By naming the animals, Adam was in fact invoking
gods—or aspects of God. In this sense, we might say that Darwin’s
theory of evolution, likely contrary to its author’s intention,
suggests that humans descend not from animals per se, but from
gods—that is, from those occult forces whose living symbols are
precisely animals. Erich Neumann notes that for primitive humans, it
was natural to perceive a numinous ancestor in animal form. Humans
descend from gods represented as animals, whether those gods created
humankind or became humans by degradation or descent. Kenneth Grant
wrote that deities with animal heads served as guardians and guides
to the secret pathways of the underworld. These deities formed strata
of the subconscious containing the powers of the animals whose forms
they embodied. Humanity, says Grant, has lost the key to
understanding these divine forms, because such a key does not exist
on the level of rational explanation.
In the biblical order of creation, animals precede
humans because gods precede human beings—hierarchically,
ontologically, and temporally. However, Adam Kadmon, as the symbol of
the cosmic human, was created first and is older than all gods and
animals, for he contains them all within himself. Thus, from the
occult perspective, the human being can, through layers of the deep
psyche, summon divine consciousness symbolized by a particular
animal—a process that lies at the heart of magical atavistic
resurrection. According to Kenneth Grant, these divine forms are
typically associated with ancient animal-headed deities. In this way,
atavisms—or pre-human powers—manifest within the magician, who
experiences and actualizes in the astral world the energies and
powers once held by those specific animals. The reawakening of animal
atavisms within a human recalls the concept of messianic
resurrection, or that of the slain god. Resurrection emerges in the
body, as a physical or physiological event, meaning it is—according
to Grant—a direct experience. The renowned historian of religion
Mircea Eliade cites a passage from the Scandinavian epic Ynglinga
Saga (Chapter VI) describing Odin’s followers:
“They went without armor, wild like dogs and wolves. They bit their shields and were as strong as bears and bulls. They slaughtered men and neither iron nor steel could harm them. This was called berserker rage.”
Eliade explains that berserkers were warriors wrapped in
bear skins (serkr), thus magically and completely identified
with the bear—and at times with the wolf. One became a berserker
through an initiation involving a series of warrior trials. Through
these ordeals, the initiate adopted the way of being of the
beast—becoming all the more dangerous a warrior the more he behaved
like a beast. He was transformed into an overman by succeeding in
channeling the magical-religious power of the predator.
The well-known esoteric symbol of the Lion-Serpent
is also atavistic, and evidently a necessary mode of messianic
manifestation. The lion is simultaneously the symbol of the Judean
tribe from whose bloodline the Messiah is to come. And yet, by
demonizing Egyptian magical-religious practice as diabolical
idolatry, Moses effectively abolished the possibility of magical
obsessions with divine atavisms and their zoomorphic natures. In
doing so, an entire aspect of the microcosm was cast into shadow for
the sake of worshiping and receiving instruction from an invisible
and formless God who, throughout Old Testament history, appeared in
various ways, ultimately becoming—within the experience of his
followers—a mystical light, a sacred text, and a magical alphabet.
In the light of experience, gods are formulae—that is, keys. Let us
set aside feelings, strength of conviction, definitions, or the
nature of inner visions and experiences. In the purely practical
sense—and that, in the end, is what matters most—God, gods,
demons are formulae: vocal, symbolic, visual, energetic. Do I believe
in formulae? Of course I do, but it is almost absurd to ask. It’s
like asking a mathematician whether he believes in equations. Of
course he does—but what he’s really interested in is solving
them. Equations only matter if they prove true or false in relation
to a specific problem they are meant to solve. Many would say that
this view of the divine is rigid and limiting, but without a
functional focus, insisting on a sublime, incomprehensible, infinite
divine is meaningless—except as a subject for philosophical
discourse.
To the Egyptians, the gods—or neteru—were
countless variations of superhuman presence permeating our world.
Thus, neteru were, among other things, axes, serpents, and
falcons. The historical and mythological anthropomorphization of the
gods—from the Christian God-Man to the doctrine summed up by the
phrase “Man is God”—has blurred the nonhuman nature of
divinity. Can a human become god without first ceasing to be human?
Or does one become divine precisely by fully actualizing their
humanity? Admittedly, such questions may seem like empty rhetoric,
and from a practical standpoint, they make little sense. From a
practical standpoint, one can identify with a formula in order to
unlock it within one’s consciousness. In other words, formulae are
to be used—and the magician, like the mathematician, is someone who
works with formulae. The neteru, that is, gods or formulae,
are givens of the world—just like air, water, earth, grass,
animals, or anything else. And just as we engage with all these
givens without hesitation, so too do we engage with formulae. They
are natural givens of our world and our consciousness. Granted, among
these givens lurk many dangers—but so do dangers lurk among far
more banal phenomena. We can drown in water, crash into the earth, be
poisoned by plants, be torn apart by animals, carried off by the
wind, and so on. Likewise, we can go mad from formulae—or be led to
death by them, just like by anything else.
Now that we have cleared up some uncertainties,
let us turn to the paths of unlocking these formulae. Let us begin
with language, since we are accustomed to thinking of magical
formulae primarily as words. Our ancestors created language by
mimicking animal sounds, and this onomatopoeic language is universal,
forming the basis of all derivative spoken tongues. We do not need
spoken language in order to think—we need it to communicate with
one another, and even then, the language of signs and gestures is
often sufficient. Spoken language develops as the human world grows
more complex. We have now grown accustomed to thinking in linguistic
forms. This is a consequence and product of generational cultivation.
In that sense, the language of signs, movements, and imitation of
animal sounds is older. Magical formulae are therefore not only
words—and often not words at all. At their core lies an intention
accompanied by a specific movement, gesture, body posture, or a
series of gestures often expressed through dance. This alone is
usually sufficient—and in ancient times, it was all that was
needed. With the development of magic, or more precisely its
intellectualization, sound was added to the process—then voice, and
eventually the willed projection of mental images. Thus we arrived at
complex magical formulae and rituals. So, we have a movement or
sequence of movements, gesture or expression, posture, position of
hands and fingers, sound we emit (whistling, clicking, screeching,
howling), words we say, chant, or sing (meaningful or meaningless),
in sequences and repetitions; we have rhythm, we have the images we
imagine—and all this is combined with the appropriate place and
time for magical action. We must choose a specific place and time:
when the wind is favorable, when the spirit confirms the moment by
sending a sign—a strange cloud, a sudden gust of wind, or the
appearance of a fitting animal; when the Moon is in a certain phase,
on a certain day and season, and when a certain constellation is
visible in the sky, etc. All of this must align with our intention
and the nature of what we seek to achieve.
From all this, we can see that magic is the
original scientific discipline—a kind of primal science rooted in
experience and experimentation, underpinned by a complex worldview
based on the all-encompassing determinism of universal
interconnectedness. The agent enabling this determinism is expressed
through a power whose exponents are the neteru—that is,
gods or daimons. These entities, however abstract they may be, are—in
the magical sense—quite concrete.
