The Search for Abraxas

«Our god is named Abraxas and he is both god and the devil at the same time. You will find in him both the world of light and of shadows. Abraxas is not opposed to any of your thoughts or to any of your dreams but he will abandon you if you become normal and unapproachable. He will abandon you and look for another pot in which to cook his thoughts.» — el epígrafe que el libro pone al frente del volumen, atribuido a Hermann Hesse: Abraxas como dios y demonio a la vez, en quien conviven el mundo de la luz y el de las sombras, y que abandona a quien se vuelve normal.

«Our identification of Abraxas as a key god was right on target, for my Ph.D studies of the Graeco-Egyptian papyri have confirmed that what was once, 40 years ago, a symbol of transformation for us, now turns out to be one of the most important gods related to magic.» — Skinner, en la introducción de 2016, sostiene que su doctorado sobre los papiros greco-egipcios da la razón a la elección de Abraxas que los dos autores hicieron cuarenta años antes.

«The Graeco-Egyptian papyri (PGM) are the oldest and most extensive detailed instructions for the practice of magic in the West, dating from the first four centuries AD. They are also the root of much that came later like the grimoires.» — Skinner fija los papiros greco-egipcios como el juego de instrucciones de magia más antiguo y extenso de Occidente, de los cuatro primeros siglos de nuestra era, y como raíz de los grimorios posteriores.

«The core of these papyri (the so-called 'Theban library') is a collection of methods and magical techniques made or collected by just one practicing magician.» — Skinner atribuye el núcleo de esos papiros, la llamada biblioteca tebana, a la colecta de un solo mago practicante.

«Although Egypt was always famous for magic, it took Greek genius to organise it into an ordered and (dare I say it) scientific form.» — Skinner separa la fama mágica de Egipto del trabajo de ordenación, que adjudica al genio griego.

«Just as the Greek genius Euclid (who lived in Alexandria) systemised the whole world of plane geometry circa 300 BCE, so the Greek speaking magicians» — Skinner compara la sistematización de la magia con la de la geometría plana por Euclides hacia el 300 a. C.; la frase se corta en el límite de plana y sigue en la siguiente con *responsible for the PGM organised magic into 40+ procedures and techniques*.

«Prior to my work, the true structure of this magic was hidden from those researchers who relied solely on a range of English translations, by a number of scholars who, failing to value the scientific precision of Greek magical terminology, uniformly translated these many Greek technical words simply as 'spell' or 'charm'.» — Skinner objeta a los traductores al inglés de los papiros haber vertido como *spell* o *charm* un vocabulario técnico griego que él lee como preciso.

«Indeed the English vocabulary for both magic and geometry is pitifully small compared to the detailed and precise vocabulary of the ancient Greeks.» — Skinner mide el vocabulario inglés de la magia y de la geometría contra el griego antiguo y lo halla pobre.

«I think it is true that when one takes that initial step into the Mystery traditions there is no going back, and there are themes hinted at in The Search for Abraxas that would become pivotal to both of us in our various» — Drury, en la introducción de 2013, sostiene que del primer paso dentro de las tradiciones mistéricas no se vuelve; la frase se corta en el límite de plana y sigue con *lines of research*.

«A key element in what we finally came up with relates to the imagery associated with the Gnostic deity Abraxas - a god associated with Time and Eternity, whose symbols are found on many ancient Middle Eastern amulets and talismans.» — Drury nombra el elemento que da título al libro: Abraxas como deidad gnóstica del Tiempo y la Eternidad, cuyos símbolos están en amuletos y talismanes del Medio Oriente antiguo.

«had both been fascinated by the idea that the figure of Abraxas appeared to represent the polarities of both good and evil. To this extent, the transcendent Gnostic god was emblematic of the very nature of human potential itself.» — Drury adjudica a Carl Jung y a Hermann Hesse la lectura de Abraxas como figura que reúne el bien y el mal, y de ahí la toma por emblema de lo que el hombre puede llegar a ser; el tramo arranca después de los dos nombres, que la frase da antes.

«magic is essentially about altered states of awareness that can lead alternatively towards cosmic transcendence and spiritual integration or towards dark alienation and» — Drury enuncia la tesis del libro sobre la magia: estados alterados de consciencia que llevan tanto a la trascendencia como a la alienación; la frase se corta en el límite de plana y sigue con *even evil - and these dimensions are all part of the human equation*.

«Our book is structured in very much the same way: it is divided into The World of Light', The World of Shadows' and 'The World of Dreams' and concludes with a philosophical overview that addresses 'the search for Abraxas' itself.» — Drury deriva la estructura del libro de esa tesis: los tres mundos y el balance filosófico final; la capa de texto pierde la comilla de apertura en los dos primeros títulos.

«his book is about levels of consciousness, and Western Man's pursuit of the Ultimate Level. There are many doctrines and methods leading to this Reality. We deal here with less familiar Paths leading to that exalted state of Being, which we have designated Abraxas, because we find it meaningful. There are many other names we could have chosen.» — el Prologue, sin firma y en primera persona del plural, declara la materia del libro y el porqué del nombre: Abraxas por significativo, no por necesario; la capa de texto pierde la capitular y deja *his book* donde el libro imprime *This book*.

«Mystics come from the same country and recognise one another.» — el epígrafe que encabeza la Sección I, The World of Light, atribuido a Saint-Martin.

«In 1882 an anonymous book named OAHSPE, A Kosman Bible was published in New York. It was subsequently revealed in a letter to the Editor of The Banner of Light, a Boston periodical, that its author was a dentist named Dr. John Ballou Newbrough and that the book had been written, mostly in the dark, through the agency of automatic writing.» — Drury abre el capítulo Modern Revivals con la salida anónima del OAHSPE en Nueva York en 1882 y la revelación posterior de su autor y de su modo de escritura.

«Newbrough claimed indeed that the book was written not by himself but through 'some other intelligence' using him as a vehicle.» — Drury consigna la atribución que el propio Newbrough hacía: no suya, sino de otra inteligencia que lo usaba de vehículo.

«His interest in spiritualism was long standing. When he was a boy his father felt obliged to discourage his clairvoyant and clairaudient leanings, and when at college, Newbrough had allowed himself to be mesmerised bv a visiting lecturer. Later on, Newbrough discovered that when he sat in circles at seances and calmed his mind, his hands would 'fly off into tantrums' producing messages reading in all directions.» — Drury traza el fondo espiritista de Newbrough, de las inclinaciones clarividentes de niño a las manos que se le disparaban en las sesiones; la capa de texto imprime *bv* donde el libro dice *by*.

«After examining over 200 cases of mediumship, he became convinced that spiritualistic phenomena were 'angelic' in nature and he himself began to 'crave for the light of heaven'.» — Drury cuenta que Newbrough examinó más de doscientos casos de mediumnidad y salió convencido del carácter angélico del fenómeno.

«Consequently Newbrough decided to 'purify' himself, in order to attract the light. He did this by abstaining from meat, fish, milk, and butter, and by critically repenting of his misdeeds.» — Drury detalla la purificación con que Newbrough buscó atraer la luz: sin carne, pescado, leche ni mantequilla, y con arrepentimiento.

«Newbrough now found himself able to see and hear the angels who had formerly revealed their presence only by controlling his fingertips in trance. He was 'instructed' to obtain a typewriter and struggled to master it.» — Drury consigna el paso siguiente: la instrucción de conseguir una máquina de escribir.

«One morning the light struck both my hands on the back, and they went for the typewriter for some fifteen minutes, very rigorously. I was told not to read what was printed, and I had worked myself into such a religious fear of losing this new power that I obeyed reverently. The next morning, also before sunrise, the same power came and wrote (or rather printed). Again I laid the matter away very religiously, saying little about it to anybody. One morning I accidentally (seemed accidental to me) looked out of the window and beheld the line of light that rested on my hands extending» — la voz de Newbrough, citada por Drury: la escritura a máquina bajo la luz, la prohibición de leer lo impreso y la línea de luz sobre las manos; el tramo se corta en el límite de plana y sigue en la siguiente.

«heavenward like a telegraph wire towards the sky. Over my head were three pairs of hands, fully materialised; behind me stood another angel, with her hands on my shoulders. My looking did not disturb the scene; my hands kept right on, printing ... printing."» — la continuación del relato de Newbrough: tres pares de manos materializadas sobre la cabeza y un ángel detrás con las manos en los hombros; el tramo arranca donde lo dejó el corte de plana.

«For fifty weeks this continued, every morning half an hour or so before sunrise, and then it ceased, and I was told to read and publish the book OAH5PE. The peculiar drawings in OAHSPE were made with pencil in the same way."» — Newbrough, citado por Drury, fija en cincuenta semanas el dictado y extiende el mismo modo a los dibujos del libro; la capa de texto imprime *OAH5PE* en la primera ocurrencia.

«OAHSPE, which is one of the most remarkable neo-religious books ever published, is some 900 pages in length. It contains, among other things, details of the skills and qualities of spiritual rulers of Earth during different ages in history, and a map of the lost continent of Pan situated in the Pacific between Australia and South America. It describes also, in very lyrical language, magnificent fiery space-vehicles which angels use for cosmic travel.» — Drury describe el contenido del OAHSPE: gobernantes espirituales de la Tierra por edades, el continente perdido de Pan en el Pacífico y los vehículos ígneos de los ángeles.

«Less fortunately, perhaps, it contains many religious and mythological 'condemnations'. Osiris, for example, is described as a 'false god' and the modern movements Swedenborgism, Mormonism and Shakerism are all regarded as "attempts at false godheads (having) their origin in the lower heavens."» — Drury consigna el reverso del mismo libro: Osiris por falso dios y el swedenborgismo, el mormonismo y el shakerismo por intentos de falsa divinidad.

«The institutions of Christianity, Buddhism, Brahmanism, and Mohammedanism are described as being inspired by false deities which OAHSPE names respectively as: Looeamong, Kabalactes, Ennochissa, arid Thoth. However there is no criticism of Jesus as such (his 'real' name is Joshu), Buddha (called in OAHSPE, 'Sakaya') nor 'Brahma'. Mohammed is not mentioned.» — Drury enumera los cuatro nombres con que el OAHSPE designa a las deidades falsas de las grandes instituciones religiosas y consigna a quiénes deja fuera de la censura; la capa de texto imprime *arid* donde el libro dice *and*.

«OAHSPE was only one of a number of religious innovations in a period of American and European history that saw the emergence of the scientific method and the shattering of many 'fundamentalist' Christian concepts.» — Drury encuadra el OAHSPE en una serie de innovaciones religiosas contemporáneas del método científico y del desmoronamiento del fundamentalismo bíblico.

«When it became clear that the world had not indeed been created in the year 4004 B.C. as Bishop Ussher had declared, and that the seven days of Creation were not literal ones, one reaction in the United States was to produce new, and sometimes incredible, versions of the 'Sacred Truth' as the old one appeared to crumble.» — Drury adjudica esas innovaciones a la caída de la cronología de Ussher y de los siete días literales de la Creación.

«We observe the growth of Mormonism, which in many ways parallels OAHSPE in its 'angelic' origins; the Jehovah's Witnesses of Charles Russell, who stated that non-adherents of his sect, including 'heathen Christians', would not survive Armageddon; and the Christian Scientists of Mary Baker Eddy, who attempted in a certain way to reconcile Christianity with both science and spiritual healing techniques.» — Drury pone junto al OAHSPE el mormonismo por su origen angélico, los Testigos de Jehová de Charles Russell y la Ciencia Cristiana de Mary Baker Eddy.

«And even before On the Origin of Species and Lyell's treatises on geology which indicated that the Creation was not instantaneous but a long, gradual process, we see that in the United States there were spasmodic outbursts of religious preaching that the world was soon to end and a new religious age about to dawn.» — Drury fecha antes de Darwin y de Lyell los brotes de predicación estadounidense sobre el fin del mundo.

«Harriet Livermore, daughter of a congressman from Massachusetts, expressed her belief that Christ was shortly to begin a 1,000 year reign over the Twelve Tribes of Israel.» — Drury consigna la espera de Harriet Livermore: un reinado de mil años de Cristo sobre las Doce Tribus.

«More famous, perhaps, was William Miller whose millenarian teachings culminated in the modern Seventh Day Adventist sect. He estimated that the end of the world would occur in 1834, and then when this proved incorrect despite the fact that it had been calculated by five independent methods, 1843 was set as the new date.» — Drury cuenta las dos fechas de William Miller para el fin del mundo, la segunda tras fallar la primera pese a los cinco métodos de cálculo.

«Regrettably, this too was an error. Miller sank into despondency and disbelief, leaving the movement which had caused considerable hysteria and mob excitement and won 50,000 adherents.» — Drury consigna el saldo del millerismo: histeria, cincuenta mil adherentes y el abandono del propio Miller; el tramo se corta antes de la llamada de nota.

«Another organisation which has experienced various turns of fortune, faced a great deal of criticism, yet counted some notable followers, including D. H. Lawrence and painters Mondrian and Kandinsky, is the Theosophical Society. Founded in New York in 1875 by the Russian, Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Henry Olcott, this movement attempted not so much to revive Christianity as to fuse into a new teaching the strands of truth common to all the great religions.» — Drury presenta la Sociedad Teosófica, fundada en Nueva York en 1875 por Blavatsky y Olcott, y le adjudica el propósito de fundir en una enseñanza nueva lo común a todas las religiones, no el de revivir el cristianismo.

«The name 'Theosophy' means literally 'Divine Wisdom'; the Society's motto was "There is no religion higher than truth."» — Drury traduce el nombre y cita el lema de la Sociedad.

«Madame Blavatsky outlines her ideas most succinctly in her book The Key to Theosophy first published in 1889. She says here that one of the chief aims was to "reconcile all religious sects and nations under a common system of» — Drury remite a The Key to Theosophy de 1889 para el propósito declarado de reconciliar las sectas y las naciones; el tramo se corta en el límite de plana y sigue con *ethics based on eternal verities*.

«All the world's religions contained a basic truth, asserted Madame Blavatsky, because the "Wisdom Religion was one in antiquity."» — la razón que Drury atribuye a Blavatsky para ese propósito: que la Religión de Sabiduría fue una sola en la antigüedad.

«H. P. B., as she was known to her disciples, personally smoked a pipe, was notably pagan in her religious preferences and believed that she received exclusive sacred messages from a Tibetan 'Master' named Koot Hoomi by means of the postal service.» — Drury consigna sin armonizar los rasgos que se le achacan a Blavatsky: la pipa, la preferencia pagana y los mensajes del Maestro tibetano Koot Hoomi llegados por correo.

«On some occasions she also indulged in trickery during spiritualistic seances in order to prove to her more gullible following that there was adequate proof of the inner realm of Spirit.» — Drury consigna también el engaño en sesiones espiritistas que se le atribuye.

«However, her compendium The Secret Doctrine is a vast storehouse of esoteric and mythical lore written in the 1880s when the comparative study of religion was hardly under way.» — Drury pone del otro lado The Secret Doctrine como almacén de saber esotérico escrito cuando la religión comparada apenas empezaba.

«And it is her teachings, rather than her personality quirks, which Theosophists respect and admire most. Few modern avatars, after all, have been perfect.» — Drury separa la enseñanza de la persona y cierra el punto con una reserva sobre los avatares modernos.

«Theosophy asserts that 'the Truth' is recoverable from a distant historicalmythological past whence it has become obscured, distorted and even forgotten.» — Drury enuncia la tesis teosófica de una Verdad recuperable de un pasado remoto; el libro imprime *historical-mythological* partido por el guion de fin de renglón y la extracción por programa devuelve la forma unida.

«In effect. Theosophy is not without precedent because the West has always known a tradition of people who claimed special access to the Gnosis (Sacred Knowledge).» — Drury da por precedente de la teosofía una tradición occidental continua de acceso a la Gnosis; la capa de texto pone punto donde el libro imprime coma en *In effect*.

«In the years of cultural flux which saw Christianity arise, the movement known as Gnosticism evolved as an esoteric, heretical shadow, drawing eclectically from traditions that were Egyptian, Hellenistic, Judaic, and Mesopotamian in inspiration.» — Skinner abre Genesis of the Gnosis situando el gnosticismo como sombra herética y ecléctica del cristianismo naciente.

«However there is one crucial difference between the two world views. The Christian waits for an act of Grace from his God; the Gnostic, by contrast, believes that he himself is in control. Through manipulation of sacred names and gematric formulas the invoker beckons the deities to his call.» — Skinner fija la diferencia que a su juicio decide: el cristiano espera la gracia, el gnóstico se tiene por dueño de la operación mediante nombres sagrados y fórmulas gemátricas.

«Philo of Alexandria refers to a ladder of words (names) stretching from Heaven to Earth, through knowledge of which man may ascend to God ("In the Beginning was the Word ..."» — Skinner trae de Filón de Alejandría la escala de nombres del cielo a la tierra por la que el hombre asciende.

«The Gnostic soul is saved because it knows the secrets of the heavenly spheres and gives the correct answers (i.e. to the deities encountered).» — la fórmula de Robert M. Grant que Skinner cita: el alma gnóstica se salva por saber los secretos de las esferas y dar las respuestas correctas.

«Thee I invoke, thou mightiest God and Master... thou who enlightenest all and pourest thy rays by means of thine own power on all the world, O God of gods! ... Enter, appear to me, O Lord of mighty names whom all have in their hearts, who dost burst open rocks and mak'st the names of gods to move!"» — el Rito Místico de la Llama que Skinner transcribe de la gnosis helenística, donde el hombre manda a su dios.

«Irenaeus, who was bishop of Lyons in the late 2nd century, believed it was impossible to control the heavens simply by uttering 'sacred' names. As a Christian he was naturally reticent about the strange gods which seemed to lurk behind the teachings of the Gnostics:» — Skinner consigna la objeción de Ireneo: los nombres sagrados no dan mando sobre los cielos.

«They use magic and images and incantations and invocations," wrote Irenaeus, "and after inventing certain names as if they belonged to angels, they proclaim that some are in the first heaven, others in the second, and then try to set forth the names, principalities, angels and powers of the 365 fictitious heavens ..."» — la cita de Ireneo que Skinner trae: nombres inventados como de ángeles y el recuento de los trescientos sesenta y cinco cielos.

«Who was presumed to be in charge of these heavens? According to Basilides, it was a god named Abraxas, whose name appears engraved upon many Gnostic amulets and talismans (and who also, as a predominant deity of the Gnosis, supplies the title of our book).» — Skinner adjudica a Basílides el nombre de Abraxas para el señor de esos cielos y declara ahí mismo de dónde sale el título del libro.

«Abraxas had a human body, the head of a hawk and legs of serpents. He was usually shown holding a knife in one hand, and in the other, a shield inscribed with the sacred name JAH.» — Skinner describe la iconografía de Abraxas en los talismanes.

«It is believed that in his purest form. Abraxas was a Sun god whose influence over the world extended throughout the year (growth and decline), and cyclically, through all Eternity.» — Skinner recoge la lectura solar de Abraxas, con dominio sobre el año y sobre la eternidad; la capa de texto pone punto donde el libro imprime coma en *purest form*.

«The name Abraxas, when equated with numerical values based on the Greek spelling, totals 365, the number of days in a year.» — Skinner da la gematría griega del nombre y la iguala a los días del año; el tramo se corta antes de la llamada de nota que detalla el cálculo.

«For this very reason the superstitious common people engraved their good luck charms with the name Abraxas because they hoped that fortune would then smile upon them from day to day.» — Skinner adjudica a esa cuenta el uso del nombre en amuletos de buena suerte.

«He was ruler of the First Heaven, pervader of the seven spheres and Lord of the 365 zones of the inner realm. He was associated with the Creation of the World, and his name, according to Basilides, contained considerable magical power which could make one invincible.» — Skinner enumera los títulos de Abraxas y le atribuye, según Basílides, un poder mágico que vuelve invencible.

«This emphasis upon sacred formulas of power is alien to Christianity, which eventually pronounced Gnosticism to be a heresy.» — Skinner deriva de esa insistencia en las fórmulas la condena del gnosticismo como herejía.

«It presents, in fact, a complicated system of mysticism whereby the individual receives inspiration from the Higher Spheres through revelation and then endeavours by his own effort to regain the spiritual heights, either in meditation or in the astral journey of the soul after death.» — Skinner describe el sistema gnóstico como revelación desde las esferas altas y esfuerzo propio de retorno, en meditación o en el viaje del alma tras la muerte.

«According to the Ophites, a Gnostic sect, there were seven such obstructive animal demons. Their names were Michael (a lion), Souriel (a bull), Raphael (a hissing snake), Gabriel (an eagle), Ialdabaoth (a lion), Iaoth (a snake), Sabaoth (a bull), Eloaios (an eagle), Thauthabaoth (a bear), Erathaoth (a dog), and Oneol or Thartharoath (an ass).» — Skinner enumera, según los ofitas, los demonios animales que obstruyen el camino; la lista que imprime el libro da once nombres donde el texto anuncia siete.

«Origen, a Christian theologian writing in the 3rd century, described in his Contra Celsum how the Ophites addressed these seven bestial demons on the inner journey.» — Skinner remite al Contra Celsum de Orígenes para el modo en que los ofitas se dirigían a esos demonios.

«In general the Gnostics believed that these heavens (called Aeons or 'eternities' because they were outside space and time) were emanations from a First Principle which might be best visualised as vibrant Energy.» — Skinner define los Eones como emanaciones fuera del espacio y del tiempo de un Primer Principio que propone imaginar como energía vibrante.

«The first Aeons were pure and perfect in themselves, but as they reached down closer and closer to the level we call reality, they became tainted by contact with the World. All material things were regarded as basically 'deficient' because they were only dim reflections of the Divine.» — Skinner traza la degradación de los Eones al acercarse al mundo y la deficiencia de lo material.

«In fact, because the Earth was created out of chaos, which the Gnostics believed to be devoid of cosmic energy, the 'deficiencies' came to be equated with negativity or evil.» — Skinner deriva la ecuación gnóstica entre deficiencia y mal del origen caótico de la Tierra.

«Some Gnostics believed also that when the soul fell into matter from its earlier elevated state, it became sorrowful because physical existence involved suffering. And like the Buddha, these Gnostics equated suffering with ignorance. The Path of Self-Knowledge eliminated ignorance and suffering and led to spiritual renewal» — Skinner acerca a los gnósticos al Buda por la ecuación entre sufrimiento e ignorancia y pone el Sendero del Autoconocimiento como salida; el tramo se corta antes de la fórmula final, que el troceo parte con un guion de renglón.

«According to the Ophites the First Light came from the Darkness, and He was God the Father, the First Man. His thought gave rise to His Son, the Second Man. A third emanation now arose: the Holy Spirit (Female).1 Beneath these lay a watery Chaos which saw the birth of the First Woman. The First Man and His Son rejoiced at Her beauty and filled Her with Light, which generated the Third Man, whose name was Christ.» — Skinner expone la cosmogonía ofita: la Primera Luz salida de la Tiniebla es Dios Padre y Primer Hombre, su pensamiento da el Segundo, sigue el Espíritu Santo femenino, y de la Primera Mujer nacida del caos acuoso sale el Tercer Hombre, que es Cristo; el tramo se corta antes de la llamada de nota.

«The Mother could not sustain the Light, which overflowed on Her left-hand side. Meanwhile Christ, who was on Her right-hand side, ascended in the Light to the level of the First Aeon which placed Him alongside God (the First Man).» — Skinner sigue el relato ofita con el desbordamiento de la Luz por el lado izquierdo de la Madre y el ascenso de Cristo al Primer Eón.

«These three emanations parallel the Supemals. Kether. Chokmah and Binah. in the Qabalah.» — la nota al pie de Skinner que empareja las tres emanaciones ofitas con las tres supernas cabalísticas; la capa de texto imprime *Supemals* y pone puntos donde el libro separa los nombres con comas.

«The early Fathers of the Christian Church considered Plato's ‘Logos' to be identical with their Christos. See J. Stirling, The Canon, an Exposition of the Pagan Mystery Perpetuated in the Cabala as the Rule of all the Arts, Elkin Mathews, London. 1897. p. 56.» — la nota al pie en que Skinner adjudica a los primeros Padres la identificación del Logos platónico con el Christos y remite a The Canon de J. Stirling; cita de bibliografía, extraída con la guarda anticosido apagada y releída entera en el crudo.

«Sabaoth, Adonai, Elohim, Oreus, and Astapheus, who reigned, in their respective heavens, over things celestial and terrestrial.» — Skinner cierra la lista de las siete deidades menores nacidas del desbordamiento de la Luz; el tramo arranca donde el corte de plana dejó la enumeración.

«Christ then descended through these seven heavens into the body of the man Jesus and the latter began both to produce miracles and to preach that he was Christ, Son of God (i.e. Son of the First Man).» — Skinner expone el descenso de Cristo por los siete cielos al cuerpo del hombre Jesús, según los ofitas.

«When Jesus was crucified, Christ departed to the First Aeon but although the body of Jesus perished, Christ provided him with a psychic, spiritual body. It was this, and not a resurrected physical body, that the disciples saw.» — Skinner consigna la resurrección ofita: un cuerpo psíquico y espiritual, no el cuerpo físico.

«As a system of spiritual redemption the Ophites' viewpoint was bound to be heretical because it bypassed the Church as an authority.» — Skinner explica la herejía ofita por lo que su sistema deja fuera, que es la Iglesia como autoridad.

«it spoke of the final Union with the First Mystery, the Source of Creation - the transcendental God whose name, according to Basilides, was ABRAXAS.» — Skinner remata el capítulo con el nombre del Dios trascendente al final del camino ofita, que adjudica a Basílides.

«The 12th and 13th centuries saw the rise in southwest France of the heretical Cathars. They believed in a dualistic Universe where the power of Evil, the demoniac Monster of Chaos, counteracted the omniscience of the Christian God.» — Skinner pasa de la gnosis antigua a los cátaros y describe su universo dualista.

«According to the Cathars, the world and the flesh were basically evil and man's divine spark had to be liberated from the body which engulfed it. These too are Gnostic ideas.» — Skinner cuenta entre ideas gnósticas la maldad del mundo y de la carne y la liberación de la chispa divina en los cátaros.

«More specifically heretical perhaps was the Cathar denial of the Virgin birth, Jesus' death on the Cross, and the physical resurrection. These, they said, were purely fictitious.» — Skinner consigna lo que a su juicio hace más herética la posición cátara: negar el nacimiento virginal, la muerte en la cruz y la resurrección física.

«Continuing our investigation of the Gnosis we note the alchemystical writings of men like Paracelsus, Thomas Vaughan and Solomon Trismosin, among many others, all of whom presented methods whereby the 'leaden' unenlightened man is transmuted into a state of 'golden' spiritual purity bv applying the sacred principles of the Philosopher's Stone: the Great Secret.» — Skinner mete en la misma línea de la gnosis a Paracelso, Thomas Vaughan y Solomon Trismosin, con el hombre plúmbeo transmutado en oro espiritual; la capa de texto imprime *bv* donde el libro dice *by*.

«have the same allegorical meaning as the 22 Keys of the Tarot, and are in the same order, thus linking alchemy with the Qabalistic tradition» — Skinner empareja las veintidós láminas alquímicas del Splendor Solis de Trismosin, que el libro fecha en 1582, con las veintidós llaves del tarot, y por ahí enlaza alquimia y cábala; el tramo arranca después del año entre paréntesis.

«The controversial Comte de St. Germain (circa 1710-1784), allegedly the son of Prince Ragoczy of Transylvania, and a frequent visitor to the courts of Europe, claimed to have knowledge of the Philosopher's Stone and went to great lengths to preserve a sense of mystery so that many thought him immortal.» — Skinner presenta al conde de Saint Germain, su filiación alegada y el misterio con que se rodeó.

«He is nevertheless reputedly the author of a work entitled The Most Holy Trinosophia which remains one of the most amazing alchemic tracts known. The following is only an extract and, needless to say, does not adequately convey the magnificence of the work, which covers the entire mystical journey:» — Skinner le adjudica por fama The Most Holy Trinosophia y la presenta como uno de los tratados alquímicos más asombrosos, del que solo da un extracto.

«I crossed the place and mounting on a marble platform which was before me, I noticed with astonishment that I had re-entered the hall of Thrones (the first in which I had found myself when entering the Palace of Wisdom).The triangular altar was still in the centre of this hall but the bird, the altar and the torch were joined and formed a single body. Near them was a golden sun. The sword which I had brought from the hall of fire lay a few paces distant on the cushion of one of the thrones: I took up the sword and struck the sun, reducing it to dust.» — el extracto de la Trinosophia que Skinner transcribe: el regreso a la sala de los Tronos, el altar triangular, el ave, la antorcha y el sol de oro partido con la espada.

«I then touched it and each molecule became a golden sun like the one I had broken. At that instant a loud and melodious voice exclaimed/ The work is perfect!' Hearing this, the children of light hastened to join me, the doors of immortality were opened to me, and the cloud which covers the eyes of mortals was dissipated. I SAW and the spirits which preside over the elements knew me for their master.» — la segunda mitad del mismo extracto: cada molécula vuelta sol, la voz que declara perfecta la obra y las puertas de la inmortalidad abiertas.

«All of the above were aspirants to the Gnosis and perpetuators of a tradition which had a common goal. However, there remains one school of thought which above all others has most influenced the Western Mystery teachings. Like Gnosticism it describes a series of emanations from God which man must retrace - from his lowly position in the material world back to the illuminated Source of All Things. We refer, of course, to the doctrine of the Ancient of Days - the Qabalah.» — Skinner cierra el recorrido gnóstico y anuncia la cábala como la escuela que más ha pesado sobre la enseñanza mistérica occidental, por su serie de emanaciones que el hombre debe desandar.

«Figure 3: 'The Universal Way' - painting from Splendor Solis by Solomon Trismosin.» — el pie de la lámina tercera, que reproduce una pintura del Splendor Solis.

«Figure 4: 'Transformation of Earth' - painting from Splendor Solis by Solomon Trismosin.» — el pie de la lámina cuarta, del mismo Splendor Solis.

«The Qabalah is sometimes said to be the 'yoga' of the Western Tradition inasmuch as it provides for the student both a theoretical framework upon which to hang the most complicated of cosmologies or mythologies, and a practical technique of evolvement.» — Skinner abre el capítulo cabalístico llamando a la cábala el yoga de la tradición occidental por juntar armazón teórico y técnica práctica; el tramo se corta antes de la llamada de nota, que acota la comparación.

«It is based upon the ancient wisdom of Israel, but draws for its content from many Traditions, those of Chaldaea, the Egyptian Mysteries, the Tyrian Mysteries, the wisdom of the Babylonian Magi, the teachings of the Essenes, the Greek and Christian Gnosis, the mathematical theology of Pythagoras, and in later days, the teachings of Rosicrucianism and Alchemy, all blended with the various mythological systems of Europe to make a composite and rich working whole.» — Skinner enumera las tradiciones que a su juicio nutren la cábala, de Caldea y los misterios egipcios y tirios a Pitágoras, los rosacruces y la alquimia.

«It is fitting that Israel should have been the basis for the whole metaphysical edifice, as Israel has provided the ground from which Christianity sprung, and is thus indirectly the seed culture of Western civilisation. In addition Israel was the only exoterically Monotheistic religion of the period from which such a system could have sprung. It is exoterically Monotheistic, because other religions of the time were Monotheistic in their essence, that is, esoterically Monotheistic.» — Skinner explica por qué Israel: por haber dado el suelo del cristianismo y por ser el único monoteísmo exotérico de su tiempo, con la distinción entre monoteísmo exotérico y esotérico.

«The Qabalah presents in a symbolic form the essential principles not only of Man, but also of God and the Universe. It embraces the gods and goddesses of all other pantheons, which are seen in the Qabalah as aspects of the One God, using them as symbols to express ultimate realities: the forces and forms of the Universe.» — Skinner define la cábala como forma simbólica del Hombre, de Dios y del Universo, que absorbe los panteones ajenos como aspectos del Dios único.

«The Qabalah offers concrete images to express abstract truths in a manner that allows for a latitude of interpretation suited to the individual working with it, and his level of spiritual awareness. The myths that are incorporated in the Qabalah can yield a parable, a science, a philosophy, and a spiritual reality; according to the depth at which they are realised.» — Skinner atribuye a la cábala una latitud de interpretación ajustada al grado del practicante: de la parábola a la realidad espiritual.

