Holy Heretics - Introduction
Thank you for your interest in my upcoming book, Holy Heretics.
Ideally this week people would have received their preorders. Unfortunately, though, the cloth for the hardcover edition was damaged in transit, and now shipping is delayed to begin on Monday, November 17th. To shorten the waiting time a bit, Scarlet Imprint and I have decided to offer you to open the book together in advance.... So on this page you will find the complete introduction to Holy Heretics - before the release and for free.
I also had the opportunity to record an episode for the wonderful Glitchbottle podcast, in which we dive headlong into the themes of this book: Magic and Mysticism, the double-edged sword of the Christian Tradition, Paracelsus, and, of course, the world and reality of the Olympic Spirits.
Holy Heretics begins with a longer quote from the 14th century Gulshan-i Raz; you can read it just after this paragraph. Following it, and in reference to its timeless thoughts, you will find the full Introduction.
Thanks for your patience and time.
LVX,
Frater Acher
[...] God is everywhere, visible to those who see by the light emanating from his beautiful face. He is ahead, and all men follow, holding his hand. Those friends of God who are behind, as well as those who walk ahead, have given news of arrival at their destinations. When they become self-aware like Adam, they may reveal news of the Knower and that which He knows.
One of them dove into the ocean of Oneness and said, 'I am Truth.' Another rode in a boat on the same ocean, and told of how far he was from the shore. One looks at the outside and talks of dry land, while gathering shells, and the other plunges into the ocean and gets the pearl. One starts talking about the bits and parts of things, how they appear and function, Another begins telling of the Eternal One and then of the creatures who live and die. One speaks of long curls of hair, the beauty spot, the curves of her eyebrows, the beloved man in dim candle light, passing a goblet of wine. The other speaks only of himself and his opinions. And the other loses himself in idol's of love, identifying himself with the monk's rope around his waist.
Each one speaks the language native to the level he has reached, and it is hard to understand what he says. You, the seeker of understanding, you must strive to learn the meaning of what they say.
(from the Gulshan-i Raz, by Sheikh Mahmoud Shabistari, 1317 CE)
Frater Acher, Holy Heretics, London: Scarlet Imprint, 2022
Introduction
This book was written for all of us, as seekers of understanding. Seven hundred years ago one of the most famous Sufi mystics of the fourteenth century made the above address in words that remain timeless and essential to this day. Our experience of divinity is as individual as the knowledge derived from it. As human beings we are all living inside the pearl of a million rays, each of us reflecting back a certain nuance or shade of the divine light, and yet none witnessing it in its full uncreated potential.
In this world where we each possess a unique shard of truth, hasty judgement is the enemy of wisdom: one of us experiences divinity in the ocean, one of us in gathering shells, another in a lock of hair, each according to his or her sight. As human beings, however, we are not passive recipients of such experiences; we are co-creators of our encounters with the divine. Accordingly, and particularly as adepts of the magical art, we possess both the privilege and the requirement to continuously change our perspective, to enlarge the way we see this cruel and beautiful world and the manifold ways divinity manifests within it. It is best for those genuinely committed to a path of wisdom and personal evolution to harbour a healthy mistrust towards what we think we know and who we think we are.
This is the spirit in which this book was conceived, as the third and final volume of the Holy Daimon cycle. Its methodology offers a challenge and a contrast to the accepted sources for learning about Western magic. Thus, in the first part of this book we will be listening to some of the most antagonistic voices a Western magician can imagine: from the Desert Fathers to the Hesychasts and Symeon the New Theologian, from the Granum Sinapis to the Theologia Germanica, from the first centuries CE to the late Middle Ages, we will undertake a tour-de-force through the vast realm of Christian mysticism.
We will quickly come to see not only a view of the inner realm as we might not have expected it, but more importantly the heretical charge and tension within each of these voices. Because, ultimately, the source of so much hostility in our shared history does not reside in the difference of one man’s experience of the divine as opposed to another’s, but in the ever antagonistic forces between any unmediated experience of divinity and all forms of organised spiritual orthodoxy. The true mystic – like the true magician – irrespective of whether he or she emerges from an Egyptian, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, or any other paradigm, will always be perceived as a threat to organised spiritual institutions.
Western mystics and magicians, whatever the time and context in which they live, and regardless of how contradictory their practices might seem, all share one thing: the antisocial stench of the primal goês. All of our ancestors on this path have been lone workers, whether in the deserts, in their cells, or amongst their communities, walking their own version of the narrow path. And in doing so their very way of life posed a threat to any kind of codified, mediated and sanitised form of spirituality as represented by the major churches and institutional orders. Standing tall all by yourself and seeing angels eye to eye sucks the oxygen out of any kind of secondhand encounter with divinity. It is in this direct experience of the spirit that we stand united as holy heretics.
As part of the first half of this book we will discover the essential importance of what Christian mystics have come to call the heart space or heart flame. Following the ancient Greek understanding of emotions being located in one’s gut, for millennia the human heart was known not only as the throne of wisdom within man, but more importantly as the actual crack between the human and divine world, from which the light comes in. Each chapter, therefore, ends with straightforward instructions on how to approach your own heart space, how to navigate this complex inner realm, and how to ultimately attune it to the specific spirit(s) you intend to work with. Because the second half of the book builds upon these foundations, I would advise against skipping ahead and delving into the section titled MAGIC.
