The 31st Path to Hod
This afternoon, I made my way through the third path of the OTA pathworking exercises.
Environmental observations:
Time: Approximately 12:30 PM
Phase of the moon: Waxing crescent in Aquarius
Other notes: Accompanied by a selenite wand and a chunk of raw amethyst on the table in front of me. I also burned a blend of Copal Resin, Frankincense, and Angel Root incense. I also propped up The Sun card from the tarot because I misunderstood which of these paths I was on, thinking that this was the trek from Yesod to Hod. How wrong I was.
I began this pathworking session with the LBRP and then several minutes of Tratakam meditation, gazing at my crystal ball and burning a bit of the incense blend to facilitate an easier drop into a hypnotic state for when the pathworking narration began. I hadn't done this with either of the previous pathworking attempts as each session begins with Frater Thabion's guided relaxation and meditation but the process doesn't feel very long and even though the previous experience was particularly potent and deep, the very first run I took in the air element felt a bit hasty and left me feeling like maybe I wasn't doing things properly. So this time I preloaded the experience and felt like it was the right decision. Eventually, the whispy incense smoke obscures the flaws in the crystal ball and the gazing takes on a particularly magical vibe.
My astral body practically leaps from the physical cage and flies through the soul door. I find myself in a brutal environment, though. The surroundings remind me of rover photos of the surface of Mars. Fine sand and pebble sand partially obscure sharp black rocks, which appear severely wind-blown after millions of years of violent weather. The path I'm on seems to twist and wind into a valley which opens up to a broad length of cliff overlooking a wide river of molten lava. Linking my side of the river to the other is a long and narrow bridge of stone which curves up and over the river. Its width seems barely capable of accommodating my size but I know that no matter what, I'm going to have to risk falling in and so I begin by crawling on my hands and knees, keeping low to the bridge's surface. Terror grips me with every step I take. Columns of flame erupt at either side of me as I cross. The lava below erupts and splatters the path ahead of me but at a certain point in my crossing it occurs to me that the flames touch me and some even pass through my astral being. The sensation isn't terribly unpleasant, either. In some ways, the flames seem to tingle on my skin and warm my astral body from within. The erupting flames even begin to take shape. At first, they leap from the fire, vaguely anthropomorphic but before long they become definitely humanoid.
Numerous beings leap from the fire, each appearing to me like the old Jack Kirby version of The Human Torch and, no longer fearing a fiery death, I stand to meet them. The heat radiating from this being, what I'm later told is called a Salamander, warms me in a peculiar way. Though the heat from below blasts me like a furnace, there is one thing comforting about the heat of the salamanders. It's like the warmth you feel after. Prolonged period of freezing on a winter day. Later on, I do some research and it turns out that the salamanders are kind of like small dragons and not like people, at all. But I do like my Human Torch versions. Like in other pathworkings, we speak.
"You're always going to be tested, friend," The lead Salamander tells me, "You get no rehearsals. Everything is done live and every step on this path will test your resolve but you've come this far, already. Look behind you!" I look and can see that the start of this bridge is so far behind me and that ahead of me lies only a small bit of the path left to cross.
"Every step is a test and every test will purify you of spirit and burn away your sins."
I step off of the bridge and they dive back into the river of flame, leaving me to a new expanse of path, which descends into a shadowy valley of sun-beaten clay. The walls of the valley around me show layers of stratified earth, concealing the fossilized remains of massive prehistoric creatures. As I pass through this graveyard of bones I see the remains of the earth's residents until something strange emerges from the sand. Partially covered by the earth, the remains of a giant seems to have stopped halfway as it crawled out from under the landscape. It is three times larger than any human being and its skull is unlike anything on earth. It is considerably larger than a human skull. The cranium sweeps back a great deal further than ours and a space where we might recognize a third eye is occupied by an indentation in the bone. Not necessarily a third eye hole but a space that could have accommodated such a thing. I'm not really sure what this supposed to represent but here it is.
Leaving the valley of the bones, I find myself on a vast Saharan-style desert landscape. The sun reflects off the dunes which stretch out to the horizon in all directions. In the distance, I see what appears to be a collection of pyramids, and naturally, I make my way in their direction but no matter how long I walk, no matter how far, they seem to be fixed to the horizon, never getting any closer. As the sun sets, their appearance fades with the setting sun.
