Astron Argon

A Zelator’s Aphorisms

by Frater Zephyros

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

I am the Magickal Childe in the College of the Rose Cross. I am "Asar Un Nefer" (myself made perfect) and acknowledge myself as my own self-creation. I place no blame and no reliance on my ancestors for my flaws and for any form of consolation. Indeed, it is better that I lose my racial consciousness altogether; lest they deceive me and aid and abet me in my toying with old sweetnesses.

The true Aspiration holds not to destroy the lower ego but rather to perfect it by teaching it to hear the subtle flap of the wings of one's Holy Guardian Angel. It is not the lower ego but the dysfunctional quality of egotism, which is to be overcome. Success is attained by holding the lower ego subservient to the Will and no longer being subservient to its usurpation of the throne of the Will.

The usurpation of the throne by the lower ego is like a childish and undisciplined king who cannot resist the moods of sulkiness, bad temper, irritability, and impatience. Remember always that the task of the true king is to control yourself, your faults and emotions, your speech and your actions; cutting with the dagger, those items that fail to serve your Aspiration. This comes by experience and the ordeals.

We must strive ardently to distinguish between what we believe to be and what is actually inherent in the nature of our Initiation. In this methodology, we deal only with verifiable facts. All else, whether theory, hypothesis, inference, axiom, or postulate, we approach with great skepticism unless and until we can prove them out. And until then, they are the prejudices and tendencies of superstition and belief.

Emotionalism is revealed by a personal fencing-in of feeling; intellectualism is an over-indulgence in personal analysis and criticism; fantasias are the succumbing to one's personal imaginations. In all three trances, the lower ego is in control as it limits and shapes one's personal illusions. One cannot seek the Knowledge & Conversation where the Angel is most certainly absent.

The Zelator begins by learning that the lower ego is very much the lesser part of him or herself and that it must be kept down in its place as an obedient servant with its desires scrutinized and disciplined, or even negated by the cut of the sword along with its illusions exposed and removed. There is no energy to waste on this petty tyrant as it will take one's all to persevere to that end which must be attained.

Know that the universe is equally indifferent to both the evil deeds of ignorant hucksters and the virtuous actions of the righteous. And so also is the Holy Guardian Angel unaffected by the character or conduct of the lower ego. It is a part of the College of Adepts and unaffected by the wrongdoing or the righteousness of the lower ego, which is without the pale of the Inner Order.

When this lower ego is put in its proper relation with the True Will and not allowed to usurp its throne, it aligns itself with the Holy Guardian Angel; attuned to the sound of the Angel's lute. From this relationship, inner directives guide the Adept and an inner harmony gives one certainty and not faith; so much so that unpleasant circumstances will not be enabled to disturb this direct communication.

The moral re-education required by this philosophy is achieved through the ordeals of one's Aspiration and the physical Alchemy of one's ritual and yogic work. The attainment of the Knowledge & Conversation is not to be viewed as the success of a pious hope or the reward of a grace bestowed upon the Aspirant by the Holy Guardian Angel. It is rather the natural result of the psychological changes and nervous sensitivity developed by the practices.

By working regularly every day at the practices, one is proving the potency of his or her Aspiration in earnest, demonstrating one's faith in his or her perfected self and showing one's perseverance. When the time comes, these three qualities will support the appeals and prayers of the Dominus Liminis to the Holy Guardian Angel in a solid way. The response of Grace and Benediction must then eventually and necessarily manifest as the Knowledge & Conversation of Thine Holy Guardian Angel.

The lower ego then perpetuates itself by entering into these practices and not merely in the mundane life alone. The spiritual Aspiration, moral ideals, and even the mystical experiences become themselves inverted projections of the lower ego. Through these practices, the lower ego is able to expand itself and become greater, grander, happier, and stronger than before. If the Aspiration is not authentic and of its own creation but instead, merely provides shelter or disguise the lower ego, then the Aspiration is soon infiltrated and betrayed by the lower ego, it becomes undermined or permeated by it until the Aspiration itself is fed upon and nourishes the lower ego.

