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The Most Holy Trinosophia: Section Four

Writer's picture: magicstudentmagicstudent



We left our narrator standing before a wall that seemed to indicate that the reddening/fire journey was coming up, but then that wall disappears. Suddenly, where the wall was before, there's a lake of fire. "Sulphur and bitumen rolled in flaming waves." He trembles. He's afraid. A loud, authoritative voice tells him he has to walk across the fire. Even though he was trembling a moment ago, he listens to the voice. The fire isn't hot. It doesn't burn him. Then he comes to a round room.


The hallway he's in which leads to the round room is lined with forty columns of fire. One side has white flames and the other has black flames, seeming more like a shadow than a light.


This is a false duality. Shadows cannot exist without light. The white flames and black shadow-flames need each other, but they're separate here. His outlook on the world is black-and-white, a phrase which works the same in French (the text's original language) as it does in English. There's no room for nuance. In more modern terms, he hasn't fully integrated his shadow.


The number forty could also be significant, as it's often associated with difficult trials. The flood of Genesis rained for forty days and forty nights. The Israelites wandered the desert for forty years. Jesus fasted for forty days and was tempted by the devil. That's just a few Abrahamic examples.


In the center of the round space is an altar that's shaped like a serpent. The serpent is greenish-gold and has rubies for eyes. There's a cup on its head. Nearby, there's a sword driven into the ground. He hears a voice tell him what he needs to do. "The end of thy labours draws near. Take the sword and smite the serpent."


He draws the sword (air, intellect) from the ground (earth, material existence), takes the cup (water, emotions), and strikes the serpent (...wisdom).


Yes, in my understanding of the text, he just tried to slay wisdom. The voices that commanded him to walk through the flames and kill the serpent were not to be trusted. Did they deliberately mislead him? Maybe they meant well and were simply incorrect. Either way, their advice was not helpful to him.


You'll notice I assigned elements to the items involved. There's a reason for that. I take this as a metaphor for people who think they're about to achieve enlightenment ("The end of thy labours draws near"), but they've got everything upside-down. He takes all of his knowledge from the material world, removes his emotions, and ends up losing wisdom. We've all met people like this, who are so steadfast in their 'logical' reasoning that they dismiss any emotional intelligence. They believe they have everything figured out, one way or another. But... life is a teacher, and it keeps trying to teach, even when the student refuses to learn.


As soon as his sword hits the serpent-shaped altar, everything around him vanishes and he finds himself in an endless space. The sound of the sword hitting the altar reverberates, sounding like a thousand brass bells were struck all at once. He has failed in his task, and the ringing suggests that his failure ruminates in his head.


It's interesting that the author mentions brass bells. Brass is a manmade alloy of copper and zinc, so we could view this as a sort of counterfeit Venusian metal. It was fake. The whole thing was fake. The fire wasn't even hot!


He wasn't actually supposed to slay the serpent. The fact that he listened to a commanding voice telling him to do something violent without even questioning it means that he failed this test. Blind obedience is counterproductive to spiritual growth; we need to learn to question anything that we don't understand and to rely on our own intuition rather than the instruction of others.


Why am I so sure that he failed? Because his guide is angry with him. "A hand seized me by the hair and lifted me toward the vault which opened to let me through. Shadowy phantoms appeared before me—Hydras, Lamias and serpents surrounded me." The monsters, seeing the sword in his hand, scatter. He is lifted up through the layers of the earth until he's back on the surface, where he started. It's as if the guide is saying, "You screwed up, try again."


This doesn't seem to be a common interpretation of this passage, but it makes the most sense to me. Sometimes we fail and have to start over. Failure is a necessary step to learning. In fact, I would argue that it's how we gain most of our wisdom. We try, we fail, we learn from our mistakes and try again. The important part is to keep trying.


Stay safe!

- me

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