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An Exercise Revisited
Jun. 8th, 2023 02:57 pm
Back in February, I posted something here about an interesting exercise I'd found in early 20th century American occult literature, the Rising Call exercise. I'd meant to post something else in a week or two. Then, as the legendary school history exam paper put it, some other stuff happened, and I'm only just picking up the threads I had to drop at that time. The Rising Call exercise was one of the many items to come from the busy pen of Harry Gardener, a Los Angeles occultist active from the 1920s through the 1960s. Gardener was also a small-time occult publisher, and he came to my attention because his press was the one that originally released The Eye of Revelation, the booklet that introduced the Five Rites exercises to the US occult community. (My book on the Rites will be out in the fall.) Gardner seems to have been active in an odd little Rosicrucian order in the 1930s and 1940s -- not one of the major orders, and not one that seems to have left many more traces -- and that appears to be the source of the Rising Call exercise and a range of other teachings and traditions.
The Rising Call exercise is of interest to me because it works with a dimension of occultism that's been largely forgotten in recent times -- the ductless glands in the brain. Alongside the main parts of the brain -- the cerebrum, the cerebellum, and the brainstem -- there are various little glands and nerve centers, mostly scattered around the underside of the brain. These communicate to each other and to the brain as a whole partly through nerve linkages and partly through chemicals released into the bloodstream, but they have a third route. The whole brain floats in a pool of cerebrospinal fluid, which is held in by a set of membranes that line the inside of your skull. When you're young, the cerebrospinal fluid flows freely around the brain. With age, the membranes get stiff, dead cells and assorted gunk builds up in the channels and passages that allow the fluid to flow, and so the ductless glands can no longer use the cerebrospinal fluid to get chemicals all through the brain. This is a difficulty in general, but it's especially problematic for the occultist, because that flow of chemicals from gland to gland is important in certain kinds of spiritual development; notably, certain exercises that stimulate the pineal gland won't have their full effect unless the pineal secretions can make their way through a channel at the front of the third ventricle to the pituitary gland.
This exercise is meant to get your brain fluid moving. It works by gently increasing blood pressure in the brain -- that's why you bend forward, so your head is lower than your heart -- and also by using the retained breath to put pressure inside the nasal tissues and sinuses. In effect, you're gently squeezing your brain, in order to get the fluid in motion again.
So that's the point of the exercise. I've heard from several readers who've tried it and found that it seems to be useful. I'll be interested to hear from anyone who has experiences to report.
Edit: If you're interested in the original source, you can download a PDF copy here. Keep in mind that it's most of a century old and the author has the attitudes and opinions of his time rather than ours.
