Astral Ascent Mysticism: Standard Basic Model for Transcending Eternalism

Michael Hoffman, April 7, 2025

_{Site Map: Astral Ascent Mysticism}

Contents:

• The Basic Model of Astral Ascent Mysticism: 9 Spheres, 11 Levels
• The Model as 3 Essential Levels
• 3 Guys Mapped to 3 Essential Levels
• The Chronic Awkward Silence of Scholars about the Fixed Stars when Ascending through Sphere 8 to Transcend Fate
• Building on Ulansey’s Clear (Coherent, Consistent, Explicit, Intelligible, Scientific) Mithraism Model
• Psychedelic Transformation into Fate-Awareness, and then Transcending Fate by Integrating Possibilism- and Eternalism-Thinking
  • Psychedelic Transformation into Fate-Transcendence
• Moving Past Eternalism
• Motivation for this Page
• Rectifying Confused, Contradictory Cosmos Models
• Titles of this Page
• {cut right trunk}
• Tim Freke
• Free Will (Rush, 1980)
• See Also

The Basic Model of Astral Ascent Mysticism: 9 Spheres, 11 Levels

Sphere # or Level – Cosmic Body – Mental Model
—————————————————————
10 – outside spheres – source of control-thoughts
9 – precession – integrated possibilism/eternalism thinking
8 – fixed stars – eternalism-thinking
7 – Saturn – 7/8 eternalism-thinking
6 – Jupiter – 6/8 eternalism-thinking
5 – Mars – 5/8 eternalism-thinking
4 – Sun – 4/8 eternalism-thinking
3 – Venus – 3/8 eternalism-thinking
2 – Mercury – 2/8 eternalism-thinking
1 – Moon – 1/8 eternalism-thinking
0 – Earth – possibilism-thinking

The Model as 3 Essential Levels

3) outside fixed stars = mature, integrated possibilism/eternalism thinking; qualified possibilism-thinking; hyper-eternalism thinking
2) fixed stars = eternalism-thinking
1) below fixed stars = possibilism-thinking

3) outside fixed stars = possibilism/eternalism
2) fixed stars = eternalism
1) Earth = possibilism

3 Guys Mapped to 3 Essential Levels

3) outside fixed stars = integrated possibilism/eternalism thinking = advanced = leg-hanging guy.
2) fixed stars = basic eternalism-thinking = guy sitting in tree balancing with right foot & hand on cut branches, & passing students 1 & 3 on left.
1) planet spheres = possibilism-thinking = furrowed brow of students 2 & 4 during Psilocybin loose cognition when able to perceive uncontrollable source of control-thoughts yet trying to rely on monolithic, autonomous control as foundation of the personal control system – causes loss of balance, cybernetic instability; non-viable self-control.

1. Earth = foolish youth (furrowed brow) = possibilism-thinking.
2. fixed stars = wise youth (smooth brow) = eternalism-thinking.
3. outside fixed stars = floating sage (furrowed brow) = integrated possibilism/eternalism thinking.

Eadwine via floating sage (placed to follow the basic L foot vs R foot guys) sets up the instructional puzzle asking the student who is reading the image, to interpret leg hanging in the above row, while the image teaches the student to rely on eternalism-thinking instead of possibilism-thinking during the intense mystic altered state.

The Chronic Awkward Silence of Scholars about the Fixed Stars when Ascending through Sphere 8 to Transcend Fate

The Chronic Awkward Silence of Scholars about the Fixed Stars when Ascending through Sphere 8 to Transcend Fate Indicates the Need to Build on Ulansey’s Clear Mithraism Model, Adding Psychedelic Transformation into Fate-Awareness and then Transcending Fate, Integrating Possibilism- and Eternalism-Thinking.

Every scholar of esotericism, when explaining “astral” ascent through the “cosmos” levels to transcend Fate/ heimarmene/ no-free-will, every single one of them covertly GOES SILENT and never even mentions “fixed stars”, upon arrival in sphere 8.  

In a different paragraph, they say zodiac & other fixed stars (in sphere 8) = Fate, & the Demiurge in sphere 8 ruling over the 7 planetary archon rulers.

