To Just Live

St. Foy, Conques 

Part of the difficulty of our inner search, I think, is the extraordinary number of attachments we form to our external lives. They create an enormous range of impulses and desires, all of which are inclined by impulse to live this way, that way, or the other way. In the end, I always want more than life, somehow; and I know this sounds contradictory, but there you are. I want the things of life; and there is no end to this wanting, because there is no end to the things. 

What I fail to want is life itself.

 Life is what quickens in me and gives me being. It’s life itself. Not the things of life. Life is an energy, a force, which my being ought to inhabit. If we speak about the law of reciprocal feeding in this context, perhaps we could suggest that my Being feeds life and life feeds my Being.

 All this takes place before there are any things, and the things ultimately don’t have anything to do with its action. 

Yet all of my attention is riveted on things, not Being.

 I don’t want to just live. Yet to just live would be exactly what’s necessary in order to acquire the sense of Being that I profess interest in. In an exquisite irony, even the sense of Being becomes a thing I want, instead of a simple action of just living.

 To just live is to be here. 

Not to be here in the mind, which thinks I am here. 

And not even to be here in the body, which senses that it is here. 

Not to be present in the emotions, which feel like I am here (and would probably rather be there, somewhere else, where things are better.) 

It is to be here in a whole way which involves a molecular sensation, an awakening of the intelligence of the body and the intelligence of the feeling, which join the intelligence of the mind to form a receptive state which just lives.

 Perhaps I think this is too idealized and practical for what we call the “real world” today; I don’t know. But even that is already intellectualizing it, because one should just live first, and discover what it means afterwards.

 There are no magical actions here. Ordinary being is quite prosaic and stands in suspension, awaiting the conditions of life. My outward parts will always have gears that turn in reaction to it; but the inward parts can form a more stable environment. 

In the end, this is only a place to begin, and nothing more. To just live. That can be, as you may see with some effort and some luck, quite sufficient of itself. Even a glimpse of the complications we inflict upon ourselves and one another from this perspective will do a great deal to explain the conditions we live in.

Regards,

Lee

Announcing the publication of 

The Reconstruction of the Soul

The Reconstruction of the Soul is a wide-ranging investigation of symbolism in High and Late Medieval art. It includes detailed analyses of the Unicorn Tapestries at the Cluny Museum and the Cloisters in New York, as well as detailed examinations of the mysterious, erotic and bizarre symbolism in The Cathedral of St. Lazare in Autun.

Along the way, it traces the roots of Western esoteric art from Babylon to ancient Greece, revealing traditions that are still alive today, some 3000 or more years later.

The material is illustrated with photographs taken by the author on location in France and New York, as well as source material from various museums.

It will appeal to anyone interested in the symbolic transmission of the world's Western esoteric heritage.

All funds from your purchase of this book will go to support the translation of important historical documents related to the Gurdjieff tradition.

The author is currently at work on a second volume which will explore even earlier (!) influences on esoteric art and practice. Anticipated publication of this follow-up work will be late 2019.

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.

An Objective Assistant

Observer, from the arch over the tympanum at St. Foy in Conques

 The action of my mind is perpetually confused and confusing; and I'm perpetually caught in it. 

If my inward observation of myself is sufficiently acute, eventually I realize several things. 

First of all, there's no sorting out this confusion. Its existence rests in the very nature of the intellect itself, and it propagates through its contact with the material world: objects, events, circumstances, and conditions. These forces will always be confusing. Any other belief I have regarding the matter is at best naive. At worst, it seduces me with the illusion of my own authority.

The second thing I realize is that there's little point in paying much attention to all of this. Not, that is, in terms of the question of living in the material world (an exercise I need to devote my left foot, but not much more, to) but in terms of an inward attention that can teach me anything about myself. My thoughts about myself will continue to be confused, disorganized, and unclear for as long as they revolve around my intellect, my psychology, and my opinions. Yet I very stubbornly insist on trying to "figure out" my inner work with this faculty.

I need to seek a relationship with a part of Being that has few such attachments. My organic sensation is that part.

The molecular sense of Being is objective. It receives life in exactly the way that life arises from it: without judgment, without attitude. Life flows into me in this place without judgment or attitude; and it also flows out of me without those two qualities. So I become freer of external circumstances and their confusion in direct proportion to the amount I invest in my objective assistant.

