Wiccan Rede * Summer 1984 by Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki
We are all aware that a new age is coming, or it may have already arrived. A lot of words both printed and spoken have been spent on its advertisement, but have we really thought hard about what living and working in this new age will mean?
Old ideas, old methods, old habits will have to give way to the new, and while everyone is going around with a happy expression and is talking about the age of Aquarius, giving up the old ways for the new, will not go down too well in actual practice. We will have to learn to think in new ways, and that will mean knowing a great deal more about the actual process of thought than we know now.
A lot of people have been searching for many years to find out just what makes the physical brain tick, and they are beginning to make some fantastic discoveries. Those discoveries are going to be vital to us who work with the art of magic, for the mind and the physical brain are part of that art. Up until now occultist have been content to leave anything along the physical side of the minds to the scientists, it has been enough for them to know that for instance Thought is Creative. So it is, but how is it creative, and with what?
If there are people with medical knowledge reading this and see I am making a mistake, please let me know, for I am as curious and as eager to learn as anyone. And I am not an expert on what I am going to discuss. Most is theory, some is the result of some long hard research over the last two years. Years when I have read medical texts with to dictionaries, one for the medical terms and one to explain the medical terms used,,, Since, like a true Gemini, I hate to think there is anything going on that I don’t have at least a vague outline of, I ask you to bear with me, listen to what I freely admit may be somewhat hazy, but which in my opinion at least offers a great deal for thought. I hope that someone somewhere will take up where I left off and dig further and deeper.
The sign of Aquarius is an air sign, a mental sign, and it is in this age that we must come to turns with and learn to rule the unconquered kingdom of the mind. It is the mind above all that is trained in the mysteries, and it is the mind that accomplishes most of the magic that an occultist can come up with.
Although we don’t know what ‘mind’ is, we know that the brain is the vehicle of mind and mental power. During man’s evolution the brain has altered and grown in capacity. The human brain is divided into distinct areas – each area having developed in response to a need for more sophisticated thinking and sensory abilities. In this article we are mainly concerned with the mid-brain and the neo-cortex. It is the mid-brain which I believe holds the secret that we as occultists need to unravel. With the advent of the mid-brain our ancient ancestor was born. The mid-brain was something very new, it had several compartments and all of them had different work to do. There were new extensions to the senses, colours were more distinct, touch was more delicate, taste more varied. Smell was still the single most important sense we had. So important that it was to lay down the actual basis of the last area of the brain, the neo-cortex. This mid-brain system was a chemist, it could and did brew up many new hormones and brain chemicals that made this distant ancestor of ours a new man,,, He was quicker, in thought and in movement, he could coordinate better, and more than that,,,he began to differ in shape. Man became tall, short, fat, thin, happy, moody, sexy, or not sexy at all. Some grew a lot of hair, and others hardly had any. The old brain and the little cerebellum got quite dizzy trying to keep up with all this new mid-brain activity. But the mind had got something that was to really bring it out of the jungle and onto the road to civilisation. It had somewhere to store power, power as in memory. The mid-brain has remained the power storage area ever since.
In later times, when even this was not enough, to cope with the ever growing complexity of the man’s lifestyle, the olfactory organs started to grow and off shoot that became the right and left lobes of the neo-cortex. The mid-brain system however, is in actual fact the fairy princess sleeping in her invisible tower,,,The neo-cortex is also linked with its very own rainbow bridge,,,a symbol that has always been of occult value; it is the corpus calossum and it is the means by which the Gemini brains of men communicate.
There is a great deal we don’t know about the limbic system as yet, but we are learning fast, and I have been trying to fit these facts into a mental power link that I believe is there waiting for man to wake up to use it,,,then he really will be Homo Aquarius.
Let’s have a look at some of the things I have found out and how I think they can be applied to occult work. I repeat, I am no expert, and things are happening so fast in this field, that already I may be behind in some things. But I will show you what I think is already within our grasp.
For instance, we know that the brain uses and makes chemicals, and the liver is also a chemist. Together they can make almost any and every chemical you can think of. In fact, I will go so far as to say that any chemical the body needs to cure itself from any disease, can be manufactured by the brain as and when it is needed. I believe that this is why psychic healing works, that there is something that comes from a healer, some intercommunication between the healer and the brain of the sufferer, that stimulates the needed chemical. I think that somehow, the brain receives a message from the subconscious that tells it to manufacture the chemicals needed. Maybe different people need different chemicals. But the question is: How does the brain know what is needed? And how can we trigger off ourselves consciously?
I know all this must sound very odd, but it gets even odder! The brain is the finest computer we will ever know. The earth could not hold a computer that could do the work the brain does, even if we knew how to build one. Yet nature packs it into two and a half pounds of intricate wiring encased in a comparatively fragile bone shell.
