The Occult Significance of Excessive Physical Exercise

The magos aims at making his or her physical body a vehicle of power that will allow him or her to endure the hardships of his or her magical training. This refinement through purification and consecration, which are the results of excessive physical exercise, are necessary for one who endeavours to embody that holy fire from above within the self below, for as above, so below. How can one expand towards the heavens when one has not mastered Earth? How can one descend into the hells when one has not conquered the Earth? Elemental equilibrium is not just immaterial alchemy,  it is an act and fulfilment of the body too. Strength and vigour are prerequisites for one who faces the exceptional energeies of the pure forces of the cosmos, for one must endure or else he or she will wither away and dissolve. The Magos is, by virtue of his or her training, capable of great physical endurance and exceedingly tenacious of life, as is witnessed by the extraordinary happenings in connection with the murder of the infamous Rasputin, who resisted cyanide of potassium and bullets through the heart and brain, and had finally to be literally hacked to pieces before life was extinct.