 Meister Eckhart makes a great deal of following God’s primary inclination; and God’s primary inclination is to Be. To allow Being to flow inwardly and outwardly without constant judgment and interference provides an objective perspective. Yet this can only be done using the sensory faculties which do not rely on the intellect, the mind, to accomplish their goals. In this sense the idea of “mindfulness” isn’t helpful, because it implies that we are going to think with careful attention and thereby understand. In point of fact, from the perspective of intellect, the objective is to not think— and yet have a careful attention — which is rooted in this “lower” level of molecular sensation, which is resident, inherent, receptive, and essential.

 Perhaps it’s important to examine this word “essential;” few people speak of essence from an essential nature. 

Essence has a certain rate of vibration. The experience of it is very closely related to molecular sensation and the intimacy of Being. Trying to understand essence without understanding the nature of its vibration, which has an independent intelligence, is impossible. We can’t understand essence with the thought or with the mind or with psychology. Essence must be understood from the rooted nature of self, with the help of the objective assistant.

 By myself, everything I take in is inflected by opinion. The development of a molecular sense of Being engenders a different mind, which equally receives and interprets life, but in an extra-ordinary way which is quite difficult to describe. In the first place, it is completely, utterly, and inherently active. Action is its reason for existing and Being. Yet at the same time, its action, which is intelligent in a new way that does not relate to the turning of thought, is an entirely passive, because it has an unfathomable capacity to receive life, in exactly the same way that its capacity to generate life is also unfathomable.

At the same time, in this active passivity, which can both receive and emanate life in equal measure, there are no opinions, no confusions. The molecular sensation of Being is incapable of lying, because the faculty has no tools with which that could be achieved. Hence its objectivity: I can rely on everything that is received and perceived by the molecular sensation of Being, because it is a fact, not born of me, but an emanated condition rooted on the one end in God, and on the other end in man. 

Warmly,

Lee

Announcing the publication of 

The Reconstruction of the Soul

The Reconstruction of the Soul is a wide-ranging investigation of symbolism in High and Late Medieval art. It includes detailed analyses of the Unicorn Tapestries at the Cluny Museum and the Cloisters in New York, as well as detailed examinations of the mysterious, erotic and bizarre symbolism in The Cathedral of St. Lazare in Autun.

Along the way, it traces the roots of Western esoteric art from Babylon to ancient Greece, revealing traditions that are still alive today, some 3000 or more years later.

The material is illustrated with photographs taken by the author on location in France and New York, as well as source material from various museums.

It will appeal to anyone interested in the symbolic transmission of the world's Western esoteric heritage.

All funds from your purchase of this book will go to support the translation of important historical documents related to the Gurdjieff tradition.

The author is currently at work on a second volume which will explore even earlier (!) influences on esoteric art and practice. Anticipated publication of this follow-up work will be late 2019.

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.

Confusion

St. Foy, Conques

Photo by the author

The illustration here is from the tympanum at the abbey church of St. Foy in Conques, France. Superficially, it’s a recapitulation of the last judgment, a common theme in medieval art. Much more could (and ought to) be said about this tympanum, which has some very ingenious features; but for today let’s just take note of the fact that it is divided into three levels, top to bottom, and that the left and right side depict heaven and hell. Let’s note, furthermore, that heaven and hell exist as a foundational level here; heaven is not ”above“ and hell “beneath.” They’re on the same level; and the entire rest of creation (Christ and the activity on the two higher levels) are solidly built upon this pair of contradictory impulses.

High Medieval art is never, esoterically, about locations other than the inner. This tympanum depicts what is taking place in us right now. It’s always thus; the esoteric Christian message is always direct towards the immediate question of what my state is now. Heavens and hells are not abstracted places of reward and punishment; they are inner states which I choose to participate in.

In the Tympanum at St. Foy, I can choose between the order of heaven or the chaos of hell; both are present in me. One has a sense of the sacred, the other is deeply entangled in the chaotic events of the physical and material world. Yet these two states in me are codependent and thus arranged on the same level. My only option is to become responsible for both of them. It’;s the inner physics of attraction that leads me towards heaven or hell; and this is a material, a foundational, action upon which, metaphorically, the kingdom of Christ (the next level up) is erected.

Now, we know from the sermons of Eckhart than medieval monastics were deeply engaged with the examination of such questions (more so, I'd say, than we are today) and so it’s no surprise to see such concerns carefully, if somewhat covertly, encoded in the tympanum of a medieval church. In medieval art, it’s the rule, not the exception. Yet it’s probably quite difficult for us to see how this relates to us as people, if at all.

