[Transcribed from the presentation given at the 15th annual meeting of the Star of Azazel. A recording of the original Finnish presentation can be listened to here, courtesy of lodge Lucifer.]
The rainbow bridge and the emerald of the Devil are together a twofold symbol, or a cluster of symbols, which, in my presentation, is especially related to the beginning of Polyharmonia [of Fosforos] and the uniting work in the Star of Azazel’s constitution.
The rainbow, especially the rainbow as a bridge, is a symbol of connection. The emerald of the Devil, which in itself appears separating, is featured in the emblems or symbolic ideation of the lodges Lucifer and Graal. In both, it is used for this work of connecting. It might be good to first remind ourselves about these emblems. Lodge Lucifer has an undrawn but envisioned picture1, as a kind of motto, where the angel Lucifer places his crown onto the rainbow bridge; for the glory of God, to serve human beings.
The rainbow bridge touches heaven and earth; and Lucifer, who is usually understood as the angel of pride, is, in this emblem, taken as an entity rising above one’s pride, turning it to redeem oneself and humankind. This is an old esoteric idea, stressed especially by Pekka Ervast: that which appears as evil Satan, proud Lucifer, is actually a mask, behind which is hidden an extremely high kind of entity. This is the single most important proposition we adopted from this Finnish occultist.
The idea of the rainbow bridge, the emphasis on diversity, can be seen uniting earth and air – lodges with each other – the lower and higher nature of humanity. [Concerning these two natures of humankind] we can, on the one hand, speak of corporeality or personality; on the other, divinity or spirit. The same bridge also unites kâma manas or the formal intellect, and manas, the spiritual intellect, that can also approve other than material and mathematical means of evidence. It also unites ideal and practice. Much has been spoken about the Trial by Air in the Star of Azazel over the past ten years, and the idea of the rainbow bridge takes a practical approach to this challenge: practice is taken from abstract rumination into concrete action. As a natural phenomenon, the rainbow unites the manifestations of light (or fire) and aqueous vapor (or water) within it. It, therefore, unites all the opposite elements to each other. The rainbow has been an important messenger of the gods in many different mythologies, in Greece, in the Old Testament, and elsewhere. For the esotericist, the seven colours of the rainbow are familiar as the symbols of human principles. Each of them has to do with different corporealities or different means of experiencing being.
The emerald of Lucifer’s forehead is sometimes met in the forms of other gemstones as well. Emerald is nevertheless best for to picture the green colour that unites Venus and Saturn. In them is seen the inversion of the correspondence scheme between Occidental and Oriental occultism. In the Star of Azazel, we usually follow the Blavatskian esoterical system, where the correspondence of Saturn is green, and black is left for Venus. In Western ritual magic, the same colour scheme is presented vice versa. The system of inversions is always important in the symbolism of Lucifer. It can be seen even in the form of the rainbow itself, where one notices the half-circle journey of changing polarities. Lucifer resurgens, the re-rising and resurrecting Lucifer as Lucifer-Christos, is an important agent in all three lodges of which I am a member: lodges Lucifer, Graal, and also in her feminine manifestation in lodge Salome.
It is important to remember that the Bible does not use the name “Lucifer” – not even in Versio Vulgata, where it can be found in this exact form – of Satan, but of Christ. Christ is “the bright and morning star,” the Lightbringer in Revelations, for example.2 The Old Testament’s presentation of Lucifer means not the Devil but Nebuchadnezzar.
Like Fatuus said in his presentation, it might be good to create symbolic forms for ourselves to use in meditative and astral working. This is supported in the practice path of Graal the clearer and farther it goes. Principal responsibility is naturally the practitioner’s own. We have this schema of a triangle, a mountain whose cliffs one first climbs to the temple at the top – this is the first grade – then something is found from that temple – the second grade – and with that, the triangle gets inverted, and one goes through the Dantean funnel of hell downwards – the third grade. These things have been presented earlier in the Graal articles. With another kind of permutation, these two triangles will form a rhombus when put together, and this rhombus is the emerald of the Devil. According to the myth, the cup of the Grail was carved out of this precise emerald.
The Voice of Silence, the text of esoterical Vajrayana Buddhism presented by H.P. Blavatsky, mentions the same emerald of Lucifer. In Buddhism, the Devil manifests as the tempter, Mara. The text discusses astral working:
“Beware, Lanoo, lest dazzled by illusive radiance thy Soul should linger and be caught in its deceptive light. This light shines from the jewel of the Great Ensnarer, (Mâra). The senses it bewitches, blinds the mind, and leaves the unwary an abandoned wreck.
