During my initiation to the Little Mysteries, my late benefactor Jeff Gros-Sel repeatedly came back on the kinship between the neolithic long-barrows and the Romanesque crypts. Wait? Millennia separate these works! It seemed strange, if not impossible. It was obvious to him.
Now I understand how tight this link is. It is essentially based on the vault effect, which sorcerers call spell. The huge blocks that cover covered walkways and dolmens produce this spell. It exercises on the impetor an effect conducive to interiorization and awakening.
Likewise in Romanesque crypts, the vault which supports the imposing mass of cut and adjusted stones bed by bed in reverse polarity proceeds from the same culture, and shares the same secret. Let’s say it’s a free adaptation, a development. And then the medieval builders had no choice. The secret of lifting the megaliths was definitely lost.
Everything happens as if wormholes linked these different epochs, the end of the Neolithic and the early Middle Ages. I am not the only one to believe it. These communication holes were named the corridors of time in the block-buster of Jean-Marie Poiré Les Visitors. In the practice of the Mysteries of Isis, at least in the first stage of the Little Mysteries, it is essential that the smuggler create this vault effect, either by operating in a suitable temple, or by another process.
For those who ask the question, the Little Mysteries is the medieval name of the deep trance of recapitulation, now called Arcana XIII. The path of the initiatory tarot counts this arcane, which some people insist on calling death, whereas it is, on the contrary, about life, rebirth, flight to the state of awakening. It is the nameless arcane, just as the Fool is the numberless arcane.
I lived my arcana XIII 28 years ago, in 1991. At this time I was in a state of great ignorance. All that I had learned about the inner path, the many initiations that I had previously received, the operative magic that had been my daily bread in adolescence, none of that had survived the Arcana XI Strength and its so disastrous imprint of materialism on a being of light. We all suffer, very few get through.
The recapitulation is an indispensable test on the path of the warrior. Castaneda lived his own, such hard time he got. But never his benefactor Don Juan Matus let the laziness and indolence of his apprentice take precedence over the necessary reunion of the being with his occulted past. We all forget our past. Memory is selective, it quickly erases painful moments, starting with those where we have not lived up to the noble image that we have of ourselves.
That’s why the recap is a hard time to live. It is a question of exhuming our turpitudes, of pressing the painful abscess to bring out the pus. It sucks, it’s dirty and it hurts. The camel we are, however, must cross the eye of the needle. But it stuck severe seals. We tear ourselves apart, we think we are dying, we are especially funny to see for an outside spectator. My benefactor has laughed more than once before the agony of my strong ego.
What does not kill us makes us stronger, Nietzsche said. I survived. My ego took a good slap, it was not the last. The ego always comes back.
If one believes the initiatory practices of high antiquity, the first half of life is up to 42 years. In sacred terms, there are seven initiations that a warrior of light can receive. The first is birth. The second comes at the age of 7 years. It is Druidic baptism, whose trace has continued in the first communion of catholicism. The second is at 14: the solemn communion for catholics. The third at 21, which was once the majority. And so on every 7 years until 42, where our last personality is constituted: the spiritual being. Traditionally, the age of 42 is the limit to receive initiation to the Little Mysteries. In the Middle Ages, it was given at 21. Since then, we measure the loss …
I had the good fortune to be introduced to the Mysteries of Isis at the age of 42 years. Saved by the gong! Then, in my practice of smuggler, I am forbidden to give this initiation beyond this extreme limit. With prayers, older people tried to force my hand. My artichoke heart gave way. It never worked.
After 42, the ego is caparisoned. Locked up. During the crystallization of the last personality, that of spirit and belief, the ego has inextricably melted to the being. No force in the world can blow it away. Not mine, anyway. It’s sad, but that’s the way it is. You can stomp, scream, writhing in pain, crawl on your stomach, offer a golden treasure, summon the thousand demons, nothing works. In accordance with the unwritten Rule mentioned by Castaneda’s benefactor, there is a time to everything. The bird of freedom flies one way, never stops, never comes back.
All in all it’s just another brick in the wall. (Pink Floyd)
And it’s sad, but nobody can do anything. Once the initiation of the Little Mysteries has been received, the petitioner must face alone the next test, which is also a great joy: the arcane XVI The Tower, the outpouring of being with its astral double. The passage in the white light, according to Jean-Claude Flornoy’s formula. The last day of my arcanum XIII, I had a famous earthquaking catharsis. In the true sense, I saw rockets and candles. A real firework.
Afterwards quite moved, Jean-Claude Flornoy had this comment: “I saw the white light scorching your hair.”
It lasted a long half hour. My body was shaking with spasms under the violence of energy rise. Really the kundalini sent me to seventh heaven. For a little, I would have chained the arcane XIII with the XVI. I would have mixed the little mysteries with the big ones. I would have known some instant awakening. What would have been a remake after cleaning, since I had already awakened at the age of 16, having lived my first conscious body outing right here, in the beautiful garden of my house in Erquy.
But that, Jean-Claude could not know.
