Above all things, know thyself.
Introduction: Are We Consciousness Experiencing Matter?
Are we physical bodies that somehow produce consciousness, or are we consciousness experiencing existence through physical bodies?
This question has challenged philosophers, theologians, mystics, and scientists for centuries.
Modern neuroscience has revealed an extraordinary amount about the brain's electrical activity, neural communication, visual perception, memory, and awareness.
Yet the philosophical question of why physical processes are accompanied by subjective experience remains unresolved.
In Western Hermetic Qabalah, the human being is traditionally understood as a Microcosm—a differentiated expression of the greater Macrocosm.
My own metaphysical position is straightforward:
I am a psyche whose identity is not limited to a coagulation of matter.
I understand the Universe as Consciousness, expressing itself through innumerable forms and relationships.
The physical body is one such expression.
The brain, in my philosophical understanding, is not the ultimate boundary of consciousness. It is an instrument through which embodied experience becomes organized, interpreted, remembered, and communicated.
This is a metaphysical position, not a conclusion established by neuroscience.
Nevertheless, modern discoveries concerning bioelectromagnetism, perception, social synchronization, and cognition provide fascinating material for examining this philosophy.
They also raise questions about the human aura, telepathy, collective consciousness, the Eye of Horus, and the mysterious relationship between intuitive understanding and the spoken Word.
As a lifelong observer of human auras and a teacher of the Thoth Tarot and Western Hermetic Qabalah, I find these questions especially intriguing.
And if consciousness truly is fundamental to existence, perhaps our greatest mystery is not how the brain creates the Universe, but how we came to believe that the Universe could fit inside approximately three pounds of cerebral jelly!
Let us investigate.
1. The Human Body Is an Electromagnetic Organism
We begin with established science.
Every living human body generates electrical activity.
The heart produces coordinated electrical impulses. Neurons communicate through electrochemical processes. Muscular contraction, sensory perception, and numerous physiological functions depend upon the movement of charged particles.
Electrical currents produce magnetic fields.
Therefore, the human body possesses measurable electrical and magnetic properties.
Scientists record these processes through several technologies:
Electroencephalography (EEG): Measures electrical activity associated with the brain.
Electrocardiography (ECG): Records electrical activity associated with the heart.
Magnetoencephalography (MEG): Detects extraordinarily weak magnetic fields generated by neural activity.
Magnetocardiography (MCG): Measures magnetic fields associated with the heart's electrical activity.
Researchers have also demonstrated that living tissues naturally emit weak electromagnetic radiation.
Passive microwave radiometry can measure thermal electromagnetic emissions from biological tissue, including emissions within the 1–10 GHz range.
A 2022 study published in Scientific Reports investigated natural electromagnetic emissions from human skin at sub-terahertz frequencies and explored their relationship to physiological stress.
Thus, the human body is not electromagnetically silent.
However, these different forms of electrical activity and radiation must not be confused with one another.
A brainwave, a heartbeat, and a microwave emission are not simply three names for the same phenomenon.
Each has different physical characteristics.
Does Every Person Possess a Unique Electromagnetic Signature?
Scientific research into cardiac biometrics demonstrates that individuals can possess distinguishable electrocardiographic patterns.
Differences in heart anatomy, electrical conduction, and physiological characteristics contribute to these patterns.
Researchers have used them to identify individuals.
This is an important discovery.
But it does not establish that every human being continuously transmits one permanent, uniquely identifiable radio frequency.
Biological electrical patterns change with health, activity, emotional arousal, and other conditions.
The human being is not a radio station permanently broadcasting on 101.7 FM!
Nevertheless, these discoveries establish that individual biological electrical activity can contain identifying information.
That leads to a fascinating question.
If human beings produce distinguishable electromagnetic patterns, could some individuals possess unusual perceptual abilities associated with those patterns?
Science has not demonstrated such a human electromagnetic sensory ability.
However, it has investigated unusual forms of perception that may help us understand reports of seeing human auras.
2. My Personal Experience of Human Auras
I have experienced what I describe as human aura perception for as long as I can remember.
I did not develop this experience through formal ritual training.
It preceded my education in Western Hermetic Qabalah, metaphysics, and Tarot.
My experience involves swirling bands of color that appear to move around another person.
These colors are not simply fixed decorative outlines.
They change in appearance and movement, seemingly in association with the person's mood or circumstances.
The experience is especially unusual because I continue seeing the individual normally with my physical eyes.