«The Qabalah is a tradition that has been passed on verbally by learned Jews and rabbis, with its origin lost in antiquity. As the word QBLH in Hebrew literally means 'to receive from mouth to ear', it has been preserved mainly in the form of a verbal tradition, passed on from teacher to pupil under strict vows of secrecy. Even when it has been partly committed to paper it loses little of this secrecy.» — Skinner deriva el secreto cabalístico de la etimología de QBLH, recibir de boca a oreja, y de la transmisión bajo voto.

«The Qabalistic Tradition has survived in the form of manuscript fragments and glyphs, which at first sight appear unintelligible, but upon meditation gradually reveal their inner meanings; thus preserving the teaching in a form that is compact and safe from misuse, but which will deliver its meaning to the aspirant who works hard enough at the glyph.» — Skinner explica la transmisión por fragmentos y glifos ininteligibles a primera vista como forma compacta y resistente al mal uso.

«As the racial dharma of the West is control of the physical plane, the system of evolvement chosen by the Westerner should be one that fits this particular destiny, a destiny of accepting life and not escaping it: thus the Western aspirant works with ceremonial Magic - the bringing down of the Godhead to illumine the physical plane, the manifestation of the Divine Law on Earth, not simply an escape from the physical in search of the spiritual.» — Skinner deriva de un dharma racial de Occidente la elección de la magia ceremonial: traer la divinidad al plano físico en vez de escapar de él.

«The first traces of this essentially verbal tradition in a written form appeared circa the 3rd century of the Christian Era, in the form of Sepher Yetzirah (or The Book of Creation). This curious work details the formation of existence in terms of 'Names of Power' with which God sealed the various quarters of the Universe.» — Skinner data hacia el siglo III el Sepher Yetzirah y lo describe como formación de la existencia por Nombres de Poder con que Dios selló los cuadrantes del universo.

«It has been interpreted variously as a commentary on Genesis, a philosophical treatise on the Names of God and the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, or as an instruction whereby man himself could learn to create.» — Skinner consigna las tres lecturas del Sepher Yetzirah sin arbitrar entre ellas.

«This last interpretation has led to a number of stories concerning that mysterious figure, the Golem. The Golem was a figure created from earth» — Skinner hace salir del Sepher Yetzirah las historias del Golem; el tramo se corta en el límite de plana y sigue en la siguiente.

«animated with a soul (in the Hebrew sense of Nephesh) which though dumb, could carry out basic chores.» — Skinner describe el Golem como figura de tierra animada con un alma en el sentido hebreo de Nephesh, muda pero capaz de faenas.

«By the 12th century the technique for Golem-making had become quite established: one such recipe is to be found in a manuscript in the British Museum by Pseudo-Saadia» — Skinner fecha en el siglo XII la fijación de la técnica y remite a un manuscrito del Museo Británico atribuido a Pseudo-Saadia; el tramo se corta antes de la llamada de nota.

«They make a circle around the creatures and walk around the circle and recite the 221 alphabets, as they are noted, and some say that the Creator put power into the letters, so that a man makes a creature from virgin earth and kneads it and buries it in the ground, draws a circle and a sphere around the creature, and each time he goes around it recites one of the alphabets. This he should do 462 times.» — la receta del Golem que Skinner transcribe: el círculo, los doscientos veintiún alfabetos, la tierra virgen amasada y enterrada y las cuatrocientas sesenta y dos vueltas.

«If he walks forward, the creature rises up alive, by virtue of the power inherent in the recitation of the letters. But if he wishes to destroy what he has made, he goes round backwards, reciting the same alphabets from end to beginning. Then the creature sinks into the ground of itself and dies.» — la segunda mitad de la receta: hacia adelante la criatura se levanta, hacia atrás se hunde y muere.

«who busied themselves with the Book Yetzirah, by mistake went around backwards, until they themselves by the power of the letters sank into the earth up to their navels. They were unable to escape and cried out. Their teacher heard them and said: 'Recite the letters of the alphabet and walk forward, instead of going backward» — el caso que la misma receta refiere: los estudiantes que giraron al revés y se hundieron hasta el ombligo hasta que su maestro les mandó recitar hacia adelante; el tramo arranca después de dos llamadas de nota pegadas a las iniciales del rabino, releídas en el crudo.

«Of all the rabbis famous for this operation, perhaps Rabbi Loew of Prague has more than his fair share of Golem legends attached to his name.» — Skinner adjudica al rabino Loew de Praga la mayor parte de las leyendas del Golem.

«In modern times Golem-making is usually a matter of using an Elemental, of which more later, to indwell a wax or clay figure which is used in a manner similar to that of a pentacle.» — Skinner traduce la fabricación del Golem a términos modernos: un elemental alojado en una figura de cera o barro que se usa como pentáculo.

«(I) The practical Qabalah, which deals with its application in Magic. (II) The Dogmatic Qabalah, which contains the doctrinal part of the Qabalah, consisting of several main texts with their dependencies.» — Skinner divide la cábala en cuatro secciones y da las dos primeras: la práctica, que es su aplicación en la magia, y la dogmática, que es su parte doctrinal con sus textos.

«These include the Zoluir, the Sepher Yetzirnh, the Seplier Sephiroth, and Aesch Metzareph.» — Skinner enumera los textos de la cábala dogmática; la capa de texto corrompe los títulos y deja *Zoluir*, *Sepher Yetzirnh* y *Seplier Sephiroth* donde el libro imprime Zohar, Sepher Yetzirah y Sepher Sephiroth.

«(III) The Unwritten Qabalah, consisting of the oral knowledge concerning the correct attribution of the symbols to the Tree of Life.» — la tercera sección según Skinner: el saber oral sobre la atribución correcta de los símbolos al Árbol de la Vida.

«(IV) The Literal Qabalah consists of the three methods of elucidating texts according to the relationship between letters and numbers. In this interpretation, every word and letter of the text is given a numeration, which is then manipulated by the methods of Gematria, Notariqon and Temura to produce 'esoteric' interpretations. Christian examples of this numeration of words are found in the Book of Revelation.» — la cuarta sección según Skinner: la cábala literal, con la gematría, el notariqon y la temurá, y el Apocalipsis como ejemplo cristiano de numeración de palabras.

«A more universally accepted method of endowing the Golem with life was to inscribe the word emeth, literally truth, on its forehead, so that when» — Skinner da el método más aceptado de animación del Golem, la palabra emeth escrita en la frente; el troceo reemite la marca de plana en el límite de chunk y corta ahí la frase.

«its demise is desirable one only has to wipe out the aleph which converts the word to meth (so that the meaning is altered to 'God alone is truth', implying that the Golem isn't a true creation) and the Golem crumbles back to dust.» — la continuación de esa frase: borrado el aleph, emeth se vuelve meth y el sentido pasa a que solo Dios es verdad, con lo que el Golem se deshace.

«'earthed' in the figure so that the magician can continue to reinforce it, using the figure as a storage battery. When the magician has need of the elementary force he unwraps the Golem, as he would unwrap a pentacle, and directs the force into those channels in which it is needed.» — Skinner describe el Golem moderno como pila de almacenamiento de la fuerza elemental, que el mago desenvuelve y dirige como haría con un pentáculo.

«A number of literary works built around the Golem have been written, of which the most outstanding is Gustav Meyrink's Der Golem.» — Skinner señala Der Golem de Gustav Meyrink como la obra literaria más notable del asunto.

«Returning to the development of the Qabalah we find that the next book of any Qabalistic import was published in Southern France around 1180. This book, Bahir, Gershom Scholem refers to as 'the earliest Qabalistic document', and is interesting because it includes the first detailed reference to 'tree', 'source', and similar basic Qabalistic symbolism.» — Skinner data hacia 1180 en el sur de Francia el Bahir, que llama documento cabalístico más antiguo siguiendo a Gershom Scholem, por traer la primera referencia detallada al árbol y a la fuente.

«However the crown of Qabalistic literature appeared shortly after this, circa 1280, as the Zohar, or Book of Splendour, allegedly written by Moses de Leon. This compilation of 'fourteen camel loads' was of such extent and complexity as to appear to be a collation of a number of previously existing Midrashim (Rabbinical commentaries on the Pentateuch).» — Skinner data hacia 1280 el Zohar, lo adjudica por fama a Moisés de León y consigna la sospecha de que sea recopilación de midrashim previos.

«It is possible however that the bulk1 of the Zoliar could have been written by the same author. It is from this enormous storehouse of Qabalistic wisdom that most of the subsequent treatises on the Qabalah have been based.» — Skinner deja abierta la autoría única del grueso del Zohar y lo pone como almacén del que salen los tratados posteriores; la capa de texto imprime *Zoliar* y el tramo lleva dentro la llamada de nota que enumera sus partes.

«Some of the most notable Qabalists since then have included Moses Cordovero, Isaac Luria, Abraham Ibn Wakar, Rabbi Hayyim Vital, who wrote some of the most lucid works on the Qabalah of this period,1 2 3 and Solomon Ibn Gebirol, the famed author of Me'qor Hayyim. The last-named book is better known as Fons Vitae, or the Fountain of Life? a book that has also strongly influenced Christian thinking.» — Skinner enumera a los cabalistas mayores desde el Zohar, de Cordovero y Luria a Hayyim Vital y a Ibn Gabirol, cuyo Me'qor Hayyim conoce el pensamiento cristiano como Fons Vitae; el tramo lleva dentro las llamadas de nota, releído en el crudo.

«Outside of this strictly Rabbinical tradition, other writers, including quite a few Christians, wrote treatises on the Qabalah. These included John Baptist von Helmont, of early scientific fame; Raymond Lully, author of Ars Magna; Baruch Spinoza, the 'God-intoxicated philosopher'; Pico di Mirandola; Knorr von Rosenroth, the author of Kabbala Denudata» — Skinner enumera a los cabalistas cristianos, de Van Helmont y Ramón Llull a Spinoza, Pico y Knorr von Rosenroth.

«Amongst this rapidly proliferating tradition there grew up the Rosicrucian tradition, allegedly brought from Damcar by one Christian Rosencreutz. This almost mythical figure was introduced to the public by two documents, Faina Fraternitatis (published in 1614) and Conjessione Fraternitatis R.C. (published a year later), which traced the wanderings of Fra. C.R.C., as Christian Rosencreutz was called.» — Skinner hace salir la tradición rosacruz de esa proliferación cabalística y la funda en la Fama Fraternitatis y la Confessio, que la capa de texto imprime *Faina* y *Conjessione*.

«He travelled from Germany, through Jerusalem and Damascus, to Damcar, where he learned Mathematics, Medicine (Physic) and Philosophy, as well as transcribing that often-mentioned, but rarely seen, Book M. He left Damcar for Fez where he learned from the 'Arabians' both the Qabalah and Magic, which were here closely associated with each other.» — Skinner traza el viaje de Christian Rosencreutz, su aprendizaje en Damcar y la transcripción del Libro M, y en Fez la cábala y la magia juntas.

«Upon returning to Germany via Spain, Christian Rosencreutz established an Order for the preservation and propagation of the Wisdom he had learned in the East. This Order kept its existence secret for over 100 years, till the two manifestoes mentioned above were published.» — Skinner consigna la fundación de la Orden a la vuelta y su siglo de secreto hasta los dos manifiestos.

«Since then however there has been no lack of societies, orders and brotherhoods claiming the exalted title of Rosicrucian, down to the present day when there are at least four organisations who claim this style, and who will admit you, for a fee, to the Rosicrucian Mysteries, by post; not to mention many others which are less well publicised.» — Skinner objeta a las sociedades que se dicen rosacruces en su tiempo la admisión por correo y previo pago.

«The original order survived in Germany under several Masonic and Rosicrucian designations, sending forth at least one branch to another country. This branch, despite the many and varied stories of its foundations, came into existence in England in the last two decades of the 19th century.» — Skinner hace llegar a Inglaterra, en las dos últimas décadas del siglo XIX, una rama de la orden alemana.

«This Order was the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, whose early inception has been too often reiterated to bear repetition in this book. Suffice it to say that it drew its extensive heritage of esoteric information from several English Freemasons, including Frederick Hockley, Robert Wentworth Little and Kenneth Mackenzie, who had earlier, in 1865, formed the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia.» — Skinner nombra esa rama y le adjudica su herencia esotérica a masones ingleses que en 1865 habían formado la Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia; declara de paso que omite el relato de fundación por sabido.

«leaving the Order with Mathers as head, and with branch Temples at Bradford, Edinburgh, Weston-super-Mare, and Paris (all except the last two being short-lived).» — Skinner consigna el desenlace de la jefatura de la Golden Dawn tras la muerte de Woodman en 1891 y la renuncia de Westcott en 1897, con sus templos de filial; el tramo arranca después de los años entre paréntesis.

«Accordingly in 1887 the first Isis-Urania Temple of the Hermetic Students of the Golden Dawn was formed.» — Skinner data en 1887 la fundación del templo Isis-Urania.

«From this Order sprang most of the work done on Magic, the Qabalah, and the Western Esoteric Tradition in the 20th century. It is therefore important that we examine the techniques of this Order, as they have had such an influence over the search for Abraxas in the West.» — Skinner adjudica a la Golden Dawn el grueso del trabajo del siglo XX sobre magia, cábala y tradición esotérica occidental, y de ahí justifica examinar sus técnicas.

«The practices of the Golden Dawn, as they were based on the Qabalah and German Rosicrucianism, had as their central glyph 'the Tree of Life'. The Tree of Life, or Otz Chiim, is a diagrammatic system of the relationships that exist between everything in Man and the Universe: it is applicable to both because the principles upon which both manifested are the same.» — Skinner pone el Árbol de la Vida, Otz Chiim, como glifo central de la orden y lo define como sistema de relaciones válido a la vez para el hombre y para el universo.

«This glyph portrays creation as the Great Unmanifest manifesting in a series of emanations, outflowing from the three Veils of Negative Existence. These emanations follow the order of the Lightning Flash and in doing so 'God incarnates in the Universe', and the infinite becomes finite through limitation.» — Skinner describe la creación en el glifo como emanaciones que salen de los tres Velos de la Existencia Negativa siguiendo el orden del Relámpago.

«Each of these emanations, or Sephiroth, can variously be interpreted as an aspect of the Godhead, a stage in creation, or a facet in the constitution of man.» — Skinner da las tres lecturas posibles de cada sefirá sin elegir entre ellas.

«This multiple identification arises from the doctrine (as expressed by Hermes Trismegistus): "As above, so below, but after another fashion."» — Skinner funda esa multiplicidad en la fórmula que atribuye a Hermes Trismegisto y que la nota remite a la Tabla Esmeraldina.

«By this it is meant that the Universe contains different forms of existence, each using the same blueprint, and it is held that because of this similar blueprinting, an examination of any part of the Universe at a particular time should reveal, by analogy, the forces pertaining to the whole, and so to other parts of the Universe. In the Hermetic sense, the structure of the microcosm (the inner world) is similar in outline to the structure of the macrocosm (the outer world).» — Skinner desarrolla la correspondencia como un mismo plano constructivo repetido, de modo que examinar una parte revela por analogía las fuerzas del todo.

«A close modern analogy to this would be to point out, as James Jeans has, that the structure of the atom, that of the solar system, and that of a nebula, are in principle the same.» — Skinner trae a James Jeans para la analogía moderna entre átomo, sistema solar y nebulosa.

«Returning to the Tree of Life, and applying this Hermetic axiom to it, it becomes apparent why the infinite abundance of images and symbols attributed to it explain every facet of reality and unreality in the Universe, no matter how large or how small. It also becomes apparent why the motto taken by Macgregor Mathers, "There is no part of me which is not of the Gods," was an expression of his philosophy rather than an idle boast.» — Skinner lee el lema de Macgregor Mathers, que no hay parte de él que no sea de los dioses, como enunciado de esa filosofía y no como baladronada.

«It is therefore very difficult to attempt to compress a description of this glyph in so short a compass, and the reader would be well advised to fill in the following sketch of the system by consulting such books as Dion Fortune's Mystical Qabalah or Macgregor Mathers' Kabbalah Unveiled.» — Skinner declara el límite de su propio bosquejo y remite al Mystical Qabalah de Dion Fortune y al Kabbalah Unveiled de Mathers.

«The glyph Otz Chiim (see Figure 5) is divided into 10 Spheres and 22 Paths (lines connecting them), attributed to the 22 Letters of the Hebrew Alphabet, or the 12 Signs of the Zodiac, together with the seven Planets of the Ancients, and the three Elements (of the four Classical Elements, Fire, Air, Water, Earth). The fourth Element, Earth, does not appear on the Paths but is attributed to the physical plane and is therefore not among the Paths that lead into the Unseen.» — Skinner da la estructura del Árbol: diez esferas y veintidós senderos con sus letras hebreas, signos, planetas y tres elementos, y explica por qué la Tierra queda fuera de los senderos.

«The 22 Atus, or Major Arcana of the Tarot, are also ascribed to the 22 Paths of the Tree. The significance of these Paths can be deduced by the two Spheres that a given Path relates or connects, and the Tarot Trump ascribed to it.» — Skinner asigna los veintidós arcanos mayores a los senderos y deriva su sentido de las dos esferas que unen y del triunfo correspondiente.

«Existence to form the Primal Point or First Manifestation, Kether the Crown of Creation. Kether, asexual in nature, divides into Binah and Chokmah, and with this division forms a functional trinity that can then proceed to generate. This pair Chokmah and Binah respectively equate to the archetypal Male and Female potencies. At this stage a balance is achieved, the triad being considered in the Qabalah as a balanced number: collectively these three are called the three Supernals.» — Skinner expone la primera manifestación, Kether, y su división en Binah y Chokmah como potencias arquetípicas masculina y femenina que forman la tríada superna; el tramo arranca donde el corte de plana dejó la frase.

«The product of Chokmah and Binah is a phenomenal existence that Kether could never achieve by itself. From these sprang a Sephirah which is given no number: Daath, the Sephirah which hangs above the Abyss, separating the three Supernals (which partake of the nature of God) from the rest of the Tree (which partakes of the nature of Man). Daath is in another dimension, so it has not got the same kind of 'existence' that the other Sephiroth have: it was the first child of Binah and Chokmah, and preceded the emanation of the seven Lower Sephiroth.» — Skinner sitúa Daath sobre el Abismo, sin número, separando lo que participa de Dios de lo que participa del hombre, y en otra dimensión que las demás sefirot.

«The three Supernals are the Head of Adam Kadmon (the Archetypal Man) and are separate from the rest of the Sephiroth, but yet form the principle upon which all else manifests - the Principle of the Trinity. The Trinity occurs again in the Ethical Triad of Chesed, Geburah and Tiphareth and in the Astral Triad of Netzach, Hod and Yesod.» — Skinner identifica las tres supernas con la cabeza de Adam Kadmon y repite la trinidad en las tríadas ética y astral.

«Chokmah heads the Pillar of Mercy (Male) and Binah the Pillar of Severity (Female), whilst Kether heads the Pillar of Equilibrium (Androgyne or Hermaphrodite). Thus the Principle of the balance of opposites by a reconciling factor is established in the Tree. This balance is the balance between Force (Chokmah) and Form (Binah), just as science sees the Universe as a balance between energy and matter.» — Skinner reparte los tres pilares y lee el equilibrio de opuestos entre Fuerza y Forma como la ciencia lee el que hay entre energía y materia.

«As the vertex of the Supernal Triangle points towards the Ain Soph Aur, its balance derives from that which lies beyond the Veils, whilst the two other Triangles of the Tree have down-pointing vertices, showing their dependence upon the manifested phenomenal Universe for their raison d'etre: this shows even more distinctly the function of the Abyss.» — Skinner deriva la función del Abismo de la orientación de los tres triángulos: el superno apunta más allá de los Velos y los otros dos dependen del universo manifestado.

«It is necessary to have three Sephiroth before generation of the phenomenal Universe can commence, just as it is necessary to have three straight lines to enclose a space. The third Sephirah, Binah, therefore makes the phenomenal Universe possible by introducing Time as a limiting factor:» — Skinner explica con el símil de las tres rectas por qué hacen falta tres sefirot y adjudica a Binah la introducción del Tiempo como límite; el troceo reemite la marca de plana en el límite de chunk y corta ahí la frase, que remata con *hence Chronos or Saturn is ascribed to it*.

«After the failure of Daath, Chesed (Mercy) was generated. Out of this Sephirah sprang its opposite, Geburah (Severity), and the two of these unified in the down-pointing triangle, whose apex is Tiphareth (Beauty).» — Skinner hace salir Chesed del fracaso de Daath y con Geburah y Tiphareth arma el triángulo descendente.

«To each of these in turn is ascribed Jupiter with its qualities of construction, expansion and solidification, the merciful ruler (Chesed); Mars, the transition by destruction of forms or ideas into materials for the construction of further forms (Geburah); and the Sun, the centre of both the Tree and our solar system, the beauty and harmony of the sacrifice of its energies for Life (Tiphareth).» — Skinner reparte Júpiter, Marte y el Sol entre Chesed, Geburah y Tiphareth con la función de cada uno: construir, destruir para construir de nuevo, y sacrificar la energía propia para la vida.

«A division on the Tree similar, on a lower arc, to the Abyss, is the Veil Paroketh which separates Hod and Netzach from Tiphareth, symbolising on the microcosmic level the point to which man may attain whilst yet remaining human.» — Skinner pone el Velo Paroketh como límite microcósmico de lo que el hombre alcanza sin dejar de ser hombre.

«Tiphareth, incidentally, is also the Redeemer not only of the Ethical Triangle, but also of the whole Tree: it is the Son, just as Kether is the Father, and Yesod the Holy Spirit. It is situated at the heart of the Tree.» — Skinner lee Tiphareth como Redentor de todo el Árbol y arma con Kether y Yesod la trinidad de Padre, Hijo y Espíritu Santo.

«So far we have formed a Hexagram with the upward apex of Kether (the Father) reflected in the downward-pointing apex of Tiphareth (the Son). Tiphareth now forms the head of a Calvary cross, whose foot rests on the Earth at Malkuth and whose opposite arms are Netzach (Victory) and Hod (Glory).» — Skinner dibuja el hexagrama de Kether y Tiphareth y de ahí la cruz del Calvario con el pie en Malkuth.

«Netzach, to which Venus is attributed, represents the elemental sphere of Nature's forces, or in the constitution of man, the unconscious. Opposing it on the other Pillar of the Tree is Hod, attributed to Mercury and covering the mercurial processes of thinking and rationality.» — Skinner adjudica Netzach a Venus y al inconsciente y Hod a Mercurio y a los procesos del pensar.

«Yesod, whose symbol is the Moon, is the reconciler of Netzach (Nature Mysticism) and Hod (Intellectual Magic) in its capacity as the Sephirah of psychism. Yesod's place in the Universe is that of the 'darkly splendid treasure house of images', in Theosophical imagery, the Astral Plane.» — Skinner pone Yesod como reconciliador entre el misticismo de la Naturaleza y la magia intelectual, y lo identifica con el plano astral, el tesoro oscuramente espléndido de las imágenes.

«This is both the Foundation of the Tree and the repository of the illusions of the Universe.» — Skinner deja Yesod como fundamento y a la vez depósito de las ilusiones del universo.

«This concept reflects the Eastern view that 'all is Maya', in that the Universe is here seen as based on illusion. The Qabalistic rationale of this is» — Skinner acerca esa lectura a la doctrina oriental de Maya; el tramo se corta en el límite de plana y sigue en la siguiente.

«that the Universe has been generated from the archetypal images generated in the mind of the Logos (literally the 'Word' in St. John, Chap. 1, v. 1), which is seen by the Qabalist not only as God, but as God's means of creating the Universe through the vibration of a sound.» — la continuación: el Logos del prólogo de Juan leído por el cabalista como Dios y como el medio con que Dios crea, por vibración de un sonido; el tramo arranca donde el corte de plana dejó la frase.

«The Qabalistic doctrine of the Word plays an important part in the practical Qabalah, that is, in Magic. As in all invocations and evocations the accurate 'vibration' of 'Words of Power' is the crux and quite often the climax of a ritual designed to produce a particular change in consciousness.» — Skinner traslada la doctrina del Verbo a la cábala práctica: la vibración exacta de las Palabras de Poder como núcleo y clímax del ritual.

«Consequently it is not surprising that the magical philosophy claims that basic changes in consciousness, if not in matter itself, can be wrought by a change in vibrations.» — Skinner enuncia lo que a su juicio reclama la filosofía mágica: cambios en la consciencia, si no en la materia, por cambio de vibraciones.

«The vibration of 'Words of Power' is no mere chanting or shouting aloud, but the warmth and the trembling that can be felt in the body and the shaking of the temple in which they are pronounced.» — Skinner acota qué es esa vibración y qué no: no canturreo ni grito, sino calor, temblor del cuerpo y sacudida del templo.

«But to return from this digression, the last Sephirah of the Tree of Life is pendant to Yesod, in the sense that, if it were not there, the Tree would be perfectly symmetrical. It, however, provides for the descent of the powers, images, and planes of existence, summarised by the Tree, into the material world.» — Skinner explica la asimetría del Árbol por la sefirá última, que es la que hace descender poderes, imágenes y planos al mundo material.

«The Sephiroth are not to be interpreted as different spatial areas, but as levels of consciousness or awareness interpenetrating each other, but distinct in that the Taws' of each sphere are completely different.» — Skinner niega la lectura espacial de las sefirot y las pone como niveles de consciencia que se interpenetran con leyes distintas; la capa de texto imprime *Taws'* donde el libro dice *laws*.

«Figure 5: Otz Chiim - The Tree of Life, with Golden Dawn magical grades, and Hebrew letters on the 22 Paths.» — el pie de la lámina quinta, el Árbol de la Vida con los grados mágicos de la Golden Dawn.

«This is produced by considering the Tree under four different aspects, or as the Qabalists say, in Four Worlds. The Spheres each exist in each of these Worlds which are called, from the most ethereal to the most material:» — Skinner introduce la naturaleza cuádruple del Árbol: cada esfera existe en cada uno de los Cuatro Mundos.

«(1) Atziluth, the Archetypal World or World of Emanations: in which the Sephiroth have a Godname ascribed to them.» — el primero de los Cuatro Mundos según Skinner: Atziluth, donde a cada sefirá le toca un nombre divino.

«(2) Briah, the World of Creation, or Khorsia, the World of Thrones: in which each Sphere has ascribed to it one of the Ten Archangels. In this World the Archetypal Ideations of the Godhead in Atziluth are brought unformed into creation.» — el segundo Mundo según Skinner: Briah, el de los Tronos, con un arcángel por esfera y las ideaciones arquetípicas traídas sin forma a la creación.

«(3) Yetzimh, the World of Formation and of Angels: in which each Sphere has ascribed to it an Angelic Host. In this World the formlessness of the Briatic World is ordered and diversified into elements, as symbolised by the Angelic Host.» — el tercer Mundo según Skinner: Yetzirah, donde lo informe de Briah se ordena en elementos; la capa de texto imprime *Yetzimh*.

«(4) Assiah, the World of Action, the World of Matter (not exclusively physical): in which each Sphere has ascribed to it a Mundane Chakra. The Mundane Chakras (not to be confused with the Yogic term) are, in order from Kether to Malkuth, the Trimum Mobile', the Zodiac, the seven planets of the Ancients (Binah to Yesod), with Malkuth as the Four Elements taken together. Each Sphere has a mode of existence in each of the Four Worlds, thus making 40 Sephiroth in all.» — el cuarto Mundo según Skinner: Assiah, con su chakra mundano por esfera, del Primum Mobile a los cuatro elementos de Malkuth, y el total de cuarenta sefirot; la capa de texto imprime *Trimum Mobile'*.

«(1) The fiery sword or Lightning Flash, which gives the order of Sephiroth, or Macrocosmic aspects of the Tree. This shows the Cosmic Path of Involution.» — Skinner adjudica a la espada ígnea el orden de las sefirot y la llama camino cósmico de involución.

«(2) The Serpent Nehushtan, which gives the correct order of the Paths, or the Microcosmic aspects of the Tree. This shows the Path of Evolution that has to be pursued by the consciousness of Man, or specifically the order of initiation pursued by the Western aspirant.» — Skinner adjudica a la serpiente Nehushtan el orden de los senderos y lo lee como el camino de evolución y el orden de iniciación del aspirante occidental.

«In addition to the Paths and Sephiroth, there are two elements that are beyond the 'dimension of the Tree'; these are the Abyss (alternatively, the hidden Sephirah Daath) and the three Veils of Negative Existence. These Veils are a 'backdrop' against which the structure of the Tree is built: they both symbolise and remove the necessity of postulating an Absolute.» — Skinner pone el Abismo y los tres Velos fuera de la dimensión del Árbol, y adjudica a los Velos el efecto de volver innecesario postular un Absoluto.

«paradox is explained when it is realised that in one sense they constitute the turning point between Negative and Positive Existence, just as the digit zero is required to bridge the gap between the positive and negative numerals, yet in itself it means nothing - it is merely a convenient cipher to represent the unimaginable no-thing.» — Skinner explica la paradoja de los Velos con el símil del cero, que hace de puente entre lo positivo y lo negativo sin significar nada por sí; el tramo arranca donde el corte de plana dejó la palabra.

«Also the three Veils remove the necessity of going further back, as they provide a convenient point of reference that is fixed and not shifting (like the indefinite 'Absolute' of most philosophies).» — Skinner objeta al Absoluto indefinido de las filosofías su carácter movedizo y prefiere el punto de referencia fijo de los Velos.

«The limiting of the Tree by the Veils makes the Tree take a finite form, so that its symbols can be used in the Qabalistic method as a chain of associated ideas that can lead the student to a realisation of abstract concepts, arising from a visual symbol system.» — Skinner deriva del límite de los Velos la utilidad del Árbol: una cadena de ideas asociadas que lleva al estudiante de un sistema visual a conceptos abstractos.

«Negative Manifestation transmutes through Negativity (Ain), Limitlessness (Ain Soph) and Limitless Light (Ain Soph Aur) to one effulgent point of brilliance which is the first positive manifestation, Kether, the Crown of manifestation.» — Skinner traza el paso de Ain, Ain Soph y Ain Soph Aur al punto de brillo que es Kether.

«The nine Sephiroth that follow are phases of involution. This contrasts with the subjective nature of the interconnecting Paths which are the evolving soul's apprehension of the Cosmos, as well as the Path of return that it must take to reach Abraxas.» — Skinner opone las nueve sefirot como fases de involución a los senderos como aprehensión del cosmos por el alma y camino de vuelta hacia Abraxas.

«The Emanations, or Sephiroth, evolve each from the previous one, so that all the Sephiroth are held in potential in the Ain Soph Aur, each Sephiroth being emanated when the previous one has formed sufficiently to react to the unbalanced nature of its birth by overflowing to form the next lowest Sephirah.» — Skinner describe la emanación como desbordamiento: cada sefirá nace cuando la anterior se forma bastante para reaccionar a su propio desequilibrio.

«God, in a sense, is the compulsion to expand outwards1 into manifestation, and it is the uprushing from the Great Unmanifest, rather than the separate and complete fashioning of each article (as portrayed in Genesis) that constitutes the essence of Creation.» — Skinner define a Dios como la compulsión a expandirse y pone la esencia de la Creación en ese brote desde el Gran No Manifestado, no en la hechura separada de cada cosa que lee en el Génesis.

«Thus, for example, the nodal expression of the Life-force in Kether (Rashith ha Gilgalim or First Swirlings) takes a new expression when it forms Chokmah, in which the circular movement has the concept of segmentation (Mazloth, the Zodiac) added to it to form this new Sephirah.» — Skinner da el ejemplo del paso de Kether a Chokmah: a los Primeros Remolinos se les añade la segmentación del zodiaco.

«Just as the Sephiroth represent the generation or involution of the Godhead into material existence, so the Paths indicate the path of evolution or return to the Godhead, the path along which many in the West seek Abraxas.» — Skinner opone otra vez sefirot y senderos: involución de la divinidad en la materia y camino de vuelta por el que en Occidente se busca a Abraxas.

«The training of an aspirant in the Western Tradition is designed to give him a full knowledge of his own psyche: and having attained this, to strengthen each facet in turn.» — Skinner declara el fin del entrenamiento occidental: conocimiento completo de la propia psique y refuerzo de cada faceta.

