Deepening the Well: 9 Mysteries of Indo-European Mysticism

These mysteries are for intense mysticism, practiced by capable mystics. We're talking about a self alchemy that can cause madness, so use any of this gnosis at your own risk. If you're not a trained or experienced mystic, don't approach the mysteries. Not for children, and the laity should use these to ponder in meditation, rather than using them to dismantle your subjective reality. Rumi says, “I have lived on the lip of insanity, wanting to know reasons, knocking on a door. It opens. I’ve been knocking from the inside."

1 Purusha hath a thousand arms, a thousand eyes, a thousand feet.
On every side pervading earth he fills a space ten fingers wide.
2 He with three quarters rose to heaven here reappeared a fourth
of him.
Thence he strode forth on every side to all that eats not and that
eats.
3 So mighty is his grandeur, yea, greater than this is Purusha.
All creatures are one-fourth of him, three-fourths what dieth
not in heaven.
4 Purusha is in truth this All, what hath been and what yet shall;
be
Lord, too, of immortality—and what hath grown with some-
what else.

(From the Atharva Veda 19.6)

These were supposed to be the last set but blogger's html table editor sucks ass so go figure. I just take it as a sign that I haven't figured out the 10th mystery: this wysiwyg.

Each mystery is carefully selected by myself to both reflect an inversion of the virtue in the same column and to relate to the element. Sun provides light, light provides Truth, Truth telling and integrity are the basis of Honor. Nice, neat and it fits together.

I'll bring the table in from the other article:

These tables look like shit on mobile, turn sideways.

Primordial Force	Fire	Water	Water	Fire	Water	Fire	Fire	Water	Cosmos
Element	Stone	Earth	Sea	Plant	Sky/Wind	Sun	Moon	Cloud	Heavens
Self	Bone	Flesh	Blood	Hair	Breath	Face	Mind	Brain	Crown
Directions	North	Under	West	Outward	East	South	Inward	Through	Above
Virtues	Piety	Fertility	Moderation	Hospitality	Perseverance	Honor	Courage	Vision	Wisdom
Sense/Expression	Might*	Taste	Feel	Love*	Hear	See	Wisdom*	Smell	Second Sight
Time of Day	Night	Night	Day	Day	Day	Day	Night	Night	Sunrise and Sunset
Mystery	Security	Empathy	Temperance	Compassion	Breadth	Truth	Illusion	Labrys	Sovereignty
Wheel	Midwinter	Imbolc	Midspring	Bealtaine	Mid Harvest	Midsummer	Samhain	Lunasa	Eclipse
Color	Black	Brown	Blue	Green	Gold	Red	Silver	White	Speckled
Profession	Enchanter	Treb Mage	Conjurer	Healer	Poet	Sorcerer	Tuathai(Witch)	Seer	Priest
Tools	Hagstone	Fermentation	Cauldron	Wand	Song	Blade	Inspiration	Incense	Torc/Hood

In this system, we associate each of the nine elements to nine other things for an interconnected association table of 81 points. The mysteries might seem like virtues, but virtues are just lists of our highest best practices... you do them and you're generally safe. Mysteries must be figured out, however, and affect your worldview and perception heavily. If the Virtues are best practices, the Mysteries are their unperceived counterpart: their underbellies.

Security

Security is the opposite of insecurity. This mystery represents a self overcoming, gaining the feeling of safety through the reduction of the need to feel safe. Each person's overcoming methods would likely vary. I personally stick my neck out over and over for myself until confidence builds. We're not talking about actual unsafe situations, instead we focus on situations that majority of society thinks are safe, yet due to one reason or another... usually our trauma, we deem it full of danger.

Security is about building our being on solid foundations.

Empathy

Empathy as a mystery, represents a self overcoming, gaining the insight to what it truly feels like to be in another person's shoes. Once we isolate empathic emotions through introspection, we can deepen them. One way most people deepen their empathy when they feel bad for someone's daughter, for example, is to view the story as if it were your own daughter. We shouldn't have to make this a mystery in our world today, but potentially because it hasn't been seen as one up to this point is why we are having this conversation.

There is a ridiculous amount of lack of empathy among mainstream religions.
And among many Indo-European pagans you find even less compassion.

If the Virtues are best practices, the Mysteries are their unperceived counterpart: their underbellies.

