like to travel and I always look to see if there are old stories about places I plan to visit. Conversely, a story sometimes makes a seemingly meaningless place interesting to visit. For this reason, I climbed Mount Cadair Idris in Wales. Among the people who climbed this mountain before me are the magician Merlin and the poet Yeats. They wrote that if you spend the night on this mountaintop, you change into a visionary or a poet.

So I decided to follow their footsteps. In my naivety, I assumed that there are worse examples to follow. I thought it might be an interesting journey, not realizing that fools walk in areas that angels wouldn’t dare to tread … So here I am, climbing the so-called Chair of the giant Idris. The mountain is steep; I can hear my breathing getting faster. I climb the sandy path through the pine wood. I inhale the smell of mushrooms evaporating from the moist woods. Every time I touch the branches, the pine trees greet me with their spicy perfume, drifting nebula form fragile veils that filter the sun’s light. When the rays of the sun break through the mists, they create cathedrals of light. The leaves of the trees whirl on the wind, rushing, bowing and receiving the blessings of the elements. They move like dancers, engaged in a whirling duet with the ever-changing forces of nature …’

With these words the Journey of the Fool begins, the start of a series of guided meditations that take you through advanced teachings on the Tarot Cards.

 

 

Hypersensitive people often have inexplicable experiences. Through a sudden spiritual awakening, the Veils-between-the-Worlds open, and the Road to Avalon appears. This mostly comes as a shock and raises the conclusion: “There must be ‘more’ to life!” But how to find this and whom to trust to be my guide at this unusual path? What if New Age spirituality is not an option? Then maybe you want to dive into the legacy of well-trusted adepts from the past and from there find the reliable sources of today; adepts like Carl Gustav Jung, Dion Fortune, Isaac Newton and Rudolf Steiner, how where they trained?

Join us on a journey into one of the most underestimated training programs for high sensitive people; the Grail Tradition. Enter the Grail Castle through the Gates of Wonder and learn to develop your psychic  and magical skills, by Merlin of Britain and the enchanting Morgaine le Faye. Identify with the knights and ladies, join us at the mythical Round Table and learn directly from the Fay how to enter into the Magical Otherworld: Learn from Nimue to listen for her teachings in the sounds of running rivers, become enchanted by Merlin’s voice rushing in the Winds. Witness the Interior Stars rising one by one, feel how your life gradually changes into an Enchanted Land.

Explore your Inner Kingdom and search for the magical treasures hidden there. This is both a solo journey and an adventure taken on as a Fellowship. Do you dare to look into the magical mirror of the Lady of the Lake and discover how extraordinary your life can become? Drink from the overflowing Grail Chalice and change your hypersensitivity into a blessing. Join us and experience Merlin’s Secrets!

FOR WHOM: It’s for everyone who wants to develop their sensitive talents into a valuable tool.
WHERE: the Eulenburg in 37520 Osterode, right at the border at the enigmatic Harz mountains in Germany.
WHAT: We will spend the weekend building a solid theoretical background to explore using guided meditation exercises and even ritual drama to explore the Arthurian mythological landscape to experience the wealth of our inner vision.
WHEN: Start August 19th Friday evening 20.00 – 22.00, Saturday 20th from 10.00 – 22.00, Sunday 21th from 10.00 until + 17.00 o’clock.
PRICE: € 295,00 handouts, coffee, tea and one Magical Banquet included.

We can assist you in finding fitting accommodation near the workshop site in various price ranges. The places for this unique event are limited, so don’t hesitate!

Due to the Corona pandemic we have discovered the benefit of teaching by means of weekly webinars. For this reason we have included this way of teaching in our program. The series of webinars are called “The Digital Journey”. It is an adventure into the classical Mysteries that starts with the famous words that were once written above the Temples in ancient Greece:

Know Thyself

is the adagio that was written above many Temples for ages. But knowing yourself is only the start of the journey of becoming an Initiate of the Mysteries! It was written above the entrance of the Temple. After having passed this doorway into the Mysteries the so called Great Work begins…

It sounds so awesome! A heroic goal for a distant future. Many are attracted to the glamour side of the Mysteries: the incense, the crystals, the magical potions and spells: and not to forget the promised Powers. Many forget that the Great Work means … work!

Too often the Mysteries are used as an escape route to flee from life’s difficulties such as problems in relations, unbalanced mental states, work and money related problems etc. Many approach the Mysteries with the desire to get access to spells to fix their issues. They feel the need to take control and power without knowing how this works. The solution is not to add magic to an existing imbalance.

The Great Work is a Call to Action:

Heal Thyself!

Many people know the Hermetic Adagio “As Above, So Below”. But do you realize there is also a relation between the Truth Inside and the effects this Inner State has on your life? If your head is a mess, what is your life like?
The Mysteries also say:

As Within So Without

Heal Thyself… but how to do this? And what is the role of the magical potions and spells to achieve this? During the Digital Journey we will be working on a broad variation of topics all connected to the Tree of Life, the Tarot, Astrology, Alchemy, Mythology etc. We will focus on the Mysteries of Healing that are enclosed in the sacred teachings of all ages.

We meet weekly during a semester. Every semester consists of a series of 20 webinars. We will do meditation exercises, work with arts and crafts, explore theoretical backgrounds and dig into actual topics that are of interest to the Mysteries.

Everyone is interested in the Sacred Teachings of All ages is welcome to enroll for this program. All the exercises and homework of the Digital Journey are additional to any other program of our school.

I am looking forward to meeting you online soon!

---

Dates: For the actual dates look up the Calendar on the website

Place: Zoom on Wednesdays 19.30 – 20.30 o’clock CET/CEST (Amsterdam time zone)

Price: 20 Lessons of one hour € 430,00

 

While we are all still enduring the stress of the pandemic we are going through for over a year now I want to tell you a little bit about some of the important strategic choices Initiates in the Hermetic Mysteries apply to their lives:

We all deal with difficult times in our lives, there are no exceptions and no free rides. There is only one guarantee in your life, and that is the fact that you will die in the end. Nobody knows when it comes and under what circumstances, but that it will come is a fact.

The First Choice: Become fearless

The first strategic choice that an Initiate makes is to stop being afraid for death. Some people may believe that there is an afterlife, or that reincarnation exists, others firmly believe that there is no-thing; their answers are ideas or beliefs and only few who are still alive are able to look behind those veils… so choose an option that you feel comfortable with: there is no scientific proof to keep you from deciding for yourself.

The Second Choice: Learn how to navigate

The real question is: if the end of your life is a fact, how do you spend your time in the meantime?
The answer is: To enhance the quality of the NOW.
How do you do this?
Life is like a vast ocean and sometimes the waters are calm, at other times you will need to ride the rough waves. The challenge at those stormy times is to keep your boat on track, to stay on top of the waves and to prevent it from capsizing. The Mystery Teachings train you in ‘sailing lessons’: they prepare you to conquer even the worst storms!

