The House of Adocentyn

02/13/2017

"That the Holy Grail is associated in a manner with the Cauldron of Regeneration of Celtic lore, is a frequent statement among specialists in medieval legend. It is a statement whose profound truth goes far beyond any literary evidence, seeing into the very nature of Adepthood itself. The 'Quest of the Grail' is indeed a distinct and recondite image of the task which lies before the risen Adept, the Knight, the Professed. Here, 'that which he is to seek, he is to become': - the sacred vessel which is to receive the Wine of Inspiration. Nevertheless, this is but one level of the Grail's significance. It is also the specific and sacred symbol of the Goddess in her Binah Aspect, as a receptacle of the power of the Supernal Father. The Grail thus represents a high spiritual reality: one of its co-symbols is the Universe. To raise up a magical instrument, as has been said, is to bring it into manifestation and into operation. He who elevates the Grail in solemn ritual, therefore, is making offering so far as he is able, of the universe itself as a receptacle of Divine Power. Not only that: he is also whether explicitly or implicitly offering himself as an instrument of that Power. {Even thus does the Grand Master make offering of the Order, and of himself its representative before the Gods.}" - Mysteria Magica, Denning &Phillips

The Quest for the Grail

The symbol of the Grail has occupied a place in the imagination since awareness of it first dawned in the European Middle Ages, and it continues to exert a fascination upon all who come within its sphere of influence. As a sacred vessel, the grail has strong links with Celtic myth, with the hermetic vessel and the Philosophers’ Stone of alchemy. Cup stone or jewel, however it is depicted, the grail has remained a symbol of spiritual wholeness leading to union with the divine, which has been the aim of seekers after truth in every land and every century. It is a symbol ‘whose home is properly in the uncharted country of the soul’.

-The temple of mysteries-

The home of the Grail is properly in the uncharted country of the soul; but within the framework of the stories, an externalized form- the temple, or grail castle- came to be recognized as the place where if the quester should reach it, he might find the object of his search. And because such a place must have its guardians. There came into being an Order of Grail Knights, a king and a court, conforming to the mediaeval idea of such a place, but at the same time as remote and mysterious as the ritual object thus housed.

Image: Parsifal by Hermann Hendrich, made for the eponymous opera by Richard Wagner.

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10/30/2016

The House of Adocentyn is pleased to announce that it will perform the opening ritual for Phoenix Pagan Pride Day on Saturday, November 5th, 2016 at 10 am. Additionally, the House will have a booth at the event where interested students may obtain information on the Ordo Astrum Sophiae or purchase select publications relevant to the Ogdoadic Tradition. The House of Adocentyn believes strongly in supporting the local Phoenix occult community, continuing a tradition extending back to the original Aurum Solis under Melita Denning and Obsorne Phillips who were active participants in the Llewellyn Gnosticon festivals held in the Twin Cities in the 1970's.

Though the OAS remains a private magical order, with initiation by invitation only, this event offers an opportunity for local interaction and outer manifestation within the greater occult community.

07/20/2013

The Ordo Astrum Sophiae has just published Issue 5 of The Ogdoadic Journal! As with all of the Journals, it is freely available to all via PDF on the OAS website. This is the first of 2 issues to focus on Praxis - specifically the "Lesser Mysteries." Containing innovative new material and complete presentations of the foundational rites with photos, audio, and commentary, we hope this issue will inform and inspire all students of the Mysteries!

07/02/2013

A beautiful representation of the quadrivium. Of significance to students of the Ogdoadic Tradition is the girdle-knot of Isis, a subtle nod to the feminine nature of the quadrivium as corresponding to the "natural sciences": arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. The grouping of four (and, traditionally, even numbers in general) also indicates the feminine nature of these studies and their relationship to the Nephesh, while the grouping of the three traditional studies - the trivium - is thus masculine and corresponds to the Ruach. The trivium (consisting of grammar, logic, and rhetoric) was taught first, followed by the quadrivium. In a similar manner, the initiatic cycle of the Ogdoadic Tradition presents the mysteries of the "Pillar of the Breath" in the First Hall, before the mysteries of the "Pillar of the Body" in the Second Hall.

Art in The Ritman Library.