Temperance

This mystery represents a dual self overcoming with regard to ranges of being. On one end of the scale you've got the little king from Alice in Wonderland, and on the other would be someone like our current president. This mystery doesn't always apply to active presence and personality or ego, but in this example it does.

The dual nature of this mystery is fitting because temperance is about overcoming weaknesses in moderation... between two extremes. If speaking loud, projecting, and holding power stances in social situations, then your overcoming involves becoming more comfortable doing those things.

This mystery relates to emotional temperance mostly, but can be applied to any personal weaknesses having to do with extremes, and therefore require either empowerment or restraint to attain. Temperance is a joining of opposites, chaos with restraint. 

Compassion

I've encountered a number of people who boasted good hospitality and yet, in actuality, it wasn't based on the way the guests were made to feel. When in service to your fellow man, the gods, or even yourself, an amount of grace is required. This is the ultimate goal in Tribe, and everyone is capable of finding areas within themselves which lack compassion or aren't compassion first perspectives.

It is easy to throw up your hands at someone for being frustrating, ridiculous or not making sense. People would rather label someone as 'extra' or an outsider to norms. This takes the form of passing off a needy guest as having less worth. But mystics attempting to uncover the mystery of compassion seek to explain and develop understanding of these circumstances and the individuals at play.

If you wouldn't argue the ridiculousness of a storm or hurricane's nature with it, standing on the shore shaking your fist? Then why argue with anyone about things that aren't part of a worldview or outlook? The rest is cosmic weather that we have to accept and understand. We have to do so because it is all we can do and is the right thing to do.

The selfish side of compassion is that without it, there would be no life forms on the planet. Nature is equal parts conflict and cooperation, in balance, and no other situation can ever be the case if the entire system is to exist.

Breadth

Breadth is kind of like a concept used to instill in the mystic the amorphous cloud of things that knowledge of or awareness of pertains to. Breadth is a reminder that we generally think too small. To honor it, we must break out of our current microcosm into a greater order of magnitude. We must cover a more full range of gnosis and thinking.

Breadth is overcoming of all things too narrow. Its lesson is to span greater things like the wind.

When faced with a challenge, breadth as a concept can help you in any skill by helping you categorize gnosis and symbols into a realistic range between knowns and unknowns. Those are broken up further into unknown knowns, known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns. Those can be further broken down into things that are knowable or not, and so unknown unknowns become knowable unknown unknowns and unknowable unknown unknowns.

Now that you have more types of pockets to fill, you're bound to think of or discover more and deeper gnosis to fill them.

A poetic exercise in Breadth looks like this:

Poet ask themselves if their work is full bodied... like a nice Guinness. If not, they start breaking apart the poems components, categorizing them into the various pockets and lo and behold, there are some things the poem doesn't have that are core to its expression.

This is mysticism because the more proud of your work and skill, the more it takes shedding ego and raising up the audience of the work to a higher connoisseur than the poet himself. When you think a poetic work is perfect, it is an act of ego damage to then go beyond yourself and ask what is it lacking, what would others want out of it? It is admitting the poet thrives off of adoration and approval from those unskilled in such works.

Relating to Persevering as a virtue, Breadth is what you should set your expectations by. The number one reason for lack of follow through among people I know is that they didn't set their expectations correctly, instead thinking a goal was easier than they thought. This is a absurdity we hide from ourselves, as we don't logically think reality is going to conform to what we expect, yet when it doesn't in a way we didn't think about, we no longer want to proceed. This is absurd because our beliefs and actions are not inline. We act as if the universe will do something we know it won't, and rage quit because the mental disharmony in the mind feels bad.

Truth

Truth is of fire and the sun. It is the light that makes awareness. Mystics seek it with utter loyalty. We do so, so much so, that we often go into madness from gaslighting and 'advocating for the devil's behalf to ourselves about our perceptions. The concept of maya in hinduism and vedism is a philosophical construct of the illusory nature of the world. We seek to uncover illusion and tend to find it every place we look. The search for truth is less about deciding what is true, and instead, fighting our biases to keep ourselves really and totally unsure, that way truth can always arise from the cosmos, and update itself with new evidence if we just let it and keep our biases in our pants. Truth pertains to sorcerers, the warrior and hero mage's profession, being of the sun, fire, and light.

Truth telling and integrity are the basis of Honor.