Simultaneously, another visual experience appears upon what I call my inner forehead screen.
It resembles a moving picture composed of changing, swirling bands of color.
I
can voluntarily enter or leave this mode of perception.
Sometimes the colors seem to communicate an immediate emotional impression.
At other times, my interpretation draws upon decades of observation and accumulated symbolic knowledge.
Thus, the experience includes both spontaneous perception and learned interpretation.
I describe these things as personal experiences, not as scientifically verified measurements of another person's electromagnetic field.
That distinction allows us to investigate them honestly.
The Difference Between Seeing and Interpreting
A crucial distinction exists between experiencing a color and deciding what that color means.
One might experience red and immediately associate it with excitement, vitality, anger, or passion.
But those interpretations are not identical.
The experience may be spontaneous while the meaning assigned to it remains influenced by memory, context, and learning.
This becomes particularly important when considering both neuroscience and Hermetic symbolism.
3. Synesthesia: Can the Brain Generate Colors Associated With People?
There is an intriguing neurological phenomenon known as synesthesia.
Synesthesia occurs when particular sensory or conceptual experiences automatically evoke additional experiences.
Some individuals associate musical sounds with colors.
Others perceive numbers or letters as inherently colored.
Still others experience colors associated with particular people, personalities, or emotions.
Researchers have even investigated individuals who report seeing colored halos around human faces.
A 2012 study titled Colored Halos Around Faces and Emotion-Evoked Colors: A New Form of Synesthesia documented this type of perceptual experience.
Another 2012 publication, Auras in Mysticism and Synaesthesia: A Comparison, examined descriptions of synesthetic color experiences alongside reports of mystical aura perception.
The researchers identified similarities, but also important differences between the experiences.
Consequently, synesthesia cannot automatically explain every reported instance of aura perception.
Nevertheless, it provides a plausible neurological starting point.
The Brain's Color-Processing Systems
The visual cortex contains specialized networks involved in processing color, form, movement, and spatial relationships.
One region frequently discussed in color-perception research is V4.
Other brain regions participate in recognizing faces, interpreting expressions, evaluating emotional significance, and retrieving associations from memory.
Some researchers have proposed that unusual interactions between face-recognition and color-processing networks may contribute to person–color synesthesia.
In such cases, colors may be experienced automatically without those colors being physically present in the light entering the eyes.
This is important.
An internally generated color can still be a vivid and genuine perceptual experience.
The scientific issue is not whether the person reports seeing it.
The issue is identifying the mechanism responsible for it.
Could This Explain My Inner Forehead Screen?
Perhaps partially.
One hypothesis is that attention to another person activates visual and emotional processing networks that contribute to internally experienced colors.
The brain could then organize those impressions into moving imagery.
Because the imagery is generated within perceptual networks, it might coexist with ordinary external sight.
However, my experience also includes deliberate control over when I engage this mode of perception.
That makes attention and visual imagery particularly relevant possibilities.
No scientific assessment of my particular experience has been performed, so these remain hypotheses rather than diagnoses.
4. The Eye of Horus and the Mystery of Inner Vision
The description of an inner visual screen located near the forehead immediately invites comparison with two longstanding esoteric symbols:
The Eye of Horus and the Ajna center.
The Eye of Horus, known in ancient Egypt as the Wedjat, represents restoration, protection, healing, and wholeness.
In Egyptian mythology, the eye of Horus is injured and subsequently restored.
Its restoration symbolizes the recovery of order and completeness.
Modern esoteric teachings sometimes associate the Eye of Horus with spiritual perception and the third eye.
The Ajna center, originating in Indian yogic traditions, is likewise associated with inner awareness and contemplative insight.
However, these symbols arose in different historical traditions.
Their identification with one another belongs largely to later esoteric interpretation.
Is the Eye of Horus the Pineal Gland?
Popular metaphysical literature sometimes presents the Eye of Horus as an ancient anatomical representation of the pineal gland.
This claim is visually appealing, but convincing historical evidence that Egyptian artists intentionally depicted the pineal gland through the Wedjat has not been established.
Scientifically, the pineal gland is principally associated with melatonin secretion and the regulation of circadian rhythms.
It has not been demonstrated to function as an electromagnetic receiver for clairvoyance or human aura perception.
The visual cortex and its associated networks offer a much stronger scientific starting point.
Nevertheless, the Eye of Horus remains a powerful symbol of restored perception and spiritual insight.