Hermetic scholars’ consistent silence about fixed stars during upper ascent levels, shows that all scholars are baffled about relating ascent-rebirth to sphere 8, fixed stars.

Building on Ulansey’s Clear (Coherent, Consistent, Explicit, Intelligible, Scientific) Mithraism Model

David Ulansey’s solution explaining Mithraism: Ulansey is the only scholar who says “fixed stars” when the soul ascends to sphere 8.

Ulansey is the only coherent scholar: he says only when reach sphere 9 (primum mobile; pleroma; precession of the equinoxes) does the spirit escape Fate.

Ulansey is the only articulate, clear, coherent, intelligible scholar re: fixed stars in sphere 8 during astral cosmic spiritual ascent.

Scholars leave it to me to build on Ulansey’s uniquely articulate & intelligible coherent model, to connect that to Psilo transformation re: ascending to sphere 8 (Fatedness! fixed stars! demiurgic creator/ emperor!) and only *after* that, transcend Fatedness, outside the cosmos boundary.

Transcending Heimarmene in Mithraism (David Ulansey)

David Ulansey’s Mithras and the Hypercosmic Sun, http://www.mysterium.com/hypercosmic.html

David Ulansey’s The Eighth Gate: The Mithraic Lion-Headed Figure and the Platonic World-Soul, http://www.mysterium.com/eighthgate.html

Psychedelic Transformation into Fate-Awareness, and then Transcending Fate by Integrating Possibilism- and Eternalism-Thinking

Psychedelic Transformation into Fate-Transcendence

Spiritually reaching sphere 9 above the fixed stars (above enslavement to Fate) is *Integration* & maturation: cognizance of fatedness yet along w that, the appearance & experience of usual steering among apparently branching possibilities. 

Moving Past Eternalism

Moving Past 4D Spacetime Mysticism

4D Spacetime Mysticism is like James T. Cushing’s “road not taken”, my brand of 1890-era Physics-cum-Mysticism that’s in contrast with the reaction against it, Quantum Mysticism.

Moving Past Mysticism: Theory of Psychedelic Eternalism Provides Scientific Basis, Superseding “Mysticism, Meditation, & Psychotherapy” Framework – 2023/01/15

My fear (furrowed brow) lately isn’t loss of control, so much as giving possibilism-thinking its due in light of the revelation of eternalism: I anxiously work to solve that puzzle, like floating sage challenging us to interpret leg-hanging – so I can say that:

The “problem” of the leg hanging guy includes the problem of “moving past eternalism mysticism”. The mind always uses possibilism-thinking, and returns to the ordinary state, and experience is shaped as possibilism.

The battle between appearance (experience) vs. revealed underlying reality.

Both the experience (practice) and the epistemology (seeing eternalism) must be respected and integrated, in the mature, completed, perfected mental model.

The Mysticism Wars in Psychedelic Science blew up the Hopkins research Psilocybin 2016 Religious Professionals study ended with Matthew Johnson filing ethics violations complaints for pushing newage mysticism and even trying to add Psilocybin to Christianity, heaven forfend!

A travesty of Science: the scientific explanation of what ego transcendence from Psilocybin transformation is really about.

The ultimate purpose and achievement of Science is the Egodeath theory of psychedelic eternalism.

Motivation for this Page

Need a clean, Reference page that is focused on the standard Reference model is, of astral ascent mysticism, according to Egodeath theory of psychedelic eternalism.

Transcending eternalism = transcending Fate, heimarmene, no-free-will, prison, slave, puppet, kidnapped; receiving ransom; freedom, redemption.

My original page:
https://egodeaththeory.org/2020/11/10/ptolemaic-astral-ascent-mysticism/
Has more details, expanded today, April 7, 2025.

Rectifying Confused, Contradictory Cosmos Models

Hermetic scholars say:

fate = fixed stars = sphere 8 = Ogdoad = above fate = above Saturn

ERROR!

Perennialism = confusion = mysticism = hermetism = scholarship.

