THE ESOTERICISM OF THE CHESS

Samael Aun Weor

The chess game comes from the ancient Atlantis, it is a game that was known and practised by the people of the continent that today is submerged in the ocean that has its name.
The chess symbolizes or allegorizes the Game of the Life, or better to say, the Chessboard of the Life.
Esoterically speaking at the light of the Gnosis, we are simple chips, governed by invisible or occult forces that we do not know. Some of those mechanic forces are evolutives and involutives.
We do not have to forget the revolutionary forces that work from the superior dimensions of the space, the Intelligent Principles that are occult beyond the phenomena, creating and creating again. The ineffable beings, the Lord of the Flame, the Master of the Conscious Circle of the Solar Humanity, sometimes govern the white chips and other times the black ones; that is to say, they direct the flow of the innumerable centuries. Some of those beings, called Devas, govern for example, the Elemental Departments of Nature, meanwhile others work in many other activities. In all of this there levels and levels, grades and grades. And every group or family according with their particular ray, act over the Chessboard, that as we said, symbolizes the Universal Life.
It is obvious that if the humanity would have the Consciousness awakened, it would be able to determine the circumstances over the chessboard, because logically it would not be governed by the mechanical laws as the Law of Cause and Effect, the Law of Return, the Law of Recurrence, etc. What do represent the four sides of the chessboard? It represent the four elements of nature: Fire, Air, Water and Earth, frequently mentioned in all the treatises of alchemy. They also represent the four Existential Bodies of the Being: Physical, Astral, Mental and Causal bodies, created by the real or authentic man in the Forge of the Cyclops, using to the purpose the transmutation of the libido or sexual energy.
Multiplying side by side, the eight squares by the eight squares, we obtain the number 64. At the same time, adding in cabbalistic form this number (6 + 4), then we have the Arcanum 10 of Tarot, let us remember that the Tarot is the Golden Book, and that by itself, constitute the Pattern of Measures of the Cosmic Laws. So, the Arcanum 10 is the Wheel of Samsara, the tragic wheel whose three thousand revolutions or cycles have already been studied by the Revolutionary Scientific Gnosticism.
From the point of view of the transcendental sexology, the wheel is the alchemic hieroglyphic that represents the necessary time needed to the boiling of the philosophical matter, and of course, of the boiling itself. Over the Chessboard of Life, we have to annihilate the Ego and to create the Superior Existential Bodies of the Being, making good use of the time in the hard work of the philosophical matter's boiling. In this form we will be able to get out of the Samsara's
Valley. The Ego, the "I," the myself, make us to stay tied to the Valley of sufferings, to the fatal wheel of births and dead; receiving new bodies as a result of the Karma.
Now, if we observe carefully the 32 white squares and the 32 black squares, we can observe in it the evident manifestation of the Opposite Pairs of the Hermetic Philosophy, that is to say, the light and the darkness, the day and the night, the permanent fight between the forces of good and evil, that we have to transcend, that we have to overcome.
Those black and white opposites are the oriental Yin and Yan: the passive force and the active force.
Adding the number 32 (3 + 2) in cabalistic form, we get the number 5, that in the Major Arcanums of the egyptian tarot represents the Great Law, the Divine Justice. This means that the Court of the Objective Justice governs the two antagonistic forces and that the intellectual animal mistakenly called man, is subjected to its judgements.
Let us analyze now each one of the pieces of the Chess. But before let us see this: in total are 16 pieces. The number 16 is the Fragility, the Tower fulminated by the Ray of the Cosmic Justice. Among the cabbalists, it is the Babel's Tower, the tower of the languages' confusion.
As a fact, many are the initiates that fall on the Chessboard of Life as the inverted star.
Many are the Fulminated Towers: every initiate that spills the Hermes' Cup, falls.
The 8 pawns will also be inverted stars, until they awake the Consciousness and create the Existential Superior Bodies of the Being. The number 8 is the number of Job's tests, it is a number of pain and sufferings.
On the chessboard, the humanoids cannot understand each others, they are the mechanical, unconscious, asleep humanity. In other word, they are the famous Tower of Babel.
What is the symbolism of the king? Why there is a black king and a white one? The king symbolizes the Internal Real Being of each one of us. When in the Chess' game, he receives checkmate, it means that the cycle of 108 existences for each Essence that plays has ended, and that the Intimus or Inner Master has absorbed the spiritual principles to let the Essence involutionate in the infernal worlds (so, it will be liberated from the "I's").

When that Essence re-initiates a new cycle, it will begin once again the Game of the Life; that is obvious.
The white king invite us to think in the Eternal Father, Jehovah or Iod-Heve; the black kings indicates the opposite: the Antichrist or tenebrous forces of the universe. Also the black king makes reference to the Animal Ego, and in general to all the Potencies of Darkness, to the involutive forces ofnature and cosmos.
The white king is immortal; he has to fight against his antithesis, he is the one that impulses (from inside and upwards) his Essence, in order to make her to work on herself in the Chessboard of Life.
The Queen has also two aspects: the black and the white. In its positive aspect, she is the Divine Mother Kundalini with its five manifestations, already symbolized by the Hindus in the Holy Cow of five foot. She is Mary or Ram-Io, is the feminine aspect of God (God Mother), one part of our being but derived.
The ungrateful son that forgets his mother, fails in the Chessboard of Life, cannot annihilate the Animal Ego.
In truth, the white queen or Kundalini is the electro-magnetic and solar fire that stays twisted, in form of serpent, waiting the instant to be awaken.
Those that have studied the esoteric Nahuatl or Hindustani physiology, emphasize the transcendental idea of a marvellous magnetic center, located in the base of the vertebral spine, between anus and the sexual organs. In the center of that Chakra there is a yellow square, invisible physically, but visible to the six sense or clairvoyance.
In this square there is a Yoni or Womb, and in its center there is a Phallus in where the serpent, that mysterious energy called Kundalini is twisted.
It is unquestionable that only through the Sahaja Maithuna or Sexual Magic, can the serpent, the white queen of the chess in its energetic aspect within ourselves be awakened.
In its negative or black aspect, she is the Goddess Kali (of the desires and passions). Even now, some tenebrous and degenerated sects of India, offer human sacrifices to Kali. So, the black queen is the infra-instinctive and brutal force of nature, it is the antithesis of kundalini, is the tempting serpent of Eden; the sexual fire descending into the atomic infernos of man.
There always existed and will exists a crude fight between the white queen and the black queen, a fight for their sons and daughters, the humanity... The bishop represents the sexual force of nature (established in Jesod, the Ninth Fundament, the Sex).