Within my Hermetic practice, I can contemplate the inner visual experience through that symbolism without claiming that the ancient Egyptian emblem is a neurological diagram.
The High Priestess and Gimel
Western Hermetic Qabalah offers another correspondence.
ATU II, the High Priestess, is associated with the Hebrew letter Gimel, meaning Camel, and the Moon.
On the Hermetic Tree of Life, Gimel connects Kether, the Crown, with Tiphareth, Beauty.
The High Priestess represents receptive consciousness, concealed wisdom, and the mysterious threshold between ordinary awareness and the Supernal principles.
Symbolically, the spontaneous appearance of inner imagery may be contemplated through the receptive nature of the High Priestess.
But the image itself is not proof that a supernatural transmission has occurred.
The spiritual meaning of an experience and its physical mechanism are two separate questions.
5. Why Live Human Interaction Matters to My Aura Perception
One of the most interesting characteristics of my experience concerns distance.
I can perceive the swirling colors when speaking with another person face-to-face.
I can also experience them while conversing with someone through a live video connection, even when that individual is thousands of miles away.
However, watching a prerecorded video does not produce the same experience.
This distinction is important.
Initially, I wondered whether fiber-optic transmission might somehow carry the individual's energetic signature.
Fiber-optic cables transmit encoded digital information through pulses of light.
But ordinary video communication does not directly transmit the subject's biological magnetic field.
Instead, cameras capture visual information, encode it electronically, and send it through communication networks.
A live video connection may travel through fiber optics, copper cables, radio links, or combinations of these systems.
The receiving screen reconstructs images that our eyes and brains interpret.
Thus, the fact that an inner visual experience occurs during live video conversation does not demonstrate that the person's biological electromagnetic emissions have traveled through the network.
he Neuroscience of Live Interaction
Live conversation contains something prerecorded video does not:
Reciprocal interaction.
During a live conversation, two individuals continually respond to one another.
Facial expressions change.
Speech rhythms adjust.
Eye movements, gestures, and attention become coordinated.
Emotional responses influence the course of the conversation.
The brain anticipates what the other person may say or do.
This continuous feedback can produce a different cognitive state from passively observing a recording.
Research using simultaneous brain recordings, called hyperscanning, has demonstrated that people interacting socially sometimes develop correlated patterns of neural activity.
Researchers have studied this phenomenon during conversation, cooperation, and close personal relationships.
The synchronization can be explained through shared sensory information and ordinary social communication.
It does not, by itself, prove telepathy.
Nevertheless, these findings suggest an intriguing possibility:
My inner color experience may depend partly upon the cognitive state produced by genuine, reciprocal human interaction.
This remains an explanatory hypothesis.
An appropriate experiment would compare live conversation, silent live observation, prerecorded conversation, and identical video content transmitted through different communication technologies.
Such testing could help determine what actually triggers the experience.
The Neuroscience of Live Interaction
Live conversation contains something prerecorded video does not:
Reciprocal interaction.
During a live conversation, two individuals continually respond to one another.
Facial expressions change.
Speech rhythms adjust.
Eye movements, gestures, and attention become coordinated.
Emotional responses influence the course of the conversation.
The brain anticipates what the other person may say or do.
This continuous feedback can produce a different cognitive state from passively observing a recording.
Research using simultaneous brain recordings, called hyperscanning, has demonstrated that people interacting socially sometimes develop correlated patterns of neural activity.
Researchers have studied this phenomenon during conversation, cooperation, and close personal relationships.
The synchronization can be explained through shared sensory information and ordinary social communication.
It does not, by itself, prove telepathy.
Nevertheless, these findings suggest an intriguing possibility:
My inner color experience may depend partly upon the cognitive state produced by genuine, reciprocal human interaction.
This remains an explanatory hypothesis.
An appropriate experiment would compare live conversation, silent live observation, prerecorded conversation, and identical video content transmitted through different communication technologies.
Such testing could help determine what actually triggers the experience.
6. The Difference Between Aura Observation and Ordinary Verbal Thinking
Another interesting feature of my experience concerns memory and language.
When I am observing another person's swirling colors and attempting to comment upon them, retrieving particular words sometimes becomes difficult.
I may know what I intend to communicate yet temporarily struggle to recall the exact word required.
It feels almost as though my attention has moved away from ordinary verbal thinking.
To retrieve the word, I must deliberately refocus.
This is not the same as claiming that consciousness physically leaves the brain.
It is a subjective description of a change in the organization of awareness.