For proving that the holy experience of communion with one's Holy Guardian Angel is indeed a genuine fact and not an hallucinatory one, not only is the experience itself to be recorded in one's Magickal Record and analyzed but the after-effects ought to be studied noting one's subsequent behavior. One is then seeking to discover in oneself, less attachment to the lower ego and more devotion to the Holy Guardian Angel along with less emotional disturbance and more mental tranquility.

As revealed to us by the Adepts of the Great White Brotherhood, it is not only possible to attain these brief glimpses of the Holy Guardian Angel, but also to attain a durable lasting Knowledge & Conversation with it. Nothing can then interfere with this and the Adept discovers that his or her future is no different from but quite the same as its past as one is completely immersed in the sacred and eternal Now. Only by this abiding light is it possible to commune with the College of Adepts in the Order of the Rose Cross.

It has been revealed by the sages of the past that the true union, completely authentic and completely beatific, where the lower ego melts into the higher ego without the admixture of mundane desire or egoic suggestion, cannot be properly described in words. One who experiences it may know its onset or its end because of the enormous contrast with his ordinary self, but he or she can not know its full height simply because one will not even know that he or she is experiencing it. To become enabled to do so would be to re-introduce the lower ego again and thus fall away from the purity of the union. This would then be admixture–which is the fate of most unions.

The mysterious character of the Holy Guardian Angel inevitably puzzles and even frightens the lower ego. We may attend to this better if we accept the paradoxical fact that it's nature is to unite a duality and that therefore there are two ways to consider its qualities. There is the divine being which is entirely above all temporal concerns, absolute and universal, and there is also the demi-divine being which is in historical relation with the lower ego.

There are moments when the Holy Guardian Angel addresses the consciousness of the mundane personality, and rarer moments when the Adept gets at Its consciousness. It is profitably advantageous to extend these moments, if you can, or to dwell long and often on their memory, if you cannot. What the Zelator needs to develop is both the facility and the capacity to expand the slightest premonitory movement of the gate of intuitive awareness and up to the widest opening of this gate.

Whenever one notices the very slightest in-drawing to the Holy Guardian Angel, whenever the least feeling of Its presence appears, the Zelator should at once begin to wrap him or herself around with the felt influence of the Holy Guardian Angel to the exclusion of everything else. Know that once one has attained the philosophic realization of the Holy Guardian Angel, one will go nightly to sleep in It's Grace. And if the sleep is dreamless and deep, one will find that he or she has been completely immersed in its effulgence. Otherwise, one inserts It into his or her dreams if the sleep is not so deep and dreamless; either way one does not withdraw from one's natural devotion to It.

In Our Order, excessive importance is given to the Teacher; even unto Discipleship to the Adept called a Spiritual Master. This exaggerated devotion given to him, can only have value in the earlier stages of the quest. The point of view then present has so much lower ego invested in it that the Aspirant would not be satisfied unless he or she had such a guru. But it this relationship is still an attachment of the lower ego to a false image and so has to be let go later on.

But the basic concept of AoAo is to have a Teacher, who has already traversed the path that the Student is now embarking upon. The purpose of this Teacher is to provide water and sunlight for the newly planted Student by giving friendship and guidance along with the constructive feedback that focuses and better enables the capacities of the Student. The Teacher fails miserably when he or she proves to be arrogant or self-serving in his or her methodology.

The spiritual Master is the midwife of the Disciple's Holy Guardian Angel. So it's the initial task of the Master to demonstrate energy, and shifts of consciousness in a way that the student will be able to perceive. This requires a fluid spontaneity that is applied differently from Disciple to Disciple based on the unique qualities of each Disciple. Therefore, the Master is expected to develop a complete empathy for the Disciple so that the Master can begin to comprehend the unique nature of the Disciple's Initiation.

In this way the Master honors the Disciple, which is returned by the Disciple by befriending the Master. A polarity then develops between the two that benefits the occult power of both. Therefore, there is no charity as the Master gains just as much from the experience of the Disciple as the Disciple gains from the experience of the Master. And once the Disciple has attained, he or she severs the magnetic link with the Master and seeks out new Students of his or her own.

Love is the law, love under will.