The neo-cortex in an animal can be removed and the animal will still live. It is not a hundred per cent, but it lives, eats, sleeps, etc. But remove the limbic system and it dies. That is how important it is to us. This mid-brain is divided into many compartments and each has a job to do. The hippocampus looks like a set of micro circuits, which is not a bad description of what it is. It is concerned with spatial memory and memory of all kinds,,, In fact, you could say that here is a stored knowledge, not only immediate knowledge, but going back longer than you think. When you are regressed and go back in time before birth, it is this part of the brain that is stimulated. If you have a good memory, this is where it is kept. If you have a bad one, this is the area to stimulate. If this is damaged, you can lose your memory. It is also the area of pain and pleasure. Remember that pain and memory go together in survival,,, you learn -for instance- to keep away from fire once you have been burned. It might also be the place where you acquire and get rid of habits. The hypothalamus is the chief engineer of the appetite department. It is this that tells you when you are full and when you are hungry. It can also be fooled very easily,,, the brain, especially this part of it, cannot tell the difference between the real experience and an imagined one, providing the imagination is trained and controlled. It is this that makes the mid-brain so important to us, for one of the basic areas of occult training is that of creative visualisation. Unless that is developed and fully controlled, you cannot go as far in the mysteries as those who can. The hypothalamus reacts to stimuli. You pass a confectioner’s and if you have a sweet tooth, your mouth waters. But it will also water if you think up a cream cake on your mental inner screen. So, if you want to slim without going hungry,,, About 30 minutes before your meal, sit down and visualise the dinner you would like to eat. Think about it, look at it, let your mouth water over it. Then, in your mind, get down and eat it, step by step,,,enjoy it, use the hippocampus to bring back from the memory banks the taste of each item. Take your time, and by the time you are through, your hypothalamus will be telling you that you are full and can’t eat anymore. A doctor in the USA has already tried this out and reported quite a lot of success, but it does depend on your ability to visualise and to recall the taste and above all the SMELL of the food in your mind.
Smell is of the greatest importance in our lives. We may not think we are smelling things all the time, but we are. We have lost the ability to distinguish one from another, but the nose can still detect them. Smell was the prime sense for survival in prehistoric times, sight was still not perfect, but smell could tell you what was behind that tree, how far away, and if you should run or stay where you were. Smell is the most evocative of all the senses, one huff? of something and you are back in your childhood in such a detail that you might have been taken back in time. It is the only one of our senses that goes directly to the mid-brain and does not have a junction point. It is this that makes it so important and so evocative.
Smell is of the greatest importance in our lives. We may not think we are smelling things all the time, but we are. We have lost the ability to distinguish one from another, but the nose can still detect them. Smell was the prime sense for survival in prehistoric times, sight was still not perfect, but smell could tell you what was behind that tree, how far away, and if you should run or stay where you were. Smell is the most evocative of all the senses, one huff? of something and you are back in your childhood in such a detail that you might have been taken back in time. It is the only one of our senses that goes directly to the mid-brain and does not have a junction point. It is this that makes it so important and so evocative.
The amygdala is almost totally a mystery at the moment, except that there is some evidence that it controls moods. Removal seems to cause anger, aggression and the loss of an ability to learn. So it must to some extent work with the hippocampus. Its removal also causes intensified sexual activity suggesting that a dysfunction of this area might be the cause of sexual attacks and murders.
The pituitary is the big boss of the whole mid-brain,,, it controls growth, it decides the time of puberty for both sexes and generates the sex hormones for male and female. It can make a man bald, and give women long thick hair. Shock to this area can cause the hair to fall out. It manufactures several chemicals some of which are of great interest to us. One of the chemicals it makes is referred to as FSH and it is a follicle chemical. It makes hair grow, is linked to the sex hormones as well. This is why a pregnant woman has shiny, healthy hair, and after the birth, when the hormones decrease again, her hair suffers. Women who are involved with ritual and who are constantly using incense (remember that the sense of smell goes directly back into part of the brain, particularly the pituitary) usually have either long hair of very thick hair. They also have a much later menopause than women who are not involved with rituals using incense. I have been told by an expert that in ancient Egypt, the temple prostitutes used a special compound as an incense which acted as a contraceptive. In the last few years researchers have been experimenting with a nasal spray contraceptive,,, It seems that modern science is at last catching up with the past. The pituitary also decides when enough is enough and the menopause begins, but that as I have said depends of what kind of olfactory stimuli the woman is getting in her life. In the occult we use scent a great deal, we tend to use natural perfumes and of course the all important incense with the myriad of ingredients needed to make them. We have many different kinds and each one stimulates a different part of the brain. Just to smell the right incense can conjure up the ritual itself. In fact if you have the incense,,,that is all you need, and in the future I think it may come that ritual as we know it today may well disappear, although I hope there will always be those who will practise ritual in the old way, just for the sheer beauty of it. But it is true that with a group of trained minds you van do the most complicated of rituals simply sitting in a chair and going through them in your mind. Already there are a few of us in the UK who are experimenting with this and getting very good results.
Magical work keeps the whole brain active and keeps those important brain chemicals flowing. We have in effect some sort of elixir of life going for us if we can make use of that important mid-brain area. The trick is to find the way to stimulate those areas and make them work. I have tried for years to find exercises that do this, but ht most successful are the old standby’s of creative visualisation. I have studied the brain structure until I know exactly how and where these parts are and then I tried to ‘feel’ them inside my head, building them up on my inner TV screen until I felt I could try stimulating them. The first result I got was not what I had expected,,, I managed to give myself morning sickness for two weeks until I found a way to shut the stimulus down..!