Great. A mirage.
But it's not exactly a mirage. The desert becomes cold and with no sense of where I need to be going, I continue in the direction I was traveling only to come to the edge of a sink. Down in the valley below the sea of dunes is the pyramid city that I saw from so far away only now that I see it up close do I realize that it's a silent necropolis at the bottom of the desert. The silver curtain of the full moon's light casts the scene in an eerie glow. Nothing moves in the gaps between the buildings. From what I can tell, the necropolis is characteristically devoid of life.
I wander the alleys and streets between buildings and pyramids until I come up a stone arch which seems to call to me. Inside of this building is one thing, a stone sarcophagus and inside that stone sarcophagus is the owner of the voice which called to me. I cautiously make my way to it and look inside to see the mummified remains of a body which I accept as my own. A rumbling sound reverberates throughout the chamber and I turn in time to see a large stone slab lowering itself into the opening that I came in through. Not only am I trapped but there is a power coming from the corpse that seems to pull me to it. Against my will, the power actually draws me into the corpse and traps me there in the pitch darkness of this dead place.
At this point in my journey, there is a distinct separation between my free astral form and my inert physical body. I only occasionally seem to notice that I'm still an actual person on this plane but in this moment, my astral form recognizes an overwhelming terror and full-body tension spreading through my physical form. My astral form panics and seems to scream out but makes no sound. I'm assessing what to do about this hopeless situation when above me, through what appears to be a crack in the stone, a thin beam of light slowly descends toward me. It is a single point of light in the sky, a single star, which shines down on me. As the light reaches my corpse, my astral body is drawn up into it and thrust into the sky, through the crack and out of this world toward the star. I leave the world behind me and am stopped in space by the star which speaks to me.
"We are one and all. You are us and and we are you. This is our judgement. Visit us again. Find us in your waking sky. We will signal to you. Give us a name."
With that, I am pulled back down to the pyramid and am gripped with horror until I find my astral self not trapped in the dead body as before but now standing beside the sarcophagus and the stone which blocked the door is now gone. I make a plan to get out as quickly as possible. Rising out of the sink, I once again descend into a deep and narrow canyon and off in the distance a ways, the sun reflects off of a bronze dome. But as the path narrows and the cliff sides get taller, I lose sight of the dome and am eventually led to a tall mesa. If I step back a bit, I catch a glimpse of the bronze reflection and the walls of a white building at the top of the mesa, but there seems to be no obvious way up. Around the back side of the mesa I find a pair of scales hanging from a long chain which seems to wrap around a winch at the top of the mesa. I spend some time trying to balance the scales by myself, standing on one with rocks stacked on the other but I can't quite seem to get the distribution right. At a certain point, there seems to be another sense of physical pulling on my astral self and another person emerges from my being. She walks across to the other scale and stands on it, seeming to check me out.
Her appearance is not much unlike my own, except that she's a woman. Tall, husky, dishwater hair to the waist. The truth strikes me like a lightning bolt. I'm looking at the feminine qualities of myself. It makes sense. This is a journey of hermetic discovery. There's a lot of breaking apart and recombining to be done and this is just another step. With this realization, my consciousness seems to snap to her and I see myself from her position and feel her judgement. I see myself standing there, slouched, middle aged, steadily gaining weight.
"Your temple is crumbling. You need to preserve it. You claim to love yourself but you can't seem to take the steps that used to be strong and healthy. If you love yourself, why can't you treat yourself with some respect? Keep on like this and you're just going to end up like your dad. Everything is great here. You can be whatever you want to be. But you live out there and there are rules."
My consciousness snaps back to my male self and I regard her with skepticism. She's not wrong but there's something in her tone that pisses me off. She's definitely given to a bit of vanity. For instance, we're standing here on the astral plane and she's made up a bit. Not much but I can tell that there is effort put into her outer appearance. A sexuality that seems to be directed at no one since no one but myself has ever seen her. This reflects a certain narcissism in me that I occasionally regard and then do nothing about.
And then the scales start moving upward.
