Astrology & Divination: Imitation of Divine Order
Divination is activated neither by bodies nor by bodily conditions, neither by a natural object nor by natural powers, neither by human disposition nor its related habits. It is not even set in motion by a skill acquired from without… Rather, all of its supreme power belongs to the gods and is bestowed by the gods. Divination is accomplished by divine acts and signs, and consists of divine visions and scientific insights.
— De Mysteriis III.2, Clarke, Dillon, and Hershbell trans., p. 119
Iamblichus treats astrology not as a deterministic science, but as a sacred method of interacting with the gods. Like Plotinus, he maintained that the stars were not the causes of things but were visible indicators of patterns that emanated from the World of Forms down to the world of matter.
Astrology was not a mechanical process for Iamblichus; it was a way of reading the synthemata of the gods—symbolic expressions embedded in the cosmos by divine will. It functions when the practitioner is inwardly aligned with the divine order. Iamblichus was adamant that divination without a higher power guiding it was fruitless.
It could not succeed without divine aid. Iamblichus does not disparage astrology or the expertise that it required, far from it. He had enormous respect for the astrological knowledge of the Egyptians. He was condemning what he felt were widespread misconceptions about it, in the same way that he criticized popular misconceptions about astrological talismans and other sacred images.
Traditional divination had unique advantages over purely visionary experiences like trances and dreams: it engaged both spirit and matter. Iamblichus emphasizes that rituals imitate the divine order when done correctly. Astrology not only imitated the sacred mathematical processes that govern nature but engaged all parts of the theurgist’s body and mind.
The mathematical calculations used the purely analytical and rational faculties and allowed intuition to function without them getting in the way. It occupied the body and senses to help minimize disruptions from the appetitive soul. Astrology had another and arguably more important function in theurgy-it deeply embedded sacred numbers and star maps into the memory, which served as a map in altered states of consciousness and out-of-body experiences.
“Inner Astronomy”- Map of the Soul
God gave us vision so that we might observe the rotations of the heavens and imitate them by training the revolutions in our head to become aligned with the divine order. This is the purpose of studying astronomy: to restore the circuits in our soul.
—Plato, Timaeus 90a–b (trans. Donald J. Zeyl)
According to the Timaeus, deep knowledge of the stars reawakens their corresponding portions in the soul, which the Demiurge constructed using the same patterns and proportions or the World Soul. The close study of the stars embeds these patterns and symbols into the imagination and memory, an “inner astronomy” like the inner statue that Plotinus described. The ancient geocentric model of the cosmos not only had practical uses, such as a navigation tool, but was also a map of the human soul.
Mortal existence is experienced from the “geocentric” viewpoint of the physical body, a microcosmic correspondence to the earth. Each morning at sunrise, a microcosmic reflection of the cosmos’ creation could be observed and experienced in the emergence of light. Western astrology is in many ways a Pythagorean practice, and the examination of a horoscope is, in part, a means of observing sacred numbers linking an individual soul to the World Soul.
The Chaldean Oracles instruct the theurgist to meditate deeply on the divisions of the cosmos. One verse cryptically speaks of seeing through the eyes of the lion. This is an obvious reference to Leo. Presumably, the theurgist would enter an altered state and focus their awareness on the Leo constellation. This would allow the mind to experience an existence beyond the physical and awaken the part of the soul that corresponds to Leo.
Elsewhere, Hecate speaks of using a spherical device made of gold and a blue stone (possibly lapis lazuli) to focus the eyes and mind. This was to be used like a mandala and focus the mind on the spherical nature of the cosmos.
When the theurgist induced a visionary experience to explore these regions within and without, expert knowledge of the stars and astrological symbolism allowed them to recognize what they were seeing. This was crucial because it was quite bizarre and deeply symbolic. Without this knowledge to provide context, the visions would only confuse and frighten those who saw them.
Until a few centuries ago, astronomy and astrology were categorized as the same practice. These visions were, technically speaking, astrology, which means interpreting the meaning of the stars. These visionary experiences were undertaken primarily to gain knowledge that elevated the soul, but obtaining information or predictions about the world of matter was not uncommon.