What Neuroscience Suggests
Cognitive science demonstrates that simultaneous tasks can compete for attention and working-memory resources.
This is called dual-task interference.
Intensive visual processing may compete with verbal memory retrieval, particularly when both activities require conscious attention.
During aura observation, several things may be happening simultaneously:
Ordinary visual perception continues.
Inner visual imagery becomes prominent.
Attention follows the changing patterns.
Emotional or symbolic associations arise.
Verbal interpretation must be organized.
Specific words must be retrieved and spoken.
That is a demanding combination.
It is possible that intensive attention to the inner imagery temporarily reduces the cognitive resources available for word retrieval.
This would help explain why language becomes easier when attention returns to ordinary conversation.
Other neurological explanations remain possible, and no specific mechanism can be established without examination.
Persistent or worsening word-finding difficulties outside these voluntary experiences deserve medical assessment; sudden difficulty speaking may be an emergency.
The Hermetic Correspondence: Yesod and Hod
In Western Hermetic Qabalah, this relationship offers an elegant analogy.
Yesod — The Ninth Sephirah, the Moon
Yesod represents the Foundation, the formative domain of imagery, dreams, and unconscious patterns.
Hod — The Eighth Sephirah, Mercury
Hod represents intellectual formulation, language, analysis, symbolism, and conceptual organization.
One might interpret the experience as a shift of attention toward the imaginal qualities represented by Yesod, followed by an effort to translate those impressions through the linguistic functions symbolized by Hod.
This is not a literal journey between brain regions or Sephiroth.
It is a symbolic way to understand the transition between nonverbal experience and verbal expression.
The Hermetic lesson is that receiving an impression and communicating its meaning are different activities.
And Mercury, being Mercury, occasionally insists that the entire mystical experience wait while he searches for the correct vocabulary!
7. Universal Consciousness and the Hermetic Psyche
Here we must examine the fundamental metaphysical question.
My philosophy begins with the proposition:
The Universe is Consciousness.
I do not understand the psyche as merely an accidental byproduct of physical matter.
Rather, I understand embodied individuality as an expression of a greater conscious reality.
This position has relationships with forms of metaphysical idealism, cosmopsychism, and certain interpretations of Hermetic philosophy.
In philosophy of mind, some theories propose that consciousness is fundamental.
Other theories argue that conscious experience emerges from, or is identical with, physical processes.
These positions remain debated.
Modern neuroscience establishes strong relationships between conscious experience and brain activity, but philosophical disagreement remains concerning the ultimate nature of consciousness.
The Brain as Receiver, Filter, or Translator
One metaphysical hypothesis proposes that the brain functions as a receiver or filter through which a wider consciousness becomes expressed.
In this model, the embodied brain organizes experience into the forms required for ordinary human functioning.
However, no scientifically established external consciousness signal, transmission frequency, or corresponding brain receiver has been identified.
Consequently, the receiver model remains a philosophical hypothesis.
When I use the language of expanded frequencies of consciousness, I am describing my metaphysical interpretation of experience.
That usage should be distinguished from the precise meaning of frequency in physics, where oscillations can be measured in cycles per second.
The Qabalistic Soul
Western Hermetic Qabalah offers a multidimensional model of the human soul.
Its traditional fivefold structure includes:
Nephesh: The vital and instinctual soul, commonly associated with Yesod.
Ruach: The intellectual and moral consciousness, centered symbolically upon Tiphareth.
Neshamah: Higher Understanding, associated with Binah.
Chiah: The higher Life-principle, associated with Chokmah.
Yechidah: Divine Unity, associated with Kether.
These are spiritual and metaphysical principles, not anatomically identified components of the nervous system.
Nevertheless, they offer a coherent symbolic framework for contemplating consciousness beyond ordinary personal identification.
Within this model, the personality is not the entirety of the psyche.
It is one differentiated expression of a greater spiritual constitution.
Solve et Coagula
Alchemy provides another analogy.
Coagula symbolizes the consolidation of potential into form.
Solve represents dissolution, release, and transformation.
The physical personality can be contemplated as a coagulated expression of consciousness.
An expanded contemplative state may symbolize a temporary loosening of identification with that particular form.
This does not require consciousness literally to depart from the brain.
Instead, it describes a change in the individual's experienced relationship to identity.
I am not merely the coagulation of matter. I am the conscious experiencer of that coagulation.
8. Teaching the Thoth Tarot: When Knowledge Expands Through Speech
My experience of teaching the Thoth Tarot differs from my experience of observing auras.
