that the Great War is now being waged. Its effects are felt when Megiddo is known as a place of mourning where great kings of Judah were slain and it seems therefore that error has taken the place of ideals.
ARMANISM — Ancient Teutonic pagan priesthood exterminated by the Christians. One of the streams that was diverted by the Nazis to feed directly into their metaphysics.
ARRA — (Or “Ur.”) Star-stone of the covenant of the Elder Gods — as in the Necronomicon’s Chaldean oath, “They who gave it to us will not forget us. They have sworn: Spirit of the Skies, Remember!”
Also known, HPL says, as the “Elder Sign,” the five-pointed sigil “carven of gray stone from ancient Mnar,” the glyph of the Elder Gods whose sway over the Great Old Ones remains incontestable. The star-stone spells and incantations are only stand-ins for the Elder Gods themselves. They may not therefore be strong enough, in the end, to resist the Great Old Ones, but who holds the Arra can control any lesser creature. And such also are legion.
AS IF — In Eckankar chelas are taught that the senses contain all manifestation. Imagination, in the field of Maya, if exercised properly will create an effect by the chela who acts “as if” it has already happened. We have only to recognize that we have already reached God-Consciousness.
ASPECT — One of the forms or faces of a god (Father: Son: Holy Ghost or Brahma/Vishnu/ Shiva). A human being’s aspect can be considered one of his traditional roles, as an actor has certain well-known “character parts.”
ASTRAL LIGHT — (HPB calls it “astral fluid.”) In Hinduism this is an invisible aura surrounding the earth and is the life-energy of the cosmos itself. It acts as a storehouse for all the energies of the cosmos and contains (eternal?) “holograms” of everything that transpires (or has transpired?) on the physical or astral planes.
Others refer to it as the “cosmic switchboard” or the “collective unconscious” that connects all individual minds to Mind, or Omniscience. The magician operates within it always inside a consecrated bubble so as not to be influenced or harmed by its infinite cross-currents.
It is so fluid and tenuous that the slightest act of the will or imagination can cause it to bend in the magician’s desired direction.
ASTRAL PLANE — A mental world shared by dreamers, OOBE travelers, perichoretic visitants, newly dead, beings/spirits from other worlds who have lived lives on other planets and so on. Here are also the formidable, native “Kamadevas” and finally the lower devic orders, including the elementals and those who provide us with the spirit of a place (genius loci). Alchemical “elementals” also exist here, as do all the undespatched, artificial creations of magicians (Tibetan magi, for instance, are adept at creating thought-creatures tulpas). Many of the astral creations become powerful symbols or Jungian archetypes — collectively created.
We already exist on the A. P., as we exist on the physical plane. We have but to experience it consciously. Marc Edmund Jones says that it is the level of experience for simple individuality or is our “first transcendency of physical cause and effect.” The Astral Plane is constructed by the mental imagery of those who travel there. (Xtians think themselves in heaven, others imagine they are wherever their fancy takes them.) Astral is the first type of matter, much more subtle than our present version. As far as we’re concerned, on the astral plane, there is no “material” reality, even though everything vaguely resembles our world. Things behave like the material world, except that the character of things is worn on the outside, rather than hidden inside as on earth. This is because the Astral lies midway between material earth and the spirit worlds, qabalistically on the Yesodic level. Classically, it is characterized (for the newly dead) by a central courtyard or “receiving” field receding into “the hills beyond” — beyond which lies the capital city. This “courtyard,” plaza, precinct, garden or whatever is generally considered to be merely a way-station or transfer point.
Most authorities are agreed that the first experience after death is total and absolute darkness. Finally, appears a light as the world left behind begins to remember itself. One now enters the “desire world,” or Kamaloka. It is in Kamaloka that the spirit creates the idealized world described above. Sooner or later we realize that eating, drinking, sleeping, making love are merely phantom acts because we have no physical body. At this moment comes a second surrender and we recapitulate our lives backward from death to birth, suffering or enjoying the effects of our actions while we lived in the world. So we experience, for ourselves, the harm we have done and recognize where we must compensate for it. Animals, of course, never get this far, but quickly lose their individuality, such as it is. Family pets may last a bit longer because they have been so strongly individualized.
At any rate, we are now ready to present this refined and reformed earth-life personality to our higher self (Atma-Buddha-Manas). A separation of “I” and astral body, is the Second Death. The self, rid of ego and earth-impedimenta, now can ascend to the spirit world, as Osiris. The lower self is cast to the serpent, Urekh, to be consumed, while the spirit enters the clear sky of Sekten. The cast-off, ego-shorn astral husk, still contaminated by desire may hang around the borderland where it masquerades as some famous spirit or makes itself available to mediums.
Devachan is a mental plane in a world considerably higher than the astral, where the “I” then proceeds after its “second death.”
At the apogee from earth the soul fills with desire (Trisha) for a personality. So we plummet down again through the seven levels. The Dhyan-Choans decide where the wheel of reincarnation will stop — but thereafter it’s up to the individual. Gradually, as one falls into materialization, one forgets his old experiences and focusses on the life to come. At this point we call in karma voluntarilty to help us redress past imbalances. Passing over into the conditional sphere of Space/Time (Samsara), we reincarnate over and over (Samtana) until ultimate deliverance (Moksha). Life is thus a system of checks and balances between Activity (Pravritti) and Renunciation (Nivritti).
There is a parallel Battle of Armageddon now taking place on the A. P. that is experienced only in shadow on earth — resulting in our breakdown of civilization and planetwide pollution. Eventually, as the war breeches the spirit membrane separating our world from the Astral, the celestial war will break out on earth as well.
A rather interesting analog of the Astral Plane is given by C. S. Lewis in his Pilgrim’s Regress. Another, more satisfying version, is recounted by Tolkien in his story, “Leaf by Niggle.” There are also Franz Werfel’s Star of the Unborn and Sacheverell Sitwell’s Journey to the Ends of Time. Finally, it must be pointed out that there are many planes, of which the astral is only the first. The magician “rises through the planes,” the astral, the magician’s plane, the alchemist’s plane, the Aethyrs, the God-Planes, to the highest and innermost dimensions. (See DEVACHAN.)
ASTRONOMY —The most advanced of modern sciences. (Oddly enough, astronomy was the most advanced of all the ancient sciences, as well.)
ASTROSOME — The astral, “healing” body that can leave the body when not busy and which destroys the body after death.
ASTROSOPHY — Astrology has frequently been criticized for offering proofs of its validity on single examples, as though it were some sort of faulty science. Astrology, however, does not rest upon cause and effect, but is merely a search for synchronicities and other simultaneous parallels. Mind is the link between the body and the Cosmos. Astrology is the recognition of this connection. When the psyche descends to the sensory world, its celestial planets are drawn inward, i.e. earthed, and they become cramped, distorted and negative reflections, faint echoes of what they were. So the planets become their own inversions. Saturn, for instance, is originally divine intelligence, but in man it now settles for putting ordinary “reason” on the throne of Transcendence. Since Saturn is the heaviest of the planets, its gravity pulls down all the others which in turn become inversions of themselves also. Hence confusion grows on what it feeds and since