«It has been said by the Yoga philosophy that the most spiritual and powerful aspect of man's nature is the faculty of attention or consciousness. As the most fundamental aspect of man's free will is the choice of what he allows his attention to dwell upon, it is the goal of Yogic practice to "discover and directly experience the nature of the attention or faculty of consciousness by which all else is known."» — Skinner trae de la filosofía del yoga la primacía de la atención y el fin de su práctica: experimentar directamente la facultad de consciencia por la que se conoce todo lo demás.

«Likewise in the West the first training involves meditation and concentration. This may take the form of simple visualisations held for only short periods of time. It is often surprising for the beginner how really undisciplined his mind is: even to picture a red triangle for more than a few minutes without losing sight of a side or two, or being distracted by other thoughts, is difficult.» — Skinner pone la meditación y la concentración como primer entrenamiento y mide la indisciplina de la mente con el ejemplo del triángulo rojo.

«Although this is a facile interpretation, basically the Astral plane is the first level of non-normal consciousness that the aspirant learns to work with, or put subjectively, the first portion of his subconscious that he contacts.» — Skinner da el plano astral, con la reserva de que la lectura es fácil, como primer nivel de consciencia no normal y primera porción del subconsciente que el aspirante toca.

«One of the laws of this plane is that concentrated thought on a particular form will endure in the astral in proportion to the amount of concentration exerted.» — Skinner enuncia la ley astral que a su juicio rige: la forma dura en proporción a la concentración puesta.

«Bear in mind at this point that his 'explorations' of the astral are, in fact, explorations of himself, in accordance with the dictum gnothi seauton or 'know thyself' which hung over the portals of the Eleusinian Mysteries.» — Skinner acota qué son esas exploraciones: exploraciones de uno mismo, bajo el gnothi seauton de los misterios eleusinos.

«Of the several methods for directing the attention of the consciousness to various parts of the astral, the best known are 'skrying' or 'spirit vision' and ceremonial magic.» — Skinner nombra los dos métodos principales de dirigir la consciencia por el astral: el skrying o visión de espíritu y la magia ceremonial.

«brought to perfection as it is a major weapon in the Adept's armoury. The reason for this is that the next level of subtleness above the physical plane (ignoring the etheric level), the Astral plane, is the level of images, an objective Universe of plastic thought, corresponding to Yesod.» — Skinner justifica la concentración por lo que sigue: el plano astral como nivel de las imágenes, universo objetivo de pensamiento plástico que corresponde a Yesod; el troceo reemite la marca de plana en el límite de chunk y deja del otro lado el arranque de la frase, *However, it is essential that the ability to concentrate on ordinary things is*.

«strongly, as if it were a door set into an interminably long wall. It is here that one's ability to visualise and hold a picture becomes paramount, for the symbol may be anything from a simple coloured triangle as in the Tattwa cards to a complex esoteric Tarot card.» — Skinner describe el símbolo del skrying como puerta en un muro interminable y pone la visualización sostenida como la facultad que decide; el tramo arranca donde el corte de plana dejó la frase.

«Commencing with the simplest, Tattwa cards are symbolic expressions of the Four Elements1 of the ancients, already mentioned, together with the Fifth Element of Akasha or 'Spirit'. These symbols have been adopted into the Western system from the East as gates to the astral manifestations of these Forces which have the qualities of the physical elements to which they are referred.» — Skinner define las cartas tattwa como expresión de los cuatro elementos antiguos más el akasha, adoptadas de Oriente al sistema occidental como puertas a las manifestaciones astrales de esas fuerzas.

«The Akasha is considered the progenitor of the other four elements, of which the 'first-born' is Tejas or Fire, whose symbol is an upward-pointing red triangle and which signifies the energy, expansion and consuming properties of fire. This Element of Fire manifests throughout the Universe and is not constrained to the element of fire.» — Skinner da el akasha por progenitor de los cuatro y describe Tejas, el fuego, con su triángulo rojo hacia arriba, advirtiendo que el elemento no se agota en el fuego físico.

«The second Tattwa is Vayu, the principle of Air, which is a balance between the opposing Elements of Fire and Water,2 and therefore expresses the qualities of the overlying mantle in which the Earth is drowned. The symbol of Air is a blue circle.» — Skinner pone Vayu, el aire, como equilibrio entre fuego y agua, y le asigna el círculo azul.

«Similarly, Water, Apas, is symbolised by a silver Moon crescent and Earth, Pritlievi, by a solid yellow square.» — Skinner cierra la serie con la luna creciente de plata del agua y el cuadrado amarillo de la tierra; la capa de texto imprime *Pritlievi* donde el libro dice Prithevi.

«When it does, the skryer will be met with a landscape whose nature is in accordance with the nature of the Tattwa. If, for example, the skryer was skrying with Tejas of Prithevi, or Fire of Earth, a vision of a sandy desert stretching into the distance and lit by the lurid glare of fires roaring on the» — Skinner da el ejemplo del paisaje que corresponde a Tejas de Prithevi, fuego de tierra; el tramo se corta en el límite de plana y sigue en la siguiente.

«Upon stepping, mentally, through the portal he would find the rough ground beneath his feet warm and firm, the air oppressive with heat, and perhaps the feeling that he was not entirely alone. A figure not unlike a combination of the Gnome and Salamander of medieval tales might appear and guide him through the landscape which is symbolic of the work of that sub-Element; in this case the volcanic action required to produce metal ores in rocks is one such aspect.» — Skinner sigue el ejemplo con la sensación del suelo y del aire y con la figura mezcla de gnomo y salamandra que guía por el paisaje del subelemento.

«When the skryer has seen enough he should retread the same path back to the astral 'doorway', the Tattwa image through which he came. Then being very careful to return slowly and definitely to the physical plane, he passes through the doorway, visualises it closing behind him and completes the operation with a Banishing Ritual.» — Skinner fija la salida obligada de la operación: desandar el camino, cerrar la puerta y rematar con un ritual de destierro.

«It is interesting to note that the personification of the forces of the elements in the Middle Ages closely resembles the forms which greet a skryer who ventures into these realms: It is conceivable that many tales of fairies, gnomes, sylphs and so on can be explained in terms of the author having had a natural psychic ability so that what may have seemed a dream to him was actually an experience of a realm of Elemental force, which provides the raw energy of Nature but which is seldom encountered on its own terms.» — Skinner propone leer los cuentos de hadas, gnomos y sílfides como experiencias de un reino de fuerza elemental tenidas por autores con facultad psíquica natural.

«Elementals, being of a substance closer to the physical than most other types of existence included in the Tree of Life, are obviously more amenable to 'earthing' or manifesting on the material plane.» — Skinner explica por la cercanía de los elementales a lo físico que sean más fáciles de aterrizar en el plano material.

«However, other portals to the astral may be used, the image or figure used in each case being a type of psycho-active glyph, a figure which has significance to our subconscious mind or, even deeper, to our archetypal unconsciousness. These glyphs, drawn from Qabalistic symbols, range from Hebrew letters (portals to the Paths of the Tree), the Tarot (of which those cards easily available are simplified compared with some packs used for the purposes of skrying), the dots of Geometric figures, the figures of the I Ching, Tattwa symbols, some alchemical illustrations,1 and drawings by some artists who have a knowledge of the workings of the psyche at its» — Skinner enumera los demás glifos que sirven de puerta astral: letras hebreas, tarot, puntos de la geomancia, figuras del I Ching, tattwas, ilustraciones alquímicas y dibujos de ciertos artistas; el tramo se corta en el límite de plana.

«It is interesting to note that the Tarot, Geomancy, and the I Citing are all modes of divination and the first two were used for this purpose by the Order. Geomancy consists of figures made up of four different groups of odd and even points, making a total of 16 different figures which are derived by a random method of selection.» — Skinner cuenta tarot, geomancia e I Ching entre los modos de adivinación y declara que la Orden usaba los dos primeros; la capa de texto imprime *I Citing*.

«The Tarot, however, is an infinitely more complex instrument, as it contains 78 symbols, capable of being combined in approximately 1021 different ways, yielding a much more flexible system of divination. The Tarot has been too well documented elsewhere to elaborate on it here, except to point out that the books listed in the bibliography by Paul Case, Gareth Knight and Aleister Crowley are good introductions to the subject.» — Skinner mide la flexibilidad del tarot por el número de combinaciones de sus setenta y ocho símbolos y remite a Paul Case, Gareth Knight y Aleister Crowley; la capa de texto imprime *1021* donde el libro da una potencia de diez.

«Moving now from subjective working with divination and skrying, we come to one of the main facets of the Practical Qabalah, ceremonial magic. This entails the exaltation of the consciousness by using a barrage of sense impressions, of a similar type, designed to focus the mind on to a particular phase of mentation to the exclusion of all others.» — Skinner define la magia ceremonial como exaltación de la consciencia por una descarga de impresiones sensoriales del mismo tipo.

«At this point the ritual either fails, or unites the consciousness of the practitioner (microcosm) to the corresponding potency in the Universe (macrocosm) and there is a flow through of energy which illuminates that particular facet of the practitioner's consciousness.» — Skinner enuncia el desenlace doble del ritual: o falla, o une microcosmos y macrocosmos y deja pasar la energía que ilumina esa faceta.

«These stimuli are the bare bones of magical ritual, along with the conditioning of the mind to the symbols of the Mysteries, for if the ritual has been designed correctly then these stimuli and symbols should be of a similar symbolic nature.» — Skinner pone la condición del ritual bien diseñado: que estímulos y símbolos sean de la misma naturaleza simbólica.

«Thus if the magical operation was designed to cause a change of consciousness in one of the participants, to loosen up his perhaps overly intellectual approach to life, and free subconscious blocks which were inhibiting his emotional responses, then an operation of the sphere of Netzach might be undertaken.» — Skinner da el caso concreto: soltar un acercamiento demasiado intelectual y liberar bloqueos emocionales con una operación de Netzach.

«Accordingly, the physical stimuli of the ritual would consist of circle and triangle inscribed with those words which are appropriate to the evocation of a 'spirit' corresponding to the seventh Sephirah, Netzach. The instruments used would be the Lamp and the Girdle, the perfumes used would be either benzoin, rose or red sandal, all luxurious odours. The spirit evoked would correspond to that portion of the practitioner's psyche which it was desired to 'free'.» — Skinner detalla el aparato de esa operación: círculo y triángulo con las palabras propias, la lámpara y el cíngulo, y perfumes de benjuí, rosa o sándalo rojo.

«case of this sphere, be addressed to these ancient personifications of Universal forces which would be represented, in the case of Netzach, by Venus, in the Roman Pantheon, Aphrodite in the Greek, and Hathor in the Egyptian Pantheon.» — Skinner da las tres personificaciones a las que se dirige la invocación de Netzach; el tramo arranca donde el corte de plana dejó la frase.

«If the ritualised representations of these forces succeed, then the Vision of beauty triumphant, the flush of elation as the impeded emotions break free, and the race of the pulse as the consciousness exalts in its new freedom, greet the practitioner.» — Skinner describe el resultado esperado: visión de la belleza triunfante, elación al romperse la emoción trabada y aceleración del pulso.

«Thus the Qabalist uses concrete symbols to call up in the mind associated ideas and feelings which gradually form connected chains of thought which lead the mind into the abstract realms of thought without demanding of the student that he grasp the abstract with nothing more to aid him than his concrete mind. Thus the abstract concept is ensnared within the concrete network of symbols. The identification of the mind with these abstracts establishes a link between the aspirant and the reservoir of force associated with the abstractions.» — Skinner explica el oficio del cabalista como atrapar lo abstracto en una red de símbolos concretos, con lo que se abre un enlace con la reserva de fuerza que corresponde.

«Just as the electrician needs a detailed knowledge of the properties of electricity (although as yet no scientist can explain what electricity really is) before he is able to design circuits necessary to carry out certain functions, so the magician uses the Qabalistic knowledge concerning other forces in the Universe, in his techniques.» — Skinner compara al mago con el electricista, que diseña circuitos sin que la ciencia sepa decir qué es la electricidad.

«This then is ceremonial magic. It differs from the Eastern forms of illumination in that the ceremonial on the physical plane acts as a psychological stimulant to focus and intensify a particular type of force.» — Skinner separa la magia ceremonial de la iluminación oriental por la función del ceremonial físico como estimulante psicológico.

«When the aspirant achieves mastery of a particular Sphere of the Tree he has access to all the differing manifestations of this type of force in other Traditions that go to make up the complex Western Tradition. Hence the aspirant gains knowledge successively of each part of his psyche and the corresponding universal potency.» — Skinner declara lo que da el dominio de una esfera: acceso a todas las manifestaciones de ese tipo de fuerza en las demás tradiciones que componen la occidental.

«This contrasts with Eastern practice which attempts to eliminate all concepts, symbols and modes of rational mentation in an endeavour to reach Ultimate Reality by subtraction of symbols.» — Skinner opone a eso la práctica oriental, que a su juicio llega a lo Real por sustracción de símbolos.

«Each system is valid, one seeking to expand cognition by experiencing all levels of consciousness, the other by the exclusion of the many sensory and» — Skinner declara válidos los dos sistemas y no arbitra entre ellos; el tramo se corta en el límite de plana.

«To reach back to the origin, so say the Qabalists, one must either expand to include all, or contract to a focus.» — Skinner cierra la oposición con la fórmula que adjudica a los cabalistas: expandirse hasta incluirlo todo o contraerse a un foco.

«Aleister Crowley's great annunciation, stemming from the Book of the Law - "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be the Whole of the Law" - if interpreted by normally acceptable standards is completely unacceptable, but Crowley meant it in another sense.» — Skinner separa la lectura corriente de la fórmula thelémica de la que atribuye a Crowley.

«Crowley defines one's True Will as being the course, dependent partly on self and partly on the environment, which is natural and necessary for each person. He likens each individual to the star which has its own course through the Universe, its own proper motion and character, which very rarely results in a collision with any other star, and pursues its way un-interfered with, except insofar as its course is gravitationally modified by the presence of other stars.» — Skinner expone la Verdadera Voluntad de Crowley con el símil de la estrella con curso propio, modificado solo por la gravedad de otras.

«Since in the vastnesses of space there are seldom conflicts between celestial bodies, so in the realms of mankind there should be no chaos, little conflict and no mutual disturbance, were each individual aware of his True Will, his purpose in life, and eager to fulfil it. Unfortunately, most men, through lack of an understanding of reality, do not know their True Will and spend their time pursuing chimeras of pleasure, often at their own expense and that of others.» — Skinner saca la consecuencia social del símil y adjudica el conflicto humano al desconocimiento de la propia Voluntad.

«Crowley's corollary to his main dictum, "Love is the Law, Love under Will", annunciates Christ's two commandments, together with the rider that such love should be governed by the requirements of one's force and True Will.» — Skinner empareja el corolario del amor bajo voluntad con los dos mandamientos de Cristo, con la salvedad del gobierno de la Voluntad.

«Like ail geniuses, there was an unbalanced side to his nature; but why should we expect a balance in a man of spiritual genius as one does not expect it in the fields of art, music or literature? After all, this unbalance manifested only through 'Crowley the man', not in his research and» — Skinner admite el desequilibrio de Crowley y lo circunscribe al hombre, no a su trabajo, comparándolo con el que no se le exige al artista; la capa de texto imprime *ail* donde el libro dice *all*, y el tramo se corta en el límite de plana.

«Now these symbols can be taken in combination so that Tejas of Apas would be the red triangle of Tejas, superimposed on the silver crescent of Apas, making a total of 25 possible combinations of Tattwas. In using these as portals to the subconscious one paints the symbol on a card with a background of the complementary colour.» — Skinner explica la combinación de tattwas, que da veinticinco figuras, y el primer paso del procedimiento: pintar el símbolo sobre fondo del color complementario.

«After staring at it for some time, transfer the vision to a white background on which is seen the negative after-image. The negative after-image should then be seized upon by the imagination and portrayed as a translucent doorway. After giving the sign of the grade appropriate to the element and using a short invocation of an appropriate nature, one waits patiently for the door to swing open.» — Skinner sigue el procedimiento: la imagen residual negativa sobre fondo blanco, convertida por la imaginación en puerta traslúcida, el signo del grado y la invocación antes de esperar que se abra.

«One such seeker for Abraxas was Aleister Crowley who joined the Golden Dawn on 18 November 1898. At his initiation he took the Magical Name of Perdurabo, literally, 'I will endure': and endure he did, to the end of his 72 years, the scorn and hatred of the world, the epithet of the 'Wickedest Man» — Skinner fecha la entrada de Crowley a la Golden Dawn, traduce su nombre mágico Perdurabo y empieza a enumerar lo que dice que aquel soportó; el troceo reemite la marca de plana en el límite de chunk y corta ahí el epíteto.

«in the World', and a continued misinterpretation of his philosophy and work. Even his simplest statements were misconstrued by a public eager to find a Black Magician or a Satanist in anyone who dared to be so different.» — la continuación: Skinner adjudica la mala lectura de Crowley a un público ávido de hallar magos negros y satanistas en quien se atreviera a ser distinto.

«teachings, or through 'Crowley the Mage'. One of Crowley's most noticeable attributes was that he never attempted to hide his most'socially unacceptable' characteristics.» — Skinner adjudica a Crowley el no haber escondido sus rasgos socialmente inaceptables; el tramo arranca donde el corte de plana dejó la frase y la capa de texto pega las palabras en *most'socially*.

«This shows both his supreme disregard for society, and contrasts strongly with other spiritual teachers of the time, who concerned themselves as much with their image as with their illumination.» — Skinner lee eso como desprecio por la sociedad y lo opone a los maestros espirituales atentos a su imagen.

«After travelling in the East, Ceylon, India, and across Southern China, absorbing the techniques of Eastern esotericism, Crowley returned to England to form his own Order, the Argentium Astrum, or A.'. A.'.. Crowley incorporated a number of Yoga practices with those of Western Magic into the structure of the A.'. A.'., forming a single system of attainment.» — Skinner traza el viaje oriental de Crowley y la fundación del Argentium Astrum, donde dice que juntó prácticas de yoga con magia occidental en un solo sistema.

«Of his system Crowley says that the experience of enlightenment, whether obtained by meditation or Magic, is marked by the emergence of an entirely new type of consciousness not differentiated into a subject-object state, for these have been fused into an undivided One.» — Skinner resume lo que Crowley sostiene de la iluminación: una consciencia nueva sin diferencia entre sujeto y objeto.

«Whatever is seen, heard or felt in these moments is flooded with an inrush from the depths of the inner man. Deep lying powers which are not ordinarily put into play seem suddenly liberated and the usual insulations which sunder and restrict our inner life into separate compartments seem shot through.» — Skinner sigue con el relato de Crowley: poderes profundos liberados y rotos los tabiques que compartimentan la vida interior.

«It is the emergence of a new type-level of life, corresponding in some way with ultimate sources of Reality; it is a surge of the entire Self towards ineffable fullness of life.» — Skinner cierra el relato con el nivel de vida nuevo y la marejada del Yo entero hacia la plenitud.

«(1) The results are entirely illogical, from our ordinary point of view, but they give a unique form of knowledge which nothing else will give.» — la primera nota psicológica que Skinner adjudica a la experiencia: ilógica a ojos corrientes y a la vez conocimiento que nada más da.

«(2) The mystical states of all men, of different ages, exhibit an extraordinary similarity.» — la segunda nota: la semejanza entre los estados místicos de hombres de todas las épocas.

«(3) The experience is related to something which represents Reality.» — la tercera nota: la experiencia remite a algo que representa lo Real.

«(4) It produces clear-cut results: genius.» — la cuarta nota, con la llamada a la nota al pie que la ilustra.

«The experience produces art and genius in every field of endeavour, because therein all forms seem to speak, and there is gained an immediate intuition of form.» — Skinner deriva de esa experiencia el arte y el genio, porque en ella las formas hablan y se gana una intuición inmediata de la forma.

«One becomes a close and willing observer of Life itself rather than of the externals used by life: from the Beatific Vision one reads the meaning of existence, and by these pictures one trains oneself for life and its appreciation.» — Skinner describe el efecto como volverse observador de la vida misma y leer el sentido de la existencia en la Visión Beatífica.

«The A.'.A.', did not have many members in its early years, but the monumental body of work left behind by Crowley has provided the Western Tradition with one of ifs most scientifically ordered systems.» — Skinner mide la obra de Crowley por encima de la membresía de su orden y la llama uno de los sistemas más ordenados científicamente de la tradición occidental; la capa de texto imprime *ifs* donde el libro dice *its*.

«Since Crowley's death in 1947, the number of people working with his system has greatly increased, especially with the formation of dependent Orders based on Crowley's work, such as the 'Luculentus Astrum', and various recensions of the A.'. A.'.» — Skinner consigna el crecimiento posterior a la muerte de Crowley y las órdenes dependientes que nombra.

«As we have seen, the doors to the various levels of the consciousness are initially opened, and later recognised, by the sigils, symbols and signs which are archetypally related to them.» — Skinner recapitula: sigilos, símbolos y signos abren y luego identifican las puertas a los niveles de consciencia.

«Some artists in the 20th century deliberately set out to use this knowledge of the subconscious to draw or paint pictures which can act as keys and unlock particular parts of the psyche, from the shallowest levels to the deepest atavistic memories. One such man was Austin Osman Spare ...» — Skinner cierra su capítulo cabalístico anunciando a los artistas que usan ese saber para hacer llaves de la psique, y nombra a Spare.

«Aleister Crowley described this book as “the best text-book of Applied Qabalah.» — la nota al pie con el juicio de Crowley sobre The Canon de J. Stirling, que Skinner cita; cita de aparato.

«Figure 6: 'The Earthly and Heavenly Mystery' - drawing from The Works of Jacob Boehme. The central inscriptions are the words purportedly nailed to Christ's cross.» — el pie de la lámina sexta, tomada de las obras de Jacob Boehme.

«Figure 7: 'The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil' - drawing from The Secret Symbols of the Rosicrucians.» — el pie de la lámina séptima, tomada de los símbolos secretos de los rosacruces.

«Figure 8: The Rose Cross, central symbol of the Rosicrucian Order of the Golden Dawn.» — el pie de la lámina octava, la Rosa Cruz como símbolo central de la orden.

«Figure 9: The Vault of Christian Rosencreutz. From top left, clockwise: The Ceiling of the Vault; The Floor of the Vault; The Circular Altar; The Rose and Cross.» — el pie de la lámina novena, las cuatro vistas de la bóveda de Christian Rosencreutz.

«If the depths of our minds conceal strange forces capable of augumenting or conquering those on the surface, it is in our greatest interest to capture them.» — el epígrafe que encabeza la Sección II, The World of Shadows, atribuido a André Breton; la capa de texto imprime *augumenting*.

«Austin Spare, illustrator extraordinary, man of sigils, explorer of atavisms and vehicle for phantoms, was born at midnight on 31 December 1886, in a suburb of London.» — Drury abre el capítulo sobre Spare con los cuatro títulos con que lo nombra y con su nacimiento a medianoche del último día de 1886.

«Today he is beginning to emerge from his posthumous obscurity. His drawings and paintings, demoniac but strangely beautiful, are being rediscovered in the same way that Beardsley's were. His writings, which expound a system of probing the subconscious and the powers latent in man, have not yet been fully explained.» — Drury mide el redescubrimiento de Spare contra el de Beardsley y declara sin explicar del todo los escritos donde expone su sistema; el tramo se corta antes de la llamada de nota.

«The aim of this chapter, therefore, is to present and, it is hoped, provide a useful commentary upon the theories of this remarkable man who died virtually unnoticed in 1956.» — Drury declara el propósito del capítulo y fecha la muerte de Spare, que dice pasó casi inadvertida.

«Spare was probably the first modern occultist to evolve a self-contained working hypothesis about the nature of psychic energy and its manifestation, which could be applied without all the paraphernalia of traditional rituals, grimoires and magical incantations.» — Drury adjudica a Spare la primera hipótesis moderna y autónoma sobre la energía psíquica, aplicable sin el aparato de los rituales tradicionales.

«His system of sigils shows how an effort of will, when focused on the subconscious, can unleash the most amazing psychic energy.» — Drury resume el sistema de sigilos como voluntad enfocada sobre el subconsciente.

«Spare's writing style is complicated and occasionally, like Crowley's, too personalised to fathom. There emerges, however, a certain rationale, which in itself is lucid and simple in conception, and undoubtedly significant in its application» — Drury objeta a la prosa de Spare lo mismo que a la de Crowley, estar demasiado personalizada, y aun así le reconoce un razonamiento lúcido.

«When he was 16, Spare won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art, and in the early years of the 20th century he was commissioned to illustrate a handful of books» — Drury fecha la beca de Spare a los dieciséis años y sus primeros encargos de ilustración; el tramo se corta antes del primer título, cuya fecha entre paréntesis dispara la guarda anticosido.

«In the early '20s he was co-editor, with Clifford Bax, of an excellent illustrated literary magazine called The Golden Hind which ran for eight quarterly issues (1922-24) before being discontinued. It contained a number of Spare's drawings, mostly of sumptuous fleshly women, occasionally shown with atavistic characteristics - some had deer's heads, for example.» — Drury consigna la coedición de The Golden Hind con Clifford Bax, sus ocho números y los dibujos de Spare con mujeres de rasgos atávicos.

«Also featured were articles by Aldous Huxley, Alec Waugh and Havelock Ellis, as well as illustrations by such brilliant 'decadents' as Harry Clarke, Alastair and John Austen.» — Drury nombra a los colaboradores de esa revista, entre ellos Huxley y los ilustradores decadentes que reaparecen en el capítulo Phantasy in Art.

«Despite these encouraging early signs. Spare's life was lived mainly out of the mainstream of contemporary ideas.» — Drury sitúa la vida de Spare fuera de la corriente principal de las ideas de su tiempo; el tramo arranca después de dos llamadas de nota pegadas, releídas en el crudo.

«concepts, his own occult philosophy which he wrote down and illustrated admirably in a few now very rare books, that would seem to be the most potent reminder of his genius.» — Drury pone los libros raros de Spare por encima de todo lo demás como recuerdo de su genio; el tramo arranca donde el corte de plana dejó la frase.

«His life resembled a vortex caught up within a framework from which it had to burst free to take its fullest effect.» — Drury da la imagen con que lee la vida de Spare: un vórtice que debía reventar su marco.

«Spare's art and philosophy evolves from a traditionalist approach into something quite his own. He moves from a style resembling Edmund J. Sullivan, the well known black and white illustrator, to a frenzy of detail in which both symbols and subject are interfused; from a seemingly orthodox mysticism to an atavistic occultism which involved regressing through countless bestial intrangencies within the subconscious, to the final source of creation.» — Drury traza el recorrido de Spare de Edmund J. Sullivan a la interfusión de símbolo y asunto, y del misticismo ortodoxo al ocultismo atávico que regresa por las intransigencias bestiales del subconsciente; la capa de texto imprime *intrangencies*.

«Spare visited Egypt during World War I and was no doubt strongly impressed by the solemn, magnetic presence of the ancient Egyptian pantheon. Near-Eastern deities of all grades and significance abound in his drawings.» — Drury adjudica a la estancia egipcia de Spare la presencia del panteón antiguo en sus dibujos.

«But Spare's first book betrays a background most strongly influenced by another, related, mystery tradition: the Qabalah. This brand of Jewish mysticism which modern occultists claim was passed down as a secret tradition concurrent with, if not earlier than, Christianity, has provided the main basis of Western Magic, especially in its outline of various divine names, or 'words of power'. These are verbal representations of an aspect of a deity otherwise too abstract to represent.» — Drury pone la cábala como el fondo más fuerte del primer libro de Spare y la lee como base de la magia occidental por sus nombres divinos.

«The order of the Golden Dawn had predominantly Qabalistic leanings and made use of these God names in its rituals, although Egyptian deities were also frequently alluded to. Most significantly for our argument, it is believed that around 1910 Austin Spare was a member of the A.'. A.'. (Argentium Astrum: The Silver Star), an occult group, some of whose teachings Aleister Crowley derived from the Golden Dawn.» — Drury consigna como creencia, no como hecho probado, la membresía de Spare en el Argentium Astrum hacia 1910.

«As far back as the publication in February 1905 of a limited edition of Earth: Inferno, Spare had been developing his ideas along at least semi-traditional Qabalistic patterns (although no one would suggest that the Golden Dawn and its derivatives were purely academic).» — Drury fecha en Earth: Inferno el arranque de las ideas semitradicionales de Spare y acota entre paréntesis que ni la Golden Dawn ni sus derivados eran academia.

«At this stage Spare tends to be dualistic: he sees things generally as either positive or negative, spiritual or materialistic, real or delusory. Human existence for him is a continuing sequence of lives during which man learns to cope with the problems and adverse situations which arise in direct relation to the ability inherent in his personality.» — Drury describe el dualismo del primer Spare y su idea de la existencia humana como secuencia de vidas ajustada a la capacidad de cada personalidad.

«The unenlightened meanwhile become bogged down in empty traditions and activities devoid of vitality. Furthermore they fail to perceive the principle KIA,» — Drury opone a eso al no iluminado, atascado en tradiciones vacías y ciego al principio KIA; el tramo se corta en el límite de plana.

«Spare's name for 'Ain Soph', which is the one Source behind all manifestation, and the one Truth behind all illusions.» — Drury identifica el KIA de Spare con el Ain Soph cabalístico, fuente única y verdad única; el tramo se corta antes del asterisco de llamada.

«ought to shed his dependency on his material security which enshrouds him in 'conventionality', and inquire instead beneath his 'mask' into his subconscious. This probing towards the macrocosm enabled man to realise his full potential. What man himself was, and what he could attain as an individual. Spare called ZOS.» — Drury expone el programa de Spare: dejar la seguridad material, mirar bajo la máscara hacia el subconsciente, y llama ZOS a lo que el hombre es y puede alcanzar.

«His whole theory then hinges on the relationship between KIA, the Primal Energy, and ZOS, the human vehicle for receiving it. This was an inward, spiritual activity in Spare's view because he believed, as all mystics do, that the Godhead lay within.» — Drury fija el eje de la teoría de Spare en la relación entre KIA como energía primordial y ZOS como vehículo humano, y la da por actividad interior.

«Contemplating himself, he pondered on his own 'unreal self as humanity saw it', and came to the conclusion that he should follow the beckoning of the naked 'Primitive Woman', the Universal Mother of Nature, who could guide him pantheistically back to the Source.» — Drury cuenta el paso siguiente de Spare: seguir a la Mujer Primitiva desnuda, Madre Universal de la Naturaleza, de vuelta a la Fuente.

«This 'journey' which Spare describes is one within the psyche, and even in his earliest illustrated book he employs the effective device of giving symbols and ordinary depictions equal pictorial emphasis so that one is never quite sure what is 'real' in his drawings.» — Drury lee el recurso pictórico de Spare, dar igual peso a símbolos y figuras, como modo de volver indecidible qué es real en el dibujo.

«The mystical quest is undertaken beyond 'the parapet of the subconscious' and this too is rendered as a literal circular pathway along which visionless old men dodder hopelessly looking to their candles for light, unaware of the 'Great Beyond'.» — Drury describe el parapeto del subconsciente dibujado como sendero circular por el que andan viejos sin visión alumbrándose con velas.

«People who are unable to rise above their material environment, says Spare, frequently take things on their face value; they are unable to perceive symbolic connotations.» — Drury adjudica a Spare la tesis de que quien no se levanta de su entorno material toma las cosas por su valor aparente.

«Spare shows us a depraved young man making lustful advances to the 'Universal Woman' in his failure to see beyond her enticing outward appearance. It is clearly a question of insight, for otherwise the wise, all-seeing Sophia of the Gnosis is mistaken for the Scarlet Woman of Babylon.» — Drury lee el dibujo del joven que confunde a la Sofía de la gnosis con la Mujer Escarlata de Babilonia como cuestión de discernimiento.

«Spare himself did not commit this error: "I strayed with her, into the path direct. Hail! the Jewel in the lotus!"» — la frase de Spare que Drury cita para decir que él no cayó en esa confusión.

«Mystics believe that Union with the Godhead is achieved when man is totally harmonised both within himself and externally with all things. It is the realisation that both macrocosm and microcosm are essentially the» — Drury enuncia la condición mística de la Unión: armonía interior y exterior y reconocimiento de que macrocosmos y microcosmos son lo mismo; el tramo se corta en el límite de plana y sigue con *same that shatters man's ego or insularity, and leads to the Great Liberation*.