We reach the top and she crosses over to me and takes my hand. We rejoin into a single individual and I find myself before the gates of a massive white marble building. At its top is a shining fire opal. A set of steps leads to a pair of bronze doors and to either side are black stone statues of basilisks with gleaming red ruby eyes. They seem to be watching me. Skeletal remains litter the steps. The doors part for me as I reach the top and I enter.
The interior is a beautiful library. It's what I imagine the inside of the Library of Alexandria looked like. Tall shelves line the walls, stacked with books, scrolls, and tablets. There are multiple levels and each is supported by a number of stone heads as columns. I recognize some of the heads. I see Jesus, Alan Moore, Martin Luther King Jr., Philip K. Dick, Mahatma Ghandi, Socrates, Bob Dobbs, Buddha, and others. These are representative of wise people of the world. On the second floor I am drawn to a head which looks remarkably like Robert Anton Wilson. I'm currently reading his bizarro autobiography, Cosmic Trigger, so it seems only natural that I approach this bananas philosopher and see what he has to offer me. These pathworkings have been real personal ordeals, so a little humor wouldn't hurt at this point. But I hear him speak in his voice and he lets me have it.
"We're trying to shake off your demons, man. This whole experience right now? It's a trial by fire. You noticed that, right? Fire, scales, dying and facing the star, all of it is like the trial of Maat in the Egyptian death myth. Your heart is being weighed against a feather and until you talk to your mom and get all this abuse business out in the open and dealt with you're going to be out of balance. I'm glad you faced your lady-self to get up here but don't go thinking that that means that the scales are balanced. Because they're not. Clear the air. To get higher on the tree you're going to need to be free and clear. Read what Abramelin has to say about that. I'm sure he has a book around here somewhere."
Thanks, Bob. I was kind of hoping for some Discordian silliness, but clearly we're on a mission.
I look around the library. I can smell the age of the books. There's a book on a high pedestal and I get the feeling that I'm not supposed to touch it. Like all my other pathworkings, this is a piece of my astral cabin which corresponds to this place as well. And just like in my astral cabin, this book is inaccessible. I've tried to open the book in the cabin before but the cover doesn't budge. That one says that it's The Akashic Record. This book says that it's a book of fate, which definitely connects the two. I'm not sure I want to open this one anyway. Who wants to know the fullness of the future? What if I were to open the book and find out that the west coast gets nuked tomorrow? No thanks. I'll take my chances.
There's a pool surrounded by a railing in the center of the main hall. Above it turns a model of the solar system and it is reflected in the black water of the deep well below it. Before my eyes, the crude model becomes an actual solar system in the reflection and I zero in on the landscape of the Earth which transforms to show me the evolution of all life on the planet in the epic style of a DW Griffith movie. There are extinctions, mass migrations; cities rise and fall. But the moment that sticks with me is the moment that a fleet of massive flying crafts drift over the earth. At their helms, exposed to the elements, is a single pilot in each, ornately dressed in gold and wielding scepters and staves. Each handles their craft like a chariot while the landscape beneath them burns in a great conflagration.
I turn away and face a tall shelf. At eye level, a single book slides on its own out from the stack a few inches and I pick it off the shelf. I open the book and realize that I'm reading a book about myself but in another lifetime. This experience isn't as potent as the Earth element's past-life progression. I learn about it in second-hand fashion. In this story, I am a black man who seems to realize that he comes from a long line, many lifetimes over, of healers and community leaders. In his life, which I have sometimes seen glimpses of in my waking life, he seems to be a part of an organization that works to provide for his neighborhood, which seems quite poor. There's no overarching tragedy or secret origin like a comic book. There's no larger story to be read into here. He is simply a good man that realizes that he's part of a larger tribe.
This is effectively the end of the trip. I make my way back out the way I came from end to beginning and arrive back in my body. As before, I spend a lot of time thinking about the experience, fleshing out things which only seem to come to me in flashes but like my very first pathworking, I again feel trapped in my skin. I'm not sure if it's leftover trauma from the death scene or if my astral body is waking up to its freedom to roam at will but the feeling is not a good one. I struggle a bit with depression for the rest of the day. When I'm finished, I look up the Kabbalistic details of the path and find that I was wrong about The Sun being the card for this path. The actual card for this path is Judgement, which suddenly shifts my thinking on the experience. Everything suddenly snaps into place. The entire experience has way more meaning that before.