The World Passive Milieu
The magical descriptions of the world across different lands and peoples converge on the notion that the unfolding of the process of cosmogenesis takes place in the so-called Passive World Milieu (Akasha, the Ether, Telesmi, the Vacuum).
This milieu functions as the second Creative Principle and participates in every particular act of creation automatically alongside the Substantial Principle; this automaticity — the absence of a substantial will, i.e., passivity toward volitional manifestations — is what determines the secondary status of the Milieu.
For the process of world-making, actualization, and self-knowledge of the One reality in the totality of its potentials to be realized, reality is divided into the Knowing and the Known principles.
“And just as the One brought forth all from Itself by applying Itself, so all things in the world arose from one inert originating milieu, by means of its application“,
– declares the Emerald Tablet of Hermes.
Namely, beyond the potentials ready for actualization — energies — there is a milieu of undifferentiated passivity, an original, homogeneous field of potential being from which those potentials are born.
The idea of such a milieu arises from the conception of an original unity divided by the differentiating activity of mind. However, the ether is not chaos; it is the milieu in which the cosmos unfolds.
This means that mind is capable of revealing an unbounded multitude of forces and agents, while the Milieu reveals only voids — expanses for the realization of potentials. That is, in response to each volitional manifestation, a place for its realization arises in the Milieu — that is, according to the law of the quaternary a vortex comes into being.
When any volitional impulse arises, the Passive Milieu immediately manifests its binary analogue — idea, Me, enactment. The movement that arises in the milieu is called the Force of Meigin (Pneuma). This means that Pneuma is the active component of Telesmi, although this activity is secondary and is caused by an external impulse.
The Passive Milieu is the sum of all possible potentials; it differs from the mind in how it generalizes individual potentials. Monad, as an aspect of the Absolute, is a potential synthesis that contains everything within itself; being originally one and homogeneous, it produces separate relative aspects by differentiation and self-limitation, asserting self-awareness in some relative plane — a particular embodiment.
The cosmic milieu, unlike the mind, is not a synthesis but merely a summation; none of its separate potentials are active in manifestation, serving as a passive repository of forms, aspects, and tonalities. In other words, unlike the mind, the milieu is not homogeneous. By giving form to any existence, it freely allows the mind to draw from it the elements it requires, remaining indifferent as a whole. If, in this process, the will or mind encounters any difficulties, this is merely a consequence of its own inefficiency and inability to extract from the cosmic repository what it needs without affecting or needlessly disturbing the repose of others. Thus will and milieu are polar opposites — will without a milieu has no field of activity, the milieu without will lacks capacity for movement.
Strictly speaking, equating the Milieu with the ether — which occurred in early conceptual thinking — is not entirely accurate; it would be more precise to say that the ether (in the magical, not the physical, sense) is the Milieu’s manifestation on the physical plane. The concept of Telesmi is more comprehensive and metaphysical. Nevertheless, the properties of the ether — passivity, applicability — are dictated precisely by the characteristics of the Milieu.
Condensations of the Milieu caused by the shaping influence of intelligence lead to the formation of Magical primary elements. Moreover, it is precisely Telesmi that preserves the imprints of all events, for it is so passive that it cannot even erase them.
In magic, the Passive Milieu has practical significance — within it the axes of realization are formed, and the creative will of the Magus molds vortices that modify the cosmos.
En, can an equality sign be placed between the Medium and the Source of Urd?
Partially, perhaps, it can, although I am not sure that such a parallel is productive… If we are talking about the Northern myth, then the medium is more likely to correspond to the rime that falls from the collision of Fire and Ice. Although even this correspondence is also far from complete.