During aura observation, visual imagery can become so prominent that retrieving words becomes difficult.
During my Thoth Master Classes, however, I sometimes enter a state in which understanding expands intuitively as I speak.
Knowledge does not always arrive as a finished paragraph waiting to be recited.
Instead, one concept stimulates another.
A Hebrew letter leads to a Path.
A Path reveals a relationship between Sephiroth.
That relationship opens an astrological correspondence.
The astrological principle suggests an alchemical process.
And suddenly an entire explanation unfolds from what began as a single Tarot card.
The knowledge appears to expand through the act of communication itself.
This is how I describe the experience from within my metaphysical understanding.
The Neuroscience of Flow
Psychology studies certain aspects of such experience through the concepts of flow, absorption, expertise, and associative retrieval.
Experienced practitioners often possess deeply interconnected knowledge structures.
As they speak, related concepts may become accessible with little conscious effort.
This can create a sense that understanding is unfolding spontaneously.
Verbal explanation itself may stimulate further associations.
The words do not merely describe the thought.
They participate in developing it.
For an experienced Hermetic teacher, decades of accumulated knowledge may allow apparently distant correspondences to become immediately available.
The experience can feel transpersonal without science having established a transpersonal source.
The Magus and the Creative Word
In the Thoth Tarot, ATU I is The Magus.
The Magus is associated with Mercury and the Hebrew letter Beth, meaning House.
On the Hermetic Tree of Life, Beth connects Kether with Binah.
Symbolically, this represents the movement from primordial potential toward intelligible formulation.
The Magus is not merely someone who speaks.
He is the archetype of the creative Word: the principle through which meaning becomes expression.
Here the correspondence becomes especially beautiful.
The High Priestess symbolizes receptive awareness. The Magus symbolizes the articulation of potential into meaning.
During teaching, intuitive understanding and verbal expression seem to participate in a continuing creative relationship.
The more I explain, the more relationships become available.
The lecture becomes a living act of discovery.
Or, as Mercury might say, “I wasn't finished explaining that first idea, but I've already discovered six more!”
9. Chokmah, Binah, and the Expansion of Understanding
Within the Supernal Triangle of the Tree of Life, Chokmah and Binah provide a particularly useful analogy.
Chokmah — Wisdom
Chokmah represents the primal creative impulse, the dynamic principle of Wisdom before full conceptual differentiation.
Binah — Understanding
Binah represents organization, limitation, definition, and the establishment of intelligible form.
Together, they symbolize the relationship between inspired potential and structured understanding.
When intuitive insight arises during teaching, it may be contemplated through Chokmah.
When the insight becomes organized into a coherent explanation, it may be contemplated through Binah.
Hod then symbolizes the analytical and verbal functions required to communicate it.
Tiphareth represents conscious integration.
This is not a claim that specific brain regions correspond anatomically to these Sephiroth.
It is a philosophical interpretation of how insight becomes knowledge.
Why I Review My Recorded Classes
Although insights may emerge spontaneously, memory benefits from deliberate reinforcement.
I frequently review recordings of my Master Classes.
There is good scientific reason for this practice.
Memory consolidation, active recall, and spaced repetition contribute to long-term learning.
Repeatedly retrieving information helps make that information more accessible.
Simply hearing the same lesson again can be helpful, but actively reconstructing its central relationships is often more effective.
Thus, intuitive discovery and disciplined memory training need not conflict.
One produces new associations.
The other helps preserve and organize them.
In Hermetic language:
Chokmah inspires. Binah organizes. Hod rehearses. Tiphareth integrates.
And Mercury, naturally, wants everything properly indexed!
In Hermetic language:
Chokmah inspires. Binah organizes. Hod rehearses. Tiphareth integrates.
And Mercury, naturally, wants everything properly indexed!
10. Can Two Human Consciousnesses Synchronize?
Research has shown that two individuals can exhibit correlated physiological activity during social interaction.
Heart rhythms, breathing patterns, and neural activity may become coordinated under particular conditions.
This has been investigated in romantic relationships, parent-child interaction, conversation, cooperation, and group activities.
The scientific interpretation generally emphasizes ordinary sensory communication, behavioral coordination, shared attention, and emotional responsiveness.
Y
Yet the findings remain interesting for Hermetic philosophy.
They demonstrate that human physiological activity is responsive to interpersonal relationships.
We are separate organisms, but our behavior and physiology are not entirely independent during interaction.
