The Alchemy of JK Rowling

Chapter 76 - Hagrid And The Spiders

A Master of Compassion comes to earth to bring the message of liberation. We know such Masters as Gautama the Buddha, Lao Tzu, Mani, Zarathustra, Orpheus and Master Jesus.

People are transfixed by the magic of the Bodhisattvas’ teachings and by the Force which they radiate. An unearthly call emanates from everything they do, a call which fills the listeners with longing for the true homeland, where there is peace, eternal joy, and especially Love.

Their teachings are all very similar, though adapted to the culture, time and consciousness of their audience. They talk about a total change of life, a complete conversion or transmutation and about the defeat of the evil within. People begin to follow the Master and soon he is surrounded by a large group of disciples. He begins to select those disciples which are obviously ready to go the long and strenuous Path of Liberation, and he gives them private teachings to help them achieve their goal.

This inner group, together with the Master, builds up a force field of great tranquillity, goodness and love. How do they do that?

As you know from previous chapters, the human being is composed of various force fields, as well as his physical body. The two that are important in understanding this post are the etheric and the astral fields.

The etheric field or body in and around the human being is what gives life to the personality. This is why the etheric body is also called the vital body. It enables the person to live a healthy life, metabolise food, use the senses, reproduce, and especially to think. The astral field or body is of a higher vibration than the etheric one, and it allows us to feel emotions and desires. Without it we would be just like plants, which have an etheric field but not an astral one. The reason we earthly people die is simply that our etheric and astral bodies have a very low vibration. The basic formula is earthly and hence they gradually start to lose energy. The physical body dies, followed soon thereafter by the etheric one, and a few years later the astral field dissipates. A new incarnation has to follow. As I have explained, the reason for the low vibration is the fact that we are not participating in the Divine Plan. Our microcosms stopped doing that many millions of years ago. If we could return to participating in the Divine Plan our etheric and astral fields would resume their high vibration, and they would never lose energy and dissipate, because they would be eternally fed and maintained by the Divine Spirit. Incidentally, the new etheric body would be the matrix for a new ‘physical’ body which would also be indestructible, but of course would not be visible to earthly eyes because of its high vibration.

This is what the Master teaches his inner circle, and the disciples begin to bring his teachings into practice. Their etheric and astral bodies begin to rise in vibration, because of their sincerity, their pure longing (the ‘stag’), and their dedication. They have begun the process of the transmutation.

What happens next is what happens when any group of people join together with a common goal, be it spiritual or earthly, be it football or butterfly hunting: a collective force field is formed and maintained. This is an etheric-astral force field consisting of etheric and astral energy and substance which the members (unwittingly in this world) donate by virtue of their common goal. This force field will have a certain vibration rate according to the sublimity or otherwise of the objects of the group. If the group’s aims are earthly the vibrations will be earthly, and the group will be bound to time and space. If the aims are liberating, in the sense of being in harmony with God’s Plan, the vibration rate will rise above that of the whole fallen universe and lift itself and all its members out of it into the real, eternal universe, the Kingdom of Heaven, to use a Biblical term.

This is the basis of legends like Noah’s Ark. This ark really did exist, but not on the physical plane. The presence of all the animals is a symbolic way of saying that the ark, i.e. the force field, contained all the possibilities for life. And so, throughout history, groups around the world have formed, built their arks of gopher wood, and sailed to the New World. In The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosycross this is symbolised by the events in CRC’s dream on the first day. A rope is lowered into the pit symbolising this world, and those who manage to grasp the cord are lifted out. The dream also mentions that many people are left behind. These are the people who could not or would not make the total sacrifice of their ego, and bring their Inner God to life.

Their teacher and his inner circle had ascended into the clouds of heaven, leaving behind a group of people who were called, but not chosen. This is not in the sense that God rejected them, but these people could not achieve the purification and alchemical transmutation needed to be members of the group which left the earthly plane.

So what do these people do? There’s a large physical organisation with buildings, a bank account, a hierarchy of officials, a huge infrastructure and a constitution. Do these people sell the buildings, give the money to the poor and go home to watch TV? Of course not! They have the teachings and they are not even aware that the Inner Group has departed. The original teachings are very beautiful and attractive and so the ‘church’ goes from strength to strength, gaining new members, doing missionary work to spread the word, and improving the infrastructure of its organisation.

For a while things go well, but then Scabbers starts to nibble at the works. The ego begins to play a role. People forget about liberation (if they ever understood this in the first place) and begin to squabble about what the teachings mean. To stop people departing from the ‘true faith’ there’s a commission set up (later called ‘The Inquisition’) to protect the interpretation of the faith.

There’s a leadership squabble, because being at the top endows one with power, prestige and financial rewards. The organisation becomes so big that more and more rules have to be made, and a huge bureaucracy develops. I’ll leave the rest to your imagination. As the organisation grows, and as more and more egos participate, it shows signs of disintegrating. This is ruthlessly dealt with by the leadership, but it can’t be stopped, and within a few centuries the original child of the Master of Compassion has split into numerous little churches, denominations and sects. In other words, Aragog has a large number of children - all very hungry. What do they eat? They eat the etheric energy which their members radiate when engaged in worship. This helps the force field of the group grow in strength. But there’s another very important reason for wanting etheric energy of a high quality. Above, I have briefly described the process of death: the death of the physical body is followed by that of the etheric body, then by the death of the astral body, and finally the mental body and the three consciousness levels disintegrate quickly. A new incarnation follows.

