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THEINNER GUIDEMEDITATIONA Spiritual Technologyfor the 21st CenturyEdwin C. SteinbrecherSAMUEL WEISER, INC.York Beach, Maine

First published in 1988 bySamuel Weiser, Inc.R O. Box 612York Beach, Maine 03910-0612www.weiserbooks.com08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 0015 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7Copyright 1988 Edwin C. SteinbrecherAll rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, includingphotocopy, without permission in writing from Samuel Weiser, Inc.Reviewers may quote brief passages.1st Edition: An Excerpt from "The Guide Meditation, "April, 1975,private printing, Santa Fe, N M .2nd Edition: The Guide Meditation: The Manual on Theory andTechnique, July, 1975, private printing, Santa Fe, N M .3rd Edition: The Guide Meditation, 1977, private printing, SantaFe, N M .4th Edition: The Inner Guide Meditation, 1978, Blue Feather Press,Santa Fe, NM.5th Edition: The Inner Guide Meditation: A Transformative Journeyto Enlightenment and Awareness, 1982, The Aquarian Press,London, England.Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 85-51591ISBN 0-87728-657-4BJCover illustration is a painting titled Aquarius Rising.Copyright 1988 Joe Rizzo. Used by kind permission.Printed in the United States of AmericaThe paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of theAmerican National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence ofPaper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992(R1997).

ContentsAcknowledgmentsForewordPreface to Revised Sixth EditionviiixxiPart 1: Basic ConceptsIntroductionThe ArchetypesThe TarotAstrologyProjectionActive ImaginationBecoming ConsciousThe Initial ExperimentsFalse Guides and False Guidance136891221242943Part 2: Inner Guide Meditation andthe Kundalini EffectH o w to Contact the Inner GuideWorking with Your GuideKundalini51536774Part 3: Questions and Answers93Part 4: Technical AspectsH o w to Translate a Horoscope into Tarot TermsH o w to Plug Your Relatives into Your HoroscopeThe Inner Guide Meditation and theIChing205207246252Appendix: Transiting Positions of P l u t o ,Neptune, Uranus and SaturnRecommended ReadingD . O . M . E . ServicesAbout the A u t h o rIndex259265273275277

AcknowledgmentsGhateful acknowledgment is made to Inner Traditions International, Ltd., 1 Park Street, Rochester, VT 05767; Oxford University Press, 200 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016; PrincetonUniversity Press, Princeton, NJ 08540; the Sabian Publishing Society, 2324 N o r m a n Road, Stanwood, WA 98292; and to MitchWalker/Treeroots Press, P. O. Box 684, Berkeley, CA 94704, fortheir kind permissions to utilize materials from their respectivepublications.I would also like to t h a n k all the people and groups, past andpresent, who have helped in their many and varied ways to producethis present work. Special thanks to my parents, Edwin E. andHelen S. Steinbrecher, to my God-mother, Josephine M. Siska —the real founder of D . O . M . E . —who introduced my family toastrology and metaphysics, to David Benge, Maggie Bott, StephenP, Connors, Maryanne Hastings, Michael Sean Tierney, and J o h nWoodsmall of D . O . M . E . , the Inner Guide Meditation Center, fortheir inspiration and support over the years, to Steven Hechter for.ilways appearing to help edit and advise just when I have to get anew edition out, to Leigh McCloskey, Carol H u r d Rodgers andSheila W. Ross for their beautiful artwork for this book, to Karl T.Tani for both his graphics and his tarot illustrations, and to my fiveknown Inner Guides, A m a n , George, Ta, Emily and Simon.

ForewordThe investigation of the inner world of the soul has long been thespecial province of what is known as occultism. Some forms ofreligion have also attempted much the same task —especially theEastern ones —limited, however, by some original revelation whichhampered the free reign of scientific method. It is only in relativelyrecent times that some schools of modern psychology have turnedtheir attention to that same area, and in the process of doing sodeveloped their own peculiar techniques. The latter, curiouslyenough, bear many resemblances to the more archaic methods thatare referred to as occult.The author of this little h a n d b o o k on meditation deserves anenormous amount of credit for first having approached the possibility of such methods through the medium of analytical psychology, the method of Carl G. J u n g . Since Steinbrecher was an astrologer years before becoming an analyst and, it did not take him longto perceive relationships and thus to attempt some kind of unification of these different sets of ideas and techniques. So his handbook describes an amalgam of Jung's use of creative imagination,astrology and the tarot. The author evidently knows what he isdoing, for he has evolved a viable system of self-discovery with allsorts of fascinating overtones and undertones.The book is clearly written, the technique vividly and plainlydescribed so that there is little room for misunderstanding as towhat the author means. The meditation often yields up entirely newand unexpected types of information and interpretation relative tothe meaning of the tarot, for example, and/their relation to theplanetary symbols — and in turn to the psycho-physical structure ofthe student.Steinbrecher's directions are unambiguous and should be intelligible to anybody with the least capacity for imaginative or occult

