The Fifth Work of Hercules, the Solar Hero, was the hunting and killing of the cannibalistic birds living in the lakes of Stymphalus, who killed people with their bronzed feathers, throwing them like deadly arrows at their defenseless victims.
This Work is clearly and intimately related to the constellation of Pisces, house of Neptune, the Lord of Practical Magic.
Unquestionably those cannibalistic birds are the cruel Harpies cited by Virgil, the poet of Mantua…
For the good of the Great Cause, for which all of us, the brothers of the Gnostic Movement, are fighting for, I am now going to transcribe a few paragraphs from “The Aeneid”…
We struck our sails, we strained at the oars; our mariners quickly made the foam fly with their hard stroke, sweeping the dark blue sea. It was the coast of the Strophades that rose to welcome me. Preserved from the waves, Strophades being the Greek name for those islands in the broad Ionian Sea where dreadful Celaeno and her coven of Harpies (horrible witches, black Jinn) dwell, now the house of Phineus is barred and in fear they have left their pristine banquets. No viler monstrosity than they, no pest more atrocious did ever the wrath of god conjure up out of hell’s swamp. Bird-bodied, girl-faced things they are; abominable their droppings, their hands are talons, their faces haggard with hungerinsatiable.
When we had made our landfall and entered port, we observed abundant herds of cattle dotted over the vale and goat flocks browsing there without any goatherd by them. We slaughtered some; we invited Jove and the other gods to take their share of the spoil. Then by the winding shore seated on makeshift benches, we are most richly feasting. But, the next moment, we hear a hoarse vibration of wing beats; the Harpies (witches) are on us, horribly swooping down from the mountains. They tear the banquet to pieces, filthying all with their bestial touch. Hideous the sounds, nauseous the stench about us. We choose a secluded spot under an overhanging crag, enclosed by trees and their shifting shadows; to set up our tables again and light a fire on a new altar. Again from their hidden lairs, flying in from different angles, that noisy coven claws at the feast, hovering around it, their mouths tainting the meat (those cannibalisticbirds).
So then I order my friends, stand to arms, for we must fight this damnable brood. They did as they were ordered: they hid their swords in the grass ready to hand, and put their shields out of sight beside them. So when the creatures again came screeching round the bay, Misenus, from an observation post above us, blew the alarum. My friends went in to an unfamiliar combat, trying their steel on sinister birds of the sea. But blows did not make them turn a feather, their bodies would not be wounded—they simply flew off at high speed into the blue, leaving a half devoured feast and their own disgusting traces. Celaeno alone, perching upon a rock pinnacle, stayed behind, and broke into speech, a fortune-teller ofevil:
“So you’re willing to go to war-to war, sons of Laomedon over the cattle you slaughtered, over slain bullocks? Prepared to drive us innocent Harpies out of our rightful domain? Very well: take these words to heart, and never forget them. What the Father almighty foreshadowed to Phoebus Apollo and he to me, will I, the chief of the Furies, reveal you. You are making all speed for Italy, and the winds won over, to Italy you shall go, even enter port you may: But, before you can wall your promised city, outrageous famine shall fasten upon you, in return for trying to kill us, and force you to chew your tables—yes, gnaw at them and devourthem.”
She spoke: she winged away into the sheltering forest. As for my friends, their blood went cold with the shock of panic and curdled; their hearts sank: no more fighting, they said. Through vows and prayers alone we must seek security, whether those creatures are of heaven or uncanny birds of ill omen. Anchises stretched out his hands from the shore in supplication to the powers above, appointing due sacrifice in their honour. Ye gods, prevent these threats! Ye gods, avert this calamity! Incline your hearts to the faithful! Oh, save us! Then he gave orders to cast off the moorings, to free the sheets and pay them out.
The Aeneid
This is the end of this unusual occult and esoteric story. Let us continue now with the explanations.
Many of these abysmal harpies, caught red-handed, have been captured by means of certain procedures.
Some ancients traditions say:
“If we put on the floor a pair of steel scissors opened to form a cross and if we spill black mustard around this metallic instrument, any witch can be caught.”
It is astonishing that some illustrious occultists ignore that these witches can avoid the universal law of gravity!
Even if it may sound unusual, we assert solemnly that this is possible by putting the physical body into the fourth dimension.
It is in no way strange that these witches and their drones, living with their physical body in the fourth vertical (hyperspace) can levitate and travel in a few seconds anywhere in the world.
In fact, they have secret formulas to escape “physically” from this three- dimensional world of Euclid’s.
