Evoking Higher Spiritual Powers
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"It is through evoking higher spiritual powers by means of rites
of Supernatural Magick that humans come to true realization of what
they are in essence: eternal spiritual entities." Iamblicus
There are several different conceptions of Higher Powers and the
phenomenon of evocation, so you can make your choice as to what
area you wish to examine: The highest power I can imagine would be
to have the power to get a million dollars The highest power I can
imagine would be to have the power to evoke a spirit which would
then do whatever I wanted it to The highest power I can imagine
would be to have the power of astral projection The highest power I
can imagine would be to have the power of inner stability that is
independent of outward circumstances
Please select one of the above items to proceed.
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The end for which man was created, Plato said, was to achieve
communion with the Higher Powers above the terrestrial realm,
through "the light and spirit of the Divine, the wings of the soul.
That ought to be man's aim in the acquisition of knowledge." In
previous essays, we reviewed how to discover the spiritual domain
and the new language of spiritual inspiration used to travel to and
communicate within that world. We also studied some of the portals
into that spiritual dimension.
"All arts lie in man, though not all are apparent. Awakening
brings them out. To be taught is nothing; everything is in man,
waiting to be awakened." Paracelsus
We've seen how some spiritual explorers have achieved entre into
the higher domain through unusual states, altered states, and
through Perennialist art. We earlier examined the meaning of
activity in the spiritual domain. Here we are investigating how to
call into being and operation the higher powers of the spiritual
world. In the metaphysical tradition, the concept of "powers"
includes both: Mental, social, physical, or spiritual efficacy --
capacity, authority, or right -- and Entities which possesses such
efficacy
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I hesitate to use the term "evoke" in this essay because such a
great deal of nonsense has been written about "magical evocation of
spirits" and other such deliberate confabulation. One of the
twentieth-century works of charlatanry was Franz Bardon's The
Practice of Magical Evocation. This book, as well as his Initiation
Into Hermetics, were pretences at explaining the phenomena of
evocation and initiation. Bardon worked within the
pseudo-scientific arenas of astrology, cabala, and tarot,
obfuscating important metaphysical topics and trying to pass off
simplistic nonsense as the veriest truth. To review Bardon's The
Practice of Magical Evocation, go here.
A Completely Different Approach In contradistinction to such
nonsense as Bardon's, I'm using the term "evoke" in a very specific
sense to refer to: 1. Calling up powers (efficacies and entities)
from within ourselves and also 2. Evoking powers in this special
sense of conjure: 1 To charge or entreat earnestly or solemnly To
summon by or as if by invocation or incantation 2 To affect or
effect by or as if by magic To bring to mind
"For man is demonstrated to be an epitome of the whole mundane
creation, and was generated to become wise above all terrestrial
animals; being endowed, besides those powers which he commonly
exerts, and by means of which he is able to contemplate the things
which exist around him, with the germ of a higher faculty, which,
when rightly developed and set apart, reveals the hidden Forms of
manifested Being, and secrets of the Causal Fountain, identically
within himself. Nor this alone; not only is man reputed able to
discover the Divine Nature, but, in the forcible language of the
Asclepian Dialogue, to effect It; and in this sense, namely with
respect to the Catholic Reason which is latent in his life, man was
once said to be the Image of God."
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Mary A. Atwood, Hermetic Philosophy and Alchemy, 1850, 1960
When I speak of evoking spiritual powers, I refer both to
effectuating higher capabilities within our inner essence but also
to invoking supersensual dynamisms (beings and forces). This is
essentially what Plato meant when he spoke of "communing with
Higher Powers." As we saw in an earlier essay, communion connotes
both communicating with and also becoming one with another entity.
Perennialist savants such as Hermes, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato,
Plotinus, Iamblicus, and Porphyry spoke of hierarchies of spiritual
and terrestrial beings: divinities, higher spirits, guiding
spirits, and souls. All humans have their own level of being that
determines their life experience. Each of us has been assigned our
own guardian spirit. This guiding spirit has its being on the level
immediately above our own. If we discover and work within the
spiritual domain--as guided by the guardian spirit--we can achieve
higher levels of being while on earth and after passing to the next
realm. Until, as Plotinus, puts it, one "reaches the heights."
