Prospectus for the Sojourner Grade

This is the first paper to be studied once members of the Fellowship of the Hermetic Rose have performed the 2° initiation, which was posted last week.  It summarizes the work ahead. I've also appended the first two parts of a classic John Gilbert essay on developing the intuition; the remaining parts will be posted over the next two weeks, along with other materials for study. As before, don't worry if you aren't keeping up -- at this point, probably, nobody else is either. Make a copy for future reference and keep on working at whatever level you've reached. (Or simply read it as a resource for some other approach to occult training.) 

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2° Overview

Welcome Sojourner!  Once you have completed the studies of the Candidate and Seeker grades and performed the initiation rituals of the Seeker and Sojourner grades, you are an initiate of the 2° grade of Sojourner. The work before you is considerable but it builds on what you have already learned.

The requirements you must fulfill to complete the work of the Sojourner grade and proceed to the next stage, the 3° grade of Server, are as follows:

1. Continued daily practice of a protective ritual (Sphere of Protection, Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram, or Judson exercise), discursive meditation, and some form of divination;

2. Continued weekly practice of the ritual for opening and closing the temple;

3. Study of several papers assigned to the Sojourner grade;

4. Study of at least two additional books on some aspect of occultism;

5. Practice of a series of scryings of the element of Water;

6. Purchase and consecration of a cup of Water.

Once you complete these requirements, you will be able to perform the self-initiation ritual for the 3° grade of Server. This uses the same equipment as the 1° and 2° initiations, though you will need the blue candle, and you will also need your cup of Water. At least two months should elapse between your Sojourner and Server initiations; you may take as much additional time as you find useful.

A few comments on some of the requirements for the grade may be helpful at this point. You are expected to learn three methods of divination over the course of your training, and only one of those is to be a divinatory deck.  If you have done your daily divination with one method up to this point, this might be a good time to choose a second method and begin doing daily readings with it, or—if it’s a method such as palmistry, which does not lend itself to daily readings—make other opportunities to practice the method.

The books you read to fulfill requirement #4 may be literally any book on any occult topic, so long as you have not previously read them. They can be good books, indifferent books, or really dreadful books, as there is something to learn from each of these. To become a capable occultist you will need to know your way around the literature of occultism, so you might as well get started; the number of books you will need to read for each grade, at a minimum, is the number of the grade itself:  1 for the 1°, 2 for the 2°, and so on. 

If you’re short on money, remember that most public libraries have some books on occultism—in the Dewey decimal system used in most US libraries, they’re near the beginning of the nonfiction section at Dewey number 133. You can also search archive.org using keywords such as “occult” and “divination,” or visit the IAPSOP collection of classic out-of-copyright occult books at iapsop.com/ssoc/ and download texts to your heart’s content. If you can’t find something from any of those sources that interests you, check to see if you still have a pulse.

Scrying is the receptive use of the imagination, as creating astral forms is the active use. In scrying, you imagine yourself entering another realm of being and experiencing things there. You don’t have to be good at visualizing to practice scrying, though it’s an advantage if you are. The FHR, like John Gilbert’s Magickal Order of the Golden Dawn before it, uses its own distinctive set of elemental symbols as symbols for scrying.  You have already explored the practice of scrying the element of Earth, and in this grade you will proceed to scry the element of water.

The cup, as mentioned in a previous paper, is the working tool of the element of Water. More detailed instructions for obtaining and consecrating the cup of Water will be given in a later paper.

The following paper on developing your intuition should be read and studied during the time you spend in this grade. It will be continued over the next two weeks.

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How to Develop Your Intuition

John Gilbert

1

 You are intuitive. You have an active intuitive mind. You can tune into your intuitive mind any time you want. These incontrovertible truths are based on Universal Law. Everybody who can think is able to intuit. It's your birthright to be intuitive, or "psychic" as some people call it. It's natural to be intuitive. It's normal.

The truth is you really don't "develop" your intuition. You just recognize it for what it is. You develop your ability to recognize and understand your own intuitive insights. You develop your ability to differentiate between imagination and intuition. You distinguish or discriminate one from the other.

