Title: The Hermetic Caduceus: A Path to Inner Mastery
Tags: #Hermeticism #Initiation #FluidicBody #SelfMastery #EvolianPractice

1. Detachment and Neutrality: Begin by detaching from external influences and maintaining a neutral, balanced lifestyle. Avoid excesses in sleep, food, and emotions. This creates the foundation for inner mastery.
   
2. Harmonization of Body and Soul: Temper the soul, cleanse it of impulsiveness and passions, and stabilize it. Unify the soul with the body to achieve a state of calm and harmony.
   
3. Isolation from External Judgments: Recognize that the actions, thoughts, and judgments of others hold no power over you. Cultivate indifference to external opinions.
   
4. Vigilance Over Consciousness: Observe all external and internal phenomena without judgment. Maintain a silent, unperturbed mind, stopping all reactive thoughts with firm control.
   
5. Mastery Over Passions: When passions arise, do not suppress them. Instead, deliberately satisfy and then discard them, ensuring they do not disrupt your equilibrium.
   
6. Cultivation of Inner Strength: Develop a lord-like presence within yourself, a force that commands respect and silence. This inner strength is the “Gold” of the Hermetic tradition.
   
7. Fluidic State and Mercury Extraction: Through disciplined practice, achieve the “fluidic state,” where consciousness and body merge into one. This is the first extraction of Mercury, a key step in Hermetic work.
   
8. Education of the Heart: Purify your feelings by detaching from pleasure, desire, and aversion. Observe emotions as external phenomena, cultivating a refined, objective sense of perception.
   
9. The Mirror Technique: Use the mirror as a tool to isolate the fluidic body from the physical. Stare into the mirror until the physical senses are neutralized, allowing the astral light to emerge.
   
10. Rebirth in the Mind: Transcend the neutral point to achieve the “Rebirth in the Mind.” This is the awakening of the intellectual light, where the Self is liberated from the animal body and assumes a fluidic form, capable of miraculous works.
    

This path demands unwavering will, discipline, and perseverance. It is not for the faint-hearted, as failure to master these steps risks falling into mediumistic or subconscious states. Success requires absolute commitment to the goal of self-transformation and liberation.

Every teaching remains illusory until it is translated into practice and action. Thus, you will be guided in the initial operations, as previously hinted.

First, take control of a portion of your life, or at least your day, to firmly establish a new quality. Achieve inner detachment from yourself and your surroundings. Maintain a sober, effortless, neutral, and balanced lifestyle, free from excess. Sleep only as necessary and eat sparingly.

Ensure your body is whole, calm, and harmonized. Temper your soul with the power within you, cleansing it of impulsiveness, passions, and restlessness. Stabilize it and unite it with your body.

Other beings do not exist. Do not let their actions, thoughts, or judgments affect you, regardless of their nature.

Guard against anything that might subtly influence you. Watch over external influences and the depths of your consciousness. Observe all things silently and remain undisturbed, halting all judgments firmly.

If passions arise, do not react or become disturbed. Satisfy them deliberately, then discard them.

Continue in this direction until you recognize the frivolity, uselessness, and threat of every thought, allowing your mind to calm and rest silently at your feet.

Through this, you will build an inner strength, akin to a lord whose gaze instills silence, respect, or confusion in those around him. This is our Gold.

When you achieve this with subtle, constant, strong, and gentle art, and when the balanced, neutral state becomes continuous and natural, you will feel reconnected to yourself, experiencing a profound sense of interiority. From this calm and enlightened rest, spiritual contentment will arise.

Observe and retain this sensation. When you fully possess it, connect it with your body so it permeates it like warmth in water, resulting in a single, unified state.

This is the fluidic state, known in our Tradition as the “first extraction of Mercury (or Hermes) from the Mine.”

Hold onto this state with calm firmness. Release it, then evoke it repeatedly. Study it until it becomes a subconscious reality, ready to emerge at your command. Achieving this marks significant progress.

