The other half of the greeting

You have probably heard “psychic attack” in this room used as if it were a diagnosis rather than a question. The practical problem is not whether someone is aiming at you. It is what happens next, and nobody in the room has rendered the corpus’s own answer to that.

The library renders two halves of the same picture: 31, the inhabitants of the lower reaches, and 48, the discipline behind the word magic. What has not been rendered is the third half: what the corpus says about protection.

The argument here is simple and it runs against the grain of the way the word is used. Dion Fortune’s Psychic Self-Defense supplies the West’s diagnostic casework. She is working in the register of a casebook: types of attack, vampirism, etheric projection, hauntings, non-human contacts in whose sphere “evolution impinges upon the earth”, and the risks incidental to ceremonial magic. Her second part is a differential diagnosis, drawing the line between objective psychic attack and subjective psychic disturbance, with the Tree of Life as the defensive map — planets, elements and signs arranged upon it in a pattern the book says is known only to initiates. That is a real tradition, well worked out, and its value in this library is as a mirror to what the corpus does differently, not as a competing verdict.

The corpus’s own account of attack is the psychic greeting. Its own defense is not a technique. It is a state. That is the claim, labelled as ours: the six records that bear on the subject form a coherent structure, and it refuses to be read as a procedure.

Ra describes the greeting as a mechanism before it describes any defense against it.

This will be the last full query of this working. The development of the psychic greeting is possible only through the energy centers starting from a station which you might call within the violet ray moving through the adept’s energy center and therefrom towards the target of opportunity. Depending upon the vibratory nature and purpose of greeting, be it positive or negative, the entity will be energized or blocked in the desired way.

This is the diagnostic map in the corpus’s own vocabulary. The greeting develops through the energy centres, beginning at a station within the violet ray and thence to the target of opportunity. The outcome depends on the vibratory nature and purpose of the greeting — positive or negative — and on which station the visitor reaches. Ra’s own contact comes in through violet ray, narrow-banded. The entity of Orion pierces the same ray and goes to two places: it activates the green-ray centre and blocks the indigo-ray centre, producing confusion and over-activity in unwise proportions.

That description is a differential diagnosis. The three stations Ra names — violet, green, indigo — are the corpus’s way of saying where the greeting may be intercepted, and which interception leaves which residue. A person who finds confusion in the mind and over-activity in the body against this record has been given a differential in the corpus’s own vocabulary, not by importation of a foreign method. That is our reading of how the material functions as a diagnostic tool, and the library’s judgment.

The greeting’s whole mechanism depends on a target of opportunity, not a pre-arranged appointment.

This entity was, as your people put it, looking for a target of opportunity. The missed word was a chance occurrence and not a planned one. We might suggest in the, shall we say, future, as you measure space/time, as you begin a working be aware that this instrument is likely being watched for any opportunity. Thus if the circle is walked with some imperfection it is well to immediately repeat. The expelling of breath is also appropriate, always to the left.

A missed word is a chance occurrence and not a plan. The advice attached to it is the first hint of what defense looks like in this account: walk the circle with care, and if it comes out imperfect, repeat it. That is our reading of the closest thing in the Ra material to a technical instruction about a working’s form — and it is attached to the greeting, not to a protection formula. (The record at 76.2 offers a more explicit ordered protocol, but it is framed as a cost of the dedication, not as a greeting’s defense.) The greeting is what you watch for.

Now comes the half people expect and do not find. The questioner in 32 asks directly: what do we do to protect ourselves from distorting influences in general, and is there a ritual or a meditation? The answer is instructive because it does not give one.

Although we are in sympathy with the great desire to be of service exemplified by this question, our answer is limited by the distortion of the Way of Confusion. We shall say some general things which may be of service in this area. Firstly, when this instrument distorted its bodily complex towards low vital energy due to this occurrence, it was a recognizable substance which caused this. This was not a, shall we say, natural substance nor was the mind/body/spirit complex enough aware of its distortion towards physical weakness. The natural ways of, shall we say, everyday existence in which the entity without the distortions caused by ingestion of strongly effective chemicals may be seen to be of an always appropriate nature. There are no mistakes, including the action of this instrument. Secondly, the means of protection against any negative or debilitating influence for those upon the positive path was demonstrated by this instrument to a very great degree. Consider, if you will, the potentials that this particular occurrence had for negative influences to enter the instrument. This instrument thought upon the Creator in its solitude and in actions with other-self, continually praised and gave thanksgiving to the Creator for the experiences it was having. This in turn allowed this particular entity to radiate to the other-self such energies as became a catalyst for an opening and strengthening of the other-self’s ability to function in a more positively polarized state. Thus we see protection being very simple. Give thanksgiving for each moment. See the self and the other-self as Creator. Open the heart. Always know the light and praise it. This is all the protection necessary.