The moth attracted to the dazzling flame of thy night-lamp is doomed to perish in the viscid oil. The unwary Soul that fails to grapple with the mocking demon of illusion, will return to earth the slave of Mâra.
Behold the Hosts of Souls. Watch how they hover o’er the stormy sea of human life, and how exhausted, bleeding, broken-winged, they drop one after other on the swelling waves. Tossed by the fierce winds, chased by the gale, they drift into the eddies and disappear within the first great vortex.
If through the Hall of Wisdom, thou would’st reach the Vale of Bliss, Disciple, close fast thy senses against the great dire heresy of separateness that weans thee from the rest.
Let not thy “Heaven-born,” merged in the sea of Mâyâ, break from the Universal Parent (SOUL), but let the fiery power retire into the inmost chamber, the chamber of the Heart and the abode of the World’s Mother.
Then from the heart that Power shall rise into the sixth, the middle region, the place between thine eyes, when it becomes the breath of the ONE-SOUL, the voice which filleth all, thy Master’s voice.”
I included this longer presentation because it beautifully depicts the approaches seen in different lodges and because in it one can see the reversion or resurrection of Lucifer in particular: even though astral deception blazes forth from the jewel in the forehead of Satan, the Tempter, by conquering this “great heresy of separatism” this jewel will return as the crown for the attained. In this process, the attained human being themself becomes Lucifer resurgens.
When it is brought to the heart, “the chamber of world’s mother” about whom Beshiira spoke a little before, it becomes the voice of the Master, the voice of Lucifer-Christos, and the star will blaze at the forehead of the human being. They have received back their crown. Like it is presented in The Garment of Seven Blessings: it is given to God, and precisely in this giving, it is earned. God in this context means a naturally very different thing from the common monotheistic idea of patriarchal power. So we see that with the briefest explanation, the emerald is the principle of manas, which can be seen at both ends of the rainbow bridge. They are the kâma manasic and manasic ends, fallen and re-glorified, resplendent Lucifer.
It may be asked how this kind of dharmic and karmic journey is made, how the temptation of Lucifer can be won.3 The answer is surprisingly easy to state, even as it is surprisingly hard to accomplish: It is won when we, by our own effort, attain the phase where is found a form of self that is essentially higher than it. A human being will naturally remain convinced that they themself are manas until the moment when they see inside themself an even higher form of self. But when this immensely long path has been gone through, we will – by using the rainbow bridge and the self-sacrifice or the attitude of serving – find something that is at first vague, like sparks, and after that, the buddhic plane itself. Little by little, hues can be seen in the forms of experience higher than manas. In the phase where a human being starts to see otherness in that kâma manasic self, which earlier meant for them the absolute self, there will come about an exciting tantric transition: that which earlier was a strangled, pressed experience of the self, will explode into a multitude of colours.
This might be easy to understand if we consider how we see our personality. In my lower mind, I see Johannes in a certain way: I am of a certain temperament to which some things are attractive and some others just the opposite. But to the extent I can realize that in the buddhic oneness such a personality has only instrumental value – that in reality, I am not myself a certain Johannes temperament – then in getting distance from my personality, I give it the possibility to explode to a new kind of brilliance of colours. In some alchemical treatises, this is seen in the form of cauda pavonis, the peacock’s tail. Also, we know this tail of a peacock to be arc-shaped, greenish, multi-hued, and having in it the ahamkaric symbol of the eye; in Persian mythology, the peacock is known as a symbol of Satan. Everything once again coils into one in the familiar occult principle of unification.
Finding the higher personality, which for the human being in question appears as losing one’s personality (but for the others around them as intensely personality-inducing or even as eccentricity), is the resurrection of “the saints that slept” we know from Revelations and the Gospels. This presentation belonging to the initiation of the adept is mentioned in passing with things regarding Jesus’ crucifixion, where it is casually said that several dead did arise up at that time4 – a quite absurd thing in the light of the common theological teaching. Occult symbolism can be seen in the Gospels when we read them more rigorously than the usual clerical approach. In passing, it can also be mentioned that according to some later theosophical views, the buddhi-manasic essence that transcends personality relates to kârana sharîra, a “thread-soul,” which unites together different personalities.