The fluidic body is energized by a vegetarian diet, fasting, and magical aromas. Sexual encounters driven by pleasure weaken it, especially in those with nervous temperaments. Sudden loss of equilibrium or strong emotions can harm both body and psyche. Its virtues must be sharpened through discipline.

Do not destroy feelings but detach from clinging to pleasure, desire, aversion, and anguish. Purify yourself from these bonds. Be open, free from fear and pettiness in your feelings. Observe them as external things, realizing, “Just as I am not the food I taste, I am not the feelings that echo in me: they are not mine, they are not me.”

Only then will feelings reveal a new, objective sense beyond the animal ones, oriented to a subtler aspect of reality. Educate this sense with inner attention, refining it. Maintain calm self-control and lucidity at your center, open to every voice.

This education of the heart, achieved through “persuasion” and a slow, gentle “fire,” will infuse supersensible knowledge into your fluidic body, creating a “distilled water,” consecrated in the sign of your neutrality.

Next, attempt the liberation of the central power and the encounter with the Serpent. This occurs when your “Self” transfers into the fluidic body, detached from animal senses and isolated from the physical world.

Avoid dissolving self-awareness, which lowers the magician's world to that of mediums and visionaries. Maintain the intellectual center's preponderance over peripheral sensibility and subconscious elements.

When the fluidic body detaches, remain steady in a pure, immaterial, extra-cerebral state of mind. If not, the mediumistic state sets in, making the fluidic body a passive instrument of the inferior world.

Actively surpassing the neutral point leads to “Rebirth in the Mind” in the “Magnesium of the Wise.” From the golden nucleus of your perfected mind, an intellectual light will emerge, realizing a new, powerful sense of Self.

Philalethes notes that through our Gold (the Sun), the enlivening virtue hidden beneath the body's husk is reborn when bathed with our water (the fluidic). The fixed becomes volatile to inherit a nobler quality, then fixes the volatile.

With this experience, your “Self” abandons the animal vehicle, assuming a fluidic body as an organ for action. If difficulties arise, evoke the image and will it.

The magician must escape the enslavement of the “soul of the earth,” entering conscious contact with the beyond and directing effects in real life. His spirit, like a flame, rises to the surface of the “waters,” consecrated in “air,” empowered to subject beings dependent on this current, the “Astral Light.”

The task is not easy or without dangers. Persevere, master your doubts, and you will succeed. Dare and be silent.

The strongest force is the will of a man who knows what he wants. Set your goal and never change it. Once started, never quit, for the path of Magic has no “dead corners.” You must either succeed or perish.

Metaphysical part:

Upon the pope's death, the camerlengo verifies his passing, locks the papal apartment, and breaks his ring and seal. Cardinals under 80 gather for the conclave, voting in secrecy until a two-thirds majority elects a new pope, announced with “Habemus Papam” and a blessing.

Evola's Critique of Pope Francis: A Traditionalist Perspective

1. Evola would critique Pope Francis's emphasis on compassion and social justice as a deviation from the Church's traditional role as a custodian of sacred order and spiritual discipline.
2. He would view Francis's focus on mercy and inclusion as a dilution of the Church's transcendent mission, aligning it with modern egalitarian ideals.
3. Evola would argue that the Pope's advocacy for social justice and environmentalism reflects a capitulation to modern materialism.
4. He would see the push for reform and dialogue as an erosion of the Church's authority, aligning it with the decadence of the modern world.
5. For Evola, the Church should embody a rigid, hierarchical order that transcends worldly concerns.
6. He would emphasize the need for the Church to uphold timeless spiritual truths rather than adapt to contemporary issues.
7. Evola would reject the modern humanitarian focus, seeing it as a loss of the Church's role as a beacon of spiritual authority.
8. He would criticize the Church's alignment with modern egalitarianism as a betrayal of its traditional hierarchical principles.
9. Evola would argue that the Church's mission should be to maintain a sacred order that stands above temporal concerns.
10. Ultimately, he would call for a return to a Church that prioritizes spiritual discipline and transcendent values over modern compromises.