The Chariot Allegory and Heavenly Ascent
These visions were vivid and intense experiences of traversing the heavens in a chariot, and in other cases on the back of a single horse. Plato describes the experience of the World of Forms as riding in a chariot drawn by two horses, corresponding to the three faculties of the soul.
Of the nature of the soul, let this be the description. It is like the union of powers in a team of winged horses and their charioteer… the soul of every human being is composed of a charioteer and a pair of horses… One of them is noble and good, and of noble breed; the other the opposite in every way [….] the part that uses reason and is always in pursuit of the divine is likened to a charioteer guiding noble steeds upward toward the heavens. The soul’s vision once beheld true being, and with the eye of the soul saw the Forms.
— Phaedrus 246a–b, 247c-d trans. R. Hackforth (Loeb)
The chariot itself symbolized the rational soul (Logos) directing the irrational parts, and the charioteer the self or psyche. The black horse symbolizes the appetitive soul and negative emotions, while the white horse symbolizes the more virtuous traits and the mediating spirit. Plato says that the charioteer must keep control of both horses, lest they try to run in different directions and the chariot crashes.
He explains that the emotions and appetites must still be kept in check even after the World of Forms has been perceived. If the lower nature is allowed to regain dominance, access to the Forms is consequently lost until control is regained. The lower nature will use increasingly clever illusions and deception to bring the charioteer under its influence again.
These otherworldly flying horses that can take mortals beyond the world have older parallels in Greek myths. Pegasus is one such example from the Age of Heroes, tamed by the hero Bellerophon and assisting him in slaying many monsters with his ability to traverse different realms. Bellerophon grew arrogant, believing that he was better than mortals and deserved to live on Mount Olympus with the gods. He ascended towards Olympus on his faithful horse.
As he drew closer, Zeus was offended by his arrogance and stunned Pegasus so that he accidentally threw his rider off, who plunged back to earth and to his death. When Pegasus arrived alone, Zeus took him in and chose him to draw his own chariot with thunderbolts. Zeus rewarded Pegasus with the constellation that bears his name. The Pegasus constellation is among the circumpolar stars that surround the pole star and never go beneath the earth, in the highest region of the heavens. Zeus struck Bellerophon down in his attempt to reach the heavens despite his many accomplishments because he lacked humility. This is a recurring theme in traditions of heavenly ascent.
Some may argue that Plato speaks of the chariot only in metaphorical terms and the experience of apprehending the Forms was purely theoretical, but he makes it clear that it is an experience outside of the physical senses, complete with divine beings and a perspective from outside the earth.
And so it was that the soul once beheld true being, when it soared aloft with the divine band, and saw beauty, wisdom, and the Forms… This is the reason why the soul remembers what it saw then and is inspired when it sees beauty here below.
— Phaedrus 249c–d
Universal Imagery of Celestial Journeys
The use of chariot imagery in soul journeys is not specific to Plato or the Greeks. Sufism has its own tradition of ascension through an out-of-body experience in the seven spheres of the heavens. Its roots are in the night journeys of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, the Isra and Miraj. He beheld Allah and encountered prophets such as Moses and Abraham in the afterlife.
Miraj in Arabic means “ladder” or “way of ascending”. The journey was enabled by a glowing being with an appearance like a horse called the Buraq, meaning “lightning” or “radiance”. It could transport its rider anywhere in an instant. The Buraq is almost always depicted as having wings in Islamic art.
In the Rig Veda, the god Indra traverses the heavens in a chariot that is not limited by the constraints of time or space, vanquishing demons and bringing rain. Many depictions show it drawn by seven horses. Throughout the Bhagavad Gita, 700 verses of the Sanskrit epic poem Mahabharata, the prince Arjuna observes a battlefield in a chariot. He is accompanied by the god Krishna, who serves as his charioteer. Most of the Bhagavad Gita consists of a lengthy dialogue between Arjuna and Krishna on the nature of human existence in a chaotic and painful world, represented by the war that Arjuna must reluctantly fight.
In the ancient religion of Tengrism, practiced from the Eurasian steppes across Central Asia all the way to Mongolia, the horse was a central figure. Tengrism is unique among the religions deemed “shamanic” and “animistic” because its practitioners all shared a common set of doctrines. Tengri means “sky” or “the heavens”. The god Ulgen was the source of all good, residing above the cosmos and eternally opposing the evil god Erlik, much like Ahura Mazda opposing Angra Mainu in Zoroastrianism.
