Places of power. Shamanic excursions

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A day later, on January 31, 1916, the dead appeared again: “We want to know about God. Where is God? Is God dead? And Philemon began the second instruction:

“God is not dead, he is alive just as he was of old. God, he is a Creation, something specific, and therefore different from the Pleroma. God is a property of the Pleroma, for everything that I said about the Pleroma is valid for it.
It differs, however, from Creation because it is many times darker and more indefinable than Creation. He is less distinguishable than the Creation, for at the basis of his essence there is the existing Fullness, and to the extent that he is defined and distinguished only as a Creation, but to the same extent he is a manifestation of the existing Fullness of the Pleroma.”

We noted that Philemon's terms “distinctiveness” and “indistinguishability” correspond to what Jung understood by consciousness and unconsciousness. In the second instruction, the magician talks about distinctiveness and indistinguishability in relation to the gods. So he continues: “Everything that is not distinguished by us is cast into the Pleroma and is abolished, together with its opposite. That is why, when we do not distinguish God, the existing Fullness is abolished for us.” And its opposite, Emptiness, is also abolished. But what is she? “True Emptiness is the essence of the Devil. God and the Devil are the first manifestations of Nothing, which we call Pleroma.” In the Pleroma there is neither one nor the other. “This is not what Creation is like. In the respect in which God and the Devil are Creations, they do not abolish themselves, but oppose each other as real opposites.” But, as we know, “real opposites” not only oppose each other, but also form paired unities. Speaking about the divine, Philemon formulates it this way: “Everything that distinctiveness removes from the Pleroma is a pair of opposites, therefore the Devil is always involved in God.”

Oh, my prophetic spleen senses that not everyone will understand all this right away. What to do? I remember about forty years ago the Khakass shaman Apollo (in those places this is not such a rare name, and since he was from the Beltyr people, he jokingly called himself Apollo Beltyrsky) explained to me all these subtleties, drawing circles on the coastal sand of Abakan. I later generalized this and found formalisms that made it possible to construct a general theory of paradox. This is not the place to present it. I will limit myself only to visual diagrams with the help of which you can explain what Philemon is talking about.

Let's imagine two bordering spheres (Fig. 1). For simplicity, the boundary can be reduced to point X, at which sphere A comes into contact with sphere B. The boundary point X obviously belongs simultaneously to both sphere A and sphere B. This spatial analogy makes it possible to clarify the relationship between the binary oppositions that Philemon spoke about: Good and Evil, Beauty and Ugliness, Fullness and Emptiness, Existing and Non-existent, A and B... It is clear that at point X these opposites are identical. That is, in it Fullness is Emptiness, Good is Evil, Beauty is Ugliness, Truth is Lie, and so on (as in Orwell’s novel “1984”).

The situations depicted in Figure 1 are often encountered in life and are sometimes reflected in art. For example, at the point of contact X, which belongs simultaneously to spheres A and B, some object may be placed that creates a conflict of interests of the contacting parties. Or, say, in stories about intelligence officers at point X, sometimes there is a double agent working simultaneously for both sides: one misinforms the other through an exposed agent, and the other tries to play its own game through him. All these are quite obvious things. But there are borderline situations where there is no clarity. And in principle it cannot be.

In the previous excursion, I quoted a fragment of the book “On the Nature of the Psyche”, in which Jung talks about the near-conscious sphere of the psyche (the border between consciousness and the unconscious). Jung called the situation in this area paradoxical, although it seems that he used the word “paradox” in the ordinary everyday sense (a kind of contradiction in general). Meanwhile, any boundary carries within itself the possibility of a real paradox - such as the paradoxes of set theory or the “I’m lying” paradox (if this is the truth, then it is a lie, and if it is a lie, then it is the truth). Using the diagram discussed above (Fig. 1), it is impossible to display the structure of such a paradox, and if I stopped at it, it was only in order to show against its background that Philemon teaches things that are much more non-trivial.

Here he is just moving on to an interesting case: “God and the Devil are distinguishable through fullness and emptiness, creation and destruction. Existence common to both. Existence connects them. Therefore, existence rises above both, and it is God above God, for it unites Fullness and Emptiness in their existence.” Here we are no longer talking about a simple contact of two spheres, but about their contact in some other dimension (“in their existing”). To represent this train of thought of Philemon graphically, we will have to initially define (construct) point X as a certain special boundary point that does not belong to either sphere A or sphere B.

In this case, the picture will look slightly different (Fig. 2): point X, at which spheres A and B touch, will not belong to either sphere A or sphere B (by definition), however, it may belong to system AB (if we we will define accordingly), which means it will belong to both sphere A and sphere B, included in the system AB. Then it turns out that point X in the situation of contact of spheres A and B (in system AB) belongs and at the same time does not belong to sphere A. And in exactly the same way it belongs and does not belong to sphere B. That is, in the system AB, which is designed so that point X does not belong to any of the subsystems A and B, but at the same time is a system-forming link AB, the position of point X turns out to be paradoxical.

So, following Philemon's thought about God ("being"), "exalted" above God and the devil, we have drawn a diagram showing the antinomic nature of such a God. This diagram allows us to see that in the construction proposed by the old magician, point X remains the point of contact of the two sides, but at the same time does not belong to either of them, although it belongs to the system as a whole. In other words: point X in Figure 2 is a system-forming element of a new system (“existence”), which differs from the structure shown in Figure 1, where the parties simply touch (interact) with each other at point X. The new system was initially constructed as a paradox, involving ambiguity. In practice, this will mean that a paradoxical device constructed in this way cannot be seen from either of the two spheres A and B interacting at point X, but the entire system can be seen from a certain privileged point (X), in which resides the one whom Philemon called “ God over God."

