As Above, So Below

This is the thirteenth part of my essay series “Inner Work with the Planets”. If you haven’t read the earlier parts yet, I suggest you start with part 1 to get the most out of this essay.

In the last essay, we started the descent back down to earth again, all the way from the fixed stars in the eigth sphere. We also had a lively discussion of Hermetic ideas, about the importance of being well rooted here on earth while we still dwell in our current state of dual nature, and about different kinds of descents through the planetary spheres.

During all this, we descended about halfway down again, back through the sphere of the Sun… and are just now entering the sphere of Venus.

Just as during the earlier ascent, we are lovingly greeted and invited straight to the party. We’ve wisened up a bit since last time, though! Let’s simply grab some of the delicious food and a drink or two, and then be straight on our way further down. As we have learned the hard way, once we start enjoying Venus’ pleasures, letting go of them can be hard work all in itself.

So further down we move through her sphere, with swinging steps which match the rythm of the music.

By now, we’ve considered two kinds of Hermetic descents through the planetary spheres: Our initial one, as represented by the story of the first human. And the descents we take after each incarnation and into our next one, and in which we fill our soul’s pockets with a new pile of planetary coins, after having dumped the ones from our previous incarnation on our preceding way up.

(Although this latter descent is, strictly speaking, not included in the Hermetica, but is some artistic liberty of mine.)

Biting into some of the succulent fruit which grows along the path, you might be wondering what kind of descent our current journey is, then. After all, it’s certainly not our initial foray down to the material world before our first incarnation ever.

(I’m sitting very much incarnate in front of my laptop while I write this, and I’m sure you’re in a similar very-much-incarnate position or you wouldn’t be able to read this essay on your screen!)

And we’re also all still very much alive, and are definitely not descending into a new incarnation after death either.

So what exactly are we doing right now?

The short answer is: It’s a third kind of descent – and we do it after a different kind of ascent.

(It’s also a particularly important kind of descent, as I explained in the last essay. It helps us to maintain solid roots in the material world, and we need these roots as long as we exist in dual nature.)

We’ll get into the nitty-gritty of this “third type” of descent in the next essay, where we’ll also talk some more about the ascents which precede it, and of what this essay series really is all about.

For now, though, let’s wave goodbye to Venus and her friends, put on our seven-league boots, and rush straight down into (and through) the sphere of Mercury.

A bit further up, in Jupiter’s sphere, we marvelled at the obvious connection between the Divine and the material – and then scratched our heads, wondering how the in-between-spheres of the planets and the fixed stars are tied into the connection between the divine realms and material life on earth.

At this point, some of you are probably bouncing up and down, bursting with excitement, because you finally get to shout “As above, so below! As above, so below!!”. Well, don’t let me hold you back…

Done? Good. 😉

If you have no clue what I’m talking about: There are some adages which keep getting quoted, and which, in public mind, seem to represent their sources. Like (real or made up) quotes from Einstein, which for a lot of people seem to represent all of what Einstein was at a person.

One such adage is the Hermetic idea of “as above, so below”. What it means, or rather: What it is taken to imply varies a bit, depending on who uses it and in which context.

(We’ll not go into potential interpretations here. But please feel free to meditate about this quote and come up with as many ways as possible to understand and to apply it!)

This well-known trope of “as above, so below” covers the richness of Hermetic thought about as well as an Einstein quote covers all of Einstein’s personality , and I hope this has become unmistakably clear from this essay series! 😉

But just because it has become a much-quoted trope doesn’t mean it’s useless – quite the contrary! While it certainly not represents the richness and fullness of the Hermetic worldview and its concepts, it does very well represent some core elements of Hermetic thought.

I.e. although “as above, so below” is oftentimes being abused to reduce Hermeticism to one single concept when in reality Hermeticism is a rich world full of interconnected (and sometimes contradictory) concepts, this doesn’t mean that this particular concept doesn’t play an important role in Hermeticism.

In fact, it has peaked through the pages of these essays (or rather, through their pixels) more than once, as you might well have noticed!

Before we talk about one very specific application of this concept, though, let’s first slow down a bit before we enter the Moon’s sphere. After the speed and agility with which we rushed through Mercury’s, it will be good to catch our breath and enjoy this last, gentle and relaxed leg of our journey.

So how are above and below connected? And what about the stuff in between?

Let’s approach this from a practical angle, just like people have done for centuries. Let’s assume you want to achieve something very mundane and tangible: more money. Now, there are various ways to go about this, of course. 🙂

But let’s also assume you had gotten your hands on a copy of a book called “De Quindecim Stellis”, “About the Fifteen Stars”. It’s a book chockfull of notes about how Hermes Trismegistus, the legendary sage / saint / teacher / divine being who gave Hermeticism its name, supposedly used fifteen of the fixed stars in talismanic magic.

Generally speaking, a lot of the older Hermetic texts state as their author Hermes the Thrice-Greatest himself, even when this clearly wasn’t the case.

This doesn’t mean the actual authors suffered from delusions of grandeur, but that they meant to put their works firmly into the world of Hermeticism (and probably also that they meant to claim some authority from Hermes himself as higher authority – a very human thing to do!).

De Quindecim Stellis must have been reasonably popular, as evidenced by the fact that several variants still exist. In any case, you’re browsing through a variant of the text to see if there is anything related to having more money (unless your old Latin is very solid, it’ll probably be in a translation like this one by Hess), when a sentence about the fixed star Regulus catches your eye: “For this star is the significator of great honour and great riches.”.