My interesting analysis summary:

I had to figure out what would be the most useful model to map to Egodeath theory, that would fit with the given, confused state of scholarship on Hermetic texts, a confusion propagated through all the videos and books.

I am justifying using the Mithraism cosmos model, which is simple and clear (unlike Hermetic texts) and neutral (unlike Gnosticism).

Contradiction in the scholarship: Heremetic texts:

Poimandres (and even “8 reveals 9”) is often read as if the highest level of Fate is sphere 7, Saturn.

Yet that reading clashes with the same scholars‘ assertion, in the same books, that fixed stars = Fate.

So the scholars silently, quietly waffle, instead of being forthright that they are asserting two contradictory models thanks to poor, vague, inconsistent writers in antiquity.

Whether the fixed stars should be included [with Saturn, sphere 7] or should rather be associated with the Ogdoad [sphere 8] remains an open question for me.

p. 294, footnote 114, Hermetic Spirituality and the Historical Imagination: Altered States of Knowledge in Late Antiquity, by Wouter Hanegraaff, 2022

Contradiction in the tradition: As is widely stated, the number of spheres above sphere 8 (fixed stars) varies.

Egodeath theory needs 1 sphere higher than eternalism (fixed stars, sphere 8), to represent mature, integrated possibilism/eternalism thinking.

Use the space/level above that, as God/Source.

This provides a utility, usefulness-driven, maximally useful, least confusing model, of 9 spheres plus earth (level 0 under spheres) and God (level 10 above spheres).

Thus I favor picture from the Paul Davidson-written video “What is Hermeticism?” Sep. 2024.

That picture has just enough complexity/ room above sphere 8 (fixed stars) to express full mature mental model re: eternalism, and to express God/Source outside the cosmos, and per relational mysticism (2-level, dependent control), distinguish between Creator vs. mature creature.

Titles of this Page

• Astral Ascent Mysticism: Standard Basic Model for Transcending Eternalism
• The Standard Reference Model of Astral Ascent Mysticism Cosmology per the Egodeath Theory of Psychedelic Eternalism
• Astral Ascent Mysticism: Standard Basic Model per the Egodeath Theory
• Astral Ascent Mysticism: Standard Useful Model per the Egodeath Theory
• Astral Ascent Mysticism: Standard Model for Transcending Eternalism
• Astral Ascent Mysticism: Standard Model for Transcending Eternalism per Mithraism
• Astral Ascent Mysticism Standard Model
• Standard Model of Astral Ascent Mysticism per the Egodeath Theory
• Astral Ascent Mysticism: Standard 9-Sphere, 10-Level Model per the Egodeath Theory of Psychedelic Eternalism

{cut right trunk}

The {cut right trunk} motif on the right side of this cosmos model relates hypercosmic spiritual ascent to the {non-branching} motif.

To ascend above sphere 8 (fixed stars) is to maturely integrate possibilism-thinking and eternalism-thinking.

The YI tree depicts integrating the two different mental models: appearance integrated with reality, distinguishing the two and using both mental models, maturely integrated.

Features:

• Artistic sleight of hand: 7 spheres above sphere of the fixed stars, to pad out the transcendent levels, to imply mature integrated possibilism/eternalism thinking.
• {cut right trunk}
• {right foot forward}

Branching on left, {cut right trunk} on right:

Tim Freke

Ladder from Saturn sphere 7 into Fate-ruled fixed stars sphere 8, not yet transcending Fate until reach sphere 9 above sphere 8 fixed stars.

Purified at sphere 8, but not yet maturely integrated.

The Egodeath Theory of Psychedelic Eternalism is the evolution of scientific explanatory modeling of Transcendent Knowledge.

This page is dedicated to Tim Freke, who resonated with the Egodeath theory in 2000, and is looking for better adjustments to spirituality.

https://timfreke.com

Tim Freke is rejecting the following and will publish a voice recording podcast book, the podbook:

• ego loss, ego dissolution, get rid of the ego
• no-thought
• only mind exists
• nonduality unity oneness
• enlightenment is non-rational
• thinking is bad

I reject all of the above expressions and values. They are not useful or helpful for Transcendent Knowledge, or for practical stable control during psychedelic loose cognitive association binding.