To some, such a construction will seem artificial and abstract. However, situations constructed in this way often occur in life. A well-known example: the provocateur Yevno Azef (by the way, he was in a German prison when Jung wrote down the teachings of Philemon). In Russia, Azef led the combat organization of the Social Revolutionaries and at the same time not only handed over his militants to the police, but also, with the help of the police, organized new combat groups and carried out terrorist attacks. Did he work for the police? No. On the Social Revolutionaries? Not either. But, nevertheless, he worked for both. It worked and didn't work at the same time. Both the police and the revolution. Strictly speaking, he worked only for himself, being the point of connection of two spheres (police and revolution) into a single system (police-revolution), the structure of which only he knew, because he himself created it. This single system was a paradoxical structure, within which fundamentally ambiguous events took place, the true meaning of which was not visible either from the authorities or from the revolutionaries. By the way, the controlled chaos that we observe today is also created by someone who cannot be seen unless you move into his paradoxical reality.

But Philemon just sees a certain God above God and the Devil. And, calling this God “by his proper name ABRAXAS,” he asserts: “He is even more indefinable than God and the Devil.” Well, of course, “more indefinable”, Figure 2 clearly demonstrates this. And it makes clear the paradoxical nature of this indefinability. Philemon does not have a magic picture that explains (on fingers) the structure of any semantic paradox, and therefore he has to be content with a not very systematic description of Abraxas: “In order to distinguish God from him, we call God HELIOS or the Sun. Abraxas is an existence, nothing opposes him, except that which has no essence... Abraxas is exalted above the Sun and exalted above the Devil. He is the incredible probable, the non-existent. If the Pleroma had an essence, Abraxas would be its manifestation.”

These are manifestations of a paradoxical nature God over God and Devil. In the draft written on January 16, 1916 (“Black Book 5”), there is still no clear definition of Abraxas (however, there are no speeches of Philemon or the dead, so we will assume that the magician somehow hypnotized this text to Jung) , but even in the draft version the antinomy of this god is fully readable: “He is form and formation, and equally matter and power, therefore he is above all light and dark Gods. He tears souls apart and pushes them to be born. He is the creator and creation... The more you free yourself from him, the more you bring death closer, because he is the life of the universe. But he is also universal death."

In this Abraxas it is not difficult to recognize the god who tempted the righteous Job. For the sake of an experiment, the god of Job gives the righteous man into the hands of Satan, and he (the Devil, a lower-level god) puts the poor man through terrible trials. Closer to old age, Jung will write the book “Answer to Job” (1952) and say in it (in accordance with Christian tradition, calling Abraxas by the Hebrew name Yahweh): Job “is not mistaken about the unity of God, but understands well: God is in contradiction with himself, and, moreover, so completely that he, Job, is confident of the possibility of finding in him an assistant and intercessor against himself. In Yahweh he clearly sees the evil, but he also clearly sees the good in him...he is both, persecutor and helper, in one person, with one aspect no less evident than the other. Yahweh is not a schism, but an antinomy, a total internal contradiction, which is a necessary condition for his monstrous dynamism, omnipotence and omniscience.”

We will someday look into “Answer to Job,” a book that is a psychoanalysis of God in his evolution from the unconscious to consciousness: “The internal instability of Yahweh is a prerequisite both for the creation of the world and for that pleromatic action, the tragic chorus of which is humanity. Dealing with creation leads to internal changes in the Creator himself.”... But now it’s time to return to the instruction about Abraxas, which Philemon ends with: “Although he is the very being, he is, however, nothing definitely existing, but only existing in general. It is non-existent because it does not have a specific existence. He is also Creation, for he is distinguishable from the Pleroma. The Sun is definitely existing, as is the Devil, which is why they seem to us to be more existent than the indefinable Abraxas. He is Strength, Duration, Changeability."

Hearing this, the dead became indignant (“for they were Christians”) and retreated into the darkness. Jung said: “Have mercy on us, wise one! You are robbing people of gods to pray to.” To which Philemon objects in the sense that these dead themselves, they say, rejected Christian beliefs (they did not find in Jerusalem what they were looking for), so why talk to them about a god in whom they could believe and to whom they could pray. But now the world has entered the month of the great year (we are talking about the advent of the era of Aquarius, see), “when you can only believe in what you know. It is quite difficult, but it is also a cure for a long illness that has arisen because people believed in what they did not know. I teach them a God whom we—both I and they—know without realizing it, a God whom they do not believe in and do not pray to, but whom they know.”

Before we talk further about the god whom we know without being aware of him (and there is clearly a meaning here: “we know, without realizing, without knowing”), it should be noted that the Abraxas about whom they spoke at the beginning of the era of Pisces Gnostics, is by no means identical to the Abraxas whom Philemon knows. Abraxas of the Gnostics is the personification of time and space, chapter. It is difficult to say how much we can trust the information that has come to us through Christian critics of Gnosticism, but they say that Basilides (who authored the “Seven Instructions for the Dead”) attached some directly Kabbalistic meaning to the name of Abraxas. In particular, he believed that the sum of the numerical displays of the seven Greek letters of his name gives 365, which corresponds to the number of days in the year and the number of Aeons.

This abracadabra is what Basilides could know about Abraxas. And that Abraxas, whom Philemon knows and teaches to the dead, is the deity of the coming era of Aquarius. Having exposed its paradoxical structure, I have perhaps said much more about it than could be said (I hope this will not backfire on me). As for Jung, the questions he asks Philemon show that the analyst does not yet fully understand what the old magician is driving at. He will understand something when he begins to instruct the dead for the third time. The very next night they will appear and exclaim: “Tell us further about the Supreme God.” And Philemon will say: “Abraxas is God, whom it is difficult to recognize. It has the largest part, because it is invisible to man. From the Sun man sees summum bonum, that is, the highest good, from the Devil infinum malum, that is, boundless evil, and from Abraxas life, which is insurmountable in no way, which is the mother of good and bad.”