«same that shatters man's ego or insularity, and leads to the Great Liberation.» — la continuación de la condición mística: el reconocimiento que rompe el ego y lleva a la Gran Liberación; el tramo arranca donde el corte de plana dejó la frase.

«So we find Spare saying "I myself am Heaven and Hell": in other words Austin Spare, in 1905 at least, was still an ego whose positive and negative qualities had not yet been reconciled or worked out.» — Drury lee la frase de Spare de 1905 como señal de un ego cuyos polos aún no estaban reconciliados.

«The process of harmonising these opposites in one's nature is a crucial one; Spare in his later work became highly aware of the need to overcome 'dualitv' in all its forms.» — Drury consigna que el Spare tardío se volvió muy consciente de la necesidad de vencer la dualidad; la capa de texto imprime *dualitv*.

«It is said, traditionally, that when one starts to evolve beyond the framework of the ego-centred personality, disillusionment may ensue because in the act of transcendence there is a tendency to become uprooted from humanity: correspondingly there is no longer any measure of achievement and no tangible gauge of 'progress'.» — Drury explica el desarraigo que sigue a salir del marco del ego: sin medida de logro ni indicador de progreso.

«Hence the term 'the black night of the mystic', when one feels cut off from the world and simultaneously unable to perceive any final meaning. It is only after a great period of mental anguish that the vision of the light of God begins to dawn within the minds of those worthy to perceive it.» — Drury nombra la noche negra del místico como ese corte respecto del mundo y pone la visión de la luz de Dios después de una larga angustia.

«The barrenness of this life but remains, yet in despair we begin to see true light. In weakness we can become strong. Revere the KIA and your mind will become tranquil."» — la frase de Spare que Drury cita a propósito: en la desesperación empieza a verse la luz verdadera y en la debilidad se puede ser fuerte.

«In the same way that the purity of aspiration is its own judge, the mystical endeavour cannot afford to be mediocre. C>ne must be thoroughly involved and not merely a dabbler.» — Drury sostiene que el empeño místico no admite mediocridad ni diletantismo; la capa de texto imprime *C>ne* donde el libro dice *One*.

«Spare is quick to point out that the 'normal' run of things frequently involves only a half-hearted commitment: most people give only part of their time to enacting their beliefs.» — Drury adjudica a Spare la objeción al compromiso a medias de la mayoría con lo que dice creer.

«I know thy works. That are neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou are lukewarm. And neither cold not hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth ..."» — los dos versículos del Apocalipsis que Spare pone por texto a la ilustración The Inferno of the Normal, según Drury; la capa de texto pone puntos donde el libro corta los versos con comas.

«bodies - the groping masses - are presented to view; these are the people who do not 'experience' but hide behind the curtain of Faith. Spare is entirely ruthless in his visual expressions, for his methods deal with self-realisation not self-trickery.» — Drury describe el dibujo de las masas que se esconden tras la cortina de la Fe y declara despiadado el método de Spare; el tramo arranca donde el corte de plana dejó la frase.

«A well known concept in occultism involves the confrontation, on an inner plane of consciousness, with the so-called 'Dweller on the Threshold'. A vile creature, an embodiment of corruption, decay, vice, and sheer horror, it is none other than the accumulated self, the ego, presented to the onlooker as the anthropomorphic representation of his collected sin in incarnation.» — Drury define al Morador del Umbral como el yo acumulado, el ego, con figura antropomorfa del pecado reunido en la encarnación.

«As a ghastly vision of one's 'karmic total' it has to be mentally overcome (first acknowledged, then transcended). It is not until this moment that the individual can reach beyond such degradation and realise the Divine nature behind his own appearance.» — Drury fija los dos tiempos de la operación, reconocer y trascender, como condición para alcanzar lo divino tras la propia apariencia.

«We realise our insignificance to the incomprehensible intellect of the Absolute KIA (the Omniscient) and find out how subcutaneous our Attainments are!"» — la frase de Spare que Drury cita sobre lo epidérmico de los propios logros ante el KIA absoluto.

«Man has to ascend from the grime of the 'Dweller on the Threshold': the self has to undergo a purgative death and be spiritually reborn as Divine.» — Drury enuncia el paso obligado: muerte purgativa del yo y renacimiento espiritual.

«This level of attainment on the Qabalistic glyph, the 'Tree of Life', is represented by the sixth Sephirah, Tiphareth, an emanation which symbolises both spiritual renewal, and also all gods who are slain and rise again (Jesus, Osiris, etc.).» — Drury sitúa ese grado en Tiphareth, la sefirá de la renovación espiritual y de los dioses que mueren y resucitan.

«In portrayal. Spare shows the skulls of lions lurking behind a disconsolate woman who is tied by chains to the feet of a cross on which the legs of a nailed body are just discernible. The title is 'Bodily Suffering, a resurrection of crime unpaid'; the theme is one of a Saviour figure (Christ) enduring and thus nullifying man's 'karmic debt'.» — Drury describe el dibujo Bodily Suffering y lo lee como figura del Salvador que anula la deuda kármica.

«This opens up the possibility that man may be rescued from the fate of a terrible death (symbolised by the skulls of lions); terrible because without the chance of rebirth or resurrection man's existence is totally and devastatinglv meaningless.» — Drury saca del mismo dibujo la condición de sentido: sin renacimiento ni resurrección la existencia queda sin sentido; la capa de texto imprime *devastatinglv*.

«Despite Austin Spare's acknowledgement of the Christ-attainment, however, he remained cynical about existing religious institutions.» — Drury separa en Spare el reconocimiento del logro crístico del juicio sobre las instituciones religiosas; el tramo se corta antes de la llamada de nota.

«He was also critical of occultists who. like the Church, claimed to be carrying on a Tradition. This. Spare believed, led by its very nature to a loss of vitality.» — la nota al pie: Drury extiende la crítica de Spare a los ocultistas que se dicen continuadores de una tradición; cita de aparato, con los puntos que la capa de texto pone por comas.

«The ceremonial magician sets his stage for the rehearsal of reality with all the traditional weapons: but ZOS (Austin Spare) maintains that this is unnecessary mummery» — la síntesis que Kenneth Grant hace de la posición de Spare, citada por Drury en nota: el aparato ceremonial es pantomima innecesaria.

«he called "obelisks of humanity's insignificance," projecting "incapacity, the imaginations of fear, the veneer of superstition ..."» — las palabras de Spare sobre las instituciones religiosas que Drury cita; el tramo arranca donde el corte de plana dejó la frase.

«Not only was the Church too fundamentalist to transcend its own security in materialism, and its own ego; it was inherently unnecessary.» — Drury resume la objeción de Spare a la Iglesia: demasiado fundamentalista para trascender su propio ego y, además, innecesaria.

«For Spare believed that every human being, however 'degraded', is essentially Divine, although most failed to perceive it: "I have not yet seen a man who is not God already," declares Spare paradoxically.» — Drury adjudica a Spare la tesis de la divinidad de todo ser humano, con la paradoja de no haber visto todavía a un hombre que no sea ya Dios.

«All man had to do was confront himself as he really was, and he would find God. Necessarily this involves the death of the ego, for it is the ego that insists we are distinct from other people and hence isolates us from the greater realisation of Unity.» — Drury pone la muerte del ego como condición, porque es el ego el que separa y aísla de la Unidad.

«Spare therefore thought of death as a positive thing because it destroyed the pretence of personality: "From behind. Destiny works with Death.» — Drury explica por qué Spare tenía la muerte por positiva: destruye la pretensión de la personalidad.

«On entering at the Gates of Life, Lo, I behold Knowledge the Jester. Capsizing the Feast of Illusion, The drawing aside false Truth. He shewed us all - The World, The Flesh, and The Being. This is the Alpha and Omega ..."» — la visión cabalística de Spare que Drury transcribe, con el Bufón del Conocimiento volcando el Festín de la Ilusión.

«In the Qabalah, Kether diagrammatically represents the first emanation of God, the act of Creation 'out of nothing'. This is the highest level spiritual man can attain.» — Drury identifica Kether con la primera emanación y con el grado más alto al alcance del hombre espiritual; el tramo se corta antes de la llamada de nota, que define a los avatares como los que se resisten a disolverse en la divinidad para enseñar.

«It is shown symbolically on the Tarot trump, corresponding to the Path leading to Kether, as the Jester or Fool.» — Drury asigna a ese sendero el triunfo del Bufón o Loco.

«precedes it. As a device which maintains the 'secrecy' of mystical symbols by making them outwardly nonsensical, the Jester is suitably chosen, for a fool is one who knows 'no-thing'.» — Drury explica la elección del Loco como recurso para mantener el secreto haciendo el símbolo aparentemente absurdo, porque el necio es el que no sabe nada; el tramo arranca donde el corte de plana dejó la frase.

«He is accordingly the wisest among all men for he has reached the highest possible state of consciousness. He has seen KIA, or negative existence.» — Drury invierte el sentido del Loco: es el más sabio porque alcanzó el estado más alto y vio el KIA, la existencia negativa.

«All of this involves a relatively orthodox Western mysticism, but Spare was already developing his own individualised philosophy, devoid of all dogma or 'belief '. He was steadily eliminating - or so he hoped - the 'vices' of "fear, faith ... science and the like," and was preparing for the plunge into his own unknown, his inner self.» — Drury marca el punto en que Spare se separa del misticismo occidental ortodoxo hacia una filosofía sin dogma ni creencia.

«With these ideas in mind, he came to write a book entitled The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love):The Psychology of Ecstasy, which first appeared in 1913.1 In it were a number of important new concepts.» — Drury fecha en 1913 The Book of Pleasure y lo da por el libro de los conceptos nuevos.

«Now it is true that many occultists prior to this date had been emphasising the place of the 'will' in magical procedures. Florence Farr had outlined the need for intense mental concentration in her articles in The Occult» — Drury consigna que la voluntad ya venía siendo asunto de los ocultistas y nombra a Florence Farr; el tramo se corta antes del año entre paréntesis y el título aparece como *The Occult Reihew* en la capa de texto.

«and Aleister Crowley himself emphasised a form of mastery in "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law," by which he meant acting in accordance with the 'higher Will' or true nature.» — Drury lee la fórmula de Crowley como obrar conforme a la Voluntad superior o naturaleza verdadera.

«Austin Spare adopted this view too, but only up to a point: he then moved in a different direction.» — Drury marca hasta dónde acompaña Spare a Crowley y dónde se aparta.

«Firstly Spare dealt with the methods of concentrating the will. Since the degree of effectiveness of any action is related to a thorough understanding of the command behind the action. Spare developed a way of condensing his will so that it was more readily grasped as a totality. He did this by writing his 'will' (desire) in sentence form, and by combining the basic letters, without repetition, into a pattern shape or 'sigil'. This could then be simplified and impressed upon the subconscious.» — Drury da el método del sigilo: escribir el deseo en forma de frase y combinar sus letras sin repetición en una figura que se imprime en el subconsciente.

«Sigils are made by combining the letters of the alphabet simplified. Illustration: the word 'Woman' in sigil form is:» — la definición del sigilo en palabras de Spare, citada por Drury; lo que sigue son las figuras dibujadas, que la capa de texto no resuelve.

«The idea being to obtain a simple form which can be easily visualised at will...» — el remate de la explicación de Spare sobre el sigilo, después de los ejemplos dibujados.

«As has been said before, Spare spoke of KIA as the Supreme Principle in the Universe: it was akin to a dynamic expanding Vortex of Energy, ever in a state of Becoming.» — Drury repite la definición del KIA como vórtice dinámico de energía en Devenir permanente.

«Man was normally unaware of its full potential simply because he did not let it manifest in himself ("Are we not ever standing on our own volcano?"). Instead, he shut himself off by various 'insulating' devices employed by the ego.» — Drury adjudica a Spare la imagen del hombre de pie sobre su propio volcán y el cierre del paso por los aislantes del ego.

«The only way in which the Energy could manifest (or be 'aroused' to use the metaphor applied to Kundalini) was by thoroughly opening oneself to it. It was when the individual was in a state of mental 'vacuity' (ultimate openness) that KIA became "sensitive to the subtle suggestion of the sigil."» — Drury fija la condición para que el KIA se vuelva sensible al sigilo: la vacuidad mental, apertura última, comparada con el despertar de la kundalini.

«This state could be arrived at by emptying the mind of all its thought-forms in an effort to 'visualise' non-manifestation, e.g. 'blackness', 'emptiness'. In turn, this usually involved inducing meditation-leading-to-a-state-of-trance, in which the individual became oblivious of his surroundings as he focused only on the Inner Void.» — Drury describe el procedimiento de vaciado: visualizar la no manifestación y entrar en trance por meditación hasta quedar ajeno al entorno.

«He would now be consciously attempting to transcend the physical, by eliminating its dominance of the senses. The contemplative state of mind, with its 'latencies', would become 'reality', rather than the earlier environment of the 'waking consciousness'.» — Drury declara el cambio buscado: que el estado contemplativo y sus latencias pasen a ser la realidad en vez del entorno de la vigilia.

«Because we all proceed from the Godhead originally, argued Spare, it should be possible to trace back through the mind to its First Cause.» — Drury expone el argumento de Spare para la regresión: si todos venimos de la divinidad, se puede desandar la mente hasta la Causa Primera.

«embodiments or personalities, right back to the Beginning.» — Drury cierra el argumento de la regresión: el subconsciente como fuente potencial de todas las encarnaciones previas hasta el Principio; el tramo arranca donde el corte de plana dejó la frase y se corta antes de la llamada de nota.

«Know the subconscious to be an epitome of all experience and wisdom, past incarnations as men, animals, birds, vegetable life, etc: everything that has, and ever will, exist. Each being a stratum in the order of evolution. Naturally then, the lower we probe into these strata, the earlier will be the forms of life we arrive at: the last is the Almighty Simplicity."» — la frase de Spare que Drury cita: el subconsciente por compendio de toda experiencia, con los estratos de la evolución y la Simplicidad Todopoderosa al fondo.

«Spare's intention was to gain knowledge of his concealed states, through 'regression', and eventually to lose his own self or individuality (ZOS) in the indescribably ecstatic Union with KIA, whose energy he had now come to consider to be basically sexual.» — Drury declara el propósito de Spare, perder el ZOS en la unión con el KIA, y consigna que este acabó teniendo esa energía por sexual; el tramo se corta antes de la llamada de nota, que advierte que la mayoría de los ocultistas llaman evolutivo a su método y Spare lo llama regresión.

«The dark void of the mind, emptied of thought-forms through an act of concentration, could now be penetrated by the will by employing a sigil suitable for one's purpose. According to ability, one could, in theory at least, project the sigil to all possible recesses of the subconscious and hence gain access to the entire sphere of the imagination.» — Drury expone la operación: vaciado el hueco por concentración, la voluntad lo penetra con el sigilo y en teoría alcanza toda la esfera de la imaginación.

«Spare believed that the self lived ‘in millions of forms', and that it was obliged to experience ‘every conceivable thing', i.e. all the infinite possibilities inherent in the manifested Universe. (They were also inherent in KIA but the self didn’t realise that). Any incomplete existence or situation required a reincarnation to finalise it or make it whole: “1 have incarnated that which I need to rationalise."» — la nota al pie con la doctrina de la reencarnación en Spare: el yo vive en millones de formas y toda existencia incompleta pide otra que la complete; cita de aparato.

«(1) The ability to derive a suitable sigil.» — el primero de los tres factores que Drury pone como condición del método.

«The ability to prevent random thought-forms from unintentionally disturbing the 'black void' and thus rendering 'impure' the individual's attempt to be a pure vehicle for the energies of KIA.» — el segundo factor: impedir que formas de pensamiento al azar enturbien el vacío negro.

«(3) The ability to reach further into the subconscious by totally renouncing the worldly grip on one's aspirations. Ultimately the task involved destroying the Ego, a most unworldly activity!» — el tercer factor: renunciar del todo a la presa mundana sobre las propias aspiraciones, hasta destruir el ego.

«This last condition was the hardest to achieve. Spare says that 'total vacuity' is 'difficult' and 'unsafe' for those 'governed by morality, complexes, etc.', i.e. all the 'superstitions' and intellectual conceptions that man has surrounded himself with.» — Drury recoge la advertencia del propio Spare: la vacuidad total es difícil e insegura para quien está gobernado por la moral y los complejos.

«Spare believed that to become totally receptive to the influx of Energy one would have to cast aside all contrived or finite rationalisations.» — Drury fija la condición de receptividad: dejar caer toda racionalización finita.

«This state of being could be achieved by any discipline nullifying the ego or intellect, but in human terms it was hard, if not virtually impossible, to arrive at. Spare therefore tried to think of various situations where the rationale was minimal or absent.» — Drury explica por qué Spare buscó situaciones de raciocinio mínimo en vez de una disciplina.

«The first of these was the state of physical exhaustion. If one had a 'desire' or 'concentrated thought' in such a circumstance. Spare argued, the mind would become "worried, because of the non-fulfilment of such desire, and seek relief. By seizing this mind and living, the resultant vacuity would become sensitive to the subtle suggestion of the sigil."» — el primer método de Spare según Drury, el agotamiento físico, con la frase del propio Spare sobre la vacuidad que queda sensible al sigilo.

«In other words, by exhausting the body one made it impossible for normal mental aspirations or commands to be carried out physically. The mind was therefore 'forced' into manifesting more transcendental concepts, embodied in this case in the sigil.» — Drury explica el mecanismo del agotamiento: imposibilitada la ejecución física, la mente se ve forzada a lo transcendente; el tramo se corta antes de la llamada de nota, que compara el método con el de los derviches giradores.

«Sheer exhaustion can be brought about in a number of ways, but a more notorious one in mystical circles is the sexual act itself.» — Drury nombra el acto sexual como la vía más notoria de agotamiento en los círculos místicos.

«mind was well known at the time Spare was writing. It is probably also the basis of 'the vision of the Black Sabbath'. Aleister Crowley and Victor Neuberg, who had a homosexual relationship, employed it on a mountain in Algeria when they invoked into vision the entity Choronzon.» — Drury consigna la técnica tántrica del orgasmo como trampolín visionario y el caso de Crowley y Victor Neuberg invocando a Choronzon en Argelia; el tramo arranca donde el corte de plana dejó la frase y la capa de texto imprime *Tan trie*.

«The second method lay in exploiting the mental state of extreme disappointment, experienced, say, when one lost faith in a close friend, or when a cherished ideal had been destroyed: "When fundamental disappointment is experienced the symbol enshrining a quota of belief is destroyed. In some cases the individual is unable to survive the disillusionment. But if at such times the moment is seized upon and consciously experienced for its own sake, the vacuum attracts into itself the entire content of belief inherent in the person at the time of disappointment."» — el segundo método de Spare según Drury, la desilusión extrema, con la frase del propio Spare sobre el vacío que atrae hacia sí el contenido entero de la creencia.

«Spare is saying, in effect, that when we thoroughly lose faith in a belief or ideal, we are given the option of transcending it, and transcendence of belief leads to ecstasy, as we are sucked into the vortex of KIA.» — Drury glosa ese método como opción de trascender la creencia perdida, y la trascendencia como éxtasis.

«Both these methods involve rising above a symbol, 'leaping beyond the sigil', and 'destroying an Ego-ideal', respectively, so that the organic reality of KIA is allowed full expression in the human vehicle.» — Drury empareja los dos métodos por lo que tienen en común: saltar por encima del sigilo y destruir un ideal del yo para que el KIA se exprese entero.

«Kenneth Grant notes that a most important idea of Austin Spare's was to allow desires implanted by sigils (at times when the ego was negated) to "germinate secretly and unobtrusively in the subconscious.» — la observación de Kenneth Grant que Drury recoge: los deseos implantados por sigilos germinan en secreto en el subconsciente.

«The desires would 'grow' in the seedbed of the mind until they became ripe and reached back down into the conscious mind. In this way one could manipulate one's own psychic 'reality'.» — Drury sigue la imagen del semillero hasta la vuelta del deseo maduro a la mente consciente.

«However, Austin Spare seems to have preferred a third approach, which in a sense implied the other two, and which could be used for both generalised changes in the personality and also specifics. This involved self-induced trance in which the body became rigid, ceased to function, and underwent what Spare called 'the Death Posture'.» — Drury nombra el tercer método y el preferido: el trance autoinducido con el cuerpo rígido, la Postura de la Muerte.

«(This is similar to the second stage of Pranayama in Yoga, when after profuse perspiration the body as a whole becomes rigid. The third stage is a series of often quite painful spasms, described as 'jumping about like a frog', before the fourth» — Drury compara la Postura de la Muerte con las etapas del pranayama; el tramo se corta en el límite de plana y sigue con *and rarely attained stage of levitation*.

«Gazing at your reflection1 (e.g. in a tall mirror) "till it is blurred and you know not the gazer, close your eyes and visualise. The light (always an X in curious evolutions) that is seen should be held onto, never letting go, till the effort is forgotten; this gives a feeling of immensity (which sees a small form), whose limit you cannot reach."» — el ejercicio preliminar en palabras de Spare: mirar el propio reflejo hasta desconocer al que mira, cerrar los ojos y sostener la luz vista hasta olvidar el esfuerzo.

«The Ego is swept up as a leaf in a fierce gale," he wrote, "In the fleetness of the indeterminable, that which is always about to happen, becomes its truth. Things that are self-evident are no longer obscure, as by his (i.e. Spare's) own will he pleases; know this at the negation of all faith by living it, the end of the duality of consciousness."» — la frase de Spare que Drury cita sobre el ego arrastrado y el fin de la dualidad de la consciencia.

«Here Spare is alluding to the KIA Dimension, which is outside Time, but which is nevertheless the central basis of all potential. Finite occurrences are latent in the unmanifest: when people 'open' themselves, certain aspects of the KIA can manifest.» — Drury lee esa frase como alusión a la dimensión del KIA, fuera del Tiempo y base de todo lo potencial.

«In summary his 'Death Posture' is, then, a procedure of conquering finite limitations. It seems to resemble, in effect, what other writers have called 'astral projection'.» — Drury resume la Postura de la Muerte como conquista de los límites finitos y la acerca a lo que otros llaman proyección astral.

«This term unfortunately conjures up all sorts of pseudo-theosophical connotations. It refers nevertheless to the hazy, variable, ever-changing realm of the subconscious with all its sense impressions and memories.» — Drury objeta a la expresión proyección astral sus connotaciones seudoteosóficas y acota a qué se refiere él.

«Occultists believe it is possible to wander consciously in this realm, through an act of 'projection' (will) which depends firstly on imagination.» — Drury consigna como creencia de los ocultistas el paseo consciente por ese reino, dependiente ante todo de la imaginación.

«Spare considered that this ^wrcise should be practised daily, and its results are more fully describM in his next major book which was called The Focus on Life» — Drury remite al libro siguiente de Spare para los resultados del ejercicio; la capa de texto imprime *^wrcise* y *describM*, y el título como *The Focus on Life* donde el catálogo del propio libro da The Focus of Life; el tramo se corta antes del año entre paréntesis.

«But he had already alluded to the implications of the practice in an overall way.» — Drury declara que Spare ya había apuntado antes el alcance de esa práctica.

«Pleasure for Spare was just this cosmic Realisation achieved by overcoming the dualities of the normal non- transcendent world.» — Drury define el Placer de Spare como realización cósmica por superación de las dualidades del mundo no trascendente; el tramo se corta antes de la llamada de nota, que trae la fórmula de Spare sobre el Hermafrodita y el Eunuco.

«For example he believed that he could transcend good and evil by rejecting the distinction, and he had a similar attitude to sex.» — Drury da el ejemplo con que Spare aplicaba esa superación: rechazar la distinción entre bien y mal, y lo mismo con el sexo.

«Man implies Woman. I transcend these by the Hermaphrodite, this again implies a Eunuch» — la fórmula de Spare que Drury cita en nota, y que la nota traduce al Árbol: el Hermafrodita en Kether y el Eunuco o No Sexo del Ain Soph.

«animated by consciousness, and it is this consciousness which is the sole judge of reality. Because our physical body acts in a three-dimensional way in our waking consciousness, we tend to equate reality with the 'world of the senses'.» — Drury enuncia la premisa: la consciencia como único juez de lo real, y la ecuación corriente entre realidad y mundo de los sentidos; el tramo arranca donde el corte de plana dejó la frase.

«Now if it were possible to visualise, in the imagination, a simple shape, e.g. a sphere or a cube, and by an effort of will to transfer one's consciousness by auto-suggestion to it1 so that one felt oneself to be the sphere or cube, to be 'in' it and to 'inhabit it', reality would then appear to be of the same quality as imagination was previously.» — Drury describe el traslado de la consciencia por autosugestión a una forma visualizada, con lo que se invertiría la escala de lo real; el tramo lleva dentro la llamada de nota que compara el ejercicio con las visiones tattwa.

«'Astral projection' is the passing into this very dimension, the creative psyche, the 'treasure house of images', through an act of determination.» — Drury define la proyección astral como paso a esa dimensión, la psique creativa, el tesoro de las imágenes.

«One side effect, however, is that with the extreme degree of mental detachment from everything other than the projected mental image (the cube, etc.), the body becomes numb and the individual sinks into a deep trance.» — Drury consigna el efecto colateral del desapego extremo: entumecimiento del cuerpo y trance profundo.

«However, the Death Posture as a concept was, for him, much more than an act of mental fantasy; it was an act involving a confrontation between the microcosm and the macrocosm, the individual Self which Spare called ZOS,3and the KIA or the 'Atmospheric T, the Infinite Potential. It was a question of directing one's will into the cosmic memory» — Drury declara que la Postura de la Muerte no era fantasía mental sino confrontación del ZOS con el KIA, el Yo Atmosférico y Potencial Infinito.

«The Death Posture provided the possibility of a link. The sigil confirmed the possibility.» — Drury reparte las dos funciones: la postura da la posibilidad del enlace y el sigilo la sostiene.

«A sigil, as indicated, is a visual condensation of the will. However, what we 'will' can often be based on ideas of grandeur and self-deception. Spare points out that if we imagine ourselves to be great we are not so necessarily, and all the desiring in the world can't alter the fact.» — Drury acota el sigilo con la objeción de Spare a la voluntad fundada en autoengaño.

«Realisation is not by the mere utterance of words ... but by the living act ... The will, the desire, the belief, lived as inseparable, become realisation ..."» — la frase de Spare que Drury cita: la realización por el acto vivido, con voluntad, deseo y creencia inseparables.

«Belief to be true must be organic and subconscious. The idea to be great can only become organic (i.e. 'true') at the time of vacuity and by giving it form. When conscious of the sigil form (any time but the magical) it should be repressed, a deliberate striving to forget it; by this is it active and dominates at the subconscious period; its form nourishes and allows it to become attached to the sub-conscious and become organic; that accomplished is its reality and realisation. The individual becomes his concept of greatness."» — la doctrina de Spare sobre el sigilo en sus propias palabras: hecho en la vacuidad, reprimido después a propósito para que obre en el subconsciente y se vuelva orgánico.

«In summary, beliefs need to be 'organic' not theoretical in their origin; organic realities originate with KIA and lie dormant in the subconscious; we can use a sigil to embody our desire, command or will, and it may relate to what we want to do or become; the sigil can grow in the subconscious but will lose its effect if it is consciously remembered: the sigil will eventually manifest as a 'true' aspect of the personality since it comes from within.» — Drury resume las cinco condiciones del método del sigilo, incluida la de perder efecto si se recuerda conscientemente.

«All geniuses have active subconsciousnesses and the less they are aware of the fact, the greater their accomplishments. The subconscious is exploited by desire reaching it.» — la frase de Spare que Drury cita sobre el genio y el subconsciente activo, tanto más eficaz cuanto menos consciente.

«This implies that geniuses not born, could be made.» — Drury saca de ahí que el genio podría hacerse y no solo nacer, y la nota adjudica la misma tesis a Crowley.

«Kenneth Grant, who knew Spare personally, tells of a situation where Spare needed to move a heavy load of timber without assistance. A sigil was required which involved great strength, so Spare constructed a suitable sentence: "This is my wish, to obtain the strength of a tiger."» — el caso que Kenneth Grant cuenta, citado por Drury: el sigilo construido para levantar una carga de madera.

«Spare closed his eyes for a while and visualised a picture which symbolised a wish for the strength of tigers (i.e. the final sigil above). Almost immediately he sensed an inner response. He then felt a tremendous upsurge of energy sweep through his body. For a moment he felt like a sapling bent by the onslaught of a mighty wind. With a great effort of will, he steadied himself and directed the force to its proper object. A great calm descended and he found himself able to carry the load easily."» — la continuación del relato de Grant: la respuesta interior, la oleada de energía y la carga levantada sin esfuerzo.

«Spare implied that no matter what method was used, one would arrive at 'the true sigil' for a given situation. This seems unlikely in view of the many different ways of expressing a desire.» — Drury objeta a Spare la unicidad del sigilo verdadero, dado el número de maneras de decir un deseo.

«What is essentially most important, however, is that the individual is concretising his will by deriving a symbol for it that seems valid and therefore is. There is no question of whether Spare's method is 'more correct' than another: it appeared to work for him and was therefore pragmatically useful. A sigil will work for you if you believe in it.» — Drury desplaza el criterio de la corrección a la eficacia: el sigilo vale por concretar la voluntad de quien lo hace, y funciona si se cree en él.

«Kenneth Grant makes it clear from his account that firstly dormant energy was awakened and then it was focused into a specialised activity.» — Drury separa los dos tiempos del relato de Grant: despertar la energía dormida y enfocarla.

«This was not always Spare's method, for in his more far-reaching 'atavistic resurgences' he allowed the influx of KIA to obsess him. His mind would become flooded with preternatural influences and there was no semblance of control.» — Drury opone a eso las resurgencias atávicas, donde Spare dejaba que el KIA lo obsesionara sin control.

«Strike at the highest ... death is failure. Go where thou fearest not. Has canst thou be great among men? Cast thyself forth! ... Retrogress to the point where knowledge ceases in that Law becomes its own spontaneity and is freedom ... This is the new atavism I would teach: Demand of God» — la exhortación de Spare que Drury cita: retroceder hasta donde cesa el conocimiento y la Ley se vuelve espontaneidad; el tramo se corta en el límite de plana y remata con *equality - Usurp!*.

«Thus the Death Posture, the first step, ultimately involves much more than mere transition. It involves the death of the Ego, an assault on the peak of Creation ('stealing the fire from Heaven'), and the utter negation of thought in supra-consciousness.» — Drury declara lo que la Postura de la Muerte implica de más: muerte del ego, asalto a la cima de la Creación y negación del pensamiento.

«But Spare at first found himself coming into contact with all sorts of forms and entities, and he came to see himself as a collection of consciousnesses many of which were bestial and hitherto unacknowledged ("This focus T, called consciousness, is unaware of its entire living embodiments"» — Drury consigna el primer resultado: Spare viéndose como colección de consciencias, muchas bestiales, que el yo focal desconoce.

«The waters became murky then muddy, and movement began.» — el arranque del sueño de Spare que Drury transcribe; el tramo se corta antes de dos llamadas de nota pegadas, una de las cuales trae la advertencia de Jung.

«Going nearer he observed a phosphorescent morass crowded with restless abortions of humanity and creatures - like struggling mud worms aimless and blind: an immense swamp of dissatisfaction, a desire smashed to pieces.» — la continuación del sueño: el fangal fosforescente con abortos de humanidad, ciénaga de insatisfacción.

«This quagmire was soon none other than a vision of the 'degraded' human situation, the 'Inferno of the Normal', the terrible lethargy of inertia, that Spare himself was trying to overcome. The going was difficult, but he endeavoured to rise above it.» — Drury lee el fangal del sueño como la situación humana degradada, el Inferno of the Normal que Spare quería superar.

«He was certain he had been there before by a staircase. But now there was no easy means of access. He would have to climb whatever served. After much painful effort he managed to reach and hang on to the balustrade of the upper floor. There he noticed innumerable strange effigies and new creations of humanity. He struggled further along to obtain an easy means of ingress ... when suddenly he observed another and more agile following him - who when reaching Aaos,3 clutched hold of him - shouting, 'where I cannot reach, thou too shalt not ascend!', their combined weight became too heavy - the balustrading collapsed and they both fell..."» — el resto del sueño: la balaustrada, las efigies extrañas y el perseguidor que se aferra a Aaos y los hace caer a los dos; la nota aclara que Aaos es extensión gnóstica de las iniciales de Spare.