By teaching you the ‘sailing lessons’ we coach you in such a way that conquering the waves becomes a second nature to you. The techniques teach you:

• Learn to look inside,
• Acknowledge what is there
• and heal what hurts by learning the lessons and cause the necessary changes.

The Third Choice: I come to know in order to Serve

The first and the second choice enable you to solidify your basis, the third choice is to invest in MEANING: Investigate how everything you experience serves a higher goal. There is a Light of Goodness in every experience. To search for that Light – regardless of your circumstances – is a method to keep yourself sane and energized under all circumstances. Then you decide how this Light can contribute to the Good of All.

This leads to the third strategic choice: “I come to know in order to Serve”. By making this choice you have shifted your consciousness from ‘What is in it for me’ to providing your unique contribution to the community, to the planet and bring that Light into dark places. Working and living according to this principle will enable you to work with passion and will make your life meaningful. You will begin to experience that you receive inspiration and vision.

The Digital Argo’s Journey

In order to take these Sailing Lessons you need to have a boat. The Argo was the mysterious boat that brought the Greek heroes of antiquity to the Earth to fulfill their highest mission. The Digital Argo is our international online group training. We meet weekly through webinars. Together we make this amazing Inner Journey by participating in the teaching, practicing the exercises and implementing the techniques in our daily life.

You are welcome to join us on Wednesday evenings from 19.30 to 20.30 CET.

• When you have worked together with us in the past, you can enroll by sending us an email.
• When you are new to the work of the Academy for Hermetic Arts and Sciences, please drop us an email to introduce yourself and we will make an appointment to see whether our expectations meet.

Place: Online webinar
Time: Wednesday evenings from 19.30 to 20.30 CET. Start February 17, 2021
Price: for the semester based on 20 group lessons of one hour is € 415,00

The Inner Journey

When the time for the Digital Argo Journey does not fit you, or you prefer individual coaching, you can also apply for the Inner Journey. You can read more about the Inner Journey here.
Apply by dropping us an email to introduce yourself and explain your motivation and we will make an appointment to see whether our expectations meet.

Place: Online coaching
Time: on appointment
Price: for the semester based on 10 individual lessons of 30 minutes plus a course book € 333.50

I hope to meet you there
In LVX
Ina

Coming Sunday, July 12, we meet again at the last edition of the FREE webinars. This time we are going to bring together the work what we have been doing. The Mirror of Hathor is the magical tool the Goddess of Love gave us to learn to know ourselves. When the Light of Love is lit deliberately and with intention, the Inner Self becomes empowered.

Coming Sunday is the last of the free webinars. Coming autumn we will again be gathering online for a brand-new and very interesting series of meetings. We are going on a hunt for Magical Treasures. Watch my newsletter and my website to stay informed!

Coming Sunday we are going to build on the work we did last time. But in case you missed us last week; it is still possible to attend these meetings.

What you need:

• The colored candles  white – red – orange – yellow – green – turquoise –  blue violet and white
• Fire
• A hand mirror

Love, Light and Health
Ina

Webinar

• Date: Sunday, July 12
• Time: 19.30 PM Central European Summer Time (CEST = Amsterdam)
  For people who live outside of Europe, please pay attention to the time zone. I noticed that there are people who try to join our meetings one hour too late; the Academy for Hermetic Arts and Sciences is located in the Netherlands, that means that we are in the Central European Summer Time zone (CEST) and that is one hour ahead of London.
• You need to register at zoom.us once and allow the Zoom client for meetings to install
• When you want to stay informed about our weekly webinars, please subscribe to our newsletter!

Coming Sunday, July 5, we meet again at the 15^th edition of the FREE webinars. This time we are going ignite the Light of Memory. It is also called the Light of Knowledge.

Knowledge differs from Wisdom in the sense that Knowledge is the result of lived experience. This evening we are going to contact our Ancestors. Their lived experience can be a powerful resource of sane advice in times where we have no example to solve a rare issue.
Coming Sunday we will discuss the important spiritual skill of Contacting the Ancestral Knowledge and apply this in our modern world.

We will be building on the work we did last time. But in case you missed us last week; it is still possible to attend these meetings.

What you need:

• A candle in an violet glass, so that the light of the candle becomes coloured violet
• Fire
• A hand mirror
• A small violet semiprecious gemstone

Love, Light and Health
Ina

Webinar

• Date: Sunday, July 5
• Time: 19.30 PM Central European Summer Time (CEST = Amsterdam)
  For people who live outside of Europe, please pay attention to the time zone. I noticed that there are people who try to join our meetings one hour too late; the Academy for Hermetic Arts and Sciences is located in the Netherlands, that means that we are in the Central European Summer Time zone (CEST) and that is one hour ahead of London.
• You need to register at zoom.us once and allow the Zoom client for meetings to install
• When you want to stay informed about our weekly webinars, please subscribe to our newsletter!

Coming Sunday, June 28,  we meet again at the 14^th edition of the FREE webinars. This time we are going to ignite the Lamp of Power.

A lot of people long for power, but with that power also comes responsibility. How do you handle power safely? Sunday we talk about how to apply the important spiritual skill of Transformation to grow in power.

We will be building on the work we did last time. But in case you missed us last week; it is still possible to attend these meetings.

What you need:

• A candle in an orange glass, so that the light of the candle becomes coloured orange
• Fire
• A hand mirror
• A small orange semiprecious gemstone

Love, Light and Health
Ina

Webinar

• Date: Sunday, June 28
• Time: 19.30 PM Central European Summer Time (CEST = Amsterdam)
  For people who live outside of Europe, please pay attention to the time zone. I noticed that there are people who try to join our meetings one hour too late; the Academy for Hermetic Arts and Sciences is located in the Netherlands, that means that we are in the Central European Summer Time zone (CEST) and that is one hour ahead of London.
• You need to register at zoom.us once and allow the Zoom client for meetings to install
• When you want to stay informed about our weekly webinars, please subscribe to our newsletter!

Coming Sunday, June 21,  we meet again at the 13^th edition of the FREE webinars. This time we are going ignite the Light of Truth. It is also called the light of Sacrifice.

The word “Sacrifice” has gradually gotten a negative meaning. But the original meaning is Sacri-fice; making something Sacred through transformation. Coming Sunday we will discuss the important spiritual skill of Transformation with the help of the Light of Truth.

We will be building on the work we did last time. But in case you missed us last week; it is still possible to attend these meetings.

