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EVERY human spirit-soul has attached to him a genius or daimon, as with Socrates; a ministering spirit, as with the apostles; or an angel, as with Jesus. All these are but different names for the same thing. My genius says that he does not care for the term angel because it is misinterpreted. He prefers the Christian nomenclature, and to be called minister, as their office is to guide, admonish, and illumine.
My genius looks like Dante, and like him is always in red. And he has a cactus in his hand, which he says is my emblem. (Speaking of Dante, I see that Beatrice represents the soul. She is to him what the woman should be to the man.) He tells me to say that the best weapon against the astrals is prayer. Prayer means the intense direction of the will and desire towards the Highest; an unchanging intent to know nothing but the Highest. So long as Moses held up his hands towards heaven, the Israelites prevailed. When he dropped them, then the Amalekites. The genii are not fighting spirits, and cannot prevent evils. They were allowed to minister to Jesus only after his exhaustion in combat with the lower spirits. Only they are attacked by these, who are worth attacking.
I am to inform you that the genius never "controls" his client, never suffers the soul to step aside from the body to allow the entrance of another spirit. The person controlled by an astral or elemental, on the contrary, speaks not in his own person, but in that of the spirit controlling; and the gestures, expression, intonation, and pitch of voice, change with the obsessing spirit. A person prophesying speaks always in the first person, and says, either, "Thus saith the Lord," or "So says some one else," never losing his own personality. This is one sign of difference whereby to distinguish between the various orders of spirits.
Another sign, he says, whereby to distinguish extraneous spirits
from one's genius, is this,--the genius is never absent. Provided the mind is in a condition to see, he is always present. Other spirits need times to be appointed and engagements to be made for certain hours, because they may be elsewhere at any moment. These spirits, moreover, know nothing of the Gods. Their very names are secrets from them, and if they have heard them they are, but names to them. 1 They are unable to grasp or conceive of anything beyond the atmosphere of their own circle. It is true that they speak of God, but it is without understanding the meaning of the word. The more negative the mind of the individual, the more ready and apt he is to receive these spirits. And, on the contrary, the more positive and pronounced the will of the individual, the more open he is to divine communication. The command always is--"To labour is to pray"; "To ask is to receive"; "To knock is to have the door open." "I have often said," says my genius, "Think for yourself. When you think inwardly, pray intensely, and imagine centrally, then you converse with God."
He knows, he says, concerning our immediate future, but will not tell. All he will say is this,--"Be sure there is trouble. No man ever got to the Land of Promise without going through the desert." Again he holds up to me the cactus, and he says: "Do not fret yourself about trying to get into the lucid state. In a short time it will be unnecessary to become somnolent at all." He tells me that to-night I shall recollect a great part of what has been said, and the next time more, and so on until my mind is quite clear on the subject. It is a weakness and an imperfection when the mind does not retain what has been said. At night, when my brain is free from disturbing influences, I recollect more perfectly all I have seen and heard. And this, he says, should always be the case, because my place is not taken by any other entity. No other spirit steps in to dispossess me. But it is I myself who see and hear and speak,--my spiritual self, that is.
The genius is linked to his client by a bond of soul-substance. Persistent ill-living weakens this bond, and after several incarnations--even to "seventy times seven"--thus ill-spent, the genius is freed and the soul definitively lost. It is not isolated crime, as murder, adultery, or incest, or even a repetition of these, which breaks this bond; but a continued condition of the heart
in which the will of the individual is in persistent opposition to the Divine Will. For this is a state in which repentance is impossible. The condition most favourable to salvation and speedy emancipation from successive incarnations, is the attitude of willing obedience,--freedom and submission. The great object to be attained is emancipation from the body,--from the power and need of the body, that is.
In order the better to comprehend the procession of Spirit, it must be understood that Life may be represented by a triangle, at the apex of which is God. Of this triangle the two sides are formed by two streams, the one flowing outwards, the other upwards. The base may be taken to represent the material plane. Thus, from God proceed the Gods. From the Gods proceed all the hierarchy of heaven, with the various orders from the highest to the lowest. And the lowest is the order of the genii, or guardian angels. These rest on the material plane, but do not enter it. The other side of the triangle is a continuation of the base. The initiatory forms of the base of the triangle are the lowest expressions of life. These are the first expressions of incarnation, and of the stream which, unlike the first, flows inwards and upwards. The side of the triangle represented by this stream, culminates in the Christ, and empties itself into pure spirit, which is God. There are, consequently, spirits who, by their nature, never have been and never can be incarnate. And there are others who reach their perfection through incarnation. You will see, then, that the genii and the astrals have nothing in common. For the space contained in the triangle, and separating on the one hand the apex from the base, and on the other hand the two opposing sides, is a space occupied by the planetary fluid.