Especially important to Ulgen was the Tree of Life, the cosmic axis that connected the sky and earth and birthed all created things. Horses were the means to access Ulgen, who was atop the cosmic axis. On one day every three years, a white horse could be sacrificed to him and a shaman could ride the soul of the sacrificed horse to reach Ulgen. The shaman had to pass through all the spheres of heaven and if the offering was accepted, the shaman could see Ulgen and be given important knowledge. Horses were the means of heavenly ascent for Siberian shamans and many other people across the Old World.
Jewish Chariot Visions and the Merkavah Tradition
Visions of a chariot were used by the ancient Jewish prophets as far back as the Iron Age, and were a core practice of the oldest Kabbalistic circles. The practice is known as Merkavah, meaning “chariot” in Hebrew. It features prominently in the Book of Ezekiel who beheld an awe-inspiring and terrifying vision of angels in the form of wheels and chariots ablaze with an otherworldly fire. An earlier prophet, Elijah, ascended to the heavens in a fiery chariot upon his death.
Later Kabbalists interpreted this to mean that Elijah’s soul was purified enough that he ascended directly to God with his mortal consciousness intact, which would ordinarily be discarded when the physical body died.
An entire genre of mystical writings has survived from Jewish mystic circles who practiced it two thousand years ago, throughout the Talmudic period. It is collectively termed Hekhalot literature, meaning “palace”. These journeys, like their canonical Biblical counterparts, are filled with bewildering descriptions of angels, most of which have the appearance of living astrological symbols. For instance, winged lions, bulls, and rams are the angels of Leo, Taurus, and Aries, respectively.
The chariot has the same symbolic meanings as the ship. The Hellenistic astrologers referred to the ascendant of a nativity as the “helm”, or steering wheel of a ship. The ascendant is the central point that symbolizes the person that the whole chart pertains to. The ship has its Egyptian counterpart in the solar barge of Re that carried him through the heavens and underworld, rowed by twelve oarsmen.
“The Ancient of Days” by William Blake, Europe a Prophecy, 1794
There is also the Argo that Odysseus sailed in with his fleet of twelve ships as he undertook a journey that mirrors the underworld of the Greeks. The individual soul is at the helm of the ship just as the charioteer holds the reins.
Plutarch explained the Egyptian choice of the ship over the chariot because they recognized the heavens to be of the nature of water. “They say that the sun and moon do not use chariots, but boats in which to sail around in their courses; and by this they intimate that the nourishment and origin of these heavenly bodies is from moisture.”(Plutarch, On Wise Egyptian Priests, 34)
Daniel beheld a vision of God while in Babylon that he called “the Ancient of Days”, whose throne was an otherworldly chariot of fire and surrounded by subordinate astrological beings. This imagery was later the basis of a painting by the poet, artist, and mystic William Blake.
The necessity of verifying extrasensory information under totally blind conditions—a protocol famously used by the prophet Daniel and King Croesus to test ancient oracles—is the foundation of discernment. (To understand the critical historical precedents for this scientific protocol, read our related article The Blind Test That Proved Ancient Divination Was Real.
Dealing with Phantasma
The remote viewers produced a plethora of information that was inaccurate…but their successes produced information that was unobtainable by any other means. The strict protocol of performing only under blind conditions proved to have tremendous practical value for helping determine if the information was reliable or not. What initially began as a restrictive condition to meet the criteria of the scientific method turned out to be a unique strength. It allowed for much of the phantasma that plagued divination since ancient times to be confronted and dealt with.
The blind conditions were critical for analysts to sort the wheat from the chaff, or the “knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns”. For example, remote viewers could be tasked to describe the interior of a highly secure building that was shielded from the view of satellites, surveillance planes and human observers acting as spies and scouts. The viewers were given no hints, and their target could be anything, anywhere in the world, known only to select personnel who had no direct contact with anyone participating in the remote viewing effort.