Next, I would like to quote another Blavatskian text, which I personally see as important. An exceptionally clear tantric approach is seen in this one. Even though Blavatsky was a tantricist, even one with some Left Hand emphases in some regards, theosophy has been very strict about stressing the Right Hand Path and even distances itself as much as possible from the very idea of tantra. But when we see where the last stanza of the Book of Dzyan’s Cosmogenesis5 ends up, we will once again find this same process of reversal:
“WHEN THE ONE BECOMES TWO, THE THREEFOLD APPEARS, AND THE THREE ARE ONE; AND IT IS OUR THREAD, OH LANOO, THE HEART OF THE MAN-PLANT CALLED SAPTASARMA. IT IS THE ROOT THAT NEVER DIES; THE THREE-TONGUED FLAME OF THE FOUR WICKS. THE WICKS ARE THE SPARKS, THAT DRAW FROM THE THREE-TONGUED FLAME SHOT OUT BY THE SEVEN – THEIR FLAME – THE BEAMS AND SPARKS OF ONE MOON REFLECTED IN THE RUNNING WAVES OF ALL THE RIVERS OF EARTH. THE SPARK HANGS FROM THE FLAME BY THE FINEST THREAD OF FOHAT. IT JOURNEYS THROUGH THE SEVEN WORLDS OF MAYA. IT STOPS IN THE FIRST, AND IS A METAL AND A STONE; IT PASSES INTO THE SECOND AND BEHOLD – A PLANT; THE PLANT WHIRLS THROUGH SEVEN CHANGES AND BECOMES A SACRED ANIMAL. FROM THE COMBINED ATTRIBUTES OF THESE, MANU, THE THINKER IS FORMED. WHO FORMS HIM? THE SEVEN LIVES, AND THE ONE LIFE. WHO COMPLETES HIM? THE FIVE-FOLD LHA. AND WHO PERFECTS THE LAST BODY? FISH, SIN, AND SOMA. . . . .”
Here we see many of the symbols touched in today’s presentations. Here we see the egregoric roots, the bridge reflected on water, the stone, and especially the final tantric idea about how the Moon, Sin and sôma perfect the last body. I have recently written about this concept of Sin that can also be understood as Moon in one of the Salome blog articles.6
This mystical text can be understood in many different ways, but in this context, I would like to focus attention on the fact that even very Right Hand Path theosophy mentions how “the last will the white magician take the initiations of the black,” or sometimes even vice versa.7 That is, a human being who has attained a certain grade of spiritual depth must unavoidably also consider personality, the depth of personality, corporeality, and energetics of the body. The process is very Satanic.
Finally, I would like to comment on the principle terminology of the rainbow bridge. In case we think that “the greenness under the cross,”8 which can be seen from our hymns, is mainly the imprisoning sthûla sharîra, a physical body loaded with its own kind of challenges, the rainbow bridge is the cross’ more energetical, freer form of bodily experience, linga sharîra. Once again, this has to do with the Moon, symbolized by the half-circle arc, seen, for example, in the signs of Mercury or Taurus. The radiant, resurrecting Lucifer shows linga sharîra, the aetheric double or its source principle, the eidolon: this is the idol of human being’s self, whereto we return. This is a common idea in religions: at some point in the past, we have possessed this ideal self, which at some point after that, in some kind of fall from grace, has been hidden by karmic burden, this often torturing body of “sin.”
Eidolon is connected to a term unto which we stumble quite rarely, but which was important in Neoplatonic theurgy, namely augoeides, a resplendent, monadic self. We could say that the rainbow bridge where all the colours are found belonging to human personality joins to the Sun that has been giving it birth. This connection to Sun is, so to say, our own auric personality. Thomas Taylor, a great translator of classic Platonism and Neoplatonism, depicted augoeides with the term luciform. This translation from Greek leads us full circle to where we started, to the likeness of Lucifer, resplendence. The same etymology connects augoeides also to the words that have the meaning of egg and daybreak, linking it intimately with auric personality and the splendour of the chalice of Graal.
FINIS
1. The practice of visualized lodge emblems was first established by lodge Nebukadnezzar. Such an emblem is a meditative picture that can be understood as a dharma of the idea of the lodge in question. Lodge Salome’s emblem is unique in the way that it is an actual painted picture, Apparition of Gustave Moreau.
2. Revelation 22:16. Cf. 2 Peter, 1:19: Et habemus firmiorem propheticum sermonem: cui benefacitis attendentes quasi lucernae lucenti in caliginoso donec dies elucescat, et lucifer oriatur in cordibus vestris. (King James: “We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts”). To condemn the name of Lucifer is quite a late theological invention, contradictory to the Bible itself.
3. That is, in our Luciferian world view, how Lucifer conquers the temptation he faces: the snare of remaining allured or karmically chained in the prison of the lower astral world.
4. Matthew 27:52-53.
5. 7:3-5 (The Secret Doctrine, I)
6. See Zodiac of Sins.
7. Vice versa: While having descended deep in evil, a soul can find from “the magic of matter” the mysteries that wake one up to the actual experience of unity. In both of these instances, the resulting path will be of (ethical, i.e., spiritual) ascension.
8. Feast Hymn of the Great Mother, the prayer for summer solstice.
Salome 