The bishop, is the Sacred Lance of the ancient mysteries. The Lance, the Phallus, the Sex, plays a great role in many oriental legends as marvellous instruments of salvation and liberation. Used wisely by the soul that yearns, it allows to reduce to cosmic dust, all the cave entities that in their sinful conjunct, form the myself.
The bishop, in this game, has a phallic character, it is the symbol of the sexual power.
Let us observe that it always moves in X, what remind us precisely the Cross of Saint Andrew. The extraordinary torture of Andrew, made famous the Cross in X, in which his separated members were tied.
Undoubtedly, and without any exaggeration, we have to say that the Cross of Saint Andrew (the symbolic X, that certainly is a greek K), was, is and will be one of the most valuable symbols of the Christic Esotericism.
The annihilation of the Ego in the Laboratorium Oratorium of the Third Logos, is the profound meaning of the tortures suffered by Andrew in the terrible X. It is the indispensable death, that could never be achieved with a vulgar fire.
Obviously, in order to do this work, it is necessary the help of an occult agent; a secret fire of sexual type, (that resembles more the water than a flame). This fire (or this ardent water) is the vital spark sent by the Logos to the inert matter: it is the Divine Fohat, trapped in everything; it is the Igneous Ray, the Kundalini, the Sacred Serpent of the Anahuac's Wisdom, ascending through the spinal channel of the adept. It is clear that we are talking about the white bishop, the Phallus used in positive form to achieve the chastity through the alchemic transmutation. It is not difficult to understandthat its antithesis, the black bishop, is the fornication, the sexual force used in the incorrect erotism, etc.
The horse, moves over the chessboard in L form, and this remind us the Law, symbolized among the Mohammedans as a horse. The horse of the chess game, invite us to think in the mythological centaur and in the Sagittarius Constellation. In reality, the intellectual animal is still something not completed, and that is the reason of why within himself are originated terrible fights between his animal part and his human values. The intellectual animal is like the centaur that has to send the arrow of his longing (of his yearning of being) to the Inner Sun or Real Being, in order to return to him.
The arrow symbolizes the Eros force, and the arc represents the three forces: Father, Son and Holly Spirit, that the neophyte has to use in order to achieve the inner liberation. The horse allegorizes the audacity, the boldness, the daring and other virtues of the Consciousness. However, there exists the necessity to eliminate the opposite of those virtues, allegorized by the black horse.

In the bullfighting's esotericism, the horse symbolizes the physical body not tamed yet, and in which the neophyte is mounted, disposed to prick with the lance the Bellowing Beast, the Animal Ego. The Tower, alludes the state of Alert Perception, that is to say, the Observation that the aspirant has to do on himself; it is a piece of extraordinary value. Without the sense of Psychological Self-Observation, the triumph would be impossible in the Chessboard of Life.
Do not forget that all authentic self-psychology has three fundamental aspects: Self-Observation, Self-Exploration and Elimination. Of course, the Tower is established over the Cubic Stone of Jesod, on the Sex, because the work of the mystical death cannot be done, completely, without the help of the Third Logos, the creative energy. So, in watchful state, as the watchman in wartime, the neophyte from his own tower, (his brain, his head), learns to Transform the Impressions, avoiding the accustomed process of information made by the mind, that is to say, interposing the Consciousness between the tower and the impressions that come from everywhere in the chessboard.
Paul the Apostle said to his disciples: "... You are the temple of the living God; as God had said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people." The tower of that temple is the head of the planetary body. The Solomon temple has human form... Bethlehem, comes from a chaldean word that remind us the famous Tower of Bel, the Tower of Fire. In order to the Golden Child of Alchemy could incarnate in us, it is necessary to have already made the Tower of Bel. When is it built? When we have developed the Solar Fire within ourselves; then the Tower is built. In that conditions, the Son of the Son (the Second Logos, the Christ) can penetrate in us in order to speak thegolden verb of the first instant.
In conclusion, over the Chessboard of Life the initiates have to build their Tower of Fire, if they yearn the Interior Magnesium of Alchemy, the Intimate Christ, to be born in his own crib...

Finally, the pawns are the neophytes or apprentices, those that want to become Adepts of the Conscious Circle of the Solar Humanity; are those that have been informed about the Esoteric Path that goes to the final liberation, and that because of that reason, work on themselves, debating between the black and the white.
The white pawn represents the Essence, fighting with the help of the king, of the Queen, of the Bishop and the White Tower, against the forces that appose her development. The black pawn symbolizes the forces of the Ego, those inhuman and sinister elements, that in their conjunct form the "I," the myself.