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One of the four panels by the Florentine painter Domenico di Michelino (1417-1491), showing the female personifications of the quadrivium, or four of the seven liberal arts of the Middle Ages: music, geometry, arithmetic and astronomy. Not included is the trivium, consisting of the disciplines of grammar, logic and rhetoric, the ‘foundation course’ of the artes liberales taught at the universities.

In this picture: Astronomia, cosmology and chronology, personified as a woman with an armillary sphere, showing the major spherical rings around the earth, and a sextant, to calculate the position of the stars.

04/29/2013

The stunning zodiacal visions of Johfra Bosschart. The painting of Gemini would also serve as the cover to the third printing of Denning & Phillip's Planetary Magick; unfortunately the book's copyright page misattributes it to Lissanne Lake (who drew the Magical/Briatic Images for that book).

The zodiacal paintings of Dutch artist Johfra Bosschart (1919-1998)

04/24/2013

From "Speculum Artis et Naturae" (The Mirror of Art and Nature), 1654, by Stephan Michelspacher. Several interesting elements in the central panel including, as Adam McLean has noted, a possible monogram of AGLA.

Cabala, Speculum Artis et Naturae in Alchymia by Stephan Michelspacher, 1654, Dresden

04/21/2013

Today's blog presents a 1979 editorial by Denning & Phillips on the Guyana Massacre. It speaks candidly of the occultist's social duty, a subject seldom touched upon, and of the manipulation of individuals by fear.

This past week marked the 20th anniversary of the Waco massacre. The following editorial was published in the March/April 1979 issue of Gnostica magazine. In it, Denning and Phillips discuss the events of Jonestown from an occult perspective. Their comments could equally apply to Waco, and perhaps t...

04/02/2013

Pleased to support its local pagan/occult community, the House of Adocentyn has contributed a brief overview of the Ogdoadic Tradition to this month's edition of "Grain of Sand." Many thanks to the editors and organizers.

03/07/2013

Corbin is truly indispensable for understanding the nature of the mystical theophany at the heart of the Great Work (insomuch as it may be understood rationally). This passage is filled incomparable beauty.

The "Heavenly Witness"
~Henry Corbin

And so now we come to the innermost secret of the mystical experience, to the decisive event already pre-sensed in the splendors of the "emerald vision." The alternation between the first and the third person, the substitution of the one for the other, are only another way of stating the same paradox-procreated-procreator, Contemplated-Contemplator- which the theme of Perfect Nature had already allowed us to grasp as being the supreme expression of individual spiritual initiation. In this realization of reciprocity alone can the features of the August Face be fleetingly glimpsed : a face of light which is your own face because you are yourself a particle of Its light. What the mystic, by virtue of his ardent desire, pursues and experiences is not a collective relationship shared by all alike in respect to a singular object, is not a relationship identical for all to which everyone has an equal claim in respect to one and the same object. No, this relationship is unique, individual, unshareable, because it is a relationship of love. It is not a filial relationship, but rather a marital one. An individual, unshared relationship of this nature can only be manifested, represented, and expressed by a figure which attests to the real presence of one alone to one alone and for one alone, in a dialogue unus-ambo. The figure of the "Heavenly Witness," of the suprasensory personal Guide, thus guarantees with such certainty a theophany perceived by love alone, corresponding to a feeling of marital relationship, that its most characteristic manifestations -- the flaming of photisms bearing witness to the reunion of "like with like"-- come about at the moment of a state of love carried to its climax. The mystical experience described by Najm Kobra thus comes to accord with the forms and experience of celestial love in Iranian Sufism.

"When the circle of the face has become pure [writes the shaykh], "it effuses lights as a spring pours forth its water, so that the mystic has a sensory perception (i.e., through the suprasensory senses) that these lights are gushing forth to irradiate his face. This outpouring takes place between the two eyes and between the eyebrows. Finally it spreads to cover the whole face. At that moment, before you, before your face, there is another Face also of light, irradiating lights; while behind its diaphanous veil a sun becomes visible, seemingly animated by a movement to and fro. In reality this Face is your own face and this sun is the sun of the Spirit (shams al-ruh) that goes to and fro in your body. Next, the whole of your person is immersed in purity, and suddenly you are gazing at a person of light (shakhmin nur) who is also irradiating lights. The mystic has the sensory perception of this irradiation of lights proceeding from the whole of his person. Often the veil falls and the total reality of the person is revealed, and then with the whole of your body you perceive the whole. The opening of the inner sight (basira, the visual organ of light) begins in the eyes, then in the face, then in the chest, then in the entire body. This person of light (shakhs nurani) before you is called in Sufi terminology the suprasensory Guide (mooaddam al-ghayb). It is also called the suprasensory personal Master (shaykh al-ghayb), or again the suprasensory spiritual Scales (mizam al-ghayb) (§66)."