This is all the protection necessary.

Notice the shape of the answer. It is not a method a person learns in a sequence. It is the description of a state already being lived — thanksgiving each moment, seeing self and other-self as Creator, opening the heart, knowing and praising the light. The instrument’s own record is the demonstration: it had been thinking on the Creator in solitude and in action, praising and giving thanksgiving continuously, and that had radiated to other-selves as a catalyst for their own positive polarization. Protection is, in the material’s account, the byproduct of that radiation. We would label the inference: the positive path’s defense is the same movement that makes it positive. There is no second practice sitting beside it.

That inference is what the next record forces you to confront, because it says the greeting is a cost of the dedication, not a failure of it.

We may answer in two modes. Firstly, if the instrument were thusly dedicated to this use with no transfer of energy of physical complex nature it would begin to call upon the vital energy itself and this, done in any substantive measure, is actively deleterious to a mind/body/spirit complex if that complex wishes further experience in the illusion which it now distorts. Secondly, if care is taken, firstly, to monitor the outer parameters of the instrument, then to transfer physical energy by sexual transfer, by magical protection, and, lastly, by the energetic displacements of thought-forms energizing the instrument during contact there is no difficulty in that there is no worsening of the instrument’s mind/body/spirit complex distortions of strength/weakness. It is to be noted that the instrument, by dedicating itself to this service, attracts greetings of which you are aware. These are inconvenient but, with care taken, need not be lastingly deleterious either to the instrument or the contact.

Dedication to a service attracts greetings of which you are aware. They are inconvenient. With care taken, they need not be lastingly deleterious. This is the core of the state-account: the practitioner does not become invulnerable by doing more. The practice changes the relationship to the greeting from one of being struck to one of being passed through.

Ra states this once more, as a verdict on the whole environment rather than a single working:

These symbols are astrological in origin. The shapes, therefore, may be released from their stricture. We may note that there is an overriding spiritual environment and protection for the environment of the mind. We may further note that the negatively polarized adept will attempt to fashion that covenant for its own use whereas the positively polarized entity may hold forth that which is exemplified by the astrological sword; that is, light and truth.

The environment of the mind is protected when it is held in an overriding spiritual environment. The essay’s reading, ours and labelled as such, is that this is the same sentence as the one in 32 read from the other end. Thanksgiving and praise are not charms; they are what build the environment of the mind that the record names as protected. The negative adept will try to fashion that covenant for its own use — the material will not pretend otherwise — and the positive entity holds forth light and truth instead.

If defense were a technique, the corpus would hand you one and you would have a procedure to check. Instead, on the occasions when something does go wrong, the remedy is breath — a physiological act, not a working, and not a seal you keep on at will.

This instrument is unaware of the method used to contact Ra. However, its desire was particularly strong, at the outset of this working, for this working to transpire. Thus it inadvertently was somewhat premature in its leaving of the yellow-ray, physical body. In this state the object was dropped upon the instrument which you call the tie-pin microphone. The unexpected contact caused injury of the chest muscles and we would advise some care depending from this working to avoid stress so that this injury may heal. There is a metaphysical component to this injury and, therefore, we wished to be quite sure that all portions of the environment were cleansed. Since this place of working has not its usual level of protection we used your breath to so cleanse the environment, which was at risk.

The same register repeats that in 103: when the place of working loses its usual level of protection, breath is used to cleanse an environment that is at risk. Breath in these records is a reset, not a guard. It answers an accident — a dropped microphone, a premature leaving of the physical body — and it returns the environment to a defensible condition. It is the thing you reach for when you notice the condition has changed.

One more record closes the circle, and it is the one that makes the strongest claim for the state-account.

This is exquisitely perceptive. The seeker which has purely chosen the service-to-others path shall certainly not have a variant apparent incarnational experience. There is no outward shelter in your illusion from the gusts, flurries, and blizzards of quick and cruel catalyst. However, to the pure, all that is encountered speaks of the love and the light of the One Infinite Creator. The cruelest blow is seen with an ambiance of challenges offered and opportunities to come. Thusly, the great pitch of light is held high above such an one so that all interpretation may be seen to be protected by light.