If the building could be seen through aerial surveillance to be a small, camouflaged rectangular structure by itself in the middle of a large field, this was a “known known”. The interior of the building was the “known unknown” and what the viewer was tasked for. If the viewer perceived a town square, a mountain, harbor, or something that was plainly wrong, then analysts could declare with confidence that they had only perceived the contents of their own imagination. But if they perceived a small, rectangular building covered in camouflage nets in a field, this indicated that ESP was at work. If they also described the interior of that building as containing weapons and explosives, this new information could be given higher confidence because all the other descriptors were confirmed as highly accurate. This could then be compiled in an intelligence report and evaluated along with information from other sources.
In many ways this method mirrors the biblical account of Daniel. He was forced to describe an unusual dream which was known only to the king, or blind conditions. Whether or not his description was accurate determined if the rest of his information was trustworthy. He described the dream in vivid detail and then told the king what its meaning was, giving all his information the highest levels of confidence that its source was divine.
Project STARGATE: Validation Through Blind Conditions
This program, popularly known as Project STARGATE, operated for two decades as a highly classified project that was evaluated every year by select members of the United States Congress. Its annual budget was approved or disapproved based on whether it was performing successfully or not, like an annual audit. If it did not perform successfully, then it would be quickly disbanded. By all accounts, it frequently failed, but when it succeeded, it did what the rest of the US intelligence services could not.
The program’s existence was leaked to the media in the 1990s while the CIA had administrative ownership, having previously belonged to the DIA and Army Intelligence. It was quickly disavowed, and the CIA hired statisticians in 1996 to conduct a public evaluation of the program’s performance. Its high-ranking supporters in the intelligence community and Congress quickly found their careers ruined and were publicly ridiculed.
Only a small and insignificant portion of the program was evaluated. Most of its operational work was withheld because the people conducting the evaluation did not have security clearances. Based on this limited information, one of the judges determined that the program statistically proved the existence of ESP but was too unreliable as an intelligence-gathering tool.
In recent years most of the program’s files have been declassified but no further evaluation has taken place, in part because the amount of information it produced is vast. What is now apparent is that its effectiveness was understated and misrepresented in the CIA’s public evaluation, which amounted to little more than lying by omission in a kangaroo court.
The fully disclosed records show that the program’s performance was far from perfect, but its success rate was considerably more than the CIA’s evaluation portrayed to the public. It is worth noting that the program was primarily used for intelligence targets that were deemed impossible. Informal estimates of the program since its files have been declassified indicate that it was highly successful in approximately 30% of the missions it was tasked with.
To put this into perspective, for every hundred tasks that had proven impossible to accomplish for dozens of spy organizations, a small group of remote viewers accomplished thirty of them.
Much of what is called “remote viewing” in popular culture and internet spaces has no relation to the research conducted by SRI or the military intelligence unit that operated for two decades. Many people simply voice what are just ordinary daydreams, with no use of the correct protocol or even knowing what it is.
Some claim it is remote viewing because the term simply sounds appealing. Others use the term because it sounds more credible with a history of secret government operations. This is unfortunate because it further damages its reputation and makes serious research less likely. Used correctly, remote viewing has helped accomplish incredible things. A team of viewers partnered with the Egyptian government to successfully locate and excavate numerous ancient ruins buried for millennia.
In Japan, one of the original military viewers has used his skills to locate dozens of missing people in their cold case files. These were conducted on live Japanese television with police detectives. This is to name but a few successful projects which mainstream media in the West have consistently ignored in favor of spotlighting failures.
Building Discernment for Traditional Spiritual Practices
Imagination is a movement resulting from an actual exercise of a power of sense.
—Aristotle, De Anima III.3 (429a1)
It’s important to note that remote viewing itself is not a spiritual practice. It is a skill and a way of using the human mind. That said, it can be an incredibly useful tool to aid any spiritual practice. As Aristotle said, imagination and the senses are intimately linked. For someone who is trying to examine their inner world and “know thyself” like the ancient philosophers did, remote viewing has a lot to offer. For one, it has an extensive and documented track record of real-world applications.
Anyone can learn to do it with motivation, patience, and practice. The learning process is simple: the viewer gets into a relaxed state and gathers impressions of something completely unknown to them, the “target”, with no hints of any sort. After the impressions are recorded, the target is revealed to them. They can observe which impressions were accurate and those that were not. The viewer’s mind slowly begins to adapt to receiving this feedback, and the skill improves.