I am looking forward to Freke’s evolutionary spirituality.

Tim Freke’s revisions are comparable to my recent work since 2003 on integrating possibilism-thinking & eternalism-thinking:

• Integrating transformed malformed perennialism writing by anti-writing mystics.
• Clarified and organized usefully per STEM communication.
• Aided by receiving the transmission of shipment of mushroom-trees from Eadwine’s delivery in Great Canterbury Psalter.

My approach is to repair and transform previous, poor representations of Transcendent Knowledge that are not helpful or useful.

Will it be possible to combine the latest greatest version of Egodeath theory and Freke’s podbook evolutionary spirituality?

Free Will (Rush, 1980)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbskwxU8-WE —

https://www.google.com/search?q=lyrics+free+will+rush

Transcendent spiritual lyrics commentary at Egodeath.com:
The Song Freewill Is about Transcending, not Denying, Determinism
http://egodeath.com/rushlyrics.htm#xtocid22968 —

“This is a profoundly ambiguous song just as pre-enlightenment naive freewill only appears to be the same as post-enlightenment transcendent freedom.  Naive freewill is ignorant of determinism; enlightened freedom magically and miraculously transcends cosmic determinism, thus Christian ideas such as “in regeneration, you become a slave of God/Jesus instead of a slave of the devil”.

“The song Free Will by Rush must be read as a mystic-state problematization of naive free will — it was written after the lyricist was intimately familiar with the intense mystic-state experience of no-free-will, so Free Will is a post-determinism or transcendence-of-determinism song, not advocacy of naive freewill as the noninitiates among the Rush fans assume. 

“After all, 3/4 of the verses in the song Free Will clearly state and express and assert the classic determinist position: A planet of playthings, we dance on the strings, of powers we cannot perceive. 

“But *in the face of this* mystic-state realization — not in denial of it — the mind is transcendently reset from outside of its own controllership resources, one “becomes truly free” per mysticism, as opposed to one’s former asleep dream and naive assumption that one was free. 

“The song Freewill is not just only merely ironic; higher than that, it is divinely transcendent (magical, miraculous, supernatural).  The divinely transcendent (magical, miraculous, supernatural) also appears in the song The Body Electric: “Bows its head and prays to the (compassionate) mother of all machines, mother of all machines.”

“The song Freewill has a predominant percentage of lines asserting determinism or cosmic determinism, contrasted against a brief and out-of-nowhere declaration of choosing free will. 

“I have defined the ‘pre-trans fallacy’ with respect to freewill: naive freewill is to be contrasted with transcendent freewill.  One moves from ignorance (freewill assumption) to knowledge of the natural (that is, the experiential discovery of determinism), to knowledge of the supernatural (that is, a certain kind of transcendence of determinism and rationality). 

“The noninitiate and the perfected initiate both proclaim freedom from heimarmene/fate/cosmic determinism, but one does it out of ignorance, and the other out of transcendent gnosis, supernatural divine transcendent wisdom.  Stage 3 (transcendence of determinism), not stage 1 (ignorance of determinism) is what is meant in acid-oriented Rock by a statement such as “I will choose free will.”

“The non-initiate is a prisoner of cosmic determinism who mistakenly thinks they are free; the peak-state advanced initiation reveals that one’s thoughts are frozen into the cosmic prison; the transcendent divine lifting-up beyond that realization gives the mind something that has historically been called “true freedom”, very different than mere naive assumption of freewill — the naive assumption of freewill is utterly dead and impossible after mystically experiencing the deterministic true situation.”

— Michael Hoffman, Egodeath.com, 2007 era

See Also

Site Map > Astral Ascent Mysticism
https://egodeaththeory.org/nav/#Astral-Ascent-Mysticism

Transcending Heimarmene in Mithraism (David Ulansey)

David Ulansey’s Mithras and the Hypercosmic Sun, http://www.mysterium.com/hypercosmic.html

David Ulansey’s The Eighth Gate: The Mithraic Lion-Headed Figure and the Platonic World-Soul, http://www.mysterium.com/eighthgate.html