The point here is that my psychological states, along with my intellect, are mired in this state of confusion represented by hell. It is chaotic, excited, and perversely attractive. It is, furthermore, so completely filled with activity that it distracts me from any possibility of organically sensing an order within myself. Clearly I could do better.

Yet I don’t.

The inner physics of attraction builds its church (its inner order) from the molecular sensation of my Being by gradually forming a center of gravity within me. This center of gravity creates a magnetic field around it: and in this way it’s quite identical to a planet. First gravity; then spin; then magnetism. I’m creating an inner solar system, if you will. This magnetism attracts substances (Gurdjieff’s arcane “chemical factory”) that concentrate within the body and gradually attract more particles, which collectively engender a capacity for Being. 

All of the obstacles of my own intellect, especially my impatience, at first stand between me and this action. My impatience especially is an enemy in this regard, because it is selfish (like the false or artificial center of gravity created by my psychology and personality) and ants everything immediately. It’s very clever at seizing absolutely everything thing it encounters and deciding that this, that or the other things represents a molecular sensation and an experience of Being, because, you see, I feel that I have to have it. 

I don’t see that this desire and this feeling themselves begin within and proceed out of my mind and its vanities, and thus make it from the start quite impossible for me to discover anything real. I've watched this process within myself and others for decades and it is a terrifically power pathology which one must forever remain on guard against.

Only patience and decades of work aimed at cultivating an inner vision attract enough particles to change the inner center of gravity; but if this can be effected the change creates an objective assistant.     

   
Warmly,

Lee

Announcing the publication of 

The Reconstruction of the Soul

The Reconstruction of the Soul is a wide-ranging investigation of symbolism in High and Late Medieval art. It includes detailed analyses of the Unicorn Tapestries at the Cluny Museum and the Cloisters in New York, as well as detailed examinations of the mysterious, erotic and bizarre symbolism in The Cathedral of St. Lazare in Autun.

Along the way, it traces the roots of Western esoteric art from Babylon to ancient Greece, revealing traditions that are still alive today, some 3000 or more years later.

The material is illustrated with photographs taken by the author on location in France and New York, as well as source material from various museums.

It will appeal to anyone interested in the symbolic transmission of the world's Western esoteric heritage.

All funds from your purchase of this book will go to support the translation of important historical documents related to the Gurdjieff tradition.

The author is currently at work on a second volume which will explore even earlier (!) influences on esoteric art and practice. Anticipated publication of this follow-up work will be late 2019.

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.

The Inner Physics of Attraction

A master says there is nothing so like God as being: insofar as it has being it is like God. A master says that being is so pure and so lofty that all that God is, is being. God knows nothing but being, He is conscious of nothing but being: being is His circumference. 

God loves nothing but His being, He thinks of nothing but His being. I say all creatures are one being. One master says that some creatures are so close to God and have pressed into themselves so much of the divine light that they give being to other creatures. 

That is not true, for being is so high, so pure and so akin to God that no one can give being save God alone in Himself. God's characteristic is being. A master says one creature can quite well give life to another. Therefore in being alone lies all that is at all. Being is the first name. 

Whatever is deficient is a falling away from being. Our whole life ought to be being. 

Meister Eckhart, The Complete Mystical Works, Sermon 82, page 404 (Trans. M. O’C Walshe.)

In examining this question of how I attract what's necessary to acquire a greater sense of presence and Being, I use the word intimate. This word comes from the Latin intimare, to impress or make familiar, which in its turn derives from intimus, inmost.

So I’m indicating a need to turn towards what is inmost in order to discover what attracts Being. Being is embedded deep without ourselves, inseparable from what we are. While the word molecular conveys a good bit of just how deep this experience of Being lies, it is only in the experience of Being itself that we can discover how deeply embedded it is. It lies at the root of creation and what is; no thing exists without first Being.

Being is, furthermore, a conscious principle; it is consciousness itself, yet even more; for consciousness does not exist without first Being, either. We approach here a mystery which you should resist trying to understand with the intellect alone. Eckhart touches on this as well in sermon 82 in his point about the contradictions of joy and sorrow; it’s required reading for those interested in the study of the subject. 

Intellect has contradiction inherent to it; Being does not. Yet one cannot just decide to banish contradiction and be rid of it. An intellectual resolution to our confusion about Being is what we so earnestly desire; and it’s this desire itself that collapses on us. We’re perpetually buried beneath it.