What you need:

• A candle in a yellow glass, so that the light of the candle becomes coloured yellow
• Fire
• A hand mirror
• A small yellow semiprecious gemstone

Love, Light and Health
Ina

Webinar

• Date: Sunday, June 21
• Time: 19.30 PM Central European Summer Time (CEST = Amsterdam)
  For people who live outside of Europe, please pay attention to the time zone. I noticed that there are people who try to join our meetings one hour too late; the Academy for Hermetic Arts and Sciences is located in the Netherlands, that means that we are in the Central European Summer Time zone (CEST) and that is one hour ahead of London.
• You need to register at zoom.us once and allow the Zoom client for meetings to install
• When you want to stay informed about our weekly webinars, please subscribe to our newsletter!

Coming Sunday, June 14,  we meet again at the 12^th edition of the FREE webinars. This time we are going to ignite the Lamp of Wisdom. With this light you will get access to the sources of Universal Knowledge that our ancestors visited before us. When the Light of Wisdom is lit, the Inner Self connects itself to the Insights the Universe sends us as sparks of illumination.

Learn the Secret that is connected to the Everburning Lamp of the Mysteries and use this unique opportunity to connect yourself to this Source of Wisdom so that you can consult it every time you need it in the future.

Coming Sunday we are going to build on the work we did last time. But in case you missed us last week; it is still possible to attend these meetings.

What you need:

• A candle in a blue glass, so that the light of the candle becomes coloured blue
• Fire
• A hand mirror
• A small blue semiprecious gemstone

Love, Light and Health
Ina

Webinar

• Date: Sunday, June 14
• Time: 19.30 PM Central European Summer Time (CEST = Amsterdam)
  For people who live outside of Europe, please pay attention to the time zone. I noticed that there are people who try to join our meetings one hour too late; the Academy for Hermetic Arts and Sciences is located in the Netherlands, that means that we are in the Central European Summer Time zone (CEST) and that is one hour ahead of London.
• You need to register at zoom.us once and allow the Zoom client for meetings to install
• When you want to stay informed about our weekly webinars, please subscribe to our newsletter!

Coming Sunday, June 7, we meet again at the 11^th edition of the FREE webinars. This time we are going ignite the Lamp of Love. When the Light of Love is lit deliberately and with intention, the Inner Self becomes empowered.
 
It is very important to be good friends with your Inner Self because it is an endless and incredible source of power. The Mystery Schools literally have hundreds of different techniques to empower your Inner Self and help you to manifest your goals in the world ethically.

Coming Sunday we are going to build on the work we did last time. But in case you missed us last week; it is still possible to attend these meetings.


What you need:

• A candle in a green glass, so that the light of the candle becomes coloured green
• Fire
• A hand mirror
• A small white semiprecious gemstone

Love, Light and Health
Ina

Webinar

• Date: Sunday, June 7
• Time: 19.30 PM Central European Summer Time (CEST = Amsterdam)
  For people who live outside of Europe, please pay attention to the time zone. I noticed that there are people who try to join our meetings one hour too late; the Academy for Hermetic Arts and Sciences is located in the Netherlands, that means that we are in the Central European Summer Time zone (CEST) and that is one hour ahead of London.
• You need to register at zoom.us once and allow the Zoom client for meetings to install
• When you want to stay informed about our weekly webinars, please subscribe to our newsletter!

Coming Sunday we meet at the 10^th edition of the FREE webinars. It is Pentecost and that means that we are doing something that links into the high energy of this sacred day.

The theme will be “Know Thyself”, this adagio that was written above the doors of the ancient Mystery Temples.

Maybe you think:

• “This is an open door, I already know myself, who doesn’t?”

But there is much more to it than meets the eye: once you know yourself, what do you do with that information? Is it an excuse to say:

• “I don’t have self-esteem, I was not born with that talent.”
• “I don’t feel self-love, nobody of my family has it.”

The Mystery Schools have literally hundreds of different techniques to work with your Inner Self.

Coming Sunday, Pentecost evening we will start with one of these exercises, and to that end you need to bring a hand mirror to the meeting.

What you need:

• A candle in a lantern (you can use the candle of last week, or use a fresh one)
• Fire
• A hand mirror

Love, Light and Health
Ina

Webinar

• Date: Sunday, May 31
• Time: 19.30 PM Central European Summer Time (CEST = Amsterdam)
  For people who live outside of Europe, please pay attention to the time zone. I noticed that there are people who try to join our meetings one hour too late; the Academy for Hermetic Arts and Sciences is located in the Netherlands, that means that we are in the Central European Summer Time zone (CEST) and that is one hour ahead of London.
• You need to register at zoom.us once and allow the Zoom client for meetings to install
• When you want to stay informed about our weekly webinars, please subscribe to our newsletter!

Unfortunately I had to postpone the meeting of last Sunday due to computer problems. My excuses for all those who tried to login in vain. The computer issues are fixed now, so the topic planned for last week will be our focal point coming Sunday. So what’s on the plate?

While we are gradually opening up our societies, we get a view on the damage done to our economies. A lot of people will discover that what appeared to be a certainty, will have vanished overnight. Companies will become insolvent, people lose their income, are not able to pay their bills, with all the consequences…

How are we going to overcome these dangers and where can we find help to get passed these difficulties?

Coming Sunday May 24 we will continue the journey that now will take us to the Clashing Rocks. Prepare yourself by taking your lantern with you, if you have one; a compass. And a feather, preferably from a dove: and one coin. No ordinary one, a special one for a special goal!

You need a few items to prepare yourself for this. If you are not able to get all the items yourself, you can still join us and benefit from the experience.

What you need:

• A candle in a lantern (you can use the candle of last week, or use a fresh one)
• Fire
• A feather (of a dove)
• Compass
• A coin

Love, Light and Health
Ina

Webinar

• Date: Sunday, May 24
• Time: 19.30 PM Central European Summer Time (CEST = Amsterdam)
  For people who live outside of Europe, please pay attention to the time zone. I noticed that there are people who try to join our meetings one hour too late; the Academy for Hermetic Arts and Sciences is located in the Netherlands, that means that we are in the Central European Summer Time zone (CEST) and that is one hour ahead of London.
• You need to register at zoom.us once and allow the Zoom client for meetings to install
• When you want to stay informed about our weekly webinars, please subscribe to our newsletter!

While we are gradually opening up our societies, we get a view on the damage done to our economies. A lot of people will discover that what appeared to be a certainty, will have vanished overnight. Companies will become insolvent, people lose their income, are not able to pay their bills, with all the consequences…

How are we going to overcome these dangers and where can we find help to get passed these difficulties?

Coming Sunday May 17 we will continue the journey that now will take us to the Clashing Rocks. Prepare yourself by taking your lantern with you, if you have one; a compass. And a feather, preferably from a dove.

You need a few items to prepare yourself for this. If you are not able to get all the items yourself, you can still join us and benefit from the experience.