It has been given many other names, all reminiscent of the"midnight sun," the witness in the vision of Hermes described by Sohravardi. Najm Kobra refers to the Guide of light as the Sun of the heart, the Sun of certainty, the Sun of faith, the Sun of knowledge, the spiritual Sun of the Spirit. And more explicitly still he says:

"Know that the mystic has a Witness (shahid). He it is who is called the personal Master in the suprasensory world. He carries the mystic up toward the Heavens; thus it is in the Heavens that he appears (§69)."

From: The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism

http://philosophiaperennisetuniversalis.blogspot.nl/2013/03/the-heavenly-witness.html

02/22/2013

The first of the paths approaching Tiphareth will be worked this Sunday at Alpha Books in Phoenix. The session is free and open to all.

Some thoughts on the two aspects of pathworking from Osborne Phillips:

"A Path may be considered primarily as the way to the magical state of consciousness of a sphere. And to enter a sphere – a Sephirah – is to enter a state of consciousness that enables you to attain specific very wonderful powers. Upon the Path that carries the influence of that Sephirah you are likely to experience something of those same powers, but they are not made available to you as in the sphere itself: for the Sephiroth open up to us treasuries of archetypal power far beyond our personal resources.

But a Path is a different, adventurous and highly magical state of consciousness in its own right. And the Paths belong to us in a way that the Sephiroth never quite do. The archetypal images of the spheres are woven into the very stuff of our lives, it is true: but the great archetypes, which cast the shadows which are those images, stand ever beyond the limits of any individual psyche. The Paths, by contrast, represent an integral part of our lives, a part of our psyche that may be brought into consciousness and savoured; a part, too, of that deeper psychic substratum of life forces that holds all humankind in vital and interactive unity."

02/12/2013

An excellent observation from Dion Fortune. In the Ogdoadic Tradition we might add that control over the world of Yetzirah and the Nephesh (the astral levels without and within) can only be properly effected by the Ruach. Thus, in our scheme of initiation is the First Hall the initiation of Pneuma, the Breath/Ruach, where the Second Hall corresponds to Sarx: the Nephesh/Body and the Yetziratic realm of "real magic that is objective...."

"The path to becoming an adept is solely dependent on the reality of your contact with the astral world and your absolute belief in its existence. From this reality springs the ability to work real magic that is objective not subjective and can change the world around you for good."

Dion Fortune.

09/10/2012

The Song of Praises says of the 30th Path:

"Rise in thy Splendor, O King! Glorious brow, gaze on thy governance,
Gladdening all who behold! Soaring as song, rule and illuminate,
Crysoleth gleaming thy crown, rise and inspire. Lion-gold, Falcon-flight, joyous, ambrosial!"

Some of the gematric allusions here that Denning and Phillips discuss in "The Sword and the Serpent" are:

Resh (RYSh) - the Hebrew letter associated with this Path - enumerates to 510, as does its anagram ShYR, meaning "song". "Splendor," of course, is Hod - the destination of this path. Hod (HVD) adds to 15, reducing to the Solar number 6 - as do ShYR and RYSh.

Thanks to all who participated in this Solar/Alchemical journey today!

09/07/2012

The Semitalia series of pathworkings are derived from the book "Magical States of Consciousness" by Melita Denning and Osborne Phillips. This remarkable book has recently been reprinted by Llewellyn after being out-of-print for many years. Anyone interested in Qabalistic Pathworking, or the Ogdoadic Tradition of High Magick practiced by the Ordo Astrum Sophiae is strongly encouraged to obtain this work.

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07/13/2012

Here are symbols and images of import to initiates of Ordo Astrum Sophiae