There is no outward shelter in the illusion against its sudden weather — gusts and flurries, blizzards of quick and cruel catalyst. That last line is the essay’s own emphasis, because it is the sentence the corpus leans on hardest. The seeker who has purely chosen the service-to-others path will not get a variant incarnational experience. But to the pure, everything encountered speaks of the love and light of the One Infinite Creator, and the great pitch of light is held high so that all interpretation is protected by light. Protection by light is the state, not the object. It is not a shield you hold; it is the light you hold at, and from which everything is interpreted.

The difference between Fortune’s frame and the corpus’s frame is a difference of subject. Fortune diagnoses the attacker. Her chapters enumerate types and methods, and her second part separates objective attack from subjective disturbance, with the Tree of Life as the defense map. Ra diagnoses the invitation. The greeting is not something aimed and received; it is a station passed on the way through the energy centres, and which station it reaches depends on the vibratory nature and purpose of the greeting — positive or negative — as 72.17 states. That is why the corpus’s defense cannot be a technique: a technique presupposes a form of the attack that the technique can match, and the corpus describes the attack as a function of the centre it meets.

The diagnostic overlap is real, though, and it is the strongest point of contact. Fortune’s insistence that objective attack is comparatively rare and that every physical symptom must first be excluded by a qualified medical practitioner is not contradicted anywhere in the Ra material; it is simply not the register the material speaks in. The material’s caution shows up elsewhere, in its insistence that the supporting group’s harmony is a protective condition, that harmony and thanksgiving and praise are the protection, and that an entity freely leaving the physical complex without protection is vulnerable. Those are procedural facts about a working, not a defense technique in the Western sense.

Ra does name one thing that looks like a technique — the meditation putting on the armor of light, paired with the repetition of short ritual sentences known to the instrument — but that record is not about the greeting. It is offered for entities open to psychic attack through images and dreams, and its placement in the corpus’s own ordering is a procedural recommendation rather than a counter to a greeting. We decline to fold it into the greeting’s defense, because the record does not place it there and because the essay’s claim is narrow and specific.

There is also the matter of what the corpus does not supply. Across the archive, protect appears fifty times over 2,630 records and greeting twenty-two times across 17 distinct records. That is a presence claim, never a ranking, and it is what the corpus’s own search shows over all Ra-side records. The point is not that the greeting is rare. It is that the material does not build a protective doctrine around it: no section, no manual, no formula. There are the scattered statements above and the structural account of the greeting itself.

This is where the two traditions diverge most sharply. Fortune’s book is an explicit methods volume: Part IV is entirely methods of defence, four chapters, and the Tree of Life is named as the map of defense, planets, elements and signs arranged upon it. The corpus, by contrast, names no Tree as a defense map, names no planetary or zodiacal arrangement against the greeting, and names no method whose stated job is to defend a working from the greeting. If the Tree of Life is used anywhere in the corpus’s own account of the greeting, it is the seven energy centres as the stations the greeting passes — and that is a diagnostic function, not a defensive one.

For you, the practical reading is what you point a newcomer to. The library already points to the foundation (essay 42) and to the discipline behind magic (essay 48). This essay adds that the material’s protection is not a fourth item on a checklist of practices. It is the quality of the ground the other items are built on. You cannot add it. You can only be in the state it names, and the state is the same movement the positive path already requires.

We would not say this without a caveat. A state is not a substitute for a working that has gone wrong. Breath resets an environment that has become vulnerable; a group’s harmony is a stated protective condition; care in walking the circle, repeated when it comes out imperfect, is a real instruction about a form. These are not nothing. But they are not a protection technique for the greeting in the way a technique implies. They are maintenance, and maintenance is not the same thing as defense.

The greeting’s own account is also an account of where the risk lives. The target of opportunity is not you; it is the state of the centre the greeting encounters. Green open, indigo blocked, that combination is the danger the material names. Violet narrow-band is the condition of safe contact. If a person finds themselves in the green-indigo pattern, the work is not to build a wall against a visitor it cannot name; the work is the centre itself, and the state that governs it. The greeting is the diagnostic that shows you where the centre is. The state is the correction.

Figure 01

The greeting as differential diagnosis

Greeting, invitation, station, state. The corpus’s account is shorter than the Western casework, and shorter still than any expectation of what protection should look like. It is not a manual. It is a map of an invitation and a single sentence about how the invitation behaves when the centre it meets is already what it says it is. That is the other half of the greeting, and it is enough.