What you need:

• A candle in a lantern (you can use the candle of last week, or use a fresh one)
• Fire
• A feather (of a dove)
• Compass

Love, Light and Health
Ina

Webinar

• Date: Sunday, May 17
• Time: 19.30 PM Central European Summer Time (CEST = Amsterdam)
  For people who live outside of Europe, please pay attention to the time zone. I noticed that there are people who try to join our meetings one hour too late; the Academy for Hermetic Arts and Sciences is located in the Netherlands, that means that we are in the Central European Summer Time zone (CEST) and that is one hour ahead of London.
• You need to register at zoom.us once and allow the Zoom client for meetings to install
• When you want to stay informed about our weekly webinars, please subscribe to our newsletter!

We have another week of lockdown ahead of us. In the Netherlands the safety measures are lifted just a little bit, maybe in your country too? A critical phase. Can we discipline ourselves enough to make this spark of freedom into a window of opportunities? For a successful journey towards a healthy society, it remains necessary to restrain ourselves and keep on travelling on full alert. The journey appears to become easier, it may seem that we can soon return to ‘normal’, but that is an illusion.

This week’s meditation takes us through the Magical Moors. A journey with different challenges and other dangers than we have conquered so far.

Coming Sunday May 10 we will continue the journey that takes us through the Magical Moors. Prepare yourself by taking your lantern with you, because for this journey you will need to bring your Inner Light.

You need a few items to prepare yourself for this. If you are not able to get all the items yourself, you can still join us and benefit from the experience.

What you need:

• A candle (you can use the candle of last week, or use a fresh one)
• Fire

Love, Light and Health
Ina

Webinar

• Date: Sunday, May 10
• Time: 19.30 PM Central European Summer Time (CEST = Amsterdam)
  For people who live outside of Europe, please pay attention to the time zone. I noticed that there are people who try to join our meetings one hour too late; the Academy for Hermetic Arts and Sciences is located in the Netherlands, that means that we are in the Central European Summer Time zone (CEST) and that is one hour ahead of London.
• You need to register at zoom.us once and allow the Zoom client for meetings to install
• When you want to stay informed about our weekly webinars, please subscribe to our newsletter!

Click here to see the video at YouTube

How are you doing during this long lockdown? In the beginning of the pandemic there was a fearful excitement everywhere. It was frightening, new, unexpected and we all needed to adjust very quickly.

Now the crisis lasts longer and we are approaching another level of stress and mental pressure, the risk is that it will creep under your skin. We observe the first signs of what the mental pressure does to people. We are beginning to see what weeks of isolation means for the mind: outbreaks of aggression, protests against the  emergency laws, suspicion about the motives of governments, fear to lose our freedom and democracy. A big question hovers above our heads: “When and how will this end?”

During other crises, Initiates of the Mysteries developed and applied mental techniques to stay sane. They left us techniques to stay mentally healthy during crises and long periods of isolation. At the Sunday evenings we are working together for several weeks now to provide you with a toolkit of mental techniques to help you to get through it.

Coming Sunday May 3 we will continue the work on the Seed of Hope. If you joined us some weeks ago you will now have a magical flower pot with some sprouts coming out of the soil. Take that flower pot with you during this meditation. If you don’t have that, then simply fill a pot with soil and put some flower seeds in the soil and take it with you to work with during the meditation.

We meet coming Sunday evening on Zoom for a meditation and to keep up the good spirits during this time of stress and disease. For people who live outside of Europe, please pay attention to the time zone. I noticed that there are people who try to join our meetings one hour too late; the Academy for Hermetic Arts and Sciences is located in the Netherlands, that means that we are in the Central European Summer Time zone (CEST) and that is one hour ahead of London.

You need a few items to prepare yourself for this. If you are not able to get all the items yourself, you can still join us and benefit from the experience.

What you need:

• A candle (you can use the candle of last week, or use a fresh one)
• Fire
• Flower box with soil and seeds

Love, Light and Health
Ina

Webinar

• Date: Sunday, April 26
• Time: 19.30 PM Central European Summer Time (CEST = Amsterdam)
• You need to register at zoom.us once and allow the Zoom client for meetings to install
• When you want to stay informed about our weekly webinars, please subscribe to our newsletter!
  

Coming Sunday April 26 we will talk about what spiritual abilities are essential in times of crisis, why you need them and how to apply them. We will also practice one of these techniques: the Exercise of the Flaming Heart. It is a technique that helps you to develop compassion and opens you to all the good and soft sides of the people around you.

Let us meet Sunday evening on Zoom for a meditation and keep up the good spirits during this time of stress and disease.

You need a few items to prepare yourself for this. If you are not able to get all the items yourself, you can still join us and benefit from the experience.

What you need:

• A candle (you can use the candle of last week, or use a fresh one)
• Fire

Love, Light and Health
Ina

Webinar

• Date: Sunday, April 26
• Time: 19.30 PM Central European Summer Time (CEST = Amsterdam)
• You need to register at zoom.us once and allow the Zoom client for meetings to install
• When you want to stay informed about our weekly webinars, please subscribe to our newsletter!
  

If you like our Sunday meditations, you might also like The Inner Journey.

In times of illnesses our ancestors worked together with those spiritual beings that are specialized in different types of healing. They left for us a broad spectrum of methods to help and comfort us in times of great need. These forces are still available to us! Among them are healing gods, saints and angels and all healing forces fall under the jurisdiction of the Archangel Raphael.

As in the previous weeks we will organize an online meeting that is open for everyone who wants to join us in our healing work. We will raise energies to provide solace during these challenging times and direct these energies to those in need. We do this for ourselves, for our loved ones, for the world in general.

Coming Sunday we will invoke the Archangel Raphael and some specific helpers  who can help when somebody we know and love falls ill.

As in the previous meetings you need to prepare some basic items:

• A candle (you can use the candle of last week, or use a fresh one)
• Fire
• A representation or a picture of a crown

Love, Light and Health
Ina

Webinar

• Date: Sunday, April 19
• Time: 19.30 PM Central European Summer Time (CEST = Amsterdam)
• You need to register at zoom.us once and allow the Zoom client for meetings to install
• When you want to stay informed about our weekly webinars, please subscribe to our newsletter!

Coming Sunday April 12 the Christian world celebrates Easter, it is their most important religious feast. The theme of the Christian stories connected to this feast are the Sacrificial Death and the Resurrection of the Sacred King.

The power of mythical stories is that they explain the nature of patterns that we  experience in our life. The myths connected to Easter give us a special view on the world wide crisis that we all have to deal with.

Coming Sunday we will focus our weekly meditation on the Sacrifice of the Sacred King. The archetypical King has many names in different mythologies: he has been called Osiris, Christ, the Fisher King to name a few.

One of the themes the myth of the Fisher King teaches us is:

The King and the Land are one.

