Since these proficients are still at a very low stage of progress, and follow their own nature closely in the intercourse and dealings which they have with God, because the gold of their spirit is not yet purified and refined, they still think of God as little children, and speak of God as little children, and feel and experience God as little children, even as Saint Paul says, because they have not reached perfection, which is the union of the soul with God. In the state of union, however, they will work great things in the spirit, even as grown men, and their works and faculties will then be Divine rather than human, as will afterwards be said. To this end God is pleased to strip them of this old man and clothe them with the new man, who is created according to God, as the Apostle says, in the newness of sense. He strips their faculties, affections and feelings, both spiritual and sensual, both outward and inward, leaving the understanding dark, the will dry, the memory empty and the affections in the deepest affliction, bitterness and constraint, taking from the soul the pleasure and experience of spiritual blessings which it had aforetime, in order to make of this privation one of the principles which are requisite in the spirit so that there may be introduced into it and united with it the spiritual form of the spirit, which is the union of love. All this the Lord works in the soul by means of a pure and dark contemplation, as the soul explains in the first stanza.

As a result of this, the soul feels itself to be perishing and melting away, in the presence and sight of its miseries, in a cruel spiritual death, even as if it had been swallowed by a beast and felt itself being devoured in the darkness of its belly, suffering such anguish as was endured by Jonas in the belly of that beast of the sea. For in this sepulchre of dark death it must needs abide until the spiritual resurrection which it hopes for.

This was also described by Job, who had had experience and, in these words: 'I, who was wont to be wealthy and rich, am suddenly undone and broken to pieces; He hath taken me by my neck; He hath broken me and set me up for His mark to wound me; He hath compassed me round about with His lances; He hath wounded all my loins; He hath not spared; He hath poured out my bowels on the earth; He hath broken me with wound upon wound; He hath assailed me as a strong giant; I have sewed sackcloth upon my skin and have covered my flesh with ashes; my face is become swollen with weeping and mine eyes are blinded.'

But there is another thing here that afflicts and distresses the soul greatly, which is that, as this dark night has hindered its faculties and affections in this way, it is unable to raise its affection or its mind to God, neither can it pray to Him, thinking, as Jeremias thought concerning himself, that God has set a cloud before it through which its prayer cannot pass. For it is this that is meant by that which is said in the passage referred to, namely: 'He hath shut and enclosed my paths with square stones.' And if it sometimes prays it does so with such lack of strength and of sweetness that it thinks that God neither hears it nor pays heed to it, as this Prophet likewise declares in the same passage, saying: 'When I cry and entreat, He hath shut out my prayer.' In truth this is no time for the soul to speak with God; it should rather put its mouth in the dust, as Jeremias says, so that perchance there may come to it some present hope, and it may endure its purgation with patience. It is God who is passively working here in the soul; wherefore the soul can do nothing.

Until the Lord shall have completely purged it after the manner that He wills, no means or remedy is of any service or profit for the relief of its affliction; the more so because the soul is as powerless in this case as one who has been imprisoned in a dark dungeon, and is bound hand and foot, and can neither move nor see, nor feel any favour whether from above or from below, until the spirit is humbled, softened and purified, and grows so keen and delicate and pure that it can become one with the Spirit of God, according to the degree of union of love which His mercy is pleased to grant it; in proportion to this the purgation is of greater or less severity and of greater or less duration.

Inasmuch as not only is the understanding here purged of its light, and the will of its affections, but the memory is also purged of meditation and knowledge, it is well that it be likewise annihilated with respect to all these things, so that that which David says of himself in this purgation may by fulfilled, namely: 'I was annihilated and I knew not.' For, in order that the soul may be divinely prepared and tempered with its faculties for the Divine union of love, it would be well for it to be first of all absorbed, with all its faculties, in this Divine and dark spiritual light of contemplation, and thus to be withdrawn from all the affections and apprehensions of the creatures, which condition ordinarily continues in proportion to its intensity. And thus, the simpler and the purer is this Divine light in its assault upon the soul, the more does it darken it, void it and annihilate it according to its particular apprehensions and affections, with regard both to things above and to things below.

And this is the characteristic of the spirit that is purged and annihilated with respect to all particular affections and objects of the understanding, that in this state wherein it has pleasure in nothing and understands nothing in particular, but dwells in its emptiness, darkness and obscurity, it is fully prepared to embrace everything to the end that those words of Saint Paul may be fulfilled in it: Nihil habentes, et omnia possidentes. For such poverty of spirit as this would deserve such happiness.

-- Dark Night of the Soul, by St. John of the Cross

Man is not an end, but a bridge between the animal kingdom and the Super-man. He may attain the condition of Super-man by a process of "self-upraising" (Selbstaufhebung); by an intensity of suffering so great that it leads at last to optimism. The first step is that which his disciples had already taken: intense disgust of themselves, leading them to pessimism or asceticism. Zarathustra tells them that they have not suffered enough. "For ye suffer on account of what ye are; ye have not yet suffered on account of what Man is." Only by attaining this supreme degree of pain and disgust can they develop sufficient energy to cross the last gulf which separates them from the state of Super-man.

-- Nietzsche and Madame Blavatsky: Their Doctrines Stated and Compared, by Theosophical Quarterly Magazine 1909-1912

Whoever says evil of the gnostic in reality says good of the gnostic; for the gnostic shies away from that quality, blame for which might settle on him. The gnostic is the enemy of that quality; hence, he who speaks evil of that quality speaks evil of the enemy of the gnostic and praises the gnostic; for the gnostic shies away from such a blameworthy thing, and he who shies away from the blameworthy is himself praiseworthy. Things become clear through their opposites.' Hence the gnostic knows that the critic is not really his enemy and his dispraiser.

-- Discourses of Rumi, translated by A. J. Arberry

With the Semite, that stooping man meant the fall of Spirit into matter, and that fall and degradation were apotheosized by him with the result of dragging Deity down to the level of man.... The Aryan views of the symbolism were those of the whole Pagan world; the Semite interpretations emanated from all were pre-eminently those of a small tribe, thus marking its national features and the idiosyncratic defects that characterize many of the Jews to this day -- gross realism, selfishness, and sensuality.

-- The Secret Doctrine -- The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy, by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

The construction of history sketched by Augustine of Hippo is a relevant model for understanding the framework of thought of Theology of History, if only for the historical reason that this model factually dominated the whole Catholic conception of history down to the late Middle Ages. His major work The City of God can be considered the elaboration par excellence, though in a rudimentary way, of a Christian theology of history....Augustine is considered a founding father of Christianity as a whole. He developed his thought around 400 AD, nearly 700 years before the definitive schism between the Western and the Eastern Church (1054), and thus his work goes beyond the later divergence between them....

The theological model of history elaborated by Augustine is determined by the ontological distinction between, on the one hand, the immanent level of the temporary, mutable, and incomplete human world, and, on the other, the transcendent level of God, who rests in eternity, immutability and plenitude. This dichotomy is articulated in Augustine's metaphor of the two Realms or Cities [civitates], the Earthly City and the Heavenly City. Only the Earthly City is subject to change, which is seen as a negative characteristic, as instability, fragility and imperfection. This is opposed to the perfection of the Heavenly City or City of God. The secular world as such and profane history do not have an immediate meaning, whereas the religious world of the Christian church occupies the foreground. More fundamentally, the emphasis does not lie on history as such but on the transcendent and thus extra-historical foundations of history, namely on its cause and goal in eternity....

The distinction between two realms is supported by the attribution of different characteristics to time.... The perception of the past is dominated by the figure of Christ, whose life and death is commemorated in the liturgy....The present is a decisive moment of choice in favour of God in the act of faith professed by Christians during the liturgy and prayer....It is the dimension of the future that is of central concern however, since salvation is at stake. This view of the future is eschatological in the sense that it refers to a set of views that has been revealed by God about the last events of history [from the Greek eskhaton]. A properly apocalyptic eschatology is more specific and refers to the belief that these last events are to some extent imminent. Apocalyptic eschatology, of which Augustine is a prominent example, contains a mainly catastrophic, deterministic, and dualistic view of history. It is catastrophic in the sense that it refers to radical events that are violent, cruel and punishing. It is deterministic because the future is already established. Finally, it is dualistic because the absolute god and absolute evil are depicted in the sense that there is no grey or neutral zone, no ambiguity. Apocalyptic eschatology is perhaps more current in Orthodox Russia than in Catholic Western Europe.

-- History, Sofia and the Russian Nation, A Reassessment of Vladimir Solov'ev's Views on History and His Social Committment, by Manon de Courten

If, therefore, the salamander lives in fire, as naturalists have recorded, and if certain famous mountains of Sicily have been continually on fire from the remotest antiquity until now, and yet remain entire, these are sufficiently convincing examples that everything which burns is not consumed. As the soul too, is a proof that not everything which can suffer pain can also die, why then do they yet demand that we produce real examples to prove that it is not incredible that the bodies of men condemned to everlasting punishment may retain their soul in the fire, may burn without being consumed, and may suffer without perishing? For suitable properties will be communicated to the substance of the flesh by Him who has endowed the things we see with so marvellous and diverse properties, that their very multitude prevents our wonder.

-- St. Augustin's City of God

In fashion then as of a snow-white rose
Displayed itself to me the saintly host,
Whom Christ in his own blood had made his bride...
I through the Rose go down from leaf to leaf. ...
... the great John,
Who, ever holy, desert and martyrdom
Endured, and afterwards two years in Hell.
And under him thus to divide were chosen
Francis, and Benedict, and Augustine.

-- The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It was the year when they finally immanentized the Eschaton.

-- The Illuminatus! Trilogy, by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson

I will make a song for these States that no one State may under any circumstances be subjected to another State,
And I will make a song that there shall be comity by day and by
night between all the States, and between any two of them,
And I will make a song for the ears of the President, full of weapons with menacing points,
And behind the weapons countless dissatisfied faces;
And a song make I of the One form'd out of all,
The fang'd and glittering One whose head is over all,
Resolute warlike One including and over all,
(However high the head of any else that head is over all.)

***

Omnes! omnes! let others ignore what they may,
I make the poem of evil also, I commemorate that part also,
I am myself just as much evil as good, and my nation is—and I say there is in fact no evil,
(Or if there is I say it is just as important to you, to the land or to me, as any thing else.)

I too, following many and follow'd by many, inaugurate a religion, I descend into the arena,
(It may be I am destin'd to utter the loudest cries there, the winner's pealing shouts,
Who knows? they may rise from me yet, and soar above every thing.)

Each is not for its own sake,
I say the whole earth and all the stars in the sky are for religion's sake.

I say no man has ever yet been half devout enough,
None has ever yet adored or worship'd half enough,
None has begun to think how divine he himself is, and how certain the future is.

I say that the real and permanent grandeur of these States must be their religion,
Otherwise there is just no real and permanent grandeur;
(Nor character nor life worthy the name without religion,
Nor land nor man or woman without religion.)

***

I do not despise you priests, all time, the world over,
My faith is the greatest of faiths and the least of faiths,
Enclosing worship ancient and modern and all between ancient and modern,
Believing I shall come again upon the earth after five thousand years,
Waiting responses from oracles, honoring the gods, saluting the sun,
Making a fetich of the first rock or stump, powowing with sticks in the circle of obis,
Helping the llama or brahmin as he trims the lamps of the idols,
Dancing yet through the streets in a phallic procession, rapt and austere in the woods a gymnosophist,
Drinking mead from the skull-cap, to Shastas and Vedas admirant, minding the Koran,
Walking the teokallis, spotted with gore from the stone and knife, beating the serpent-skin drum,
Accepting the Gospels, accepting him that was crucified, knowing assuredly that he is divine,
To the mass kneeling or the puritan's prayer rising, or sitting patiently in a pew,
Ranting and frothing in my insane crisis, or waiting dead-like till my spirit arouses me,
Looking forth on pavement and land, or outside of pavement and land,
Belonging to the winders of the circuit of circuits.

***

From my own voice resonant, singing the phallus,
Singing the song of procreation,
Singing the need of superb children and therein superb grown people,
Singing the muscular urge and the blending.

***

O the orator's joys!
To inflate the chest, to roll the thunder of the voice out from the ribs and throat,
To make the people rage, weep, hate, desire, with yourself,
To lead America—to quell America with a great tongue.

-- Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman

Statistics: Posted by admin — Fri Sep 25, 2015 8:32 pm

The vibration sweeps along, touching with its swift wing the whole universe and the germ that dwelleth in darkness.

-- The Secret Doctrine -- The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy, by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

[Priest] Listen to his epitaph:



"Here lies Gaius Pompeius Trimalchio. A pious, strong, and faithful patron who came from nothing ... he left 30 million sesterces and never listened to a philosopher. And the same be for you!

[Trimalchio] Act like you're guests at my funeral banquet.



Eat, drink, and remember me. Call the musicians, and have them play something pretty. Farewell ... farewell ... There ...



I'm dead.

-- Satyricon, directed by Federico Fellini

Statistics: Posted by admin — Fri Sep 25, 2015 7:54 pm

Potent Quote:

The major missions he and Delta Force undertook were often performed in conjunction with the CIA. It was an uneasy relationship between Delta and the Agency. Increasingly the Agency came to view Delta as its paramilitary arm, a role Delta did not relish. Freedman and the men of Delta knew they could rely on each other. The Agency, on the other hand, had demonstrated a propensity to distance itself from anything that could go awry and seemed to be planning escape routes from responsibility even before operations commenced. "They'll have you crawl way out on a limb and then saw off the branch," said one former Delta Force leader. "They've done it many times."

-- The Book of Honor -- The Secret Lives and Deaths of CIA Operatives, by Ted Gup

"Allegiance to the void implies denial of its Voidness
The more you talk about it, the more you think about it,
the further from it you go.
Stop talking, stop thinking, and there is nothing you will not
understand.
Return to the root and you will find the meaning
Pursue the light, and you lose its source.
Look inward and in a flash you will conquer the apparent and
the void.
All come from mistaken views
There is no need to seek truth, only stop having views." -- Seng T'san

"A student once asked Joshu:
'If I haven't anything in my mind, what shall I do'"
Joshu replied: 'Throw it out.'
'But if I haven't anything how can I throw it out?' the student continued,
Said Joshu, 'Well, then, carry it out'." -- Reps

"Cease to seek after God as without thee
And the universe and things similar to these.
Seek him from out of thyself and learn who it is
Who once and for all appropriateth all in thee
Unto Himself.

And say, My God, My Mind, My Reason, My Soul, My Body, and learn whence is Sorrow and Joy and Love and Hate, and waking though one would not, and sleeping though one would not, and falling in love though one would not. And if thou shouldst closely investigate these things, thou wilt find Him in thyself, one and many, just as the atom, Thus finding, from thyself, a way out of thyself." -- Manoimus the Heretic

Potent Quote:

A million or a zillion years
In future, you agree,
People could be that damn smart
And know what they can see.
But not today,
And no way me --
Don't try to take me there,
I need belief,
A life of grief.
There's not much I can say.
You clutch your idols,
Worn with care,
You urge me to be kind,
You can't depart your fixed ideas,
Your mind, my God,
Your mind.

American Buddha, by Charles Carreon

I know
that I know
and that I don't know.
But I forget.

I see that I am blind
and I see the blinding light
in everything
but I forget

I see what I know
I think
1 know what I see,
But sometimes
I forget.

And This is the Way
It should be.
At the end of every forget
I remember -- Lonny Brown

It was the great calamity of our people that drove us to the struggle, brought us together, and left us greater. Those who do not understand, have not experienced the same calamities among their people. These things appear enigmatic and mysterious, that hundreds of thousands would be led to assemble amidst calamity and passion. Others cannot understand that this is not an order of the State! They are deceiving themselves! The State does not order us! We order the State! The State did not create us! Rather we created our own State! No, the movement lives, and it is grounded hard and fast. And as long as one of us can draw a breath, he will give his strengths to the movement, just as it was in yesteryear. Then drum will join drum, flag will join flag, group will join group. Gau to Gau, and after that, this earlier divided people, will follow these sacred columns of the Nation. It would be an outrage if we were to lose what we have fought for with so much labor, so much worry, so much sacrifice, and so many privations. One cannot live faithfully and give up what has given meaning and purpose to one's entire life. That would not be so if it were not a cardinal command. And no earthly power gave us that command. For the God, our God, who created our people, gave us that command! So it is our vow this evening that each hour, on every day to think only of Germany, of the People and Reich, and of our German nation! To the German people! Hail Victory! Hail Victory!

-- Triumph of the Will, directed by Leni Riefenstahl

Statistics: Posted by admin — Fri Sep 25, 2015 7:46 pm

http://rapeutation.com/beherenowram.13r_small.gif
Spades at ease!

One People! One Leader! One Reich! Germany! Today we work together in the swamp. We work in the swamp. And in the sand. We dam the North Sea. We plant trees. We build roads from town to town, and city to city. We provide the farmer with new soil, forests and fields, land and bread, for Germany. We didn't stand in the trenches. Nor were we under the shell fire of grenades, and still we are soldiers. Sharpen the hammers, axes, pick axes and spades! We are the Reich's young manhood!

My Labor Service Men. You represent a great idea, and we know that for millions of our national comrades, physical labor will no longer be a divisive concept. But it will instead bind us together and, furthermore no longer will it be the case in Germany that physical labor will be seen as anything less than any other work. The whole nation passes through your school. The time will come when no German can be admitted into the community of the people until he has first become a member of your group.

-- Triumph of the Will, directed by Leni Riefenstahl

March past of farmers in traditional costume and presentation of the harvest to Hitler

-- Triumph of the Will, directed by Leni Riefenstahl

HARI KRISHNA, HARI KRISHNA, KRISHNA, KRISHNA
HARI HARI ... HARI RAMA, HARI RAMA, RAMA, RAMA
HARI HARI

Samuel Lewis (October 18, 1896–January 15, 1971) was an American mystic and dance teacher who founded the Dances of Universal Peace movement. He was also known under his Sufi name Sufi Ahmed Murad Chisti and was addressed by his mureeds and others as Murshid. This is an arabic word that means, "Exalted Teacher." He was popularly known as Sufi Sam.

Lewis was born to Jewish parents. Lewis' father Jacob Lewis was a vice president of the Levi Strauss jeans manufacturing company. His mother was Harriett Rosenthal, the daughter of Lenore Rothschild of the international banking family.

To his parents' dismay Lewis showed a keen interest in religion and spirituality from an early age and later rejected their attempts at as business career for him. Lewis studied mathematics at Columbia University in 1916.

In 1919 Lewis entered a Sufi community in Fairfax, California where he met and was influenced by the teachings of Hazrat Inayat Khan an Indian Sufi teacher and musician . A year later he began Zen study with Sogaku Shaku, a disciple of the Rinzai Zen Buddhist Abbot Soyen Shaku. The twin spiritual influences of Sufism and Zen were to remain central throughout his life.

Lewis remained in the Fairfax Sufi community through the early 1920s. In 1926 he collaborated with Nyogen Senzaki, a Rinzai Zen Buddhist monk, in opening the first official Zen meditation hall (zendo) in San Francisco.

