Israel Regardie - The Complete Golden Dawn System of Magic.pdf

VOLUME FIVE
there on the left that will lead you out into a landscape...take a step out into the
landscape when it appears, feeling the new type of ground under your feet. Is it soft or hard,
grassy or rocky? What is around you? What is the scene like?
"Then with your mind call for an animal to come to you. Let it be an animal you don't
know. Not a familiar housepet or some other known outer world animal, (e.g., your friend's
horse, the neighbor's cat, the lamb you had when you were a child), and ask the animal to lead
you off to the right to where your inner guide awaits you. Concentrate on following the animal
and try not to anticipate the guide...the animals that appear to people come in all varieties. Deer
were common, as are squirrels, sometimes a lion or a dog or cat will appear. People have even
gotten skunks and anteaters...
"The animal will lead you to an unknown male figure -- your first guide. The initial
inner guide for both men and women is a male form...you will generally feel an outpouring of
love, protection and friendliness from the figure...
"Let all these impressions come to you as they will. Don't try to see the guide's face
clearly right away unless it presents itself easily. One of the hallmarks of the true inner guide is
that his face isn't usually clear at first, although a false guide's face almost always is. The true
guide's face will clear and come into focus later on as you work with him -- when you stop
trying to "make him a face." Be sure to ask the figure if he is your true guide. Generally a false
guide will answer " n o " to this question. Feel the guide's feeling for you. There is no love from
a false guide.
"Ask the guide to take your right hand in his left...feel the hand contact as much as you
can...then ask the guide to point to where the sun is in the sky of your inner world. Look to
where he points..don't accept any known person from your outer world as your inner guide.
Your guide is a being who wasn't alive on this planet when you were born, so if your favorite
uncle, or your father, or the current or past president of the United States appear, keep looking
past him to the right. And if a famous deceased guru or teacher or luminary from the past should
appear, test him, and see if another figure appears beyond him on the right...the inner guides are
always human and do not have the powers or attributes of gods...remember you're in foreign
territory. Trust and use your inner guide to act both as interpreter and counselor--truly let him
guide you..."
The author then goes into a great deal of detail and explanation of the meditation and the
guide and the material to be derived from this sort of thing. The book is well worth reading, and
the method of course experimented with. I recommend it unequivocally -- at least as a device
for dealing with the inner world of the spirit. What I am interested in at this moment is to
analyze briefly a couple of the problems he encountered as relative to the meditation.
For example, he describes how the meditation evolved. He was undergoing Jungian
analysis many years ago. At one point his analyst left town for Zurich where the Jungian
Institute is located, and he was left with a feeling of being stranded, that his unconscious had been
activated but, at that moment, not going anywhere in particular. He had been using the "active
imagination" technique the analyst had taught him and was fascinated by the living experiences he
had while exploring his psyche. He had been warned about the potential dangers of the
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