The Mystery School · Grade 4 of six
The work of the fourth grade is one rite, the Natal Blueprint Invocation, in which each of the ten bodies of the nativity is invoked in the sign it held at birth, every gate the chart needs opened once, and the personal daemon enthroned.
Grade 4, under Prometheus
Prometheus brought fire from the heavens to the earth, and the commentary of Servius on Virgil’s sixth Eclogue says that he took the fire from the wheel of the Sun with a torch and was the first to teach astrology to the Assyrians. Servius reads his name as foresight. The fourth grade activates the nativity of the theurgist, and the Sun’s fire of the myth is carried to the chart of a single birth.
Chapters 56 and 57 of Ritual Praxis and Instruction are read and tested in the second grade. In the fourth grade they are the working text of the rite: the nativity as the divine blueprint, the operator audit, the natal brief and the Natal Blueprint Invocation itself.
Grade 4: the initiation
The work of the Master or Mistress of the Temple opens with an initiation that the Head Master, or an officiant he permits, performs for you once, live, in person or by video. You book its date and hour in your Backoffice, at a time when you can be alone in a quiet room for an hour.
The officiant performs the regular banishing of our School, opens the gate of Fire and invokes Prometheus, the patron of the grade. You keep the breaths and the silences with the officiant and speak one sentence, your word of entry into the work of the grade. You need no instrument and perform no part of the rite.
The god is invoked into the temple and never onto or into you, and you are free to step out of the work at any point. The initiation opens the work of a grade you hold, and no title is given for an experience.
Three things.
The grades climb through the elements: Earth, Air, Water, Fire, then Spirit. The sixth grade has no initiation of this kind.
Grade 4: the practice
Each count below is a rule of the School, stated in Ritual Praxis and Instruction, Chapter 1, with the chapter and section where the practice is taught.
Grade 4: the rite
The rite is performed on the birthday and on no other day, whole in one day. In it each of the ten bodies, the Sun and the Moon and the eight planets, is invoked in the sign it held at birth, and the personal daemon is enthroned. It is the Celestial rite of the third grade carried across the ten bodies of one birth.
Seven days before the birthday the exact moment of the solar return is found and the hour of beginning fixed. Through the week the natal brief is written, any god out of sync is banished on three days or more, the personal liturgy and the declarations are composed, the liturgy is rehearsed aloud and the temple is prepared. The last day is quiet, with the Śiva state and the year’s reference written in one sentence.
RPI §57.4.7
The ten bodies, each with its natal sign, degree, house and root element. The five gates of the day in the order Fire, Water, Air, Earth, Spirit, with the presences each names, the signs before the planets. The order of the presences. The Ascendant and its traditional ruler. The zodiac is tropical, the rulers traditional, and one house system is kept, Placidus by default.
RPI §57.4.2 · Appendix F, §F.4
The Opening Preliminaries, the Grand Invocation, the Casting of the Pentagrams in its banishing round, the Calling of the Guardians and the invocation of Hermes and Apollo.
RPI §57.5.2
Every gate the chart needs is opened once, with the wand and the invoking pentagram of its root element, in the order of the elemental hierarchy. Each gate’s pronouncement names every presence that will come through it.
RPI §57.5.2 · §57.6
Each sign is invoked in the order of its gate, followed at once by the natal planets that stand in it, each planet named in its sign, with three deep breaths between presences. Each presence remains while the next is received.
RPI §57.6 · §57.7
The Final Pronouncement, ’Ehyeh and the Sign of Silence. The day lasts about two and a half to four hours, robe to departure, and is begun so that the closing falls before midnight of the birthday.
RPI §57.5.1
Dragon’s Blood with the incense of every gate the day opens, burned to its end about thirty minutes before the entry. The stone and the trump of each god and each sign of the day are laid on the altar in the order of the presences.
RPI §57.5.5 · Ch. 22
Before the fifth god has been received, the theurgist closes, records the stop and performs the rite whole on the next birthday. After the fifth god, the theurgist closes and records it, and the rite counts as performed.
RPI §57.5.6
A meal, a walk and a quiet evening. The completion meditation about five and a half hours after the closing, and the journal that evening and again the next morning.
RPI §57.5.4 · Ch. 19, §19.12
Grade 4: the reading
The chapters of Ritual Praxis and Instruction that the Master or Mistress of the Temple performs or lives, with their length and their time at 200 words a minute. They are read and tested in the second grade.
2 chapters, 49,051 words, about 4.1 hours in the reading hour. Read and tested in the second grade.
The Backoffice opens the program one step at a time. In this grade it holds:
The journal
The journal stays with the student. At the end of each of the first five grades its pages are scanned with a phone into one PDF and sent from the Backoffice, and the Head Master returns his notes with the title of the grade. The examination of a journal takes weeks, and no table counts them.
We test what can be tested, careful reading and a practice that has been kept. No student is tested magically, and no title is given for an experience, a vision or a power.
The Mystery School takes students from the Summer Solstice 2027.