"There is, therefore, in each of us one peculiar presiding
guiding spirit . . . The invocation of him is effected through The
One, who is the lord of spirits; who from the first defined to
every one his peculiar spirit; and who, in sacred operations,
unfolds to every one his proper spirit, according to his own proper
will . . ." Iamblicus, De Mysteriis
Power in World Cultures Historically, most cultures have used a
special term to delineate powers which they considered
supernatural: Astral Light, Arealoha, Archeus, Baraka, Bioenergy,
Bioplasma, Qi, Ki, Ecknakar, Elma, God, Huna, Ka, Kerei, Mana,
Mumia, Mungo, Nervous Ether, Numen, 3 Odic Force, Orenda,
Paraelectricity, Pneuma, Prana, Reiki, the Sacred, 4 Spiritus,
Syntropy, Tinh, Tondi, Vis Naturalis, Wakan, and Wisdom.
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Spiritual forces were believed to be associated with special
persons, places, and objects, so seekers traveled to these entities
to gain supernatural power and capabilities. The oldest known
pilgrimage site is Mount Kailash in Tibet. Located at an altitude
of 18,000 feet, it has been the destination of holy expeditions for
an astounding 15,000 years. Walking the 32-mile trail around
Kailash takes about three days. Buddhists say the ritual
circumambulation erases the sins of one lifetime, and 108 times
around the mountain will enable you to reach Nirvana automatically.
In ancient Greece, sages built an Earth Goddess shrine at Delphi
because of the abundance of plenum, an energy they believed bubbled
out of the earth on the slopes of Mount Parnassus. The Chinese
believe in a similar life force called chi. Sufis call it Baraka
and Hindus know it as prana.
"A man of knowledge is one who has followed truthfully the
hardships of learning; a man who has, without rushing or faltering,
gone as far as he can in unraveling the secrets of personal power.
Only be concerned with the idea of storing personal power." Carlos
Castaneda, Journey to Ixtlan
People believe that this biophysical energy can be accessed or
generated through such techniques as meditation, fasting, and
breathing techniques. It is said that these supernatural forces can
infuse a person with tremendous dynamism and make him or her
extremely powerful in action, much more so than power developed
through the ordinary body or mind alone. This supernatural power is
depicted as a transferable quality of personal blessedness and
spiritual force said to lodge in certain individuals, places such
as the Peruvian Andes, and objects such as crystals or
monoliths.
"It is from understanding that power comes; and the power in the
ceremony was in understanding what it meant . . ." John Neihardt,
Black Elk Speaks
Power in the Perennial Tradition Perennialist teachers contact,
store, and project higher spiritual powers for specific, positive
purposes. They teach advanced students about these phenomena in
terms which the initiates can understand. They explicate a reality
which has little in common with ordinary life. Transcendental
forces have only an approximate resemblance to
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ordinary human powers, so the teacher must use similes, myths,
and allegories to explicate these phenomena which reside in another
dimension. Perennialist teachers are able to concentrate and
project a completely higher spiritual energy through means which
are taught only to advanced students. Persons can make themselves
open to this transcendental force and can also, through their
behavior or attitudes, become impermeable to it. It is a force
which can be lost once it has been received, through
thoughtlessness, immorality, or disbelief. This force often works
through persons without their being aware of its operation, either
in part or in full. When this extra-dimensional force operates
through persons it can appear that they are consciously performing
certain activities when in fact they may be only partially
aware--or not at all aware--of what is happening. Such persons may
appear to be predominantly positive, conscious agents of a higher
spiritual power when, indeed, they may be primarily negative in
their effect, being used by a demonic force in spite of
themselves.
"Sufi tradition has it that 'intermediaries' often prepare the
ground for the strange thing about this doctrine is that the
'intermediary' is someone who permanently endowed with a minimum of
Baraka (power): and such a man largely unconscious of what he is
actually destined to do."