XTHE INNER GUIDE MEDITATIONwork. I am certain this book, from the very tentative first edition ofonly a few years ago to the umpteenth yet to come, will go down inoccult history as one of the most significant contributions to meditation in modern times. Edwin Steinbrecher deserves any praise andcommendation that is handed out to him, for he has labored longand patiently in this field especially to make The Inner Guide Meditation the classic that it is well on its way to becoming.Israel RegardieSedona, Arizona1983

Preface to Revised Sixth EditionIt is now eighteen years since I discovered the Inner Guides asentities specific to each person and more than ten years since thefirst edition of The Inner Guide Meditation made its appearance inthe world. My view of the meditation continues to evolve andexpand. In a time when many systems for interacting with archetypes and working on the inner planes a b o u n d , I continue to regardthe work with the Inner Guide and archetypes as the safest andmost specific way available for touching Spirit and for learning thespiritual physics that governs everything in each of our perceivedrealities. I see the book as a primer for the 21st century shaman andthe meditation as a spiritual technology for a technician of thesacred.A shaman is one who works with super-nature, that which isbeyond, but which interacts with and affects the physical plane.The shaman of today no longer requires the rigid doctrines andoutdated traditions of other ages and times. The shaman is free —wherever he or she resides—to discover, test and develop his or herown unique spiritual path by working with personal Inner Guides.And the developed shaman, perhaps evolving into priest or priestess, is urgently needed for this post-Christian spiritual era we findourselves in. Exclusive religious forms and bibles interpreted dogmatically have had their day. The time for outer gurus and hierarchical spiritual structures is done. We have left the influence of theautocratic Fish of the first phase of our Piscean Age, and we nowcan flow with the friendly Fish of the second phase.Revisions and additions to this work will necessarily continueuntil my death, since the wisdom given by interaction with thearchetypes and the knowledge others bring from their own innerexperiences continue the revelatory process. I feel like a m a n polishing a gem to enable it to reflect and refract more Light.

xiiTHE INNER GUIDE MEDITATIONMay this book continue to reach and touch the lives of all ofyou who have asked for a way to journey within to your ownspiritual sources. Blessed be your knowledge of Spirit. Sacred isyour P a t h .Edwin C. SteinbrecherD.O.M.E.The Inner Guide Meditation CenterLos Angeles, CaliforniaNovember, 1987

D.O.M.E.Dei Omnes Munda EduntAll the Gods and Goddessesbring forth the worlds

Initiators' Creed of D.O.M.E.This I know: the flow of universal energies through me and myresponse to this flow create my personal reality. Bringing myselfand these energies into harmony heals my experienced world. Theinner worlds generate the outer world, and the source of all iswithin. The Inner Guides are our teachers and advisors in ourpersonal quests for wholeness and spiritual enlightenment. Workwith these inner teachers in the Inner Guide Meditation facilitatesachievement of these goals. Each of us carries total responsibility,without blame, for the world that is individually experienced andcannot disclaim responsibility for any portion of it. Work with theInner Guide can bring this world into a state of harmony andbalance. To kill, injure or cause harm, either physical or psychological, to a fellow being injures and causes h a r m to the individualGod-flow. Expansion of individual consciousness expands the consciousness of all beings.

Turn inward for your voyage!For all your artsYou will not find the StoneIn foreign parts.AngelusSilesius,Alchemist

Part 1BASIC CONCEPTS

IntroductionTimes of great change are times of stress for both individuals andcollective groups of people. As a child during the Great Depressionand as a teenager during World War II, I was impressed by thestruggle of the people around me to find meaning and significancefor their lives, to rise above the m u n d a n e or the tragic in personalquests for Spirit. But I also saw that the tools and paths offered tothese people didn't seem to work for them in their everyday lives.Then the horror of Korea and Vietnam demonstrated that war wasobsolete, that the polarization of Good and Evil of World War IIwas done and that nothing could ever be black or white again.Everything had become some shade of grey with no one being right,no one being wrong. The late 60's and early 70's brought with thema great variety of spiritual tools and teachers. Too many of theseseemed to be a way to run away from life and problems, of separating the spiritual from daily life, instead of bringing the twotogether. I didn't want once-a-week spirituality. I wanted Spirit toinfuse my life twenty-four hours a day, every day. A n d , when mywanting was at its most intense, I discovered my Inner Guide; thenthe meditation slowly came together from different parts of my lifeand experience.The Inner Guide Meditation is the product of the mingling of anumber of spiritual and philosophical streams: astrology, tarot,alchemy, analytical psychology, qabalah and the Western MysteryTradition, which contains the Judaeo-Graeco-Christian spiritualheritage of the West. From this synthesis of potent currents comes aspiritual technology in which the Guides —humanity's lostteachers — appear, fresh, alive and waiting to serve the individualspiritual quest; to lead us t o w a r d the "Kingdom of Heaven" to befound within each of us. The Inner Guide Meditation is a transformative process that assimilates the disparate energies which exist

4THE INNER GUIDE MEDITATIONFigure 1. T h e Guides—humanity's lost teachers—appear, f r e s h , alive andwaiting to serve the individual spiritual quest; to lead us t o w a r d the Kingdom of Heaven to be f o u n d w i t h i n each of us. Engraving by Gustave Doréfrom Dante's Inferno.