We know from personal experience that life is a complete paradox, the inseparability of grief and happiness, a total double meaning. And now it turns out that this is because life is a projection of Abraxas. Philemon shows this as clearly as possible:

“Abraxas is the Sun and equally swallows the eternal mouth of the Void, which belittles and dismembers everything, the mouth of the Devil.
The power of Abraxas is twofold. But you do not see it, because in your eyes the opposite direction of that power is equalized.
What the Sun God says is life,
what the Devil says is Death.
Abraxas speaks the word venerable and cursed, which is equal to life and death.
Abraxas creates truth and falsehood, good and evil, light and darkness in the same word and in the same deed.”

It is clear that all these (and other) contradictions stem from the fact that Abraxas is a deity of a different order than those essences that a person is able to grasp directly: Good and Evil, this and that, A and B. Since Abraxas unites opposites, it is tempting to consider him a god of boundaries, thresholds, differences (something like Terminus). But this would be too superficial, and therefore incorrect. Abraxas lives in another dimension, a paradoxical plane where there are no boundaries or what they separate. It generates any boundaries from itself, generating that which borders. And therefore it cannot be understood, grasped by thought. But you can still know him. And although this knowledge is completely apophatic, the conclusions from it are useful for everyday practice. Here, in particular, is what Philemon says about this god of lawlessness:

“He is the brightest light of day and the deepest night of madness.
To see it is blindness.
To know him is a disease.
To pray to him is death.
To fear him is wisdom.
Not resisting him is salvation.
God dwells in the sun. The devil is at night. What God gives birth to from the light, the Devil drags away into the night. Abraxas is the world, the formation and transience of the world.”

I will not retell everything that the magician said about Abraxas, but I will go straight to what Jung and Philemon talked about after the dead, having heard the last words of instruction about the paradoxical god (“he is a deceptive being”), left screaming (“ for they were imperfect"). Jung: “How, O my father, should I understand this God?” Philemon: “My son, why do you want to understand him? This God must be known, not understood. If you understand him, you can say that he is this or that and that, and not that. So you hold it in your hand, and therefore your hand must throw it away. The God I know is this and that and at the same time another this and another that. Therefore no one can understand this God, but he can be known, and that is why I speak and teach about him.”

Jung is interested in why Philemon calls the incomprehensible contradictions of nature a god? Answer: “What should I call him differently? If the irresistible essence of events in the universe and in the hearts of men were a law, I would call it a law. But this is not a law, but an accident, confusion, oversight, mistake, stupidity, inaccuracy, madness, lawlessness. Therefore, I cannot call this a law... I know that human language has always called the womb of the incomprehensible God. Verily, this God is and is not, for from being and non-being came everything that was, is and will be.”

Oh, it smelled like Hegelianism: we abstract from being and get nothing, we abstract from nothing and get being again (this is how God created), then again and again - from being, from nothing... Hegel called this flickering becoming. But Philemon is not at all a Hegelian. This is what he will say about what will be born from being and non-being, in his fourth instruction (the dead this time wanted to know “about Gods and Devils”):

“The Sun God is the highest good. The devil is the opposite of him, so you have two gods.
But there is a lot of high good and a lot of painful evil, and therefore there are two god-devils, one named flaming, the other called growing.”

It is already clear to us that the “two god-devils” are creatures not at all from that incomprehensible zone where Abraxas lives, arbitrarily creating boundaries that both exist and do not exist, since they do not yet exist, but they already exist (Figure 2). Goddevils live where boundaries and boundary points are clearly visible (Figure 1). “Burning” and “growing” are that which arises on the border of the divine and the devil, that which has the qualities of both: “Good and bad are one in the flame. The good and the bad are one in the growth of the tree.” However, Philemon sees a difference between these two god-devils: “The flaming is Eros in the form of a flame. It shines while it devours. A growing tree is a tree of life, it turns green, while as it grows it accumulates living matter.”

Well, it is clear that where there is more than one god, there are many gods: “Like a host of stars, the number of gods and devils is immeasurable.” Naturally, Philemon thinks of this multiple divinity precisely as a combination of opposites (suggesting a borderland): “Every star is a god, and every space that a star fills is a devil.” But the magician counts exactly four main gods (“for four is the number of dimensions of the world”): the first of them is the Sun God, the second is Eros, the third is the Tree of Life, the fourth is the Devil.

However, let’s put all this theology aside, since it is absolutely archetypal and follows from what we discussed above. Let's listen better to what the doctor and the magician were talking about after the dead left with laughter and mockery. “I think you’re wrong,” Jung said, referring to polytheism. “You seem to be teaching pure superstition.” To which the teacher again: whoever has rejected the one God, let him hear about the diverse divinity. And then - a long invective about the crimes of these dead: under the auspices of their good god (“the listener of prayers”) they cut down sacred trees, killed sacred animals, tore sacred ores from the depths... Did they suffer punishment for this? “No, they named, weighed, counted and distributed things. They did whatever they wanted... But the time has come for things to speak... And things will rise up, and count, and weigh, and distribute, and devour millions of people.”

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Abraxas variant Latin spelling of Abraxasvariant Latin spelling of Abraxasvariant Latin spelling of Abraxasvariant Latin spelling of Abraxasvariant Latin spelling of Abraxas

Άβράξας — Variant Greek spelling of AbraxasVariant Greek spelling of AbraxasVariant Greek spelling of AbraxasVariant Greek spelling of Abraxas

Άβρασάξ — Variant Greek spelling of AbraxasVariant Greek spelling of AbraxasVariant Greek spelling of AbraxasVariant Greek spelling of AbraxasVariant Greek spelling of Abraxas

Abrasax Variant spelling of AbraxasVariant spelling of AbraxasVariant spelling of AbraxasVariant spelling of Abraxas

"According to the doctrine of the Basilidians (one of the Gnostic sects - followers of Basilides, Syria, 2nd century), Abraxas- the supreme head of the heavens and aeons, as if combining their fullness in his person. In the Basilides system, the sum of the numerical values ​​included in the word " Abraxas" seven Greek letters (1 + + 2 + 100 + 1 + 60 + 1 + 200) gives 365 - the number of days in the year ("the totality of world time"), as well as the number of heavens ("the totality of world space") and the eons corresponding to the heavens (“the totality of the spiritual world”). The “cosmic” character of seven as a total number of letters is emphasized by the name given to it. Abraxas the meaning of a certain exhaustion of the moments of being, the final totality."