But who is the King and what is the Land?

Many stories predate Christianity, together they teach us the existence of a natural cycle, they bring hope and comfort and they teach us the important themes we need to contemplate to find our way out of the worldwide pandemic.

Let us meet Sunday evening on Zoom for a meditation and keep up the good spirits during this time of stress and disease.

You need a few items to prepare yourself for this. If you are not able to get all the items yourself, you can still join us and benefit from the experience.

What you need:

• A candle (you can use the candle of last week, or use a fresh one)
• Fire
• A small cardboard box or a small terra cotta pot filled with soil
• Flower seeds

Love, Light and Health
Ina

Webinar

• Date: Sunday, April 12
• Time: 19.30 PM Central European Summer Time (CEST = Amsterdam)
• You need to register at zoom.us once and allow the Zoom client for meetings to install
• When you want to stay informed about our weekly webinars, please subscribe to our newsletter!

We have had a little problem with the newsletter, so I am very sorry when you did not get the newsletter or get it twice 😉 . We do our best to get everyone informed about our Sunday evening meetings.

Coming Sunday April 5 we will meet on Zoom again for a meditation to keep up the good spirits during this time of stress and disease.

We will be doing an online ritual to spread light, healing and energy for ourselves and those around us.

You need a few items to prepare yourself for this. If you are not able to get all the items yourself, you can still join us and benefit from the experience.

What you need:

During the first part of the webinar I will explain what we will be doing, in the second part of the webinar we will be doing the online ritual.

These meetings are open to all who subscribe to our newsletter.

Love, Light and Health
Ina

Webinar

• Date: Sunday, April 5
• Time: 19.30 PM Central European Summer Time (CEST = Amsterdam)
• Meet us at  www.zoom.us
• When you want to stay informed about our weekly webinars, please subscribe to our newsletter!

While Pandora’s Box is still opening, we look into the ugly face of a worldwide disease. Corona is spreading herself over the world. We realize that we are vulnerable, that our health is a treasure. That we share a responsibility to take care of ourselves and our vulnerable family members, friends, neighbors and colleagues.

We also feel an increasing need for comfort, for solace and for directions, but under these circumstances we are not allowed to touch each other; a kiss can bring disease and even death!

We are forced to go in quarantine and we face an unfamiliar Silence. How often did we seek her company? Do we fear her, or does she offer opportunities? The Chinese word for crisis has a double meaning: it means both chaos and opportunity. Coming Sunday I will teach you an ancient method to go into the Silence and to find your way to the Fountain of Hope, a place of Silence, Solace and Solitude.

Love, Light and Health
Ina

Webinar:

Date: Sunday, March 29
Time: 19.30 PM Central European Summer Time (CEST = Amsterdam)

When you want to stay informed about our weekly webinars, please subscribe to our newsletter!

It has been a while ago since you heard from me. I have been withdrawn a little bit from the internet lately. But these are strange times. The developing Corona pandemic is causing a lot of fear, uncertainty and stress. Everyone is asked for their expertise to solve this crisis. So it is important for me now to break the silence, offer my two cents and reach out to you.

We live in a time when Pandora has opened her box, it releases uncertainty and fear. We worry we could lose our jobs. We are insecure whether official information can be trusted. We can lose our health and our loved ones, even our lives …  In anticipation of possible horror scenarios we hoard … toilet paper???

It is a time of transformation. I deeply feel that Mother Earth wants us to change direction. It is as if Gaia pushes us through a new and narrow birth canal, towards an unknown future, that will look completely different from where we are right now. What is the deeper meaning of this crisis? How do we cope with the uncertainties that lie ahead of us?

During this time of transformation we will face all kinds of unknown scenarios that we cannot even imagine today. This is going to become a turning point in history. During this time of change we need the wisdom of the spiritual community. In order to become an effective force, we need to free our minds from paranoia and open up to the Bigger Plan of the Planetary Spirit. When Pandora opens her box, we need to find hope, we need to become resilient and connect as a community!

In order to do so, let us join forces and come together to learn techniques that develop the Higher Skills of the mind. Techniques that enable you to fight your fear and stress, to feel the protection and support of the community and to connect us to the Fountain of Hope, where all solutions whirl up from deep resources.

In order to achieve this, I organize a series of FREE webinars on Zoom.us. We will come together for weekly meditations. They will help you to stay calm and become resilient, and a source of comfort and support to those around you.

I am looking forward to meeting you there!

In LVX
Ina
 

How to participate:

• We meet weekly at Sunday evenings, starting on March 29 at 19.30 PM Central European Summer Time (CEST = Amsterdam) for a webinar at Zoom.us
• You need to be subscribed to the email list to receive the weekly links and passwords for the webinar
• You need to download and install the Zoom client before the meeting (once)
• At this moment we have 100 places available.
  
  

Last week I worked at the renovation of my painting ‘Sekhmet when she dances’ and finished the workbook, this morning I red Aaron Leitch’s post about his concerns about the situation of the world, and this very night I had THAT dream again. It is time to write this post:

I have a repetitive dream about today’s world: In the dream I am approached by a group of spirits that are involved with the protection of the harmony of the world. They warn me that today’s world is ruled by criminals, who use every weapon and method they can think of to destroy opponents to remain in power. In my dream I was told that we are no longer ruled by politicians who represent ‘the people’, but by huge money grabbing globalist individuals and companies who have their plans to ‘patent’ food, drinking water, medication etc. The people who run those companies lack empathy and compassion and are dangerous predators whose only goals are expansion of their powers at all costs. THEY are the cause of poverty, wars, pollution of the planet and the natural disaster, that is slowly becoming visible for the greater group of people.

Continue reading “Sekhmet when she dances”

While I am developing the Tarot Cards, I collect notes from everywhere. I have got several notebooks full with drawings, exercises and realizations. While I am working at each card I do experiments, I test every working.

It is a very inspiring journey for me, with a lot of unexpected adventures and realizations. I discover a wealthy world full of gems; hidden wisdom, a richness described in many sacred texts. In even my wildest dreams I never thought of being able to dig that up in myself.

The wealth that I reveal is far more rich than I dared to dream of before I started this journey. I discovered the Earthlight, a priceless treasure that illuminates every aspect of life and reveals the sacred spiritual teaching in every thing and in every being, a secret jealously guarded by the initiates of all ages …

 

As an author I regularly notice how other people sometimes use my texts without giving me the credits for it. In some cases complete pages are copied and pasted without naming me as the source. The copycats think they are smart but they don’t realise that the energy is not the same when they re-use my energy.

The creative process is unique per definition. Without connecting to your own roots and sources, the end result looks twisted and unreal.