In strictly occultist terms, we can well qualify these sinister and dark harpies by the title of black Jinn, to differentiate them radically from the white Jinn.
The human organism put into the fourth dimension, in spite of everything that official science may say, can assume any figure, change shape…
Remember, beloved readers, the execrable Celaneo and his dirty Harpies, horrible birds from the islands of Stymphalus, in the Ionic Sea…
One evening, no matter which date, day or time, I was seated near some railings in an old dungeon, studying an esoteric work…
The Sun was hiding among the red fires of the sunset and the evening light was slowly disappearing…
Suddenly, something unusual happens: I hear next to me a sarcastic, loud, mocking guffaw, markedly feminine…
It was one of these cannibalistic birds inhabiting the lakes of Stymphalus, a witch of ill omen, a woman of sinister witches’ Sabbaths…
The depraved woman runs away and hides among the frightful shadows of the infernal worlds…
Here starts my intrepid descent among the living entrails of the submerged Martian mineral kingdom…
“Before ascending it is indispensable to descend”: it is the Law. Each exaltation is preceded by a frightful and terrible humiliation.
To annihilate inside myself those inhuman elements, witch-like, those birds of ill omen, was certainly my task in the dark Tartarus.
Even if it appears incredible, it is urgent to realize that all human beings, without exception, have in their unconscious depths varied magic elements.
This means that in the world there are many people that, without knowing it, unconsciously practice Black Magic.
Unquestionably even the saints of every religion suffer something indescribable when they discover this trait in themselves; then they can verify by themselves the crude realism of those inhuman elements that in fact they are obliged to eliminate from their psyches.
Any adept or mystic or saint, provided that he has not radically died in each and every one of the forty-nine departments of the subconscious, is more or less black.
Here is one of the great motives why we should not condemn anybody:
“He that is without sin among you let him first cast a stone at her”.
At that time of my life I was attacked unceasingly and in a merciless way by the sinister birds that inhabit the lakes of Stymphalus…
At the meeting places of sinister witches’ Sabbaths in the Martian Hells, I found, astonished, many brothers of the stony path…
They were in fact witch-like aggregates, clearly ignored by their human personalities…
Once I was finished with my work in the mineral abysses of Mars, I ascended victorious to the Fifth Heaven, the world of Atman, the radiant abode of the Virtues.
Thus I returned to the Heaven of Mars; then I regained my place among these sublime beings, a divine position lost a long time ago…
The objective of my work in the Martian Hells had been achieved. Having eliminated from my psyche the inhuman elements, my Consciousness was free…
The intellectual shackles had been annihilated and my Consciousness liberated, having left that horrible prison of the mind where for such a long time it had been a prisoner; it had managed to fuse, to merge, with Atman, the Ineffable, my Real Being.
Ah, if people could understand what the prison of the intellect actually is… if they understood that they live as a prisoner in the jail of the mind…!
In complete happiness as Spirit-Man in the Martian Heaven, far from the body, from the affections and from the mind, I walked consciously as a shining bird of light, radical antithesis of those sinister birds from the lakes of Stymphalus…
At such moment of exquisite happiness, I had to pass next to many symbolic works constructed from pure iron.
This is the region of Atman, the Ineffable, the world of the crudest realism, the dimension of Mathematics.
In the three-dimensional world of Euclid’s we never perceive a solid in an integral manner, as a totality. Here we only see angles, surfaces, etc., in a subjective way.
However, in the brilliant region of Atman, we not only perceive solids in an integral way, but also hyper solids, including the exact quantity of atoms that together constitute the entirety of any body.
Unquestionably in the Heaven of Mars we actually enjoy the most complete objective perception.
How happy I felt in that region of infinite bliss! However, not everything in life is a party; there are also sufferings. You know that…
The seat of the Celestial Judgement, where the Objective Justice is administered, always intervenes.
One day, when I was happy in the world of Atman, a Judge of the Law of the Katancia (superior Karma) approached me.
He sat at a table and I, with much respect and veneration, had then to answer some charges.
—You have criticized many people in your books—said the Hierarch.
—I am combative by nature —I answered in an emphatic manner.
—You are condemned to seven days in prison (such was the sentence).
I have to confess frankly that when I heard the sentence I felt slightly cynical.
It appeared to me that this was a silly police case, such as that when one as a lad fights with another of the same age and gets sent to jail for a few hours.
However, already in full annulment of the sentence, I felt that this punishment was very painful.
Seven days in the horrible jail of the mind and after having already been emancipated…
Seven symbolic days of bitterness inside the frightful jail of the intellect… Oh my God!
Samael Aun Weor