From ancient times, intuitive people have explained that their inner voice is a small, quiet voice. It speaks softly and quietly to us all the time. We don't hear it for several reasons:

·         Our thinking mind is chattering away

·         Our imagination is running wild

·         Our memories are flooding us

·         Our emotions are excited and energetic

·         Our bodies demand something

Before we can hear our small, quiet intuitive voice, we need to quiet down all this interference. The first step is to quiet down the "body mind." This mind tells us what our body needs from us. It tells us things like:

·         Drink that coffee, soda, water or something

·         Eat that chocolate, doughnut, cake or something

·         Scratch me here or there where the itch is

·         Relieve this bladder as soon as possible

·         Empty this intestine now before I do

·         Rub these shoulders or aching muscle

·         Move that leg, or hand, or toe or something

The messages we receive from our "body mind" usually launch us into some activity to satisfy the needs, wants and desires of the body. The body can be quite demanding. It is demanding. Prove it to yourself.  Just sit quietly, close your eyes and forget about everything else. Just be with your body. In almost no time you'll find yourself moving some body part, scratching this or that, relieving pressure here or there, doing something your body wants you to do.

Refuse to do it. Just sit there and observe how the body intensifies its demands. The pressure to move builds, the itches seem to multiply and grow stronger, tense muscles start to get harder and more painful. The body is speaking. It demands your attention.

This is happening to you all day, every day whether you're aware of it or not. We habitually answer the demands of our body. We move. We scratch. We tense and release muscles. We do this without thinking. We do it automatically. Habitually.

Your first step in tuning into your own intuitive mind is to quiet down the body mind (also called the animal mind, the unconscious, the primitive mind). You do this by relaxing the body and breathing deeply and rhythmically. If you're not accustomed to completely relaxing your body, you might like to try a couple of exercises that have proven helpful to generations of students. 

The first is a simple contraction-relaxation exercise. It goes like this:

Get into a comfortable sitting or reclining position. Adjust your position until you're quite comfortable. Concentrate on your left foot. Tighten the muscles in your left foot slowly until they're intensely rigid. Hold this muscle-contracted position for a couple of seconds and then let go. Completely relax your left foot. Let go of all tension.

Repeat this exercise for your right foot, then your left calf, right calf and work your way up your body from feet to head: feet, calves, thighs, hips, lower abdomen, lower back, stomach, middle back, chest, upper back, hands, forearms, upper arms, shoulders, neck and face. In the beginning this exercise can take twenty to thirty minutes to completely relax your body. The benefits of this exercise are to release toxins from your muscles, improve blood flow and oxygenation to your muscles and organs, and to release tension.

Over a few days of practice you can go through this whole sequence in less than five minutes. You will be able to relax every muscle completely in just a few minutes. Over a few weeks of practice you can do this whole sequence in less than a minute. Over a few months you can do it in a few seconds.

The second exercise is deep breathing (also called abdominal breathing and Yogi breathing). While in a relaxed state, force all of the air out of your lungs and hold it for a second. Then allow your abdomen to inflate while your chest remains compressed. Let the air flow in and out without effort as you raise and relax your abdomen. This is the first phase of abdominal deep breathing.

After a few breaths, allow your chest to inflate after your lower lungs are filled with air. Hold your breath for a second. Relax and let the air from your chest expel first. Then pull in your abdomen and let the rest of the air in your lungs move out. Pause and repeat. This is the second phase of deep breathing.

One caution: Never force your breath. Always be relaxed and comfortable before you start deep breathing, while deep breathing and after you're done with the exercise.

As you quiet down and relax your body, abdominal breathing become easier. My suggestion is to do only the first exercise until you can completely relax your whole body in less than five minutes. Then add the second exercise. First get relaxed and then breathe deeply. The benefits of deep breathing are more energy, deeper relaxation, removal of toxins from the lungs, calmer state of mind and greater emotional control.

It may seem strange to you to relax and breathe as a first step toward opening your intuitive mind. But thousands of teachers have been teaching thistechnique for thousands of years with good results.  Students who take this first step discover things about themselves they never knew. They become calmer and more peaceful, less anxious and less depressed, more energetic and more intuitive. Try it and see what you experience.