The intimate, organic, molecular sense of Being, which is emitted by the level “below” us, is actually a much finer and very high rate of vibration. Here, paradoxically, we discover that the level below us isn’t actually below us at all. If and when we acquire a sensation of it —a permanent sensation, I just emphasize—we discover it is a higher level than the one our conventional awareness rests in. It is more intimate; and it draws unto itself the intimacy that creates it. It has a natural, unmanned and organic ability to attract the substance of which it itself is made; and thus an accretion takes place in which sensation, organic and molecular sensation, needs no assistance to maintain itself. Because it arises from Being it already understands how to be fed from Being; the spring from which this water wells up is eternal, that is, it lies outside time—a subject Eckhart also covers in sermon 82. And since time is above all a subjective experience within us, we can understand here that Being comes into us, and exists within us, from outside time. The molecular sensation of Being is a resident or inherent state of this action.

Ah, well, we come back once again as to how one does this.  

How do I do it? 

What can be done?

There’s a certain magnetism that develops as the finer particles of Being are collected and deposited within the soul. Let us call it the inner physics of attraction. Everything from within me, all of my sensation or my inner life—which is not what I collect in my examinations of my outwardness—must be turned towards this inner physics of attraction. I first need to hear about it, study the ideas of it, of course: the intellect is the blade that cuts a path through the vines that obscure it inwardly.  But in the end I must understand it as a physical thing, not a mental one. 

Warmly,

Lee

Announcing the publication of 

The Reconstruction of the Soul

The Reconstruction of the Soul is a wide-ranging investigation of symbolism in High and Late Medieval art. It includes detailed analyses of the Unicorn Tapestries at the Cluny Museum and the Cloisters in New York, as well as detailed examinations of the mysterious, erotic and bizarre symbolism in The Cathedral of St. Lazare in Autun.

Along the way, it traces the roots of Western esoteric art from Babylon to ancient Greece, revealing traditions that are still alive today, some 3000 or more years later.

The material is illustrated with photographs taken by the author on location in France and New York, as well as source material from various museums.

It will appeal to anyone interested in the symbolic transmission of the world's Western esoteric heritage.

All funds from your purchase of this book will go to support the translation of important historical documents related to the Gurdjieff tradition.

The author is currently at work on a second volume which will explore even earlier (!) influences on esoteric art and practice. Anticipated publication of this follow-up work will be late 2019.

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.

To Establish Inner Contact

Yesterday the question came up of how we come into touch with a higher energy… a finer rate of vibration… an experience of presence and Being.

Of course if anyone had the real answer to this, it would change everything. Yet despite the efforts (in the Gurdjieff work, that is) of thousands of people over many millions of hours, no clear answer has emerged. The exhortations… my own included… stand as testament; but even the best suggestions seem to consistently fall short of the mark.

Like others, I can speak only from my own experience. While there are points of contact between me and others, each case is unique, distinct and individual—and there are no guarantees.

Last night and the night before, as I listened to exchanges on this subject, again and again my thoughts—which were then and are now specifically grounded in this absolute sensation of Being—returned to the themes and understandings I have come to on my own, from my own work—not a reiteration of what others have said in the various books on the subject, but how it arises within and feels to me.

This may, perhaps, be idiosyncratic; yet I doubt it. There’s an objectivity to the arising and manifestation of any gravitationally sound sense and state of Being that does not permit of variation.

It is molecular; by this I mean that an organic sense of Being is grounded never in the thought, but always in the finest particles of Being that compose our state. This finer energy is not “above” us in the sense that one might think it is (and there are indeed such energies) but below us; and yet it encompasses a higher rate of vibration within me at a lower level than the one “I” am on.

This may sound like a paradox, but understanding it is essential to understanding both what organic sensation consists of, and how it supports the rest of our efforts towards Being.

The second thing that occurs to me is the manner in which intimacy comes into question here. If I don’t develop an instinctive intimacy directed (quite gently) at my Being and its parts—if I don’t cultivate a quiet, loving, intelligent relationship within myself— then I can’t begin to initiate the kind of inner contact that will attract what’s needed here.    

Warmly,

Lee

Announcing the publication of 

The Reconstruction of the Soul

The Reconstruction of the Soul is a wide-ranging investigation of symbolism in High and Late Medieval art. It includes detailed analyses of the Unicorn Tapestries at the Cluny Museum and the Cloisters in New York, as well as detailed examinations of the mysterious, erotic and bizarre symbolism in The Cathedral of St. Lazare in Autun.