I give myself solace with the knowledge that there is nothing compatible with the creative process itself. The ability to reach those heights of inspiration, the experiences of exalting beauty that it raises. The changes in your inner world that it causes, the inner ritches, happiness, beauty inside. The outer work is but a residue of what happens on the inside. That is something no one can steal. The knowledge of how to get to that inner place is the real secret, because you connect you to a source inside that cannot dry out; that knowledge can never be stolen, it can only be achieved by work, work, work!

 

Today I am preparing the upcoming Temple Training. It is such a joy to be able to dig so intensively in beauty, because coming Sunday we will be investigating the Orphic Path; the Orphic Path is the spiritual path that works with beauty, nature symbolism and art.

Among the Western Mysteries there are beautiful mythological stories that contain hidden shamanistic techniques. The stories are world famous, but their transformational powers are forgotten by the greater public.

The stories are very evocative and that is the reason why great artists took them as their source of inspiration to create the most beautiful art: here the line between temple work and theatre becomes very thin. An example of such a story is Orfeo ed Euridice, Gluck wrote an opera around this ancient Greek myth.

Coming Sunday we are going to work with this beautiful story. I will be explaining the magical technique that is hidden in the story and we will work with it. I call this type of work Transpersonal Magic; it is a crossover between modern therapeutically techniques with ancient magical healing techniques.

The picture above is taken at a performance of Orfeo ed Euridice, it is taken when the Dance of the Furies was performed. Orfeo meets them in the underworld on his search for his beloved deceased Euridice. They challenge him to face his own fears. Something we also need to do when we want to outgrow our blockages.

When he finally has freed his beloved Euridice from the Underworld the most dangerous and difficult challenge needs to be over won;
Don’t look back, don’t look back, don’t look back!

When you are curious about this work, you can apply for an introduction meeting here

At this moment I am working at the Magical Treasures of the Cave of the Fool – The Child from the Deep Waters. I am gathering my information, desciding on the material to create the Fool’s magical pouch. Everything is quiet around me, I experience a serene rest, the right circumstances to do creative work and becoming absorbed in the magical process of contacting the right energies.

‘Do you want to visit a village?’ my husband invites me to go for a walk.
I think I can need a distraction, creating these boxes is most of the time an inside job, in the house and in a visionairy state. I could use some fresh air and a nice walk to stretch my muscles.
‘Where do you want to go?’ I ask him.
‘I have heard that Ghent is a beautiful mediaeval city, I would like to visit it’.
‘That sounds interesting’, I answer and off we go.

Ghent is at a 1,5 hours distance from Rotterdam. We go there on a windy sunny day. We walk around in the center and along the canals. We admire the old fashioned houses, windows beautifully decorated with statues; what a love these ancient builders put into their work. I realise that this was made by hand and only with very primitive materials.

Along the walk the thought crosses my mind whether this small journey will give me additional information about the tarotcard The Fool and about the Cave: The Child of the Deep Waters.
‘I will show you, don’t worry’, a trusted voice speaks in my head.
‘Now I am really curious’, I think, I cannot imagine what He has planned.

We walk along the canals, we visit the old castle in the middle of the town. In my mind I fill in the details in every room; this is where they had dinner, this is where they stored their food. I see how it was both a place for a family to live, and a fortification for the village to offer shelter in times of an attack. Going down the dungeons I discover the reason why the tourist shop of the castle sells little ghosts; my god this place is haunted!

Then we sit down near the Fish Market to drink a cup of coffee and I point out to my husband the beautiful statue of Poseidon with his Dolphins.

‘Still no Fool’, I think…
‘Don’t underestimate me,’ the answer is.

We continue our walk, now on the way back to pick up the car, when a strong ghust of wind pushes us around a corner. Then I see it, the Mason’s Guild Hall, with on the roof ….. my eyes become big, I gasp for breath, feel goose bumps all over:
‘Is six fools dancing on the wind enough confirmation for you? Count on it, the Cave is activated.’ and I hear a hilarious laughter.

Today I am contemplating the quality of the materials I am going to use for my products in the Magical Treasure Boxes. I am looking at my stock of beeswax. This is such an interesting material; by choosing this for some of the items, I support the bees and the people who take care of them. The question I am asking myself is: ‘Can I avoid the use of lesser quality materials such as palm oil?’ The demand for palmoil is one of  the reasons why big companies are cutting down rain forests and cause gorilla’s to loose their natural habitat.

The choice of materials is a delicate balance between availability, quality and price. But it is also a statement. If it is true that big companies are overtaking the power of governments, then you vote as a consumer in the supermarket, with your wallet: instead of at the elections. This is something I am very conscious about.

I think the temples should pay attentention to environmental issues because we work with nature symbolism. We read about the ancient methods of producing products where spirituality and sustainability was an integrated part of the production of goods: Ora et Labora, pray and work at the same time.

Yes we can use the cheep paraffin tealights in our ceremonies, they also produce beautiful light. But where and when is it possible to make better choices? Maybe we need to do this step by step, research what the better choice is, and if affordable make the nature friendly choice.

So I decided to approach this issue with a little affirmation in my head:

I MAKE THE BEST POSSIBLE CHOICE
UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES I AM IN,
AND TO THE BEST OF MY KNOWLEDGE

I am very curious to hear from you if you recognize this dilemma in your life and how you deal with it?

 

 

I hear the call of the Queen Bee
and I awaken from my slumber
‘It is time to start our collective mission
to feed the Hungry Ones with Milk and Honey’

Today I will be working at the development of the tarotcard the Fool. The Cave of the Fool is connected to Air of the Wise. I always associate Air of the Wise to the Golden Breath. The Golden Breath is an experience; you experience it at those moments, that it is as if a golden glow illuminates everything that is valuable to you. When this happens, life is good, mysterious, meaningful and beautiful. It is a sign of health; did you know that the psychologist Maslow investigated this? He called these moments ‘peak experiences’, and stated that the more healthy people are, the more often they have peak experiences. Magicians know that you can train your mind to luxate peak experiences at will.

I am very happy with wat came with the post. I ordered some super high quality prints of my tarot card The Fool. The images are printed on alluminium and are going to serve as votive images in my second Magical Treasure Box.

One by one I peel off the protecting foil and I take them to my altar to consecrate them. After I have done that I put a wax seal on them and sign them.

 

Awaken from the dull state:
Collect your peak moments daily,
as if they are precious flowers.
This will turn your life into a place of beauty,
and you become aware
Of the Presence of the Spirit of the Deep.

Ina Custers-van Bergen

 

 

[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section]

QUESTION TO YOU;
I am very curious; what are your sources of inspiration and power? For me personally it is digging into the old mysteries and live them. Every day – no matter what I need to do – I spend half an hour to meditate upon the old Wisdom Texts and I integrate the outcome of my realisations in my life.