«In his autobiography. Carl Jung warned against the possibility of allowing the symbolic contents of dreams and visions to be indulged in. rather than checked. Jung believed that the perception of dual, but intermingled, levels of awareness (e.g. atavism and reality) could lead to schizophrenia. One wonders if Spare would agree.» — la nota al pie en que Drury trae la advertencia de Jung sobre entregarse a los contenidos simbólicos de sueños y visiones, con el riesgo de esquizofrenia, y deja abierto si Spare la aceptaría; cita de aparato.

«Spare was thus dragged back from transcendence by his lower 'normal' self which resisted both the destruction of 'security' and the vision of unsuspected archetypes at higher levels of awareness.» — Drury lee la caída del sueño como el yo normal resistiéndose a perder la seguridad y a ver los arquetipos.

«But he was determined to indulge the 'pleasure' of Union with his Higher Self, which in The Focus of Life he describes in increasingly sexual terms: "Up! Up! My sexuality! and be a light unto all - that is in me."» — Drury consigna el giro sexual del lenguaje de Spare en The Focus of Life.

«Direct union with the awakened diverse forms of past incarnations, beyond which lay their ultimate focus, KIA, became his obsessive aim.» — Drury declara el fin obsesivo de Spare: la unión directa con las formas de encarnaciones pasadas y con el KIA que las enfoca.

«Macrocosmically this aim constituted the Vision of the true Universal Identity; the indulgence in all the earlier shapes and outgoings of manifested experience. United in the pleasure of Self-Recognition, this would become the Final Liberation.» — Drury traduce ese fin al plano macrocósmico como Visión de la Identidad Universal y Liberación Final por autorreconocimiento.

«The world of man, of morality, science and religious dogma could no longer claim him once he had achieved macrocosmic unity with the Primal Energy. He would pass beyond experience: "Abstinence from righteousness by total indiscrimination becomes limitlessness ..."» — Drury declara que la moral, la ciencia y el dogma dejan de tener parte una vez lograda la unidad con la Energía Primordial, y cita a Spare sobre la abstinencia de rectitud.

«There remained, however, the problem of the Devil and the nature of Evil. In The Focus of Life, Spare describes a terrible dream: and dreams become significant because he has previously stated that "in future my dreams shall interpret themselves as will" (i.e. in reaction to earlier 'subconscious demands' through sigils).» — Drury anuncia el problema del Diablo y del mal, y explica por qué los sueños cuentan: Spare había declarado que en adelante se interpretarían por sí como voluntad.

«In this dream he visits an undertaker's apartment where he is shown his wife's dead body. The coffin meanwhile has just been constructed.» — Drury sitúa el sueño en la funeraria, con el cadáver de la mujer de Spare y el ataúd recién hecho.

«given the choice of being burnt to death or buried alive with herl Naturally [he says] my choice was to be alone. But no such chance was to be mine ... I was buried alive with her corpse. With their [the undertaker's assistants] combined weight forcing on the lid. I thought I was dead, - for did I not hear the rushing winds? - when doubt crept into my soul. Then realisation of life dawned when I felt that cold corpse crushed against my body by the tightness of the coffin, - never have I realised such horror! With a mighty yell, my after-suspiration burst that overcrowded coffin» — el sueño en palabras de Spare: enterrado vivo con el cadáver de su mujer y el grito que revienta el ataúd; la capa de texto imprime *herl* donde el libro dice *her!*, y el troceo reemite la marca de plana en el límite de chunk y corta ahí la frase.

«into fragments. I arose thinking I was alone. But no, sitting by the corpse, amid the debris ... was the Devil grinning! To be alone and half alive with the Devil is not a welcome anti-climax ..."» — el remate del sueño: el Diablo sonriendo junto al cadáver entre los restos del ataúd.

«When you have proved that God is merely a name for the sex instinct, it appears to me not far to the perception that the sex instinct is God ...» — la frase de Crowley que Drury pone en nota al hilo de la sexualidad no modificada de Spare; cita de aparato.

«Then he spoke unto me: 'Coward! Where was thy courage? ... Ah! ah! Thou hast indeed willed power. Thou or I? What medicine for the dead Gods! Thou wretched scum of Littleness - heal thy gaping wounds, thou art more fitted to pray than prey.'"» — las palabras que el Diablo dirige a Spare en el sueño, citadas por Drury.

«Spare evidently succeeded in 'willing away' the Devil but he was obsessed with further doubts: "Perhaps," he says, "I became the Devil?" ...» — Drury consigna la duda con que Spare cierra el sueño, sin resolverla.

«We shall never know the answer of course, but the situation is reminiscent of one in which Aleister Crowley once found himself. He had reached a state of consciousness where he said of himself that: "I was in the death struggle with self: God and Satan fought for my soul... God conquered - now I have only one doubt left - which of the twain was God?"» — Drury empareja esa duda con la de Crowley en la lucha a muerte consigo mismo, según la cita que la nota remite a The Great Beast de John Symonds.

«Our only other clue to the workings of Spare's mind and its achievements rests in his evocative drawings, which are superbly executed and often depict in detail the 'atavistic resurgences' which Spare himself conjured up.» — Drury declara que el único otro indicio del trabajo mental de Spare son sus dibujos de resurgencias atávicas.

«The fact that they contain bestial elements in no way brands Spare as a diabolist because his method, as we have seen, involved 'regression' rather than the more orthodox 'evolution'.» — Drury niega que los elementos bestiales hagan diabolista a Spare y lo explica por el método de regresión en vez de evolución.

«The Law of Evolution," says Spare, "is retrogression of function government progression of attainment, i.e. the more wonderful our attainments are, the lower in the scale of Life the function that governs them. Man is complex, and to progress, must become simplified."» — la Ley de la Evolución en palabras de Spare: cuanto más alto el logro, más baja en la escala de la vida la función que lo gobierna, de donde la simplificación del hombre.

«Because more and more manifestations of KIA are appearing all the time through reincarnation, as the Source of Creation expands 'outwards', the 'true' direction is 'inwards' or 'backwards' to the First Cause.» — Drury deriva la dirección verdadera, hacia dentro y hacia atrás, de la expansión hacia fuera de la Fuente por reencarnación.

«The magnificent illustrations in The Book of Pleasure (Self-Love), which were drawn between 1909 and 1912, show an atavistic merging of forms.» — Drury fecha entre 1909 y 1912 las ilustraciones de The Book of Pleasure y las describe como fusión atávica de formas.

«portrays Spare as a winged head (consciousness) rising above the Naked Primitive Woman, then merging with an ibex shape which eventually becomes a deer skull.» — Drury describe el dibujo de la ascensión del ego: cabeza alada sobre la Mujer Primitiva desnuda, fundida en un íbice que acaba en calavera de ciervo; el tramo arranca después de la llamada de nota que da la fuente.

«One plausible interpretation of this important drawing could be: Mother Nature is the door to the Greater Reality which can be found only by penetrating things as they appear. The earlier animalian (and other) incarnations can then be explored subconsciously until the Ego finds its first point of existence» — Drury ofrece su lectura del dibujo como una entre varias: la Madre Naturaleza como puerta a la Realidad Mayor, y la exploración de las encarnaciones animales hasta el primer punto de existencia del ego.

«We will offer no final judgement on Austin Spare's way of thinking since it is uniquely phrased, and allows no immediate comparison with other schools within the occult tradition. It is quite another thing to say that, as a method, it has far-reaching implications and appears to work. It is therefore immensely significant.» — Drury se abstiene de juzgar el pensamiento de Spare por no admitir comparación con otras escuelas, y a la vez declara que el método parece funcionar.

«He who subordinates animal instincts to reason quickly loses control... control is by leaving things to work their own salvation."» — la primera de las sentencias de Spare con que Drury cierra el capítulo: el control se pierde al someter el instinto a la razón.

«Only when there is no fear in any form is there realisation of identity with reality."» — la segunda sentencia de Spare: la identidad con lo real llega solo sin miedo de ninguna forma.

«We are what we desire ... Desire nothing and there is nothing that you shall not realise."» — la tercera sentencia de Spare sobre el deseo.

«Revere the KIA and your Mind will become TRANQUIL.» — la cuarta sentencia de Spare, que el libro imprime en versales.

«Spare once referred to the soul as consisting of‘the ancestral animals'.» — la nota al pie con que Drury remata: el alma como conjunto de los animales ancestrales, en palabras de Spare.

«Figure 10: 'Forces of the Sighs' - painting by Austin Osman Spare (reproduced from the collection of Jimmy Page, with the owner's permission)» — el pie de la lámina décima, de la colección de Jimmy Page; la capa de texto imprime *Sighs* donde la lista de ilustraciones de la plana 11 da *Sigils*.

«Figure 11: Magical Stele: 'Formula of Zos vel Thanatos' - painting by Austin Osman Spare.» — el pie de la lámina undécima, la estela mágica con la fórmula de Zos vel Thanatos.

«Figure 12: 'Elemental Manifestations' - painting by Austin Osman Spare, (reproduced from the collection of Jimmy Page, with the owner's permission)» — el pie de la lámina duodécima, también de la colección de Jimmy Page; es la que ilustra el sigilo de la fuerza del tigre.

«The Witches who were Magicians as well as Devil worshippers apparently shared the magical and pagan sense of the value of the animal side of human nature. Dancing and revelling in animal costumes and the orgiastic worship of an animal god imply the letting loose of the animal in man. In magical theory, this is an essential step to the achievement of wholeness, in which a man becomes divine."» — el epígrafe que encabeza el capítulo Belladonna, tomado de The Black Arts de Richard Cavendish: soltar al animal que hay en el hombre como paso hacia la totalidad.

«The Devil has been described as "a large black monstrous apparition with horns on his head, cloven hooves, ass' ears, hair, claws, fiery eyes, terrible teeth, an immense phallus, and a sulphurous smell ..."» — Drury abre el capítulo Belladonna con la descripción corriente del Diablo.

«This was the Horned God of the Witches, who was sometimes a goat, sometimes a horse or stag, and who provided a demoniac challenge to the Church from the 12th century onwards.» — Drury identifica esa figura con el Dios Cornudo de las brujas y fecha desde el siglo XII su desafío a la Iglesia.

«It was He who was believed to incarnate in the coven leader, who in turn imitated the guise of the Devil by appearing to his fellow witches in a horned mask and in animal skins smeared with oily substances.» — Drury consigna como creencia la encarnación del Cornudo en quien dirigía el aquelarre, con máscara y pieles untadas.

«Such gatherings were to become the subject of intense persecution throughout Western Europe specifically because their blasphemous ceremonies were regarded as a direct, pagan mockery of the Christian religion.» — Drury explica la persecución por la lectura de esas ceremonias como burla pagana del cristianismo.

«When all the wizards and witches arrive at the place of rendezvous, the infernal ceremonies begin. Satan, having assumed his favourite shape of a large he-goat, with a face in front, and another in his haunches, takes a seat upon the throne; and all present in succession pay their respects to him and kiss him on his face behind. This done, he appoints a master of the ceremonies, in company with whom he makes a personal examination of all the witches, to see whether they have the secret mark about them by which they are stamped as the Devil's own.» — el relato contemporáneo del aquelarre que Drury transcribe: Satán como macho cabrío de dos caras, el beso y el examen de la marca.

«The mark is always insensible to pain. Those who have not yet been marked receive the mark from the master of ceremonies - the Devil, at the same time, bestowing nicknames upon them. This done, they all begin to sing and dance in a most furious manner, until someone arrives who was anxious to be admitted into the Society. They are then silent for a while until the new-comer has denied his salvation, kissed the Devil, spat upon the Bible, and sworn allegiance to him in all things.» — la continuación del relato: la marca insensible, los apodos del Diablo y el rito de admisión del recién llegado.

«They then begin dancing again with all their might, and singing ... In the course of an hour or two, they generally become wearied of this violent exercise, and then they all sit down and recount all their evil deeds since last meeting. Those who have not been malicious and mischievous enough towards their fellow creatures receive personal chastisement from Satan himself, who flogs them with thorns and scorpions until they are covered with blood, and unable to sit or stand. When this ceremony is concluded, they are all amused by a dance of toads.» — la continuación: el recuento de las malas obras y el castigo con espinas y escorpiones a quien no fue bastante dañino.

«Thousands of these creatures spring out of the earth, and standing upon their hind legs, dance while the Devil plays the bagpipes or the trumpet. These toads are all endowed with the faculty of speech, and entreat the witches there to reward them with the flesh of unbaptised infants for their exertions to give them pleasure. The witches promise compliance. The Devil bids them remember to keep their word, and then, stamping his foot, causes all the toads to sink into the earth in an instant.» — la continuación del relato: los sapos que bailan y hablan, y su petición de carne de niños sin bautizar; el tramo arranca donde el corte de plana dejó la frase.

«The place thus being cleared, preparations are made for the banquet, where all manner of disgusting things are served and greedily devoured by the demons and witches - although the latter were sometimes regaled with choice meats and expensive wines, from golden plates and crystal goblets; but they are never thus favoured unless they have done an extraordinary number of evil deeds since the last period of meeting.» — la continuación: el banquete, con manjares y vinos reservados a las brujas de más malas obras.

«After the feast, they begin dancing, but such as have no relish for any more exercise in that way amuse themselves by mocking the holy sacrament of baptism. For this purpose, the toads are again called and sprinkled with filthy water, the Devil making the sign of the cross and the witches calling out oaths. When the Devil wishes to be particularly amused, he makes the witches strip off their clothes and dance before him, each with a cat tied round her neck and an other dangling from her body in the form of a tail ..."» — el remate del relato: la burla del bautismo con agua sucia y el baile desnudo con gatos atados; la nota lo remite al Occult Review de 1909.

«The most important witch gatherings during the year took place on May Eve, 30 April (known in Germany as Walpurgis Nacht), and on All Hallows' Eve, 31 October.» — Drury fija las dos fechas mayores del calendario brujo, la víspera de mayo y la de Todos los Santos.

«Prior to meeting on these occasions the witches would rub their naked bodies with magical ointments, mount upon their broomsticks, and fly from their windows or chimneys into the night sky. Or so legend has it.» — Drury consigna el vuelo sobre la escoba tras untarse el cuerpo, y lo marca expresamente como leyenda.

«At the culmination of the Sabbath described above, they would engage in orgiastic revelry, transform themselves into frolicking animals, and copulate with the Devil. These activities ceased at cock-crow as darkness began to dissolve in the oncoming light of day.» — Drury describe el remate del aquelarre: orgía, transformación en animales y cópula con el Diablo hasta el canto del gallo.

«Witchcraft has a strong sexual undercurrent as is shown in the testimonies of Anne Marie de Georgel and Catherine Delort who spoke of erotic extravagances with the Devil, and that of Jeanette d'Abadie who suffered painful intercourse with him.» — Drury apoya la corriente sexual de la brujería en los testimonios de Anne Marie de Georgel, Catherine Delort y Jeanette d'Abadie.

«However, there seems also to have been a notable hallucinatory element. Antoine Rose, a witch tried in Savoy in» — Drury abre el asunto alucinógeno con el caso de Antoine Rose; el tramo se corta en el límite de plana y el año sigue en la siguiente.

«1477, stated at her trial that she had made use of certain ointments which, from her account, produced both psychic and sexual enhancement. The Devil, she said, had given her a stick 18 inches long and a jar containing ointment which was to be smeared upon it. She placed the stick between her legs exclaiming "Go, in the Devil's name go!", and in so doing rode through the air to the Sabbath.» — el testimonio de Antoine Rose según Drury: el palo de dieciocho pulgadas y el ungüento con que dijo haber volado al aquelarre.

«In light of the Devil's supposedly remarkable sexual powers it seems impossible to conclude, as Pennethorne Hughes does, that the broomstick is "a symbol of woman." It is clearly the male phallus, whereby the witch 'flies' into her demoniac ecstasy.» — Drury objeta a Pennethorne Hughes la lectura de la escoba como símbolo de la mujer y la lee como falo.

«Hughes thinks that aerial travel is a metaphor applied to witches as they scurry rapidly over the ground. It seems more likely that the potions contained hallucinogens which caused a sensation of weightlessness, and which, coupled with ecstatic orgasm, gave rise to the witches' idea of having travelled a long distance and made love with a god.» — Drury opone a la explicación de Hughes la de los alucinógenos en los ungüentos, que darían la sensación de ingravidez y, con el orgasmo, la de haber viajado lejos.

«This implies that the Sabbaths were in one sense literal; they were meeting places where witches engaged in orgiastic excesses - but they were also, in another sense, transcendent, diabolical psychic 'happenings' prone to exaggerations of the imagination.» — Drury consigna los dos sentidos a la vez, sin armonizarlos: aquelarres reales y a la vez sucesos psíquicos sujetos a la exageración.

«Is there any evidence that witches' ointments contained such activating qualities? Professor H.S. Clark thinks there is. Writing in an appendix to Professor Margaret Murray's book Witchcraft in Western Europe, he stated that some concoctions which were used at Sabbaths did have toxic qualities which could provide a sensation of flying through the air as in a dream.» — Drury trae al profesor H. S. Clark, del apéndice al libro de Margaret Murray, para las cualidades tóxicas de los ungüentos.

«Hemlock and aconite," he concludes, "would produce mental confusion, impaired movement, irregular action of the heart, dizziness and shortness of breath." In a second ointment, the belladonna used "would produce excitement which might pass into delirium" and a mixture containing belladonna and aconite together would induce "excitement and irregular action of the heart..."» — los efectos que Clark adjudica a la cicuta, al acónito y a la belladona, citados por Drury.

«It has been suggested that the hard, broken skin of witches would enable such ointments rubbed in deep to enter the bloodstream through cracks and scores. This in fact seems highly plausible.» — Drury da por muy plausible la vía de absorción por la piel agrietada.

«But it might also be possible that witches made use of techniques resembling those of the Tantrics, Eastern exponents of Sex Yoga. A passage in the Malleus Maleficarum says that the Devil "can prevent the flow of the semen to the members in which is the motive power, by as it were closing the seminal» — Drury abre la hipótesis tántrica y la apoya en un pasaje del Malleus Maleficarum sobre el Diablo que retiene el semen; el tramo se corta en el límite de plana.

«duct so that the semen does not descend to the genital vessels" (II, Ch. ii). In sex rituals, the Tantric yogi through an act of will withholds the ejaculation of semen to allow his (and his partner's) ecstatic vision to extend in climax for longer than normal.» — Drury cierra la cita del Malleus y la empareja con la retención seminal del yogui tántrico para alargar el clímax; el tramo arranca donde el corte de plana dejó la frase.

«Was the Devil, as manifested in the medieval coven leader, similarly able to extend the sexual climax, thus enabling hallucinating witches to transcend the physical nature of their intercourse? Were the witches using sexual energy as a catalyst to assist in gaining the Vision of the Homed God...?» — Drury deja la hipótesis en forma de dos preguntas y no la afirma; la capa de texto imprime *Homed* donde el libro dice *Horned*.

«Another striking feature of the witch-cult was the belief that wizards and witches could turn themselves into animals at will. This practice, known as lycanthropy, caused considerable fear among the local inhabitants of witch infested hamlets.» — Drury pasa a la licantropía como creencia del culto y al miedo que causaba.

«Pennethorne Hughes relates a 16th century case from Auvergne where a gentleman who was out hunting was suddenly attacked by a monstrous wolf which was immune to bullets. In the struggle the hunter lopped off the creature's forepaw and placed it hurriedly in his pocket as he escaped for his life. He later produced his trophy to show to a friend but discovered to his amazement that he held not a paw but a woman's hand with a wedding ring upon one of its fingers. The friend recognised the ring as belonging to his wife and ran home to find that she now had a bloody stump where her hand should have been. The woman was subsequently burnt publicly as a witch, before a very large crowd.» — el caso de Auvernia que Drury toma de Pennethorne Hughes: la pata de lobo que resulta ser una mano con anillo de bodas.

«the eye. The animal immediately disappeared. At the same moment, the children of Bigot heard the latter utter a cry of pain from his bed and add, 'Ah! the wretch, she has destroyed my eye!' From that day, in fact, he became one-eyed. Several persons told me this fact, and I have heard it from Bigot's children themselves."» — el remate del caso Bigot: el golpe en el ojo del animal y el grito del molinero en su cama, que quedó tuerto.

«Dr. Hereward Carrington, the psychical researcher, writing in The Occult Review (Vol. 9, 1909), has suggested that lycanthropy refers to a situation where an individual is able to project his consciousness so that it "adopts a non-human vehicle imaginatively created or that it dominates by will the body of a real animal. Injuries to such a body would transfer back to the body of the source consciousness."» — la hipótesis de Hereward Carrington que Drury recoge: la consciencia proyectada adopta un vehículo no humano o domina el cuerpo de un animal real, y las heridas vuelven al cuerpo de origen.

«In the case of Bigot, then, the animal shape was none other than his projected consciousness, or astral double. As a hypothesis this could also apply to those cases where witches who are known to have stayed in their rooms have sunk into trances and on waking have reported vivid details of what ensued at the Sabbath.» — Drury aplica la hipótesis al caso Bigot y la extiende a las brujas que, sin salir de su cuarto, dieron cuenta del aquelarre al despertar del trance.

«Figure 13: 'The Sabbath' - drawings by Austin Osman Spare.» — el pie de la lámina decimotercera, dibujos de Spare sobre el aquelarre.

«The belief that witches can transform themselves into animals is not found only in Europe. It is a widely held notion, for example, in Meso-America, surviving even in present times as a remnant of a Pre-Columbian witch tradition originally held in honour of Tlatzolteol, the great Earth Goddess who was supposed to assist in producing fine harvests of the hallucinatory drug peyote. Tlatzolteol is depicted on talismans riding naked upon a broomstick and is sometimes accompanied by an owl ...» — Drury abre Los Diableros llevando la creencia a Mesoamérica y la liga al culto de Tlatzolteotl, que dice representada sobre una escoba; la capa de texto imprime *Tlatzolteol*.

«In modern-day Guatemala and Mexico, the Aztec-derived word 'nagual' is commonly used in connection with belief in witch-transformation although it tends to mean different things, and varies in spelling, from place to place. The Nahuatl of Tepoztlan, for example, use 'nagual' to describe any person, male or female, who is capable of turning himself into an animal, usually a dog or a pig, and the Tzeltal and Tzotzil Indians of Chiapas employ a related term 'nawales' to describe the animal counterparts - dog, horse or mountain lion - which a man may assume supernaturally to gain power for himself.» — Drury recorre los usos del término nagual entre los nahuas de Tepoztlán y los tzeltales y tzotziles de Chiapas.

«However, Benson Saler, an anthropologist who has studied the phenomenon in depth, has indicated that 'nagual' and its variants often denote a second self or double, which is not always animalian but can also resemble the wind or a comet.» — Drury trae a Benson Saler para ampliar el nagual a un doble que no siempre es animal y puede parecerse al viento o a un cometa.

«Should the alter ego suffer harm," he says, "It is widely believed the individual whose destiny is linked to it (i.e. the animal form) is likely to suffer harm in a corresponding degree."» — la frase de Saler que Drury cita sobre el daño que pasa del alter ego a la persona.

«In other words, should the projected vehicle containing the witch's consciousness be impaired, the witch will suffer bodily and mental harm as a result. This concept resembles closely the medieval witch tradition in Europe.» — Drury empareja esa creencia con la tradición brujeril europea medieval.

«The Quiche Indians of Santiago El Palmar in Guatemala more specifically differentiate the term 'nagual', which means in their usage the affinity that a witch has with an animal, from the term 'win', the actual practitioner.» — Drury separa, entre los quichés, el nagual como afinidad con un animal y el win como el practicante.

«Some of the Quiche believe that the nagual is related to the characteristics of the person, that is to say, a witch with a tiger nagual would be brave and savage. Others consider the nagual to be the creature of the astrological sign one is born under, on the basis that the date of birth in some degree predetermines one's character.» — Drury consigna las dos explicaciones quichés del nagual sin arbitrar: por el carácter de la persona o por el signo astrológico del nacimiento.

«the witch himself, the lecherous nocturnal prowler who in his animal body prays to the Devil in the cemetery, steals from his neighbours, and rapes unsuspecting women in their sleep.» — Drury describe al win como merodeador nocturno que en cuerpo animal reza al Diablo en el cementerio; el tramo arranca donde el corte de plana dejó la frase y se corta antes de la llamada de nota, que acota que el win ataca solo al sexo contrario.

«Normally, the win assumes bird or dog-like form but he can be recognised instantly by his movements which are always unnatural and contrary to the manner of the species. He is frequently hideously ugly, with red glaring eyes, and he makes a habit of choosing virtuous people for his victims. Luckily, the animal-spectre of the win can be halted in its tracks by the continued recital of "Our Father ..."» — Drury da las señas con que se reconoce al win y el remedio contra su espectro.

«Another category of evil-doers is distinguished by the Quiche and these are the 'ajitz' or sorcerers, who do not derive their power from the Devil as the win does, but from magical formulas and rites.» — Drury distingue a los ajitz o hechiceros, cuyo poder no viene del Diablo sino de fórmulas y ritos; la nota consigna que unos informantes los decían aprendidos de los libros mágicos de los judíos.

«Unlike the win the sorcerer usually chooses specific victims whereas the win is in an overall sense malevolent and a threat to all who crosses his path. Some sorcerers engage in relatively minor operations, like burying artefacts belonging to the intended victim in the hope that both will decay, but many others are credited, like the win, with the ability to transform into phantasy or real-life animals for evil purposes.» — Drury opone el blanco concreto del hechicero a la malevolencia general del win, y les atribuye a muchos la misma transformación animal.

«In 1960 an American anthropologist student named Carlos Castaneda was visiting the Southwest for information on how Indians use medicinal herbs. He was introduced to a Yaqui Indian called Don Juan who came from Sonora, Mexico, and had a reputation for using certain hallucinogenic plants, including peyote, to achieve magical effects. Don Juan was at first reluctant to part with his 'secretes' but after an initiatory period he accepted Castaneda as an apprentice in sorcery.» — Drury fecha en 1960 el encuentro de Castaneda con don Juan y el aprendizaje que siguió; la capa de texto imprime *secretes*.

«The timeless and often terrifying visions which Devil's Weed ('la yerba diablo'), peyote and the psilocybe mushrooms bring about became a new reality.» — Drury nombra las tres plantas del aprendizaje y las da por realidad nueva para Castaneda.

«Castaneda was taught certain things which are normally connected with the witchcraft tradition and which hardly seem feasible in the present day. One of these was the rubbing of magical unguents into the skin. Don Juan showed his pupil how to prepare an odiferous paste from the root of the datura plant (Devil's Weed) which according to legend had been used by Indian 'diableros' to transform themselves into animals for evil purposes.» — Drury empareja lo enseñado a Castaneda con la tradición brujeril: el ungüento de raíz de datura que los diableros usaban para volverse animales.

«medieval witches at their trials. Castaneda says: "I looked down and saw Don Juan sitting below me, way below me ... I saw the dark sky above me and the clouds going by me ... My speed was extraordinary ..."» — el testimonio de Castaneda que Drury cita sobre el vuelo, emparejado con el que declaraban las brujas en sus procesos; el tramo arranca donde el corte de plana dejó la frase.

«He felt as if he no longer had a body and was capable of changing into anything; there could be no limitations. Don Juan suggested that he should learn to fly properly by "becoming a crow."» — Drury consigna la pérdida del cuerpo y la ausencia de límites, y la instrucción de don Juan de aprender a volar como cuervo; la nota explica que don Juan quería una forma segura y no una presa.

«In Don Juan's opinion mushroom-smoke was more satisfactory than Devil's Weed as a means of achieving this transformation. Having indulged in the Tittle smoke' ('humito') Castaneda focused upon a creation of his imagination and it immediately became real. His head, guardian of the consciousness, metamorphosed so that it became a crow: legs emerged from his chin, a tail from his neck, and wings from his cheeks. A beak extended between his eyes and he now saw laterally instead of straight ahead.» — Drury cuenta la transformación en cuervo con el humito: patas del mentón, cola del cuello, alas de las mejillas y visión lateral; la capa de texto imprime *Tittle smoke'*.

«At Don Juan's command he was able to fly confidently, and his Universe was instantly ablaze with radiant lights and colours.» — Drury remata el episodio con el vuelo y el universo encendido; el tramo se corta antes de la llamada de nota, que consigna que a Castaneda se le acusó en los años setenta de haberlo inventado todo y que aun así el libro guarda hallazgos.

«Thus we have an insight into what sorcerers may have performed in the past. The consciousness was projected into the realm of the imagination and in so doing conferred upon it a sense of reality.» — Drury saca su conclusión del capítulo: la consciencia proyectada al reino de la imaginación le confiere sentido de realidad.

«In this way we believe we can account for all witches and 'diableros' who were, and are, supposedly able to transform themselves into animal bodies. It might also be possible, as Dr. Hereward Carrington has suggested, to mentally dominate the 'will' of an animal and enter into its body causing distinct changes in its behaviour.» — Drury extiende esa explicación a brujas y diableros y deja abierta la segunda vía de Carrington, dominar la voluntad de un animal.

«Transformation phenomena, as has been seen, are a thing of the present as well as the past, although perhaps they are less practised today. Don Juan says: "I think we have lost interest and now power does not matter any more." One thing we do know, however, is that the practice is at least as old as Ancient Egypt, home of Magic and the man-animal deities.» — Drury consigna que la práctica sigue viva aunque menos, con la frase de don Juan sobre el poder que ya no importa, y la remonta al Egipto antiguo.

«A miller named Bigot had some reputation for sorcery. One day when his wife rose very early to go and wash some linen not very far from the house, he tried to dissuade her repeating to her several times, 'Do not go there, you will be frightened.' 'Why should I be frightened?' answered she. 'I tell you, you will be frightened ...'» — el arranque del caso del molinero Bigot que Drury toma de Posthumous Humanity de Adolphe D'Assier: la advertencia a su mujer antes de que saliera a lavar.

«She made nothing of the threats and departed. Hardly had she taken her place at the wash-tub before she saw an animal moving here and there about her. As it was not yet daylight, she could not clearly make out its form, but she thought it was some kind of dog. Annoyed by these goings and comings and not being able to scare it away, she threw at it her wooden clothes beater, which struck it in» — la continuación del caso: el animal que rondaba el lavadero y el golpe con la pala de madera; el tramo se corta en el límite de plana y sigue con *the eye*.

«grains of incense into the flame and recited certain words; she then went to a large chest containing several bottles, and taking out one which contained oil, rubbed all her body with the liquid, from head to foot, beginning with the ends of the nails, and suddenly feathers and wings began to grow upon her, and a hooked, horny beak took the place of her nose. In a very short time she resembled a bird in every respect, and when she saw that she was well feathered, she flew upwards and, uttering the cry of a night-raven disappeared through the window ..."» — el relato de Luciano sobre la mujer que se unta el cuerpo con aceite y se vuelve ave, citado por Drury como el antecedente antiguo de la transformación; la nota lo remite al Egyptian Magic de Sir Wallis Budge.

«Some twenty-four centuries ago, Chuang Tzu dreamt he was a butterfly, and when he awoke he was not sure whether he was a man who had dreamt he was a butterfly or a butterfly who now dreamt he was a man.» — el epígrafe que encabeza la Sección III, The World of Dreams: la parábola de Chuang Tzu y la mariposa.

«The Victorians were a proud society, for they had fulfilled a dream. They had built an Empire unequalled in history, they had brought many 'pagan nations under the sway of enlightened British culture and they had raised the standard of living at home to a new peak, or so their statistics said. There was a technological boom, more machines, finer buildings, and it was undoubtedly an age of progress. Material progress. For the Victorian was inclined to measure progress in terms of wealth. And Great Britain, with all her productive colonies, was a wealthy country now.» — Drury abre Phantasy in Art con el orgullo victoriano y con el progreso medido en riqueza.

«All of this amounted to a kind of smugness whereby prosperity itself acquired a certain virtue, and perhaps even beauty. The ugliness which industry and the inequality of wealth produced was not specifically forgotten, but it was repressed because it was unpleasant.» — Drury adjudica a esa suficiencia la represión de la fealdad producida por la industria y la desigualdad.