O. M. Burke, Among the Dervishes, Octagon Press, 1973
One of the primary means of distinguishing the Perennial
Tradition from degraded and corrupted systems is its understanding
and use of spiritual power. In such aberrant systems as shamanism,
black magic, witchcraft, metallic alchemy, and sorcery, a species
of extra-normal power is invoked to be used for personal--often
negative--purposes. To denounce degenerate systems in this way is
completely different from how, say, a bigoted and dogmatic
Christian would anathematize any practice outside his purview in
these terms: "To seek spiritual power outside a submissive
relationship to the Roman Catholic Church is to practice
witchcraft." Higher spiritual powers, as we are here exploring this
phenomenon, only appear to the uninformed and ignorant to be
similar to the forces which are invoked in debased systems. We must
distinguish higher spiritual powers from lower, debilitating forces
which depraved persons can learn to summon and utilize. Humans at
present are so psychologically immature that they're unaware that
they can be manipulated by a charlatan through emotional stimuli,
causing these persons to believe they have been involved in a
spiritual event when it's nothing more than a heightened,
subjective, counterfeit experience. We call such charlatans
charmers, enchanters, entrancers, or spellbinders. We also refer to
charms, spells, chants, and amulets as verbal incantations or
objects supposed to endow occultists with magical potency. Persons
who allow themselves to be duped by such frauds are merely seeking
stimulation, not understanding or personal and social
transformation. The essential difference between higher spiritual
powers and black magical or occult forces is that a person learning
to contact and cooperate with higher dynamism must of necessity
attain advanced moral understanding and rectitude. It is simply
impossible to contact or work with higher spiritual forces unless
one has attained the state of high moral purpose and discernment.
Higher powers, by their very nature, are indiscernible and
incomprehensible to persons who seek to use them for negative
purposes.
"The deeper secrets and laws of our being are self-protected; to
learn them requires an adaptation of character and purpose, and a
humility of mind and spirit, inconsistent with those displayed by
the perverse or merely curious enquirer. To understand, let alone
practically to explore, the Hermetic Mystery is not for every
one--at least, at his present state of evolutional unfolding . . .
Only to those whose spiritual destiny has already equipped them
with a certain high measure of moral and intellectual fitness will
even a rough notional apprehension of it be practicable."
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Walter Leslie Wilmhurst, Introduction to M. A. Atwood, Hermetic
Philosophy and Alchemy
Just as our current civilization uses electricity, magnetism,
and electro-magnetic waves, Perennialist savants use and manipulate
higher spiritual energies. These subtle forms of power function in
reference to certain laws of nature, just as electromagnetism
operates by certain laws. Spiritual energy can be contacted and
utilized only through esoteric knowledge, which is preserved for
those who demonstrate the prerequisite moral and intellectual
qualities.
What Are Higher Spiritual Powers? Spiritual powers consist of
subtle inner forces which we activate or external dynamic energy
found in persons, events, or places which we evoke. We'll first
examine two inner spiritual powers which require an altered or
heightened state of consciousness in order to discover and
understand them. Then we'll look closely at external spiritual
forces and how we access their energies. The ordinary consciousness
is incapable of recognizing inner or external powers, because such
powers are too subtle and seem to common awareness to be too
powerless and insignificant for any serious consideration. Higher
spiritual forces possess and utilize power in ways we would least
suspect.
"There exists in you, indefinitely developable, an engine of
power, dynamically creative, capable of impressing and molding your
material world according as you give out from your inner being in
creative force." Stewart Edward White and Betty White, Across the
Unknown
We develop genuine spiritual power by establishing a propulsion
of the vitality we accumulate through spiritual awareness. This
force is fundamentally a sensation of throwing out from
ourselves--not an idea to be expressed but an active, superabundant
sort of energy that naturally overflows and helps to do for others
what has already been done for us. It's like a magnetic or chemical
attraction that draws out of other people a similar quality, and
gets them started with their own effort. This spiritual power
involves continually throwing off from ourselves the surplus
vitality of understanding and sympathetic awareness.
"It is just this gentle distribution around you of the spiritual
heart force, as you feel its expansion within you, that will teach
you the actuality of spiritual faculties." Stewart Edward White and
Betty White, Across the Unknown
The more we ally ourselves with the subtle higher spiritual
powers, the more we become aware of even greater forces to be
cooperated with in order to gain still more comprehensive
empowerment.
Self-Control and Self-Improvement Along with the development of
a propulsion of the vitality we accumulate through spiritual
awareness, the second transcendent "power" we work to achieve is
self-control. As all the Perennialist savants have taught, we
gain
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dynamism through our efforts at self-awareness and
self-improvement. If you're not appalled at who you were last
year--last week--then you're not developing the absolutely
essential spiritual powers of self-control and
self-improvement.
