Dearly beloved readers:
On this occasion, I am sending you the eighty-fourth emblem of the book Nucleus emblematum selectissimorum, ‘The Nucleus of the Most Select Emblems', with the texts in Latin and Old French and a possible translation.
The title of the emblem is…
…DETERIVS FORMIDO
─‘I fear the worst’─
Let us look at the Latin sentence:
«Carcere clausa meo, FORMIDO vulturis vngues,
Duplex poena premit me, satis vna foret».
Translation: ‘Locked up in my prison, I fear the vulture's claws, a double penalty oppresses me, one would be enough.'
It should be noted that the subject has to be of the feminine gender, because it says clausa, which means ‘locked up' [in its feminine form]. We imagine that it refers to the word avis ─'bird'─, which is feminine in both Latin and Spanish. However, we will see that it has another meaning more in line with the emblem.
Words in Old French:
«Helas! Ce n’est asses, que cette pauvre vie,
soit a tant de malheurs sans repos asservie:
Mais pour combler nos maux, une rongeante peur
d’un plus grand desastre nous martèle le cœur ».
‘Alas, it is not enough until this poor life is doomed to so many misfortunes without rest: but, to add to our sufferings, a persistent fear of a greater disaster hammers our hearts.’
What does all this mean, dear readers?
The center of our emblem is marked by a bird, symbolizing our soul, our Essence, which remains caged in the prison of the intellect.
Certainly, friends, the V.M. Samael and Gnosis crudely emphasize to us that our mind, in our current state, is without a doubt bottled up, and that is already a suffering, a misfortune that persecutes us vehemently until we manage to appease and transform it through MEDITATION and alchemical work in the Forge of Vulcan ─namely: Sexual Tantra─.
In one of his extraordinary narratives, our Patriarch describes to us the horrible sufferings he had to go through when he had to face the fifth Labor of Hercules ─ which is part of the Secret or Hermetic Path that we need to live, that is, to experience it on the path of Self-Realization. In this description he tells us that, during the combat against the man-eating birds, he later had an encounter with the Lords of Karma and in that encounter certain recriminations were made to him, to which he replied in a somewhat rebellious manner. The response of the Archons of Destiny was to sentence him to seven days in jail.
The Master believed at first that he was going to be sent to an earthly dungeon, but that sentence was even worse, because he was locked up again in the DUNGEON OF THE MIND, and this, for a Master who is already seeking his liberation, is more bitter than gall. Seven days of anguish, of mental torture!, which V.M. Samael had not experienced for a long time because his mental body was already quite perfected. This fact led him to “exclaim several times the mantra ‘Ay!, ay!, ay!'”, he tells us in that narrative…..
This gives us an idea of how necessary it is not only to abandon our MENTALOID state plagued by the contradictions of the “I”, but also to purify it, to fill it with PEACE through MEDITATION. This technique keeps us united to the thoughts and feelings of the BEING.
Unquestionably, the EMBOTTLED MIND likes to be HAMMERING our psyche by means of memories and permanent contradictions. That is why we say in Gnosis that the MIND IS THE SEAT OF SATAN, the THRONE OF THE DEMON. This must be understood and comprehended very, very, very deeply in order to enter, once and for all, into the universe of the wonders of the Father!!
The mind, dear readers, IS NEVER A GOOD COUNSELOR, not for material things and far less for spiritual things. We have to move definitively away from the IDENTIFICATION with the mechanical thoughts that daily try to make us their prisoners and ultimately only serve to imprison us in the CAVE of contradictions. The vultures of the mind appear and disappear when we least expect them, and for this reason WE MUST REMAIN IN CONSTANT SELF-OBSERVATION of what we THINK, FEEL AND DO…
I now give you a few sentences for your reflection:
“We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full.”
Marcel Proust
“It is a great evil not to be able to suffer, it is necessary to suffer in order to suffer less.”
Anacarsis
“If the pain is severe, it will not last long; if it lasts a long time, it is because it is mild.”
Cicero
“He who fears suffering already suffers what he fears.”
Montaigne
“Suffer the adversities so that you may moderate yourself in happiness.”
Spanish proverb
SAPIENTI SAT.
─‘For the wise it is enough'─.
KWEN KHAN KHU