«It was towards the end of the Victorian era that a certain artistic gentleman considered that society's short comings should be exposed graphically. His name was Aubrey Beardsley and his illustrations were preposterous.» — Drury presenta a Aubrey Beardsley como quien quiso exponer gráficamente las fallas de esa sociedad.

«Fat leering society women reared on the wealth of the land stared forth from his drawings as the epitome of moral degradation. Ladies who should have known better worshipped giant phalluses, and aristocrats blithely whipped their servants or indulged in decadent perversities behind jewel-encrusted doors.» — Drury describe el repertorio de los dibujos de Beardsley.

«Beardsley believed that his satires were a corrective. The vision of evil had to be laid bare before the smug upper class which had repressed its social and sexual extravagances beneath a veneer of respectability.» — Drury adjudica a Beardsley el propósito correctivo: desnudar la visión del mal ante la clase alta que la reprimía.

«But Beardsley was only the first of a number of dedicated artists and illustrators who felt obliged to maintain the vision of corruption. The intricate decorative details, the splendid use of black, grey and white values based on lines and dots to accommodate the new printing processes, all of these were to be continued in a school of illustration which might best be described as 'Late Art-Nouveau, Decadent'.» — Drury nombra la escuela de ilustración que continúa esa visión y describe sus recursos técnicos.

«Many names spring to mind, some of whom were perpetuators of Beardsley's vision of evil. Others merely copied his line techniques and extended them into new phantasies which have been revived in contemporary psychedelic art.» — Drury separa a los continuadores de la visión del mal de los que solo copiaron la línea, y liga estos últimos al arte psicodélico de su tiempo.

«Among the figureheads of the 'Decadent' school were men like Harry Clarke, Alastair and John Austen. Of Harry Clarke's life little is readily ascertainable except that he died at the premature age of 41, and his best work was done in the 1920s.» — Drury nombra a los tres cabezas de la escuela decadente y consigna lo poco que dice saberse de la vida de Harry Clarke.

«embellishments is perhaps the most potent vision of darkness since Hieronymus Bosch's Hell scene in 'The Garden of Delights'. (See Figure 16.)» — Drury pone el Fausto ilustrado de Clarke como la visión de tiniebla más potente desde el infierno de El Bosco; el tramo arranca donde el corte de plana dejó la frase.

«Published in 1925 in a limited edition of 1,000 copies, Clarke's illustrated Faust throngs with grotesque animal shapes, bodiless eyes, and semi-human concoctions of various sorts, a veritable quagmire of the subconscious.» — Drury fecha el Fausto de Clarke y describe su poblado de formas animales, ojos sin cuerpo y criaturas semihumanas.

«His characters have theatrical, stylised poses which imply a sense of ritual drama, and they invariably look out upon the world with melancholy eyes as if they are beholding truths far more intolerable than mere man can endure.» — Drury lee en las poses teatrales de Clarke un drama ritual y en las miradas melancólicas la contemplación de verdades insoportables.

«Like Beardsley, even Clarke's sinister vision contains a transcendental element. It lifts man to a stage where he discovers, and must acknowledge, his other half, the section of his personality which corresponds to his psychoses, repressions and cumulated vice, the obverse of his respectability. Clarke continued what Beardsley was doing, only he penetrated much deeper into what we really are.» — Drury encuentra en Clarke el mismo elemento trascendente que en Beardsley: obligar al hombre a reconocer su otra mitad.

«The artist Alastair, whose real name was Hans Voight, was a German from Munich who lived in magnificent isolation in a 17th century Bavarian hunting lodge. An actor at heart, he was also fond of music and dancing, and his drawing, which is baroque and decadent in style, shows tendencies which resemble those of a great fashion designer of the times, Erte. Alastair, who had no technical training in art but who perfected his own style nevertheless, also followed Beardsley as Clarke had done.» — Drury presenta a Alastair, su nombre civil, su aislamiento bávaro y su estilo barroco y decadente.

«However, the Victorian decay which inflamed Beardsley was not so intense for the European, who has correspondingly contributed relatively few grotesque or satirical pieces. His 'Demon' (from Wilde's Salome) and 'Herod' (from Flaubert's Temptation of Saint AnthonyJ1 are perceptive creations in this vein though, the latter depicting the evil inherent in power.» — Drury explica por qué Alastair dejó menos piezas satíricas y nombra las dos que sí lee en esa vena, Demon y Herod.

«Alastair contributed drawings for books and periodicals from the splendid obscurity of his home from 1914 onwards, and like Harry Clarke, his personality remains hidden behind his work.» — Drury fecha desde 1914 la colaboración de Alastair y lo empareja con Clarke en la ocultación de la persona tras la obra.

«impressive work is contained in Oscar Wilde's The Sphinx, and in Fifty Drawings. Like Clarke, Alastair often gives his characters rigid theatrical stances but communicates a vast range of emotion particularly through the rendering of the eyes. They reflect a vision of things seen but unproclaimed; a latent horror hides beneath the baroque frenzy of the linework. Alastair's characters invariably look strained and sad as if they have pity both upon those who cannot penetrate appearances, and upon themselves who cannot endure the insight.» — Drury nombra la obra que tiene por mejor de Alastair y lee en las miradas de sus figuras una lástima doble, por los que no penetran las apariencias y por sí mismas; el tramo arranca donde el corte de plana dejó la frase.

«John Austen, the English illustrator who also followed in the wake of Beardsley, combines these same qualities with an emphasis, too, on the sexual extravagances of Victorian eroticism. Naked decadent ladies flaunt their form in much the same way as Beardsley's do, but their openness is their revealed ugliness.» — Drury sitúa a John Austen en la estela de Beardsley con el acento puesto en el erotismo victoriano.

«Austen's most distinctive work from our point of view was done before 1925. After this date he moved in directions which owed little to his original sources, and his drawings began to resemble stvlised woodcuts.» — Drury acota hasta 1925 la obra de Austen que le interesa; la capa de texto imprime *stvlised*.

«In summary, the 'Decadent' school of illustration achieves its synthesis by visually correcting human deficiencies. These deficiencies are presented as the things about ourselves which we would rather forget but which we must come to grips with if we are to 'know ourselves'. And self-knowledge implies recognition of the 'evil' side of our nature.» — Drury resume la escuela decadente como corrección visual de lo que preferiríamos olvidar, y liga el autoconocimiento al reconocimiento del propio mal.

«A parallel school in British illustration which presented the essence of the supernatural as opposed to the 'normal' but through much more gentle contrasts, included men like Arthur Rackham, Edmund Dulac (see Figure 21) and Danish born Kay Nielsen. Their ethereal watercolours of fairy elementals and nature spirits have never been equalled, and they contain much that mirrors Tolkien in our own time.» — Drury nombra la escuela paralela de Rackham, Dulac y Kay Nielsen y la empareja con Tolkien.

«Rather than present evil as the vital but repressed component of man's nature, they strove to lift the senses into something purer, more serene, eternal. The phantasies of these men, who became famous for their goblins and mythical heroes, are sublime and unsullied by a social context.» — Drury opone el propósito de esa escuela al de la decadente: elevar los sentidos a algo más puro y sereno, sin contexto social.

«It is little wonder therefore that these drawings appealed mostly to children who did not yet know what society and 'life' were about. There is almost nothing 'real' about Rip Van Winkle, Vie Tempest or Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales, for in an illustrational sense, these are adventures of the spirit.. And therefore they are invaluable, for apart from being delightful as art they ultimately point the way to a new dignity.» — Drury explica el público infantil de esos dibujos y aun así los llama aventuras del espíritu que apuntan a una dignidad nueva; la capa de texto imprime *Vie Tempest*.

«Now while these developments were being enacted mostly in England, a phantasy school of quite a different order was evolving on the Continent. This was an attempt to lift man above himself; this too offered man a Universe enlarged by greater realisation. Its name was Surrealism.» — Drury cierra el capítulo anunciando el surrealismo como la escuela continental del mismo orden de ambición.

«Figure 14: 'Silence' - by Harry Clarke.» — el pie de la lámina decimocuarta.

«Figure 15: 'Morelia' - by Harry Clarke.» — el pie de la lámina decimoquinta.

«Figure 16: Illustration from Faust -by Harry Clarke.» — el pie de la lámina decimosexta; es la única plana de lámina del volumen sin folio impreso.

«Figure 17: 'Herod' - Alastair (Hans Voight)» — el pie de la lámina decimoséptima.

«Figure 18: 'Demon - Alastair (Hans Voight).» — el pie de la lámina decimoctava; la capa de texto pierde la comilla de cierre del título.

«We lay no claim to changing anything in mens errors but we intend to show them the fragility of their thoughts and on what shifting foundations, what hollow ground, they have built their shaking houses."» — el epígrafe que encabeza el capítulo Surrealism, atribuido a la Declaración del 27 de enero de 1925.

«Clarke's other masterpiece is Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination» — Drury nombra la otra obra maestra de Clarke, los cuentos de Poe; el tramo se corta antes del año entre paréntesis, que el libro da como 1920.

«which is filled with organic curiosities, distorted bodies and sordid death scenes - in general a pantheon of sheer horror, although his illustration to 'Morelia' does have a beautiful dream quality.» — Drury describe esas ilustraciones como panteón de horror y exceptúa Morelia por su calidad de sueño; el tramo arranca después del año entre paréntesis.

«As a movement. Surrealism was not, as Roger Shattuck has recently suggested, "highly disciplined and tightly organised." It consisted in fact of many diverse and curious activities whose sole common purpose was to manifest the irrational and mysterious.» — Drury objeta a Roger Shattuck la disciplina y la organización que atribuye al surrealismo, y le deja como único fin común manifestar lo irracional; la capa de texto pone punto donde el libro imprime coma en *As a movement*.

«Many strange actors were involved in this drama, among them Yves Tanguy who ate live spiders, Robert Desnos who went continually into trances, Philippe Soupault who used to ring doorbells at random asking "if Philippe Soupault did not live there," and Wolfgang Paalen who pondered the mysteries of the seventeenth Tarot card, 'The Star'.» — Drury enumera las rarezas de cuatro surrealistas, entre ellas la carta decimoséptima del tarot que ocupaba a Wolfgang Paalen.

«Announced in Paris, and flowering between the two World Wars at a time when many people felt alienated from society, Surrealism was an attempt to find new perspectives. Logic, tradition and 'normality' were utterly renounced; phantasy took their place.» — Drury sitúa el surrealismo entre las dos guerras y lo lee como búsqueda de perspectivas nuevas tras renunciar a la lógica y a la normalidad.

«Maurice Nadeau has said that Surrealism "was never a doctrine but an attitude of mind" and Patrick Valdberg has called the endeavour not a 'formal movement' but a 'spiritual orientation', although Dali with his phallic preoccupations and Miro with his sexual phantasms were not specifically mystical in their inclinations.» — Drury recoge las fórmulas de Maurice Nadeau y de Patrick Waldberg, actitud mental y orientación espiritual, y a la vez consigna que Dalí y Miró no eran místicos; la capa de texto imprime *Valdberg*.

«There was, however, a turning towards the subconscious as the potent vortex of imagination, which led in turn to an adoration of visionaries, alchemists, occultists, and mediums, as penetrators of this relatively uncharted realm.» — Drury adjudica al giro hacia el subconsciente la adoración surrealista de visionarios, alquimistas, ocultistas y médiums.

«Founder figures Andre Breton and Philippe Soupault meanwhile investigated automatic writing, whereby one endeavours to write so fast that there is no logical control. This precipitates transcendental elements which Breton believed involved the 'dictation of thought' without the restraint of the mind.» — Drury adjudica a Breton y Soupault la escritura automática y a Breton la fórmula del dictado del pensamiento sin freno.

«More important, however, as a means of access to the Great Mystery, was the interpretation of dreams. In the First Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, Breton, as mouthpiece of the movement, explained why he believed in 'the omnipotence of the dream'.» — Drury pone la interpretación de los sueños por encima de la escritura automática y remite al primer manifiesto de 1924.

«Dreams, he thought, were not only a reflection of life, but ultimately a more valid visual representation of reality, because their forms were unimpeded by rational processes.» — Drury adjudica a Breton la tesis del sueño como representación más válida de lo real por no estar trabada por lo racional.

«Having studied Freud at length, Breton longed for the day when dreams would be methodically analysed as a continuing sequence, for he saw them as an everlasting inner commentary upon man's finite dimension.» — Drury consigna la lectura freudiana de Breton y su deseo de que los sueños se analizaran como secuencia continua.

«Breton considered that the combination of dream with reality» — Drury cierra el punto con la fórmula de Breton sobre la suma de sueño y realidad; el troceo reemite la marca de plana en el límite de chunk y corta ahí la frase, que sigue con *produced a much more meaningful Universe*.

«produced a much more meaningful Universe, "a sort of absolute reality, a» — la continuación de la fórmula de Breton, al otro lado del corte de chunk; el tramo se corta otra vez en el límite de plana y la palabra final, que la capa de texto imprime *Si/rreality*, cae en la siguiente.

«It is the pursuit of this 'Surreality' that links in essence the styles and techniques of many otherwise dissimilar artists, some of whom employed loose abstract forms, and others who painted with meticulous care for detail.» — Drury pone la persecución de la Surrealidad como lo único que une a artistas por lo demás dispares.

«In the first category we find, for example, Wolfgang Paalen, the Austrian artist who lived for a time in Mexico and invented a technique known as 'Fumage'. Paalen would hold canvases freshly coated with oil paint above a candle so that the smoke would trace random patterns in the wet paint. These suggested shapes would then be used as the basis of an abstract supranormal composition.» — Drury describe el fumage de Paalen: el humo de una vela trazando patrones al azar sobre el óleo fresco, tomados luego por base de la composición.

«In the naturalistic category can be included Rene Magritte and Salvador Dali, both of whom transpose ordinary, everyday objects into alien contexts; Yves Tanguy who depicted superbly detailed phantasy structures; and Paul Delvaux who peopled his classical Greek backgrounds with naked women entranced as if in a dream, but painted in an entirely representational manner.» — Drury reparte la categoría naturalista entre Magritte y Dalí, Tanguy y Delvaux.

«We discover the great eclectic. Max Ernst, lurking somewhere between the two extremes, fluctuating, as it were, between the poles of different techniques; drifting from the emergent bird and animal shapes in 'Alice's Friends' to the atavistic realism of'The Robing of the Bride' (see Figure 20).» — Drury sitúa a Max Ernst entre los dos extremos; la capa de texto pone punto donde el libro imprime coma en *the great eclectic*.

«Ernst also invented a process which, like Breton's automatic writing, provided an entry into the subconscious. This was a technique known as frottage.» — Drury empareja el frottage de Ernst con la escritura automática de Breton como entrada al subconsciente.

«Ernst would rub lightly with pencil upon sheets of paper placed upon his floorboards, thus allowing the uneven surface to come through on his paper as a texture. He then manipulated his newly discovered textures by filling in areas where the grain ran in different directions, thus arriving at a simple picture.» — Drury describe el procedimiento del frottage sobre las tablas del suelo.

«But when Ernst looked carefully at his frottages he found that he was able to perceive things latent within them which he had not suspected were there: "When gazing at these drawings," he writes, "I was surprised at the sudden intensification of my visionary faculties and at the hallucinatory succession of contradictory images being superimposed on» — la frase de Ernst que Drury cita sobre la intensificación repentina de sus facultades visionarias ante los frottages; el tramo se corta en el límite de plana.

«We therefore find Ernst using these creations as Teaping-off points' into visionary states, in much the same way as Austin Spare had used sigils. In fact Spare anticipated the Surrealists, both in his philosophy and application, by at least 10 years.» — Drury empareja los frottages de Ernst con los sigilos de Spare y adjudica a Spare la anticipación por lo menos diez años; la capa de texto imprime *Teaping-off points'*.

«A work cannot be considered surrealist, unless the artist strains to reach the total psychological scope of which consciousness is only a small part ... There prevails at this unfathomable depth a total absence of contradiction ... a timelessness, and a substitution of psychic reality for external reality all subject to the principle of pleasure alone ..."» — el pasaje del primer manifiesto surrealista que Drury cita: la ausencia total de contradicción y la sustitución de la realidad exterior por la psíquica.

«Is this not exactly what Spare had stated in his later writings and incorporated into his drawings?» — Drury deja el paralelo entre Breton y Spare en forma de pregunta; la nota declara que las cursivas de la cita son suyas para señalar ese paralelo.

«Elsewhere Breton writes: "Surrealism will introduce you to death which is a secret society. It will glove your hand entombing there the consummate 'M' with which the word Memory begins."» — la segunda frase de Breton que Drury cita, con la muerte como sociedad secreta.

«Does this not refer to the initiatory state which Spare called the Death Posture, and which provided access to the hidden memories and images within the subconscious?» — Drury vuelve a dejar el paralelo en pregunta, ahora entre esa frase y la Postura de la Muerte.

«In the early years Breton had observed that in wartime man found his relationship to the despoiled world to be valueless and intolerable. Would this realisation lead them to a new Revolution, a search for meaning whereby all archaic and traditional concepts were cast aside and new transcendental values adopted in their place? Breton certainly hoped so.» — Drury consigna la esperanza de Breton en una revolución de valores tras la guerra.

«Colleague Paul Eluard spoke of this Revolution as equating with "real life, like love, dazzling at every moment ..." Regrettably post-war society has hardly heeded the message. Although there are recent signs of change, it has remained, on the whole, embedded in materialism and as pragmatic as ever.» — Drury cita a Paul Éluard sobre esa revolución y consigna que la sociedad de posguerra no la atendió.

«We would suggest that perhaps in the final analysis Surrealism remains valuable not as the precursor of an age of instant enlightenment, but rather as a gauge of human consciousness in terms of art. The artists involved in the movement were all reaching further and further into the hidden recesses of the mind, and their paintings can be seen as indicators of the psychic levels attained.» — Drury propone leer el surrealismo no como anuncio de una era iluminada sino como medida de la consciencia humana en términos de arte.

«journey produces archetypal visions common to all who travel the path. The temperament and personality of the beholder merely fashion the way in which the vision is perceived.» — Drury explica esa medida por el carácter arquetípico de las visiones del camino místico, que el temperamento solo modula; el tramo arranca donde el corte de plana dejó la frase.

«Now although the Qabalah in itself is profoundly Jewish, the archetypal psychic levels which it describes are independent of any specific culture.» — Drury separa el origen judío de la cábala de la independencia cultural de los niveles psíquicos que describe.

«Indeed the parallels in religious symbolism which are found in both ancient and modern independent pantheons exist because the same fundamental realities have been experienced in the first place: "The Gods do not die, only their names are changed ..."» — Drury explica los paralelos entre panteones por la experiencia común y lo remata con la fórmula que la nota atribuye a M. W. Blackden.

«Until recently the inner experience was almost exclusively the domain of mysticism and religion. But with the break away from 'realism' in art at the beginning of the 20th century, and the contemporary rise of psychology and psychoanalysis, experiences hitherto regarded as sacred have begun to filter into secular circles.» — Drury adjudica el paso de la experiencia interior a lo secular a la ruptura con el realismo en el arte y al auge del psicoanálisis.

«The Surrealists themselves were not specifically 'religious'. But the essence of their work was undoubtedly transcendental as has been already indicated.» — Drury niega el carácter religioso de los surrealistas y a la vez llama trascendente la sustancia de su obra.

«According to our hypothesis it ought then to be possible to estimate the Surrealist attainment, using the 'Tree of Life' as a guide. The vision experienced within each Sephirah has as its characteristics certain symbols, colours and motifs. We would expect the Surrealists to mirror these in their work.» — Drury enuncia la hipótesis del capítulo: estimar el logro surrealista con el Árbol de la Vida por los símbolos, colores y motivos de cada sefirá.

«The tenth and final Sephirah Malkuth relates to the manifested Universe as we perceive it and so all acts of transcendence begin here.» — Drury pone Malkuth como el universo percibido y el punto de partida de toda trascendencia.

«Rene Magritte, the Belgian Surrealist, shows a respect for 'reality' but he nevertheless twists it out of its normal perspectives. Gravity fails to operate in his pictures.» — Drury coloca a Magritte en Malkuth por el respeto torcido a la realidad y la suspensión de la gravedad.

«we are shown a massive boulder floating above the ocean waves in a state of precarious levitation. In another composition an extraordinary meteoric body consisting of a lion, a tuba, an armchair, a sewing machine, and a Graeco-Roman sculpture, wafts through the atmosphere oblivious of the demands of the natural order.» — Drury describe dos cuadros de Magritte, el peñasco en levitación sobre el mar y el cuerpo meteórico de objetos dispares; el tramo arranca después del año entre paréntesis.

«images in combinations which defy normal classification. A mermaid with the head of a fish and the legs of a woman lies hopelessly cast up upon a beach; a succulent green apple fills a room; and plants which are also birds grow profusely upon a rocky mountain-top. Magritte undoubtedly derives his inspiration from the visual Universe, but he exposes the limits of three-dimensionality and indicates at the same time that we may proceed beyond.» — Drury cierra el caso de Magritte con la sirena invertida, la manzana que llena el cuarto y las plantas que son aves, y lee en ellas la exposición de los límites de lo tridimensional; el tramo arranca donde el corte de plana dejó la frase.

«Yves Tanguy, a more mystical Surrealist, joins us at this point. During the late 1920s,Tanguy was producing some remarkable oil paintings which superficially resemble underwater scenes, yet at the same time exude a peculiarly ethereal effect: curious half-forms float limply in an alien atmosphere of dusky grey, and a feeling of inner space is implied, unlike anything with which we are commonly familiar.» — Drury describe la pintura de Tanguy de finales de los años veinte: semiformas flotando en una atmósfera gris con sensación de espacio interior.

«Throughout his career Tanguy retained his subdued colours but he later populated his dream dimension with unusual mechanical structures held together in impossible harmonies by fine threads.» — Drury sigue la obra de Tanguy hasta las estructuras mecánicas unidas por hilos finos.

«There is something unmistakably lunar about Tanguy's landscapes. In addition, his mechanical structures, which are never quite real, seem always to be prototypes for something eventually more definite and more recognisable.» — Drury lee lo lunar en los paisajes de Tanguy y sus máquinas como prototipos de algo todavía por definirse.

«Tanguy seems to have been preoccupied with a state of consciousness known by Qabalists as Yesod, which is one phase removed from Malkuth, the sphere of the Earth.» — Drury coloca a Tanguy en Yesod, a un paso de Malkuth.

«Yesod is ruled by the Moon, its colours in visions are sombre greys and purples and it is the first level of the astral within the subconscious. In terms of creative emanations proceeding from the supernals, the twilight shapes of Yesod represent a state of 'potential' structure always about to become fully manifest in Malkuth below.» — Drury da las señas de Yesod, grises y púrpuras y primer nivel astral, y lee sus formas como estructura en potencia.

«Because Surrealists Magritte and Tanguy remained 'true to form' it is relatively easy to correlate their work with the specific Qabalistic Sephiroth which dominate. Other artists within the school were more variable and their sources of inspiration fluctuated.» — Drury acota su propio método: solo con los artistas de forma constante es fácil correlacionar obra y sefirá.

«Max Ernst's late work, for example, is characterised by solar motifs which are linked Qabalistically with Tiphareth, the sphere straight above Yesod and Malkuth on the 'Middle Pillar'.» — Drury coloca la obra tardía de Ernst en Tiphareth por sus motivos solares.

«In addition to his 'Solar' work Ernst has also contributed a notable series of paintings ('The Nymph Echo', etc.) in which Nature is presented in its most chaotic aspects. Prompted by the horrors of the Second World War, which threatened to engulf Nature in a mechanical hell, these pictures equate with the Sephirah Netzach which symbolises organic growth and whose colour is green.» — Drury coloca la serie de la naturaleza caótica de Ernst en Netzach, sefirá del crecimiento orgánico y de color verde, y la atribuye al horror de la segunda guerra; el tramo arranca después del año entre paréntesis.

«A number of other Surrealists would seem to have uncovered varying degrees of degradation and evil in the subconscious and in view of earlier comments on the 'Dweller on the Threshold' this does not appear surprising. In the Qabalah, such demoniac aspects are called Qliphoth and they are the shadows of the Sephiroth.» — Drury nombra las qliphoth como la contraparte cabalística de la degradación que algunos surrealistas hallaron en el subconsciente.

«Felix Labisse's macabre women with insect heads, Victor Brauner's ego-taunting devils, and the obscurely evil landscapes of occultists Kurt Seligmann and Wolfgang Paalen, reflect these tendencies.» — Drury pone a Labisse, Brauner, Seligmann y Paalen del lado de las qliphoth.

«An exhaustive study of all the Surrealist modes would obviously fill many volumes and cannot be attempted in a short space here, but it does seem plausible that the paintings described above are indeed the result of inspiration derived from various subconscious levels.» — Drury declara el límite de su propio recorrido y deja la correlación como plausible, no como probada.

«For these men were the explorers of duality, the polar opposites within the psyche. They have passed on to us the visions which were their adventures. In so far as they were searching for greater meaning they too pursued the Gnosis to which we have been alluding. They too, were searchers for Abraxas.» — Drury cierra el capítulo contando a esos artistas entre los buscadores de la gnosis y de Abraxas.

«The Surrealists drew their inspiration from the subconscious, the world of dreams: the one 'mystical' experience common to all of us, since everyone dreams. Dreams are no less a mystical experience than a willed and worked-for contact with the subconscious; they are the spontaneous expressions of our subconscious selves, albeit distorted by a censor who deforms our memory of them upon waking, into an acceptable form.» — Skinner abre el capítulo sobre proyección astral poniendo el sueño como la experiencia mística común a todos y consignando al censor que deforma su recuerdo.

«Dreams are, as the psychoanalysts have found out, one of the easiest egresses into the subconscious. However, because this state is experienced every night of our lives, even if we forget we have dreamed, it has come to be regarded as commonplace, as a distraction to be wondered at next morning.» — Skinner explica por qué el sueño pasa por cosa corriente pese a ser la salida más fácil al subconsciente.

«We have seen how Austin Spare projected his thought-sigils into his subconscious while in the Death Posture, how Don Juan taught Carlos Castaneda to transfer his being into the imagined form of a crow, and how the Surrealists and 'Decadents' attempted to merge subliminal images into a greater Reality. All of these men climbed, as it were, into their dreams; they penetrated the very origins of thought, the potent, creative vortexes within their psyche.» — Skinner recapitula los tres casos del libro, Spare, Castaneda con don Juan y los surrealistas, como entradas al propio sueño.

«The 'magical act' occurs when one becomes one's idea. In so doing the entire frame of reference is changed because consciousness is no longer restricted to a finite context. The projected self now encounters images and symbols, no longer subjective but real.» — Skinner define el acto mágico como volverse la propia idea, con lo que la consciencia deja de estar en marco finito y las imágenes dejan de ser subjetivas.

«And because the act of mental exploration is a conscious one, three-dimensionality is still perceived as coexistent with the 'living dream'. In one's barren room, hitherto inhabited by oneself only, might be found lurking a mythological gryphon, a sinister grotesque which has escaped from one of Bosch's paintings, or some aspect of the divided self which one had not realised was capable of separate anthropomorphic existence!» — Skinner describe la coexistencia de lo tridimensional con el sueño vivido y lo que puede aparecer en el cuarto: un grifo, un grotesco de El Bosco o una parte del yo dividido.

«These creatures are real on the astral plane, just as solid three-dimensionality is 'real' on the physical plane. As we know that matter exhibits wavelike characteristics, and that atoms are mostly space: perhaps the atomic nuclei, so stubbornly substantial, are only compacted waves of another order of existence.» — Skinner equipara la realidad astral a la física y propone leer el núcleo atómico como onda compactada de otro orden de existencia.

«In occult terminology astral forms can exist coextensively with the physical objects of the room. In fact the old idea of 'ghosts' being able to pass through walls is a 'folk awareness' of this law of the astral plane. Likewise the astral body can pass beyond the walls of a house as easily as it passed beyond the walls of the body.» — Skinner lee la creencia popular en fantasmas que atraviesan muros como conciencia difusa de la ley del plano astral.

«These symbols had already occurred fleetingly in a sequence painted by him in the 1930s under the title of 'The» — Drury rastrea los motivos solares de Ernst en una serie de los años treinta; el tramo se corta en el límite de plana y el título sigue en la siguiente.

«Entire City', which showed stark mottled ruins beneath a dominant Sun, as sole provider of energy in a dying world.» — la continuación: las ruinas moteadas bajo un sol único proveedor de energía en un mundo que muere.

«We suggest that the whole Phantasy movement of the Decadents and the Surrealists was an attempt by a number of artist-magicians to overcome material limitations and to probe the recesses of the mind for an Inner Reality. In doing so they uncovered many remarkable aspects, some of which were spiritual and others demoniac, some mystical, others atavistic.» — Drury junta decadentes y surrealistas bajo la figura del artista mago que sondea la mente en busca de una Realidad interior, y consigna que lo hallado fue tanto espiritual como demoniaco.

«The phenomenon which we have been discussing, and which is termed by Western occultists 'astral projection', indicates that what occurs in the imagination is as real to the psyche as the messages of the senses perceived in normal consciousness.» — Skinner enuncia la premisa de la proyección astral: lo imaginado es para la psique tan real como lo percibido por los sentidos.

«Two main disciplines are involved. The first is the ability to imagine and sustain within the mind a simple three-dimensional shape which is to all appearances 'real', already mentioned as the first necessary skill of an aspirant in the West. The second prerequisite is the ability to transfer one's entire consciousness to the created mental image so that it becomes one's new 'body' or 'vehicle' on the astral plane.» — Skinner da las dos disciplinas que la proyección exige: sostener una forma tridimensional en la mente y trasladarle la consciencia entera.

«Before launching into techniques for astral projection it is important to reiterate that the magical philosophy posits four 'bodies' or modes of consciousness. These are the physical, etheric, astral, and mental bodies.» — Skinner enumera los cuatro cuerpos o modos de consciencia que la filosofía mágica postula.

«The physical body is a conglomeration of cells and atoms built up from the intake of the four Elements, in the form of food (Earth), drink (Water), oxygen (Air), and light (Fire) which are formed into the characteristic shape of the individual by an etheric mould.» — Skinner deriva el cuerpo físico de los cuatro elementos tomados como alimento, bebida, oxígeno y luz, y le pone por molde el cuerpo etérico.

«Now, as it is well known, the cells that make up the body are in a state of flux, that is, they are generated and they die, but the new cells follow the same pattern, although this pattern weakens as it ages, or as it is subjected to greater than normal stresses such as a debauched life might impose on it. The pattern or energy field that determines the shape of the physical body occasionally breaks down and a wild profusion of uncontrolled cell growth breaks out, commonly called cancer.» — Skinner explica el debilitamiento del patrón celular con la edad y atribuye a su ruptura el crecimiento descontrolado que llama cáncer.

«This etheric body which forms the physical is in turn affected by the astral and mental bodies, thus making the physical body a rough reflection of the type of being inhabiting it.» — Skinner hace del cuerpo físico reflejo del ser que lo habita por vía del etérico.

«Further, part of the etheric body can be separated from the physical body with advanced forms of projection, under anaesthetics (where the pain messages of the physical body cannot reach the mental body, as there is no connecting etheric matter) and under some forms of hypnotism.» — Skinner da tres casos de separación parcial del etérico y explica por ella la anestesia como corte del mensaje de dolor.

«At death the etheric body separates completely and the organisation of the body's cellular structure immediately begins to break down, and the chemical processes of decomposition take over from the etheric-directed process of cell building. The etheric is thus the 'matrix' of the physical body.» — Skinner pone el etérico por matriz del cuerpo físico y explica la descomposición por su separación en la muerte.

«The third body, the astral body, is much more 'plastic' than the etheric, just as it in turn is less rigid than the physical. It draws for its substance on the» — Skinner gradúa la plasticidad de los tres cuerpos; el tramo se corta en el límite de plana y sigue con *directed imagination*.

«directed imagination. It is this body which is formed by the mind into a vehicle for nocturnal excursions, be it unwittingly in dreams, of which only disconnected memories are brought back, or in deliberate astral projection in which the 'Body of Light' is formed as a vehicle for consciousness beyond the physical body.» — Skinner identifica el cuerpo astral como el vehículo de las salidas nocturnas, sea en sueños sea en la proyección deliberada del Cuerpo de Luz.