"Surely the resolve that moves the Sufis towards abandonment is
their realization of the evil ways that control them."
Abu-al-Mawahib al-Shadhili, Articles of the Maxims of
Illumination
If who you were ten years ago--or fifty years ago--doesn't seem
entirely alien to you, you're not effectively working at
self-awareness and self-improvement. You're not paying attention,
not learning what you need to change in yourself. Such
self-cleansing and self-improvement aren't merely optional courses
of action in achieving spiritual empowerment, they're prerequisites
for higher discernment.
"Cleanse us from our blemishes that we might see your attribute
in the mirror of our existence which is drawn from the existence of
your existence." Abu-al-Mawahib al-Shadhili, Articles of the Maxims
of Illumination
While self-improvement requires honest recognition of past
errors, you need to forgive yourself for what you have been and
done--just as you need to forgive others. It's inadvisable to try
to associate with people who cannot forgive you for what you were.
Such distortion of personality arises from their inability to
forgive themselves.
As the Perennialist sage al-Ahadhili reminds us, "While you live
avoid those folk who are supposed to be 'the good.'"
"Faults will turn to good, provided we use them to our own
humiliation, without slackening in the effort to correct ourselves.
Discouragement serves no possible purpose; it is simply the despair
of wounded self-love. The real way of profiting by the humiliation
of one's own faults is to face them in their true hideousness,
without ceasing to hope in God, while hoping nothing from self."
Fenelon
Self-control and self-improvement are spiritual powers necessary
for any higher understanding. The pleasure of
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the true seeker, Al-Ahadhili explains, consists in opposing
self. Part of self-opposition is to avoid any sense of
self-importance or fame.
"The higher the station of a gnostic, the smaller he appears in
the eyes of ordinary persons." Abu-al-Mawahib al-Shadhili, Articles
of the Maxims of Illumination
"If any man desire to be first in spiritual attainment, the same
shall be last of all and servant of all." Jesus of Nazareth
The Spiritual Power of Discernment Discernment is the power of
comprehending a phenomenon with ordinary physical and mental senses
as well as with higher intellectual faculties. Most humans have no
conception of discernment's extraordinary, transcendent potency,
because they mistakenly believe that it's easy, indeed automatic,
for a person to apprehend what reality is.
"The ancient Gnosis we may define as that knowledge of the
nature of Man and of his place in the Universe which transcends the
mere appearance of things as presented to the senses and the
intellect, and which contacts Reality in a region of pure Truth.
The beginning of this knowledge, therefore, is the realization that
things are not what they seem; and no one who is a crude
realist--as are all orthodox Christians, both in respect of the
physical world and of their own Scriptures--can make any approach
to this super-knowledge." William Kingsland. The Gnosis or Ancient
Wisdom in the Christian Scriptures
We begin to gain the elementary powers of discernment when we
see that our ordinary view of reality is a deadly delusion, that
comprehending reality requires our awakening and developing
specific capabilities enabling us to fathom a veiled unknown
actuality. To grasp how powerful discernment is, let's examine a
phenomenon that many Americans feel they comprehend just through
ordinary experience: President Barack Obama. They believe they know
that he is a well-intentioned, brilliant, leader who is basically a
humane person trying to do his best by the American people. People
who believe that about Obama are at the mercy of suicidal
delusions. Most such people are unaware that they're suffering from
mental derangement. Their ignorance of their own self-destructive
ignorance has led to their allowing themselves to be used as cannon
fodder in wars started only for the purpose of corporate profit and
militaristic domination. They're allowing their own country to be
ruined by debt, globalistic transfer of American jobs to cheap
labor markets, Constitutional freedoms being destroyed wholesale
before our eyes, and rapidly increasing poverty and debt for the
middle and lower economic classes.
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Unfortunately, Americans and citizens worldwide are NOT
awakening from their delusions and developing powers of
discernment. They're increasingly embracing mindlessness,
ignorance, and self-gratification, leading to their being duped by
Obama and his controllers: an insane, demonic group of moneyed
persons who will sacrifice anyone to gain more power and wealth.