Sympathetic Resonance: Two individuals participate in a shared experience of harmony, symbolized by overlapping waves of light. In Western Hermetic Qabalah, Tiphareth represents the Solar center of equilibrium, where individuality and relationship find their balance.
Sympathetic Resonance
In physics, sympathetic resonance occurs when one oscillating system responds to another under appropriate physical conditions.
Hermetic traditions employ resonance more broadly as a symbol of correspondence and affinity.
These meanings should not be confused.
Two people developing correlated heart rhythms does not prove that their astral bodies have merged or that consciousness is traveling between them electromagnetically.
Nevertheless, the phenomenon provides a meaningful analogy for interpersonal harmony.
The human organism participates in relationships through multiple interconnected processes.
11. Telepathy and the Question of Distant Consciousness
If the psyche is understood metaphysically as more than its physical expression, the possibility of consciousness operating beyond ordinary sensory limitations becomes a natural philosophical question.
Parapsychology has attempted to investigate such claims experimentally.
One widely studied approach is the Ganzfeld experiment.
A sender concentrates upon an image or video while a receiver, isolated from ordinary communication, attempts to identify the target.
Some meta-analyses report statistically significant deviations from chance expectations.
A 2024 meta-analysis of more than four decades of Ganzfeld research interpreted its results as supporting anomalous perception.
However, the findings remain controversial.
Methodological criticism, statistical uncertainty, possible reporting biases, and difficulties with independent replication prevent telepathy from being regarded as an established communication mechanism.
Even if anomalous information transfer were reproducibly demonstrated, determining its physical mechanism would require additional experiments.
It could not automatically be attributed to radio waves, quantum entanglement, or the Astral Light.
Thus, the scientifically responsible position is neither automatic acceptance nor automatic dismissal.
It is rigorous investigation.
12. The Great City: Can Thousands of Minds Influence One Individual?
Now we return to one of our most intriguing questions.
Imagine a large city containing millions of human beings.
Each individual produces electrical and magnetic activity.
Each experiences emotions, forms opinions, and participates in countless interactions.
Could this vast concentration of human activity interfere with an individual's thinking?
We must examine two separate possibilities.
Hypothesis One: Electromagnetic Background Interference
Could the combined biological emissions of thousands of people create a field that directly alters neural activity?
The electromagnetic fields produced by different individuals physically coexist.
However, the mere presence of numerous weak electromagnetic sources does not establish a coherent or neurologically significant combined signal.
Human brain activity is not generally synchronized into one powerful electromagnetic transmission.
Furthermore, the magnetic fields generated by ordinary brain activity are extraordinarily weak.
There is presently no convincing scientific demonstration that the combined natural electromagnetic emissions of a large crowd directly alter an individual's thoughts.
This remains an unverified hypothesis.
Hypothesis Two: Collective Emotional and Psychological Interference
Here, the evidence is much stronger.
Human beings influence one another through emotion, language, behavior, expectations, and shared beliefs.
Psychologists study these processes through concepts such as:
Emotional contagion.
Social conformity.
Collective identity.
Group polarization.
Social learning.
Collective emotional activation.
Fear may spread through a crowd.
Religious enthusiasm may become intensified through shared ritual.
Anger may escalate when reinforced by others.
Political movements can generate powerful shared identities.
The influence may be constructive or destructive.
Collective experience can inspire cooperation, compassion, and courage just as it can contribute to hostility and irrational behavior.
Thus, a city's social environment can influence individual thinking without requiring an electromagnetic thought-transmission mechanism.
Psychic Noise as a Metaphor
The phrase background psychic noise may be useful as a metaphor for the cumulative effects of stimulation, social pressure, anxiety, emotional contagion, and information overload.
A person living in an intensely stimulating environment may find sustained attention more difficult.
Constantly encountering conflicting expectations and emotionally charged messages can affect concentration and judgment.
These influences are observable through ordinary psychology.
They need not be attributed to invisible electromagnetic control.
13. The Egregore: The Collective Thought-Form
Western esoteric traditions use the term egregore to describe a collective thought-form sustained by shared attention, belief, emotion, and repeated participation.
Within Hermetic interpretation, a religious institution, political movement, cultural identity, or longstanding social organization may be contemplated as sustaining an egregoric pattern.
A group's symbols and beliefs can persist long after its individual members have changed.
New members learn those symbols.
They adopt the language.
They encounter the shared expectations.
Eventually, the group may influence how they interpret their own experiences.
