How to Make Your Way to a Tropical Island

This is the fourteenth 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 first half of this series, we’ve taken a slow, contemplative ascent through the planetary spheres, all the way up from earth to Saturn, and then beyond the planets to the Fixed Stars. We’ve also, somewhat on the side, talked a lot about Hermeticism and some of its concepts and ideas.

Starting with today’s essay, in the second half of this series, we’re going to look at things from a different angle.

(For the mathematicians among you, when I say first and second “half”, I don’t strictly mean a half as in 50%. In fact, you might be relieved – or disappointed? – to hear that the second “half” of the series will be somewhat shorter than the first. But it will also be a lot more practical, and we’ve still got some interesting stuff to discuss, so I hope you’ll stay tuned! 😉 )

Today, for starters, we’re tackling the ascent again: But this time in one go, and with our focus not on understanding each of the planets in detail, but on the ascent as a whole:

What makes this ascent such a worthwhile thing to do? How can it help you in your inner work? And how might it help you improve your life?

Or, in other words: While we’ve mostly been looking at the trees so far, today we’re going to focus on the forest they form. 🙂

As you might remember, in one of the very first essays, we already talked about why the planetary ascent was so important to the old Hermeticists, and what it meant to them. Of course, back then, we were still (comparably) green behind the ears:

We hadn’t flown with the Moon yet, hadn’t had a run with Mercury, hadn’t had a dance with Venus, hadn’t been torched by the Sun’s rays close up, hadn’t crossed swords with Mars, hadn’t been showered upon by Jupiter, hadn’t slowly shuffled alongside Saturn through his sphere, and hadn’t enjoyed the view back down on earth from the sphere of the Fixed Stars yet either.

Now that we’ve experienced all this together, you might have a somewhat clearer understanding of what you read back then, in the second essay. And because I’m a gracious and accommodating host, I won’t make you go all the way back just to read the second essay again, but will instead quote the relevant parts right here for you… 😉

(Although you are, of course, very welcome to re-read the earlier essays if you feel so inclined. In fact, I’d be very interested to know whether your understanding of certain things has changed now that we’re so far along in the series – thus if you want, please leave me comments at any of the older essays, too. The comment sections are still open and ready for your use!)

So here’s the part I was referring to from essay 2, When Your Mirror Image Has the Shape of a Planet…

In Hermetic teachings, one of the biggest responsibilities (and probably also one of the biggest challenges) of us humans is self-knowledge. This journey towards self-knowledge has two aspects:

Getting to know and understand who you truly are, and which kind of layers you have painted onto your true core, is its obvious side.

But stopping there would be rather pointless. Thus the second aspect of self-knowledge is inner work – to improve your current human personality. (Your soul can’t be “improved”, of course, as it is always perfect.)

To put it into Hermetic terms: In order to achieve self-knowledge, you will first need to clearly perceive all the planetary aspects you have layered over the true You, over your soul – and then you will need to let go of the vices you have picked up, and adopt the virtues instead.

Or, in yet other words: Self-knowledge is the ascent through the planetary spheres.

[…]

Thus, in Hermetic thought, one of the main human tasks during our lives on earth is not just to gain clear knowledge of one’s own personality and one’s underlying soul, but also to anticipate the ascent through the planetary spheres and to let go of vices and virtues according to each sphere. (Well, as much as these things are possible for us as humans.)

It’s almost as if, way back in essay 2, we’d already have anticipated where all this would be leading us, isn’t it? 😉

Kidding aside, though, let’s quickly recap why an ascent through the planetary spheres was deemed so important by the old Hermeticists:

In the Hermetic worldview, there are seven planetary spheres “above” earth: the spheres of the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, in ascending order.

(Remember that “above” doesn’t mean above us in space, although this order matches the order of the physical planets in the solar system to some extent. A sphere which is higher up isn’t physically further out, but is on some higher level. And if you find this hard to imagine, you’re in good company!)

Yet “above” the planets are some more spheres, first the Fixed Stars, and then other spheres closer to the Divine.

When the first Human had been created, He was in many ways equal to His Creator: of divine nature, up in the divine spheres above the planets (and on friendly terms with their spirits or deities), and a creator Himself, although of course on a more limited scale than the Divine Creator.

Looking down on material Creation, this First Human promptly fell in love with her and wanted to be closer to her. Thus, with the full consent and encouragement of the Creator, He descended down through the planetary spheres into Creation – and stayed there, wedded to nature, to create just like his Creator does.

Thus, as humans down here on earth, we’re of dual nature, both divine and material. And while we haven’t fallen from grace, we are in a position where we’re no longer equal or maybe even superior to the planetary rulers, but have come under their rulership due to our descent down here to earth. In fact, the planets rule over certain aspects of our incarnations, as evidenced e.g. by our astrological birth charts.