As the viewer progresses, he or she becomes more and more familiar with the inner workings of their mind. If they choose to gather the information in a deep trance, use a scrying mirror, or try to access the target in a dream, then this is a perfectly acceptable methodology. With continued practice, many people have spontaneous psychic experiences, ranging from high intuition to out-of-body experiences or spiritual encounters.
A theurgist like Iamblichus would likely have endorsed it wholeheartedly because it has strong parallels with his observations on the ways divination and visions work. Remote viewing is intensely focused on what he called phantasmata. Recognizing how one’s own bodily senses and imagination interface with intuition, reinforced with feedback, is the learning process.
Instead of phantasma, remote viewers label it “Analytical Overlay” or “Stray Cats” when they recognize it. When a flash of intuition provides a piece of accurate information, the viewer’s mind can often distort it in an unconscious struggle.
The ancient sages identified this as the lower appetites vying for dominance. When the Eye of the Soul is opened and henosis occurs, the sense of individuality and separation dissolves, posing a direct threat to domination by the lower soul (or ego in modern terms). Dealing with this instinctive mental process was and still is the most daunting problem for even the most accomplished remote viewers. Deep contemplation and observation of one’s own mind and its many subtleties were at the very core of philosophy.
The most successful remote viewers used deep meditation while gathering images and impressions in a detached state of mind. Lucid dreaming and out-of-body projection were also utilized to great effect, induced by sensory deprivation and special sounds called “binaural beats”.
These sounds altered brain activity with prolonged exposure, much like shamanic rites using rhythmic drumming. One member of the program used traditional divination practices like mediumship, and the information successfully identified numerous smugglers in the Panama Canal.
The individual methodology was a matter of personal preference; so long as the protocol was observed and information obtained under blind conditions, it was considered a valid form of remote viewing. This has become a point of contention for people who portray it only as out-of-body experiences or another specific methodology.
Coordinate vs. Extended Remote Viewing (CRV & ERV)
Remote viewing is divided into two different methodologies, the most popularly known being “Coordinate Remote Viewing” or CRV. This method does not utilize altered states of consciousness and is done by quickly scribbling impressions in a fixed order.
The other was termed “Extended Remote Viewing” or ERV and is the methodology best suited for those who want to approach the ancient methods of visions and divination.
This term encompasses the use of lucid dreams, out-of-body experiences, deep trances, or entering a state of deep relaxation and gathering impressions that arise within the mind. Lucid dreaming and out-of-body projection were desirable because of the extremely high level of detail produced.
When the viewer successfully reached their target, they were able to see and hear as if they were physically present. Early in the program’s history, viewers using the out-of-body state were able to access the interior of an underground NSA facility, whose existence was unknown to them.
The accuracy of their descriptions was high enough to trigger a formal investigation and was deemed a serious security breach. When skeptical investigators finally determined that the facility had been accessed through out-of-body experiences, because it was the only possibility, remote viewing gained some supporters within the intelligence community.
Lucid dreaming also proved equally capable of gathering information, like the out-of-body state allowed in vivid detail. These methods were offset by the high levels of difficulty required to induce the state, and viewers frequently had difficulty controlling them.
A middle ground approach was adopted where the viewer entered a deep state of relaxation, bordering on light sleep, and gathered impressions that arose within the mind.
These impressions were rarely vivid or complete, and a unique learning process was required. The viewer had to become intimately familiar with the symbolic way that their minds processed information while not in a waking state. After a lengthy period of trial and error and learning from feedback, unique symbolic “languages” were found to operate in the deeper levels of consciousness, especially the parts that process psychic information.
Metaphorical information is frequently encountered that often proves highly accurate when interpreted as such. The deeply symbolic nature of ancient languages, and especially the contents of myths, begins to make more sense in this context. The way remote viewing works gives a new perspective to Iamblichus, valuing the ancient languages, myths, and symbolism as a means to awaken the soul.
Any methodology can be an excellent foundation, but the method of gathering impressions in a light dream state or fully immersed in a lucid dream is the most practical. Dreams are natural visionary experiences and have been used in spiritual practices throughout human history. The use of dreams in theurgy is endorsed by Iamblichus, provided it is balanced with discernment.
