Daemonic ultimate life, Gnostic heir, Ouroboros

[Nebankh]

This is just something that's been running around my mind recently, so I thought I'd pop it on here


In the above alchemical illustration we see two serpents devouring one another. The winged serpent signifies the Universal World Spirit; the bottom serpent signifies our Matter, the Virgin Earth. The crowned, winged serpent is the Cosmic spirit which brings everything to life, which also kills everything and takes all the forms of nature. It is everything and nothing. This upper serpent has the material serpent by the tail. The lower serpent of matter also has the winged serpent by the tail.

These two serpents also represent the fixed state and the volatile state.

"Through the art of separation one makes One into Two….It is the most volatile and also the most fixed…it is a fire that consumes everything, and opens and closes everything. Cook with this fire until it stops, and you have the most fixed thing that penetrates all things - and one has eaten the other, and this figure [the ouroburos wearing the crown] comes out."
This then symbolises the continuous process of the union of the internal world and the external world, the eternal 'now' with the present 'now'.
Excuse the image below; it was the best I could find online of the crowned, single ouroboros, on the left!



Now without going into Alchemy too much, the 'fusion' of the two serpents - the fixed and the volatile - is an inner (spiritual) process; part of the Great Work on the Self, one of the aims of which is the unification of (inner) opposites eg Light and Dark, Moist and Dry, Masculine and Feminine etc etc. One of the symbols for successful completion of this inner work is the Ouroboros, another is the Phoenix and still another is The Golden Child.

Some here may have seen my article in Astraea Magazine (Vol.1) on The Cosmic Cycle and The Black Madonna, where I proposed that the symbol of the Black Madonna and Child was a portrayal of exactly the same process depicted in the Ouroboros, but one step further, in that it also depicted the Golden Child (as does the same imagery of Isis and the child Horus, - Divine Son of the Union of the 'material' Isis and the 'god of the underworld' Osiris) and hence could be interpreted as a gnostic/alchemical symbol going back to the time of the days of very early Christianity.

The reason I'm posting this here is because I am wondering if the union of the Daemon and the Eidolon also falls into this category, with the Ultimate Life being a version of the Golden Child - something we can attain through the Work on the Self, with the assistance of the Daemon making this possible? The Upper Winged serpent of the Universal World Spirit being associated with the Daemon, and the lower serpent of matter being the Eidolon.

It seems to me that most people I have encountered in connection with Tony's work are all at a similar kind of stage in our 'spiritual' or 'self' development. There's an openness, a recognition of something, and an eagerness to develop. I'm thinking this isn't accidental and is part of the synchrondipity that surrounds this work.

Just something else to add to the pot!
(I could waffle on a bit more about it if necessary)

Jaq

[rafromca]

I am wondering if the union of the Daemon and the Eidolon also falls into this category, with the Ultimate Life being a version of the Golden Child - something we can attain through the Work on the Self, with the assistance of the Daemon making this possible?

I love your posts and thank you for pointing out the above connection. I hadn't thought of this before, but it does make a lot of sense to me. Joseph Campbell wrote that the snake eating its own tail is an image of life. Life sheds one generation after another to be born again. The snake throws off the past and continues to live) This is a form of recurrence and fits with Tony's idea of eidolon and daemon. The eidolon like the snake's skin being shed, and the daemon continuing on.

[Nebankh]

Thanks rafromca, yes that's the idea. If we see the two snakes (among all the other things they represent) as our upper and lower self, when they consume one another and become the ouroboros, they are still the two selves but they are taking their momentum from the power of the two working in harmony. Not fighting each other, not working against each other. So the way I see it is that when the Eidolon and the Daemon are working together as a fully functioning single unit, they become the third 'self', like the ouroboros, or the golden child, or the united Eidolon/Daemonic ultimate life. To live a life as it should be lived.

In all the methods of working on the self, this is the aim, and it's by discovering and listening to the higher self, allowing it to be the guide and to govern the way we behave, rather than the lower self, that this is achieved. I see a great similarity in what Tony is presenting, the main difference being that Tony is not presenting it in a mystical, allegorical way as it has been in the past, and is therefore making it more available for everyone to undestand and to identify with, without the sophistical doctrines.
It's truly exciting, as we are seeing just how many people are responding to Tony's work and recognising the truth in it.

Jaq

[janagram]

this thread deserves some serious consideration....it is another way of interpreting the ancient symbol. (yeah its 3 yrs later...)

[Derkein]

too true.

[Anthony Peake]

I agree. Indeed in my next book I will be focusing on another, very intriguing variation of the oroborus found in the Kabbalah teachings. This is a two-tailed serpent that curls round and has both its tails in its mouth .....

[Derkein]

Yah vay

or more correctly
YaH VaH

[thepropaganalyst]

The way I've come to think of the Daemon as a higher self is not necessarily a particular, singular entity, but the path or direction guiding the Eidolon toward the source. Perhaps a combination of the states of all of the Self leading up to the source. I think this is why the foresight of the Daemon varies from the immediate to farther into the future. It definitely makes sense to me to correlate the Daemon/Eidolon idea with that of the ouroboros or Great Work since it seems to be the overlapping of a current state and a desired state, an attempt to make that which is above like that which is below.

[CFTraveler]

Nice thread. Thanks for resurrecting it, janagram.