Lewis continued to study Sufism and Zen, as well as yoga. He developed an interest in horticulture and promoted seed exchanges internationally.

In 1956 he visited Japan, India, Pakistan and Egypt, seeking the company of other mystics and teachers. In 1966 he was ordained a "Zen-Shi" (Zen Master) by Korean Zen master Dr. Kyung-Bo Seo.

In 1967 whilst recovering from a heart attack in a hospital Lewis claimed that he heard the voice of god say, "I make you spiritual leader of the hippies." For the remainder of his life Lewis traveled around California developing and teaching the Dances of Universal Peace, which draw on all the spiritual traditions he had encountered. The movement he created continues today in a formal way as Sufi Ruhaniat International, as well as informally through the wide adoption of the Dances of Universal Peace by many other Sufi and non-Sufi groups.

-- Samuel L. Lewis, by Wikipedia

"Do nought with the body but relax
Shut firm the mouth and silent remain
Empty your mind and think of nought
Like a hollow bamboo
Rest at ease your body
Giving not nor taking
Put your mind at rest
The great way is a mind that clings to nought
Thus practicing, in time you will reach Buddhahood"

OM APWITRAH PAVITRORWA
SARVA WASTANG GATOPIWA
YEH SMARET PUNDARl
KAKSHAM SABAHYA
BHUANTARAH SUCHIH

"At first a yogi feels his mind
Is tumbling like a waterfall,
In mid course like the Ganges
It flows on slow and gentle,
In the end it is a great vast ocean
Where the lights of Son and Mother merge in One." -- Tilopa

Statistics: Posted by admin — Fri Sep 25, 2015 7:38 pm

The Universe is called, with everything in it, Maya, because all is temporary therein, from the ephemeral life of a fire-fly to that of the Sun. Compared to the eternal immutability of the One, and the changelessness of that Principle, the Universe, with its evanescent ever-changing forms, must be necessarily, in the mind of a philosopher, no better than a will-o’-the-wisp. Yet, the Universe is real enough to the conscious beings in it, which are as unreal as it is itself. Among the conceptions of Occult philosophy, the noumenal essences have more reality than their objective counterparts; it resembles therein the mediaeval Nominalists, for whom it was the Universals that were the realities.

-- The Secret Doctrine -- The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy, by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

[Captain]: The ship that was to carry slaves and precious goods to Africa will not set sail tonight.



Our master is dead. He left a strange will, sir.



Listen ...



All those named as beneficiaries in my will, except the freemen, will come into possession of all I've left behind on the condition that they rip my body to pieces and eat me in full view of everyone. I urge my friends not to reject my invitation, but to devour my body with the same enthusiasm with which they sent my soul to hell." This is impossible ...



it has to be a joke.



-- Satyricon, by Federico Fellini

Statistics: Posted by admin — Fri Sep 25, 2015 7:00 pm

THE HOLY MOMENT (Pun, there!)
["... yet it will be a training school like a holy order for political leaders." -- -- Adolph Hitler]

Waking Life, directed by Richard Linklater

ADITYA HRIDAYAM PUNYAM
SARV SHATRU BENA SHENAM

"Let It Be" -- McCartney
And That Too
TAT TWAM ASI (That thou art)

OM VISHNU OM VISHNU OM VISHNU
OM WAK (mouth) OM PRAN (nose) OM SHAKSHU
OM SROTRAM OM SHIRAH OM HRIDAYAM
OM OM OM

UTTISH THANTU SURAH SERUE YEX
GANDHARV KINNERAH PISACHA-GUHYAKASH
CHEV MAL MOOTRAM KAROMYA HAM
And a mantra for taking dope:
OM SHIVA SHANKARA
HARI HARI GANGA

OM
RAMA
HARI KRISHNA
GATE GATE PARAGATE
PARASAMGATE BODHI SWAHA
(Beyond, beyond, beyond the beyond. To thee, homage!)
OM MANI PADME HUM
(See Lama Govinda's Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism for discussion of this mantra)
OM TAT SAT
OM NAMAH SHIVAYA (To Siva, I bow)

Statistics: Posted by admin — Fri Sep 25, 2015 9:55 am

"May the longtime
sun shine 'pon you
All love surround you
and the pure light within you
Guide your way home."

-- The Incredible String Band

BRAHMAPANAM - BRAHMA HAVIRE
BRAHMAGNI - BRAHMANA HOTA
BRAHMAI - TAN - CANPABYAM
BRAHMA - KARMA - SAMADHINIAH
GURU BRAHMA - GURU VISHNU GURU
DAWVO MAHISH WARA
GURU SAKSHAT
PARAM BRAHMA TUS MA EE
SHRI GURU VEY NA MAHA
OM SHANTI SHANTI SHANTI

We see the Soul, Plato said, as men see the statue of Glaucus, recovered from the sea wherein it had lain many years -- which viewing, it was not easy, if possible, to discern what was its original nature, its limbs having been partly broken and partly worn and by defacement changed, by the action of the waves, and shells, weeds, and pebbles adhering to it, so that it more resembled some strange monster than that which it was when it left its Divine Source. Even so, he said, we see the Soul, deformed by innumerable things that have done it harm, have mutilated and defaced it. But the Mason who hath the ROYAL SECRET can also with him argue, from beholding its love of wisdom, its tendency toward association with what is divine and immortal, its larger aspirations, its struggles, though they may have ended in defeat, with the impediments and enthralments of the senses and the passions, that when it shall have been rescued from the material environments that now prove too strong for it, and be freed from the deforming and disfiguring accretions that here adhere to it, it will again be seen in its true nature, and by degrees ascend by the mystic ladder of the Spheres, to its first home and place of origin.

-- Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, by Albert Pike

Only a few emperors ...



have had a mausoleum comparable to mine.



Apenna is creating a work of art.



It will all be covered with marble ...



with a pediment over 120 feet high.



On the walls, Trimalchio's entire life.



And his ships, sails unfurled.



And his favorite puppy dog.

-- Satyricon, directed by Federico Fellini

Statistics: Posted by admin — Fri Sep 25, 2015 9:55 am

The Original Semites were the fifth and most important of the seven Atlantean Races, because in them we find the first germ of the corrective quality of Thought. Therefore the Original Semitic Race become the "seed race" for the seven races of the present Aryan Epoch....

The Original Semites regulated their desires to some extent by the mind, and instead of mere desires, came cunning and craftiness -- the means by which those people sought to attain their selfish ends. Though they were a very turbulent people, they learned to curb their passions to a great extent and accomplish their purposes by the use of cunning, as being more subtle and potent than mere brute strength. They were the first to discover that "brain" is superior to "brawn."...

Under the guidance of a great Entity, the Original Semitic Race was led eastward from the continent of Atlantis, over Europe, to the great waste in Central Asia which is known as the Gobi Desert. There it prepared them to be the seed of the seven Races of the Aryan Epoch, imbuing them potentially with the qualities to be evolved by their descendants....now his thoughts were to be turned from the visible Leaders, the Lords from Venus, whom he worshiped as messengers from the gods -- to the idea of the true God, the invisible Creator of the System. Man was to learn to worship and obey the commands of a God he could not see....

Fourfold also are the steps by which man climbs upward to God. First, through fear, he worships the God whom he begins to sense, sacrificing to propitiate Him, as do the fetish-worshipers. Next, he learns to look to God as the giver of all things, and hopes to receive from Him material benefits here and now. He sacrifices through avarice, expecting that the Lord will repay a hundredfold, or to escape swift punishment by plague, war, etc. Next, he is taught to worship God by prayer and the living of a good life; and that he must cultivate faith in a Heaven where he will be rewarded in the future; and to abstain from evil that he may escape a future punishment in Hell. At last he comes to a point where he can do right without any thought of reward, bribe, or punishment, but simply because "it is right to do right." He loves right for its own sake and seeks to govern his conduct thereby, regardless of present benefit or injury, or of painful results at some future time.

The Original Semites had reached the second of these steps. They were taught to worship an invisible God and to expect to be rewarded by material benefits, or punished by painful afflictions. Popular Christianity is at the third step. Esoteric Christians, and the pupils of all occult schools are trying to reach the highest step, which will be generally achieved in the Sixth Epoch, the new Galilee, when the unifying Christian religion will open the hearts of men, as their understanding is being opened now....

To transmute Cunning into Reason proved no easy task. The earlier changes in man's nature had been easily brought about. He could then be led without difficulty because he had no conscious desire, nor mind to guide him, but by the time of the Original Semites he had become cunning enough to resent limitations of his liberty and to circumvent repeatedly the measures taken to hold him in line. The task of guiding him was all the more difficult because it was necessary he should have some liberty of choice, that he might in time learn self-government. Therefore a law was enacted which decreed immediate rewards for obedience and instant punishment for disregard of its provisions. Thus was man taught, coaxed and coerced into reasoning in a limited manner that "the way of the transgressor is hard," and that he must "fear God," or the Leader who guided him.

Out of all who were chosen as "seed" for the new Race, few remained faithful. Most of them were rebellious and, so far as they were concerned, entirely frustrated the purpose of the Leader by intermarrying with the other Atlantean Races, thus bringing inferior blood into their descendants. That is what is meant in the Bible where the fact is recorded that the sons of God married the daughters of men. For that act of disobedience were they abandoned and "lost." Even the faithful died, according to the body, in the Desert of Gobi (the "Wilderness") in Central Asia, the cradle of our present Race. They reincarnated, as their own descendants of course, and thus inherited the "Promised Land," the Earth as it is now. They are the Aryan Races, in whom Reason is being evolved to perfection.

The rebellious ones who were abandoned are the Jews, of whom the great majority are still governed more by the Atlantean faculty of Cunning than by Reason. In them the race-feeling is so strong that they distinguish only two classes of people: Jews and Gentiles. They despise the other nations and are in turn despised by them for their cunning, selfishness and avarice....

Races are but an evanescent feature of evolution. Before the end of the Lemurian Epoch there was a "chosen people," different from the ordinary humanity of that time, who became the ancestors of the Atlantean Races. From the fifth race of those, another "chosen people" was drawn, from which the Aryan Races descended, of which there have been five and will be two more. Before a new Epoch is ushered in, however, there must be "a new Heaven and a new earth"; the physical features of the Earth will be changed and its density decreased. There will be one Race at the beginning of the next Epoch, but after that every thought and feeling of Race will disappear....

[E]xtra care must be taken that as few of the spirits as possible become enmeshed in the fetters of Race. This is exactly what happened to the spirits reborn in the Jewish Race-bodies. They attached themselves so firmly to the Race that they are drawn back into it in successive births. "Once a Jew, always a Jew" is their slogan. They have entirely forgotten their spiritual nature and glory in the material fact of being "Abraham's seed." Therefore they are neither "fish nor flesh." They have no part in the advancing Aryan Race and yet they are beyond those remnants of the Lemurian and Atlantean peoples which are still with us. They have become a people without a country, an anomaly among mankind.

Because of their bondage to the Race-idea, their one-time Leader was forced to abandon them, and they became "lost." That they might cease to regard themselves as separate from other peoples, other nations were stirred up against them at various times by the Leaders of humanity, and they were led captive from the country where they had settled, but in vain. They stubbornly refused to amalgamate with others. Again and again they returned in a body to their arid land. Prophets of their own Race were raised up who mercilessly rebuked them and predicted dire disaster, but without avail.

As a final effort to persuade them to cast off the fetters of Race, we have the seeming anomaly that the Leader of the coming Race, the Great Teacher Christ, appeared among the Jews. This still further shows the compassion and Wisdom of the great Beings who guide evolution. Among all the Races of the Earth, none other was "lost" in the same sense as the Jews; none other so sorely needed help. To send them a stranger, not one of their own Race, would have been manifestly useless. It was a foregone conclusion that they would have rejected him. As the great spirit known as Booker T. Washington incarnated among the Negroes, to be received by them as one of themselves, and thus enabled to enlighten them as no white man could, so the great Leaders hoped that the appearance of Christ among the Jews as one of their own might bring them to accept Him and His teachings and thus draw them out of the meshes of the Race-bodies. But sad it is to see how human prejudice can prevail. "He came unto His own and" they chose Barabbas.

The rejection of Christ by the Jews was the supreme proof of their thralldom to Race. Thenceforth all efforts to save them as a whole by giving them special prophets and teachers, were abandoned and, as the futility of exiling them in a body had been proven, they were, as a last expedient, scattered among all the nations of the earth. Despite all, however, the extreme tenacity of this people has prevailed even to the present day, the majority being yet orthodox. In America, however, there is now a slight falling away. The younger generation is commencing to marry outside the Race. In time, an increasing number of bodies, with fewer and fewer of the Race characteristics, will thus be provided for the incarnating spirits of the Jews of the past. In this manner will they be saved in spite of themselves. They become "lost" by marrying into inferior Races; they will be saved by amalgamating with those more advanced.

As the present Aryan Races are reasoning human beings, capable of profiting by past experience, the logical means of helping them is by telling them of past stages of growth and the fate that overtook the disobedient Jews. Those rebels had a written record of how their Leaders had dealt with them. It set forth how they had been chosen and rebelled; were punished; but were yet hopeful of ultimate redemption. That record may be profitably used by us, that we may learn how not to act....

The Original Semites were set apart and forbidden to marry into other tribes or peoples, but they were a stiff-necked and hard people, being yet led almost exclusively by desire and cunning, therefore they disobeyed the command. Their Bible records that the sons of God married the daughters of man -- the lower grades of their Atlantean compatriots. They thus frustrated the designs of Jehovah and were cast off, the fruit of such cross-breeding being useless as seed for the coming Race.

These cross-breeds were the progenitors of the present Jews, who now speak of "lost tribes." They know that some of the original number left them and went another way, but they do not know that those were the few who remained true. The story of the ten tribes being lost is a fable. Most of them perished, but the faithful ones survived, and from that faithful remnant have descended the present Aryan Races.

-- The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception, by Max Heindel

***

“The Seed appears and disappears continuously.” Here “Seed” stands for “the World-germ,” viewed by Science as material particles in a highly attenuated condition, but in Occult physics as “Spiritual particles,” i.e., supersensuous matter existing in a state of primeval differentiation. In theogony, every Seed is an ethereal organism, from which evolves later on a celestial being, a God.

-- The Secret Doctrine -- The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy, by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

***

Compare: bud = being born; bloom = living; fruit = dying; seed = death; the seed lies in the earth just as the dead lie in their graves.

-- The Religion of the Aryo-Germanic Folk: Esoteric and Exoteric, by Guido von List

***

But to return from the Personal, for which I have little taste at any time, and the contrary when it stands in any connection with myself -- in order to the removal of one main impediment to the spiritual resuscitation of Protestantism, it seems to me indispensable, that in freedom and unfearing faith, with that courage which cannot but flow from the inward and life-like assurance, "that neither death, nor things present nor things to come, nor heighth, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" -- (Rom. VIII. 38, 39) -- the rulers of our Churches and our teachers of theology should meditate and draw the obvious, though perhaps unpalatable, inferences from the following two or three plain truths. -- First, that Christ, "the Spirit of Truth," has promised to be with his Church even to the end. Secondly: that Christianity was described as a Tree to be raised from the Seed, so described by Him who brought the seed from Heaven and first sowed it. Lastly: that in the process of Evolution, there are in every plant growths of transitory use and duration. "The integuments of the seed, having fulfilled their destined office of protection, burst and decay. After the leaves have unfolded, the Colyledons, that had performed their functions, wither and drop off." The husk is a genuine growth of "The Staff of Life:" yet we must separate it from the grain. It is, therefore, the cowardice of faithless superstition, if we stand in greater awe of the palpable interpolations of vermin; if we shrink from the removal of excrescences that contain nothing of nobler parentage than maggots of moth or chafer. Let us cease to confound oak-apples with acorns still less, though gilded by the fashion of the day, let us mistake them for Golden Pippins or Renates.

-- On the Constitution of the Church and State, According to the Idea of Each; With Aids Toward a Right Judgment on the Late Catholic Bill, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

***

In order to promote the growth of the human person, involving both the plant and the seed, one incorporates the very principle of regeneration, which is consciousness. And this can only be done if the consciousness which one instills is freed from its earlier limitations and identifications. This is the secret of alchemy: to isolate mercury from the aggregate of the material which one is working with, the prima materia, then prevent it from volatilizing itself into thin air, fixing it by means of sulphur, in order to produce the philosopher's stone which is the catalyst of gold. Similarly, consciousness, symbolized by mercury, must be freed from its identifications when it identifies itself with its cosmic dimensions. There would be a loss of a sense of personality, in fact a disintegration not only of the plant but of the seed, unless consciousness were projected into the seed, or through the seed, and it is this new amalgamate which will act as a catalyst to transform the personality into the model of perfection, symbolized by gold.

-- Toward the One, by Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

***

Your nature when it sinned so utterly
In its own seed, out of these dignities
Even as out of Paradise was driven

-- Paradiso, from The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

***

'This world is the seedplot of the world to come.' Whatever he sows here, there he shall reap.

-- Discourses of Rumi, translated by A. J. Arberry

***

The next highest or sixth realm is the World of Virgin Spirits. Here those sparks from the divine "Flame" have their being before they commence their long pilgrimage through the five denser Worlds for the purpose of developing latent potentialities into dynamic powers. As the seed unfolds its hidden possibilities by being buried in the soil, so these virgin spirits will, in time, when they have passed through matter (the school of experience), also become divine "Flames," capable of bringing forth universes from themselves....

The Theory of Rebirth teaches that each soul is an integral part of God, enfolding all divine possibilities as the seed enfolds the plant; that by means of repeated existences in an earthly body of gradually improving quality, the latent possibilities are slowly developed into dynamic powers; that none are lost by this process, but that all mankind will ultimately attain the goal of perfection and re-union with God.

-- The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception, by Max Heindel

***

The daimons become reconciled in the one who has found himself, who is the source of all four streams, of the source-bearing earth. From his summit waters flow in all four directions. He is the sea that bears the sun; he is the mountain that carries the sun; he is the father of all four great streams; he is the cross that binds the four great daimons. He is the incorruptible seed of nothingness, which falls accidentally through space. This seed is the beginning, younger than all other beginnings, older than all endings.

-- The Red Book: Liber Novus, by C.G. Jung

***

Hence the fundamental thesis expressed in vi. 13; the stock of the people of Jehovah is imperishable, the holy seed retains its vitality through all the work of judgment. In other words, the community of God's grace in Israel can never be extinguished. Within the corrupt mass of Judah there ever remains a seed of true life, a precious remnant, the preservation of which is certain.

-- The Prophets of Israel and Their Place in History to the Close of the Eighth Century, B.C., by W. Robertson Smith, LL.D.

***

In Sap. IV.6 it is said: "Offspring of illicit intercourse are the progeny of depravity against their progenitors," and "the seed of unnatural (paranomos) nuptials ought to be eradicated" (Sap. III. 16). '"The defilement of entities, the alteration of birth (bastardization), the lack of discrimination in marriage, and the breeding of nameless idols is the cause of all evil, in the beginning and in the end," thus it is profoundly written in Sap. XIV.26. The word "entity" (= Heb. nepes, Lat. anima = Gk. psyche) certainly cannot be translated by "soul." This is because from the Talmud we know that the se'irim seek out Sodomite relationships, kelaim; and that from this imperfect nepes result. In Sap. XII.6 it is said that the forefathers of the Canaanites were helpless "souls," and that their seed has been cursed from the beginning.