Along the way, it traces the roots of Western esoteric art from Babylon to ancient Greece, revealing traditions that are still alive today, some 3000 or more years later.

The material is illustrated with photographs taken by the author on location in France and New York, as well as source material from various museums.

It will appeal to anyone interested in the symbolic transmission of the world's Western esoteric heritage.

All funds from your purchase of this book will go to support the translation of important historical documents related to the Gurdjieff tradition.

The author is currently at work on a second volume which will explore even earlier (!) influences on esoteric art and practice. Anticipated publication of this follow-up work will be late 2019.

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.

This World Divided

All qualities are God’s.

We forget this so easily. I see every quality from one of two points of view: either it’s mine, or it belongs to someone else—to some material creature or being in the world outside me.

Now, if there is a finer rate of vibration available within me, ah, then—then I see how indelibly and utterly each thing I believe in actually belongs to God and no one else. But this is a rare state, and I’m only open to it through Grace. The rest of the time I’m a committed denizen of the world of creatures and oppositions. 

Yet all qualities belong to God and emanate from God; and it’s possible to become a participant in that understanding, such that every impression carries a sweetness within it that speaks of God alone. 

In this case the simplest of things is impossibly refined; and all of creation is suffused with a beautiful, exquisite sorrow that passes all understanding.  This is the essence, perhaps, of God Himself; and yet I understand it’s just a mere echo of His Being. 

Within this essence, all things are one; and yet I’m required over and over again to return to this world divided, from whence I venture forth again and again, according to the will and the whims of Grace, to meet God in His own domain, where I have no real right to tread.

November 9, 2018, Hangzhou, China

Wishing the best for you on this day,

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.

The Perfection, part 3

Once under solar influences, one can’t escape their constant presence, which manifests independently of personal preference or inclination, and puts Being under an entirely new set of obligations and obediences which cannot be properly outlined in texts. 

The most important thing that can be said about all of this is that it provokes a progressive openness to receiving the particles of sorrow referred to in the second passage. 

This receiving is a three-centered activity which produces an exquisite anguish which will inevitably be understood as an essential form of inner work, an experience of intentional suffering, and a sacred obligation which touches the soul so directly that no other order of experience can possibly mimic it. 

Developing this capacity within Being is one of the most essential aims of Gurdjieff’s practice. This is often either profoundly misunderstood or not understood at all; and this aim itself is what sets Gurdjieff’s practice and teaching well apart from so-called “enlightenment” teachings and other spiritual practices. To come under solar influences causes, one might say, a different kind of inner enlightenment that's not only invisible to outsiders... there is no incentive to reveal it. It is a secret, personal inner work.

The adept has to work for themselves to develop and understand the capacities and consequences of this; and comparatives fall by the wayside in the process. One might point out there are no white gowns or halos to be had here.

I would only add this caution: interpreting these matters from any perspective of one’s ordinary day-to-day experience is a great mistake. Never assume anything; in these matters, that which understands, understands, and everything else is conjecture and foolishness.

Now we come to the meaning of the second passage, which is taken from The Holy Planet Purgatory. The passage explains, in a parenthetical way, the entire process of suffering that results from the development of the astral and mental bodies; yet the result of the experience of suffering on this level is an infrequent but real possibility of a visitation of God Himself.

This may seem ludicrous and entirely allegorical; yet what it refers to is a very real perception granted from time to time as a result of the action of intentional suffering on the order of solar emanations. This perception is what I call The Perfection; and it has had its precedents, for example, in Ibn Arabi’s description of The Reality, another word for God’s Presence. 

The Perfection is not a sighting of God; however, in the sense of God as an external entity; it is, rather, an inner vision of God, for God, through God’s eyes. 

That inner vision typically manifests as a three-centered, but profoundly feeling-saturated, perception of the world and Being which contains simultaneous understandings from all three centers that impress the absolute unity of all Being upon one’s inner parts.  This is what Gurdjieff describes as a vision which can “soothe” the sufferers in Purgatory. 

It's sublime... it's The Perfection.

As such, the descriptions of Purgatory are hardly allegorical or removed in distance from Earth; they are events and circumstances that may take place within life, right here, 

if and when our inner effort qualifies us for the experiences.

Such insight is truly hard won; and never guaranteed.  