The church fathers fought against heresy with angry rebuke and caustic ridicule. Saint Epiphanius sarcastically remarked that the heresiarchs are trying to “influence the imagination of the inexperienced with terrible names and the barbaric compilation of these names,” - he also meant the title Abraxas.

In the 2nd century, the Christian Church defeated heresies, but in the Middle Ages Abraxas again became quite famous: his image as a talisman was adopted by alchemists, who wore medallions with a rooster-man on their chests.

"Afterwards broke out the heretic Basilides. He affirms that there is a supreme Deity, by name Abraxas, by whom Mind was created, which in Greek he calls Nous; that then sprang the Word; that of Him issued Providence, Virtue, and Wisdom; that out of these subsequently were made Principalities, powers, and Angels; that there ensued infinite issues and processes of angels; that by these angels 365 heavens were formed, and the world, in honor of Abraxas, whose name, if computed, has in itself this number. Now, among the last of the angels, those who made this world, he places the God of the Jews latest, that is, the God of the Law and of the Prophets, whom he denies to be a God, but affirms to be an angel To him, he says, was allotted the seed of Abraham, and accordingly he was who transferred the sons of Israel from the land of Egypt into the land of Canaan; affirming him to be turbulent above the other angels, and accordingly given to the frequent arousing of seditions and wars, yes, and the shedding of human blood. Christ, moreover, he affirms to have been sent, not by this maker of the world, but by the above-named Abraxas; and to have come in a phantasm, and been destitute of the substance of flesh: that it was not He who suffered among the Jews, but that Simon was crucified in His stead: whence, again, there must be no believing on him who was crucified, best one confess to having believed on Simon. Martyrdoms, he says, are not to be endured. The resurrection of the flesh he strenuously impugns, affirming that salvation has not been promised to bodies."

Carl Jung, "The Seven Sermons to the Dead" (Carl Jung, "Seven Sermons to the Dead")

In Thomas Moore's short story "Utopia", the island of the same name is once referred to as " Abraxas ".

The god Abraxas is mentioned in the following passage from Hermann Hesse's story "Demian":

"The bird is struggling out of the egg. The egg is the world. Whoever wants to be born must first destroy a world. The bird is flying to God. The name of the God is called Abraxas."

Hermann Hesse, "Demian" (Herman Hesse, "Demian")

In Hugo Pratt's story "Favola di Venezia - Sirat Al-Bunduqiyyah" ("Fable of Venice"), Corto Maltese encounters several Abraxas in Venice.

Abraxas is a fictional cosmic entity from Marvel Comics that was introduced in "Galactus: The Devourer".

Abraxas Current

Speaking about the pantheon of Thelema, one cannot fail to note another deity, which, although not directly present in the pantheon, has a significant influence on the symbolism, the key formula and the general vector. Abraxas! The name still excites the imagination of poets and mystics, representing the great secret of Gnostic teachings. The name with which the secret of opening the gates of knowledge is associated. A name that is one of the most important secrets of occultism in general, and the occultism of Thelema in particular.

Many of us have read Hermann Hesse’s stunning novel-confession “Damian”. A novel in which the main character searches for his God, the other side of world contradictions and ultimately finds him in a mysterious society of initiates, marked with the special seal of Abrax. “A bird gets out of the nest. The egg is the world. Whoever wants to be born must destroy the world. The bird flies to God. God's name is Abraxas." God who connects earth and heaven, God who stands on the other side of good and evil, God the key and God the door, God the word and God the silence.

How great was my amazement when I saw the image of this God. The symbol of Abrax is a figure with the body of a man, the legs of a snake and the head of a rooster. The head of a bird is the beginning of the sky, the legs of a snake are the beginning of the earth, the body of a person is the essence of their connection, the meeting of two abysses at the point of creation. I was amazed looking at this image, because long before that, when I was undergoing sessions of active imagination according to Jung, at the center of my fantasies there were two figures - the Snake and the Chicken. And these figures, after much work, united into a single feathered serpent. This was my personal Abrax. And now I knew for sure this is my God. A god I discovered much later in Thelema.

To talk about Abraxas, one should trace his history from the very beginning. Abraxas first appeared at the dawn of the Christian era in the writings of Basilides. Gnosticism was considered by the orthodox to be the most dangerous heresy, and all the works of Basilides were carefully destroyed - all that was preserved was a few paragraphs in the works of heresiologists. We can only guess and try to fill in the blank spots with the help of intellectual intuition. Since for the Gnostics there were three levels of existence - Body, Soul and Spirit, I assume that Abraxas was interpreted on all three levels. The level of interpretation is determined by the ability of a particular adept.

On the physical plane, Abraxas is the essence of the Sun, and the year is the period of a complete solar cycle. Abrax's number is 365, and at this level it indicates the number of days in a year. On the psychic level, Abraxas is the principle of consciousness, or rather the special ability of the chosen ones, People of a Special Type, for a gnostic comprehension of reality or intellectual intuition. The Abrax of the soul is the cosmic Eros connecting the individual soul with its divine source. Abraxas also corresponds to Mercury and the generative principle itself, the physical analogy of which is the seed.

Finally, at the highest level of comprehension, Abraxas is the Black Sun, or the Gnostic pleroma (completeness), the point of all-being, containing all opposites in an indissoluble unity.

As already mentioned, unfortunately, the manuscripts have not survived, and we can only guess about the scale of Basilides’ insight. Gnosticism was suppressed by orthodoxy, and Abrasax was slandered. So in the Middle Ages they spoke of “the demon Abraxas, who came up with abracadabra to confuse minds with false knowledge.” It should be noted that even in this version, the original message is visible - the plus is replaced with a minus, but Abrax is still associated with knowledge inaccessible to laymen (and therefore hastily declared false). This also indicates that the formula of Abrax, which reached the peak of its power in the third chapter of the Book of the Law - Abrahadabra, has always been associated with an alternative occult tradition alien to official dogma. In modern semantics, “abrahadabra” is associated with something absurd and incoherent, but this is the result of centuries-old propaganda of official religious discourse seeking to devalue everything that is in any way actually connected with the secrets of the occult.

