Slaying the Serpent: Part 2

Black Hole Sun

This week I wanted to continue a bit more with the story of Mars in Cancer, teth and the underworld, as I think there is a bit more to say about it. Consider it a part 2, of sorts.

If you haven’t read the post from last week, click here for part 1.

As a brief refresher, last week we talked about how Mars in the Sign of Cancer has some deep connections to the underworld and the element of water stemming from at least ancient Babylonian times. In Qabalistic terms we are examining the fifth sphere of Gevurah that represents Mars, the fourth sphere of Chesed that represents Jupiter and the path between them that corresponds to the Hebrew letter teth.

Mars in his role as god of the underworld relates to the marshaling of discrete parts of one’s being and consolidating them into a coherent unity. By descending to the underworld, Nergal must become king there, meaning that this formula requires that one bring into cohesion all the parts of oneself, a cohesion that is not there initially. In other words, on the internal plane, the action of Mars must be used to reduce entropy. Without this, cohesion falls apart and any energy spent maintaining the system is lost.

What do we mean by entropy?

Entropy is the measure of disorder in a system. Disorder in this case is randomness, or in thermodynamics, it is the amount of energy in the system that is no longer available. When there is a high amount of entropy, there is a low amount of energy present. Negentropy is the reduction of entropy in a system, in other words negentropy is creating cohesion and increasing the amount of order present in the system.

Think of a bookshelf. Imagine all the books are organized neatly, by genre and alphabetized by author. The books are new, no dog-eared pages and everything is pristine. This is a state of high order and cohesion, and low entropy. Now imagine over time the books get worn, perhaps some pages are torn or missing. They get put back in a haphazard way, in the wrong spots or not at all. Some are laying on top of the other books, instead of being lined up on the shelf. It is virtually impossible to find the book you are looking for without examining the entire bookshelf, and even then the book itself might be damaged beyond reading. This is a state of high disorder, or high entropy.

When our internal self is fragmented and disordered, we have a hard time calling up the energy we need to deal with daily life, let alone any sort of spiritual Work.

Mars can easily create entropy, in fact when we think of the action of Mars we normally think of creating chaos, damage, or disorder, all very entropic in nature. However, the action of Mars is not inherently entropic or negentropic, but can be either depending on the situation or the application of force. Burning a forest is helpful if it is a controlled burn, but harmful if not. Similarly if we consider the sphere of Chesed, that is represented by the keyword Loving Kindness, we can see how it can be either good or bad in a similar way depending on the way it is handled.

Recall that the spheres of Gevurah and Chesed are joined by the path of teth. By looking at the path that joins two spheres, we can gain information on what is needed to balance them. The letter teth represents the serpent, is also the sign of Leo where the Sun rules. We can think of cohesion as the domain of the sphere of the Sun, because the Sun creates order. In traditional astrology, the ancients said the Sun rules authority over the masses, rulership over one’s country. By bringing into alignment the pieces of oneself, one asserts authority over the masses —in this case the masses of one’s thoughts, feelings, lived experiences and past lives. If all these experiences are brought within the system and thoroughly understood and oriented towards the same goal, coherence is achieved.

Let’s examine the solar principal of teth at work here. In astrology, the Sun represents the source of light, spirituality and the fountain of intellect in the nativity. The Sun has its joy in the ninth house, the house of religion, higher learning and philosophy. It is one of the primary sources of vitality in the natal chart. In Hebrew the Sun is called שמש, Shemesh and has the value of 640 in gematria. There are a few important aspects here, first that the spelling of the word contains the letter for elemental fire, ש, shin, enclosing the letter for elemental water, מ, mem. One could easily imagine that these shins and mems might repeat forever, משמשמשמש on and on, signifying something like a waveform fluctuation between two states, one internal and one external. If we put the corresponding tarot trumps together that spell the word, we would have the Hanged Man flanked by two Aeons. We get the sense that this is a fundamental force of nature, of contrasting between the microcosm of the Aeon and the macrocosmic introspection of the Hanged Man.

Let’s move on to number 640, which can be looked at in a few ways. If we add the constituent parts, we get 6+4+0, which equals 10, the number of spheres on the Tree of Life. The number 10 is also the tenth sphere, of Malkuth. In this way it reflects our duality of mems and shins, where we have the macrocosm of the entirety of the Tree of Life, but also the microcosm encompassing only the sphere of Malkuth, the material plane. We can start to see that the action of the Sun is not a static one, but a process of moving between one part of a dyad and another. By movement, one achieves a balance of sorts. In fact, the tarot card of the Sun itself shows twins dancing before the Sun, a symbol of a duality springing from a single source, the Sun. The number 640 also corresponds to the words דביר קדשך, that means holy sanctuary.