There are but two eternal generations,--that of the celestials who begin from the Spirit and are "begotten"; and that of the created entities who accrete a body exteriorly. The astrals are between these two. They are as planes which cannot focus the Divine Spirit, since their rays are reflected in all directions, and do not converge to a central point. They cannot know God. They are not microcosms. Man--alone of the created entities is a microcosm, and he is this because the Divine Spirit, the nucleolus, contains necessarily the potentiality of the whole celestial cell. In God are all the Gods included; and the nucleolus in the perfected created cell is, therefore, multiple. Every man is a planet, having sun, moon, and stars.
The genius of a man is his satellite. Man is a planet. God--the God of the man--is his sun, and the moon of this planet is Isis, its initiator, or genius. The genius is made to minister to the man, and to give him light. But the light he gives is from God, and not of himself. He is not a planet but a moon, and his function is to light up the dark places of his planet.
The day and night of the microcosm, man, are its positive and passive, or projective and reflective states. In the projective state we seek actively outwards; we aspire and will forcibly; we hold active communion with the God without. In the reflective state we look inwards, we commune with our own heart; we indraw and concentrate ourselves secretly and interiorly. During this condition the "Moon" enlightens our hidden chamber with her torch, and shows us ourselves in our interior recess.
Who or what, then, is this moon? It is part of ourselves, and revolves with us. It is our celestial affinity,--of whose order is it said, "Their angels do always behold the face of My Father."
Every human soul has a celestial affinity, which is part of his system and a type of his spiritual nature. This angelic counterpart is the bond of union between the man and God; and it is in virtue of his spiritual nature that this angel is attached to him. Rudimentary creatures have no celestial affinity; but from the moment that the soul quickens, the cord of union is established.
It is in virtue of man's being a planet that he has a moon. If he were not fourfold, as is the planet, he could not have one. Rudimentary men are not fourfold. They have not the Spirit.
The genius is the moon to the planet man, reflecting to him the sun, or God, within him. For the divine Spirit which animates and eternises the man, is the God of the man, the sun that enlightens him. And this sun it is, and not the outer and planetary man, that his genius, as satellite, reflects to him. Thus attached to the planet, the genius is the complement of the man; and his "sex" is always the converse of the planet's. And because he reflects, not the planet, but the sun, not the man (as do the astrals), but the God, his light is always to be trusted.
The genius knows well only the things relating to the person to whom he ministers. About other things he has opinions only. The relation of the ministering spirit to his client, is very well represented by that of the Catholic confessor to his penitent. He is bound to keep towards every penitent profound secrecy as regards the affairs of other souls. If this were not the case, there would be no order, and no secret would be safe. The genius of
each one knows about another person only so much as that other's genius chooses to reveal.
Now, there are two kinds of memory, the memory of the organism and the memory of the soul. The first is possessed by all creatures. The second, which is obtained by Recovery, belongs to the fully regenerate man. For the Divine Spirit of a man is not one with his soul until regeneration, which is the intimate union constituting what, mystically, is called the "marriage of the hierophant."
When this union takes place, there is no longer need of an initiator; for then the office of the genius is ended. For, as the moon, Isis, or "Mother," of the planet man, the genius reflects to the soul the Divine Spirit, with which she is not Yet fully united. In all things is order. Wherefore, as with the planets, so with the microcosm. They who are nearest Divinity, need no moon. But so long as they have night,--so long, that is, as any part of the soul remains unilluminated, and her memory or perception obscure,--so long the mirror of the angel continues to reflect the sun to the soul.
For the memory of the soul is recovered by a threefold operation,--that of the soul herself, of the moon, and of the sun. The genius is not an informing spirit. He can tell nothing to the soul. All that she receives is already within herself. But in the darkness of the night, it would remain there undiscovered, but for the torch of the angel who enlightens. "Yea," says the angel genius to his client, "I illuminate thee, but I instruct thee not. I warn thee, but I fight not. I attend, but I lead not. Thy treasure is within thyself. My light sheweth where it lieth."