-- Theozoology, or the Science of the Sodomite Apelings and the Divine Electron, by Dr. Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels

All Wisdom comes from the East; from the West we can expect nothing good; therefore, you who desire to be useful physicians, act according to the sun of true Wisdom, and not for the aggrandisement of the moonshine of self.

-- The Life of Philippus Theophrastus Bombast of Hohenheim Known by the Name of Paracelsus and the Substance of his Teachings, by Franz Hartmann, M.D.

Let us be open as the day, that we may deeper hide ourselves.

-- The Hermetic and Rosicrucian Mystery, by Arthur Edward Waite

***
Let a lover of truth make use of but a few authors, but of best note and experienced truth; let him suspect things that are quickly understood, especially in mystical names and secret operations; for truth lies hid in obscurity; nor do philosophers ever write more deceitfully than when plainly, nor ever more truly than when obscurely. The cause of this concealment among all wise men is the contempt and neglect of the secrets of wisdom by the vulgar sort, who know not how to use those things that are most excellent, or if they do conceive any worthy thing, it is altogether by chance and fortune, and they do exceedingly abuse their knowledge, to the great damage and hurt of many men, yea, even of whole societies; so that he is worse than mad that publisheth any secret, unless he conceal it from the multitude, and in such wise deliver it that even the studious and learned shall hardly understand it. Some have hidden their secrets by their modes of writing; as namely, by consonants only, so that no man can read them unless he knows the signification of the words; and this is usual among the Jews, Chaldeans, Syrians and Arabians, yea, and the Grecians too; and, therefore, there is great concealing with them, but especially with the Jews.

-- New Platonism and Alchemy, by Alexander Wilder

***

Some fifteen years ago, the writer was the first to repeat, after the Kabalists, the wise Commandments in the Esoteric Catechism. “Close thy mouth, lest thou shouldst speak of this, and thy heart, lest thou shouldst think aloud; and if thy heart has escaped thee, bring it back to its place, for such is the object of our alliance.” And again: “This is a secret which gives death: close thy mouth lest thou shouldst reveal it to the vulgar; compress thy brain lest something should escape from it and fall outside.” A few years later, a corner of the Veil of Isis had to be lifted; and now another and a larger rent is made. But old and time-honoured errors — such as become with every day more glaring and self-evident — stand arrayed in battle-order now, as they did then. Marshalled by blind conservatism, conceit and prejudice, they are constantly on the watch, ready to strangle every truth, which, awakening from its age-long sleep, happens to knock for admission. Such has been the case ever since man became an animal. That this proves in every case moral death to the revealers, who bring to light any of these old, old truths, is as certain as that it gives life and regeneration to those who are fit to profit even by the little that is now revealed to them.

-- The Secret Doctrine -- The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy, by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

"But that which especially distinguishes the Brotherhood is their marvellous knowledge of the resources of the medical art. They work not by charms but by simples." (MS. Account of the Origin and Attributes of the True Rosicrucians.)

-- Isis Unveiled, by Helena P. Blavatsky

***

The body of a man is his house; the architect who builds it is the astral world. The carpenters are at one time Jupiter, at another Venus; at one time Taurus, at another Orion. Man is a sun and a moon and a heaven filled with stars; the world is a man, and the light of the sun and the stars is his body; the ethereal body cannot be grasped, and yet it is substantial, because substance means existence, and without substance nothing exists. If the life of the sun did not act in the world, nothing would grow. The human body is vapour materialised by sunshine mixed with the life of the stars.

-- The Life of Philippus Theophrastus Bombast of Hohenheim Known by the Name of Paracelsus and the Substance of his Teachings, by Franz Hartmann, M.D.

For all practical purposes, the microcosm, our own individual world, is the only world we are condemning or denouncing, in fact, is the only world we have the slightest business to condemn or denounce...let us consider whether we have the power to judge, not the world as a whole, but any other individual whatsoever, in the world beside ourselves...we are always dealing with ourselves and our inseparable shadows, not with a foreign world....the whole point is this: that our own state of mind for the time being is strong enough to tinge the whole of the world with its colours....Bear constantly in view this fact, then, that the world we are judging is our own individual world...I want to make it quite clear that I am not taking up the cudgels in defence of that terrible bugbear "Idealism," nor doing battle with what the Philosophy of Common Sense prides itself upon denominating "Realism." My sole object is to emphasise a fact which we are very apt to ignore, and which it is of the utmost importance to remember. The world we are condemning or praising is not the world at large, but the world within ourselves.

-- Ars Vivendi (Art of Living), by Arthur Lovell

***

Nothing is permanent except the one hidden absolute existence which contains in itself the noumena of all realities. The existences belonging to every plane of being, up to the highest Dhyan-Chohans, are, in degree, of the nature of shadows cast by a magic lantern on a colourless screen; but all things are relatively real, for the cogniser is also a reflection, and the things cognised are therefore as real to him as himself. Whatever reality things possess must be looked for in them before or after they have passed like a flash through the material world; but we cannot cognise any such existence directly, so long as we have sense-instruments which bring only material existence into the field of our consciousness. Whatever plane our consciousness may be acting in, both we and the things belonging to that plane are, for the time being, our only realities. As we rise in the scale of development we perceive that during the stages through which we have passed we mistook shadows for realities, and the upward progress of the Ego is a series of progressive awakenings, each advance bringing with it the idea that now, at last, we have reached “reality;” but only when we shall have reached the absolute Consciousness, and blended our own with it, shall we be free from the delusions produced by Maya.

-- The Secret Doctrine -- The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy, by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

***

Intimately connected with the sidereal body is the Evestrum. Paracelsus says in his "Philosophia ad Athenienses," "To speak of the Evestrum in its mortal and immortal aspects, we may say that everything has an Evestrum, and that it is like a shadow seen upon a wall. The Evestrum comes into existence, and grows with the body, and remains with it as long as a particle of the matter composing the latter exists. The Evestrum originates contemporaneously with the first birth of each form, and everything, whether it be visible or invisible, whether it belongs to the realm of matter or to the realm of the soul, has its Evestrum. The Evestrum indicates future events by causing visions and apparitions. Only those who are gifted with great wisdom may understand the true nature of Evestrum. The Evestrum influences the sense of sight. The Evestrum causes dreams foreshadowing future events. Whenever a child is born, there is born with him an Evestrum, which is so constituted as to be able to indicate in advance all the future acts and the events in the life of the individual to whom it belongs. If that individual is about to die, his Evestrum may indicate the approach of his death by raps or knocks, audible to all, or by some other unusual noise, by the movement of furniture, the stopping of clocks, the breaking of a picture, the fall of a mirror, or any other omen; but frequently such omens are neither recognised nor noticed, and not understood."

"The Evestrum of man is born with him, and after the death of the latter it remains in the earth-sphere, and there is still some sympathetic connection between the Evestrum and the eternal and immortal part of man, and it will indicate the state of happiness or misery in which the soul of the person to whom it belongs exists. Such Evestra are not the souls of the dead walking upon the earth, but they are the ethereal duplicates of the persons to whom they belonged, remaining until the last particle of the matter composing the physical bodies of the latter has been consumed."

"All Evestra originate in the Turba, magna, the collective activity of the universe. The Evestra prophetica proceed directly from the Turba magna, the Evestra obumbrata come into existence at the time when the forms to which they belong appear. The Evestra prophetica are the harbingers of great events that may concern the well-being of the world. If some such important event is to take place, they will be the forerunners to announce it to the world, so that the latter may be prepared for it, and a person who understands the true nature of such an Evestrum is a seer and prophet. Even the highest God has his Evestrum mysteriales by which his existence and his attributes may be recognised, by which everything good may be known, and which may illuminate every mind. All the powers of evil, from the lowest to the highest, have their Evestra mysteriales, which may predict future evil, and which shed their bad influence over the world."

"Necromantia gives its signs through the Astra, which we also call 'Evestra.' They mark the bodies of the sick and the dying with spots, showing that he will die on the third day; they mark the hands and fingers of men with yellow spots, foreshowing fortunate events. Through them the dead perform signs and wonders, such as the bleeding of a corpse in the presence of the murderer, and through their power voices are sometimes heard from out of the tombs. Noises and hauntings may thus take place in charnel-houses, and the dead appear in the clothing which they used to wear while living, and various visions be seen in mirrors, stones, water, &c. A great deal might be said about such things, but it would create fears and superstitions and other evils. This we wish to avoid, and we will therefore say no more about such things, which ought not to be publicly known" (Signat. Rer., ix.).

"There are Evestra in all things, and they are all prophesying spirits, whether the bodies to which they belong are rational or irrational, sensitive or without sensation. These Evestra teach Astronomia (natural science) to him who can understand what they say. The character of each thing may be known through its Evestrum, not by making astrological charts, calculating nativities, and composing prognostics, but by looking at it with the understanding, in the same manner as we may look at the image of an object in a mirror or at the shadow of a body on the surface of the water, or upon the earth. The Ens (the eternal cause and character of a thing) is reflected in its Evestrum, The form of the latter perishes, but the spirit remains. The number and variety of Evestra are as incalculable as that of the visible and invisible forms to which they belong. The Evestra of human beings know the thoughts of men, guide their instincts, watch over them in their sleep, warn them of dangers, and prophesy future events. The Sibyls of the past have read the future in the Evestra, and the Evestra have caused the ancient prophets to speak as it were in a dream" (Philos. ad Athenienses).

"The world of the Evestra is a world of its own, although intimately interlaced and connected with ours. It has its own peculiar states of matter and objects that may be visible or invisible to its inhabitants, and yet corresponding to a certain extent to ours. Still, it is a world constituted differently from ours, and its inhabitants can know as little about our existence as we about theirs. The firmament of the universe is fourfold in its essence, and divided into four planes. One belongs to Matter (Earth), one to Water, one to Air, and one to Fire, but the firmament in which rests the Evestrum is dispersed. The latter is not the firmament containing our visible stars, but the sphere in which the Nymphae, Undines, Salamanders, Flagae, &c., live. These beings are not dependent on our sphere of existence, but they have a firmament of their own; they have their own peculiar conditions, places of dwelling, localities, stars and planets. As there is in our world water and fire, harmonies and contrasts, visible bodies and invisible essences, likewise these beings are varied in their constitution and have their own peculiarities, for which human beings have no comprehension. But the two words intermingle and throw their shadows upon each other, and this circumstance causes delusive visions, apparitions, omens, and signs, mixing strangely with the two impressions coming from the Evestra prophetica, and only an intelligence illuminated by wisdom can distinguish the true from the false.

"The first thing, however, which we ought to do is, as Christ says, to seek for the Kingdom of God and His justice. If we do this we will require no prophecies, because all that we need will be given to us" (De Arte Praesaga).

-- The Life of Philippus Theophrastus Bombast of Hohenheim Known by the Name of Paracelsus and the Substance of his Teachings, by Franz Hartmann, M.D.

"The clothing closet isn't open."

-- Ram Dass, "Fierce Grace"

***

The Apocalypse of St. John 3/7: "And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write: These things saith he that is holy, he that is true, he that hath the key of David, he that openeth and no man shutteth; and shutteth, and no man openeth. I know thy works: Behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it: for thou hast a little strength, and hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name." The word little is not intended here as derogatory. By it is meant the little strength of the ego into which man is compressed into one point. He who has found himself as an ego -- who is no longer dependent on blood or kindred, or the circumstances of a people or a race, he has an open door before him, he can follow the Christ. ("I am the door", says the Christ.)

-- The Pictorial Language of Hieronymus Bosch, by Clement A. Wertheim Aymes

***

No one, says [Hippolytus], can be saved without the Son: "But this is the serpent. For it is he who brought the signs of the Father down from above, and it is he who carries them back again after they have been awakened from sleep, transferring them thither from hence as substances proceeding from the Substanceless. This, they say, is [what is meant by] the saying, "I am the Door." ...

But the "spiritual men" attain their proper nature by entering in through the "true door," Jesus Makarios (the blessed), and thus obtaining knowledge of their own wholeness, i.e., of the complete man. This man, unhonoured in the world, is obviously the inner, spiritual man, who becomes conscious for those who enter in through Christ, the door to life, and are illuminated by him. Two images are blended here: the image of the "strait gate," and that of John 14: 6: "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me." They represent an integration process that is characteristic of psychological individuation.

-- Aion, by C.G. Jung

-- The Pictorial Language of Hieronymus Bosch, by Clement A. Wertheim Aymes

It has taken a long time for people to be convinced that Germania is the "womb and factory of nations." Only today, now that almost the whole world has succumbed to ape-nature -- right up to the Germanic countries which have not been fully spared either -- does the truth begin to dawn on us, that we are lacking a certain divine humanity in a general flood of ape-men. But it will not be long before a new priestly race will rise up in the land of the electron and the Holy Graal, which will play new songs on new harps, and as before, on the first feast of Pentecost, when the spirit descended in tongues of radiation on the apostles, so will the electrical swans of the gods come once more to the great Pentecost of mankind. Great princes, strong warriors, God-inspired priests, singers with eloquent tongues, and bright-eyed cosmologists will rise up out of Germany's ever-holy soil of the gods -- put the Sodomite apelings in chains, establish the Church of the Holy Spirit, of the Holy Graal anew and make the Earth into an "Island of the Blessed." The temples of the pastors and ape-dealers will collapse, the Graal-castle and the Church of John will, however, abide until Christ comes again! So let us lay off playing the harps of Sodom and play the harps of men, so that Apollo's holy swans can return and we can again become a congregation of Gods. German men, play on "human harps," love the strong loyal, Nordic woman in whom the divine electron still slumbers.

-- Theozoology, or the Science of the Sodomite Apelings and the Divine Electron, by Dr. Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels



Spirit passes into the body, and out of it, like a breath of air passing through the strings of an Æolian harp.

-- The Life of Philippus Theophrastus Bombast of Hohenheim Known by the Name of Paracelsus and the Substance of his Teachings, by Franz Hartmann, M.D.

**

It is useless to plead that the "materialized spirits" that have exhibited themselves [at circles] with beating hearts and loud voices (with or without a trumpet) are human spirits. The voices — if such sound can be termed a voice at all — of a spiritual apparition once heard can hardly be forgotten. That of a pure spirit is like the tremulous murmur of an Æolian harp echoed from a distance; the voice of a suffering, hence impure, if not utterly bad spirit, may be assimilated to a human voice issuing from an empty barrel.

-- Isis Unveiled, by Helena P. Blavatsky

***

Here is an example of the relation of colour to vibration well worthy of the attention of Occultists. Not only Adepts and advanced Chelas, but also the lower order of psychics, such as clairvoyants and psychometrists, can perceive a psychic Aura of various colours around every individual, corresponding to the temperament of the person within it. In other words, the mysterious records within the Auric Egg are not the heirloom of trained Adepts alone, but sometimes also of natural psychics. Every human passion, every thought and quality, is indicated in this Aura by corresponding colours and shades of colour, and certain of these are sensed and felt rather than perceived. The best of such psychics, as shown by Galton, can also perceive colours produced by the vibrations of musical instruments, every note suggesting a different colour. As a string vibrates and gives forth an audible note, so the nerves of the human body vibrate and thrill in correspondence with various emotions under the general impulse of the circulating vitality of Prana, thus producing undulations in the psychic Aura of the person which result in chromatic effects. The human nervous system as a whole, then, may be regarded as an AEolian Harp, responding to the impact of the vital force, which is no abstraction, but a dynamic reality, and manifests the subtlest shades of the individual character in colour phenomena. If these nerve vibrations are made intense enough and brought into vibratory relation with an astral element, the result is -- sound. How, then, can anyone doubt the relation between the microcosmic and macrocosmic forces?

-- The Esoteric Papers of Madame Blavatsky



-- The Pictorial Language of Hieronymus Bosch, by Clement A. Wertheim Aymes

This relates to the sacred Science of the Numerals: so sacred, indeed, and so important in the study of Occultism that the subject can hardly be skimmed, even in such a large work as the present. It is on the Hierarchies and correct numbers of these Beings invisible (to us) except upon very rare occasions, that the mystery of the whole Universe is built.

-- The Secret Doctrine -- The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy, by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

***

The old Roman numerals I, II, III, IIII are only Ones placed next to one another, which augment one another to a higher unity (+).

-- The Religion of the Aryo-Germanic Folk: Esoteric and Exoteric, by Guido von List

Just as pre-Cosmic Ideation is the root of all individual consciousness, so pre-Cosmic Substance is the substratum of matter in the various grades of its differentiation. Hence it will be apparent that the contrast of these two aspects of the Absolute is essential to the existence of the “Manifested Universe.” Apart from Cosmic Substance, Cosmic Ideation could not manifest as individual consciousness, since it is only through a vehicle of matter that consciousness wells up as “I am I,” a physical basis being necessary to focus a ray of the Universal Mind at a certain stage of complexity. The “Manifested Universe,” therefore, is pervaded by duality, which is, as it were, the very essence of its ex-istence as “manifestation.” But just as the opposite poles of subject and object, spirit and matter, are but aspects of the One Unity in which they are synthesized, so, in the manifested Universe, there is “that” which links spirit to matter, subject to object.

This something, at present unknown to Western speculation, is called by the occultists Fohat. It is the “bridge” by which the “Ideas” existing in the “Divine Thought” are impressed on Cosmic substance as the “laws of Nature.” Fohat is thus the dynamic energy of Cosmic Ideation; or, regarded from the other side, it is the intelligent medium, the guiding power of all manifestation, the “Thought Divine” transmitted and made manifest through the Dhyan Chohans, the Architects of the visible World. Thus from Spirit, or Cosmic Ideation, comes our consciousness; from Cosmic Substance the several vehicles in which that consciousness is individualised and attains to self, or reflective, consciousness; while Fohat, in its various manifestations, is the mysterious link between Mind and Matter, the animating principle electrifying every atom into life.

-- The Secret Doctrine -- The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy, by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

***

What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal: what is lovable in man is that he is an OVER-GOING and a DOWN-GOING. I love those that know not how to live except as down-goers, for they are the over-goers.

-- Thus Spake Zarathustra, by Friedrich Nietzsche

***

When the candidate has lived such a life for a time sufficient to establish the current of spiritual force, and is found worthy and qualified to receive esoteric instruction, he is taught certain exercises, to set the pituitary body in vibration. This vibration causes the pituitary body to impinge upon and slightly defect the nearest line of force (See diagram 17). This, in turn, impinges upon the line next to it, and so the process continues until the force of the vibration has been spent. It is similar to the way in which the striking of one note on a piano will produce a number of overtones, by setting up a vibration in the other strings which are at proper intervals of pitch.