Warrior witches and sorcerers who act outside of Truth, casting spells when they feel injured rather than based on a truthful suspension of bias, are the epitome of what truth seekers despise. They are reminiscent of the gods like Aoife from the Children of Lir, who had her magical sovereignty stripped from her for her misuse of magical powers.

The overcoming involved with Truth, is to never approach any self belief or opinion as if it is truth. Humans have this funky catch 22 going on where we create the things we look for, and find the things we don't seek.

Illusion

Illusion is the mystery that works within the realms of the psyche. It's associated with the moon and the concept of faking it until you make it. It is the notion that the things we believe are generally and wholly delusional. In the mind, circuits which create delusions and circuits which create thoughts that are true, aren't dissimilar. The only thing that makes a truth is the coincidence that it matches phenomena that we can receive over one or more senses.

Illusion relates to valor because an experienced magician knows that cowardice and valor are opposite poles on a spectrum of faith with regard to survival, victory or success. Cowardice and Valor are nearly the same thing, a departing from a true unbiased position of shear uncertainty. And so the mystic knows that favoring one or the other and acting based on this, is a "buy" into the solution, a selling out so to speak.

Sellout scene of the Matrix

"The beautiful thing is in that moment of realization, you fully understand being awakened or enlightened means nothing. It’s the great cosmic giggle. We all want it, we all seek it, and then in a flash we realize we all already have it, and once you have it—it means nothing…HA! The perceptual shift of realization." - This Article

Bravery is worthy of honor over cowardice because it's the extreme of overcoming in this dichotomy. It is a form of faith that gets things done, protects people, and conquers Self. And so a magician should be able to create valor within themselves where there is none. An experienced magician knows the illusory nature of all of their own thoughts and through that, can enchant them into any manifestation the mystic desires. This of course works only when the magician is ready to do their work. Only narcissistic sociopaths are in the game of full time glamory, because they have no center which draws them back to themselves. As magicians, we follow our ethics, we aren't vicious changelings.

What I believe in, is faith... without it there can be no victory. - Worf

Labrys

Labrys is the root word of Labyrinth and as a mystery here, represents the path upon which truth and illusion act as vehicles to deliver gnosis. Labyrinth relates to obfuscation of truth and illusion by the passing of events, like several layers of passing of clouds obfuscating the heavens, or fog obfuscating the exit from the Paps of Anu.

As the "House of the Double Axe", the Labyrinth has a lot to do with conscious and unconscious being. The nature of shining the light of the conscious lamp casts shadow. It enabled you to see while hiding things from you and providing a place for the mystery to hide.

The Labyrinth is you, it is your psyche, it is the world that you traverse. The Grand Labyrinth is entirety of all that you traverse in this life. Some people traverse aimlessly, living for the intrigue of the sights they'll see. Magical folks aim for the Seat of Power at the center. Greek pagans will face the Minotaur, a part of their own Tyrant animal self, which dictates to us our impulses before we can defend ourselves from it.

Starting from the bottom left going clockwise: You, You, You, You, and You.
The women are you, the knight is you,
The headless man is you, and the labyrinth is you.

What is notable about Labyrinth as a mystery is that you get to circle back, and see the same events from different perspectives and angles. This gets more intense as you get toward the center. On the outer edge of the labyrinth is childhood, but when you become a parent or guardian, you circle back to your childhood from the perspective of a caretaker. This illuminates truths or illusions which you were under as a child. And now with stereoscopic vision of those events, your journey tightens and intensifies.

Cloud is the element of Labrys and labyrinthian mysticism can occur pondering anything that obfuscates by many points. Today cluster of distributed things are called clouds. The element of Cloud is more than precipitation, but it is still funny that you need a cluster of cloud of neurons to precipitate thought. And so while Moon relates to mind, Cloud as an element relates to Ymir's Brain.

The main lesson in labrys is that no matter where you see the separating line between the world and you, if the edge-most qualities of the universe were different, you would be different. The polytheistic nature of our Mysticism isn't "I AM" in the sense that I am Brahma, instead the top-most scale of the universe are the individual gods, and the shards of the primordial Giant(Purusha, Bith, Ymir). And in our Mysticism, we hold that when you access the Universal, you're at the topmost, knowing what the gods know. As Terrence McKenna would say, we are the brother of God. When we become one with all things, we access only the being that was dismembered. There are scary things of terror outside of this, more fearsome and powerful than all of human suffering throughout history combined.