Warmly,

Lee

Announcing the publication of 

The Reconstruction of the Soul

The Reconstruction of the Soul is a wide-ranging investigation of symbolism in High and Late Medieval art. It includes detailed analyses of the Unicorn Tapestries at the Cluny Museum and the Cloisters in New York, as well as detailed examinations of the mysterious, erotic and bizarre symbolism in The Cathedral of St. Lazare in Autun.

Along the way, it traces the roots of Western esoteric art from Babylon to ancient Greece, revealing traditions that are still alive today, some 3000 or more years later.

The material is illustrated with photographs taken by the author on location in France and New York, as well as source material from various museums.

It will appeal to anyone interested in the symbolic transmission of the world's Western esoteric heritage.

All funds from your purchase of this book will go to support the translation of important historical documents related to the Gurdjieff tradition.

The author is currently at work on a second volume which will explore even earlier (!) influences on esoteric art and practice. Anticipated publication of this follow-up work will be late 2019.

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.

The Perfection, part 2

The meaning of the passage about remorse is a reference to what happens to an individual who develops deep enough levels of Organic Sensation of Being to open a pathway to the arrival and development of Organic Feeling. 

Organic Feeling can’t exist in the absence of Organic Sensation. Hence the great emphasis on understanding through direct experience the resolution of levels of inner vibration which lead to Organic Sensation. Years of work need to be put into this one aim, which ought to be the fundamental and only aim in one’s inner work until it is achieved. Organic Sensation is, within the inner circles of the Gurdjieff work, traditionally associated with the development of the astral body (Gurdjieff’s first higher being-body.) 

  Once an Organic Sensation of Being develops, and enough inner ground is prepared (Gurdjieff’s “coating of being-bodies”), Organic Feeling arrives. This faculty has an ability to sense and understand life in ways that are functionally and categorically impossible without its presence; there is no point in discussing it with those who haven’t experienced it firsthand. And of course there’s always the danger that folk who learn of it will misunderstand and think they have attained it in one way or another. The point is that this is one of those objective states Gurdjieff described in which there can be no argument between two who have truly experienced it, as to what it consists of. It only results in one experience; and it only has one “result.” This is what is meant by objective. It isn’t a state, furthermore, that can be exploited for personal gain in any way; it stands apart from such considerations because it is pure, that is, it has conclusively moved beyond the level of self-interest. Organic Feeling, if it were well understood (which it is not) is associated with the development of what Gurdjieff called the mental body, or second higher being-body.

When Organic Feeling arrives, a faculty is awakened which connects a human Being directly to planetary and solar influences. Gurdjieff spoke about and wrote of this kind of influence a good deal, but in this case (unlike the allegory of purgatory) the meaning is quite literal. 

Organic Sensation connects a human being to the influences of the Moon, which are (contrary to much misunderstanding in the Gurdjieff practice) absolutely essential  for the absorption of certain rooted astral emanations.

Organic Feeling connects a human Being to the emanations of the sun—not just through solioonensius, Gurdjieff’s word for the process (which refers, by the way, explicitly to solar flares and their action) but also to a wide range of emanated solar influences, which are constant and ongoing, such as the emanations from coronal holes in the sun, and various openings in the earth’s magnetic fields which allow greater or lesser amounts of solar emanations to influence one’s Being. 

And there is an important key to this hidden teaching: the section of the book within which it is introduced. The passage is a teaching from Ashiata Shiemash, whose name means “ray of light from the sun.” Coming under the influences of his teaching actualy means “coming under solar influences.” This is meant to be understood as an actual physical event, whereby the emanations of the sun tangibly and materially begin to affect the organism.

Part 3 of this series will be published on Dec. 6.

Warmly,

Lee

Announcing the publication of 

The Reconstruction of the Soul

The Reconstruction of the Soul is a wide-ranging investigation of symbolism in High and Late Medieval art. It includes detailed analyses of the Unicorn Tapestries at the Cluny Museum and the Cloisters in New York, as well as detailed examinations of the mysterious, erotic and bizarre symbolism in The Cathedral of St. Lazare in Autun.

Along the way, it traces the roots of Western esoteric art from Babylon to ancient Greece, revealing traditions that are still alive today, some 3000 or more years later.

The material is illustrated with photographs taken by the author on location in France and New York, as well as source material from various museums.

It will appeal to anyone interested in the symbolic transmission of the world's Western esoteric heritage.

All funds from your purchase of this book will go to support the translation of important historical documents related to the Gurdjieff tradition.

The author is currently at work on a second volume which will explore even earlier (!) influences on esoteric art and practice. Anticipated publication of this follow-up work will be late 2019.

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.