The ancients conceptualized the movement of the Sun as being driven across the sky on a chariot, or in the case of the Egyptians, sailing across the sky in the solar bark. Each night, the Sun descended into the underworld, spending the night traveling through the underworld in order to be born again in the east at dawn, to start the cycle over again. Because the Sun spends half its time in the underworld, we might think of the Sun as somewhat chthonic in nature. It is during the night time, or the dark night of the soul, that the Sun enters the underworld and provides the energy necessary to do the work required to bring into coherence the discrete parts of oneself. Together with chthonic Mars, this is the formula of the work of Mars in Cancer: to reconcile duality into unity through destructive and constructive processes. This process takes place in the holy sanctuary of the underworld, or the interior plane.

Mars’s energy can be put to work reconciling dualities by removing the blockages between them, or creating bridges where there weren’t any to begin with. The Sun is both the source of duality and the source of unity.

To see how this would apply to mundane life, think of the movement between sides of a duality this way —if you fixate on a single thing, it can become an obsession and everything else in your life may suffer as a result. Perhaps it is a fixation on career, to the detriment of family life, or maybe it is fixation on one subject of learning, to the point where you lack much knowledge about anything else. In this case, nothing is balanced but very one sided. Imagine I studied herbs my whole life, and became an expert, able to create effective herbal treatments. Now, what if I studied only astrology and became well versed in the movements of the planets, able to understand much about the way the world works. Now think of mow much richer my experience would be if I balanced my study between the two, learning both. Now I can make the connection between herbs and their planetary significations, or I could create talismans or incense to a much more effective degree if I could utilize the correct plant. Really, to say that one is balancing a thing is to say one has made a connection between the two, a bridge where the two sides can enrich each other. Of course, this is just one level in which this type of energy might be put to work.

I want to bring this full circle back to the letter teth, where we see in Liber 777 that the corresponding magical formula is Crowley’s magical motto, Το Μεγα Θηριον, or To Mega Therion, the Great Beast. This motto adds up to the magical number of the Sun, 666 connecting it to teth, but otherwise at first glance it doesn’t seem to obviously function as much of a magical formula. I think in this case, in light of our focus on the work of Mars in Cancer and teth, we can perhaps view the formula not as just Crowley’s specific motto, but as the idea of the magical motto as the formula itself.

Mottos function as a talisman of sorts, whereby the magician takes an idealized name or symbol as their magical name to use in ritual work. This motto can be symbolically charged by corresponding to certain values in gematria, or having certain planetary connotations. It can be in any language, or simply be symbols, serious or just for fun, it is totally up to the person creating and using the motto. However, the motto can also be magically operative in a remedial sense, in other words you could use it to bridge gaps or destroy blockages within yourself in order to unite dualities. Say your natal chart has Venus in detriment and on the whole you have problems integrating your feminine energies, you could choose a motto that invokes Venusian energies as a balance to what is already present. In this way you might attempt to bridge the duality and bring it into coherence as a unified whole.

Praxis

Create your own magical motto. If you have access to your birth chart and can identify which signs your Sun and Moon are located, you can begin to create a magical name that integrates the two, or somehow compensates for any detrimental aspects. For example, say I have my Sun in Aquarius and my Moon in Virgo. My Sun is in detriment in the sign opposite of its domicile, and my Moon is in fall, the sign opposite its exaltation. I want to balance these traits by creating a motto that incorporates the opposite signs where those planets would be more well off. I think of the key words associated with the Sun in Leo and the Moon in Taurus.

To identify keywords, I look to an ancient source on planetary and zodiacal information, Vettius Valens, Anthologies, Book 1. I identify that both the Sun and Moon are luminaries so I choose the word Light to represent both of them. Taurus has to do with earthy matters, of growth and fecundity of green things and animals. I choose the word Fertile to represent the idea of Taurus. Leo is fiery and bold, assertive and stately. I choose the word Noble to represent the energies of Leo. Now I can put together my motto using the words Fertile, Noble and Light. I also chose to translate it to Latin for a little extra flare: Ferax et Nobilis Lux. It doesn’t have to be perfect Latin, but you can spend as much or little time as you’d like getting it correct. I just did a quick Google Translate. As long as you like the sound of it, and the rationale behind why you constructed it is reasonable, you are now all set to begin using your magical motto!

Next week-ish, I want to go back to the basics, so I’ll be writing about the fundamentals of Qabalah and astrology. Hope to see you then!

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-Ashley