Chronos Apollonios' "Home on Olympus"
Amongst the countless bits of information and lore about amulets & talismans, many which seem to challenge the rational mind that is often applied for the sake of caution or balance in magick, here and there are those which speak to us clearly to serve as if a key in a door, to unlock our faith and understanding, so that we may approach the challenge of the rest of them with renewed confidence and fervor.
This is not to say that we cannot reconstitute the peices of the art in a number of ways, almost as effortlessly as we can reconstitute the goals and ideals of the art, by bearing unhampered concern for both ourselves and those dear to us.
While it is horrifying to think of foes bearing the gift of invulnerability, even more horrifying and far more likely are the simple tragedies of commonplace accidents... and if there is deliverance from them to be had, surely to sacrifice this for fear of its abuse is to already suffer one of the worst blows of an enemy, whether they are truly there or not.
The issue is so highly charged with emotion, we note, that it seems to dispell clarity- perhaps it is that unfamiliar of ground, for we will hear this worry uttered, skirting right around the very real possibility that if a foe has such an attribute, we will nonetheless be safe for also possessing it ourself!
But the art and science of amuletics has many shades of degrees... and there may be those whose only desires from such charms are simple degrees of protection from minor factors such as pathogens, disease-causing agents...
Many such contrivances may be known to those who study magick, countless examples fill the pages of books by those whose interest in such arts take many forms, be they archaeological or devotional, often these are possible and plausible through ritual, through intuition. In my customary fashion of linking magick and science, however, I will try to elaborate so that the appreciation of these benefits might be enjoyed by a broader scope of persons and mindsets.
One of the greatest and most striking accounts of this art at its finest is found in quite a conspicuous place, Madame Helena Blavatsky’s “Isis Unveiled”. Though the index of this fabulous work is sometimes an elusive and difficult tool to use, under “Amulet” we read, “a soldier made bullet-proof by one” (Vol.) I, (pg.) 379: likewise, Steve Richards includes relevant anecdotes in also-indispensible book, “Invisibility”
"Isis Unveiled", Vol I, pg. 378-, reads thus:
"And now we must search Magical History for cases similar to those given in the preceeding chapter. This insensibility of the human body to the impact of heavy blowas and resistance to penetration by sharp points and musket-bullets, is a phemonena sufficiently familiar in the experience of all times and all countries. While the science is entirely unable to give any reasonable explanation of the mystery, the question appears to offer no difficulty to mesmerists, who have well stufied the properties of the fluid. The man, who by a few passes over a limb can produce a local paralysis so as to render it utterly insensible to burns cuts, and the pricking of needles, need be but very little atonsihed at the phenomena of the Jansenists. As to the adepts of magic, especially in Siam and the East Indies, they are too familiar with the properties of the akasha , the mysterious life-fluid, to even regard the insensibility of the Convulsionnaires as a very great phenomena. The astral fluid can be compressed about a person so as to form an elastic shell, absolutely non-penetrable by any any physical object, however great the velocity with which it travels. In a word, this fluid can be made to equal and even excel in resisting-power, water and air.
In India, and some places of Central Africa, the conjurers will freely permit any traveller to fire his musket or revolver at them, without touching the weapon or selecting the balls. In Laing's Travels among the Timanni, the Kourankos, and the Soulimas, occurs a description by an English traveller, the first white man to visit the tribe of the Soulimas, near the sources of the Dialliba, of a very curious scene. A body of picked soldiers fired upon a chief who had nothing to defend himself with but certain talismans. Although their muskets were properly loaded and aimed, not a ball could strike him. Salverte gives a similar case in his Philosophy of Occult Science: "In 1568, the Prince of Orange condemned a Spanish prisoner to be shot at Juliers; the soldiers tied him to a tree and fired, but he was invulnerable. They at last stripped him to see what armor he wore, but found only an amulet. When this was taken from him, he fell dead at the first shot."
...Many travellers, the writer included, have witnessed instances of this invulnerability where deception was impossible. A few years ago, there lived in an African village, an Abyssinian who passed for a sorcerer. Upon one occasion a party of Europeans, going to Soudan, amused themselves for an hour or tow in firing at him with their own pistols and muskets, a privilege which he gave them for a trifling fee. As many as five shots were fired simultaneously, by a Frenchman named Langlois, and the muzzles of the pieces were not above two yards distant from the sorcerer's breast. In each case, simultaneously from the flash, the bullet would appear just beyond the muzzle, quivering in the air, and then, after desrcbing a short parabola, fall harmlessly to the ground. A German of the party, who was going in search of ostrich feathers, offerend the magician a five-franc peice if he would allow him to fire his gun with the muzzle touching his body. The man at first refused; but, finally, after appearing to hold conversation with somebody inside the ground, consented. The experimenter carefully loaded, and pressing the muzzle of the weapon against the sorcer's body, after a moment's hesitation, fired... the barrell burst into fragments as far down as the stock, and the man walked off unhurt.
...The well-known story of the Indian chief, who confessed to Washington that at Braddock's defeat he had fired his rifle at him seventeen times at shourt range without being able to touch him, will recur to the reader in this connections..."
This next to last anecdote, of the man allowing himself to be shot at, at “point-blank” range, he first “had a conversation with the ground” and “asked if this would be all right”- i.e., was also seemingly familar with Communications Techology very much on the order of extraordinary electrical inventor, Nikola Tesla. To assume the amulet may be on the order and of the nature of Tesla’s inventions is not a great leap! There are many ways of accounting for the most dramatic of effects, the lending of structural integrity to a material body, the cancellation- or more rightly, perhaps, the Phase-cancellation of rampant kinetics, or force of impact... One article in Lewis Spence’s “Encyclopaedia of Occultism” refers to the “Tremblers” and gives one the impression this school of the occult accomplished feats of this sort by the nervous system sensing the impact at a distance and responding correctly by reflexes to the impact so as to cancel out the force... Those familar with the feats of martial artists and Chi Masters may already possess their own set of tools for approaching the understanding of forces which may yeild this effect...