When by the increased vibration of the pituitary body, the lines of force have been deflected sufficiently to reach the pineal gland, the object has been accomplished, the gap between these two organs has been bridged. This is the bridge between the World of Sense and the World of Desire. From the time it is built, man becomes clairvoyant and able to direct his gaze where he will. Solid objects are seen both inside and out. To him space and solidity, as hindrances to observation, have ceased to exist.

He is not yet a trained clairvoyant, but he is a clairvoyant at will, a voluntary clairvoyant. His is a very different faculty from that possessed by the medium, who is usually an involuntary clairvoyant and can see only what comes; or who has, at best, very little more than the purely negative faculty. But the person in whom this bridge is once built is always in sure touch with the inner Worlds, the connection being made and broken at his will.

-- The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception, by Max Heindel

***

The meaning of events is the way of salvation that you create. The meaning of events comes from the possibility of life in this world that you create. It is the mastery if this world and the assertion of your soul in this world. This meaning of events is the supreme meaning, that is not in events, and not in the soul, but is the God standing between events and the soul, the mediator of life, the way, the bridge and the going across....
The holy ceremony must be dissolved and become spirit. The bridge should lead out beyond humanity, inviolable, far, of the air. There is a community of spirits founded on outer signs with a solid meaning. Community with the dead is what both you and the dead need.

-- The Red Book: Liber Novus, by C.G. Jung

***

Now, mark well, in order to understand that which follows, that the upper, indigo-blue Manas is connected with the lower, green Manas by a thin line which binds the two together. This is the Antaskarana, that path or bridge of communication which serves as a link between the personal being whose physical brain is under the sway of the lower, animal mind, and the reincarnating Individuality, the spiritual Ego, Manas, Manu, the "Divine Man." This thinking Manu, therefore, alone is that which reincarnates. In truth and in nature, the two Minds, the spiritual and the physical or animal, are one, but separate at reincarnation. For, while that portion of the divine which goes to animate the personality, consciously separating itself, like a dense but pure shadow, from the divine Ego, wedges itself into the brain and senses [Now, it is in the power of the human Ego to chase away the shadows, or sins, and multiply the brightnesses, or good deeds, which make these impressions, and thus, through Antaskarana, ensure its own permanent connection, and its final reunion with the divine Ego. Remember that the latter cannot take place while there remains a single taint of the terrestrial, or of matter, in the purity of that light. of the foetus, at the completion of its seventh month, the Higher Manas does not unite itself with the child before the completion of the first seven years of its life. This detached essence, or rather the reflection or shadow of the Higher Manas, becomes, as the child grows, a distinct thinking principle in man, its chief agent being the physical brain. No wonder the materialists, who perceive only this "rational soul," or mind, will not disconnect it with the brain and matter. But occult philosophy has, ages ago, evolved the problem of mind, and discovered the duality of Manas. Look at the Plate; see the divine Ego tending with its point upwards towards Buddhi, and the human Ego gravitating downwards, immersed in matter and connected with its higher, subjective half only by the Antaskarana. As its derivation suggests, it is the connecting link during life between the two minds -- the higher consciousness of the Ego and the human intelligence of the lower mind.

-- The Esoteric Papers of Madame Blavatsky

Statistics: Posted by admin — Fri Sep 25, 2015 9:42 am

For there is no light of justice or temperance or any of the higher ideas which are precious to souls in the earthly copies of them: they are seen through a glass dimly; and there are few who, going to the images, behold in them the realities, and these only with difficulty. There was a time when with the rest of the happy band they saw beauty shining in brightness,—we philosophers following in the train of Zeus, others in company with other gods; and then we beheld the beatific vision and were initiated into a mystery which may be truly called most blessed, celebrated by us in our state of innocence, before we had any experience of evils to come, when we were admitted to the sight of apparitions innocent and simple and calm and happy, which we beheld shining in pure light, pure ourselves and not yet enshrined in that living tomb which we carry about, now that we are imprisoned in the body, like an oyster in his shell.

-- Phaedrus, by Plato

***

Then may we not say, Simmias, that if, as we are always repeating, there is an absolute beauty, and goodness, and an absolute essence of all things; and if to this, which is now discovered to have existed in our former state, we refer all our sensations, and with this compare them, finding these ideas to be pre-existent and our inborn possession—then our souls must have had a prior existence, but if not, there would be no force in the argument? There is the same proof that these ideas must have existed before we were born, as that our souls existed before we were born; and if not the ideas, then not the souls....

Then now mark the point at which I am aiming:—not only do essential opposites exclude one another, but also concrete things, which, although not in themselves opposed, contain opposites; these, I say, likewise reject the idea which is opposed to that which is contained in them, and when it approaches them they either perish or withdraw. ... Then not only do opposite ideas repel the advance of one another, but also there are other natures which repel the approach of opposites.

-- Phaedo: The Last Hours of Socrates, by Plato

***

So shall we come to look at the world with new eyes. It shall answer the endless inquiry of the intellect, -- What is truth? and of the affections, -- What is good? by yielding itself passive to the educated Will. Then shall come to pass what my poet said; `Nature is not fixed but fluid. Spirit alters, moulds, makes it. The immobility or bruteness of nature, is the absence of spirit; to pure spirit, it is fluid, it is volatile, it is obedient. Every spirit builds itself a house; and beyond its house a world; and beyond its world, a heaven. Know then, that the world exists for you. For you is the phenomenon perfect. What we are, that only can we see. All that Adam had, all that Caesar could, you have and can do. Adam called his house, heaven and earth; Caesar called his house, Rome; you perhaps call yours, a cobler's trade; a hundred acres of ploughed land; or a scholar's garret. Yet line for line and point for point, your dominion is as great as theirs, though without fine names. Build, therefore, your own world. As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportions. A correspondent revolution in things will attend the influx of the spirit. So fast will disagreeable appearances, swine, spiders, snakes, pests, madhouses, prisons, enemies, vanish; they are temporary and shall be no more seen. The sordor and filths of nature, the sun shall dry up, and the wind exhale. As when the summer comes from the south; the snow-banks melt, and the face of the earth becomes green before it, so shall the advancing spirit create its ornaments along its path, and carry with it the beauty it visits, and the song which enchants it; it shall draw beautiful faces, warm hearts, wise discourse, and heroic acts, around its way, until evil is no more seen. The kingdom of man over nature, which cometh not with observation, -- a dominion such as now is beyond his dream of God, -- he shall enter without more wonder than the blind man feels who is gradually restored to perfect sight.'

-- Nature, by Ralph Waldo Emerson

***

As regards the soul, I understand it approximately as follows: soul = A (idea); body = non-A (matter ← dyad); non (non-A) = A [solely on the basis of diairesis, without koinonia!]; that is to say: only when the body is "negated" does the soul become "pure" idea, and only man can "negate" his body (on the basis of diairesis without koinonia, which precisely allows the body to be understood as non-A, where the Non, which appears as space-time, is derived from the non-existing dyad.) In practical terms that means: one should abandon the polis, practice dialectic in the Academy, live accordingly, and one may then perhaps as a (for an instant) "pure idea" coincide (for an instant) with the One-Good.

-- On Tyranny, by Leo Strauss

***

I will obey my soul and be true to that within me that is highest. I will search within for the pure idea of right in all things, and when I find it I will express it in my outward life. I will abandon everything I have outgrown for the best I can think. I will have the highest thoughts concerning all my relationships, and my manner and action shall express these thoughts. I surrender my body to be ruled by my mind; I yield my mind to the dominion of my soul, and I give my soul to the guidance of God.

-- The Original Mysticism in American-Rosicrucian Masonic Spirituality & Metaphysics: The Secret Lodge of New Orleans, by Magus Incognito

***

The image of the world is half the world. He who possesses the world but not its image possesses only half the world, since his soul is poor and has nothing. The wealth of the soul exists in images. He who possesses the image of the world, possesses half the world, even if his humanity is poor and owns nothing. But hunger makes the soul into a beast that devours the unbearable and is poisoned by it. My friends, it is wise to nourish the soul, otherwise you will breed dragons and devils in your heart.

-- The Red Book: Liber Novus, by C.G. Jung

***

R. Judah discoursed here on the text: Then Hezekiah turned his face unto the wall and prayed unto the Lord (Is. XXXVIII, 2). He said: 'We have derived from this verse the lesson that a man in praying should stand near the wall, with nothing intervening between himself and the wall. Now the question may be asked, why does it say of Hezekiah in particular that he turned his face to the wall, and of no one else who offered prayer, though with no less devotion, as, for instance, Moses, of whom it is written that he "prayed to the Lord" (Ibid. XVII, 4), and he "cried to the Lord" (Ex. XV, 25)? The reason is as follows. Hezekiah, as tradition tells us, was at that time not married and had no children. Isaiah therefore came to him and said: "Thou shalt die and not live", i.e. as tradition explains, "thou shalt die in this world and not live in the next world". For whoever has not laboured to beget children in this world is not established in the future world, and his soul is banished thence and can nowhere find rest; and this is the punishment referred to in the Law by the words, "They shall die childless" (Lev. XX, 20). Further, the Shekinah does not rest upon him at all. Hence Hezekiah "set his face to the wall", that is to say, he made a resolution to take a wife in order that the Shekinah, which is symbolized by a wall, might rest upon him, and hence the text continues, "and he prayed unto the Lord". From here we learn that anyone who is conscious of a sin for which he means to ask forgiveness should first form a resolution to cure himself of that sin and then offer his prayer, as it is written: "Let us search and try our ways" first, and then, "turn again unto the Lord" (Lam. III, 40). So Hezekiah, recognizing his fault, set his mind to put himself right with the Shekinah, the place against which he sinned.....

R. Hizkiah discoursed on the verse: "Thine eyes did see mine imperfect substance, and in thy book they were all written, etc." (Ps. CXXXIX, 16). 'This verse', he said, 'has been frequently expounded. All the souls which came into existence when the world was created stand before God before coming down in that same form in which they afterwards appear in the world, since that bodily appearance of man which he had in this world is also found above. When this soul is about to descend into the world, it stands before God in the form which it is to assume in the world, and God adjures it to keep the precepts of the law and not to transgress them. Hence it says: "Thine eyes saw mine imperfect form" before it appeared in the world, "and in thy book they were all written", that is to say, all the souls in their forms are recorded in the book....R. Judah said: 'I have heard from R. Simeon that this verse refers to the days which were assigned to him out of the life of Adam, namely seventy years, since it has been affirmed that David had no life of his own, but Adam gave him seventy years of his life. David therefore prayed to know why it was that he had no life of his own, and continued, "Let me know how fleeting I am", that is to say, why, like the moon, I am without light of my own, unlike all those celestial lights which all have their own life. This is what David sought to know, but permission was not given to him. Observe that all celestial blessings were delivered to this grade to transmit to all creatures, and although it has no light of its own, all blessings and all joy and all goodness are contained in it and issue from it, and therefore is it called "the cup of blessing", or even simply "blessing", as it is written, "The blessing of the Lord maketh rich" (Prov. X, 22).

-- The Zohar, translated by Harry Sperling and Maurice Simon

***

Picture men dwelling in a sort of subterranean cavern with a long entrance open to the light on its entire width. Conceive them as having their legs and necks fettered from childhood, so that they remain in the same spot, able to look forward only, and prevented by the fetters from turning their heads. Picture further the light from a fire burning higher up and at a distance behind them, and between the fire and the prisoners and above them a road along which a low wall has been built, as the exhibitors of puppet shows have partitions before the men themselves, above which they show the puppets.

All that I see, he said.

See also, then, men carrying past the wall implements of all kinds that rise above the wall, and human images and shapes of animals as well, wrought in stone and wood and every material, some of these bearers presumably speaking and others silent.

A strange image you speak of, he said, and strange prisoners.

Like to us, I said. For, to begin with, tell me do you think that these men would have seen anything of themselves or of one another except the shadows cast from the fire on the wall of the cave that fronted them?

How could they, he said, if they were compelled to hold their heads unmoved through life?

And again, would not the same be true of the objects carried past them?

Surely.

If then they were able to talk to one another, do you not think that they would suppose that in naming the things that they saw they were naming the passing objects?

Necessarily.

And if their prison had an echo from the wall opposite them, when one of the passers-by uttered a sound, do you think that they would suppose anything else than the passing shadow to be the speaker?

By Zeus, I do not, said he.

Then in every way such prisoners would deem reality to be nothing else than the shadows of the artificial objects.

-- The Republic, by Plato

In its absoluteness, the One Principle under its two aspects (of Parabrahmam and Mulaprakriti) is sexless, unconditioned and eternal. Its periodical (manvantaric) emanation — or primal radiation — is also One, androgynous and phenomenally finite. When the radiation radiates in its turn, all its radiations are also androgynous, to become male and female principles in their lower aspects.

-- The Secret Doctrine -- The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy, by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

***

Today Hermaphrodites still occur among humans not all that infrequently. Today it is generally assumed that the embryo is originally bisexual. The feminine sexual organ is itself actually bisexual. This is because the clitoris is nothing other than a stunted penis. A notable phenomenon is the fact that inbreeding promotes the generation of hermaphrodites. According to the Bible, and many commentators, the man which was supposed to have been created "in the image of God" in Gen I.26 (which is not the udumu in Gen. II.7), like the "Sons of God" and the Sethites, was hermaphroditic. In all mythologies the primal god is a hermaphrodite. Thus the Egyptian Thum says: "I am the great god, who created himself." Zeus gives birth to Athene. Ymir, the Germanic primal god, generates offspring with himself. Ymir and the valkyries still live on even today among the Bavarian and Austrian people as St. Kummernis who is worshipped as a bearded half-man/half-woman. From the Koran it is clear that the angels were also thought of as hermaphrodites. (Sura XXXVII,150; XLIII,18). The angels are the Uranian-Aphrodite of the Greeks. Herodotus (I,105 and IV,67) reports concerning the Scythian hermaphrodites which everyone could see as such. Their hermaphroditism was the result of their plundering of the temple of Aphrodite-Urania in Askalon, i.e. they abducted the issuri-men from there and Sodomized them and the resulting children were hermaphrodites. Now we can also understand why the inhabitants of Sodom lusted so much after the angels which were visiting Lot. Pliny (VIII,3) emphasizes that hermaphrodites do exist, which were considered "miracles" in earlier times, but which served for the satisfaction of lust in the time of Pliny. Loki is called the "child- bearing feminine," as generally, as far as I can judge, the pure blond Germanic race has the greatest inclination to hermaphroditism. It is illustrative that the Saxon code of law [Sachsenspiegel], meant for pure-raced northern Germany contains its own legal measure concerning the "Allzuviel" (hermaphrodites). An especially unusual custom surrounding the crib of a manchild speaks further concerning the one-time existence of authentic bilateral hermaphrodites. In some regions upon the birth of a child the father has to lay down and act as if he had borne the child. Additionally it must be noted that there are really lactating men (Klaatsch Entw. d. Menscheng. 62). Among the Hebrews the child was adopted by a foster-father by him setting it on his lap and thus indicating that it has been borne by him. In an Orphic hymn it is beautifully expressed: "Zeus the First, Zeus the Last, Lord of Lightning ... Zeus was a man, Zeus was an immortal virgin."

-- Theozoology, or the Science of the Sodomite Apelings and the Divine Electron, by Dr. Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels

***

Contrary to the generally accepted idea, the Ego is bisexual. Were the Ego sexless, the body would necessarily be sexless also, for the body is but the external symbol of the indwelling spirit. The sex of the Ego does not, of course, express itself as such in the inner worlds. It manifests there as two distinct qualities -- Will and Imagination. The Will is the male power and is allied to the Sun forces; Imagination is the female power and is always linked to the Moon forces. This accounts for the imaginative trend of woman and for the special power which the Moon exercises over the female organism. When the matter of which the Earth and the Moon were afterwards formed was still a part of the Sun, the body of man-in-the-making was yet plastic, and the forces from that part which afterwards became Sun, and that part which is now Moon worked readily in all bodies, so that the man of the Hyperborean Epoch was hermaphrodite -- capable of producing another being from himself without intercourse with any other.

-- The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception, by Max Heindel

***

In the ancient theology of Greece, preserved in the Orphic Fragments, this Deity, the Ερως πρωτογονος, or first-begotten Love, is said to have been produced, together with Æther, by Time, or Eternity (Κρονος), and Necessity (Αναγχη), operating upon inert matter (Χαος). He is described as eternally begetting (αειγνητης); the Father of Night, called in later times, the lucid or splendid, (φανης), because he first appeared in splendour; of a double nature, (διφυης), as possessing the general power of creation and generation, both active and passive, both male and female.

-- A Discourse on the Worship of Priapus: And Its Connection with the Mystic Theology of the Ancients, by Richard Payne Knight

May the bright flame of our enthusiasm never be extinguished. It alone gives light and warmth to the creative art of modern political propaganda. This comes from the depths of the People, and from these depths of the people, it must always again find its roots and its strength. It may be good to possess power based on strength, but it is better to win and hold the heart of a People.

-- Triumph of the Will, directed by Leni Riefenstahl

This universal deity, being the cause of all motion, is alike the cause of creation, preservation, and destruction; which three attributes are all expressed in the mystic syllable om. To repeat this in silence, with firm devotion, and immoveable attention, is the surest means of perfection, and consequent reabsorption, since it leads to the contemplation of the Deity, in his three great characteristic attributes.

-- A Discourse on the Worship of Priapus: And Its Connection with the Mystic Theology of the Ancients, by Richard Payne Knight

When Zarathustra arrived at the nearest town which adjoineth the forest, he found many people assembled in the market-place; for it had been announced that a rope-dancer would give a performance. And Zarathustra spake thus unto the people: I TEACH YOU THE SUPERMAN. Man is something that is to be surpassed. What have ye done to surpass man? All beings hitherto have created something beyond themselves: and ye want to be the ebb of that great tide, and would rather go back to the beast than surpass man? Where is the lightning to lick you with its tongue? Where is the frenzy with which ye should be inoculated? ...



When Zarathustra had thus spoken, one of the people called out: "We have now heard enough of the rope-dancer; it is time now for us to see him!" And all the people laughed at Zarathustra. But the rope-dancer, who thought the words applied to him, began his performance. Zarathustra, however, looked at the people and wondered. Then he spake thus: Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman -- a rope over an abyss. A dangerous crossing, a dangerous wayfaring, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous trembling and halting. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal: what is lovable in man is that he is an OVER-GOING and a DOWN-GOING. I love him who scattereth golden words in advance of his deeds, and always doeth more than he promiseth: for he seeketh his own down-going.

Then, however, something happened which made every mouth mute and every eye fixed. In the meantime, of course, the rope-dancer had commenced his performance: he had come out at a little door, and was going along the rope which was stretched between two towers, so that it hung above the market-place and the people. When he was just midway across, the little door opened once more, and a gaudily-dressed fellow like a buffoon sprang out, and went rapidly after the first one. "Go on, halt-foot," cried his frightful voice, "go on, lazy-bones, interloper, sallow-face! -- lest I tickle thee with my heel! What dost thou here between the towers? In the tower is the place for thee, thou shouldst be locked up; to one better than thyself thou blockest the way!" -- And with every word he came nearer and nearer the first one. When, however, he was but a step behind, there happened the frightful thing which made every mouth mute and every eye fixed -- he uttered a yell like a devil, and jumped over the other who was in his way. The latter, however, when he thus saw his rival triumph, lost at the same time his head and his footing on the rope; he threw his pole away, and shot downwards faster than it, like an eddy of arms and legs, into the depth.