Hm. This sounds interesting, doesn’t it?

Regulus, part of the zodiacal constellation Leo, is one of the brightest stars up there in the night sky.

You decide to check what one of the other variations of De Quindecim Stellis has to say about Regulus: “Doth remove wrath and melancholy”. Well, not quite what you are looking for, but certainly wouldn’t hurt either. Flipping back, you note that the first text also states “of all the stars in the firmament none is closer to the Sun” – and suddenly it clicks.

For though the physical star Regulus is rather close to our solar system, being “only” 79 light years away, there are other stars like Sirius or Prokyon which are also covered in De Quindecim Stellis and which are much closer (and besides, you highly doubt that the ancients were that worried about astronomical precision in their instructions about talismanic magic in the first place!).

Thus, the author must have meant another form of “closeness”. And of course, the constellation Leo, to which Regulus belongs, is closely associated with the Sun. In astrological speak, Leo is ruled by the Sun. And right there is our missing link between the divine and the material…

In Hermetic thought, the divine Source creates everything. This process of creation, as expressed in the creation story we talked about before, starts at the top, and then percolates down. At the very end of the creation chain is nature and the material world.

Thus the “everything” which the Divine creates starts out at the highest levels – levels which are so much beyond our current (human) understanding that we can’t even attempt to grasp how certain things might look like up there.

(Although our divine parts do know, of course, and are still very much at home “up there”, even if we can’t remember it in our physical form!)

But then the creation reaches the next sphere below the Divine, and the next… and at some point, it reaches the sphere of the fixed stars.

At this sphere, high and close to the Divine as it might seem from our human point of view, the Created is already a loooong way away from the Source. So far away, in fact, that things have split up considerably:

Starting out, there is just unity – the Divine as One. But once the Source creates, there are two things – the Source itself, and that which it has created. And by the time creation reaches the level of the fixed stars, we’re way past unity or dualism. There are a lot of fixed stars, after all! And according to texts like De Quindecim Stellis, they each have different properties and traits.

What used to be one is now many – and the stars represent different aspects of creation.

Regulus, for example, represents aspects like “great honour and great riches”. Of course, at this level, honour and riches are still very abstract things. But remember that through Leo, Regulus has a direct connection further down, to the planetary sphere of the Sun!

If you recall some of what we talked about in the earlier essay about the Sun’s coins, you can probably see how honour and riches might relate to it, can’t you?

The shining center and king of the solar system, the Sun commands attention, and admiration. And with this comes honour and riches, too.

Thus the fixed stars and the planetary spheres are elements in specific chains of correspondence which reach from the very highest level of the Divine all the way down to earth and to life around us.

How does this look like in practice? Well, if the practical Hermetic treatises are to be believed, one of the elements and “stones” the Sun governs is… gold. 😉 (And one of the “professions” are kings, just in case you were wondering…)

Putting things in more modern terms: There is a whole correspondence chain from the highest to the lowest, from the first incredibly abstract idea of riches and honour, through Regulus in Leo incorporating this and other related concepts, through the Sun making these concepts more specific and tangible, down to the things the Sun rules here on earth which are in turn related to riches and honour.

But could all of this not be mere superstition? After all, nowadays we know better than this, don’t we?

Well, maybe – or maybe not. 😉

Consider this: It took modern science a good deal of effort to “discover” and “confirm” the fact that the herb St. John’s Wort helps against melancholy and depression.

(Just in case there is any doubt, this is an essay series about Hermeticism and self improvement – I sincerely hope nobody considers this to be medical advice!)

St. John’s Wort is one of the most solar herbs there is. It’s the poster child of solar herbs. It’s probably featured as “Sun” in any book which covers the planetary correspondences of herbs. It even usually flowers and is harvested around the summer solstice, when the Sun is the highest and the days are the longest and the warmest.

And do you remember what that other variant of De Quindecim Stellis had to say about Regulus? Right: “Doth remove wrath and melancholy”… 😉

These correspondence chains are only one application of the Hermetic principle “as above, so below”, and a rather practical one to boot. There are others, some decidedly more philosophical and spiritual, and some more related to inner work than others.

I’ll leave it to you to explore them on your own, although we might occasionally touch back on this principle in future essays. (As I said above, go ye forth and meditate about them!) But for now…

There she is. We’ve reached the edge of the Moon’s sphere, and are looking down on earth again in all her imperfect glory. Only a few more steps, and we’re back home, back in your armchair or the bus or wherever else you started out.

Let’s stretch our backs and legs a bit first. I hope the climb down hasn’t been too hard on your knees! 🙂

Well. We went all the way up, or at least as high as we can reasonably get, and came all the way down again. So is this it?

I hope you won’t be disappointed, but: Nope, this isn’t it! In fact, this has only been the first part.

So far, we’ve talked about certain aspects of Hermeticism and even more so about the planets, and I hope by now you have some ideas of how the planets and their “coins” might become useful for you in your inner work. But all of this has still been somewhat abstract.

The second part of this essay series, in contrast, is going to get more practical. Among other things, we’ll discuss ways to apply all this to your inner work.

In the next essay, though, we’ll first do a second ascent together, but this time much faster. Where our previous ascent was focused on details and on things to contemplate, this time we’ll take a step back, take a look at the big picture and understand what it is we’ve been doing all along.

So let’s roll up our sleeves for the work ahead, shall we? 🙂

The next essay will go up on Sunday July 27th.

And until then, I’m looking forward to your comments and questions below!

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Image: Louis Maniquet on Unsplash