 

2

Once you've learned to completely relax your body and dismiss it's incessant demands, you're readyto quiet down your active mind. You relax your body by first finding a very comfortable position, then letting go all body tension of any kind. You breathe deeply (abdominal breathing) and relax every muscle.

As explained in the first part, the benefits of complete relaxation and deep breathing include more energy, deeper relaxation, removal of toxins from the body, calmer state of mind and greater emotional control. With practice, you can completely relax and receive these benefits in only a few moments - definitely in less than a minute.

Once your body is completely relaxed and you're breathing deeply, your mind will become over-active. It's natural. That's why we call it the "active" mind. Your active mind is really three separate and distinct minds all working together or contrary to each other.

The first part of your active mind is your Subconscious Mind. Your subconscious mind is your memory of everything in your life. It's your past, or at least what you consciously and unconsciously remember of your past.When you start thinking about things which have already occurred in your life (or in a past life), you're accessing your subconscious mind. Usually this is the first mind you access when you get veryrelaxed and comfortable.

Your subconscious mind is also your "good and faithful servant" which will do anything it can to serve you. When you ask for something in your life, your subconscious mind will do anything within its power to accomplish that request. Herein lies great untapped power.  By simply asking your subconscious mind to stop remembering you can quiet it down. By asking it to help you tune into your intuition, you get help. It's really that simple. Ask, and your subconscious mind will do everything within its power to do exactly what you ask. It really is your good and faithful servant.

When your subconscious mind quiets down and helps you access your intuitive mind, you'll usually start imagining all sorts of possibilities. This is your second active mind, your imagination, at work. Your imagination imagines your future just as your subconscious remembers your past.  Your imagination can be controlled as easily as your subconscious mind. Ask it to stop imagining the possibilities, and it will. Ask it to imagine you communicating directly with your Intuitive Mind, and it will help you do exactly that.  You can easily shut out the past and the future by using this simple technique of redirecting your subconscious and imaginative minds to help you tune into your Intuition.

The third part of your active mind is your rational mind. This mind operates in the here and now. Your Rational Mind is your two-year-old-tantrum-throwing mind. It likes to do things its own way. It's your own personal critic. It also flatters you. Either way, it tries to control you. It is not your "Good and Faithful Servant." It may be your own private Demon. Your Rational Mind does not behave well when you ask it to stop thinking. It doesn't like to do what you ask it to do. It won't help you tune into your Intuition. In some ways your conscious mind is in competition with your intuitive mind.

There are several ways to calm down your thinking (rational) mind. One way is to occupy it with a saying of some kind. The Yogis call this "Mantra." It doesn't matter what you say. What matters is you just say it to yourself, inside your head, over and over. Occupy your mind with saying something over and over. If you're on a spiritual path, you may want to use the Divine name of your choice to occupy your mind.

You can use a Yoga mantra like Om Nama Shivaya (pronounced om na ma she veye ya). You can use an affirmation like "I am, I can, I don’t have to." Any affirmation will do. You can repeat the words to a poem or song or even an essay. Here's one of my favorites: "I am an intuitive person. My subconscious mind is helping me tune into my intuition. My imaginative mind is helping me tune into my intuition. My body is relaxed and sleeping. My rational mind is calm and listening alertly to the small quiet voice of my intuition." This is a long mantra or affirmation, but it says it all. Over and over it says it all.

Another way to quiet down your Rational Mind is to ignore it. Treat it like a child. Any time you become aware you're thinking, tell your mind you're not interested and dismiss it. Most rational minds don't like to be dismissed, so they keep coming back like a child with something else to talk about. If you're using this technique, keep saying you're not interested and dismiss it. Eventually your rational mind will go off somewhere and pout like the child that it is. That's all there is to it.

·         Place your body in a comfortable position

·         Completely relax your body and release all tension

·         Breathe deeply

·         Refocus your imaginative mind on tuning into your intuition

·         Ignore or occupy your rational mind

·         Listen attentively for your intuitive mind

After just a few practice sessions, you'll hear that small, quiet voice that comes from deep within you and you'll know your intuition is alive and well.

(To be continued next week)