Dearly beloved readers:
Noble friends, I am sending you this new engraving entitled…
… EPISTLE OR LETTER TO A HUNGRY AND THIRSTY SOUL.
THE CONVINCING DEVIL.
Let us begin by saying that this engraving is the cover of a book with the same title as we have mentioned before, which was written by the illustrious Jacob Böhme, who lived between the years 1575 and 1624.
The author sent this dialogue between a hungry soul, the devil, and an enlightened soul, directly to a recipient. The recipient was Siegmund Johann von Schweinichen, one of his sponsors.
We must notify our dear readers that the devil to whom the author refers in this engraving is Lucifer himself, or “the shadow of the intimate Christ” that we comment on in the Gnostic texts. When the book begins, Jacob Böhme gives voice to the hungry soul and it then says:
“If I had knowledge of Nature and creatures, I would want to dominate the world.”
To which the devil replied:
“The reason for such knowledge is in you. Simply change your will from God to Nature and creatures, then the desire for such a taste will arise in you, then you will be able to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, then you will know everything.”
It is obvious that the preceding paragraph refers to the temptation suffered by souls in the earthly paradise, according to the Holy Scriptures, all of which triggered the birth of the Ego and its terrible consequences to this day.
Mysteriously, the author, Jacob Böhme, intermingles this with Greek mythology to tell us:
“When this happened, Vulcan kindled the fiery wheel of the Essence, and all the qualities of Nature were awakened in the soul and it entered into its own appetite and desire… It was a worm like the fiery serpents that the devil presented to it in his image, and it began to rule the earth in an animal way.”
In the preceding letters, we are being told of those remote instants in which the angelic fall of which the theogonies of many peoples speak, and, specifically, what the Christian Sacred Scriptures tell us. However, millenary Gnosticism hasalways known the ins and outs of all that drama, and today, in the middle of the 20th and 21st centuries, the V.M. Samael Aun Weor has clearly revealed to us what really happened in the midst of all this terrible tragedy.
For lovers of Gnosis it is no secretthat that “fiery wheel of the Essences” were the electric-erotic currents that were set in motion thanks to the theurgic work of the Angel Sakaki and his sacred commission millions of years ago. This caused the “innocent” souls to know the sin of fornication and to remain identified with creation, with Nature, that is, they became prisoners of maya –namely: illusion–. Thus, in this way, the human progeny began to rule the Earth in an animalistic way, for the “I” is grotesque, brutish, animal-like, and only knows how to do blunders.
Historians and theologians are interested in the devil’s way of speaking, because, according to them, the devil speaks as a seducer, not of Eve in paradise, but using a reasoning similar to the way of thinking of secular times. It is clear that Jacob Böhme adapted those millenary words of Genesis in his work to try to bring the drama closer to the esotericists of that time and of today. Coupled with all this, we are told that the devil used arguments like these:
«La muerte cruel del hijo de Dios en la cruz paga el castigo por los crímenes humanos y eso es suficiente».
Then the Devil says:
“Why are you worried? Look at the world as it lives with joy, it will continue to be happy: Christ paid for all people and did enough; you can just console yourself that it has happened, then you will be happy. You cannot attain divine sensibility here in this world, just let go and take care of the body and temporal glory. Behold, now you are strong, great, and noble, see to it that you become greater, richer, and more powerful, use your art and intelligence so that all may fear you, then you will have a great reputation and name in the world…”
And the devil added:
“Why would rescue be necessary if we live in a secular, beautiful, joy-filled world?
It is necessary to seek self-sufficiency through wealth. Look at the beautiful world in which God created Himself and made Himself lord of all creatures to rule it. Gather for yourself the riches of your marriage so that you will no longer need the world when old age and your end come.”
The devil remarked:
“Every repentant sinner can be accepted by God, no matter the time, if only he repents.”
And he noted:
“The sinner can take his time, behave like a tyrant, and show remorse only shortly before death in order to attain the happiness that being in heaven assures him. In a beautiful world, the melancholic [the one who contemplates] is a fool. What do you think would happen to you if you became melancholic [contemplative]? Then you would be the fool of them all, and you would live in a vain sadness, which pleases neither God nor Nature…”
It must be said, friends, that the devil’s praise of life only becomes fragile when he doubts the beauty of this world in war, in the cruelest war that Central Europe had seen up to that time: the Thirty Years’ War.
If we analyze the words of the devil expounded by Jacob Böhme in his treatise, we can confirm that, in fact, the dead religions, in their eagerness to keep the multitudes among their parishioners, have been repeating for centuries precisely the words of the great PRESTIGITATOR, the Ego, the “I”, trying to convince the Consciences, the Souls, that really everything that the V.M. Aberamentho lived erased the sins of the world… But in reality what the V.M. Aberamentho came to show us is the drama that, wisely interpreted, can grant liberation to souls thirsting for light and who are willing to apply the THREE FACTORS OF THE REVOLUTION OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS.
There are many who think that, despite the fact that we have been gangsters, murderers, thieves, criminals, etc., etc., etc., with a simple repentance before dying we will go directly to the heavens of Consciousness or superior worlds. Big mistake! God, the BEING, is not an idiot whom we will convince with a few tears and beating of the chest!! These people are ignorant of the existence of the Archons of Destiny and the desiderata of the Great Divine Law. That is pure ignorance. They know nothing of that which we call karmas and dharmas, etc., etc., etc.
The “I” will always show us illusions during our life. It will always make us believe that we will become rich, famous, happy, etc., etc., even when we commit various outrages during our stay in this existence. And in the minds of many ignorant people there is the idea according to which we do not need to be rescued from anything or by anyone, that is the philosophy of the “I”.