Already in the late Renaissance, supporters of Abraxas appeared. So in “The City of the Sun” by Tomaso Campanela, the second name of Utopia is Abraxas! Although it is little known, Tomaso Campanella is one of the last of the Renaissance hermetists, and a follower of Giordano Bruno. And the original meaning of utopia was not political at all, but gnostic-hermetic, and only with the reign of maddened enlightenment, the context was completely lost.

But the real revival of Abrax began in the twentieth century, with the beginning of a new Aeon. In 1916, under unusual circumstances, Carl Gustav Jung, a world-famous psychologist, received a revelation called “Seven Precepts for the Dead.” The unusual circumstances in question are:

It all started with a confusion that I didn’t even understand: I had no idea what it all meant or what I should do. There was a feeling that the atmosphere around me was thickening, it was filled with some strange ghostly creatures. And so it was: ghosts began to appear in my house. One night, my eldest daughter saw a pale figure crossing the room, my second daughter complained that her blanket was missing twice during the night, and my nine-year-old son had a terrible dream. In the morning he took a pencil from his mother and, despite the fact that he had never drawn before, this time he wanted to depict what he saw. This is how a drawing called “Portrait of a Fisherman” appeared. In the center of the sheet were depicted a river and a fisherman with a fishing rod on the shore. He is fishing. For some reason, there is a pipe on his head, from which flames and smoke burst out. The devil flies towards him from the opposite bank, cursing the fisherman for stealing his fish. But an angel hovers over the fisherman with the words: “You will not harm him, he only catches bad fish!” My son drew all this on Saturday morning.

On Sunday, at approximately 5 o'clock in the afternoon, the doorbell began to trill frantically. It was a sunny summer day, both maids were in the kitchen, from where the open area in front of the entrance was clearly visible. Hearing the bell, everyone immediately rushed to the door, but there was no one behind it. I even saw the bell swaying! We looked at each other in silence. Believe me, it all looked very strange and scary back then! I knew something was going to happen. The house was filled with ghosts, they wandered in crowds. There were so many of them that I could hardly breathe and kept asking myself: “My God, what is this?” The ghosts answered me: “We returned from Jerusalem, there we did not find what we were looking for.”

I made these words the beginning" Septem Sermones...".

Then the words poured out in a continuous stream, and in three evenings the thing was written. And as soon as I took up the pen, the entire host of ghosts instantly disappeared. The obsession dissipated, the room became quiet, and the air cleared.

Fearing for his reputation, Jung refuses to make this text public almost until the end of his life, showing it only to his closest circle. Only in recent years, he decided to publish it, as an appendix to his autobiography. The fact is that the text in question is not just a work of art, but in fact a ready-made Gnostic gospel. Moreover, it is enough to carefully analyze the ideas that are expressed in " Septem Sermones..." and then get acquainted with Jung's basic scientific ideas in order to understand - having accepted this revelation, Jung remains until the end of his life as a translator of Gnostic ideas into the modern and only language of scientific discourse understandable to people. Jung copes with his mission brilliantly!

A whole chapter is dedicated to Abraxas, most of which we present here. Here Abrax appears primarily as a deity standing above all antinomies, the source of pure being:

Abraxas is a God who is difficult to recognize. It has the largest part, because it is invisible to man. From the Sun man sees the summum bopit, that is, the highest good,

from the Devil infinum malum, that is, boundless evil, from Abraxas life, which is insurmountable in no way, which is the mother of good and bad.

Life seems weaker and smaller than the summum bonum, therefore, even in thoughts it is difficult to imagine that Abraxas is superior in power to the Sun, which itself is the radiant source of all life force.

Abraxas is the Sun and equally swallows the eternal mouth of the Void, which belittles and dismembers everything, the mouth of the Devil.

The power of Abraxas is twofold. But you do not see it, because in your eyes the opposite direction of that power is equalized.

What the Sun God says is life,

what the Devil says is Death.

Abraxas speaks the word venerable and cursed, which is equal to life and death.

Abraxas creates truth and falsehood, good and evil, light and darkness in the same word and in the same deed. That is why Abraxas is formidable.

He is magnificent like a lion in the moment when he prostrates his victim. It is as beautiful as a spring day.

Yes, he himself is the great Pan, which means Everything, and he is also a little. He and Priapus.

He is a monster of the underworld, a polyp (Polypus (Greek) - many-legged - approx. trans.), thousand-armed, winged, sinuous serpent, fury itself.

He is also a Hermaphrodite of the lowest origin.

He is the master of toads and frogs, who live in the water and come out onto land, and sing in chorus at noon and midnight.

He is the Filled One that reunites with the Empty One.

He is holy copulation.

He is love and its mortification.

He is the saint and the betrayer of the saint.

He is the brightest light of day and the deepest night of madness.

To see it is blindness.

To know him is a disease.

To pray to him is death.

To fear him is wisdom.

Not resisting him is salvation.

God dwells in the sun. The devil is at night. What God gives birth from light. The devil drags you into the night. Abraxas is the world, the formation and transience of the world. The Devil imposes his curse on every gift from the Sun God.

Whatever you ask from the Sun God, the Devil also gives birth to.

Whatever you create together with the Sun God gives the Devil real power.

This is him, the formidable Abraxas.

The text provides very important keys to understanding Abrax, which we will consider more carefully towards the end of the work. For now, let us note that Jung identifies him with Pan and Priapus, as well as with the combination of all conceivable opposites.

