The Zelator - I

Automat, by Edward Hopper (source: Wikimedia Commons)

The Zelator Initiation is marked on the Tree of Life as 2=9, one counted from Malkuth and the other from Kether. It might be as well called the 'American Initation' as it necessarily points out to a very American way of feeling. One can see the Zelator in Hopper's paintings (any or most of them). It is a type of existence between being Here and Nowhere. The world of appetites is a step away, yet you feel like you have seen it all. That was the words of Tony Soprano (from the TV show Sopranos) that he feels like the best is over. And, fate applies to both individuals and nations. I hypothesize that USA is the embodiment of Zelator in a nation. Could this be depression? In my opinion, trying to subvert your Zelator consciousness would cause mental health issues, but the feeling of cool distance hardly resembles an illness. The main problem of this grade is it is an incarnate grade. Hence, you are supposed to inhabit this World with no apparent interest or motivation. You have just enough energy to sustain a middle class life, but totally lack in other directions. The more you allow yourself honesty, the more the world resembles a stationary and crystallized object. Dynamic life is the illusion empowered by man's own spiritual energy. No doubt, indulgence is the first initiation (Malkuth, 1=10). Indulgence is submission to the illusion, a manifesto of individuality. Common morality may stand against indulgence, but Divine Morality knows that it leads to spiritual development and higher initiations. In a probably less than comforting way, pleasure leads the individual through a mental experience which is also the collection of dues by a higher spirit, the Demiurge. What is the reality of life after 2=9 Initiation? Let's look at the alternatives:

a- Be stuck in Limbo until you Spiritually progress to more purposeful Initiations.
b- Gain Transpersonal powers to restart the illusion with better prospects.
c- Stay in your current station forever without any guidance, thereby be a slave to a higher Intelligence.

d- Actually cherish your present state by contacting Superhuman intelligences.

Men's position in the multiple planes of existence is a ray extending from Consciousness all the way down to material world. The material world is ever changing due to the influence of increasing Consciousness. The task of making the World inhabitable by the ever increasing number of Initiates is due Archons led by the Demiurge. Satisfaction with the world according to the principals obtained from higher mental states is a key factor. The first step in finding happiness as the Zelator is to stick with the modes of satisfaction open to your new consciousness. 

Therefore, my hypothesis is choice (b). There should be some reward. I feel like there is a reward. However, Initiations also create instability. One should be on the watch for the Devil. The Devil is the energy draining complexes of the people around you. With a higher initiation, you correspond to these people with anger. Anger is a result of bending your Aura towards yourself to protect your elevated consciousness. Being materialistic and spiritual are irreconcilable. Soon you would start waging a spiritual war on the physical world. The common perceptions are opposite of reality. The world is full of stray 'spirits' wandering aimlessly and sucking livelihood unconsciously from whoever would provide it. The real vampires, ghosts and ghouls are in human form, negotiating their bite under the veil of materiality. 

Aspects of Spirit. (source: https://www.minhtrietmoi.org/Theosophy/Powell/CausalBody.htm)

As a result, the Zelator is burdened with the task of protecting a delicate mind and also persevering until he can find his suitable Indulgence. This is arithmetically correct in the sense that descension to the world is matched with a potential reward. This also makes sense as Satisfaction is tied to Atma, the highest aspect of Man's triple Spirit. The higher the aspect (Atma, Buddhi, Manas, in descending order), the more subtly it will speak to Man. Bearing this in mind, something mindlessly followed such as Indulgence makes the best mechanism for an unthinkable consciousness to direct man. Throughout history, man has gradually been castrated by, first, criminalizing pleasure to suppress Atma, second, devaluing love to silence Buddhi, and finally, teaching to doubt himself to confuse Manas. By blocking the communication channels of the Spirit, Man is forced into submission. 

The Spiritually blocked man is biologically and mentally human, but has lost his Guidance. He replaces his own Guide with a discarnate Overlord and seeks relief in obedience. The Zelator is an in-between. It is costly to protect the Mass from the Zelator, hence there is no obstacles facing him if he finds his true Indulgence, place, and meaning. It is very apparent that he cannot challenge common morality, as its sustenance rests on a Divine Will, rather than mere ignorance. 