-- Thus Spake Zarathustra, by Friedrich Nietzsche

***

The boundary of the great circle of “Pass not”, called also the Dhyanipasa, the “rope of the Angels,” the “rope” that hedges off the phenomenal from the noumenal Kosmos,

-- The Secret Doctrine -- The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy, by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

***

The Distribution of Flexibility: Again following Ashby, the distribution of flexibility among the many variables of a system is a matter of very great importance. The healthy system, dreamed of above, may be compared to an acrobat on a high wire. To maintain the ongoing truth of his basic premise (“I am on the wire”), he must be free to move from one position of instability to another, i.e., certain variables such as the position of his arms and the rate of movement of his arms must have great flexibility, which he uses to maintain the stability of other more fundamental and general characteristics. If his arms are fixed or paralyzed (isolated from communication), he must fall.

-- Steps to An Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays In Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology, by Gregory Bateson

The actual condition of Man is not his primitive condition, that in which he was the image of the Word. His unruly passions have caused him to fall from his original lofty estate. But he may rise again, by following the teachings of Heavenly Wisdom, and the Angels whom God commissions to aid him in escaping from the entanglements of the body; and by fighting bravely against Evil, the existence of which God has allowed solely to furnish him with the means of exercising his free will.

-- Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, by Albert Pike

The trumpets began again to sound, which so affrighted me that I awoke, and perceived that it was onely a dream, which yet was so impressed on my imagination that I was perpetually troubled about it, and methought I was still sensible of the wounds on my feet. By all these things I well understood that God had vouchsafed me to be present at this mysterious and hidden Wedding, wherefore with childlike confidence I returned thanks to His Divine Majesty, and besought Him that He would preserve me in His fear, daily fill my heart with wisdom and understanding, and graciously conduct me to the desired end. Thereupon I prepared myself for the way, put on my white linnen coat, girded my loyns, with a blood-red ribbon bound cross-ways over my shoulder. In my hat I stuck four red roses, that I might the sooner by this token be taken notice of amongst the throng.

-- The Chymical Marriage of Christian Rosencreutz

***

I am Athene!
Fairest daughter of supremest Jove!
I am the soul of man!
That mystic bride that weds him 'pon the highest height of mind,
When all he gives in gladness, that he all might gain,
Delights he, life to lose that he might live.

-- The Fire Regained, by Sidney M. Hirsch

***

The "end of the world," i.e., of external bisexual generation, will be when man has again found the woman within himself from whom he has become separated by his descending from his spiritual state and becoming gross and material. "The Lord is not without the woman;" that means to say that the paradisaical Man (the Karana sharira) is still male and female in one; but man, having ceased to be "the Lord," and become a servant to the animal kingdom in him, has ceased to recognise the true woman in him, his heavenly bride, and seeks for the woman in that which is external to him. Therefore man cannot enter into his original state of unity and purity except by means of the celestial marriage (within his soul) such as takes place during the process of spiritual regeneration.

-- The Life of Philippus Theophrastus Bombast of Hohenheim Known by the Name of Paracelsus and the Substance of his Teachings, by Franz Hartmann, M.D.

The Pythagorean Y

The Pythagoric Letter two ways spread,
Shows the two paths in which Man's life is led.
The right hand track to sacred Virtue tends,
Though steep and rough at first, in rest it ends;
The other broad and smooth, but from its Crown
On rocks the Traveller is tumbled down.
He who to Virtue by harsh toils aspires,
Subduing pains, worth and renown acquires:
But who seeks slothful luxury, and flies,
The labor of great acts, dishonor'd dies.
-Maximinus

-- The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library, Translated by Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie

“Light,” “Flame,” “Hot,” “Cold,” “Fire,” “Heat,” “Water,” and the “water of life” are all, on our plane, the progeny; or as a modern physicist would say, the correlations of electricity. Mighty word, and a still mightier symbol! Sacred generator of a no less sacred progeny; of fire — the creator, the preserver and the destroyer; of light — the essence of our divine ancestors; of flame — the Soul of things. Electricity, the one Life at the upper rung of Being, and Astral Fluid, the Athanor of the Alchemists, at its lowest; god and devil, good and evil. . . .

-- The Secret Doctrine -- The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy, by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

***

The gods were not only living electrical receiving stations, they were also electrical power, and broadcasting stations. Electrical fish still exist, which is well-known. Strange deep-sea fish even have electric organs of illumination. Dinosaurs, which are especially to be taken into account here, are conspicuous for their apparently quite useless armor plates and spines. Obviously they served as electrical induction antennae and surfaces -- another purpose cannot be found and nature creates nothing without a purpose. The wings of the issuri could also easily have served to generate electrical power in a way very similar to a Wimhurst induction-machine. It is notable that dinosaurs had a large swelling in the spinal cord in the haunch area -- and this has to be accounted for in some way. -- Very serious investigators have recently proven the existence of a kind of radiation that is emitted from human beings (N-rays). Even magnetic forces are supposed to be active. Job V.7 expressly speaks of "lightning-men." The Devil descends like a bolt of lightning. The cherubim defend the Tree of life with blazing bolts of lightning. (Gen. III.24) The gods slumber in bestialized human bodies, but the day is coming when they will rise up again. We were electric, we will be electric, to be electric and to be divine is the same thing! By means of the electric eye primitive man was omniscient, through inner electrical power they were omnipotent.

-- Theozoology, or the Science of the Sodomite Apelings and the Divine Electron, by Dr. Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels

The virgin who first brought me the invitation, and whom I had hitherto never since seen, stepped in, and giving one blast upon her trumpet declared the sentence with a very loud voice: --

"The King's Majesty, my most gratious Lord, could from his heart wish that all here assembled had, upon his Majestie's invitation, presented themselves so qualified that they might have adorned his nuptial and joyous Feast. But since it hath otherwise pleased Almighty God, he hath not wherewith to murmur, but is forced, contrary to his inclination, to abide by the antient and laudable constitutions of this Kingdom, albeit, that his Majesty's clemency may be celebrated, the usual sentence shall be considerably lenified. He vouchsafes to the Lords and Potentates not only their lives intirely, but also freely dismisses them, courteously intreating your Lordships not to take it in evil part that you cannot be present at his Feast of Honour. Neither is your reputation hereby prejudiced, although you be rejected by this our Order, since we cannot at once do all things, and forasmuch as your Lordships have been seduced by base rascals, it shall not pass unrevenged. Furthermore, his Majesty resolveth shortly to communicate with you a Catalogue of Hereticks, or Index Expurgatorius, that you may with better judgment discern between good and evil. And because his Majesty also purposeth to rummage his library, and offer the seductive writings to Vulcan, he courteously entreats every one of you to put the same in execution with your own, whereby it is to be hoped that all evil and mischief may be remedied. And you are admonished never henceforth so inconsiderately to covet entrance hither, least the former excuse of seducers be taken from you. In fine, as the estates of the Land have still somewhat to demand of your Lordships, his Majesty hopes that no man will think it much to redeem himself with a chain, or what else he hath about him, and so, in friendly manner, depart from us.

"The others who stood not at the first, third, and fourth weight, his Majesty will not so lightly dismiss, but that they also may experience his gentleness, it is his command to strip them naked, and so send them forth. Those who in the second and fifth weight were found too light shall, besides stripping, be noted with one or more brands, according as each was lighter or heavier. They who were drawn up by the sixth or seventh shall be somewhat more gratiously dealt with, and so forward, for unto every combination there is a certain punishment ordained. They who yesterday separated themselves of their own accord shall go at liberty without blame. Finally, the convicted vagabond-cheats, who could move up none of the weights, shall be punished, in body and life, with sword, halter, water, and rods, and such execution of judgment shall be inviolably observed for an example unto others."

-- The Chymical Marriage of Christian Rosencreutz

Statistics: Posted by admin — Fri Sep 25, 2015 9:07 am

The Rosicrucian theory, that the whole universe is a musical instrument, is the Pythagorean doctrine of the music of the spheres.

-- The Secret Doctrine -- The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy, by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

***

That the harmony of the spheres is sounding here is shown by the presence of musicians and the instruments which they play (a trumpet and a drum, the two instruments which are often used to depict that a communication of a spiritual nature is taking place).

-- The Pictorial Language of Hieronymus Bosch, by Clement A. Wertheim Aymes

If spiritualists are anxious to keep strictly dogmatic in their notions of the "spirit-world," they must not set scientists to investigate their phenomena in the true experimental spirit. The attempt would most surely result in a partial re-discovery of the magic of old — that of Moses and Paracelsus. Under the deceptive beauty of some of their apparitions, they might find some day the sylphs and fair Undines of the Rosicrucians playing in the currents of psychic and odic force.

-- Isis Unveiled, by Helena P. Blavatsky

***

And she began: "Thou shouldst know,my beloved, that there exist in the elementsbeings not very unlike you men, and whoyet seldom let themselves be seen by you.The wondrous salamanders glisten and sport in the flames; the rough, malicious gnomesdwell deep in the earth; the woods arehaunted by spirits which are of the air; whilethe far-spread race of water-spirits live inlakes, and streams, and brooks; they dwelltoo in resounding crystal vaults, throughwhich heaven with its sun and stars shinesin; lofty coral plants with blue and red fruitsshine in their gardens; they wander overbright sands, and over gay, many-coloured muscles, and all that the old world possessedof beautiful which the present world is nolonger worthy to enjoy, and which the wavesconceal with their mysterious veil of silver;below still glitter noble ruins high and stately,and gently washed by loving waters whichallure forth from them delicate mosses and wreathing bulrushes. Those who dwell thereare pure and lovely to look upon, fairer thaneven mankind. Many a fisherman has hadthe good fortune to espy a mermaid as sherose up from the waters, and sang: thenwould he tell to many of her beauty; andsuch wondrous women have been called bymen Undines. Thou seest before thee anUndine, dearest."

-- Undine: A Romance, by Friedrich de la Motte Fouque

***

The Creator being both male and female, the emanations of his creative spirit, operating upon universal matter, produced subordinate ministers of both sexes, and gave, as companions to the fauns and satyrs, the nymphs of the waters, the mountains and the woods, signifying the passive productive powers of each, subdivided and diffused.

-- A Discourse on the Worship of Priapus: And Its Connection with the Mystic Theology of the Ancients, by Richard Payne Knight

The hour has now struck to ascertain whether the walls of the modern Jericho are so impregnable that no blast of the Occult trumpet is ever likely to make them crumble.

-- The Secret Doctrine -- The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy, by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

***

THERE COMES A TIME, SAYS HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN, WHEN THE GODLY SOUL CRIES, ANA'L-HAQQ, I AM THE TRUTH. WHEN YOU MAKE THE ULTIMATE AFFIRMATION, YOU ARE A KNIGHT, OR THE TRUMPET THROUGH WHICH GOD MAKES HIS PROCLAMATION

-- Toward the One, by Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

***

Assemble the priests! Gather together the peoples!
Sound upon the ram's horn! Let blare the red-voiced trumpets ...
Wind upon the cornet!
For the Oracle hath spoken!

-- The Fire Regained, by Sidney M. Hirsch

***

A shrill trumpet-call had pierced the air. It was the bulletin! Victory! It always meant victory when a trumpet-call preceded the news.

-- Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984), by George Orwell


The horn signal of spirituality.

-- The Pictorial Language of Hieronymus Bosch, by Clement A. Wertheim Aymes

***

Observe that Israel gained freedom from the side of the "Jubilee"; since it shall be thus once again in the future time, as it is written, "And it shall come to pass in that day that the great trumpet shall be blown" (Isa. XXVII, 13).

-- The Zohar, translated by Harry Sperling and Maurice Simon

That the Fall of man into generation occurred during the earliest portion of what science calls the Mesozoic times, or the age of the reptiles, is evidenced by the Bible phraseology concerning the serpent, the nature of which is explained in the Zohar. The question is not whether Eve’s incident with the tempting reptile is allegorical or textual, for no one can doubt that it is the former, but to show the antiquity of the symbolism on the very face of it, and that it was not only a Jewish but an universal idea. Now we find in the Zohar a very strange assertion, one that is calculated to provoke the reader to merry laughter by its ludicrous absurdity. It tells us that the serpent, which was used by Shamael (the supposed Satan), to seduce Eve, was a kind of flying camel. A “flying camel” is indeed too much for the most liberal-minded F.R.S. Nevertheless, the Zohar, which can hardly be expected to use the language of a Cuvier, was right in its description: for we find it called in the old Zoroastrian MSS. Aschmogh, which in the Avesta is represented as having lost after the Fall “its nature and its name,” and is described as a huge serpent with a camel’s neck.

-- The Secret Doctrine -- The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy, by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

Until now much too much mythology and much too little religious study, much too much grammar and much too little linguistic study has been undertaken to be able to recognize that the impenetrable crystal bowl around which some people uselessly circle without ever being able to open it up, will practically open itself for anyone who understands how to use as a magical key the well-known, and yet so little understood, sentence: "In the beginning was the word.''

But the apparently mystical aspects of this statement immediately disappear, and we are transported into a full state of clarity, when it is realized that, without exception, all mythological names and other kinds of mythological terms were in no way mere empty words, but rather they signified quite specific concepts, and in these very meaningful terms the key to the knowledge and understanding of the religion of our ancient ancestors is offered. Additionally, remnants of customs, sayings, tales, etc., have maintained their meaning and value only through such recognition of the force of language contained in the mythical names and terms, so that linguistic and mythic research, in a complementary way, yield a sense of the sacrality of the word in a complete vindication of the phrase: "In the beginning was the word."

-- The Religion of the Aryo-Germanic Folk: Esoteric and Exoteric, by Guido von List

***

Plato and John said, "God is Light," and if we go to one of the great observatories, and with the best telescope made, look into space, we see that there is no boundary to light. It is everywhere, and with the symbol of light there expressed there comes the idea of omnipresence and magnitude of the God we worship. John, in the first five verses of his Gospel, says: "In the beginning was the Word," and therein we have a marvelous solution of the problem, for when we go back to the beginning, we are in the realm of Truth.

At the present time we have sunk into matter, and are incapable of coming into contact with that truth directly, but when we go back in thought to the beginning of things, then we are in thought with God and more capable of recognizing the Truth. Plato spoke of a time when "there was darkness." The Old Testament tells about darkness, that state of primordial matter, or "Arche," given form by God, the Grand Architect, the primordial Builder of the universe.

When we think of the One who built things in the beginning, we come into contact with Him, with God, in that "arche" in the first sentence of the five verses we take for meditation. In the next few words we come to the second proposition: the Word. The term "Word" is mistranslated in our present Bible, for it is not only "Word," but it is also the thought, the Greek word "Logos" used in that verse meaning both the word and the logical thought back of it. Before there can be a word, there must be a logical thought back of it. Before the word could come into existence, there had to be a thinker; therefore John used the words "in arche" and "Logos." They express what we wish to understand, that in the beginning there was a homogeneous mass of matter, and in that homogeneous matter was God; and God became the "Word," the rhythmic sound that goes out in the universe, and that shapes all things.

-- The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception, by Max Heindel

***

When our Soul creates or evokes a thought, the representative sign of that thought is self-engraved upon the astral fluid, which is the receptacle and, so to say, the mirror of all the manifestations of being. The sign expresses the thing: the thing is the virtue of the sign. To pronounce a word is to evoke a thought, and make it present: the magnetic potency of the human speech is the commencement of every manifestation in the Occult World. To utter a Name is not only to define a Being, but to place it under and condemn it through the emission of the Word, to the influence of one or more Occult potencies. Things are, for every one of us, that which it makes them while naming them. The Word or the speech of every man is, quite unconsciously to himself, a blessing or a curse; this is why our present ignorance about the properties or attributes of the idea as well as about the attributes and properties of matter, is often fatal to us.

-- The Secret Doctrine -- The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy, by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

***

The Phœnician Cosmogony, like all others in Asia, was the Word of God, written in astral characters. ... "When God resolved to create the human race," said Arius, "He made a Being that He called The WORD, to the end that this Being might give existence to men." ... "In the beginning," says the extract from some older work, with which John commences his Gospel, "was the Word, and the Word was near to God, and the Word was God ... To Philo the Jew, the Supreme Being was the Primitive Light, whence the rays emanate that illuminate Souls. His Image is the WORD, a form more brilliant than fire. ...

The Degree of Rose is devoted to and symbolizes the final triumph of truth over falsehood, of liberty over slavery, of light over darkness, of life over death, and of good over evil. The great truth it inculcates is, that notwithstanding the existence of Evil, God is infinitely wise, just, and good: that though the affairs of the world proceed by no rule of right and wrong known to us in the narrowness of our views, yet all is right, for it is the work of God; and all evils, all miseries, all misfortunes, are but as drops in the vast current that is sweeping onward, guided by Him, to a great and magnificent result: that, at the appointed time, He will redeem and regenerate the world, and the Principle, the Power, and the existence of Evil will then cease; that this will be brought about by such means and instruments as He chooses to employ; whether by the merits of a Redeemer that has already appeared, or a Messiah that is yet waited for, by an incarnation of Himself, or by an inspired prophet, it does not belong to us as Masons to decide. Let each judge and believe for himself.

In the meantime, we labor to hasten the coming of that day. The morals of antiquity, of the law of Moses and of Christianity, are ours. We recognize every teacher of Morality, every Reformer, as a brother in this great work. The Eagle is to us the symbol of Liberty, the Compasses of Equality, the Pelican of Humanity, and our order of Fraternity. Laboring for these, with Faith, Hope, and Charity as our armor, we will wait with patience for the final triumph of Good and the complete manifestation of the Word of God.

-- Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, by Albert Pike

***

All that hast unlearned been by thee
Hath left a void, wherein shall rush
In thy delight, purest word,
A Name that doth the all contain! ...

Thy word ... and will of mine was banished, and my will ... thy word
Be it of holocaust or hecatombs.
Or monstrous miracles with blood of goats and blood of bulls;

-- The Fire Regained, by Sidney M. Hirsch

If one takes a book on alchemy, and sees in it the speculations on gold and light by the brothers of the Rosie Cross, he will find himself certainly startled, for the simple reason that he will not understand them at all. "The Hermetic gold," he may read, "is the outflow of the sunbeam, or of light suffused invisibly and magically into the body of the world. Light is sublimated gold, rescued magically by invisible stellar attraction, out of material depths. Gold is thus the deposit of light, which of itself generates. Light in the celestial world is subtile, vaporous, magically exalted gold, or 'spirit of flame.' Gold draws inferior natures in the metals, and intensifying and multiplying, converts into itself."