DO YOU RECOGNISE THIS?
I experience these moments as true divine gifts: suddenly the world shows its beauty. I have those moments when I am writing, when I am creating art, in ritual, outside in nature. ..

Do you recognise this, when the doors of beauty open? I am really curious to learn how you experience this or what happens to you when those doors are locked…

In a previous blog I told my most important tip for a spiritual training: Find a spiritual trainer who works within a tradition. But there are some pitfalls along the way. How to avoid these?

 

When you take your spiritual quest seriously, you don’t want to waste time and money by getting lost on an vague market!
A lot of spirituality that is offered resembles a film set. The appearance is wonderful, but behind the front door, there is no deeper knowledge. As a spiritual seeker you can get lost here, going from one setting to the other, and disappointed leaving the set time and again. Many people end their search thinking than that it’s all fake.

 

Why is there so little knowledge about spirituality?

Both in the Eastern and Western traditions the temples were always closed. You could only get access by successfully passing the first test: ‘To Know, To Will, To Dare and to be Silent.’
‘We shed no pearls before swine‘, was the overall view, and only the ones who showed the right character, got access to real knowledge. That knowledge gives power and should not end up in the wrong hands.

 

Searching Platform 9 ¾

The Eastern temples started from the 70 ‘s to give out their knowledge. The Western Temples open their doors for about twenty years now. Finding a Western Mystery Temple is difficult when you don’t know the criteria to distinguish fake from genuine. It equals searching for platform 9 ¾, without knowing it exists. That is an impossible task, you cannot conjure (yet)?

 

Stop seeking, start finding.

1. Research whether there are older books available about your area of interest, books from before the 1960s. Between 1850 and 1960 the first adepts published since long time. They are sometimes thick incomprehensible books. The issue now is not that you understand the content, but to find out whether they exist, and that your learn to know the names of people who wrote them.
2. That generation trained students to grow into adepts. This generation adepts distributed knowledge about the practical techniques, through workshops and training seminars. Their names became public between 1950 and 2000.
3. Today, the next generation adepts has started to build training institutes, they are professionalizing the spiritual training.

For a seeker this makes it easy to identify where potential teachers have trained themselves, and what level of training they hold. There are big differences between teachers. Based on this information you can make your choice, so that you become a finder.

PS. Platform 9 3/4 is the place from where Harry Potter left for Hogwarts School. It is located at Kings Cross Station in London.

 

A few days ago I wrote about my vision on the role of the teacher/trainer in the Western Mystery School. But what do the trainers train? How does the trainer use the ancient legacy of Mythology, Astrology, Magic and Alchemy? And what are the results?

Dion Fortune was one of the great teachers of the 20th century. She was a counsellor in a psychotherapy clinic and besides that she worked as a magician and a medium heading her own temple of the mysteries. Dion Fortune saw the Western Mystery Tradition as a way to bring about ‘changes in consciousness’.

When you study the ancient magical techniques closely, it becomes clear that it is an ancient system of psychology. In the work of Carl Gustav Jung, you can clearly see that he was deeply involved in the Western Mystery Tradition. Also the writer of the famous book The Golden Dawn, Israel Regardie, was a psychiatrist. What is the cause that so many influential psychotherapists were and are extraordinary interested in the techniques of the Western Mystery Tradition? It is because of its extremely powerful methods to balance the psyche and to transform blockages and old wounds.

ARCHETYPES

The ancient gods and angels were called ‘archetypes’ by Jung; deep and influential psychological structures in the make-up of every human being. Myths and legends tell stories about these parts of the human psyche, and how they behave, connect, get wounded and are transformed to a higher level of wisdom in a neutral, transpersonal way.

The Western Mystery Tradition developed a system of transpersonal psychology that works on the individual level and on the group level, to transcend blocking patterns and unfold talents in people. It is an extremely effective method of self-development that raises the level of happiness in individuals, increases their abilities to deal with the hard facts of life, and unfolds meaning and mission in the psyche.

THE INNER KINGDOM

The work in the Western Mystery Tradition is done through individual counselling, meditation and group ritual. Practicing the exercises, the trainees step by step build a psychological structure in the mind, an ‘Interior Castle’ that activates awareness of all the psychological parts and brings them to awareness. In that process people transcend their personal blockages and thus get access to all their abilities and grow as a person. The aim of the work of the Western Mystery Tradition is to become the ‘King of your Inner Kingdom’.

“TRANSPERSONAL PSYCHOLOGY” appeared first on Facebook. Join the conversation at our Western Mystery School group on Facebook!

Having started my occult path before the arrival of the internet I am “old school” and believe that initiation is not something you get automatically.

A friend of mine in another school is having problems with a student who felt he should be initiated because he said so. He had shown up, paid his dues, and he felt he was ready. He was so shocked when his teacher said no, he left in a huff and then started to attack the teacher online for not noticing his greatness. Like many modern “magicians” he has failed to see that his very actions are exactly why the teacher did not want him initiated yet.

The assumption was that rejection was the ego of an autocratic teacher. I understand how he felt. I was in the Servants of the Light for many years, working hard and not getting initiated. I remember feeling at the time – why is that person getting initiated when I am being ignored? With hindsight, there were political reasons, but at the time I was not aware of that. But what I believed at the time, and still believe, that you will be initiated when you are ready for it. Years later I got the initiation I was looking for and it took me out of the SOL style system and into the Golden Dawn. Again, with hindsight that was always going to happen, but I needed to learn some things before it did. Staying within that tradition meant I learnt those valuable lessons before leaving.

Teachers do miss initiation candidates… but

But students are not the only ones who are arrogant about the reasons for initiations. Teachers can, and do fail spot promising students and get lost in their own games. Ironically when my then teacher who provided me with that much-awaited initiation, expelled me, he did so fully assuming it was the end of my magical career. He told me that I would play around with “uncontacted groups” never going anywhere. It was then I realised what initiation was and how it was only tentatively tied to a group or tradition and you get your initiations in different places over your life. In my career, I have had four real initiators before I met my own contact and did not need them anymore.

In the Magical Order of the Aurora Aurea we get loads of applications from people who expect that because they have applied we will initiate them and let them in. However, in a real school it does not work that way, indeed you should be deeply suspicious of groups that want you to be a member or recruit you.

Initiation is a big job

Taking a student is a big task that the Order itself has very little say in. People are bought to schools by the life forces behind them for a purpose, which may or may not be initiation. But coming to a school does not make you a member of it – you might be just passing through, or just be being given a chance to start your occult career. Some groups focus on beginners and accept that they are going to get a lot of tourists passing through, but the more serious schools, particularly those with a lot of initiations, do not have the time to waste on those students who will just rush to the next newest shiny object.

Each school, if they talk about it, or even acknowledge it is based around a set of contacts who specialise in a field of training. It is those contacts who do the initiation in their school not the chiefs, or the order. If they do not want to initiate you, getting on with the human group leader will not help you, the initiation will not take place.

