E Rehmus - The Magician's Dictionary

violence, however, are not their fortes.

Forunately, the gnomes are easily accessible, as they spring up continually from the earth around us. They are as eager to "use" us as we are to "use" them. The reason is that somehow the gnomes complement us and we help one another reciprocally by earthing and releasing opposing 'volutions (our e-volution, their in-volution) -- or rather, our entropy is grounded in the elementals while negentropy from them is anodically charged in spirit for us. The result in us is matter released in the form of creation, accumulation of wealth, whereas from us they learn how to collect energy into stasis or density.

In simpler terms, they are engaged in a downward spiral of involution toward ultimate crystallization. We, on the other hand, are engaged in the upward, evolutionary struggle towards total liberation of the spirit from its prison of flesh. Both we and the earth elementals occupy contrasting realms of reality normally inaccessible to one another. So the gnomes seek to unload on us the burden of their physical powers and material riches, as we seek to transcend the appetites of the flesh. In the mysterious exchange between our different levels of being the gnomes acquire from us the concretizations they need in order to shed abstraction and draw more deeply inward to their infinitely dense centers. We, on the other hand, discover a new respect within ourselves for the physical universe and a subtler understanding of how it operates.

This enables us to work creatively with forms until we can free ourselves and break out of matter altogether. By learning how to stand on the earth firmly, trusting and depending upon its support, we can make successful launchings into "outer space".

The simplest rituals will attract earth elementals. They appreciate kindness and will meet generosity with redoubled generosity of their own. But you must avoid coarseness, grouchiness or impatience of any kind. Gnomes dislike these traits intensely. And any hint of laziness or greed acts as a repellant and the complementing is aborted.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------GNOSIS Knowing (with certainty, as opposed to Agnostic) or a specific teaching. Originally, Gnosticism was a pre-Xtian eclectic system with roots going back to Babylon, Egypy, Judaism, Zoroaster and the Greeks. It sprang up in Xtianity, probably through the Essenes. Their belief, essentially, is that the universe was created by an evil Demiurge (Yaldabaoth) and the real God dwells in a higher region of light completely out of touch with us. Since the world is evil, procreation is a great sin, because to bring children into the world is to perpetuate the evil condition. Arabic for Gnosis: Ma'arifat.

The chief difference between Xtians and Gnostic Xtians, however, was that the Gnostics insisted that Jesus was but a symbol of the cosmic consciousness already present in everyone. They insisted on the maxim, Know thyself and, for them, to be a Christian meant to become a Christ oneself. Orthodox Xtians insisted upon making Christ into an historical, flesh and blood personage called Jesus. Henceforth the argument of the priests would be that their God was genuine because he had historical reality, whereas all other gods were only myths. As our gods are assimilated by us, they inevitably become symbols while the common man worships his gods as idealized bodies of a philosophy he can never hope to understand.

The original and most fantastic Gnosis (out of which the Xtian version arose) derived from leakages from the Egyptian mysteries. The main body, however, died out with the priests who kept their silence.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------GOAT The goat has been chosen as the symbol of lust because, as Horapollo observed, it mates and even ejaculates (in sterility) the very first week after its birth.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------GOD Anything from a psychic projection to a full macrocosmic individual. Einstein, shunning Judeo-Xtian pleadings, defined God as the ultimate natural order. Deus est homo. Man is God. Indeed all beings are Gods or immortal entities. The Gods, as such, however, inhabit various levels of substantiality and, as superior entities, exist independently in their own right. And this is not just because strong personalities (as well as human society in general) create and batten projections and archetypes, but because semi-being actually wills itself to be born into that state between Matter and the Void. the Gods are being itself, rather than any particular substance. That is, they are pure substance or the conscious potentiality behind substance. Every mortal, Theosophy has pointed out, has his divine counterpart, his celestial doppelganger or heavenly prototype. It is this personal archetype that we call The Father (or Guardian Angel). Theophany is the rare union (in adepts) of the heavenly counterpart with its earth shadow-self. The divine archetypes are not confined to ordinary human beings, moreover, but ascend to ever more infinite celestial monads themselves. When we speak of The Gods or the God beyond the Gods, such as Allfather Odin or Zeus, Father of the Gods we refer to just these higher monads.

It is difficult to remember that all seemingly separate things -- all individuals -- created themselves out of the Original