-- Isis Unveiled, by Helena P. Blavatsky

It is the writer's opinion that neither the heights of Contemplation, nor the final step of Adoration can be attained without the aid of a teacher. The aspirant need never fear, however, that for want of a teacher he will be delayed in taking these steps; nor need he be concerned about looking for a teacher. All that is necessary for him to do is start to improve himself, and to earnestly and persistently continue therein. In that way he will purify his vehicles. They will commence to shine in the inner Worlds, and cannot fail to attract the attention of the teachers, who are always watching for just such cases and are more than eager and glad to help those who, because of their earnest efforts to purify themselves, have won the right to receive help. Humanity is sorely in need of helpers who are able to work from the inner Worlds, therefore "seek and ye shall find," but let us not imagine that by going about from one professed teacher to another, we are seeking. "Seeking," in that sense of the word, will avail nothing in this dark world. We ourselves must kindle the light -- the light which invariably radiates from the vehicles of the earnest aspirant. That is the star which will lead us to the teacher, or rather the teacher to us.

-- The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception, by Max Heindel

There is something like a fire within ourselves which continually consumes our form, and if we were to add nothing to our body to supply the waste caused by that combustion, our form would soon die. We continually eat our own selves; we eat our fingers, our heart, our brain, &c.; but in each morsel of food which we eat, there is contained the material required to replace that which has been consumed by that internal fire.

-- The Life of Philippus Theophrastus Bombast of Hohenheim Known by the Name of Paracelsus and the Substance of his Teachings, by Franz Hartmann, M.D.

10. Non secretarius publicus, sed Harpocrates existens, Deoque immortali, pro bonis ac donis tantis ac tam paternis, quieto et gaudio et silentio (ne sibi ipsi periculum accersat, aliisque maleficii ansam praebeat, et propterea ira yhvh misere consumatur) gratias immortales agens. [Google translate: Secretary not the public, but existing Harpocrates, Deoque, immortal, for so great and so good and the gifts of his father's, and in silence at rest, and joy (that they had not summon the midst of danger, and other give rise to crime, and therefore is consumed with anger yhvh miserably) thanks to the immortal agent.]

-- Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae, by Heinrich Khunrath

***



Ptolemaic bronze Harpocrates as the child Horus (Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon)
In late Greek mythology as developed in Ptolemaic Alexandria, Harpocrates is the god of silence. Harpocrates was adapted by the Greeks from the Egyptian child god Horus. To the ancient Egyptians, Horus represented the new-born Sun, rising each day at dawn. When the Greeks conquered Egypt under Alexander the Great, they transformed the Egyptian Horus into their Hellenistic god known as Harpocrates, a rendering from Egyptian Har-pa-khered or Heru-pa-khered (meaning "Horus the Child").

-- Harpocrates, by Wikipedia

***


QUENTIN METSYS (also written MASSYS) 1465/6-1530: Allegory of Folly, painted about 1510-1420. New York, Coll. J. Held (Mondeken toe means keep your mouth shut!)

-- The Pictorial Language of Hieronymus Bosch, by Clement A. Wertheim Aymes

***

In the reading, the master of the class, who you are imagining, tells you that he or she has looked into the neophyte's heart while they are meditating and are satisfied with their progress. In other words, you imagine someone present, who is saying that they have inspected your inner consciousness and that you are now ready to proceed. You are then enjoined to silence, placing the index finger of the right hand over the lips....a kind of symbol of the perennial silence a Rosicrucian must keep about his work, first from the outside world and secondly from those who have not reached the appropriate degree in the order.

-- The Prisoner of San Jose: How I Escaped From Rosicrucian Mind Control, by Pierre S. Freeman

***

The lodge ritual often also included the performance of certain ceremonial grips or signs, which were a part of the Masonic heritage of the FS. The Grip of Brotherhood is done by touching the pulse-point of the other person with the tip of the index finger. The master sign is done by laying the right hand over the solar plexus with the thumb spread out from the hand. The sign of the 31° is the upraised index finger laid across the lips vertically, the 32° does the same with the index and middle fingers, and the 33° sign consists of laying the right hand with the thumb spread out across the throat.

-- Fire & Ice: The History, Structure, and Rituals of Germany's Most Influential Modern Magical Order: The Brotherhood of Saturn, by Stephen E. Flowers, Ph.D.

Nothing was happening ... I could see nothing below the kneecaps ... there was nothing in my universe ... and nothing new had happened ... there was nothing to say ... nothing seemed to happen ... he twinkles at me and nothing happens ... there was nothing ... he does nothing ... nothing turns you on ... nothing to do ... nothing's happened to any of it ... I do nothing but sadhana ... there is nothing ... can I say there is absolutely nothing ... the guru taught me nothing ... nothing to do with worldliness ... no food, no nothing ... nothing to do ... nowhere to go ... there is nothing to be ... doing nothing, that's drama ... nothing is really happening at all ... nothing ever happens ... there's nothing you've got to do ... it ain't nothing but stuff ... sine qua non (without which nothing) ... nothing has happened ... I am nothing ... nothing less than death and rebirth ... it profiteth me nothing ... our will has nothing to do with it ... there's no doer to do it anyway ... and then you're in the void ... the final place that game leads to is where you live consciousness, in all of it, which is in nothing ... stay in a place inside yourself where nothing is happening at all ... beyond that there is nothing ... moving toward Zen, reflect nothingness ... in the end this is the nut: it's all or nothing ... he goes into one-with-it-all into the void ... YOU ARE THE VOID ... then you go through the final door and you go from form into the formless into the void, into the beyond the beyond ... push far enough into the void ... and then you're in the void.

-- Be Here Now, by Ram Dass

An impenetrable veil of secrecy was thrown over the occult and religious mysteries taught, after the submersion of the last remnant of the Atlantean race, some 12,000 years ago, lest they should be shared by the unworthy, and so desecrated. Of these sciences several have now become exoteric — such as Astronomy, for instance, in its purely mathematical and physical aspect. Hence their dogmas and tenets, being all symbolised and left to the sole guardianship of parable and allegory, have been forgotten, and their meaning has become perverted. It is this secrecy which led the Fifth Race to the establishment, or rather the re-establishment of the religious mysteries, in which ancient truths might be taught to the coming generations under the veil of allegory and symbolism.

The Secret Doctrine -- The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy, by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

Oeaohoo is the “Rootless Root of All”; hence, one with Parabrahmam; in another sense it is a name for the manifested one life, the Eternal living Unity. The “Root” means, as already explained, pure knowledge, eternal unconditioned reality or sat, whether we call it Parabrahmam or Mulaprakriti, for these are the two aspects of the one.

The Secret Doctrine -- The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy, by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

Alchemy of Fire: AMORC notes how religious Christians and others came to misunderstand the symbolism of fire. The true meaning of fire is a secure secret of mystical proportions, held safely by true mystics and, of course, the Rosicrucians. The laws and principles of Rosicrucian masters, since time immemorial, have been linked with fire.

Experiment: The neophyte is asked to extinguish one candle and leave the other burning. He then must sit with his feet flat on the floor, executing four or five neutral or normal breaths. Once he is completely relaxed, he must focus on the lighted candle, taking care not to blink. He must keep this focus until he feels he has become one with the candle.

-- The Prisoner of San Jose: How I Escaped From Rosicrucian Mind Control, by Pierre S. Freeman

***

It is important to collect the reports of the ancients about apes and to examine them in greater detail. In the Bible, the ape (Heb. qop), as such only occurs in I Kings X,22 and in II Chron. IX, 21. The original Hebrew text corresponds word-for-word in both cases. Solomon receives "gold," "silver," "ivory," and apes (Heb. qopim). The Latin Bible translates the word with simiae; in contrast, the Greeks translate only II Chron IX, 21 with pithekoi, as opposed to I Kings X.22 with lithoi = "stones." It is said in the Talmud that "in dreams all animals are equivalent except the ape and the long-tailed monkey. What the Talmud says in connection with this is also noteworthy: "Whoever sees a dwarf ... an ape, or a long-tailed monkey, should say: 'Blessed is he who alters the creatures!'" -- Another Semitic word for "ape" is tamewan. This word stands for a monster in Job III,16 (IV Ezra V.8) and in the Targum (the Aramaic translation of the Bible) in Is.XIII,21 and in Is. XXXIV, 4 it translates the Heb. siim. The Greeks said theria and daimonia, the Romans used bestiae and daemonia. Both Biblical passages give accounts of hordes of apes that roved about ruined places. From this it seems clear that to the ancients a demon was an ape (or similar being).

-- Theozoology, or the Science of the Sodomite Apelings and the Divine Electron, by Dr. Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels

***

If you give up your self, you live it in others; thereby you become selfish to others, and thus you deceive others. Everyone thus believes that such a life is possible. It is, however, only apish imitation. Through giving in to your apish appetite, you infect others, because the ape stimulates the apish. So you turn yourself and others into apes. Through reciprocal imitation you live according to the average expectation. The image of the hero was set up for all in every age through the appetite for imitation. Therefore the hero was murdered, since we have all been aping him. Do you know why you cannot abandon apishness? For fear of loneliness and defeat.

-- The Red Book: Liber Novus, by C.G. Jung

Most important, the central doctrine of nazism, that the Jew was evil and had to be exterminated, had its origin in the Gnostic position that there were two worlds, one good and one evil, one dark and one light, one materialistic and one spiritual.

This sheds light on an otherwise incomprehensible recurring theme within Nazi literature, as, for example, "The Earth-Centered Jew Lacks a Soul," [Found in George Mosse's book "Nazi Culture"] by one of the chief architects of Nazi dogma, Alfred Rosenberg, who held that whereas other people believe in a Hereafter and in immortality, the Jew affirms the world and will not allow it to perish. The Gnostic secret is that the spirit is trapped in matter, and to free it, the world must be rejected. Thus, in his total lack of world-denial, the Jew is snuffing out the inner light, and preventing the millennium:

Where the idea of the immortal dwells, the longing for the journey or the withdrawal from temporality must always emerge again; hence, a denial of the world will always reappear. And this is the meaning of the non-Jewish peoples: they are the custodians of world-negation, of the idea of the Hereafter, even if they maintain it in the poorest way. Hence, one or another of them can quietly go under, but what really matters lives on in their descendants. If, however, the Jewish people were to perish, no nation would be left which would hold world-affirmation in high esteem-the end of all time would be here.

... the Jew, the only consistent and consequently the only viable yea-sayer to the world, must be found wherever other men bear in themselves ... a compulsion to overcome the world.... On the other hand, if the Jew were continually to stifle us, we would never be able to fulfill our mission, which is the salvation of the world, but would, to be frank, succumb to insanity, for pure world-affirmation, the unrestrained will for a vain existence, leads to no other goal. It would literally lead to a void, to the destruction not only of the illusory earthly world but also of the truly existent, the spiritual. Considered in himself the Jew represents nothing else but this blind will for destruction, the insanity of mankind. It is known that Jewish people are especially prone to mental disease. "Dominated by delusions," said Schopenhauer about the Jew.

... To strip the world of its soul, that and nothing else is what Judaism wants. This, however, would be tantamount to the world's destruction.

This remarkable statement, seemingly the rantings of a lunatic, expresses the Gnostic theme that the spirit of man, essentially divine, is imprisoned in an evil world. The way out of this world is through rejection of it. But the Jew alone stands in the way. Behind all the talk about "the earth-centered Jew" who "lacks a soul"; about the demonic Jew who will despoil the Aryan maiden; about the cabalistic work of the devil in Jewish finance; about the sinister revolutionary Jewish plot to take over the world and cause the decline of civilization, there is the shadow of ancient Gnosticism.

-- Gods & Beasts: The Nazis & the Occult, by Dusty Sklar

Statistics: Posted by admin — Fri Sep 25, 2015 8:56 am

In this unmerged, yet undivided union of matter and light, both preserve their nature, yet neither are visible in their separateness. What is visible is pure light-bearing matter and incarnated light: enlightened coal and petrified rainbow.

-- Vladimir Solov'ev on Spiritual Nationhood, Russia and the Jews, by Judith Deutsch Kornblatt

***

The crystal is the formed thought that reflects what is to come in what has gone before.

-- The Red Book: Liber Novus, by C.G. Jung

The ROSE was anciently sacred to Aurora and the Sun. It is a symbol of Dawn, of the resurrection of Light and the renewal of life, and therefore of the dawn of the first day, and more particularly of the resurrection.

-- Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, by Albert Pike

***

"See how the roses burn!
Bring wine to quench the fire!
Alas! the flames come up with us, --
We perish with desire."

-- Hafiz, Letters and Social Aims, by Ralph Waldo Emerson

***

"A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose."

-- Gertrude Stein, by Wikipedia

***

"The rose is beautiful and has a sweet odour as long as it remains in the form; but to manifest its medicinal qualities in the constitution of man, its form must be destroyed and its spirit enter the body of man. Only that which enters into regeneration is useful; the rest is useless. In this regeneration enters the true Sulphur, Mercury, and Salt."

-- The Life of Philippus Theophrastus Bombast of Hohenheim Known by the Name of Paracelsus and the Substance of his Teachings, by Franz Hartmann, M.D.

***

The Hermetic Rose....As that Rose out of a rude mountain, so issues from the inchoate nature of the man of earth the many-petalled flower of spiritual being: so gradually and slowly unfold our potencies -- like petals -- from within.

-- The Ancient and Primitive Rite of Memphis and Misraim, Excerpts from "A New Encyclopaedia of Freemasonry," by Arthur Edward Waite

Secundam Animam, in mentis, Deo iunctae, aut luce Diuina illuminatae, speculo: idque tam dormiendo, quam uigilando: ut testes quoque conscientiae propriae mille, ueritatem perhibentes, iuxta Legem in cordibus nostris, Diuinitus scriptam.

[Google translate: According to the soul, in the mind, grew up alongside God, or Divine light illuminated, a mirror, and that so while asleep, than uigilando: that a thousand witnesses of their own conscience also, witness the truth, according to the law in our hearts, the divinity written.]

Naturam nosce, uniuersaliter, et particulariter; ex libro sanctissimae Scripturae: Naturae ipsius, qui est, et Mundus maior, totus: et Mundus minor, hoc est homo, puta, secundum et corpus et spiritum suum: denique, aut mediate, ex angelis bonis, aut immediate, in speculo mentis tuae purgatae, ex Deo Ipso: theosophice; physice; physicomedice; physicochemice; physicomagice; hyperphysicomagice; cabalice.

[Google translate: Nature knows universally, and particularly of the Most Holy Scripture from the book: nature of Him who is, The World and greater, all: The World and less, this is a man, for example, and according to their own spirit and the body: in short, or mediately, from the angels of good, or immediately, in a mirror of your mind are cleansed, from God Him: theosophice; physically; physicomedice; physicochemice; physicomagice; hyperphysicomagice; cabalice.

-- Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae, by Heinrich Khunrath

***

Shaikh Sar-razi, God's mercy be upon him, was seated one day amongst his disciples. One of the disciples had a longing for some roasted sheep's head. The Shaikh signalled, saying, 'You must bring him some roasted sheep's head.'
'How did you know that he wanted some roasted sheep's head?' the disciples asked.
'Because it is now thirty years that no desire has remained in me,' the Shaikh answered. 'I have cleansed and purified myself of all desires and have become clear as an unscratched mirror. When the thought of roasted sheep's head entered my mind and whetted my appetite and became a desire, I knew that that belonged to our friend yonder. For the mirror is without any image of itself; if an image shows in the mirror, it is the image of another.'

-- Discourses of Rumi, translated by A. J. Arberry

***

"While we are on this earth we ought to keep our mirror in God, so as to be in every respect as a child is like its father.

-- The Life of Philippus Theophrastus Bombast of Hohenheim Known by the Name of Paracelsus and the Substance of his Teachings, by Franz Hartmann, M.D.

***

There is a transcendental set of causes put in motion in the occurrence of these phenomena, which, not being in relation to our narrow range of cognition, can only be traced to their source and their nature, and understood by the Spiritual faculties of the Adept. They are, as Asclepios puts it to the King, “incorporeal corporealities” such as “appear in the mirror."

-- The Secret Doctrine -- The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy, by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

***

But perhaps it was in the sphere of contemplation that Suhrawardi's life proved the most revealing, for here he shook to their core all our preconceived ideas about knowledge. In the first stage, in meditation, we think we are a consciousness concentrating upon an object, something tangible, objective, unaware that we are being duped by an anthropocentric mirage: For what we think we know is only a reflection of reality; this is speculative knowledge, knowledge of the mirror (speculum.) Secondly you realize that everything in the universe is to be found within you in yourself, reflected as in a mirror so that you discover that what you are contemplating is the reflection of the universe in yourself and that you are the mirror. Thirdly you realize that it is not your consciousness that is aware, but that it is only a channel of the divine consciousness and that you are only a witness of this phenomenon. Finally you understand that there is no room for another presence or subject than the one and only being; and you realize that he is the only knower. This analysis reminds one very much of Bastami.

"For thirty years God most high was my mirror, now I am my own mirror and that which I was I am no more, for "I and God" represent polytheism, a denial of his unity. Since I am no more, God most high is his own mirror. Behold now I say that God is the mirror of myself, for with my tongue he speaks and I have passed away."

-- Toward the One, by Pir Vilayat Khan

***

R. Eleazar once asked R. Simeon his father, in the presence of R. Abba: 'Why is it said here "I appeared", instead of "I spoke to Abraham, etc."?' R. Simeon replied: 'My son, this contains a deep mystery. Observe now. There are colours disclosed and undisclosed, this being a part of the mystery of Faith, but men neither know nor reflect on these matters. Observe now. There are colours disclosed and undisclosed, this being a part of the mystery of Faith, but men neither know nor reflect on these matters. The visible colours were not perceived by any human being before the Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Therefore it says "and I appeared". And what are these visible colours? Those of El Shaddai, the reflection of higher colours. But these latter are hidden, and Moses alone perceived them. The Patriarchs, however, were not entirely ignorant of them; since they apprehended those undisclosed ones through the visible ones which they already knew. It is written: "And the wise shall be resplendent as the splendour of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness shall be like the stars for ever and ever." The "wise" is he who by the power of his own contemplation attains to the perception of profound mysteries which cannot be expressed in words. The "firmament" is the "firmament of Moses" (his grade of Divine knowledge), which is set at the centre and whose splendour is veiled. This firmament is above that other which is non-resplendent and the colours of which are visible and not so bright as the invisible. There are four lights (i.e. Emanations), three of which are recondite and one disclosed. There is one which sheds light abroad (Hesed); one which shines for itself only (Geburah), being like the heavens in purity; one of purple hue which gathers light into itself (Tifereth); and one which is of itself lightless (Malkuth), but which looks up to the others and reflects them as a lamp reflects the sun. The first three are recondite and brood over the one which is disclosed. (Of all this the eye is the symbol. In the eye three colours are visible, but none of these shines, because they are non-luminous. They are the parallel of those lights which are revealed; and it was by means of these visible colours that the Patriarchs were enabled to discern the colours which are luminous but invisible -- that is, those colours of which Moses alone had cognizance, which were concealed from all others but revealed to him in that firmament to which he had attained, and which are above the visible colours.) To understand this mystery, close thine eye and press thine eyeball, and thou wilt discern radiating and luminous colours which can only be seen with closed eyes. For this reason we say that Moses was possessed of the "luminous mirror", which is above the "nonluminous", which alone is vouchsafed to others. The Patriarchs, however, were able by means of the revealed colours to conceive of those that were concealed. This is the meaning of the words, "I appeared unto Abraham, etc", namely, in those visible colours, "but by My Name YHVH was I not known to them", namely, in the supernal hidden luminous colours, which only Moses was privileged to behold. The closed eye sees the mirror of light: the open eye sees the mirror which is not luminous. Therefore in regard to the lightless mirror, the term "see" is used, because it is discernible, but in regard to the luminous mirror the term "know" is used, because it is in concealment.'