At the beginning of this chapter, we talked about the novel by Hermann Hesse. Now is the time to look at this topic in more detail. The appearance of Abrax in Hesse’s work is not accidental and comes from Jung. The fact is that Jung had a student Lang who played a huge role in the life of Hermann Hesse as his teacher and analyst. It was his meeting with Lang that helped Hesse fully embrace the full force of his genius. And it was from this meeting that the story “Damian” was born, already mentioned in passing at the beginning of the article.

At the center of the story is the hero, Sinclair, who since childhood has felt painfully torn between two worlds. He rushes between evil and good, chaos and logos, flesh and spirit. He probably would have remained in a vicious circle of false dualism if not for the mysterious figure of Damian, who has been helping him since childhood. Damian is essentially the Self or SAH of the hero himself, his visible personification. And it is his intervention that helps the hero break out of the tangle of false contradictions. And realize. And accept the paradoxical integrity of existence. Being, the highest personification of which is Abraxas - the god on the other side of opposites, whose service is equally holiness and vice.

The ending of “Damian” is very important, in which the hero undergoes initiation into a special secret society, and in fact a union of People of a Special Type, united by the religion of Abrax. The religion of freedom and knowledge. In the house of Lady Eve, there are people of various teachings, the symbol of Sinclair himself is the Hawk (a bird in many ways related to the falcon), and in dreams it was “the sea into which I flowed. She was a star, and I myself, in the form of a star, moved towards her, and we felt how we were drawn to each other, met, stayed together and circled each other in close, ringing circles in eternal bliss.”

All these images are associated with the highest occultism of Thelema, which we will discuss in more detail below. In the meantime, let's talk about the Russian herald of Abraxas - the Silver Age poet Mikhail Kuzmin. Mikhail Kuzmin published his poetic almanac, which was called Abraxas, and one of Kuzmin’s key poems is essentially a Gnostic confession, and is called Basilides, an excerpt from which we give:

I didn't fight

I was weak

My hands are whips

Like an illiterate slave

I listened to a set of pompous interjections.

And suddenly

Past the will, past the desires,

Unseen buildings opened up

Luminous Row,

From the pallor the flame came forth.

The bearded tramp became the herald,

And knowledge is higher than knowledge,

Love is purer than love,

The power of strength is the strongest,

Delight, -

Like a ball

Round, cool.

Screaming, boiling,

They filled me up wonderfully.

Aeon, Aeon, Pleroma,

Pleroma - Completeness,

To the blast furnace to the house,

To the throne, to the throne,

Until the ringing, thunderous ringing

Broaden, souls, souls!

Power! Power! Power!

Tense whip muscles!

Shout louder, children,

Red throwing the ball!

I recognized both laughter and crying!

What's Homer?

Stronger than horses, soldiers, the sun, death and the Nile, -

Seven celestial spheres

The crystal harmony stunned me.

Tympanum, coo!

Trumpet, play!

Howl, strike!

A whirlwind of pigeons!

Eagles scream!

Moan of the swans!

Spirit, ray,

wey, wey,

Doors

Heavenly paradise!

Paradise, paradise!

I had a polished stone in my hand,

Bloody flame streamed from it,

And the word was roughly scrawled: abracsas.

The hero of the poem gradually goes through various historical cycles in his soul - from the world of Assyria, through Hellas to Egypt and mystical death, followed by rebirth with the experience of unity. Abrax here is at the same time a specific symbol associated with “a stone from which a bloody flame flows,” and at the same time, a global experience of unity, “crystal harmony,” the experience of unus mundus, a single world, a single mind, comprehended in the glory of Abraxas. Ruby is a special stone, often associated with Lucifer as the bearer of the Light of Gnosis. In the chapter on the symbol of faith, we examined in detail the symbolism of Lucifer, but here it is enough to mention that the Blood Stone is a ruby ​​associated with Lucifer as the bearer of gnosis, which is reflected in the poetry of Nikolai Gumilyov - “my friend Lucifer gave me seven horses, and one golden ring with ruby." Intuition tells me that we are dealing with related symbolism, especially since, as it says Meister Schwarzsichtig in his article from the site “ www. nork. ru « Lucifer is the Angel Bringing Light, or Gnosis."Which again makes symbolism similar to Abrax.

Now let's turn to the key figure of twentieth-century occultism - Aleister Crowley. At the beginning of the article we said that Abraxas is of great importance in Thelema although it is not directly represented.

First of all, it should be said about the formula “abrahadabra”, which, as is known, came from the name Abraxas. Crowley attached great importance to this formula, and analysis of its meaning is one of the favorite topics of modern occultists.

The enormous significance of this formula is not surprising - after all, the Third Chapter of the Holy Book of the Law begins with the words “Abrahadabra - the Reward of Ra Hor Khuit.” The Abrahadabra formula consists of 11 letters, and in the first chapter of the Book of the Law it is said that “our number is 11.”

The most common interpretation of this formula says that it refers to the combination of five and six, that is, the microcosm, as a separate individuality, whose symbol is the pentagram, and the Macrocosm, as a universal cosmic unity, whose symbol is the hexogram. Thus, the formula derived from the name Abraxas is a universal form of the great work, in fact the central formula of Thelema, used in most rituals! By saying Abrahadabra, we invoke this god, and this should be taken into account in spiritual practice, which is the subject of the second chapter of this book. For example, “Abrahadabra” is used in the Regule ritual.

Another interpretation of this formula sounds like this: Abra is the solar eidos, symbolizing individual consciousness, compresses into the point Had, that is, rushes to its source, the Self or God, and, looking into the depths, recognizes its own face in the mirror - therefore Abra is repeated the second time, as recognition of oneself in God.

There are a number of other interesting, although more distant and not so obvious parallels. Since the Third Chapter begins with the Formula of Abrahadabra, it can be assumed that Ra Horus Khuit, to whom the third chapter is dedicated, under the exclamation “Abrahadabr,” is somehow connected with Abraxas. Until recently, I could not think about this, since I associated Horus primarily with Martian forces, due to the militant tone of the third chapter. However, as it turns out, Crowley himself associated him primarily with Hermes, which is specifically stated in the “Book of Lies” Keflan 2. Namely Hermes, for Jung Hermes is the main figure of alchemy, combining Light and Darkness, good and evil, which to some extent identical to Abraxas.