Dreams called ‘god-sent’ do not arise in the way you describe. Rather, when sleep departs, just as we are awakening, it is possible for the soul, having been filled with divine impressions, to be conscious of them… These are not like the images that arise from fantasy or daily concerns. Sometimes these are true, sometimes false. But the god-sent dreams proceed from a divine cause and are received through divine illumination.
— De Mysteriis III.2, trans. Clarke, Dillon, and Hershbell, p. 121
After using these skills successfully under blind conditions, a natural progression would be to contemplate spiritual texts and focus deeply on synthemata just before sleep. This provides the mind with the focus needed to induce a spiritual dream. Many astrological talismans are intended to help make spiritual contact in dreams.
Strictly speaking, if one were to induce metaphysical visions in this way, it would not be remote viewing because blind conditions aren’t observed. However, experience with remote viewing will have developed intuition and discernment.
Using remote viewing to perceive the material world in philosophical terms is the Eye “turned outward” to perceive the sensible. It will be partially awakened. The other levels of the psyche are then able to effectively process what they perceive. The two horses of Plato’s chariot allegory must then be tamed and begin to run together.
The Eye of the Soul can then be “turned inwards” and used in conjunction with “inner astronomy” developed by studying the stars. Visionary exploration of the astral spheres is then possible, and the mind will be trained to maintain optimal focus, prolong the dream, and most importantly, remember the details upon waking. Requests can also be made of the beings seen in the dream.
This method is spoken of in the Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy in the chapter “Oracles and Dreams”, which prescribes a long period of intense focus before sleep. Relevant biblical verses, paintings, sigils, and paintings are used as a point of contemplation to overload the senses so that when sleep occurs, the mind will carry this imagery with it, and the desired dream can happen naturally.
When a person performs remote viewing successfully and obtains accurate results, it deeply changes the psyche in permanent ways. At the very least, the aspiring theurgist will be much better prepared to deal with the hordes of phantasmata and false visions that Iamblichus and other philosophers warned so strongly about. With a little ingenuity, the practice of using blind conditions can be combined with traditional spiritual visions to “test the spirit” as many ancient mystics recommended.
Something as simple as several dozen random photos concealed in envelopes can work well. Devoting a few moments to gathering basic impressions of the concealed photo before or after the visionary experience can be an excellent way to confirm the veracity of the rest of the vision. After waking, those impressions can be compared to the photo that was concealed.
If it proves accurate, the spiritual journey in the rest of the dream is confirmed to have been perceived while the higher faculties were active. This is a practical application of the conditions that the King of Babylon demanded of his seers over 2,500 years ago.
The value of discernment cannot be overstated. There are countless examples of people in modern times who try to develop their spiritual senses through free-form visualization or entheogens. Discernment is rarely, if ever, learned or emphasized. At best, it results in brief spiritual experiences before they’re immersed in the phantoms of imagination with no idea how to progress further. At worst, it results in delusions which can be difficult to overcome and, in some cases, can be more harmful. Nobody is immune to the tricks that our own imagination will play on us.
As Plato wrote,
Every man, even the best, has a wild beast nature in him. In sleep, when the rational part slumbers, this part may produce visions… sometimes noble, sometimes lawless.
—Republic IX.571c–e
Hoping to deal more effectively with extracting pieces of legitimate psychic information amidst a swarm of mental chatter and noise (or phantasma in Neoplatonist terminology), an early research participant named Ingo Swann developed a rigidly structured methodology he coined “Coordinate Remote Viewing”, which is the most popularly known method.
Rather than enter a relaxed altered state akin to traditional visions, this method was performed in a fixed sequence of stages, eyes open, and the viewer was constantly using pen and paper. These stages were modeled on what Swann believed to be the way that the unconscious mind processed information. It has the advantage of being easier to teach people who want a structured approach, but the disadvantage is that it blocks out experiences that the meditative trance methodology can enable.
For people who are primarily interested in remote viewing as a tool for approaching the old traditions, the meditative method is by far the best approach. Heightened intuition will be much easier to apply to traditional divination practices like dreams, scrying, or astral travel, which require an altered state of consciousness. It need not be limited to visionary methods.
Proficiency with remote viewing carries over into all types of divination, from pendulums to geomancy, and most people find they are greatly enhanced. Some of the remote viewers at Fort Meade also learned the basics of pendulum dowsing with maps and successfully applied it under blind conditions, augmenting their remote viewing reports with locations.