Contrary to common assumptions, the practice of advanced magic should not precede but instead follow periods of intense mystical training. I hope to illustrate many practical reasons for this in the first half of this book and specifically in chapters V and VI. In the final section I offer a restored version of an authentic ritual long considered lost. It relates to a magical act alluded to in the famous Arbatel and is best considered a form of baptism into the spirit and living presence of the cosmos. Paracelsus, the pseudonymous author of the rite in its earlier form, called it the act of restoring the Olympic Spirit within man.
Therefore I tell you cabalists and naturalists, or all magicians […] to learn the first three cabalistic principles: Ask, Seek, Knock on God the Lord, if you want to have a holy Spiritum (which is delivered to everyone from birth by God the Creator, to teach and guide people in all wisdom, art and true blissful life) with you and [if you want to be able to] converse with your Genius. Because no servant can be lent to you without your heart’s permission and without keeping the Evangelical commandments; according to which commandments, or Novo Olympo the faithful have more justice and freedom than those in the Old Testament with whom God did not speak directly but through the spirits: We, however, do not want to hear from the spirits alone, but we want to hear from God directly, for we have Him within us through our obedience to God. (Astronomia Olympi novi)
Before we attempt to ascend to the peak of this Novo Olympo, we have much work to do. Just as Icarus fell in his flight to the sun, so we can easily fall in our attempt to stand amongst the angels. For we face divinity neither as Jack nor Jill, names that turn to stone at the gate of the Moon, nor as sorores nor fratres, titles that melt away like wax on our ascent. Instead we face divinity as divine sparks ourselves, fragments of light facing the sun, bound from our origin to the absolute.
In this shape we are as one with all other human beings; one with those who walked before us and one with those who will come after us. In the eyes of divinity we are all one: one hand, one heart, one hive. And it is only in this shape, nameless except for the name of our species, that we shall come to stand among the angels.
But let us not be mistaken: we take the next breath, we take one step backwards, and once again we are wolves and pigs and hares. Conversely, if we hold our breath for too long or take one more step into the light, then we are dead. For such is the human condition: to partake in everything, from divinity to darkness, and never to be one thing alone. Thus it is meant to be; for it is the same hand of nature that gives the first breath to our children and that takes away their last; though one hopes with a lifetime of riches in between. We partake in it all, yet nonetheless we may choose to walk the narrow path and synthesise the Olympic Spirit from the open firmament within us.
This narrow path, of which we shall learn more, guides us safely among the traps and snares of hubris and self doubt, of egocentricity and guilt, of rigidity and inertia. Discovering our own path which leads from the tombs of our ancestors is the task of a lifetime. Whatever we create from it will be a beautiful hybrid, half of our own making, half the heritage of those who walked before us. The very nature of this path, however, has not changed throughout the millennia that our species has attempted to walk it: to breathe in both worlds at once, one foot in divinity, the other in the mundane world, one eye seeing eternity, the other our neighbour’s face; and so, in an act of Promethean courage and Clementian mildness, to stride out and live an honourable life.
I am very aware that searching for such a path among the very people who for centuries tried to usurp and control or deform and kill the Western magical tradition is a big ask. On such an expedition to find the narrow path we’ll soon be crawling through the bones, blood and ashes of our ancestors. And yet, at the same time we’ll also encounter beauty and genuine practice, true grace and deep spiritual power.
The attempt to see the world through the eyes of Christian mystics from many different centuries is an attempt to fan the flame they carried. And yet, I find my heart filled with dissonance and tension when walking in their shoes. For it seems to me they carried both light and shadow: one hand holding the flame, the other clinging to darkness.
Strangely, the further we walk back in time the more the tension seems to increase. It is hardly bearable by the time we arrive in the early centuries of Christianity. Perhaps this is because the actual, complex human beings have vanished behind the veil of time supervening between us, and all we hear now is the echo of the echo of their words. Or perhaps the difficulty lies in the fanatical extremism that guided the Egyptian Desert Fathers, itself a magical sword pulled from its scabbard. Just as easily as it cuts through the veils of the world, so it cuts through what makes us human.
Either way, excavating the powerful techniques practiced by our ancestors means immersing ourselves in their ways of thinking, living, and working, which always carries the risk of forgetting where we stand ourselves. Attempting to view, for example, Origen’s view of Jesus Christ not from the vantage point of how we would judge it today, but how Origen perceived it in his own time, requires the expertise of an anthropologist. How did Origen think about the world? What constituted coherence in his perspective? How did he forge the foundations of what would come to be one of the world’s most powerful spiritual paradigms? In order to truly encounter the Other, we must leave our own values and filters behind, with all the risk to one’s integrity that entails.
This leads us to the question of who is the intended audience of this book. To this, at least, I have a clear answer: it is for you. You and I, reader, will be embarking upon this expedition together, traveling from grave to grave, from country to country, century to century. Ours will be a lengthy journey indeed, far into foreign lands, with the risk of not returning as the people we once were. For seeing through the eyes of the Other, becoming a seeker of understanding, changes us – and changes everything.
Now, my presumption on this expedition will be that we both have certain essential traveling skills: to willingly manoeuvre our hearts into a silent, non-judgmental space; to realise the Other for what it is, rather than seeing our own projections in it (whether fears or desires); and in our pursuit of discovery, to put things that are dear to us on the scales without knowing where that will lead us. Most of all, however, I’ll trust your ability to embrace negative capability within your own mind; that is, to hold conflicting truths in your mind’s eye, and not to shut either of them out. To experience cognitive and spiritual dissonance in the pursuit of developing your capability to wrestle with a world that completely exceeds your ability to fully comprehend it. In short, I’ll trust we both show up as adepts with a desire to learn. Because becoming a seeker of understanding is a most dangerous undertaking. All magical books from Solomon to Faust teach as much.