There might be a way of using herbs and resins to reach the mid-brain, nut that needs more expertise and time than I have to spare. But I think if anything is going to reach that part and make it give up its secrets, it will be a combination of scent and imagination. These are the two basic things needed in magic. Drugs affect the mid-brain, but they also destroy its ability to function very quickly. One of the first things is that the amygdala makes the person moody and unpredictable. Once you can stimulate the area by mind touch alone, you can get the effect and feeling of being on top of the world that some drugs give, but without the soul destroying results.
The pineal gland also responds to light although like the pituitary it too is buried deep in the head. It is stimulated by light received by the optic nerves. The whole body responds to high light levels. Anyone who has done stage work will know the feeling of being tuned up and ready to go when the lights go up. And how one tends to slump when they go out when the play is over. Irregular periods in a woman can be made to ,,,regulate?… themselves by making the woman sleep in a lighted bedroom for a week before the period is due. The relaxed feeling we get when the light goes out is due to the pineal gland literally being switched off.
The neo-cortex had given us speech and logical thinking etc., but the power for all that comes from the mid-brain. The Egyptians knew a great deal about the brain, they saw it as being under the guardianship of Anubis the Jackal headed God, nephew of Isis and her successor to her magical powers. It is not surprising that the jackal has the keenest sense of smell of any animal. It can track water over a desert with any paths, and the God form of Anubis was the one who breathed new life into the dead, through the nostrils.
This tiny area of our brain can be reached by scent, by breathing exercises and by imagination. It will react to all of them. We can adjust hunger, thirst, weight, endurance of heat or cold (the mid-brain controls the central core of body heat and it is this that is under the control of a yogi when he sits stark naked on a snow topped mountain in midwinter and melts the snow around him). We can improve our memory, increase fertility, raise the pain threshold, and release natural opiates of the brain, which account for the way in which badly injured people at first feel no pain from their injuries but only later when shock begins to wear off. I believe the single most important chemical occultwise is adrenalin. It can give supernormal strength and endurance when the need is there. It can call up information / knowledge we never knew we possessed until it is needed for survival.
We know that sound plays a big part in learning, if you work with a metronome set to a certain rhythm, your brain takes in more and retains it better. We have at our disposal a living computer that can outthink any machine man can build, and we only use less half of it. The full use of the brain is the first priority of Homo Aquarius. Nothing happens in the body that the brain does not know about first. So this is where we should be aiming for, even a little more control of this area could give us mental powers we only dream about. The old mystery schools taught of a hidden kingdom where, if a student reached it, he would be made king, In my Mother lodge we were taught to above all, learn to RULE THE INNER KINGDOM. I believe that inner kingdom is here. I also think the old priests knew about this. And I will show you why I think this.
In the traditions of Egypt, it is said that the Eye of Ra was separate from the god and often went about the earth, returning to tell Ra what it had seen. Also a replica of the Eye, the Eye of Horus, was placed on the breast of the dead because in the words of The Book of the Dead: “The Eye of Horus shall provide meat and drink for him that is dead”. The mid-brain holds the key to the senses of appetite and thirst.
You all know the sigil of the Eye of Horus and the idea of the third eye. It has a very distinctive shape. I had often wondered why it had these two seemingly useless appendages there. Until one day, while drawing out a brain pattern similar to this I found that if you outline the mid-brain system,,, you get a very good, accurate Eye of Horus! We know that the priests of Egypt had a very good and accurate knowledge of the brain. Did they also know the powers of the mid-brain, and did they train and use them to increase their mental powers? I believe that it was this mid-brain, and not the pineal gland alone that was the seat of the so-called third eye.
I also found something else. Allowing for the difficulty of working in stone, the passages of the great pyramid also seem to form an Eye of Horus. Was it used to stimulate in some way the mid-brain powers? I have a recording of a ritual performed in the Kings Chamber, and the sound produced is almost unbearable to untrained ears. It produces a vibration that is felt within the skull itself,,, deep within. Around the area of the mid-brain.
As I said in the beginning, I am no medical student, and anyone with knowledge can probably shoot holes in my theories, but I think they deserve an investigation. After all my years in this kind of work, I know the feeling that comes when you are getting close to something real and true. And this has that feeling. From the moment I started, books, articles, and people with knowledge I needed came into my life. It is a point from which to start. It now needs people with time that I cannot give to it, to experiment. If you do, please let me know what you find. I have collected articles that pertain to these things, and I will continue my own seeking and try to find ways of training these areas for the future. Like Ali Baba, I feel that the right ‘Open Sesame’ will reveal a great deal that will be of use to Homo Aquarius.
We are guardians of a new type of man, everyone of us who has children holds a great responsibility, for in them we shall see the ones who will take mankind further than any century has ever known. The least we can do is equip them as best as we can,,, not so much with technical knowledge, but with self knowledge, we can help each one of them to become the ruler of his of her inner kingdom.