But if there is a formula for Abrax, then he himself must be somewhere. One of the biggest surprises for me, after several years of consciously joining the OTO, was to learn that Crowley's personal seal was the Gnostic gem Abrax. It is this seal that is the symbol of supreme power in the OTO and is passed on as a symbol of supreme power in the Order.

Thus, two occult streams, the Thelemic Egyptian vector and the Gnostic vector of Abraxas, united into One. From the mere fact of Abrax's seal it is clear that although Abrax is not officially included in the Thelemic pantheon, its symbolism and functions are directly related to the Thelemic pantheon.

If the seal of Abraxas is the gem of the OTO, doesn’t this mean that the ideal community of People of a Special Type, bearers of the initiatory seal, about which Hesse wrote, is the OTO, regardless of whether Hesse knew it or not.

This is confirmed by another interesting fact. In the main ritual of Thelema, the Gnostic Mass, at one of the most peak moments, the priest reads an invocation to Abraxas, who, exactly in accordance with the quoted text of Jung, corresponds to Pan:

IO IO IO IAO SABAO
KIRIE ABRASAX KIRIE MEITHRAS KIRIE PHALLE.
IO PAN, IO PAN, PAN

IO ISXUROS, IO ATHANATOS IO ABROTOS

IO IAO

XAIRE PHALLE XAIRE PAMPHAGE XAIRE PANGENETOR.
HAGIOS, HAGIOS , HAGIOS IAO .

It is interesting that in Damian, Hesse, without knowing it, makes many allusions to Thelema. The likening of a person to a Star is a manifestation of the third formula of the Law - “every man and every woman is a Star”, and in Lady Eve’s reasoning about love one can see a hint of the second law - “Love is the law - love in accordance with the Will.” Finally, the key image of the hero’s bird, which appears before him as a sign, is the Hawk. Is this not an unconscious allusion to the falcon-headed ruler of the new eon?

So, having examined the manifestations of Abrax in the twentieth century, we should clearly define the main vector of occultism, and the occult worldview in the broadest sense, of which Abrax is the central symbol.

Firstly, Abrax is the desire for the superhuman. Therefore, the art of flow Abrax is the art of transformation. This could be a description of the process of spiritual formation, a combination of opposites, it could be a certain sequence of symbols, touching which is an experience of transubstantiation.

Secondly, the Abrax movement is associated with a special kind of “metaphysical nonconformism.” We are talking about a fundamental transfer of plus and minus signs, a radical rethinking of symbols. Initially, in Gnosticism, the universally revered God of the Old Testament turned into the demon Yaldabaoth, and negative characters into figures of saviors. So the Edenic serpent, the tempter, turns out to be the Redeemer, conveying the secret of liberation to the proto-humans in slavery, Cain turns out to be the first to receive the seal of initiation, and Judas, an initiate of the highest gnosis, helps Jesus fulfill his mission. We see these ideas in Hesse in Damian, where a Special Type of Man is defined as the bearer of the “seal of Cain.” Aleister Crowley, taking the name of the Great Beast and rethinking the plot of the apocalypse, I think, was guided by the same considerations.

The metaphysical nonconformism of Gnosticism has many aspects and facets. This is a means of self-defense against the system of imposed stereotypes, the liberation of the initiate from the conditioning matrix. This is also an expression of fundamental disagreement with the “world of Yaldabaoth”, a means of going beyond the boundaries, matriegregor. Finally, this is a transfer of consciousness from the “earth mode,” that is, rigidly crystallized into the binary oppositions of evil and good, into the “water mode,” where all opposites intertwine with each other, smoothly flowing from one state to another. This transition is the most important initiation that occurs with the initiate on the verge of madness and genius, since in the “water mode” something is available that is not available in the “earth mode”.

Finally, thirdly, the “Abrax Current” affirms the original non-duality of being. Thus, even symbols associated with obstacle and distortion are not the personification of “absolute evil,” but necessary conditions for the formation of an adept. Thus, the Thelemic Choronzon or Gnostic Yaldabaoth is not “absolute evil”, like the Christian Devil, but the main guardian of Illusion, without whom the mystery of overcoming would be impossible. The figures opposing the adept - both symbolic and completely material, are rather artificially created by the highest spiritual principle trainer, opposition to which is a necessary condition for becoming an adept. Unlike most Eastern secret teachings, in Western occultism, neo-gnosticism does not focus on the passive dissolution of opposites, but their passionate union in a violent explosion coming from the depths of being. “Plus by minus gives liberation - home,” this is how the Rock Poet Yanka Diaghileva formulated it very accurately.

Fourthly, the Abrax Current considers sexuality to be Sacred. The highest rituals of Thelema are the rituals of sexual magic, Hesse especially emphasized this role of Lady Eve, and Jung's closest students, according to Richard Nolt, also practiced sexual magic. This is especially important because here the tension of metaphysical nonconformism reaches its limit, since for the layman sex magic is the subject of the greatest indignation and fear. Separately, it should be said regarding androgyny. Abrax, as a combination of all opposites, is a combination of the feminine and masculine in a single being. Jung spoke of the achievement of androgyny as an “integration of the anima,” when the male function of Intelligence and the female function of Intuition are combined into a higher function of perception called by initiates “intellectual intuition.” The initiate is able to feel with the brain and think with the heart. A man, without losing his function, acquires feminine traits, and a woman acquires masculine traits.

Abraxas (Gnosticism)

Abraxas

Abrasax or Abraxas or Abracas- Gnostic term. The sum of the digital values ​​of the Greek letters that make up the word is equal to the number 365. In the system of the Gnostic Basilides, Abrasax is the head (archon) of the lower eons (emanations of the Divine), which created 365 heavens. In further occult tradition, Abrasax was represented as an Egyptian god, a demon, a dualistic deity, and was depicted in the form of a rooster.