In the path to becoming an Individual with a sense of security, one of the most important tasks is to surrender thinking ability. Over-thinking is the biological reaction of the Zelator, who is excluded from the tribal men. The mental apparatus is programmed to seek a script. The master script is reinforced inside tribal exchanges. The Vertigo of conscious heights lures the Zelator into casting a script of kinds. This whole post you are reading is very lenient to follow up with a script of spiritual hierarchies, magic, mind control, etc. However, 'knowing' is a lower function. Thinking is spiritual suicide, knowing is mental amputation. Talking may be murder. The triplet; 'Think, know, speak' is the formula of Lucifer. It is not so hard to interpret the myth rightfully as Lucifer not being punished but inflicting his own pain, as the Divine has fixed laws and a matter of Nature as unalterable as force of gravity can hardly be seen as punishment. Divine Lords do not speak of whims or fashions. The most important habit the Zelator needs to follow is to surrender the mind. Everything is better for an evolved Spirit when he does not seek a script, a prospectus, an explanation, a rationalization. In many magical traditions the magician is supposed to make his own wand from materials which have not been obtained for another purpose. The symbolism is clear: the Magical Will needs as its apparatus a history of perseverance through useless endeavors. When the scripts and schemes lifestyle cannot be sustained anymore, its imprint on the Soul becomes the channel through which the Divine Will operates. This is one of the reasons the Zelator is threatened by mental instability. 'Making sense' hangs above him like the sword of Damocles. 

The Serpent that binds to different levels of consciousness. (source: I. Regardie, 1937, The Golden Dawn: The Original Account of the Teachings, Rites, and Ceremonies of the Hermetic Order)

It is important also to consider the challenges faced by Lucifer that led him to philosophize. Does being a Zelator come with its own negative experiences? After the surrender of the mind, fears still persist. The Zelator needs to go through the world of Unlove. This is the world of wholesale rules, diminished individuality and dishonesty. This is the world where one is expected to 'fit in', fake motivations, conceal his temperament, etc. 'Don't think', then must evolve to 'don't fear'. This second step towards being one's own self is challenging. The pain of being inauthentic at work, with friends, with anything in general gets amplified and feels threatening. This is the reality of Unlove, where the True Will is suppressed by default because the World is not shaped according to it. As mentioned above, the common man is cut off from the Spirit and his life revolves around fables, materialisms, oaths, and whims. In such a world, there is almost always something irrelevant and disrespectful, because common man conforms to some soulless shape according to a mundane System. It is a waste of time to discuss the origins, aims, plans, and beneficiaries of the System. Knowing is anathema. One can only hope to reach the conscious levels that is in peace with the System.  

Two of Swords, Crowley's Thoth Tarot. (source: https://book-of-thoth.net/Two-of-Swords-Peace)

The Zelator, according to the Golden Dawn Hermetic tradition, is attributed the Air element. Tarot suite associated with the Air element is Swords. In Kabbalah, the relevant Sephiroth is Yesod. Yesod is considered to be the Astral world. As the ego rests in the Astral world, also as predicted by theTarot correspondence, the Zelator grade is ripe with strife. Now, a very fine point to be considered is the nature of this strife that is supposed to coexist with a surrendering pose. First of all, strife has the shape of it only for the outside observer. Internally, the experience is more of the ebbs and flows of Astral matter. How that matter behaves and what experience it causes externally should not matter to the Initiate. This is why the magic wand discussed above, as an apparatus of Will, is necessary. The wand is the path, the Will is the sword of surrender. The Zelator should always seek peace, but be open to conflict in the Path. The Zelator grade is complete when the Astral matter takes its final shape. It is the prophetic, irrational, private, and attractive foundation of the Spirit. 

The last words of advice for those who have reached the Initiation of Zelator: Don't think, don't fear, persevere, enjoy!