What do people actually experience when they die? They are attracted, by virtue of magnetic laws, to force fields in the astral plane with which they have affinity. So what they experience is the arrival in a force field which they have helped to build up and maintain during their physical life. We are discussing religious people, and so they will experience arriving into a beautiful world which their church has promised them during their life on earth. The Jehovah’s witnesses go to their heaven, which is exactly like how they describe it. The Muslims go to their heaven, the Buddhists to theirs, etc. The reason that every church’s heaven looks like the way they describe it is because they’ve made it that way over centuries of people feeding theirforce fields.Astral substance can be moulded simply by the imagination, and so the astral plane is crowded with mighty cathedrals, mosques and temples which have been created by the members over many centuries.

As an aside I must emphasise here that I’m talking about the etheric and astral planes of this fallen universe. When a person dies he doesn’t instantly become holy, and so his astral body ascends to an astral plane of the fallen universe. Entry into the Kingdom of Heaven, the Divine Universe, does not necessarily occur after death, but as soon as the alchemist has defeated his own Voldemort and has finished the process of transmuting his whole being to Gold. Heaven is primarily a state of consciousness and entry into it is independent of the death of the physical body.

The leaders of the churches and sects have also discovered that when the members who are still on earth radiate pure and spiritual ethers, the leaders can absorb them into their own etheric bodies and so slow down their dissipation. The thing is that if the etheric body does not dissipate, the astral body won’t either, and so these people do not have to reincarnate! They have gained ‘eternal’ life. As many of you will know, there are four types of ether (in ascending order): chemical ether, life ether, light ether and reflecting ether. The two lower ethers are not wanted after death because they are usually left behind with the decaying physical body anyway. However light ether and reflecting or mental ether are needed, because they are like a protective cloak around the astral body. And so it is important to the deceased leaders of the numerous large and small churches in the hereafter that the members on earth give them plenty of light- and reflecting ether. This means these members of the church hierarchies can survive many centuries without needing to reincarnate. The higher the quality of the ethers the better, and so it is in their interest to have the living members often engage in prayer, hymn singing, meditation, discussion and every possible form of worship.

This is what J.K. Rowling is describing in Part 2 of Harry Potter. As I’ve pointed out, Part 2 takes place on the etheric plane. Harry and Ron go into the forest, which symbolises the hereafter. They meet Aragog and all his children who want to suck them dry, as spiders normally do.

We can learn a valuable lesson from this. Hagrid the Bodhisattva, the Master of Compassion, metaphorically opened the Room of Love and was filled with compassion for humanity.As a ‘punishment’ he was forced to become Keeper of the Keys at Hogwarts. He brought Aragog to Hogwarts out of love, but the Acromantula escaped and grew into a monstrosity. It populated the forest with blood sucking monsters. That is the Bodhisattva’s sorrow: when a divine deed is done in this fallen universe it achieves its goal, but it always has a shadow effect. There is always a very black, negative consequence. The light shines in the darkness but the darkness doesn’t understand it.

Incidentally, every few millennia there is a cosmic revolution, and the hereafter is cleaned up of all its thousands of man-made force fields.

The vital question for everyone is: to whom do I donate my higher etheric energy? To a liberating group, which will use spiritual energy to build an ark which will sail to Nirvana, or to a spider in the Forbidden Forest, which will use my spiritual energy to maintain the hierarchy and stop the process of personal disintegration which is inherent in the fallen universe? All you need is the ability to discriminate between the teachings of liberation, which have been given to humanity for several million years, and their shadow. In my opinion the fact that Harry Potter is so popular proves that millions of people are unconsciously longing for liberation.

How can we tell the difference between the light and the shadow it casts? The first thing is to be aware that we have a Lily in our heart. If we experience a rock solid conviction that God lives within us, then that gives us an inner compass. That’s Harry’s wand in the maze in Part 4. It will always point us in the right direction, as long as we don’t listen to the voice of the ego. The next thing is to experience a longing for the Living Water from the River of God. That is the stag within us. If we experience a longing for a force that can’t be found anywhere in this world, our heart is sending a message into the universe; a call for help from the Masters of Compassion. If our longing is totally unselfish and pure,this callwill be answered. Hagrid will knock on our door and deliver the invitation to Hogwarts.

How this knock will come depends on our personal circumstances, but come it will. It will be quite unexpected, and probably in a totally different form than we Imagined. Once we open the door to the Light it will lead us through the gate to Diagon Alley. Our whole world will become diagonal to what it was previously. Everything will suddenly seem out of line; out of plumb. Nothing will seem the same any more.

If we read Harry Potter with the inner compass, it will show us what to do, step by step. Our life will become one long Felix Felicis, provided we become Dumbledore’s Man. When our physical body is worn out and falls off like a dead leaf we won’t be attracted to one of the many heavenlets formed by the shadow dwellers in the world of the dead. If we have already passed through the Gate of Saturn we will simply continue the work of the Order of the Phoenix. If we haven’t got that far, the purity of our longing for God will automatically attract us to the Ark of Liberation where we can continue the work of alchemical transmutation