-- The Zohar, translated by Harry Sperling and Maurice Simon

The hart expresses the union of man's soul and body, while the unbound soul which is free, is regarded as a more bird-like creature, because in nature the birds are much less bound to the earth and can remain suspended in the air. The erect stag represents a stage between two situations, which is also indicated by the symbol of the chicken. The chicken is a bird but it is unable to fly, as the soul can in the supersensible realm when it is free from its body.

-- The Pictorial Language of Hieronymus Bosch, by Clement A. Wertheim Aymes

***

Man lives within the invisible world comparable to the yolk in an egg. The chicken grows from the white of the egg, which constitutes its chaos, and man is nourished by his chaos. Within man are the sun and moon, the planets and all the rest of the stars, and also the chaos.

-- The Life of Philippus Theophrastus Bombast of Hohenheim Known by the Name of Paracelsus and the Substance of his Teachings, by Franz Hartmann, M.D.

Outside this world of which we are speaking there is another world for us to seek. This world and its delights cater to the animality of man; these all feed his animality, whilst the root principle, man, goes into a decline. After all, they say, 'Man is a rational animal.' So man consists of two things. That which feeds his animality in this material world is these lusts and desires. But as for that which is his true essence, its food is knowledge and wisdom and the sight of God. The animality in man flees away from God, whilst his humanity flees away from this world.

-- Discourses of Rumi, translated by A. J. Arberry

***

All religions teach the sevenfold constitution of the body. Precise knowledge can best be obtained on this by studying the Rosicrucian lessons of Heindel.

The Immortal Part

1. Atma, the self, god in us / Sun
2. Buddhi, the heavenly soul / Moon
3. Buddhi-Manas, reason, causal body / Mercury

The Mortal Part

4. Kama-Manas, intellect / Venus
5. Kama-body (astral body), desire / Mars
6. Prana, life-force (aetheric-body-Linga-Bhuta / Jupiter
7. Sthula-Bhuta, body / Saturn

The last quadrad is called "the animal in us" by Paracelsus. The Science of the Key gives us the way to conquer this animal in us and to ascend to the causal plane...."Cut off the neck of the beast," says an old text.

-- The Practice of the Ancient Turkish Freemasons: The Key to the Understanding of Alchemy, by Baron Rudolf von Sebottendorf

***

"The nature of the universe delights not in anything so much as to alter all things, and present them under another form. This is her conceit to play one game and begin another. Matter is placed before her like a piece of wax and she shapes it to all forms and figures. Now she makes a bird, then out of the bird a beast — now a flower, then a frog, and she is pleased with her own magical performances as men are with their own fancies."

Before any of our modern teachers thought of evolution, the ancients taught us, through Hermes, that nothing can be abrupt in nature; that she never proceeds by jumps and starts, that everything in her works is slow harmony, and that there is nothing sudden, not even violent death.

The slow development from preexisting forms was a doctrine with the Rosicrucian Illuminati.

-- Isis Unveiled, by Helena P. Blavatsky

Alone the Initiate, rich with the lore acquired by numberless generations of his predecessors, directs the “Eye of Dangma” toward the essence of things in which no Maya can have any influence. It is here that the teachings of esoteric philosophy in relation to the Nidanas and the Four Truths become of the greatest importance; but they are secret.

-- The Secret Doctrine -- The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy, by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

***

[T]he eye is the window of the soul.

-- The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception, by Max Heindel

"The spark hangs from the flame by the finest thread of Fohat." The “thread of Fohat” is the thread of being which animates man and passes through all his personalities, or rebirths on this Earth, the thread on which moreover all his “Spirits” are strung, is spun from the essence of the “threefold,” the “fourfold” and the “fivefold”. What is that “Spark” which “hangs from the flame?” It is Jiva, the monad in conjunction with manas, or rather its aroma, that which remains from each personality, when worthy, and hangs from Atma-Buddhi, the Flame, by the thread of life.

-- The Secret Doctrine -- The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy, by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

***

The Minotaur reigned within the Labyrinth; he was a mighty bull to whom seven youths and seven maidens had to be sacrificed every year. Theseus, the hero, plans to slay this Minotaur with his club. He is saved from losing himself in the Labyrinth by the king's daughter Ariadne, who gives him a thread by means of which he finds his way back out of the darkness.

-- The Pictorial Language of Hieronymus Bosch, by Clement A. Wertheim Aymes

***

If having dismissed the supports of consciousness -- perception and representation -- one is able to maintain a continuity of flow between the levels of consciousness without losing the Ariadnian thread that fosters the sense of individuality, yet projecting beyond it where it fuses with all the Ariadnean threads that cross-cross in weaving the meshes of the universe, one reaches a point where consciousness is no longer the consciousness of a single individual.

-- Toward the One, by Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

***

Forget not the end of the thread: constantly deny your carnal soul its desires, till you have attained your eternal desire and find deliverance out of the prison of darkness....Well, I am a whoremonger; since I was little, this has been my trade. I know that this removes hindrances, this consumes veils; this is the root of all acts of obedience, the rest are mere branches. If you do not cut the throat of a sheep, of what use is it to blow on its trotter? Fasting leads to annihilation, where is the last of all pleasures. Whatever shop is in the bazaar, or any potion, or merchandise, or trade, the end of the thread of each one of these is the need of the human soul, and that end of the thread is hidden; until the need for those things arises, the end of the thread does not stir or become visible. Similarly with every religion, every faith, every grace, every miracle, all the states of the prophets -- the end of the thread of every one of these is in the human spirit; until the need arises, that end of the thread does not stir or become visible.

-- Discourses of Rumi, translated by A. J. Arberry

***

Wherever we pick up the thread of twentieth-century Western occultism and ritual magic, we can follow it back along a trail that leads to [Franz] Hartmann.

-- Unholy Alliance: A History of Nazi Involvement with the Occult, by Peter Levenda

***

"In the eighth year from the conception of a Brahman, in the eleventh from that of a Kshatriya, and in the twelfth from that of a Vaisya, let the father invest the child with the mark of his class." (Mann, ii. 36.)

ONE of the many peculiarities that strike a stranger in India is that many Hindus have a cord or skein of thread over the left shoulder, hanging down under the right arm. It is worn as a sash would be. Probably few, except the Hindus themselves, could tell why this cord is worn; why certain persons have it whilst others have it not; or even how or of what it is made.

This article of dress or adornment forms, however, a very important factor in the Hindu cult. The yajno pavitam, as it is called, or the sacred thread of the Hindu, is the outward and visible mark that the wearer is a Dvija, or twice-born. It is a very much prized and a very sacred badge and commands respect and even adoration.

If we enquire who are privileged to assume this distinction, we find the matter very clearly defined by the ancient Hindu law-giver. In the quotation at the head of this chapter, it is clear that the Brahmans, Kshatriyas, and Vaisyas must be thus invested. In another place it is distinctly stated that none but the three twice-born classes are entitled to the distinction.

"The three twice-born classes are the sacerdotal, the military, and the commercial; but the fourth, or servile, is once-born, that is, has no second birth from the gayatri, and wears no thread." (Manu, x. 4.)

This is the law; but others besides these three privileged classes assume the distinction. It is not safe, therefore, to conclude that every wearer of the sacred thread must necessarily be a Brahmin or one of the other two highest castes. The goldsmiths, the weavers, certain classes of fishermen and others wear it. The explanation is that the goldsmith caste, many of whom are carpenters and workers in brass and copper, are themselves a class of Brahmins; at least they assume the distinction. They have their own prescribed share in the Vedas and their own ritual. They have an upanayanam or second-birth ceremony, and are considered dvijas, or twice-born; hence this privilege in the matter of the thread, as well as in many others that are peculiar to Brahmins. The goldsmith caste are said to be the descendants of Brahmin women and Kshatriya men; and this fact, together with the rights above mentioned, appears to be acknowledged by the Brahmins themselves; yet, they do not appear to command much respect as a caste. This may be on account of their mixed origin. Until recent years, for instance, they were not allowed to celebrate their marriages with public processions, to use a palanquin, or to ride a horse. It is said that about thirty years ago there was much disturbance in Masulipatam when, in India through the freedom resulting from the British rule this caste first began to have marriage processions and, in other ways, to assert themselves. Now it is quite an acknowledged thing, for it has become what is known as ma‘mul (custom) and so no one interferes. They are not, as a rule, even now, allowed to enter temples. When they are permitted to do so, it is only to that part in which Sudras are allowed. A case recently came before the law courts in Masulipatam arising out of the attempt of a goldsmith to enter a Siva temple for worship. I believe it was eventually decided that a member of this caste could not enter a temple, except by the permission of the Brabmin priest in charge. The question of the social and religious status of the goldsmith caste is a most vexed one which gives rise to much controversy. It shows that not all wearers of the thread or cord are considered of equal rank....

[O]thers such as weavers and fishermen appear unlawfully to assume the privilege of wearing the sacred thread; but, although their custom is not interfered with, no value is set upon it by orthodox Hindus. They cannot, for example, read the Vedas or even hear them read. Authority to do this, in the case of lawful thread-wearers, is conveyed by the ceremony of upanayanam, or second spiritual birth, of which the thread is the outward symbol. In these modern days, some other classes of Sudras have also adopted the yajnopavitam merely to add to their own importance; but, in all such cases, it is of no true religious value. I have heard of a case in the Orissa country where a certain Raja of the Sudra caste made himself important by assuming authority to invest people of his own caste with the thread. Some of, them, to please him, appear to have submitted to the investiture, and adopted the thread -- thus adding to the number of the unlawful wearers of this coveted mark of distinction. It is said that one unlucky wight who, on a visit to that country, was presented with this badge of honour, was, on his return home, deprived of the same and well beaten for his presumption by his indignant neighbours.

Having thus seen who are entitled to wear the sacred thread, I now pass on to mention some particulars of the thread itself and also of the mode of investiture. Originally there appears to have been some difference in the kind of thread worn, according to the class of the wearer. Thus: "The sacrificial thread of a Brahmin must be made of cotton, so as to be put on over his head in three strings; that of a Kshatriya of sana thread only; that of a Vaisya of woollen thread." (Maim, ii. 44.)

This is the law and probably in ancient times the material of which the thread was made did thus differ, according to the caste of the wearer; but in the present day no such difference is seen. The cord is universally made of cotton. A peculiar kind of very fine cotton is what ought to be employed, but ordinarily the common cotton is used. The threads are supposed to be prepared by Brahmins. Perhaps other than the Brahmins and Vaisyas are not so particular as to the manufacture, but these two castes are very careful in this respect. The threads can generally be obtained in any ordinary bazaar, but the very orthodox, in order to ensure their purity, will frequently procure their supply from the house of the Brahmins who may happen to be engaged in the manufacture.

The yajnopavitam consists of several skeins of cotton thread. Each thread consists of three strands, each skein has three threads, and a married man's cord must consist of not less than three skeins. The number three enters very largely into the structure of the cord itself, and the ceremony of investiture. This is said to represent the three gods, Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva; the three sacrificial fires; three divisions of time —morn, noon and night; and the three worlds—heaven, earth and hell. Each skein is tied with a peculiar knot called Brahma's knot. It is made by making three turns with the threads and by so tying the knot that the ends do not appear on the outside. In making each knot the following incantation is repeated by the maker: "Pronouncing the word Om, the Brahma Sutram must be tied, and afterwards worn. (The wearer) will receive purity in all his rites, It being the personification of all the gods."

A youth, if a bachelor, when first invested with the cord, receives only a single skein, and he cannot wear more than a single skein until he is married, when he must wear, at least, three skeins. The Brahmin youth must be invested with his cord when he is about seven or eight years of age. He cannot be married until thus invested, but he may, and in fact often does, marry a day or two after the ceremony. Amongst some of the Banians or Vaisyas, it is customary to defer the upanayanam until immediately before marriage.

The ceremony of investiture is as follows. On the appointed day a fire is lighted, round which the relatives and friends of the novice are seated. This fire is a very important feature of the upanayanam. The whole ceremony is called the agni karyam or fire worship. It is kept alight during the whole four days during which the ceremony lasts, and it is the proper thing to feed it, as far as possible, with the twigs of certain kinds of trees, principally those of the Indian fig tribe. At the repeating of the various mantrams which form part of the ritual, ghee is poured on to the fire as an offering. The father of the youth to be invested takes a thread of nine strands and puts it upon his son. This is not the true yajnopavitam, nor has it the Brahma knot, neither are mantrams said over it. After some time, during which various rites are performed, and the ears of the boy are bored for earrings and then adorned with thin rings of gold, the true cord is produced—a single skein of three threads. To this is attached a bit of the skin of a male deer, or, if procurable, a long strip of this skin is worn as a sash together with the cord. Deer skin is considered to be very pure, and also to be capable of imparting purity. For this reason untanned deer skin is much employed for covering the boxes and other receptacles, in which the household gods, and things pertaining thereto are kept. It is also much used. as a mat to sit upon when performing the daily rites. Mention is made in the Smritis (the teaching of the Sages) of the purity acquired by wearing deer skin, and there are several injunctions on the matter in the laws of Manu. For example: "Let the students in theology wear for their mantles the hides of black antelopes, of common deer or of goats, with lower vests of woven sana of cshuma and of wool, in the direct order of their classes." (Mann, ii. 41.)

The piece of deer skin is worn with the thread for several months when it is taken off with some short ceremony at a temple. When the father puts on the true cord, he repeats the yajnopavitam mantram, the novice saying it after him. This mantram is as follows:

"This most hallowed yajnopavitam,
In former times with Brahma born,
Author of longevity; wear it, it is pure,
May this yajnopavitam become my strength and glory."

As the new and true cord is put on, the imitation one which was first used is taken off. This completes the investiture, and the father at once proceeds to teach the novice the gayatri prayer. This is done with great care and secrecy. A cloth is thrown over the heads of both father and son, and, the sacred words are whispered into the ears, in as low a whisper as possible, so that the holy words may not fall upon the ears of any uninitiated person. The upanayanam is now complete, and the lad is now a true dvija, duly entitled to read the Vedas, and to perform any of the religious rites of his caste.

Immediately following this investiture the youth proceeds to ask alms of those present, beginning with his mother and then his father and afterwards the other relatives or friends. This act is supposed to intimate a readiness on the part of the supplicant to provide for himself and his religious preceptor. All this takes place on the first day, but for three more days the festival is kept up during which the novice is instructed in the morning, midday and evening prayers and in other ceremonial observances. There is always much feasting and rejoicing upon these occasions. Musicians are hired to enliven the company, and friends and relatives are entertained according to the ability of the host.

A new cord must be put on every year on the occasion of a certain festival. This festival is called sravanalapaurnavami -- the full moon in the month of Sravana (July-August). Should the cord be broken during the year, a new one must at once be put on. If a man has a cord of five skeins, a broken thread or two does not matter; but a bachelor must have his one skein perfect, without even a single thread being broken, and a married person must have at least three perfect skeins, every thread of which must be perfect. There are also certain kinds of defilement, as for instance touching a Pariah, that necessitate the putting on a new thread and the casting away the old one. In these days, the orthodox are not always so very particular as this, but this is the rule. Should the cord become broken, or any defilement contracted, no food can be taken until the old is replaced by a new one.

If a strict orthodox Brahmin, in passing through the bazaar, accidentally comes into contact with a Pariah, or in any other way becomes ceremonially defiled, he must get a new cord which he cannot touch until he has bathed and thus purified himself from the defilement. After bathing he takes the new cord and, dipping it into water, spreads it out on two brass or copper vessels. He then touches it with some of the pigment he uses for putting the sacred mark on his forehead. After that he walks round the vessels three times, from right to left, repeating the gayatri prayer. Then he takes the cord, skein by skein, and puts it on saying the mantram, or consecration prayer, used at the first investiture, repeating the same for each skein.

When he has thus put on the whole of the skeins, he takes off the old cord, repeating a mantram which says: "May this old yajnopavitam become my strength and glory."

The old thread is disposed of by throwing it into a river or some other water, if there should be any at hand. The ancient lawgiver says: "His girdle, his leather mantle, his staff, his sacrificial cord, and his ewe; he must throw into the water, when they are worn out or broken, and receive others hallowed by mystical texts." (Mann, ii. 64.)

Should no river, or other suitable water be conveniently near, the old thread is rolled up and thrown on to the top of the house. This is to prevent its being trodden under foot, or in any other such way defiled. This completes the re-investiture. The defiled one is now ceremonially pure, and he can proceed to perform the daily rites which must be gone through before he can partake of food.

The sacred thread is usually worn over the left shoulder, hanging down across the body under the right arm, and, as the orthodox Hindu is not encumbered with much by way of covering for the upper part of his person, it forms a very noticeable object. On certain occasions, however, the position of the thread is changed. At the time of performing the annual ceremony for deceased ancestors, the position is exactly reversed. It is then placed over the right shoulder and hangs down on the left side. On certain other occasions, it is worn as a garland round the neck: whilst at others it is placed up over the ears to prevent its being defiled. Usually when saying the gayatri prayer, the thread is taken hold of by the thumb; and on reciting various mantrams it is used somewhat as a rosary -- the worshipper winding it round the fingers to keep count of the number of times the mantram is repeated. The ancient law-giver Manu makes various allusions to the sacred thread other than those quoted above. He speaks of the sinfulness of omitting the sacred investiture (xi. 63); and he lays down the rule that no one must use a sacerdotal string that has been before used by another (iv. 66).

The yajnopavitam is to the Hindu an all important thing, being the sign of the second or spiritual birth. Without his cord the Brahmin is not a Brahmin. He is nothing better than an outcaste, he cannot perform any ceremony or partake of any food, nay, he must not even swallow his own spittle. He may breathe, and that is about all he can do until the lost or defiled cord is duly replaced with all proper ceremony.

A Sanyasi does not wear this cord, for he has entered the fourth or last stage of the Brahmin's life.

-- "Hindu Sacred Thread, 1908," oldandsold.com

Statistics: Posted by admin — Fri Sep 25, 2015 8:56 am

To those who have removed the "Veil" from the "Sacred Shrine," and who have cast their "Lives" as an "Offering" into the "Flame" that forever burns up on the "Om-Altar " in the "Inmost"; — A "Mission" and a "Glory"!

-- A Call to the "Awakened" From "The Unseen and Unknown," for an Esoteric College, and For G.....R Dept. No. 1, by Vidya-Nyaika.

***

Parabrahmam is an unconditioned and absolute reality, and Mulaprakriti is a sort of veil thrown over it.

