Previous Gnostic Questions

What's the lesson of burning the amate figure during the invocation of the Deva Camazotz?

Answer from the V.M. Samael Aun Weor and the magazine.

This ritual symbolizes the death of the passions of the initiate's personality, in their passage from shadows to light. Through the trials of the ordeal to which candidates for initiation into the ancient mysteries were subjected, their animal soul was sometimes portrayed as a bat, because, like the bat, their soul was blind and powerless, lacking spiritual light, the sun.

Like vampires, the depraved and avaricious pounce on their prey to devour the living substances within them. And afterward, wandering lazily, they return to the shadowy caverns of the senses, where they hide from the light of day like all those who live in the shadows of ignorance, despair, and evil.

The world of ignorance is governed by fear, hatred, greed, and lust. In its shadowy caverns wander men and women who are only moved by the sway of their passions.

Only when man realizes the spiritual truths of life does he escape that subterranean, cursed cave of bats where Camazotz, who often kills with his mere presence, remains hidden, stalking his victims.

Samael Aun Weor. Excerpt from the book: The Mayan Mysteries.

Answer from the magazine "The The wisdom of the Being.".

It is the living representation of the first test we must face in life: confronting ourselves, discovering and acknowledging our errors. Few are those who are capable; it requires the courage of a jaguar warrior woman or an eagle warrior. The vast majority of us justify our flaws or evade them, but few are those who withstand the onslaught of Camazotz.

If the candidate retreats in terror, fear, tears, and anguish; A hidden door opens in the cavern, and someone points out the path of the uninitiated. He is unprepared; it requires the ability to see oneself, and he has not demonstrated this.

But if he remains unfazed, unafraid even of death, it means he is capable of seeing his own flaws—not those of others, as is our custom, but his own. Obviously, Master Camazotz doesn't even touch him; and then, to the neophyte's surprise, a door opens behind the obsidian mirror, the one that leads to the temple… The already initiated come out to welcome him, one more entering the path. A figure of the candidate, made of amate paper, is taken from the shadows and burned in his presence, symbolizing that we must burn away the dross of our personality, our vices and passions, to walk in the light.

The Magazine "The Wisdom of Being" 107: "Camazotz."