Psychology explains such processes through social learning, collective memory, cultural conditioning, and group identification.
Hermetic philosophy interprets them symbolically through the concept of the egregore.
However, social psychology does not demonstrate that egregores exist as independently conscious electromagnetic entities.
The analogy remains valuable without confusing its philosophical meaning with experimental proof.
Netzach, Hod, and Yesod
The Tree of Life provides a fascinating framework for analyzing collective influence.
Netzach — Venus: Emotion, desire, identification, and attraction.
Hod — Mercury: Language, ideology, explanation, and repeated narratives.
Yesod — Moon: Internalized imagery, associative patterns, and unconscious expectations.
Malkuth — Earth: The eventual expression of these influences through physical behavior.
Consider an emotionally charged political movement.
Netzach symbolizes the emotional force that attracts participants.
Hod symbolizes the slogans, explanations, and narratives through which the movement communicates.
Yesod symbolizes the internalization of imagery and expectations.
Malkuth symbolizes the resulting behavior in the material world.
These are symbolic correspondences, not a literal neurological circuit.
Nevertheless, they illuminate how collective influence may become part of an individual's ordinary thinking.
14. Tiphareth and the Sovereignty of the Individual Psyche
If collective environments influence our thoughts and emotions, how do we maintain conscious individuality?
Western Hermetic Qabalah offers a symbolic answer through Tiphareth.
Tiphareth, the Sixth Sephirah, represents Solar harmony, balance, and the integration of the personality around a higher organizing principle.
It does not require withdrawing from the world.
Rather, it symbolizes the ability to participate consciously without becoming entirely governed by immediate emotional reactions or unexamined collective expectations.
The individual can experience anger without automatically acting upon it.
They can encounter popular opinions without accepting them merely because they are popular.
They can participate in collective enthusiasm while retaining discernment.
This is the essential practice of spiritual sovereignty.
A Simple Hermetic Exercise
When overwhelmed by collective emotion or environmental stimulation:
Pause and establish a comfortable breathing rhythm.
Notice the emotions presently occupying your attention.
Identify the thoughts accompanying those emotions.
Ask which impressions arise from direct observation and which may reflect assumptions or social pressure.
Contemplate the golden Sun of Tiphareth as a symbol of clarity and equilibrium.
Return to the situation with deliberate attention and considered judgment.
This visualization is a contemplative practice, not a scientifically verified electromagnetic shield.
Its value lies in supporting reflective awareness.
The Magus need not defeat every collective thought-form.
The Magus must first recognize the distinction between conscious Will and unconscious conformity.
15. The Great Work: Consciousness Knowing Itself
We have examined a remarkable range of subjects.
Science establishes that humans produce electromagnetic activity and that some of its patterns can help distinguish individuals.
It also establishes that human brains can generate vivid internally experienced imagery.
Research into synesthesia provides plausible explanations for certain experiences involving colors associated with people.
Studies of interpersonal synchronization demonstrate that human beings can exhibit coordinated neural and physiological patterns during interaction.
Cognitive psychology helps explain how intensive visual attention may interfere with word retrieval and how experienced teachers may develop insights through spontaneous association and verbal expression.
Social psychology demonstrates that collective environments influence individual thought and behavior.
Parapsychology continues to investigate alleged information transfer beyond ordinary sensory communication, but its more extraordinary claims remain unverified.
Western Hermetic Qabalah offers a philosophical and symbolic framework through which these discoveries and experiences may be contemplated.
Yet we should remember an essential distinction:
A scientific explanation of how an experience is generated does not automatically settle the philosophical question of what consciousness ultimately is.
Likewise, the profound spiritual significance of an experience does not establish a particular physical mechanism.
Both scientific inquiry and Hermetic contemplation benefit from intellectual honesty.
The Microcosm and Macrocosm
In Hermetic philosophy, the human being is contemplated as a Microcosm reflecting the greater Macrocosm.
The individual is distinct without necessarily being metaphysically separate from the greater whole.
Within my understanding, the psyche is not merely a temporary accumulation of biological matter.
It is a conscious participant in the mystery of manifestation.
I do not experience expanded awareness as consciousness abandoning the physical brain.
Rather, I understand it as a shift beyond ordinary personal identification—a widening of the field of awareness through which experience is interpreted.
Science has not established that this involves reception of an external consciousness frequency.
Nevertheless, the subjective experience invites philosophical examination.
And Western Hermetic Qabalah provides a rich language for that inquiry.