Very interesting is the fact that, in the middle of the text of this work, the words of an enlightened soul appear, who says:
“You must do nothing [to return], but abandon your [egoic] will, your own comforts, and your bad qualities will weaken, and if you dare to die, you will submerge with your will back into THE ONE, that is where you came from in the beginning.”
The phrases alluding to the enlightened soul make direct reference to abandoning the will of the “I” and fighting against our weaknesses –the “I’s”– in order to integrate, little by little, with the primordial UNITY from which we have emanated.
That soul then added:
“I followed your counsel and thus gained the sight of divine sweetness. But it has departed from me again and now I am forsaken and in great temptation from the outside, facing the world, all my good friends leave me and mock me. I am also challenged inwardly by fear and doubt, and I do not know what to do now.”
Undoubtedly, esteemed reader, when it comes to living the Secret Path we will time and again feel abandoned and subjected to great temptations inside and outside of us. It is also very true that when we want to return to the Father, the world —friendships, family, friends, etc., etc.— will turn its back on us because we will not participate in its various sprees and neither do we participate in its dreams and fantasies.
And the enlightened soul added:
“Now I like you. So now our dear Lord the Christ walks his pilgrimage on earth with me and in me… This troubled soul now began its course under the patience of Christ, and entered with hope into the divine confidence, and became mighty and stronger day by day, and its evil tendencies [the psychological aggregates] became more and more extinct within it… A great Kingdom of Grace was established, and the gates of divine revelation were opened to it, and the Kingdom of Heaven was revealed in it.”
Now, illustrious reader, let us turn to the description of this beautiful engraving.
First of all, we have before our eyes the title of it: Conversations between enlightened and unenlightened souls.
Then we observe, in a more or less diffused way, theword PARADEIS, which, most probably, comes from the Greek word PARADEISOS, and which is to be translatedas‘Garden of Eden’. Obviously, such a garden is constituted by the superior dimensions of the Cosmos, where the perfume and beauty of the Creator reign.
The aforementioned word is enclosed in a semicircle. At the bottom of it we find a cross and in the center of it a triangle. This triangle alludes to the THREE PRIMARY FORCES OF CREATION manifesting themselves in creation itself. The cross speaks to us of the immense power that it contains, for it is thanks to it that the miracle of the crossing of masculine and feminine energies is carried out so that life springs forth.
These forces we have just spoken of are received by the dove of the Holy Spirit, who distributes them in the cosmic womb or Mulaprakriti of the Hindustanis. She is the representation of the Kabbalistic Third Logos, the great reconciler and the great purifier. The Holy Spirit is therefore part of a great circle or Greek ouroboros, Serpens qui caudam devoravit, or ‘serpent devouring its own tail’. That symbol has always represented the wisdom of the Great Work. However, it is good to point out that, in this case, the head of this serpent is similar to that of a dragon, because it is known by all of us that such a mythological character is the tempting Lucifer himself,who only grants his powers and secrets to those who have managed to defeat him in the hard initiatory struggle….. The significant fact that we see the dove within one part of the circle formed by the ouroboros and the other upper semicircle is to indicate that only with the energy of the Holy Spirit —namely: the Ens-Seminis— can we reach the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of superlative Consciousness.
Within the circle formed by the ouroboros we can observe an EYE that sheds a tear. This eye symbolizes the souls chained to the sufferings of Samsara, the humanity trapped within the passions provoked by the ANIMAL EGO. Those passions are described in Old German within the circle that the ouroboros forms, let us see:
To the left of the dove we find the word Zorn, which is to be interpreted as ‘ANGER’, and also this one: Fewer, which is to be read as‘FIRE’.
To the right of the sacred bird we find the word Hoffart, which we must interpret as ‘PRIDE’, ‘ARROGANCE‘, and also this one: Lust, which means ‘AIR’.
Below the eye, on the left, we can read Neidt, which is to be interpreted as ‘ENVY’, accompanied by this other one: Wasser, meaning ‘WATER’.
And also, under the big eye, on the right, we see the word Beitz, alluding to ‘COVETOUSNESS’, accompanied by this other: Erde, which is to be interpreted as ‘EARTH’.
It is interesting to see the words representing human defects accompanied by words representing the four elements. It is no secret to anyone that ANGER causes the great angry fires of humanity. Let us remember the First and Second World Wars that our world has suffered. In the same way, PRIDE likes to be ostentatious and admired by the crowds like the wind that sweeps away villages when hurricanes are unleashed. In the same way, ENVY likes to swim in all waters, in all environments, and it is like humidity, which reaches everywhere. And, finally, GREED is the cause of a great many excesses among human beings, because people live competing to be better ─materially─ than their fellow men. All this is the great tragedy in which the humanoids of this sad planet live. And that is why the circle that makes up the ouroboros is full of fire, for our human race is far from abandoning the Wheel of Samsara and being swallowed up by wisdom…..
I now give you a few sentences to be reflected upon:
“Hypocrisy is a fashionable vice, and all fashionable vices pass for virtues.”
Moliere
“Self-hypocrisy is the worst of vices because it leaves no room for repentance.”
Madame Swetchine
“The hypocrite is the dreadful hermaphrodite of evil.”
Victor Hugo
“Hypocrites do not serve God, but they use God to deceive their fellow men.”
Balzac
“The most shameful vice of all, to me, is to disguise one’s own thoughts.”
Aeschylus
TEMPUS EDAX RERUM.
─‘Time is devouring’─.
KWEN KHAN KHU