«Before commencing the actual work of building this vehicle, it is wise to perform the Banishing Ritual of the Lesser Pentagram which has the dual purpose of clearing the air of any distracting influences and concentrating the attention on the magical work in hand. A third reason is to ensure that the body is protected from any undue external influence whilst the astral is projected.» — Skinner pone el Ritual Menor del Pentagrama de destierro como paso previo y le adjudica tres funciones, la tercera de protección del cuerpo.

«Then, suitably comfortable in a dimly lit room upon a couch or in asana, an image of oneself should be built up, so that it becomes solid and apparent to the inner eye in all its details. This image can be simplified by viewing it as a hooded and robed figure but seen as definitely being oneself. The image should be seen as coinciding with the physical body and seated or lying in the same position.» — Skinner detalla la construcción del simulacro: una figura encapuchada y con túnica, reconocible como uno mismo y en la misma postura.

«When this is firmly visualised it should be gradually moved away from the physical body, till it is some distance from it. The aspirant should then perform mentally an exercise known as 'the exercise of the interwoven light'1 in order to make the experimenter more conscious of each of his three non-physical bodies.» — Skinner manda alejar el simulacro y hacer en él el ejercicio de la luz entretejida, que la nota remite a The Magician de W. E. Butler.

«If the 'exercise of the interwoven light' can be pictured as taking place in the space occupied by the visualised body or simulacrum, this will have the effect of transferring some of the matter of these three bodies to it.» — Skinner declara el efecto buscado por ese ejercicio: transferir al simulacro parte de la materia de los tres cuerpos.

«Now it is necessary to put the simulacrum through its paces by willing it to stand up, sit down, walk around and so on. An extension of this exercise is to visualise the simulacrum going through the actions of the Banishing Ritual of the Lesser Pentagram, which, if thoroughly learnt by the experimenter, will help to identify the experimenter with his simulacrum.» — Skinner da el ejercicio siguiente: hacer andar al simulacro y hacerle ejecutar el ritual de destierro para identificarse con él.

«If at any time during this phase one begins to feel as if the banishing is being conducted by oneself, not the simulacrum, this is the moment in which to identify with its point of view, to see from its direction; to be aware of a body lying at some distance upon a couch, which after a few seconds' thought is seen to be one's sleeping physical body.» — Skinner señala la señal del cambio: sentir que el destierro lo hace uno y no el simulacro, y ver desde ahí el propio cuerpo dormido.

«unmistakable click which is heard inside the head, one has to continue to exert effort to remain out of the body, rather than, as commonly feared, worry about getting back in.» — Skinner consigna el chasquido que marca el cambio de consciencia y advierte que el esfuerzo está en quedarse fuera, no en volver; el tramo arranca donde el corte de plana dejó la frase.

«Usually, astral projection will only be achieved after many abortive attempts and can be likened to a knack, which is hard to explain or achieve but once found, with a little practice, is easily duplicated at will.» — Skinner describe la proyección como un tino difícil de explicar que, una vez hallado, se repite a voluntad.

«Just as a child gets used to controlling its body as it grows up, so the experimenter will find his astral body more easily manipulated, more able to go longer distances from the physical body, and able to stay out for longer periods of time, the more it is used.» — Skinner compara el adiestramiento del cuerpo astral con el del niño que aprende a manejar el suyo.

«One of the first signs of success in astral travel is a feeling of rocking slowly backwards and forwards as if at the end of a long pendulum; this is in effect the loosening of the astral body.» — Skinner da la primera señal de éxito: el balanceo como al extremo de un péndulo largo.

«During one's first astral projection it is usual to find that apart from a strange sense of disorientation, there is a coolness in the limbs (of the astral body) and a feeling of being able to float, although the latter takes some concentration to control efficiently. There is sometimes a feeling like a hand pressing one's solar plexus which is where the link with the physical body connects with the astral form, but this lessens as the astral body grows stronger.» — Skinner enumera las sensaciones de la primera salida: desorientación, frío en los miembros, flotación y la presión en el plexo solar donde ata el enlace.

«One disconcerting thing about the condition is that as in dreams (which are similar in that they occur on the same plane) thinking of something strongly is enough to instantaneously bring it within one's immediate range of perception. Thus one can leave the room by merely imagining oneself outside it.» — Skinner consigna la ley del plano: pensar algo con fuerza lo trae al alcance, de modo que basta imaginarse fuera del cuarto para salir.

«At first only the physical objects of the room are apparent, although they seem illuminated by a bluish glow, but if one allows oneself to concentrate upon ideas other than the immediate surroundings the scene tends to fade and be replaced by a 'dream sequence' of images.» — Skinner describe el resplandor azulado de los objetos y el desvanecimiento de la escena en cuanto la atención se va a otra cosa.

«For quite some time, however, investigation of the physical surroundings in the astral body is quite enough to handle without reaching out to levels of the astral of a more subjective nature. For example, it is worthwhile practising visiting familiar surroundings, remembering details and checking up on these later, if only as a personal proof of the reality of the phenomena.» — Skinner recomienda quedarse en el entorno físico y cotejar después los detalles recordados, como verificación para uno mismo.

«attributed to various parts of the Tree of Life to direct one's progression through these realms. Thus one might commence, for example, at Malkuth and have the choice of three Paths, these having being accessible by using the Tarot trumps. The Moon, Judgement or The World, as a door which would lead respectively to the Spheres of Netzach, Hod or Yesod.» — Skinner da el ejemplo concreto: desde Malkuth, tres senderos con sus triunfos del tarot como puertas.

«The anthropomorphised ideas and feelings which will be encountered here will be similar to those described in an earlier chapter on skrying, with the difference that whilst in the astral body apparent 'reality' will be more pronounced.» — Skinner empareja lo que se encuentra allí con lo del capítulo del skrying y marca la diferencia: en el cuerpo astral la apariencia de realidad es más fuerte.

«Returning to the body is a process which must be done as slowly and with as much care as leaving it, for although there is an ever-increasing pull trying to snap one back into the body, it is wise not to yield to it.» — Skinner advierte no ceder al tirón de vuelta y hacer el regreso con el mismo cuidado que la salida.

«Thus, if the 'trip' had included the passing through of symbolic portals, each one passed should be returned through until Malkuth is reached, and one is standing in the astral body near the physical body.» — Skinner manda desandar en orden inverso cada portal simbólico hasta Malkuth; la capa de texto imprime *nil* donde el libro dice *all*.

«Then the consciousness should be transferred to the physical body, so that it wakes to perceive the now empty Body of Light standing in front of it. This should then be willed to move into the same spatial area as the body and an effort is made to reabsorb it, at the same time asserting mentally the Unity of all three 'bodies'.» — Skinner detalla la reabsorción del Cuerpo de Luz y la afirmación mental de la unidad de los tres cuerpos.

«If this is performed faithfully, not only will the projection of the astral body be easier next time, as the thoughtform of the Body of Light has already been built up, but also the thoughtform, if neglected, can be indirectly a hazard to the experimenter, as it may be taken over by other entities.» — Skinner declara el riesgo de descuidar esa forma de pensamiento: que otras entidades la ocupen.

«Other levels of the astral can be reached by visualising the astral body as rising rapidly and simultaneously picturing the desired destination or portal symbol. The images can be ordered by using the signs and symbols» — Skinner da el modo de alcanzar otros niveles del astral: ascenso rápido visualizando a la vez el destino o su símbolo de portal; el tramo se corta en el límite de plana y sigue con las atribuciones del Árbol de la Vida.

«Normally, much of the experience gained during astral projection will be remembered like that of a dream, for in fact astral projection is a very» — Skinner llama a la proyección astral una forma muy particular de soñar; el troceo reemite la marca de plana en el límite de chunk y corta ahí la frase, que sigue con *special form of dreaming, so it is desirable to have some way of recording it directly*.

«special form of dreaming, so it is desirable to have some way of recording it directly. This can be done, after facility in astral travelling has been secured, by concentrating on the physical body in such a way as to activate either hand or voice. Like Phillippe Soupault and Andre Breton, who investigated automatic writing as an aid to communicating the contents of the subconscious, so automatic writing (if one has already been accustomed to it) can be used whilst one is astrally projected to communicate one's experiences.» — la continuación: Skinner propone la escritura automática, la misma que investigaron Soupault y Breton, como registro desde el cuerpo astral.

«faculties, however, are as difficult to achieve as the initial projection. There is a further step beyond astral projection that can be taken, but only after a great facility in the control of the astral body is attained.» — Skinner acota que registrar la experiencia cuesta tanto como la proyección misma y anuncia un paso más allá; el tramo arranca donde el corte de plana dejó la frase.

«This step is etheric projection. To accomplish this one must first project the astral body, and whilst watching the physical body, imagine that a white cloudlike replica of the body is being drawn out of it. One then strives to unite with this form, and if successful, there will be a marked change in the breathing rhythm of the physical body.» — Skinner describe la proyección etérica: sacar del cuerpo una réplica nubosa y blanca y unirse a ella, con cambio marcado en la respiración.

«As the breathing of the physical body becomes irregular, one should commence to breathe in the astral body. As the astral takes up the burden of breathing the physical body will lapse into a state resembling a cataleptic trance, its breathing will cease and the body will take on the appearance of death.» — Skinner detalla el paso de la respiración al cuerpo astral y el trance catalépsico del físico, con apariencia de muerte.

«When the breathing in the astral body ceases, then the etheric matter will return to the physical body, which will revert from a trance state to that of sleep.» — Skinner describe la vuelta: cesada la respiración astral, la materia etérica regresa y el trance pasa a sueño.

«Whilst the etheric body is withdrawn from its physical envelope by 'astral breathing' the prana which is normally absorbed by the physical body is now being transmitted via the extended etheric body.» — Skinner explica el paso del prana por el cuerpo etérico extendido.

«Connecting the physical body with its extended etheric body is a tenuous cord of etheric matter, often referred to by occultists as the 'silver cord'. If this is broken at any time the death of the physical body, apparently from heart failure, will ensue.» — Skinner nombra el cordón de plata y declara la muerte del cuerpo si se rompe, con apariencia de fallo cardiaco.

«In most magical usage, astral projection should be adequate, but where it is essential that a more 'material' vehicle be used, then etheric projection may be employed, providing adequate safeguards to protect the physical body from disturbance are observed.» — Skinner reserva la proyección etérica para cuando se necesite un vehículo más material y con resguardos.

«Astral projection is significant because it implies that man's consciousness can exist actively as an entity free of the physical organism. The 'astral double' in fact equates with the concept of the soul (in the sense of Nephesh) as the component which survives the death of the body,1 the latter being seen not as the originator of consciousness so much as its outward vestment.» — Skinner saca la consecuencia: la consciencia puede existir como entidad libre del organismo, y el doble astral equivale al alma en el sentido de Nephesh; el tramo lleva dentro la llamada de nota que añade que el Nephesh también se desintegra.

«a type of dream-state, or astral Universe, when we die, it becomes clear why mystery schools advise their initiates on both visionary revelation and the anticipated after-death imagery.» — Skinner explica por qué las escuelas mistéricas instruyen a la vez sobre la revelación visionaria y sobre las imágenes de después de la muerte; el tramo arranca donde el corte de plana dejó la frase.

«In the latter instance the person involved lacks a material reference, he has no body. There is no dichotomy of 'real and unreal' to guide him. He is immersed in all the anthropomorphic embodiments of his own emotions. He must know how to react.» — Skinner describe la situación del muerto sin cuerpo ni dicotomía entre real e irreal, inmerso en sus propias emociones encarnadas.

«Are these projected images real? They seem to be and yet the mystery traditions are consistent in stating that in the final sense such images are 'maya', illusion, and not to be heeded. For if the individual takes the visionary contents on their face value, be they god-like or demoniac, he is confusing the symbol with the indescribable Infinite Reality that they reflect.» — Skinner deja la pregunta y responde con la doctrina de las tradiciones: son maya, y tomarlas al pie de la letra es confundir el símbolo con lo Infinito que refleja.

«Accordingly, both the man who surrounds himself with angels thinking he is in Heaven, and the man who is unable to shrug off the terrible appearance of devils thinking he is doomed to Hell - both these men fall short of the true Nirvana which is Boundless in all respects, and without specific form or attributes.» — Skinner iguala los dos errores, el del cielo y el del infierno, frente a un Nirvana sin forma ni atributos.

«Our destiny is resolved by whether we choose to pursue the positive, harmonising aspects or the negative, divisive qualities inherent in our own being. And in our being is the essence of all Being. Or as the Gnosis says: "As above, so below."» — Skinner cierra el punto con la elección entre lo armonizador y lo divisivo y con la fórmula que atribuye a la gnosis.

«The Bardo Thodol, or Tibetan Book of the Dead as it is known in its English translation, is a manual which deals with the varying stages of consciousness encountered by man outside his physical body.» — Skinner presenta el Bardo Thodol como manual de los estados de consciencia fuera del cuerpo.

«Carl Jung, who wrote an introduction to the English edition, considered that the book was intended as a guide to after-death experiences, thus preparing the dying for what was about to happen to them. It is true, in fact, that passages from the Bardo Thodol are used in last rites by Tibetan priests for this very purpose.» — Skinner consigna la lectura de Jung, guía de las experiencias posteriores a la muerte, y la acompaña del uso litúrgico tibetano.

«Jung's viewpoint has been criticised by Dr. Timothy Leary who believes that the Tibetan Book of the Dead deals primarily with initiation; the death of the ego and the rebirth of the Spirit.» — Skinner consigna la objeción de Timothy Leary a Jung: el libro tibetano trataría ante todo de iniciación.

«essentially transcendental and 'other-worldly', reminds man of his Divine origin, so often forgotten in the 'Sangsaric' world of normality.» — Skinner sigue la lectura de Leary: el proceso recuerda al hombre su origen divino; el tramo arranca donde el corte de plana dejó la frase.

«Surely both men are right. For there seem to be clear parallels between the after-death experience and the projection, under will, of the 'astral double'. In one instance the 'double' does not return to the body, in the other it does. But both processes involve self-realisation, the essence of initiation.» — Skinner no arbitra entre Jung y Leary y da por buenas las dos lecturas, con la diferencia de si el doble vuelve o no al cuerpo.

«Tibetan Buddhists believe strongly in the principle of Karma, or reaping the fruits of one's own deeds. The reincarnation of the self through different bodies and experiences provides the lessons by which the individual gradually comes to re-acknowledge his Divine Source.» — Skinner expone el karma y la reencarnación como las lecciones por las que el individuo vuelve a reconocer su Fuente; el tramo se corta antes de la llamada de nota, que trae la investigación de Ian Stevenson.

«This realisation lifts him away from material considerations and further 'rebirth', through initiation or reincarnation, becomes unnecessary.» — Skinner declara innecesario el renacimiento, por iniciación o por reencarnación, una vez hecho ese reconocimiento.

«It is not a crucial issue whether the mystic receives his revelations in a transcendental, visionary state or whether he is finally united with the Godhead in the after-death dream by aspiring to the deity-projections of his own mind.» — Skinner deja indiferente la vía, visionaria o de después de la muerte, para llegar a la unión; el tramo se corta antes de dos llamadas de nota pegadas.

«For the Buddhist, the concept of time is of little importance: we are, after all, going to the same place. We will all get there eventually. It is up to us to decide our pace.» — Skinner cierra el capítulo con la indiferencia budista al tiempo: el destino es el mismo y solo el paso es nuestro.

«Perhaps most important is the work of Dr. Ian Stevenson, the American medical scientist who is at present involved in research on very young children with vivid memory patterns far beyond the scope of their present lives.» — la nota al pie en que Skinner presenta la investigación de Ian Stevenson con niños de recuerdos que exceden su vida presente; cita de aparato.

«Another type of evidence is that compiled by hypnotherapist Amall Bloxham. who employs hypnotic techniques to lift his patients into their» — la segunda nota al pie, sobre las regresiones hipnóticas de Arnall Bloxham; la capa de texto imprime *Amall*; cita de aparato.

«The bird is struggling out of the egg. The egg is the world. Whoever wants to be born must first destroy a world. The bird is flying to God. The name of the God is called ABRAXAS."» — el epígrafe que encabeza la Sección IV, la que da título al libro, atribuido a Hermann Hesse.

«As religious concepts. Heaven and Hell thus acquire new meaning. They are not locations as the superstitious believe, but mental states.» — Skinner redefine cielo e infierno como estados mentales y no lugares; la capa de texto pone punto donde el libro imprime coma en *As religious concepts*, y el tramo se corta antes de la llamada de nota.

«Nevertheless, they are every bit as real to the disembodied psyche as the physical dimension is to the senses. Our virtues and vices are presented to us as Gods and Demons.» — Skinner acota de inmediato: para la psique sin cuerpo son tan reales como lo físico para los sentidos, y virtudes y vicios se le presentan como dioses y demonios.

«The Search for Abraxas is a search for Reality: from time immemorial man has realised that he has only perceived a portion of 'reality', and over the ages techniques have been formulated for the cognition of other phases of existence.» — Skinner abre la Conclusion declarando la materia del libro: la búsqueda de lo Real, y las técnicas formuladas a lo largo de las edades para conocer otras fases de la existencia.

«The ancients expressed this search in terms of Initiation into the Mysteries, Christianity in terms of the acceptance of Christ, the mystic in terms of Union with the Godhead, and so on. Even modern philosophy acknowledges that the senses are a very limited organ for the perception of reality. Sinclair has proved to his satisfaction that 'reality' is screened by a censor (not Freud's censor) which admits only that amount of experience which man is capable of handling.» — Skinner pone la iniciación antigua, la aceptación de Cristo y la unión mística como formulaciones de una misma búsqueda, y añade el censor de Sinclair que filtra la experiencia.

«Science extends our fields of knowledge using instruments such as the telescope or the microscope to extend the range of perceptions of our senses, but occultism, in its search for the greater realities beyond man's senses, uses techniques which, although not always as apparent as those of science, are in some cases as precise and in most cases less well understood.» — Skinner compara instrumentos científicos y técnicas ocultistas y concede a las segundas precisión en algunos casos y opacidad en la mayoría.

«Pursuing this line of thought, reality as a whole can be experienced by expanding the limits of the censor. In the phraseology of occultism this is called 'opening the third eye' or 'initiation'; in the case of chemically activated illumination, it is known as 'going on a trip' (although these are not necessarily the same).» — Skinner nombra las tres expresiones de una misma ampliación del censor y acota expresamente que no son forzosamente lo mismo.

«During the last decade, as also in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there has been a great upsurge of interest in the occult and the paths available have increased in number. With the aid of science, which has produced L.S.D., synthesised mescaline and isolated a number of 'utopiate' alkaloids, modern man has again been made aware of the techniques of consciousness expansion.» — Skinner empareja el auge ocultista de su década con el de fines del XIX y adjudica a la ciencia el LSD, la mescalina sintética y los alcaloides utópicos.

«The upsurge in attempts to expand consciousness is not merely a reaction to the arrival of a greater number of means of so doing, but a reaction by the subconscious to the increasingly materialistic attitude of nations whose leaders see the 'Great Society' purely in terms of material prosperity.» — Skinner explica ese auge como reacción del subconsciente al materialismo de los gobiernos, no como mero efecto de la oferta de medios.

«The result of the 'psychedelic revolution' in particular have been a return to the countryside, to the tilling of the soil and the living of a simpler, less hurried life, manifesting greater awareness of the forces of Nature and the» — Skinner consigna el saldo de la revolución psicodélica como vuelta al campo y a una vida más simple; el tramo se corta en el límite de plana y remata con *elements*.

«Each Path has its price however; for the Yogi it is the agonising control of his body before he can focus his mind on the Ultimate; for the Magician it is the possibility of being ensnared in the symbols which are used to bridge reality and falling into the illusion that they are reality.» — Skinner fija el precio de cada vía: para el yogui el control del cuerpo, para el mago quedar preso en los símbolos que tendían el puente.

«If drugs are used, then it is not drug dependence in the normal sense that is to be feared (for the major psychedelics are not addictive) but the failure to make the connection between drug experiences and ordinary life.» — Skinner acota el riesgo de los psicodélicos: no la dependencia, que niega, sino la falta de enlace entre la experiencia y la vida corriente.

«There is the added hazard of interpreting the welter of perceptions and visions as real: they are only real in the sense that each phase of consciousness is closer to the Ultimate Reality. As yet, these levels have been relatively uncharted by the explorers of 'inner space'.» — Skinner acota en qué sentido son reales esas percepciones y declara sin cartografiar esos niveles.

«This upsurge in availability, interest in, and use of psychedelic drugs has sparked off an instinctive return to occultism in an effort to disentangle the mazes of subconscious material finding expression through these drugs, or to explain their particular illumination in terms of the illuminations of other men of other times.» — Skinner explica la vuelta al ocultismo como intento de desenredar lo que los psicodélicos sacan a la luz.

«Here we begin to see an application of the keys which have been found applicable to man (as modelled in the mystery tradition), fitting into locks which have been formed recently by the advances of science. Science, however, although it has discovered L.S.D., does not have the key to using it.» — Skinner separa el hallazgo del LSD por la ciencia de la llave para usarlo, que adjudica a la tradición mistérica.

«The Qabalah is one such key, possibly the most reliable one, as it is the Western psyche, both individual and collective, which is being influenced by the new psychedelics, resulting in changes both individual and social.» — Skinner propone la cábala como la llave más fiable por ser occidental la psique que los psicodélicos tocan.

«If this proves to be correct, it reinforces the view that the Qabalah extends its validity to all corners of the psyche of man; even those 'opened' centuries after the Qabalah was first set down in writing.» — Skinner condiciona expresamente la consecuencia: de ser correcto, la cábala valdría también para lo abierto siglos después de escribirse.

«Of course, these new 'openings' are old ones, that the Qabalah had experienced not through drugs, but through hard work, devotion and that indefinite quality, inspiration.» — Skinner niega la novedad de esas aperturas y las adjudica en la cábala al trabajo, la devoción y la inspiración, no a las drogas.

«In any system of illumination one must be aware of relative truth or relative reality. It is 'true' to the man in the street that magic doesn't exist; it is 'true' to the would-be initiate that magic does exist.» — Skinner introduce la verdad relativa con las dos posiciones opuestas sobre la existencia de la magia.

«into the wealth of sense-symbol-expressions as pleasurable experiences, instead of using them to structure consciousness and life, that must be avoided.» — Skinner nombra lo que hay que evitar: quedarse en el placer de las expresiones sensoriales en vez de estructurar con ellas la consciencia y la vida; el troceo reemite la marca de plana en el límite de chunk y deja del otro lado el arranque, *It is the retreat*.

«initiated, 'magic' does not exist, inasmuch as the effects described by this word are the result of application of exact formulae and laws which have not as yet found their way into the canon of accepted science.» — Skinner da la tercera posición, la del iniciado, para quien la magia no existe por ser efecto de fórmulas y leyes aún fuera del canon científico; el tramo arranca donde el corte de plana dejó la frase.

«Each of the above three statements is true to the person concerned, likewise the laws applying to each plane are different and often contradictory: on the physical plane two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time or travel sufficiently fast for the same object to be in two places at the same time. However, these occurrences are quite in order in terms of the laws of the astral plane. To apply the laws of one plane to the other results in inaccuracy and confusion.» — Skinner declara verdaderas las tres posiciones para quien las sostiene y extiende el principio a las leyes de cada plano, que no se trasladan de uno a otro.

«Confusion of an intermediate plane or a relative truth with an ultimate truth, is merely an exchange of one illusion for another; thus, the indiscriminate use of drugs has provided a number of unstable personalities with a new apparent reality upon which to exercise their unstable egos» — Skinner objeta al uso indiscriminado de drogas que cambia una ilusión por otra y da a egos inestables una realidad aparente nueva.

«This is not to deny that drugs can play a part in exploring other areas of consciousness normally not accessible, but merely to point out that usage of anything as drastic as a psychedelic drug without some idea where one is going,1 or even where one has been, is going to leave the aspirant with whatever neurosis he started with, distorted into a frame of reference with which he is even less familiar: in short a flight from reality.» — Skinner concede a las drogas un papel en la exploración y a la vez advierte que sin rumbo devuelven la neurosis de partida en un marco menos familiar.

«The solution to this apparently endless progression of planes is to use an already established 'Uranography2 of the mind' which will enable one to explore consciousness systematically and determine a direction in which to evolve.» — Skinner propone como salida una Uranografía de la mente, carta estelar interior que permita explorar con sistema.

«Similarly in the Western Tradition, it is not simply a matter of invoking or evoking a series of gods, demons, spirits, or angels, but its practice must consist of systematic reawakening of those extensions of consciousness that for most of us appear to have been closed for ever by our civilisation or upbringing. With the aid of such a Uranography one can determine one's weaknesses and correct them.» — Skinner declara que la práctica occidental no consiste en invocar dioses y demonios sino en reabrir con sistema extensiones de consciencia que la civilización o la crianza cerraron.

«Uranography literally means ‘star chart', for as Aleister Crowley has said. “Ever}' man and woman is a star."» — la nota al pie en que Skinner explica el término y lo apoya en la frase de Crowley sobre cada hombre y cada mujer como estrella; cita de aparato.

«consciousness which have no systematic background; such as the psychedelic movement. Timothy Leary has provided it with an Eastern background by adapting the Tibetan Book of the Dead, which categorises a 'trip' into three phases: First Bardo or period of ego-loss and non-game ecstasy; Second Bardo, or period of hallucinations, from archetypal forms, through wave constitution-of-matter visions to Creator visions; and the Third Bardo of 're-entry' or return to non-Bardo consciousness.» — Skinner expone la adaptación del libro tibetano por Timothy Leary en tres bardos y la presenta como el trasfondo oriental que el movimiento psicodélico se dio; el tramo arranca donde el corte de plana dejó la frase.

«However, since it is the Western mind, with its own archetypes, that is undergoing the 'psychedelic experience' it is more appropriate to apply a Western charter of the psyche. It is for this reason that we have dealt in this book primarily with traditions closer to home, and specifically one that is highly applicable in our own time, the Qabalah.» — Skinner objeta a esa adaptación el desajuste de arquetipos y declara ahí mismo por qué el libro trata sobre todo de la cábala.

«The Golden Dawn brought together the strands of esoteric Jewish teaching, Rosicrucianism and the Mystery Religions and forged them into magical and mystical ceremonial which expanded the consciousness of its participants through initiation.» — Skinner adjudica a la Golden Dawn la fusión de la enseñanza judía esotérica, el rosacrucismo y las religiones mistéricas en ceremonial de iniciación.

«The times in which this occurred were characterised by rampant materialism, similar to that which has produced, as an effect, the total rejection of many values inherent in the corrupted American Dream of today.» — Skinner empareja el materialismo de la época de la Golden Dawn con el que a su juicio produjo el rechazo de valores de su propio tiempo.

«One of the most significant after-effects of the Hippie movement has been that many young people have experienced profoundly significant religious insights and are currently searching for a philosophy or teaching which adequately explains the 'realities' previously apparent under drugs.» — Skinner consigna la secuela que tiene por más significativa: jóvenes con experiencias religiosas buscando una enseñanza que las explique.

«The so-called Jesus Freaks, as clergyman John Bisango put it, "are turning on to Jesus." However, the majority of latter-day Hippies remain unable to enter a world dominated by faith.» — Skinner cita al clérigo John Bisango sobre los Jesus Freaks y a la vez consigna que la mayoría no entra en un mundo regido por la fe.

«For the drug experience breeds an enquiring approach. Firstly, visions; but then one wants to know just what is going on. It is therefore hardly surprising that the new approach is primarily non-institutional, pantheistic, eclectic, and theosophic. The truth is sought in The Bible perhaps, but also in the I Ching, in Professor Tolkien's mythology, in the mystical writings of Hermann Hesse, in the Tarot cards, in the UFO literature, in the Qabalah ...» — Skinner describe el enfoque nuevo como no institucional, panteísta, ecléctico y teosófico, y enumera dónde se busca la verdad, de la Biblia y el I Ching a Tolkien, Hesse, el tarot y la literatura sobre ovnis.

«It is as if we have lost sight of something which has to be regained. As if, perhaps, we have been ignoring that other side of ourselves, our potential.» — Skinner cierra la enumeración con la fórmula de lo perdido y por recobrar, que es el otro lado de nosotros mismos.

«This is why the current search for inner knowledge or Gnosis involves a synthesis. All facets of life have to be accounted for, whether good or evil, for otherwise the imbalance weighs heavily and the memory of the bad trip remains.» — Skinner declara la síntesis como exigencia de la busca de gnosis: hay que dar cuenta de todas las facetas, buenas y malas, o el desequilibrio pesa; el tramo arranca donde el corte de plana dejó la frase.

«There is an animal in man, and there is a God in man. In order to produce a harmonised microcosm these aspects of our nature have to be firstly acknowledged: it is then that the self may be transformed.» — Skinner pone el reconocimiento de las dos partes como condición del microcosmos armonizado.

«Perhaps the God which best symbolises this mystical venture is the one who is both a man and a hawk; He who is of the Sun and whose legs are coiling serpents, symbol of Wisdom reaching down to Earth. He who holds the sacred shield ... and whose name is Abraxas.» — Skinner cierra el libro con la figura de Abraxas, hombre y halcón, solar y con piernas de serpiente, y marca la propuesta con un *perhaps*.

«Figure 22: 'Night Flower' - Nevill Drury.» — el pie de la lámina vigésima segunda, un dibujo del propio Drury.

«Newbrough, J. Oahspe, A Kosmon Bible. London and Sydney, 1926.» — la entrada bibliográfica del OAHSPE; la bibliografía imprime *Kosmon* donde el capítulo Modern Revivals, en la plana 30, da *Kosman*, y fecha la edición usada en 1926 y no en la primera de 1882.

«Trismosin, S. Splendor Solis. Kegan Paul, Trench and Trubner, London.» — la entrada bibliográfica del Splendor Solis, sin año.

«Regardie, I. The Golden Down (4 vols.). The Aries Press, Chicago, 1938-1940.» — la entrada bibliográfica de la Golden Dawn de Regardie; la capa de texto imprime *The Golden Down*.

«Spare, A.O. Earth: Inferno. London, 1905; reprinted Askin, London, 1976.» — la entrada bibliográfica del primer libro de Spare, con la reimpresión que Skinner declara haber publicado.

«Castaneda, C. The Teachings of Don Juan. Penguin Books, Middlesex, 1970.» — la entrada bibliográfica del libro de Castaneda que sostiene el capítulo Los Diableros.

«SECTION III: Vie World of Dreams» — el rótulo de la tercera sección en la bibliografía; la capa de texto imprime *Vie* donde el libro dice *The*, como ya lo hizo con *Tlie* en el índice.

«Evans-Wentz, W.Y. The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Oxford Universitv Press,» — la entrada bibliográfica de la edición del Bardo Thodol que el capítulo sobre proyección astral usa; la capa de texto imprime *Universitv*.

«Muldoon, S. and Carrington, H. The Projection of the Astral Body. Rider, London, 1963.» — la entrada bibliográfica de Muldoon y Carrington, los dos autores que Wilson y Drury nombran a propósito de la proyección astral.

«SECTION IV: The Search for Abraxas Hesse, H. Demian. Panther Books, London, 1969.» — la bibliografía de la sección que da título al libro se abre con el Demian de Hesse, de donde salen los dos epígrafes sobre Abraxas.

«Leary, T. et al. The Psychedelic Experience. University Books, New York,» — la entrada bibliográfica de la adaptación del libro tibetano por Leary que la Conclusion discute.

«Basilides, Gnostic teacher, 34, 35,» — la entrada del índice para Basílides, único sitio del volumen donde se le pone oficio; los números son folios impresos, una unidad menos que la plana del troceo.

«Astral projection, 9,13,80, 81, 96,» — la entrada del índice para la proyección astral, con la corrida de folios que el troceo imprime sin espacios tras las comas.

«Witchcraft in Western Europe, 94» — la entrada del índice para el libro de Margaret Murray a cuyo apéndice remite el capítulo Belladonna.

«Crowley, Aleister, 13,14,15, 21, 58, 60, 61, 62, 70, 75, 77, 79, 82, 85, 86,137,142,143» — la entrada del índice para Crowley, la más larga de las de persona, con dieciocho folios.