Conclusion: The Eye That Sees and the Mind That Knows
The mysteries of consciousness are not exhausted by electrical measurements, nor are they resolved merely by applying mystical terminology to unexplained experiences.
The brain is an extraordinary biological system.
The psyche, considered philosophically, raises questions extending to the foundations of existence.
The human aura remains an intriguing subject of personal experience and scientific investigation.
The Eye of Horus remains a powerful symbol of restored perception.
The Magus represents the creative articulation of understanding.
The High Priestess represents the mysteries of receptive awareness.
Yesod symbolizes the formative realm of imagery.
Hod gives those impressions language.
Chokmah inspires Wisdom.
Binah gives Wisdom form.
And Tiphareth symbolizes the harmonizing center of conscious integration.
Together, these principles offer a beautiful map for contemplating the relationship between perception, memory, understanding, and the Greater Mystery.
Yet the essential Hermetic instruction remains unchanged:
Above all things, know thyself.
Know what you perceive.
Know how you interpret it.
Know the difference between experience and explanation.
Know the influences that shape your thoughts.
And remain willing to investigate the mysteries of consciousness with both intellectual rigor and spiritual imagination.
For knowledge does not diminish wonder.
Properly understood, it deepens it.
And should Mercury occasionally misplace a word while the High Priestess displays an entire moving picture upon the inner screen, perhaps we should simply give the Messenger a moment to catch up!
After all, even a Magus must occasionally wait for the vocabulary to arrive.
Scientific References and Further Reading
Bioelectromagnetism
Passive Microwave Radiometry in Biomedical Studies (2020) — Research on naturally emitted microwave radiation from biological tissues.
Emission from Human Skin in the Sub-THz Frequency Band (2022) — Experimental examination of human skin emissions and physiological stress.
Individual Identification via Electrocardiogram Analysis (2015) — Cardiac electrical activity as a biometric identifier.
Biomagnetism: The First Sixty Years (2023) — Review of research measuring human biomagnetic fields.
Aura Perception and Visual Neuroscience
Auras in Mysticism and Synaesthesia: A Comparison (2012) — Comparison of synesthetic color experiences and reported mystical auras.
Colored Halos Around Faces and Emotion-Evoked Colors (2012) — Research documenting an unusual form of person–color synesthesia.
Color Synesthesia: Insight Into Perception, Emotion, and Consciousness (2014) — Review of neurological explanations for synesthetic color experiences.
Memory and Cognition
When Do Visual and Verbal Memories Conflict? (2005) — Investigation of interference between visual and verbal working memory.
Visual and Verbal Working Memory Loads Interfere With Scene-Viewing (2020) — Experimental study of competing cognitive demands.
Collective Consciousness and Social Psychology
Interpersonal Neural Synchronization During Social Interactions in Close Relationships (2024) — Meta-analysis of interpersonal neural synchronization.
Emotional Processes, Collective Behavior, and Social Movements (2022) — Research on collective emotional activation.
The Social Effects of Emotions (2023) — Scientific review of emotional contagion and social influence.
Parapsychology
Anomalous Perception in a Ganzfeld Condition (2024) — Meta-analysis reporting results interpreted as evidence of anomalous perception.
Testing for Questionable Research Practices in a Meta-Analysis (2016) — Critical analysis of statistical and methodological concerns in Ganzfeld research.
Western Hermetic Qabalah and Occult Philosophy
Aleister Crowley — The Book of Thoth
Aleister Crowley — Liber 777
Robert Wang — The Qabalistic Tarot
Dion Fortune — The Mystical Qabalah
Israel Regardie — The Golden Dawn
Éliphas Lévi — Transcendental Magic
A Blessing from the Tarot of Eli
Thank you for your interest, thoughtful comments, and generous supportive donations.
May the radiant Sun of Tiphareth illuminate your understanding, the Wisdom of Chokmah inspire your discoveries, and the Understanding of Binah give form to your highest aspirations.
May the High Priestess open the mysteries of inner perception, while the Magus grants you the clarity to transform inspiration into meaningful expression.
May you remain compassionate amid the emotions of the world, discerning amid the opinions of the crowd, and sovereign in the exercise of your conscious Will.
Above all things, know thyself.
May you live long, prosper, and become ever more conscious of the magnificent mystery that you are!
Magus Eli
The Tarot of Eli 2, LLC
3 Western Hermetic Tarot and Magick websites helping people to become more magick and less tragic since 2010.