Christian Kundalini (Part 1)

salvation is sexy crazy

Note: this post gets weird. As such, most of it is behind a paywall. Thank you for understanding. Skip to Part 2.

“In this manner you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord’s passover.” - Exodus 12:11

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My journey may not make a lot of sense from the outside (or from the inside). Zigzagging from mystical inclinations to violently obsessive egotism, the course of my spiritual life is like the erratic flight of a bumblebee, hurried yet lazy and nonetheless somehow optimized in a superconscious way. While a fellow like Freud might considered mysticism to be a “pathological” misdirection of sexual energy, I would wager that he never tried any mystical discipline in earnest. Freud admits in his writing that he has only an outsider’s view on the mystical experience, having never felt anything like that himself.

In college, I was gathering writings of an orthodox hermit by the name of George A. Maloney, who wrote A Journey Into Contemplation, as well as translating Hymns of Divine Eros by St. Symeon the New Theologian. Nonetheless, I was unable to reach the heights of what I read, in part because I was trying to plumb the depths of the abyss at the same time. As Mephistopheles says:

Descend to the depths…. I could just as well say ascend to the heights!¹

The mystics write with an erotic mania for the divine, particularly for Sophia (Mary), which I simply could not fathom because of my own attachments. I was intellectual, and I was carnal, but I did not love. The lion and the serpent were alive in me, but not the dove.

Jesus tells a parable about the distribution of this potent germinal force:

“A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured them. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they had not much soil, and immediately they sprang up, since they had no depth of soil, but when the sun rose they were scorched; and since they had no root they withered away. Other seeds fell upon thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. He who has ears, let him hear.”²

The Parable of the Sower obviously isn’t about producing a hundred, sixty, or thirty children³ — or necessarily any — but rather about attaining higher levels of spiritual development through the judicious direction of this germinal energy to higher or lower levels. Within the human organism, the path that birds devour is the external world, which is simply squandered. The “good soil” is the rich depths of contemplation, the Holy of Holies of the innermost mind. Where your heart is, there will your treasure be also.⁴ If inspiration only motivates external action, this is barren in itself — the birds take it away. External busyness without an organizing principle works but in the wrong way, and the fruits of action are stolen because they are sown in the material world. If inspiration stimulates the formative world of bringing things into being but does not rouse deeper conviction, these are missing the nourishing waters — they are baked in the sunlight. If the germ of faith falls in a wet patch where there is abundant growth, it is choked out by the many thorns. But if the seed falls on good archetypical rich soil, it is able to grow and produce more seeds. Inspiration is able to inspire others. That germinal idea is able to reproduce more viable seeds.

Merely raising the serpent simply elevates venom to new heights, like lifting up a live cobra with your hands. The serpent must be killed if it is to be raised safely. Otherwise, the intellect becomes more ferocious than ever. If the serpent’s energy (kundalini is Sanskrit for snake) is merely elevated, it can spit venom from above. One might even say that the serpent, if not killed, is better at the base of the tree. From above, the unslain serpent has even more power than before.⁵

“Though the demonism of the Middle Ages seems to have disappeared, there is abundant evidence that in many forms of modern thought—especially the so-called ‘prosperity’ psychology, ‘willpower-building’ metaphysics, and systems of ‘high-pressure’ salesmanship—black magic has merely passed through a metamorphosis, and although its name be changed its nature remains the same.”⁶

Alan Moore is the creator of many things that have captivated the cultural imagination, including The Watchmen and V for Vendetta — though for esotericists, Promethea is of far more interest. Moore declared at his 40th birthday that he would become a ceremonial magician and actually did so. But he hardly seems to wish to encourage others to join his path: “Realise that most magicians end up mad, or dead, or worse in some way.”⁷

Valentin Tomberg writes, “this ‘serpent power’ can be awoken and directed either above (yoga) or below and outside (arbitrary magic).”⁸ If slain and raised up with devotional attentiveness, this makes way for the descent of the dove:

“Is the serpent, as the ‘great magical agent’, the only magical agent, and is he the magical agent of all magic? Does divine or sacred magic (which we have referred to in the Letters relating to the third and fifth Arcana of the Tarot) make use of the same agency as that of fakirs, hypnotists, magnetic healers and necromancers?

Now, centuries of experience show that there is not only another agent and another magic, but also that there is another consciousness and experience than that due to the brain. It was not the serpent that John the Baptist saw descend upon the Master of sacred magic, the greatest thaumaturgist of history, but rather a dove.”⁹

We must become wise as serpents and innocent as doves.

As the Son of Man, having been raised up, becomes kosher, so too does the serpent’s venom become sacred when sublimated.

In the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ on Good Friday, he is raised up. According to the Talmud, what descends from heaven, even if donkey meat dropped by a crow, is kosher for Passover:

“In connection to that story, it is related that Rabbi Zeira asked Rabbi Abbahu: If the likeness of a donkey had descended for him, what would the halakha have been? Would it have been permitted? Rabbi Abbahu said to him: Foolish bird [yarud nala]. The Sages already said to him that a non-kosher item does not descend from heaven; therefore, it must be kosher.”¹⁰

As the Son of Man, having been raised up becomes kosher, so too does the serpent’s venom become pure when sublimated. The threefold temple structure of the Holy of Holies, the Inner Temple and the outer Courtyard correspond to the head, the chest, and the belly. The reproductive organs belong “outside” the temple, and yet it is the gifts brought from the front door of the church that rise to the altar. When Jesus flogs bankers and drives them out of the Inner Temple, he is driving out animal impulses that have been displaced into the heart. There is nothing wrong with animal impulses if they stay below the diaphragm in the Courtyard. But when lower impulses overreach, all sorts of disharmony occurs in the human soul. Paramhansa Yogananda writes, “Reason and feeling remain in a heaven of cooperative joy so long as the human mind is not tricked by the serpentine energy of animal propensities.”¹¹