This combined approach has historical precedents. Some famous astrologers combined their charts with visions, like Michel de Nostradamus, who kept a scrying mirror on the table where he calculated astrological charts. The famous prediction of King Henry’s death was made by combining astrology and scrying. Nostradamus saw a symbolic vision that indicated he would die in a jousting accident from a head wound.
The astrological charts provided him with the day that the accident would occur and his death three days later. This was far from his only claim to fame. During the outbreak of the plague that devastated Europe, Nostradamus prescribed highly effective treatments in three cities that strongly suggest he understood germ theory centuries before it was known.
Shortly after this, he began to devote most of his efforts to his esoteric practices, suggesting that his plague treatments were obtained, at least in part, from his occult studies.
A few of the remote viewers in the Fort Meade unit reported profound and unexpected encounters with spiritual entities while in altered states of consciousness. In a few cases, those present reported witnessing things resembling poltergeist activity. These events were an unexpected occurrence and often happened while the viewer was perceiving nonhuman entities.
This recalls Iamblichus describing an unearthly light becoming visible in flames during rituals, or accounts of Hecate’s statue glowing and moving with an ethereal presence in the presence of many people. Iamblichus considered the mental and spiritual condition of the participants to be the factor that ultimately determined the outcome.
This spiritual work can be taken even further with dreams. Ancient people valued all dreams as a source of valuable information. The famous historian Herodotus recounts many instances where unusual dreams altered the fate of entire nations. Artemidorus, a professional dream interpreter who lived around two thousand years ago, wrote one of the greatest guides to dream interpretation and is highly recommended reading.
In the ancient world, expert dream interpreters were respected and their services were in high demand. An expert interpreter was able to extract useful information from even the most mundane or seemingly meaningless dream.
Remote viewing may appear to be a modern development, but it uses the same mental and spiritual faculties that ancient priests, seers, and philosophers worked to cultivate throughout human history. The only things that set it apart are the terminology and adherence to blind conditions. The strict protocol with blind conditions was established to meet the criteria for scientific tests in a laboratory, but it turned out to be remote viewing’s greatest asset.
People who only have experience with traditional methods of divination may assume that blind conditions are not necessary and only an attempt to placate debunkers and skeptics, but the opposite is true. It forces the viewer to become intimately familiar with their own mind and discern its contents in a way that few other practices replicate.
Discernment is in its foundation, and success is only achieved by following the inscription at Delphi; Know Thyself.
This is critical for approaching esoteric practices, which have no shortage of psychological and spiritual pitfalls. Remote viewing allows for no confirmation bias, excuses for failure, or overestimating one’s own ability. It puts the ego under constant scrutiny, and its clear way of measuring success and failure is a continuous “ego check”. This is often lacking in people who place their entire sense of self-worth and identity in their spiritual practice.
All too often, an accomplishment is followed by an inflated sense of importance and overconfidence. The lower soul gains even more dominance, and it inevitably leads to harm. Iamblichus was all too aware of this danger inherent in theurgy, and remote viewing provides an excellent way to balance the rational and irrational.
The modern world has largely succeeded in crippling the traditions from the ancient world, but their written works are now available like never before and waiting to be rediscovered. It is almost poetic that modern science helped develop a tool that can help revive it.
The Eye of the Soul and the Future of Discernment
This core content culminates the philosophical journey, showing that the modern documented protocols of remote viewing provide the practical framework necessary to cultivate discernment and successfully revive ancient spiritual practices.
By training the rational mind (the charioteer) to confront and manage the inner phantasmata (or Analytical Overlay), we can finally fulfill the Delphic injunction: “Know Thyself”. This synthesis allows the Eye of the Soul to be partially awakened and effectively used in conjunction with “inner astronomy” to maintain focus in visionary explorations.
If you want to dive deep into the comprehensive history and philosophical foundation of this entire practice, start at the beginning of the series: The Eye of the Soul Cultivating Divine Vision and Intuition.
But if you are ready to witness the dramatic historical precedent for this scientific rigor—showing how the absolute necessity of blind conditions to ensure discernment was proven reliable thousands of years ago by figures like King Croesus and the prophet Daniel—then continue reading: The Blind Test That Proved Ancient Divination Was Real.