Or, in the terms we’ve been using before: On our way down into our current incarnation, we descended through all seven planetary spheres. And in each sphere, we picked up some coins of the respective planet – some of his or her vices and virtues.

But while all of this makes our lives as humans “interesting”, to put it mildly, we are still very much of dual nature, and we’d do well to remember this. We all have a divine part. And in the end, our goal is to get back to the Divine, where we belong.

In Hermetic thought, self-knowledge is one important prerequisite of getting “back up there”. After all, if we can’t even separate between our divine aspects, our material (human) aspects, and the coins we picked up from the planets on our way down… then how are we ever going to leave the material parts behind, return the planetary parts where they belong, and free our divine part to return to the Divine?

Of course, the old Hermeticists where humans just like the rest of us. And based on these ideas, they did what every reasonable human would do, and came up with a way to achieve an ascent back to the Divine.

Maybe they just wanted to speed this process up. Maybe they wanted to make sure it was actually going to happen, preferably right after their then-current lifetime (and not only many lifetimes later). Or maybe they were just human, and loved to fiddle and experiment.

Be that as it may, they came up with a way of “ascending” through the planetary spheres during incarnation (and not afterwards or in between). Not as a means stay up there with the Divine, of course (that would have rendered their incarnations rather short-lived!), but just temporarily – a kind of advanced ascent, so to speak.

The idea was to move back up through the planetary spheres, one after the other, in order to leave their influences behind, to gain true self-knowledge, and to come back home to the Divine.

(You might remember how in the last essay, we talked about a “third” kind of descent, not before or between incarnations but during an incarnation, and how this descent is preceded by a “different” kind of ascent. Well, this is the different kind of ascent I’ve been hinting at back then – and we’ll get to the corresponding descent in a second. Or maybe in two. 😉 )

So the old Hermeticists worked on ascending through the spheres not only after, but also very much during their lives… which is all fine and well, and sounds great on first glance, but chances are good you’re scratching your head right now and are wondering how exactly they might have done (or attempted) this, aren’t you? 😉

Well, it’s smart of you to ask – and as you will see, the answer has some direct relevance both to the essay series as a whole, and to the questions we raised at the beginning of today’s essay. (I hope it’ll also come to have some relevance to your own inner work, but that is, of course, up to you! 🙂 )

One possibility of ascending through the spheres during our human life is what we did in the past few essays: Do it as a dry run, so to speak.

I.e. by using techniques like contemplation, reflection, journaling, discursive meditation, or other ways to gain both more knowledge about the planetary spheres, and about ourselves in relation to these planets.

Using such methods, we could e.g. do a deep-dive into which coins we picked up from a certain planet, and how they affect our life for good or bad. We could gain a big-picture understanding of how the planets relate to our life. We could develop ways to mitigate some of our planetary vices. We could figure out ways to turn some of these vices into virtues. We could change our lives to better reflect these planetary virtues.

All of these are very worthwhile things. Done in a serious fashion, they will lead to a considerable amount of self-knowledge.

(They will also help us understand other people and the world a lot better. And they will, almost inevitably, improve our lives to some extent. Just sayin’…)

So these methods should have been right up the alley of the old Hermeticists, of course. And while we can’t know for sure what those guys (and gals) actually did in their daily lives, changes are good that they used contemplation, meditation, or similar methods to make sense of themselves and the universe – as a bunch of people who so highly valued self-knowledge, and took such a deep dive into philosophical and spiritual questions, that’s almost a given.

(Besides, just thinking e.g. about the planets, their vices and virtues, does lead to a certain amount of reflection and self-knowledge – as you might have noticed when reading the preceding essays!)

But of course, thinking and reflecting will only get you so-and-so far – there are limits to what can be achieved by such tools.

And if your goal is to get back to the Divine again, then just contemplating it, by whatever means, is a very poor copy even for human standards – if your goal is to visit a tropical island, for example, just contemplating this island might make for nice day dreams, but is most decidedly not the same experience! 😉

Thus the old Hermeticists came up with yet another way to “ascend” the planetary spheres, and to get back to the Divine again as a human being, at least for a short-term visit.

This way is based on the Hermetic understanding that we’re of dual nature. Yes, we do have material parts – your physical body will not ascend to Saturn just because you think about it, just like it won’t travel to said tropical island just because you think about it.

But the divine part of you… the part which is right at home with the Divine anyway… this part is perfectly able to make the ascend, as long as you approach it the right way.

Which, of course, immediately raises the question: How did the old Hermeticists approach this ascent of their divine part?

Well, that’s a very good question – and it’s one of the things we’ll talk about in the next essay… 😉

I hope to see you back in two weeks for the next essay, and until then I’m looking forward to your comments below – or to any of the older essays!

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Image: Darren Lawrence on Unsplash