Testing for Initiation

In MOAA we ask people wanting to join to carry out a series of pathworkings to see how they get on with our contacts and ask for detailed reports back. We ask for symbols so we can see what the student is getting at a level they have not worked out yet. Often the would-be student is telling us that contact in the pathworking is earnestly telling them that they will be part of the order, while the symbols all around them are quietly hinting no thanks.

Before someone is initiated they must have some semblance of stability. That is not to say that perfection is possible, but they should not have any obviously alarming traits which show that there will be problems further down the line.

In some groups, where you wait several years to be initiated, you are expected to sort out a lot of those quirks before being plugged into the contacts. In GD groups the first level of initiation power is applied gradually and will cause you to focus on different aspects of your life. Obviously any one of these initiations you can fail and “break” and some personalities are so damaged and fragile that breaking is a certainty.

Failed initiations

Sometimes you cannot tell if someone is going to break or fail a grade, often it is obvious. The group leaders often have an inkling but still hopes it will not be the case. It is usually the blue-eyed boys or girls who are mostly likely to fail. It is the plodders who do not attract attention who quietly go up the grades that succeed.

When people fail a grade, it is spectacular and usually the leader of the group is the target for abuse. I used to think that this was part of the individualisation process, but now I am less certain. More often the people who go bang in this way are doing so because of problems that they refuse to face and would rather project it onto the group leader. Parental issues are the biggest problem, with mummy or daddy issues played out violently on the teacher who did not give them what they wanted. It is more likely that they will continue to ignore the issue for the rest of their life and take their problems to the next group they join, or their relationships, or workplace. If the problem is crippling, then chances are they will leave practical magic. One modern trend is to fail an initiation in one group and then suddenly be attracted to another group which will not challenge that weakness, or which convinces you that all your problems are the fault of your old one.

And finally

The point of all this is when you hear someone bad-mouthing their teacher because they refused to give them the initiation they felt they deserved, understand that you are seeing the problem that prevented them from being initiated. Try to understand that teacher themselves will also be sad that the amount of effort they put into that student did not help them see that problem. If the teacher really was at fault, then advice the student to move on and find the occult teacher they need.

This post first appeared on Nick Farrell’s Blog…, 22.03.2017
Read original here

Further to my statement in support of Ina Cüsters-van Bergen and her school, my comments provoked a backlash of venom and malice from these bloggers… as might have been expected.

The following statement was today posted on the Servants of the Light Website by Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki and I think it is important that it is widely published, so with her permission I reproduce it here and on the Helios Blog. Please “like” this in support of Dolores’s statement:

To all Students, Supervisors and Magi,

Every week I receive requests to join some social network, Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter etc… I have avoided joining any networks, which I acknowledge are useful in some instances, because of the time they take up, but also because of the petty politics and public airing of ‘trash’ that goes on through such media.

I do not have a personal Facebook page yet an imposter has been presenting themselves as “Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki”, even using a photograph of me on the fake profile, that has not been removed even though I have complained.
Another Internet trend is blogging, which seems to be as open to abuses as other social media formats. Many blogs are helpful; however, some express potentially libellous material as well as being unhelpful or even damaging.

Ina Cüsters-Van Bergen, the head of The Temple of Starlight based in the Netherlands, a former SOL Student, Magus and Supervisor (she supervised several people including Andy Cooper who went on to become the Director of Studies of the Helios School of Esoteric Science) is currently being attacked in a blog that is full of inaccuracies and which is written in a low and gossipy tone. The author of the blog who obviously bears a grudge against Ina, and now Andy Cooper too, is expressing a lot of unhelpful emotion as well as publishing misrepresentations and influencing several other blogs that are seeking to damage Ina’s reputation.

I do not wish to link the SOL website with the blog mentioned above, by giving a direct reference to its name or by providing a hyperlink, and do not encourage SOL students to seek it out and read it. However, I mention it because I wish to emphatically state that it does not in any way give a balanced or accurate view of either Ina or Andy or the Schools they head; nor does it tell the truth about recent SOL history. It is a cowardly attack (the publisher of the blog hides behind a pseudonym).

The Temple of Starlight is not an SOL Daughter School and Ina Cüsters-Van Bergen works independently of the SOL. Andy Cooper’s Helios School is an official SOL Daughter School and yet it also works independently of the SOL. Both schools have SOL roots and work in the Western Mystery Tradition according to their own curriculums that have evolved out of SOL training.

In healthy families disagreements and differences of opinion can often strengthen relationships as well as helping children to find their own way in life. Families that are committed together work through differences. The Helios School and the Temple of Starlight are making their own way in the Great Work and the Mother School respects their efforts and will help to defend them as and when it is necessary, hence this statement.

In Light,
Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki and Michael Nowicki.

This post first appeared on Facebook,
Helios School of Esoteric Science, 03.06.2013
Read original here

As an Initiate and the head of a Mystery School, there may be times when I am called upon to stand up and be counted, and to take a stance where there is wrong doing and injustice. Such a situation has recently been drawn to my attention, and so it is a time when those of us who work in the Light have to make a stand against those who are at the effect of the Lords of the Dark Face.

There is a group of so-called magical people based in The Netherlands who have been, and are currently publishing online, scurrilous, untrue, defamatory and slanderous comments about my friend and fellow Third Degree Initiate, Ina Custers-van Bergen, the Magister Templi of the Temple Of Starlight. I wish to make it perfectly clear to everyone that I deplore this outrageous and evil behaviour and fully stand alongside Ina as a person of the highest integrity and who, like me and the rest of our fellow Third Degree Initiates of the Fraternitatis Alexandrae walk the Path of Light.

This kind of behaviour only serves to bring the whole magical community into disrepute. I urge anyone reading this post to ignore completely any of this material should they come across it, and not to look for it, as it is important that we do not give this work of the Lords of Chaos any further energy than it has already received. The best and most effective way to address this is to send love and light to those who perpetrate this evil and to simply continue your own work in the Light.

I am reminded of the First Degree Initiation Ritual of the Western Mysteries when the would-be initiate has the sword placed across the neck and the Magus says “This is the Sword of the Mysteries , if you fight against the Forces of Darkness it will give you strength, if you protect the weak, it will summon the Forces of Light. If you aspire to the highest it will point the way. But if you turn to the Lords of the Dark Face, it will be your Bane and your Destruction.”

The perpetrators of this slanderous material would do well to remember these words.

This message has also been posted on the Helios Website Blog.

Dr. Andy Cooper
Initiate of the Third Degree, The Fraternitatis Alexandrae
Founder & Director of Studies
The Helios School of Esoteric Science

This post first appeared on Facebook,
Helios School of Esoteric Science, 24.05.2013
Read original here