Abraxas is a mystical word, incorrectly considered Egyptian, of origin rather of Persian and in this case contains all the letters used in Pelvi for numerical designation and at the same time the very first letters of the alphabet of this language. Introduced by the Gnostic Basilides, whose followers attached magical meaning to the stones on which this word was carved and, in addition, a figure with a human torso, human arms, a rooster's head and snakes instead of legs; in her right hand is a whip, in her left is a circle or wreath with a double cross inside. Stones of this kind were found in Asia, Egypt, and partly in Spain, where they, together with the Basilidian teaching, were brought by the Priscillians, and then were accepted by all magical and alchemical sects and became widespread as amulets in the Middle Ages. The mystical figure was modified in a wide variety of ways and was replaced by various images, pagan, etc., which no longer had anything in common with Gnosticism. Wed. Bellermann "Ueber die Gemmen der Alte n mit dem Abraxasbilde" (3rd issue. Berd. 1817-19"; Barzilai "Gli Adraxas" (Trieste, 1873).

In culture

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Personifying the unity of World Time and Space. In the Basilides system the name Abraxas has a mystical meaning, since the sum of the numerical values ​​of the seven Greek letters of this word gives the number of days in a year.

Α = 1, Β = 2, Ρ = 100, Α = 1, Σ = 200, Α = 1, Ξ = 60

According to Kabbalah, the Universe is divided into 365 eons, or spiritual cycles; their sum is the Great Father, who is given the Kabbalistic name of Abraxas. This is a symbol of the number of Divine emanations. Abraxas was depicted in ancient Indian, Persian, and Egyptian art, on ancient gems, as a creature with a human body, the head of a rooster and snakes instead of legs. In one hand he holds a knife or whip, in the other - a shield on which the name Yah is inscribed (Egyptian Jah - a prayer exclamation, in the Eleusinian Mysteries it turned into the name of the Sun deity). The rooster symbolizes the beginning of a new day, the knife symbolizes the death of the material body, and the whip symbolizes power. In Egyptian art, Abraxas is usually represented with the sign of the Ankh, a scepter, and a headdress with horns, above which is the sign of "Millions of Years" (a small figurine of a man with his arms raised to the sky). In late antiquity and the Middle Ages, the image of this deity was interpreted as follows: the rooster is a symbol of foresight and vigilance, the snake is a symbol of inner feeling, intuition and insight. Other emanations of this deity are Mind, Word, Wisdom, Strength. It is believed that Abraxas owes its origin to the ancient images of the serpent and dragon.

The mystical figure was modified in a wide variety of ways and was replaced by various images, pagan, etc., which no longer had anything in common with Gnosticism. Wed. Bellermann "Ueber die Gemmen der Alten mit dem Abraxasbilde" (Berlin, 1817-19); Barzilai "Gli Adraxas" (Trieste, 1873).

In culture

• The American comics company Marvel Comics has the character Abraxas (a cosmic entity that is the embodiment of pure destruction).
• In the computer game Sacrifice there is a hero named Abraxus (eng. Abraxus)
• For Thomas More, Abraxas is the old name for the island of Utopia.
• The name "Abraxas" was used by a group of "emotionalists" led by Mikhail Kuzmin for their almanac of the 1920s (during this period Kuzmin was actively interested in Gnosticism and wrote a poem about Basilides).
• The image of Abraxas is also found in Hermann Hesse (novel Demian), in modern pop and rock culture, etc.
• Swedish symphonic metal band Therion recorded the song "Abraxas" on their album Lemuria, released in 2004.
• Australian blackened thrash metal band Deströyer 666 have an EP “Terror Abraxas” (2003).
• Santana's second album is called "Abraxas" (1970).
• The British mathcore band Rolo Tomassi has a song called “Abraxas” on their album “Hysterics” (2008).
• In Rowling's Harry Potter, this is the name of Lucius Malfoy's father.
• The song “Abraxas”, written by S. Kalugin, is performed by the Russian group “Orgy of the Righteous”.
• In the American TV series Charmed, Abraxas is a time demon with the ability to reverse time.
• In Andrei Dashkov's "Lost Light" this is one of the names of a stationary satellite - a source of psychotronic radiation.
• Fumetto's antagonist "Dylan Dog"'s alias is Xabaras, which is an anagram of the name Abraxas.
• In the web comic Homestuck, Jake English's character "Abraxas" has an Internet browser. Also Abraxas is his (Jake's) Dweller.
• In the Hollywood film "Jupiter Ascending" by Lana and Andy Wachowski, the entire cosmic race of Abrasaxes appears, they have excessive power in the universe and act as villains.

Sources

• // Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron: in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - St. Petersburg. , 1890-1907.

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Excerpt characterizing Abraxas

In St. Petersburg at this time, in the highest circles, with greater fervor than ever, there was a complex struggle between the parties of Rumyantsev, the French, Maria Feodorovna, the Tsarevich and others, drowned out, as always, by the trumpeting of the court drones. But calm, luxurious, concerned only with ghosts, reflections of life, St. Petersburg life went on as before; and because of the course of this life, it was necessary to make great efforts to recognize the danger and the difficult situation in which the Russian people found themselves. There were the same exits, balls, the same French theater, the same interests of the courts, the same interests of service and intrigue. Only in the highest circles were efforts made to recall the difficulty of the present situation. It was told in whispers how the two empresses acted opposite to each other in such difficult circumstances. Empress Maria Feodorovna, concerned about the welfare of the charitable and educational institutions under her jurisdiction, made an order to send all institutions to Kazan, and the things of these institutions were already packed. Empress Elizaveta Alekseevna, when asked what orders she wanted to make, with her characteristic Russian patriotism, deigned to answer that she could not make orders about state institutions, since this concerned the sovereign; about the same thing that personally depends on her, she deigned to say that she will be the last to leave St. Petersburg.