Individuation

The topic of Individuation comes up in Arcanum ViI, The Chariot.

This is the fundamental law of sacred magic:

That which is above being as that which is below, renunciation below sets in motion forces of accomplishment above and the renunciation of that which is above sets in motion forces of accomplishment below.

That is, we must resist the desires that arise from below. This is equivalent to following the three vows. As a reminder, here are the temptations against the vows:

Vow	Eve’s Temptation	Jesus’ Temptation in the Desert
Obedience	Eve listened to the voice of the serpent	All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me
Poverty	She saw that the tree was good for food	Command these stones to become loaves of bread
Chastity	She took of its fruit and ate	If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down

The Charioteer

Tomberg describes the charioteer:

the charioteer of the Arcanum “The Chariot” is the victor over trials, i.e. the temptations, and if he is master, then it is thanks to himself. He is alone, standing in his chariot.

In other words, he has attained the higher self. The danger is that he may become blind to the divine that transcends that self.

We saw that in Chapter VI of Gnosis, in which the levels of consciousness are related to the levels of being:

Levels of Consciousness	Levels of Being	From MoTT
Consciousness	The universal I	God
Consciousness of the real I	The real individual I	Higher Self
Waking consciousness	The personal mental I	Ego
Subconsciousness	The physical I of the body	Subconsciousness

Tomberg begins with Jung’s discoveries. While acknowledging the sexual (Freud) and will-to-power (Adler) layers of the subconscious, he then encountered a higher spiritual layer. He regarded the transition from the Ego to the Higher Self as a “second birth”.

Unfortunately, there is a danger associated with that process: the danger of inflation. First of all, the Ego is the conscious part of the Psyche. Hence, the Ego experiences the Self as an object because it is unable to experience directly the unconscious. So it projects itself onto symbolism:  e.g., dreams, visions, active imagination.

It is worthwhile to maintain a dream journal to see what it reveals over time. Also, during the moments of spontaneous (or willed) awakenings during the day, try to see what was going on in the psyche at that time. Over time, you can see the forces keeping you in the state of waking sleep.

The process, to be effective, requires the harmonization of the Ego and the Psyche. This requires a re-centering of the personality, the birth of a new center, i.e., a magnetic center. From that center, the unconscious is perpetually in transformation into consciousness. This awakens the symbol-forces, called the archetypes. These are not known rationally, but rather experienced. There is the danger of identifying the whole of consciousness with one of the archetyps.

If this danger is avoided, then the center of personality can shift from the Ego to the Self.

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Associated task: work on the vows. Renounce the temptations associated with the vows.

This post is gathered from notes from an online weekly discussion.
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* This article was originally published here