But an emptiness filled my spirit, not forceful enough to be labeled depression. “Malaise” fit the bill nicely. When night settled in, I felt grateful. Sometimes sleep is the best way to surf time.
Rajnar Vajra, Her Scales Shine Like Music
But an emptiness filled my spirit, not forceful enough to be labeled depression. “Malaise” fit the bill nicely. When night settled in, I felt grateful. Sometimes sleep is the best way to surf time.
Rajnar Vajra, Her Scales Shine Like Music
In making love with yourself, dedicate your pleasure to the Spirit. At climax, place the image of deity at the crown center, and open yourself to the sense of presence.
Brandy Williams, Ecstatic Ritual: Practical Sex Magick
The sad—the chilling conviction therefore, went to the old man’s heart, that the only being left to solace him on earth, had deserted him; and his spirit was bowed down in despair.
George W M Reynolds, Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf
Let the spirit assert itself and demand health and hope and happiness in this new year.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox, The Heart of the New Thought
Do not tell me it is too late to be successful or happy. Do not tell me you are sick or broken in spirit, the spirit cannot be sick or broken, because it is of God.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox, The Heart of the New Thought
The young men of France are studying alchemy, hoping to learn the secret of the transmutation of gold. If you will study your own spirit and its limitless powers, you will gain a greater secret than any alchemist ever held; a secret which shall give you whatever you desire.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox, The Heart of the New Thought
During this stay on these higher planes, the soul communes with the higher phase of itself – the divine fragment of Spirit – and is strengthened and invigorated thereby.
William Walker Atkinson, The Astral World
Books on true occultism are on the whole very useless things; because those who are in possession of occult knowledge will not require them; while those who have no such knowledge will not understand them; neither will they receive much benefit from such literature; because real spiritual knowledge must be found within one’s own soul; it cannot be learned from books. The scientist, rationalist, and speculative philosopher deals only with, so to say, the candlesticks bearing the candles from which is emanating the light which they cannot see, neither can they see the candle; for the latter is representing the soul, whose light is the spirit.
Franz Hartmann, In The Pronaos of The Temple of Wisdom
There’s a dark lantern of the spirit,
Which none see by but those who bear it,
That makes them in the dark see visions
And hag themselves with apparitions,
Find racks for their own minds, and vaunt
Of their own misery and want.
Samuel Butler quoted in Thomas Love Peacock, Nightmare Abbey
Esoterism & Symbol by R A Schwaller de Lubicz, from Inner Traditions, is part of the collection at the Reading Room.
“Esotericism and Symbol initiates the reader into the tone, structure, and mentality of ancient Egyptian knowledge, the wellspring of all Western theology and science.
Schwaller de Lubicz makes the distinction between two kinds of human intelligence, one cerebral, the other innate. The symbol is a conventional representation of cerebral intelligence. The hieroglyph, on the other hand, is a direct, nonconventional form of writing with the unique ability to transcribe the innate ‘intelligence-of-the-heart.’
This intelligence is independent of the senses and belongs to the vast totality called life. To the ancient Egyptian it is the intelligence-of-the-heart which allows man to move toward the divine.
All esoteric teaching is addressed to this intelligence. ‘Spirit is found only with spirit,’ and esotericism is the spiritual aspect of the world, inaccessible to cerebral intelligence. It can be neither written nor spoken, nor consequently betrayed. It has nothing in common with deliberate concealment of truth. However, the preparation needed to grasp it is not a matter of learned knowledge, but of intuitive capacity.
Esotericism and Symbol explores the ‘process of becoming’ as it relates to consciousness and is revealed in all of nature; the relationship of ‘apparent life’ and the life behind appearances; the kinship between man and the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms; the mystery of the formation of substance into matter; myth, Kabbalah, and the stages of awareness leading to ‘Cosmic Consciousness.’
De Lubicz shows us that esotericism is not a ‘particular meaning hidden in a text’ but a ‘fusion’ between the vital state of the reader and the vital state of the author. This fusion evokes the intelligence of the heart, our guide to the path of self-knowledge.” — back cover