The true goal of occultism is to gain immortality through aligning yourself with Truth (which is signified in religious rituals around the world by the lamps or candles in each ceremony and on every altar). Truth is often described as elusive, hidden, & requiring a very erudite, humble attitude on the part of the seeker if they wish to uncover it & remove every internal obscuration to alignment with it. This is shown in Roman Mythology as Veritas, the daughter of Saturn and the mother of Virtue—the restrictions of objective reality birthing truth, essentially, and truth birthing all that is good. Veritas hides at the bottom of the well, signifying that truth is always there but is hidden, only for those bent on seeking it. Those who conform to the eclipsed darkness of Rahu, choosing to celebrate egoic divisions of reality, flaws and ignorance, notions of ultimate subjectivity, become like Narcissus and worship the ego as God-- too busy withering away, staring at their own reflection to ever embark on the challenge of stripping away one's ego to truly find her. Truth is unchanging and eternal; it is never new, and exists outside of time. It always is, always was, and it always will be. Through being very meticulous and avoiding behavior that we know in our hearts goes against truth, we can literally attach ourselves to the eternal and the unchanging, rendering ourselves immortal along with it. To the Egyptians, Truth was the Goddess Maat, who judged the hearts of humanity to see if they lived in accordance of truth. This was described as her weighing the heart which, if it was as light as a feather, allowed the soul to continue on its quest towards genuine pursuit of this alignment, and eventually attain salvation. If a person's heart was heavy due to him or her committing an egoic transgression that caused them to fall out of line with truth, their heart was fed to Ammit, the devourer of the dead, giving them what is known in occultism as "the second death". The second death is the death of the soul and the soul's opportunity to continue on its quest of becoming immortal in any future life times.
Among the Nakshatras, Mula corresponds to Ammit, with the ruling goddess Nritti, who is described as being the consumer of the sacrificial husks, or the dead. Mula, being our root and our own connection to truth, judges all those who commit any actions that they know are incorrect and that went against their own foundational connection to truth, which was allowing them to continue to reincarnate and strive for self-realization. Although Mula is a nakshatra that many people fear due to these unpalatable aspects of consumption/digestion of the unworthy back into soil for potential for better things to manifest, its greatest virtue is that it keeps one in line with truth if you understand and study your own foundational connection to the Unus Mundus, that is represented in your natal chart by your Ketu. In a 12-week section of my female path course, I describe deeper methods on how to align yourself regularly with your Ketu, which allows hidden mysteries to surface & removes your possibility of committing actions that go against your own Dharma and foundation, built up in previous incarnations through your spiritual momentum or Karma. One of the major secrets of interpretation of the Egyptian Book of the Dead and the weighing of the heart is that it occurs every day in our own lives, & not just when we physically die. Every day we can commit the actions bringing us closer to truth, or sever ourselves from it eternally. The idea of an "Esoteric Ordeal" is linked to the very real possibility that it is possible to "die" spirituality while you are physically alive, from losing connection to your spiritual foundation, thus making you one of the "living dead" or zombies, in that you have no Solar element or connection to the eternal light within you (the candle on the altar goes out), due to your severance from truth in the hall of judgement, thus rendering you spiritually "dead" (the worst of all deaths, and the death that Mula represents). This emphasis on the importance of light, which is produced from the Sun among the celestial bodies, is why Jyotish is the "science of light" (conquering Rahu through utilizing it correctly to shed light [Sun] on the absolute truth of reality and its cosmic patterns), and why Thelema is often described as a "solar-phallic" in nature.
In regards to the transition to "zombie", It is our connection to truth that we must always maintain a scrupulous adherence to, or else we open ourselves to punishment and retribution for betraying our Dharma or path. In Haiti, for example, there exists secret societies who inflict punishment on those who commit crimes or wrong doings by turning the wrong doer into a “zombie astral”. This is done by approaching the “First Ancestor” known as Papa Ghede, who is similar to Yama (in India), in that he is a God of death and punishment, keeping tally over one's good or bad deeds. With his permission, the individual who committed the crime is turned into a living ghost that then goes on to serve the sorcerer who “took their soul”. This method of inflicting punishment on criminals is common in West African culture and had a big presence in the New World after the slave trade. This is by no means a subject that is foreign to our own Western culture, however, as we ourselves have stories of Mk Ultra and celebrity mind control at the hands of a shadowy elite. In Tantra, the method of turning someone into a slave or zombie is known as Vashikaran, thus we can clearly see that this form of magic and punishment is found in many different cultures around the world and should be taken seriously.