When regeneration is fully attained, the divine Spirit alone instructs the hierophant. "For the gates of his city shall never be shut; there shall be no night there; the night shall be no more. And they shall not need the light of the lamp, because the Lord God shall enlighten them." The prophet is a man illumined by his angel. The Christ is a man married to the Spirit. And he returns out of pure love to redeem, needing no more to return to the flesh for his own sake. Wherefore he is said to come down
from heaven. For he hath attained, and is a medium for the Highest. He baptizeth with the Holy Ghost, and with the Divine Fire itself. He is always "in heaven." And in that he ascendeth, it is because the Spirit uplifteth him, even the Spirit who descendeth upon him. "And in that he descendeth, it is because he has first ascended beyond all spheres into the highest Presence. For he that ascendeth, ascendeth because he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth. He that descended is the same also who ascendeth above all the heavens, to fill all things." Such an one returns, therefore, from a higher world; he belongs no more to the domain of Dionysos. But he comes from the "sun" itself, or from some nearer sphere to the sun than ours; having passed from the lowest upwards.
And what of the genius himself? I asked. Is he sorry when his client attains perfection, and needs him no more?
And he said, "He that hath the bride is the bridegroom. And he that standeth by rejoiceth greatly because of the bridegroom's voice." I return, therefore, to my source, for my mission is ended, and my Sabbath is come. And I am one with the twain.
Here he led me into a large chamber where I saw four bullocks lying slaughtered upon altars, and a number of persons standing round in the act of adoration. And above, in the fumes arising from the spirits of the blood, were misty colossal shapes, half-formed, from the waist upwards, and resembling the Gods. And he said "These are Astrals. And thus will they do until the end of the world." 1
After this instruction concerning the degradation of religion through the materialisation of the spiritual doctrine of sacrifice, he resumed:--
The genius, then, remains with his client so long as the man is fourfold. A beast has no genius. A Christ has none. For first, all is latent light. That is one. And this one becomes two; that is, body and astral body. And these two become three; that is, a rational soul is born in the midst of the astral body. This rational soul is the true Person. From that moment, therefore, this personality is an individual existence, as a plant or as an animal. These three become four; that is, human. And the fourth is the Nous, not yet one with the soul, but overshadowing it, and transmitting light as it were through a glass, that is, through the initiator. But when the four become three,--that is,
when the "marriage" takes place, and the soul and spirit are indissolubly united,--there is no longer need either of migration or of genius. For the Nous has become one with the soul, and the cord of union is dissolved. And yet again, the three become twain at the dissolution of the body; and again, the twain become one, that is, the Christ-spirit-soul. The Divine Spirit and the genius, therefore, are not to be regarded as diverse, nor yet as identical. The genius is flame, and is celestial; that is, he is spirit, and one in nature with the Divine; for his light is the divine light. He is as a glass, as a cord, as a bond between the soul and her divine part. He is the clear atmosphere through which the divine ray passes, making a path for it in the astral medium.
In the celestial plane, all things are personal. And therefore the bond between the soul and spirit is a person. But when a man is "born again," he no longer needs the bond which unites him to his divine source. The genius, or flame, therefore, returns to that source; and this being itself united to the soul, the genius also becomes one with the twain. For the genius is the divine light in the sense that he is but a divided tongue of it, having no isolating vehicle. But the tincture of this flame differs according to the celestial atmosphere of the particular soul. The divine light, indeed, is white, being seven in one. But the genius is a flame of a single colour only. And this colour he takes from the soul, and by that ray transmits to her the light of the Nous, her divine spouse. The angel-genii are of all the tinctures of all the colours.
I have said that in the celestial plane all things are personal, but in the astral plane they are reflects. The genius is a person because he is a celestial, and of soul-spirit, or substantial nature. But the astrals are of fluidic nature, having no personal part. In the celestial plane, spirit and substance are one, dual in unity; and thus are all celestials constituted. But in the astral plane they have no individual, and no divine part. They are protoplasmic only, without either nucleus or nucleolus.
The voice of the genius is the voice of God; for God speaks through him as a man through the horn of a trumpet. Thou mayest not adore him, for he is the instrument of Cod, and thy minister. But thou must obey him, for he hath no voice of his own, but sheweth thee the will of the Spirit.
36:1 London, November 1880. Spoken in trance. E. M.
See Life of Anna Kingsford, vol. i, pp. 388-415, relating "Conversations with the Genii." S. H. H.
37:1 One of their commonest modes of deception is by the assumption of divine names; but their utterances are always pretentious and inane. E. M.
40:1 London, May 28, 1881. Received in sleep. Referred to in Life of Anna Kingsford, vol. ii, pp. 12-14.
41:1 Meaning, "the end of materialism in Religion" (see Part I, No. V (2), p. 15, note). S. H. H.