So, too, even in Von Danniken’s “Pathways to the Gods” do we find the accounts of Mana from the Polynesias, amongst the strange and wonderous boons it may grant is invulnerability... Mana, too, has been studied by scientists within a modern genera, and a good set of details may be found to be available...
It is a great mystery itself why the modern firefighter is not a great afficianado of the firewalker, for amongst the many ways of achieving this, from tricks of insulation to herbs such as those of the Southwestern Native American fire societies- herbs like Echinacea and Yarrow which may be employed certain ways for such purposes, once often demonstrated by the handling of hot coals with the mouth... there is doubtless some remains of tradition of doing so in ways that pertain to special powers of the adornments of the firewalkers, as well as them accomplishing this unaided except for true prowess in mysticism...
Literally draining or grounding or damping the kinetic energy from a fall or projectile or other encroachment is another possible approach, again evoking the wireless arts of Tesla, to begin with.
Properties may be programmed into magnetic feilds stored in the amulet which is serving as a magnetic feild core, and this can quite likely be done regardless of the material, by directional casting, muon magnetization, or various other techniques, and none of these necessarily incompatable with other approaches...
So, too, do we have the menageries of nature to observe... while in ways it may seem to be something of a naieve question, or something of an exaggeration to say that “certain soft sea creatures can withstand preposterous crushing pressure found in the greatest depths of the ocean, pressures that might ‘crush a submarine like an eggshell’ “, to tentatively uphold the idea and then fill in the missing peices, we may see theories develop from biomagnetic equivalents to Alan Holt’s NASA spacecraft design using Feild-Resonance propusion and magnetohydrodynamics, to Rupert Sheldrake’s Morphic/Morphogenetic Resonance and Feilds and to other applications of magnetic feild concepts such as found in the work of Michael Persinger...
Likewise, is the question of undersea tolerance and mobility addressed in certain Greek myths, of Glaucos, of Dardanos... Under the provision of serendipity and apparently of Correnspondences, it is my best guess into the matter that those herbs which serve Minor needs in this area also serve in Major ones; as far as I can tell of the issue, these particular tales contain an Especially rich endowment of meanings-within-context that may serve to illuminate all areas of these concerns.
And there is even more to be said by adding the feat of Intangibility to the forum!
In the realm of what may be for most closer at hand, there is still the question of amulets and talismans which may serve as prophylaxes (from where the use of the term, “prophylactic” to describe a condom comes from, the term once referred to all manner of agents to ward of disease... perhaps a rather disappointing degradation of its use).
In truth, the "sterile feild" of Star Trek episodes requires very little in the way of "24th century technology". The amounts of static electricity in the environment on a dry cool day are not only enough to destroy sensitive computer chips, but they are quite likely to prove, like the already-utilized ionizing power of mere ultraviolet light, more than a match for microscopic organisms which may cause disease, and alternatively have the power to repel them away from beings and organisms they might infect.
Any of the "crude" or "primitive" ways of generating static electricity such as the electrophorus, or magickally, the Apis or Nebris skin, or the Aegis-shield of Zeus, may lend much of this effect.
The ancient commonness of these practices may indicate for us how it was possible for the ancients to enjoy the degree of interaction that seems to be evidenced again and again and again, without carrying with them devastating plagues like those that are alledged to have been brought to the Americas by settlers following the so-called discovery of America by Columbus.
So, too, do I advocate, especially since I find these words so far nowhere else, looking closely at the traditional outfits of nuns and priests for photoelectric or photostatic feild generators, along with further electron output- triboelectrically, electricity from friction- from handling the rosary beads ritually, as well as donated by the aromatic molecules in the rosary woods, which, when demonstrating a mysterious inexhaustibility like that of the scent of money, or various lingering perfumes, may also possess the copious advantage of replicating itself by existing in a quantum state that is partially or fully bosonic, that is, like light, is Not a fixed quantity in the universe.
The drastic difference in charges generated in the extreme light and dark areas could lead to a current flow which may strategically carry pathogens away from the hands and face- exposed skin which might otherwise be infected.
This could allow nuns and priests to touch and comfort the ill, even victims of highly contagious plagues, and work close to them, without risking contamination... and this Long before Einstien wrote his theory of Photoelectricty which now serves us in many ways... evidencing, too, that the great acts of kindness of the Church seem to walk very close to a secret source of Initiated Knowledge about the workings of the Natural World, much as St. hildegarde of Bingen seemed almost covertly to be showing the colors of Thesophists again and again.
Suffice it to say, that even for consuming millions and even billions of dollars of antibiotics, disinfectants, and what have you, in these area, even by modern standard, let alone the ancients seem to have been far advanced beyond us here, we are at present sadly lacking.
The terrible irony is that the simple gesture that may be most commonly used to demonstrate the principles of the electrophorus, "bringer of electricity", simply rubbing a baloon on the head until it stands up, may have been adequate in itself to prevent numberless deaths from various diseases and opportunistic infections, perhaps including those which are said to participate in fatalities from HIV.
Of course, none of this truly begin to answer the questions of Why people are so vulnerable to begin with... or so sensitive to forces of nature, let alone what so much Occult evidence seems to suggest, whether our vulnerability is a side-effect of that very sensitivity, perhaps in juxtaposition to the way we are usually taught in school...
But given some attention by the sincere and willing, it may keep us alive long enough to find answers...
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