«Hesse, Hermann, 8,12, 22,133,» — la entrada del índice para Hermann Hesse, que remite a los dos epígrafes sobre Abraxas y a la bibliografía.

«Oahspe, a Kosmon Bible, 18, 29, 30,» — la entrada del índice para el OAHSPE, con la tercera grafía del subtítulo que da el volumen: *Kosmon* en minúscula inicial aquí, *Kosmon* en la bibliografía y *Kosman* en el cuerpo.

«Newbrough, Dr. John Ballou, 29,» — la entrada del índice para Newbrough, con el nombre completo que el cuerpo da y que la introducción de Colin Wilson reduce a *Ballou*.

«Figure 1: An authentic Gnostic Abraxas talisman.» — el pie de la lámina primera, el talismán que el libro presenta como gnóstico auténtico y al que remiten los capítulos Genesis of the Gnosis y la Conclusion.

«Figure 2: Ink drawing of Abraxas by Nevill Drury, based on antique Gnostic talismans.» — el pie de la lámina segunda, el dibujo del propio Drury hecho sobre talismanes gnósticos antiguos.

«Uranography, 137 Ussher, Bishop, 30» — dos entradas seguidas del índice: el término con que Skinner nombra su carta estelar de la mente y el obispo cuya cronología Drury da por caída.

«I Clung, 58,138 Ialdabaoth, 36» — dos entradas seguidas del índice; la capa de texto imprime *I Clung* donde el libro dice I Ching, y en la plana 59 lo imprime *I Citing*.

«Section III - Tlie World of Dreams» — el índice de la tercera edición nombra así la sección tercera; la capa de texto lee *Tlie* donde el libro imprime *The*.

«I have first to record my debt to my co-author, Nevill Drury. We met while we were both doing our Arts degree at Sydney University.» — Skinner abre la introducción a la tercera edición nombrando la deuda con su coautor y el sitio donde se conocieron.

«Inner space became even more fascinating than outer space, and I launched and edited one of the new psychedelic magazines. Chaos, for which Nevill did much of the artwork. In turn Nevill introduced me to the rock music of that era, and incidentally some very good parties, and I introduced him to the Qabalah and magic.» — Skinner cuenta el reparto de oficios entre los dos: él dirigía una revista psicodélica para la que Drury hacía la ilustración, y a cambio le enseñó la cábala y la magia; la capa de texto pone punto donde el libro imprime coma en *magazines. Chaos*.

«Nevill passed away in October 2013, after an incredibly productive life in the worlds of magic, art and music.» — Skinner fecha la muerte de Drury en octubre de 2013, es decir después de la segunda edición y antes de esta.

«Further to the actual production of this book, as Nevill mentions in his introduction, he offered the idea to the publisher Neville Armstrong. Probably with the objective of getting rid of the eager young author in front of him, Neville Armstrong said that if we could deliver a final manuscript within a month he would accept it for publication.» — Skinner cuenta la génesis editorial: Drury llevó la idea a Neville Armstrong, que puso como condición entregar el manuscrito en un mes.

«We both liked a challenge, so Nevill returned to Sydney immediately and we started writing. Indeed we did make the deadline (all laboriously handwritten and then typed on a portable typewriter) and airmailed the manuscript back to London.» — Skinner declara que cumplieron el plazo escribiendo a mano y mecanografiando en una portátil, y que mandaron el manuscrito por correo aéreo a Londres.

«It is also very satisfying to see that Nevill and I saw the brilliance of Austin Osman Spare's work, both as magic and as art, long before he became a popular resource for works on sigil magic and Chaos magic theory.» — Skinner reclama para los dos la anticipación sobre Austin Osman Spare, antes de que fuera material corriente de la magia de sigilos y de la magia del caos.

«I have taken the liberty of marking which chapters were written by Nevill and which by me, and this indeed became an indication of our later respective career paths: Nevill's in magic, music, shamanism and art, and mine in practical magic, Qabalah, grimoires. Gnosticism and eventually Graeco-Egyptian magic.» — Skinner declara que las iniciales del índice son suyas y las lee como anuncio de las dos carreras; la capa de texto pone punto donde el libro imprime coma en *grimoires. Gnosticism*.

«Three very rough sketches by Austin Osman Spare have been dropped from this edition as they seemed out of place next to his more considered work.» — Skinner declara qué quitó esta edición: tres bocetos de Spare que juzgó fuera de lugar.

«More than 40 years have now passed since the release of The Search for Abraxas - a book which Stephen Skinner and I both look back on with a certain fondness because it was our first publication.» — Drury abre la introducción a la segunda edición: cuarenta años después, el libro sigue siendo para los dos su primera publicación.

«The book obviously reflects some of the predictable weaknesses associated with youthful exuberance - we were both in our mid-twenties when the book was released.» — Drury declara el límite de la obra por la edad de sus autores, a mitad de la veintena cuando salió.

«However we were unaware until the book was actually in its production phase that the publisher, London-based Neville Spearman, had invited the well known British novelist and occult writer Colin Wilson to contribute an introduction.» — Drury cuenta que la introducción de Wilson la encargó el editor Neville Spearman sin que los autores lo supieran hasta la fase de producción.

«We were delighted that Wilson described the book as "the manifesto of a new generation" for this was generous praise and we were certainly not expecting it. Wilson concluded with these remarks - "What will spring from it remains to be seen"» — Drury recoge las dos frases de Wilson que quedaron pegadas al libro: el manifiesto de una nueva generación, y la pregunta por lo que de él saldría.

«In my case, I continue to be fascinated by the connection between magical thought and visionary art - whether we are talking about the potent states of magical consciousness explored by such artists as Austin Osman Spare or Rosaleen Norton, or the more mythic forms of visionary art produced by Surrealists like Max Ernst, Wifredo Lam and Wolfgang Paalen.» — Drury declara su propio hilo: la unión entre pensamiento mágico y arte visionario, de Spare y Rosaleen Norton a los surrealistas.

«Following publication of The Search for Abraxas, Stephen branched off into numerous other esoteric activities including specialised work on geomancy, Crowleyan Thelema and practical magic, in due course co-authoring a major publication with Francis King titled Techniques of High Magic and editing various works by Aleister Crowley.» — Drury traza la carrera de Skinner después del libro: geomancia, thelema crowleyana, magia práctica, el volumen con Francis King y la edición de Crowley.

«Turning his attention to the Orient, he also produced several books on jeng-shui - he was the first person to write on this subject for a Western audience - and he became one of the first publishers to specialise in producing quality facsimile reprints of important magical texts, like Dr. Meric Casaubon's 1659 edition of Dr. John Dee's spiritual diaries and Henry Cornelius Agrippa's Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy.» — Drury sigue con la otra mitad de esa carrera: el feng shui, que la capa de texto imprime *jeng-shui*, y los facsímiles de la edición de Casaubon de los diarios de John Dee y del Cuarto Libro atribuido a Agrippa.

«Stephen and I first met each other at Sydney University in 1968 and indeed it was he who first introduced me to the study of the Qabalah, a subject which has inspired me ever since.» — Drury fecha el encuentro en 1968 y adjudica a Skinner su entrada a la cábala.

«In 1970, while working as a school teacher in rural New South Wales, I happened upon the first edition of a new part-work publication titled Man, Myth and Magic and was immediately struck by its dramatic cover image which featured a painting of a supernatural entity by Austin Spare.» — Drury cuenta el arranque de la investigación: la portada de Man, Myth and Magic con una pintura de Spare.

«At this stage there was no substantial information on him of any kind, with the exception of a very brief essay by Kenneth and Steffi Grant, published in 1961 as one of the Carfax Monographs» — Drury consigna el estado de la bibliografía sobre Spare en 1970: nada salvo un ensayo breve de Kenneth y Steffi Grant de 1961; el tramo se corta antes de la llamada de nota.

«In 1971, while based in London, I obtained a reader's ticket to the British Museum and was able to read Spare's self-published books first-hand.» — Drury declara de dónde salió su material: los libros que Spare se editó a sí mismo, leídos en el Museo Británico.

«Excited by the scope of Spare's vision, I decided to seek out London publishers who might be interested in his art and ideas, and I eventually found my way to the office of occult publisher Neville Spearman Armstrong in Whitfield Street, not far from the Museum.» — Drury cuenta cómo llegó al editor Neville Spearman Armstrong buscando quién publicara sobre Spare.

«I wasn't really surprised that Neville Armstrong quickly warmed to the idea of a book describing the magical imagery of Austin Spare because the artworks themselves were so remarkable, but it was equally clear that such a book would also have to be broader in scope.» — Drury explica por qué el libro no quedó en una monografía sobre Spare: el editor pidió alcance más amplio.

«I returned to Australia and after co-opting Stephen as my co-author we decided together to produce a book that would explore some of the major themes in the Western esoteric tradition and the philosophies and cosmologies underpinning them.» — Drury fija el encargo que los dos se dieron: recorrer los temas mayores de la tradición esotérica occidental y las cosmologías que los sostienen.

«Colin Wilson has described this book as a 'manifesto' and I suppose in a sense it is - although as far as I can remember we did not start out to produce a tract that was purely polemical.» — Drury acepta a medias la palabra de Wilson y niega el propósito polémico.

«As co-authors of this reissued work Stephen and I both hope that new readers will find much that is worthwhile in the pages that follow, despite the fact that in several of its key themes The Search for Abraxas has been overtaken by more recent scholarship and research.» — Drury declara que en varios de sus temas la obra quedó atrás respecto de la investigación posterior.

«One thing is clear, however: neither Stephen or I could have had any inkling whatsoever in 1972 - when The Search for Abraxas was first published - that Austin Spare would eventually be acknowledged as one of the key figures in the Western magical tradition and one of its most original thinkers, as well as becoming a seminal influence on contemporary Chaos magick.» — Drury consigna lo que no podían prever en 1972: que Spare acabaría contado entre las figuras centrales de la tradición mágica occidental y entre las fuentes de la magia del caos.

«Hopefully our book has contributed to this recognition by providing the first detailed commentary on this important visionary artist.» — Drury reclama para el libro el primer comentario detallado sobre Spare.

«It is difficult to maintain a sense of historical perspective about your own epoch. Too much is happening; there are too many trends and events and intellectual fashions, and you can never be sure which of them will appear important in a hundred years time.» — Colin Wilson abre la introducción de 1972 con la dificultad de juzgar la propia época.

«But it has been borne in upon me recently that a pretty spectacular change really has taken place in the past 10 or 15 years - as total and unexpected as some of the great climatic changes of the Pleistocene.» — Wilson fecha en los diez o quince años anteriores un cambio que compara con los grandes cambios climáticos del Pleistoceno.

«When I was writing my first book, at the age of 23 (in 1955), both Europe and America were in the middle of a phase of 'political consciousness'. Most of the intelligent young people were concerned about the Bomb and germ warfare, and a few were even then concerned about overpopulation and pollution of the environment.» — Wilson sitúa 1955 y su primer libro en una fase de consciencia política, con la bomba, la guerra bacteriológica y ya la superpoblación como asuntos de la juventud culta.

«I felt completely out of it, since politics interested me less than poetry, music and religion. This was not a reasoned attitude; it was purely instinctive.» — Wilson declara su ajenidad a esa política y la da por instintiva, no razonada.

«I labelled the problem 'the Bombard effect', after the Frenchman Alain Bombard, who sailed a rubber dinghy across the Atlantic in the early '50s, living entirely on plankton and the juices squeezed from fishes.» — Wilson nombra el efecto Bombard por el francés que cruzó el Atlántico en bote neumático alimentándose de plancton y jugo de pescado.

«This, I felt, was the problem that destroyed Shelley and Novalis and Holderlin and Van Gogh. They had experienced states of mind in which life suddenly became infinitely interesting, in which a tree became a torch of green flame and a night sky a whirlpool of pure vitality. Then they were asked to return to 'ordinary consciousness' and the boundless mediocrity of our commercial civilisation.» — Wilson aplica el efecto a Shelley, Novalis, Hölderlin y Van Gogh, que la capa de texto imprime *Holderlin*: haber conocido estados en que la vida se vuelve infinitamente interesante y tener que volver a la consciencia ordinaria.

«Then, round about 1966 or '67, the change began. For example, to the amazement of his English and American publishers, the novels of Hermann Hesse began to sell in huge quantities.» — Wilson fija hacia 1966 o 1967 el punto de giro y lo mide por las ventas de Hermann Hesse.

«Oddly enough, the philosophical position of these leftists was often curiously pessimistic. They were inclined to accept Freud's disheartening view of human nature: that culture is man's attempt» — Wilson lee pesimismo en la posición filosófica de esa izquierda literaria y se lo adjudica a la visión freudiana de la cultura; el troceo reemite la marca de plana en el límite de chunk y corta ahí la frase, que sigue con *to compensate for the dark forces of the libido, and that the fundamental striving of life is towards death*.

«When Genet compared society to a brothel for perverts, they cheered; when Ionesco and Beckett said that life was meaningless anyway, they nodded sadly.» — Wilson recoge las dos adhesiones que atribuye a ese medio: Genet comparando la sociedad con un burdel de pervertidos y la declaración de sinsentido de Ionesco y Beckett.

«What seems to have happened is that the beatnik movement, started in America by Kerouac and Ginsberg as a drop-out revolt against bourgeois respectability and the American Dream, outgrew its original anti-intellectualism - the cult of Charlie Parker, Billie Holiday, James Dean - and began to set up a pantheon of intellectual idols that included figures as disparate as Marcuse and Tolkien.» — Wilson traza el giro desde el movimiento beat de Kerouac y Ginsberg hasta un panteón de ídolos intelectuales.

«The faces on the Beatles' Sergeant Pepper LP include Aleister Crowley, Jung, Poe, and Aldous Huxley.» — Wilson toma la portada del Sergeant Pepper como medida del cambio: Crowley, Jung, Poe y Huxley entre las caras.

«And Aldous Huxley who was the real founder of the psychedelic cult with his 1953 book on mescaline.» — Wilson adjudica a Huxley la fundación del culto psicodélico por su libro sobre la mescalina.

«But Jung, with his obscure German syntax, and Crowley, that Dionysian Kabbalist who was mistakenly labelled a Satanist - how on Earth did they manage to seep into the consciousnesses of the pop enthusiasts?» — Wilson se pregunta cómo llegaron Jung y Crowley al público del pop, y de paso llama a Crowley cabalista dionisiaco mal rotulado de satanista.

«By the late '60s, it was very clear that the Jung-Crowley combination represented a new current of interest. There had always been a small, specialist market for books on occultism. In the early '50s, Rider and Co. of London republished the magical works of Eliphas Levi, Muldoon on astral projection, and biographies of Hindu mystics; but the market was always sluggish.» — Wilson mide el mercado del ocultismo antes del giro: Rider reeditando a Eliphas Levi y a Muldoon sobre proyección astral, con venta floja.

«Ten years later, in America, University Books republished the books of A. E. Waite, Yeats' associate in the Golden Dawn society, and Montague Summers' treatises on vampires and witchcraft.» — Wilson sigue el mismo mercado en los Estados Unidos con las reediciones de A. E. Waite y de Montague Summers.

«Works like Regardie's four volume Golden Dawn, which could have been purchased for five quid in 1950, was so much in demand that it became worth £80 a set.» — Wilson mide la demanda nueva por el precio de la Golden Dawn de Regardie, de cinco libras en 1950 a ochenta por juego.

«Man, Myth and Magic amazed the publishing trade by becoming the magazine equivalent of a best-seller - so successful that it has now been reprinted in 25 volumes.» — Wilson toma el éxito de la enciclopedia Man, Myth and Magic por el dato comercial que asombró al gremio.

«This certainly seemed to be the case in I960, when Gallimard brought out in Paris a curious work called Le Matin des Magiciens by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier.» — Wilson data en 1960 la salida de Le Matin des Magiciens de Pauwels y Bergier; la capa de texto imprime la fecha como *I960*.

«The book swoops from quantum theory to the mythology of Lovecraft, from buried cities in the Brazilian jungle to the suggestion that the Nazis were an occult society. A fascinating book, certainly; but the kind of thing that would enrage any logical positivist because its authors seem to have an attitude of blissful indifference towards questions of proof and verification.» — Wilson objeta a ese libro la indiferencia ante las cuestiones de evidencia y verificación, aun llamándolo fascinante, y describe su salto de la teoría cuántica a Lovecraft y a los nazis como sociedad oculta.

«Not that anyone doubted the existence of such cults; everyone knew that the works of the late Gerald Gardner - which purported to describe witch cults already in existence - had led to the formation of dozens of such covens.» — Wilson adjudica a los libros de Gerald Gardner la formación de docenas de aquelarres, y no la descripción de cultos preexistentes que ellos decían hacer.

«In fact, this whole notion was mistaken. And this brings me, belatedly, to the subject of the present book, and its two young authors. For what readers of The Great Beast could be forgiven for failing to understand was that, exhibitionist or not, Crowley was as dedicated and serious a magician as Einstein was a physicist. Fie belonged to a tradition that believed wholly in the objective efficiency of magic.» — Wilson niega esa lectura y pone a Crowley como mago tan serio como Einstein físico; la capa de texto imprime *Fie* donde el libro dice *He*.

«We are not talking about Rhine's experiments in extra-sensory perception, or about naked girls copulating with a high priest on an altar. We are talking about a belief that has been discredited for the past three centuries, but which has never ceased to be accepted by a small number of men and women, that certain magical operations can produce a result in Nature» — Wilson acota de qué no habla el libro y enuncia la creencia de la que sí habla: que ciertas operaciones mágicas producen un resultado en la Naturaleza.

«as when the North Berwick witches confessed to causing the storm that almost wrecked the fleet of James VI of Scotland when he was returning from Denmark with his newly married bride.» — Wilson pone por caso la confesión de las brujas de North Berwick de haber causado la tormenta contra la flota de Jacobo VI.

«And no practising magician would deny that it could have been pure delusion. But, he would insist, there are forces in Nature, and in the human mind, which can be called upon through certain magical disciplines, and which could cause such a storm.» — Wilson deja la delusión abierta y adjudica al mago practicante la reserva: hay fuerzas en la Naturaleza y en la mente que esas disciplinas convocan.

«In fact, the more I study the case of the North Berwick witches, the more I am inclined to doubt my original opinion that they were persecuted innocents. There are now plenty of highly convincing accounts of African rain-makers who can call up a storm through tribal ceremonies, and it strikes me as a real possibility that the North Berwick witches may have discovered how to work the same trick.» — Wilson enmienda su propia opinión anterior sobre las brujas de North Berwick apoyándose en relatos de hacedores de lluvia africanos.

«There are, nowadays, hundreds of serious students of magic who believe that the magicians of the past were really 'on to something': that is a half-forgotten tradition, as alien to our modes of thinking as Balinese music is to ears accustomed to Western music.» — Wilson compara la tradición mágica medio olvidada con la música balinesa para un oído occidental.

«The acceptable premise is that the human mind is bigger and stranger than any psychologist has ever guessed - although Jung came close to it - and that it possesses unexplored powers. They also believe that there is a purely objective component in magic; that there are 'powers and dominions' in Nature, god-like or demonic forces that can be utilised by the human mind when it has learned to draw upon its hidden» — Wilson parte la creencia de esos estudiantes en dos premisas, una tolerable para la mente occidental y la otra no, y llega hasta las potestades y dominaciones de la Naturaleza; el tramo se corta en el límite de plana y sigue con *powers*.

«A whole school of young practising magicians has sprung up. They are not sensation-seekers or hippies. They pursue their subject with the same seriousness that they might study electronic engineering or radio astronomy.» — Wilson describe a esa escuela de magos jóvenes como estudiosos, no buscadores de sensaciones.

«Magic begins by assuming that these aimless energies could be channelised and ordered, and that the result might be totally unlike anything you could anticipate from studying the behaviour of a cloud of gnats.» — Wilson da la imagen con que explica la magia: la nube de mosquitos cuyas energías sin rumbo podrían ordenarse.

«the Golden Dawn was a genuine magical society, bringing to its own experiments the same seriousness that Lord Rutherford brought to the investigation of crystal structures.» — Wilson pone la Golden Dawn como sociedad mágica de verdad y su seriedad a la altura de la de Rutherford.

«For Crowley, as he emerges in John Symonds' biography The Great Beast seems to be a martyr to the romantic-artistic principle of shocking the bourgeoisie.» — Wilson resume la figura de Crowley tal como sale de la biografía de John Symonds: un mártir del principio de escandalizar al burgués.

«Moreover, these younger students of magic have taken up where Mathers and Waite left off.» — Wilson pone a los estudiantes nuevos como continuadores de Mathers y de Waite.

«King's Ritual Magic in England discusses some of these recent groups, and records their claim that they have actually produced 'results'.» — Wilson remite a Ritual Magic in England de Francis King para esos grupos recientes y su reclamo de resultados; el límite de chunk parte el nombre y deja *Francis* del otro lado del corte.

«Both live in Australia. Stephen Skinner, born in 1948 in Sydney, is a graduate from Sydney University7 who is at present a lecturer in a technical college.» — Wilson presenta a Skinner en 1972: nacido en Sídney en 1948, egresado de la universidad de esa ciudad y profesor de un colegio técnico; la capa de texto imprime *University7*.

«Nevill Drury, born in 1947, was born in Hastings, Sussex, and has spent half his life in Australia; he is a graduate of Sydney University, and majored in anthropology and modem history.» — Wilson presenta a Drury: nacido en Hastings en 1947, media vida en Australia, egresado en antropología e historia moderna, que la capa de texto imprime *modem*.

«They seem to have approached 'occultism' from opposite positions. Nevill Drury thinks of himself as basically an artist (hence his interest in Austin Spare - see Section II.)» — Wilson separa a los dos autores por su puerta de entrada al ocultismo y adjudica a Drury la del artista.

«He became interested in magic through he Matin des Magiciens and the works of Arthur Machen; he also edited the Australian UFO Review from 1966 to 1969.» — Wilson traza la entrada de Drury por Le Matin des Magiciens, que la capa de texto imprime *he Matin*, y por Arthur Machen, y le acredita la edición de la Australian UFO Review.

«A grandmother was an ardent Steiner-ite, and his father came under the influence of Buddhist thought while serving as an officer in the Second World War.» — Wilson añade el fondo familiar de Drury: una abuela steineriana y un padre tocado por el pensamiento budista.

«Stephen Skinner began as a student of psychology; in a letter to me, he commented that he found MacDougalTs Abnormal Psychology and Sinclair's studies in philosophy inadequate to explain the observed phenomena of the mind.» — Wilson cuenta, sobre una carta de Skinner, el descontento de este con la psicología académica ante los fenómenos observados de la mente.

«The behaviourist psychology he encountered at university also left him thoroughly dissatisfied, since it "seemed to lose sight of the psyche in a maze of stats and Skinner boxes."» — Wilson cita la frase de Skinner contra el conductismo, que a su juicio pierde de vista la psique.

«The psychological need for more 'nutritious' objects of study led him to works on occultism, and on the Qabalah in particular. This highly complex and precise system of mysticism satisfied the need for logical exactitude, and he came to concentrate on Qabalism.» — Wilson explica la concentración de Skinner en la cábala por la exigencia de exactitud lógica que no halló en la psicología.

«The Qabalah prescribes various practical disciplines for exploring 'astral' realms; it might be described as a form of occult behaviourism.» — Wilson describe la cábala como disciplina práctica de exploración de los planos astrales y la llama una suerte de conductismo oculto.

«Drury's belief that the artist is a vehicle for, not a creator of, his artistic productions, produced a desire to explore methods of charting the hidden sources of inspiration.» — Wilson adjudica a Drury la idea de que el artista es vehículo y no creador de su obra, y de ahí su búsqueda de un mapa de la inspiración.

«The levels of inspiration achieved by different artists seems to me to parallel the stages of consciousness outlined in the Qabalah, and for this reason, one of my main aspirations is to achieve greater rapport with the higher levels of my unconscious."» — la frase de Drury que Wilson cita: los grados de inspiración le parecen paralelos a los estados de consciencia que traza la cábala.

«Skinner's need for scientific exactitude and Drury's desire to tap hidden levels of subconscious vitality combine in a common purpose.» — Wilson junta las dos necesidades en un propósito común, y de ahí hace salir el libro.

«The discussion moves swiftly from Ballou's OAHSPE, a book supposedly written at the dictation of an angel, through sketches of Gnosticism and Qabalistic philosophy, to a number of studies of the borderland between art and occultism - especially in the art of Austin Spare, who fascinates both writers.» — Wilson recorre el itinerario del libro y llama *Ballou's OAHSPE* al libro que el capítulo I adjudica al doctor John Ballou Newbrough.

«What the authors have attempted to do, in the briefest possible space, is to present the basis of their studies, the core of their obsessions.» — Wilson declara el propósito que le atribuye al libro: la base de los estudios de los autores y el núcleo de sus obsesiones.

«Instead, they have chosen the intuitive method of presentation, to discuss what deeply interests them, leaving the reader to divine all the connections.» — Wilson nombra el método del libro como intuitivo y deja al lector la tarea de adivinar los enlaces.

«Drury and Skinner argue that such experiences allow us to glimpse the active powers of the imagination, and that the realms of consciousness glimpsed by Castaneda are an objective reality that can also be explored by Qabalistic disciplines.» — Wilson resume el argumento de los autores frente al escéptico: las experiencias de Castaneda dejan ver los poderes activos de la imaginación y una realidad objetiva a la que también llega la disciplina cabalística.

«The authors of this book represent a new phenomenon: the serious study of the practice of magic.» — Wilson nombra el fenómeno que a su juicio representan los autores.

«In Religion and the Rebel, I pointed out that science began as the study of distant phenomena, the stars and planets. Then it moved down to Earth, with physics and chemistry. Later came geology, then biology, then psychology, then the social sciences. At each stage there has been a time-lag before these subjects were regarded as respectable enough to teach in universities; man found it hard to believe that anything so close to him as psychology or sociology could be a real science. With each new science, the focus moves further from the outside Universe, in towards man himself.» — Wilson remite a su propio Religion and the Rebel para el movimiento de la ciencia desde los astros hacia el hombre.

«A century ago, it would have been as impossible to take a scientific attitude towards magic as it was for the Victorians to take a scientific attitude towards sexual perversion. It was a bit too near the bone.» — Wilson explica por ese movimiento el retraso en tratar la magia con actitud científica.

«What Stephen Skinner and Nevill Drury have done in this book is not to make an anthology of the weird and wonderful, but to state, with a kind of modesty and quiet precision, what they consider the relevant facts to be. It is their manifesto, and the manifesto of a new generation. What will spring from it remains to be seen.» — Wilson cierra llamando al libro manifiesto de una nueva generación y dejando abierto lo que de él salga.

Gnosis (conocimiento salvífico) — El libro define la gnosis por oposición a la gracia cristiana: el cristiano espera un acto de gracia de su Dios y el gnóstico se tiene por dueño de la operación mediante nombres sagrados y fórmulas gemátricas. Skinner recorre su genealogía de Filón y Basílides a los ofitas y a los cátaros, y Drury cierra el libro declarando que la busca contemporánea de conocimiento interior es la misma gnosis y exige una síntesis que dé cuenta del bien y del mal. Colin Wilson lo llama en su introducción Sacred Knowledge.

Sefirot (las diez numeraciones) — El capítulo cabalístico expone las diez esferas y los veintidós senderos del Otz Chiim, su generación desde los tres Velos de la Existencia Negativa, la tríada superna, Daath sobre el Abismo, el Velo Paroketh, los tres pilares y los cuarenta estados que resultan de repetir cada esfera en los Cuatro Mundos. Skinner las lee expresamente como niveles de consciencia que se interpenetran y no como regiones del espacio.

Ein Sof (el Infinito) — Spare llama KIA a lo que Drury identifica con el Ain Soph cabalístico: la Fuente única detrás de toda manifestación y la Verdad única detrás de todas las ilusiones, un vórtice dinámico de energía en Devenir permanente que se vuelve sensible al sigilo solo en estado de vacuidad mental. En una nota, Spare escribe que el Eunuco o No Sexo corresponde al Ain Soph.

Gematría (aritmética de las letras) — La gnosis maneja fórmulas gemátricas; el nombre Abraxas suma 365 en la numeración griega, tantos como días del año, y la nota da además la cuenta hebrea. La cábala literal reúne gematría, notariqon y temurá, y el libro señala el Apocalipsis como ejemplo cristiano de numeración de palabras.

Talismán (imagen astrológica) — El volumen abre con un talismán gnóstico de Abraxas y con un dibujo de Drury hecho sobre talismanes antiguos; Skinner explica que la gente común grababa el nombre en amuletos de buena suerte por la cuenta de los 365 días, y Drury sitúa la imagen del dios en amuletos y talismanes del Medio Oriente antiguo.

Iniciación (recepción por grados / metamorfosis del ser) — El libro pone la iniciación como una de las formulaciones de una misma busca: los antiguos la expresaron como entrada en los Misterios, el cristianismo como aceptación de Cristo y el místico como unión con la divinidad. Timothy Leary lee el Bardo Thodol como manual de iniciación y no de muerte, y Skinner declara válidas las dos lecturas porque las dos son autorrealización.

Imaginación (phantasia) — La premisa de la proyección astral es que lo imaginado es para la psique tan real como lo percibido por los sentidos; la proyección es el paso a esa dimensión, que el libro llama la psique creativa y el tesoro de las imágenes. Wilson resume el argumento de los autores como un dejar ver los poderes activos de la imaginación.

Transvection (el traslado corporal por seres demoníacos) — El capítulo Belladonna recoge el testimonio de Antoine Rose, juzgada en Saboya en 1477, sobre el palo untado con que dijo haber volado al aquelarre, y objeta a Pennethorne Hughes la lectura de la escoba como símbolo de la mujer y la explicación del vuelo como metáfora del correr por el suelo: Drury prefiere atribuirlo a alucinógenos que daban sensación de ingravidez.

Cuatro elementos (fuego, aire, agua, tierra) — Las cartas tattwa expresan los cuatro elementos antiguos más el akasha, con su forma y color; el Árbol atribuye tres elementos a los senderos y deja la Tierra al plano físico; y el cuerpo físico se construye con los cuatro tomados como alimento, bebida, oxígeno y luz.

Enteógenos (entheogen, el dios dentro) — El libro trata las plantas y sustancias que producen visión sin darles nombre de tradición: la belladona, el acónito y la cicuta de los ungüentos de las brujas, la datura y los hongos de don Juan, el peyote, el LSD, la mescalina sintetizada y los alcaloides que llama utópicos. Skinner acota que los psicodélicos mayores no crean dependencia y que el riesgo está en no enlazar la experiencia con la vida corriente.

Evocación (llamar y constreñir espíritus) — La magia ceremonial se describe como descarga de impresiones sensoriales del mismo tipo que une al practicante con la potencia correspondiente del universo; la operación de Netzach lleva círculo y triángulo inscritos con las palabras propias, lámpara, cíngulo y perfumes, y el espíritu evocado corresponde a la porción de la psique que se quiere liberar.

Pentagrama (estrella flamígera) — El Ritual Menor del Pentagrama de destierro se manda antes de construir el Cuerpo de Luz, con tres funciones: despejar influencias, concentrar la atención y proteger el cuerpo; después se hace ejecutar el mismo ritual al simulacro para identificarse con él.

Microcosmos (el hombre-mundo) — El axioma que el libro atribuye a Hermes Trismegisto —como es arriba, así es abajo, pero de otra manera— se desarrolla como un mismo plano constructivo repetido, de modo que examinar una parte revela por analogía las fuerzas del todo; la Postura de la Muerte se define como confrontación entre microcosmos y macrocosmos, y la unión mística como reconocimiento de que los dos son lo mismo.

Piedra filosofal (lapis philosophorum) — Skinner cuenta entre los aspirantes a la gnosis a Paracelso, Thomas Vaughan y Solomon Trismosin, que a su juicio transmutan al hombre plúmbeo en pureza áurea aplicando los principios sagrados de la Piedra Filosofal, y presenta al conde de Saint Germain reclamando ese conocimiento en The Most Holy Trinosophia.

Ocultismo (occultisme) — Colin Wilson dedica su introducción a medir el mercado del ocultismo antes y después de mediados de los años sesenta, y Skinner cierra el libro explicando la vuelta al ocultismo como intento de desenredar lo que los psicodélicos sacan a la luz y de explicarlo en los términos de otros hombres de otros tiempos.