The Astral Temple or 'Theatre of Memory'

In an earliert document I talked about constructing a physical altar or temple room. Now I will talk a little about a concept in Magick whose importance cannot be overemphasised - the construction of a imaginary counterpart to the physical temple.

Every style of Magick has its own particular astral temple. In Kabbalah I have heard it called the Malkuth temple, and its description is based upon the mystical drawing called the Tree of Life. In Chaos Magick it is the Chaos Sphere, in Greek Magick is the Tetratis. The Renaissance magus Giordano Bruno coined the term 'Theatre of Memory' for this concept. He designed, in his mind's eye, an imaginary Greek theatre, where every part had symbolic significance. He could use this technique to memorise the relationship between very complex groups of symbols. Similar images were used by John Dee and Robert Fludd, see for instance Palladio's reconstruction of the theatre of Vitruvious or even the plan's of Shakespeare's Globe theatre. This is a very important discovery.

I intend to use an example drawn from Tantrism. The basic design of the Tantrik astral temple is the Shri Yantra, the most famous and universal of all the mystical diagrams (mandala or yantra). If you are not familiar with this diagram, then it is reproduced on page 85 of Tantra Magick in bare outline, and elsewhere throughout that book in various sections and partial views. I am indebted to blessed Ganesha, the Elephant headed one, for revealing to me some of its significance.

Becoming familiar with the lineaments of the astral temple, is usually accomplished by the repeated practice of guided visualisation or so-called 'path-working'. This is where the experimenter imagines his or herself walking or moving through the designated landscape or building in serial order. Thus at first only the lower parts of the glyph are traversed, building up a great familiarity with its topography. As one grows in mental stamina and ability, higher and higher levels of the glyph are opened up to the explorer.

It is possibly to obtain pre-recorded tapes of famous path-workings, which are designed so that the experimenter may follow the imagery as it unfolds. In my experience this kind of pre-recorded guided visualisation is of limited use. The more the experimenter gets into the path working, the more of a distraction becomes the voice on the tape. For instance the speaker may insist that the statue has an angry face, when you've already seen it, and it is smiling! The answer is to perhaps read (or play the description) once or twice, and then do the path working without the tape. Alternatively the guide can lead you to a particular door, describing what is behind the door and then inviting you to step through it alone, and explore it at your own pace. The guide then remains silent - the best example of this are done in rituals, and the guide has been chosen before hand and will often not read from a prearranged script but improvise with what comes into their head, a kind of stream of consciousness. When the guide stops talking, they can lapse into their own meditation of path working. So what the guide is saying is not scripted, it is what they are 'seeing' or intuiting - they are in fact in a low level trance, which can often deepen significantly when they lapse into silence.

When the guide invites to proceed on your own, do so. Following the vision, however feeble, to its natural conclusion. The session usually terminates when you reach your goal or begin to run out of mental stamina and feel the need to wind things up. During this time, you may have become quite dissociated from your physical body. Perhaps it is some physical sensation, such as pins and needles that disturbs you, or the subtle movements of others in the room who have obviously finished. Alternatively, you may hear a gentle sounding of a bell chimed by one of the other participants, as the pre-arranged signal to return. When either of these things happens, try and mentally retrace your steps to where the guided visualisation began. When you have done this, become fully aware of your body again and if necessary vibrate or chant some sacred words to really ground yourself. It is especially important to join in with any chanting at the end of the ritual where appropriate, or do your closing, as this serves to balance everything up again and prevent unwanted obsession.

Move to next page which has leads into a discription of the Temple of Sethi I at Abydos. The first section of this temple, which include the courtyards, hypostyle hall and shrine of Amon Ra will be open for you to explore and familiarise yourself with before running the whole image in real time during a meditation. Ie. The vitual temple is merely a training exercise to be used before you do the actual ritual and mediation on a daily basis. If you think you might prefer a hindu version of the 'same' temple then take a look at the Kamarupa temple. (Your might find it useful to look at the Kamarupa version anyway, as it has some useful information on how to turn this symbolic data into a real virtual temple.

Go to 'Temple of Seti I at Abydos'

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