What gives us hope is the realization that--even in this murderous
Dark Age--Higher Knowledge is currently being preserved, protected,
and disseminated by persons working within the Perennial
Tradition.
"In reality cognition is . . . spiritual struggle for meaning .
. . It is decided by the intensity of the will to truth and meaning
. . ." Nicolas Berdyaev
If you don't recognize that we're living in the time of a
transcendent, spiritual struggle of Truth against devastation and
falsehood, you're simply not awake enough to have much hope for
survival. At this point in human history, we either overcome our
deadly delusions and work to attain the spiritual power of
discernment, or the human race may descend into increasing
barbarism and ultimate extinction. Spiritual discernment allows us
not only to see through social delusions but to gain an awareness
of transcendent realities as well.
"The illusion from which we are seeking to extricate ourselves
is not that constituted by the realm of space and time, but that
which comes from failing to know that realm from the standpoint of
a higher vision. We are at length restored to consciousness by
awakening in a real universe, the universe created by the One Mind
as opposed to that perversion of it which has been created by our
egocentric selves. We then see the visible world as the expression
of the immanental life of God, the Divine in manifestation. In
relating ourselves to it we live in that Presence subjectively in
the depths of our mystical being. And in the properly integrated
personality the two processes have become one." Lawrence Hyde, The
Nameless Faith, (1950)
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In evoking Higher Spiritual Powers, the teacher must assist the
student to enter into an altered state of consciousness, thereby
activating a higher faculty within. We relax the bonds by which the
soul is held down by the body: To allow the soul to reunite with
the Higher Consciousness To release the soul from the spell under
which it is held in bondage in the body To bring the body and the
mind to quiescence To free the Higher Consciousness from the
enthrallment of the ego consciousness To reunite the soul with its
lost universality To separate the higher subtle feelings from the
gross sense feelings To free the soul from any misconceptions To
allow the soul to travel to higher realms
In bringing about this altered state, these factors are
involved: The teacher entrancing the senses of the student The
teacher giving suggestions of passivity to the student and
neutralizing his consciousness: Plato says that communing with
Higher Powers is possible only when the understanding or reasoning
faculty is in abeyance The student gazing at a specified object to
entrance the eye and the conscious mind The teacher speaking
directly to the student's subconscious mind to influence and
control his behavior The teacher and the student conversing with
the powers within Setting the mental framework as the experience of
the moment of death followed by rebirth The teacher manipulating
the student's Force Field to activate the psychic force field
within which the student resides to bring all facets of this life
force into harmonious interplay and homeostasis The teacher's
psyche leading the student's psyche through suggesting actions,
feelings, and thoughts
"The aspirant therefore would be placed in the condition of a
person at the moment of death or in anaesthesia; but with this
difference, that, whilst thus reduced to subjectivity, he would be
at the mercy of the compelling will and direction of the operator
into whose power he had committed himself. His consciousness,
withdrawn from externals, would be restricted to and focused upon
the mind's internal content, and these inania regna he would be
directed to explore and to consider."
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Walter Leslie Wilmhurst, Introduction to Mary A. Atwood,
Hermetic Philosophy and Alchemy
Vital Distinctions To evoke Higher Spiritual Powers, the teacher
and the student must be thoroughly conversant with the various
levels of being and consciousness.
Level of Being
Characteristics
Entities
Faculties
Spiritual
Eternal Unchanging
Forms Higher Spiritual Powers Higher Concepts Higher Symbols
Higher Consciousness Communion Higher Intellect Inspiration
Lower Consciousness Sensing, Feeling, Thinking Unconscious,
Instinct
Metaphysical
Intellectual Nonmaterial
Terrestrial: Conscious
Measurable Tangible
Persons Objects Concepts
Terrestrial: Subconscious
Non-rational Malleable
Images Symbols
In evoking Higher Powers through effecting an altered state of
consciousness, the teacher speaks directly to the student's
subconscious mind, which is malleable, capable of being controlled
by the suggestions or commands of the teacher. As described by
Plutarch, the altered state involves the deactivation of the
consciousness, separating it from awareness of objects and matters
that are immediately present to our ordinary experience, allowing
us to enter a new order of being.