Followers of the Dúile believe all souls that inhabit this one universal body, and we are granted our own Steads within this all pervasive World Tree that grew in place of the Giant's sacrifice. Cránn Naofa is our Brahma, and the local Bile is our connection to it, it's fractal micro representation.

But you are the fruit of it, and while you may delineate yourself  by your 'bubble' or skin, as a fruit of the World Tree, your edge-most extremities are the roots of the tree, its highest branches and leaves, and even the breadth of the waterway that feeds it.

So out with the holiness of I AM, and in with the holiness of WE ARE.

Sovereignty

The Seat of Power in the Center is the Sovereignty Seat. You must dominate all spirits within to sit there, including the worst one, your own Minotaur... The reward is magical ability and self Kingship. In the Settling of the Manor of Tara, it is no coincidence methinks that Kingship is in the center, and that seers looking for kingship must look within.

I relate this to the Seat of Brahma which while in Hinduism is located in the heart, for us, it is located in the crown of the head.

Sitting here is a balance gained from the other overcomings which leads to objectivity in gnosis of the world and success in putting your will into action onto society and the world. But remember if like Aoife, you're intents and wills are unjust, you'll loose your magical sovereignty. The karma for unjust curses in our system is the dwindling of their success. This isn't a light consequence given by the gods, because declawing a mage and setting them out into the world is putting them on a miserable fate.

Again, these are mysteries that I'm sure existed in countless philosophies are parts of various worldviews and philosophical structures. But here we are building a NEW structure based on ancient myth and filling them with things we want, that makes sense to us, but most importantly, generate mystic gnosis and magical success.

Procession toward Sovereignty

The procession of Sovereignty is a march toward the realization of the full potential to your agency and power. You already hold sovereignty over yourself, but you may not know it or act like it. A mystic progresses the all eight to attain the ninth. We do this by meditating on the mysteries during conflict and testing our behaviors and their affect on the world. Sometimes this means acquiescing to gain power, instead of using force. This is like stepping back to unlock a sealed door.

Our tests are carried out by remaining in suspension, withholding our beliefs from influencing our actions, allowing other realities besides the ones we fear to surface. When the ones we do fear arise, we quickly accept them as the situation from which we have to manefest things as we see they should be.

When we do this, we realize that the thing that holds us back the most are our denials, procrastinations, self deprecating beliefs, sensibilities, need for comfort and unvisited assumptions. Unless we eliminate the influence these things have on our reality... they will sabbotage our magic and will. Unless we understand our nature as fragments of cosmos, we cannot become our potential. We will be slaves to them and their consequences. We will be un able to actuate change in the tribe when needed, be unadaptable, and therefornot git for survival by Nature's standards.

A sovereign magician has accepted their own weaknesses in a way, they are the lure of a black widows death strike. I gain power by carrying my vulnerabilities forward, enticing my enemies with them, and then striking a blow witj the force of my enemies own weight. When i get out of the way of my procession toward my skillful place in the cosmos, the way becomes effortless like the cosmos is a locomotive propelling me. Its the Tao of the magus, the attainment of Eudamonia, Dán Maithe, and good Wyrd.

Tapasyan Practices

These mysteries are self evident. You cannot live multiple lifetimes and escape mastering them. Everyone's weaknesses are as diverse as any other's, and therefore everyone will have a harder time with some of these than others.

Tapas is the practice among hindus and vedic pagans toward universal states of consciousness by performing acts of self restraint. It means to heat, and its practices stoke your internal fires. Once a mystic has the wind knocked out of them from a solid gnosis blow, their ambition for becoming a holy person wanes. Once you free yourself from the illusion and learn a few of these mysteries, a nihilistic pointlessness to doing this work washes over you. This is normal, and Tapasia solves this. The pointlessness is required to be a good mystic. Like the best politicians, you do the work because you must... not because you fancy the glory. More on how we do this practices later.

My Own Mystic Experiences

I'm working on writing about these, how exactly I attained them, what path I'm on now, I'm just not ready to do that right now. But I've got a blank titled article in the que, so don't worry. Hit me up at a pagan event in Central Texas and we'll talk about it over a couple of Dos Equis. That's four equis in total.