Iamblicus, The Egyptian Mysteries "There exists a faculty in the
human mind which is immeasurably superior to all those which are
grafted or engendered in us. By it we can attain to union with
superior intelligences, finding ourselves raised above the scenes
of this earthly life, and partaking of the higher existence and
superhuman powers of the inhabitants of the celestial spheres. "By
this faculty we find ourselves liberated finally from the dominion
of destiny, and we become, as it were, the arbiters of our own
fates. For, when the most excellent parts in us find themselves
filled with energy; and when our soul is lifted up towards essences
higher than science, it can separate itself from the conditions
which hold it in the bondage of every-day life; it exchanges its
ordinary existence for another one, it renounces the conventional
habits which belong to the external order of things, to give itself
up to and mix itself with another order of things which reigns in
that most elevated state of being."
Why An Altered State of Consciousness?
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To evoke Higher Spiritual Powers, we place ourselves in an
altered state of consciousness that activates the higher faculty
described by Iamblicus above. An altered state of consciousness is
necessary because only in this higher state are we able to activate
clairvoyant powers such as clairsentience, sight, and
clairaudience, hearing and understanding. We ultimately learn to
utilize these supranormal powers even while in our ordinary state
of consciousness.
"This third vision of light [anagogic] is in Elysium: where the
eye of mind, no longer as heretofore looking from without inwardly,
beholds its object through the atmosphere of the natural life; but
contrariwise, having passed through this, purifying to the centre,
is converted and raised; and, as a Unit, now regards the
circumference transitively, including it as an understanding or
reflector, as it were, to the focus of her light." Mary A. Atwood,
Hermetic Philosophy and Alchemy, p. 237
To achieve these powers requires that a person be initiated by
someone who herself has attained them and understands how to
instruct in fundamentals, train for attainment of capabilities, and
to place ceremoniously or formally in an office or a position of
power.
"Plato was initiated into the 'Greater Mysteries' at the age of
49. The initiation took place in one of the subterranean halls of
the Great Pyramid in Egypt. The ISIAC TABLE formed the altar,
before which the Divine Plato stood and received that which was
always his, but which the ceremony of the Mysteries enkindled and
brought from its dormant state. With this ascent, after three days
in the Great Hall, he was received by the Hierophant of the Pyramid
(the Hierophant was seen only by those who had passed the three
days, the three degrees, the three dimensions) and given verbally
the Highest Esoteric Teachings, each accompanied with its
appropriate Symbol. After a further three months' sojourn in the
halls of the Pyramid, the Initiate Plato was sent out into the
world to do the work of the Great Order, as Pythagoras and Orpheus
had been before him." 5
Notes:1 2
As defined in Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 10th
Edition
Incantation: enchantment, use of spells or verbal charms spoken
or sung as a part of a ritual of magic, a written or recited
formula of words designed to produce a particular effect [Merriam
Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 10th Edition]
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3
Numen: a spiritual force or influence often identified with a
natural object, phenomenon, or place How did "numen," a Latin term
meaning "nod of the head," come to be associated with spiritual
power? The answer lies in the fact that the ancient Romans saw
divine force and power operating in the inanimate objects and
nonhuman phenomena around them. They believed that the gods had the
power to command events and to consent to actions, and the idea of
a god nodding suggested his or her awesome abilitiesdivine power.
Eventually, Latin speakers began using "numen" to describe the
special divine force of any object, place, or phenomenon that
inspired awe (a mystical-seeming wooded grove, for example, or the
movement of the sun), and "numen" made the semantic leap from "nod"
to "divine will or power." English speakers adopted the word during
the 1600s.4
The SACRED is that which is the object of veneration and awe.
The term comes from the Latin sacer meaning restricted or set off.
A person may be designated as sacred, and so can an object or a
place which is regarded as extraordinary, dynamic, magical, or
unique.5
In his book The Secret Teachings of All Ages, Manly P. Hall says
that a manuscript by Thomas Taylor contained the remarkable
paragraph quoted above.
Reference: Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism -- Anyone genuinely
interested in mysticism will want to read Underhill's excellent
book. Though Underhill's bias of Christian orthodoxy sometimes
colors her discussion, in general her book is thoughtful and
beneficial. There are countless phony shamans and gurus who write
unreadable books on the mystical life. Among the more prolix and
syncretistic is Iona Miller.
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