-- The Secret Doctrine -- The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy, by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

***

Look at man, the weak one in his wretchedness and torment, whom the Gods have singled out as their quarry -- tear to pieces the bloody veil that the lost soul has woven around man, the cruel nets woven by the death-bringing, and take hold of the divine whore who still cannot recover from her fall from grace and craves filth and power in raving blindness. Lock her up like a lecherous bitch who would like to mingle her blood with every dirty cur. Capture her, may enough at last be enough. Let her for once taste your torment so that she will get to feel man and his hammer, which he has wrested from the Gods.

-- The Red Book: Liber Novus, by C.G. Jung

***

Each of our seven physical senses (two of which are still unknown to profane Science), and also of our seven states of consciousness -- viz: (1) waking; (2) waking-dreaming; (3) natural sleeping; (4) induced or trance-sleep; (5) psychic; (6) superpsychic; and (7) purely spiritual, -- corresponds with one of the seven cosmic planes, developes and uses one of the seven super-senses, and is connected directly, in its use on the terrestro-spiritual plane, with the cosmic and divine centre of force that gave it birth, and which is its direct creator. Each is also connected with, and under the direct influence of, one of the seven Sacred Planets. These belonged to the Lesser Mysteries, whose followers were called Mystai (the veiled), seeing that they were allowed to perceive things only through a mist, as it were "with the eyes closed" while the Initiates or "Seers" of the Greater Mysteries were called Epoptai (those who see things unveiled). It was the latter only who were taught the true mysteries of the Zodiac and the relations and correspondences between its twelve signs (two secret) and the ten human orifices.

-- The Esoteric Papers of Madame Blavatsky

***

[A]ll women were burdened with ideas carried over from England with the colonists, influenced by Christian teachings. English law was summarized in a document of 1632 entitled "The Lawes Resolutions of Womens Rights":

In this consolidation which we call wedlock is a locking together. It is true, that man and wife are one person, but understand in what manner. When a small brooke or little river incorporateth with Rhodanus, Humber, or the Thames, the poor rivulet looseth her name.... A woman as soon as she is married, is called covert ... that is, "veiled"; as it were, clouded and overshadowed; she hath lost her streame. I may more truly, farre away, say to a married woman, Her new self is her superior; her companion, her master.

-- A People's History of the United States: 1492-Present, by Howard Zinn

Speak, you concubine of Heaven, you divine monster! Have I not fished you from the swamp? How do you like the black hole?

-- The Red Book: Liber Novus, by C.G. Jung

The Astral Light or Anima Mundi is dual and bisexual. The male part of it is purely divine and spiritual, it is the Wisdom, it is Spirit or Purusha; while the female portion is tainted, in one sense, with matter, is indeed matter, and therefore is evil already.

-- The Secret Doctrine -- The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy, by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

The Sun is the ancient symbol of the life-giving and generative power of the Deity. To the ancients, light was the cause of life; and God was the source from which all light flowed; the essence of Light, the Invisible Fire, developed as flame manifested as light and splendor. The Sun was His manifestation and visible image; and the Sabæans' worshipping the Light -- God -- seemed to worship the Sun, in whom they saw the manifestation of the Deity.

The Moon was the symbol of the passive capacity of nature to produce, the female, of which the life-giving power and energy was the male. It was the symbol of Isis, Astarte, and Artemis, or Diana. The "Master of Life" was the Supreme Deity, above both, and manifested through both; Zeus, the Son of Saturn, become King of the Gods; Horus, son of Osiris and Isis, become the Master of Life; Dionusos or Bacchus, like Mithras, become the author of Light and Life and Truth.

The Master of Light and Life, the Sun and the Moon, are symbolized in every Lodge by the Master and Wardens: and this makes it the duty of the Master to dispense light to the Brethren, by himself, and through the Wardens, who are his ministers.

-- Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, by Albert Pike

***

In the figure now under consideration a kind of pre-eminence seems to be given to the moon over the sun; proceeding probably from the Hindoos not possessing the true solar system, which must however have been known to the people from whom they learnt to calculate eclipses, which they still continue to do, though upon principles not understood by themselves. They now place the earth in the centre of the universe, as the later Greeks did, among whom we also find the same preference given to the lunar symbol.

-- A Discourse on the Worship of Priapus: And Its Connection with the Mystic Theology of the Ancients, by Richard Payne Knight

***

Rome, that reformed the world, accustomed was
Two suns to have, which one road and the other,
Of God and of the world, made manifest.

-- The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

***

Hail! Hail! Unto thee Jove supernal!
Light of the Sun! Of the Sun of the Suns!
Giver of the corn, the wine, and the oil!
Bread of the heart, ecstasy of soul, light that rays the face.
Bountiful Jove! Former of form!
Hail unto Thee! Hail unto Thee!
Essence of ecstasy! Return I unto Thee in rhapsody!
Hail unto Thee, Hail! Hail!

-- The Fire Regained, by Sidney M. Hirsch

***

The Sun's resplendent deity I sing,
The beauteous offspring of almighty Jove,
Who, thro' the vivifying solar fount
Within his fabricative mind conceal'd,
A triad form'd of splendid solar gods;
From whence the world's all-various forms emerg'd
From mystic darkness into beauteous light,
Perfect, and full of intellectual goods.
Hail! Supermundane king of light divine, ...
O best of gods, blest dæmon crown'd with fire,
My soul's sure refuge in the hour of woe, ...
And oft with thee in blissful union join'd
Thro' energy ineffable, may soar
Beyond the highest super-mundane forms

-- Two Orations of the Emperor Julian, One to the Sovereign Sun and the Other to the Mother of the Gods, by Flavius Claudius Julianus

***

We people are the children of the sun, the bright source of life; we are born of the sun and will vanquish the murky fear of death.

-- Children of the Sun, by Maxim Gorky

***

The mystic, as he sees the light of the morning dawn, looks upon it as the daily coming into his soul of the primordial Creative Fiat, "Let there be Light," and as the Light of day progresses and gradually wanes in the western sky, he sees in the glorious tapestry of the sunset a something beyond description by human tongue, a something that can be felt by the soul. If we let those five verses live within us, in the way they do in the mystic, we too, shall know the light, know the truth, as we know nothing else in the world.

-- The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception, by Max Heindel

***

The life of the solitary would be cold were it not for the immense sun, which makes the air and rocks glow. The sun and its eternal splendor replace for the solitary his own life warmth. His heart longs for the sun. He wanders to the lands of the sun. He dreams of the flickering splendor of the sun, of the hot red stones spread out at midday, of the golden hot rays of dry sand. The solitary seeks the sun and no one else is so ready to open his heart as he is. Therefore he loves the desert above all, since he loves its deep stillness. He needs little food since the sun and its glow nourish him. Consequently the solitary loves the desert above all since it is a mother to him, giving him food and invigorating warmth at regular hours. In the desert the solitary is relieved of care and therefore turns his whole life to the sprouting garden of his soul, which can flourish only under a hot sun. In his garden the delicious red fruit grows that bears swelling sweetness under a tight skin. You think that the solitary is poor. You do not see that he strolls under laden fruit trees and that his hand touches grain a hundredfold. Under dark leaves the overfull reddish blossoms swell toward him from abundant buds, and the fruit almost bursts with thronging juices. Fragrant resins drip from his trees and under his feet thrusting seed breaks open. If the sun sinks onto the plane of the sea like an exhausted bird, the solitary envelops himself and holds his breath. He does not move and is pure expectancy until the miracle of the renewal of light rises in the East....

He gives you a small insignificant fruit, which has just fallen at his feet. It appears worthless to you, but if you consider it, you will see that this fruit tastes like a sun which you could not have dreamt of. It gives off a perfume which confuses your senses and makes you dream of rose gardens and sweet wine and whispering palm trees. And you hold this one fruit in your hands dreaming, and you would like the tree in which it grows, the garden in which this tree stands, and the sun which brought forth this garden. And you yourself want to be that solitary who strolls with the sun in his garden, his gaze resting on pendant flowers and his hand brushing a hundredfold of grain and his breath drinking the perfume from a thousand roses. Dull from the sun and drunk from fermenting wines, you lie down in ancient graves, whose walls resound with many voices and many colors of a thousand solar years....

You sleep down through the thousand solar years, and you wake up through the thousand solar years, and your dreams full of ancient lore adorn the walls of your bedchamber.

-- The Red Book: Liber Novus, by C.G. Jung

***

JUDAH, THEE SHALL THY BRETHEN PRAISE, THY HAND SHALL BE ON THE NECK OF THY ENEMIES. R. Jose discoursed here on the verse: He made the moon for seasons (Ps. CIV, 19). 'God', he said, 'made the moon for us to sanctify by it new moons and new years. Now the moon never shines except from the reflection of the sun, and when the sun is aloft the moon does not appear, but only when the sun is gathered in does the moon rule the heavens, and the moon is of no account save when the sun is gathered in. God made both of them to give light and also "for signs", to wit, Sabbaths, "and for seasons", to wit, festivals, "and for days", to wit, new moons, "and for years", to wit, New Year days, so that the Gentiles should reckon by the sun and Israel by the moon. This accords with R. Eleazar's exposition of the verse: "Thou hast multiplied the nation, thou hast increased its joy" (Is. IX, 2), where he refers "nation" to Israel and "it" to the moon, which gained accession of light for the sake of Israel. Which are superior, Israel or the Gentiles? Assuredly, the moon is highest, and the sun of the Gentiles is under this moon, and this sun derives light from this moon. See, then, the difference between Israel and the nations. Israel cling to the moon and are linked with the supernal sun, and are attached to the place which gives light to the supernal sun, as it is written: "But ye who cleave to the Lord, are alive every one of you this day" (Deut. IV, 4).'

-- The Zohar, translated by Harry Sperling and Maurice Simon

'What is the difference between the wisdom of Solomon and the wisdom of the children of the east and the wisdom of Egypt, mentioned in the same verse?' He replied: 'The secret of Solomon's wisdom was in the name of the moon when blessed from every side. In his days the moon was magnified and reached her fullness. A thousand mountains rose before her, and she blew them away with a puff. A thousand mighty rivers flowed before her, and she swallowed them at a draught. Her nails reached out in a thousand and seventy directions, and her hands in twenty-four thousand, so that nothing could escape her. Thousands of bucklers clung to her hair. From between her feet went forth a youth who stretched from one end of the world to the other with sixty clubs of fire, and who is also called "Enoch son of Jered." He was called "son of Jered" (lit. descent) in reference to the ten stages by which the Shekinah descended to the earth. Under him are stationed many Hayyoth, under which again is fastened the hair of the moon, which is called "the knobs of the sceptre". Her hands and feet take hold of it like a strong lion holding his prey. Her nails are those who call to mind the sins of men and inscribe them with all rigour and exactness. The offscourings of her nails are all those who do not cleave to the Body of the King and suck from the side of uncleanness, when the moon begins to diminish. Now, after Solomon had inherited the moon in its fullness, he also desired to inherit it in its defective state, and therefore he sought to acquire the knowledge of spirits and demons, so as to inherit the moon on every side. As for the wisdom of Egypt, this is the lower wisdom which is called "the handmaid behind the millstones", and which was also included in the wisdom of Solomon.' Said R. Abba: 'How thankful am I that I asked you this question, since I have received so illuminating an answer.' R. Simeon said further: 'With regard to Solomon's words, "What profit hath man in all his labour?" (Eccl. I, 3), these do not apply to labour in the study of the Torah, since the statement is qualified by the words, "wherein he laboureth under the sun", and the study of the Torah is above the sun.' Said R. Hiya: 'Study of the Torah which is prosecuted for worldly ends is also accounted "under the sun", as it does not ascend aloft'....

R. Hizkiah, citing the verse, "And when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram, etc." (Gen. XV, 12), said: 'This verse has been applied to the day of judgement, when man is removed from this world. For we have learnt that the day when man departs this world is the great day of judgement when the sun's light is withheld from the moon, as it is written, "or ever the sun be darkened" (Eccl. XII, 2). This is the holy neshamah which is withheld from man thirty days before he departs from the world. During that time he observes that he throws no shadow, the reason being that his neshamah is withheld from him. For it does not wait until he is on the point of dying, but even while he is still in his full vigour it passes out of him, and does not illumine the spirit, which in turn does not illumine the vital soul, so that his shadow no longer shows. From that day all proclaim his coming fate, even the birds of the heaven.

-- The Zohar, translated by Harry Sperling and Maurice Simon

***

When a planetary chain is in its last Round, its Globe 1 or A, before finally dying out, sends all its energy and “principles” into a neutral centre of latent force, a “laya centre,” and thereby informs a new nucleus of undifferentiated substance or matter, i.e., calls it into activity or gives it life. Suppose such a process to have taken place in the lunar “planetary” chain; suppose again, for argument’s sake, that the moon is far older than the Earth. Imagine the six fellow-globes of the moon — aeons before the first globe of our seven was evolved — just in the same position in relation to each other as the fellow-globes of our chain occupy in regard to our Earth now. And now it will be easy to imagine further Globe A of the lunar chain informing Globe A of the terrestrial chain, and — dying; Globe B of the former sending after that its energy into Globe B of the new chain; then Globe C of the lunar, creating its progeny sphere C of the terrene chain; then the Moon pouring forth into the lowest globe of our planetary ring — Globe D, our Earth — all its life, energy and powers; and, having transferred them to a new centre becoming virtually a dead planet, in which rotation has almost ceased since the birth of our globe. The Moon is now the cold residual quantity, the shadow dragged after the new body, into which her living powers and “principles” are transfused. She now is doomed for long ages to be ever pursuing the Earth, to be attracted by and to attract her progeny. Constantly vampirised by her child, she revenges herself on it by soaking it through and through with the nefarious, invisible, and poisoned influence which emanates from the occult side of her nature. For she is a dead, yet a living body. The particles of her decaying corpse are full of active and destructive life, although the body which they had formed is soulless and lifeless. Therefore its emanations are at the same time beneficent and maleficent — this circumstance finding its parallel on earth in the fact that the grass and plants are nowhere more juicy and thriving than on the graves; while at the same time it is the graveyard or corpse-emanations, which kill. And like all ghouls or vampires, the moon is the friend of the sorcerers and the foe of the unwary. From the archaic aeons and the later times of the witches of Thessaly, down to some of the present tantrikas of Bengal, her nature and properties were known to every Occultist, but have remained a closed book for physicists.

Such is the moon from the astronomical, geological, and physical standpoints. As to her metaphysical and psychic nature, it must remain an occult secret in this work. These are topics, indeed, “on which the adepts are very reserved in their communications to uninitiated pupils,” and since they have, moreover, never sanctioned or permitted any published speculations upon them, the less said the better.

***

A few words more of the Moon. There are some further details which may be added, though they border too closely on forbidden ground to be treated of fully. The last word of the mystery is divulged only to the adepts, but it may be stated that our satellite is only the gross body of its invisible principles. Seeing then that there are 7 Earths, so there are 7 Moons, the last one alone being visible; the same for the Sun, whose visible body is called a Maya, a reflection, just as man’s body is. “The real Sun and the real Moon are as invisible as the real man,” says an occult maxim.

In reality the Moon is only the satellite of the Earth in one respect, viz., that physically the Moon revolves round the Earth. But in every other respect it is the Earth which is the satellite of the Moon, and not vice versa. Startling as the statement may seem it is not without confirmation from scientific knowledge. It is evidenced by the tides, by the cyclic changes in many forms of disease which coincide with the lunar phases; it can be traced in the growth of plants, and is very marked in the phenomena of human gestation and conception. The importance of the Moon and its influence on the Earth were recognized in every ancient religion, notably the Jewish, and have been remarked by many observers of psychical and physical phenomena. But, so far as Science knows, the Earth’s action on the Moon is confined to the physical attraction, which causes her to circle in her orbit. And should an objector insist that this fact alone is sufficient evidence that the Moon is truly the Earth’s satellite on other planes of action, one may reply by asking whether a mother, who walks round and round her child’s cradle keeping watch over the infant, is the subordinate of her child or dependent upon it; though in one sense she is its satellite, yet she is certainly older and more fully developed than the child she watches.

It is, then, the Moon that plays the largest and most important part, as well in the formation of the Earth itself, as in the peopling thereof with human beings. The “Lunar Monads” or Pitris, the ancestors of man, become in reality man himself.

-- The Secret Doctrine -- The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy, by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

The Egyptian ram-headed god makes man of clay on a potter’s wheel, and so in Genesis do the Elohim fashion him out of the same material.

-- The Secret Doctrine -- The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy, by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

"Fohat traces spiral lines to unite the six to the seventh — the Crown." -- This tracing of “Spiral lines” refers to the evolution of man’s as well as Nature’s principles; an evolution which takes place gradually, as does everything else in nature.

-- The Secret Doctrine -- The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy, by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

Dew falls from the invisible air, corals grow in the water, and seeds draw their nutriment out of the soil; the earth is a great stomach, in which everything is dissolved, digested, and transformed, and each being draws its nutriment from the earth; and each living being is a stomach that serves as a tomb for other forms, and from which new forms spring into existence. Each organism requires that kind of food which is adapted to its own nature. The body cannot be nourished with theories, nor the mind with potatoes. The body requires material food, the mind mental knowledge; but the soul needs the nutriment that comes from the holy spirit of truth.

Every living being requires that particular kind of food which is adapted to its species and to its individual organism, and Life, the great alchemist, transforms the food taken. A hog, for instance, will extract nutriment out of substances that would act as poisons in the organism of man, but there is no animal known that will eat the excrements of a hog. Animals refuse to eat or drink things which are injurious to them, and they select by their natural instincts those things which they require; it is only given to intellectual man to disobey his natural instincts, and to eat or drink things which are injurious to him, but which may gratify some artificially acquired taste. Man is much more subject to diseases than animals in a state of liberty, because animals live in accordance with the laws of their nature, and man acts continually against the laws of his nature, especially in regard to his eating and drinking. As long as his body is strong it can expel or overcome the injurious influences which are continually caused in it by intemperance, gluttony, and morbid tastes; but such a continuous effort at resistance will imply a serious loss of vitality, and a time will come when disease will be the result, because the organism requires a period of rest and a renewal of strength to expel the accumulated poisonous elements.

-- The Life of Philippus Theophrastus Bombast of Hohenheim Known by the Name of Paracelsus and the Substance of his Teachings, by Franz Hartmann, M.D.

[Librarian's Comment: This assertion is precisely wrong. Gluttony results not from some inherent perversity in human nature, indicative of some tendency to deviate from natural wisdom, but rather from society's ability and inclination to over-satisfy our natural desires for wholesome substances. People become obese from eating fast-food not because they are inclined to gluttony, but because fast-food providers, for commercial benefit, appeal to the human desire for fat, sugar, and salt. Fat, sugar and salt are rare in nature, and thus we have evolved to eat as much of them as we can, whenever they are available. What is really poisoning humanity is wealth itself, and our inability to adjust to abundance after having evolved through millennia of scarcity. This is why there are signs in zoos saying, "Don't feed the animals." By providing a gorilla with a human diet, you can give a gorilla a very human heart attack. Evolutionary forces, genetic in the first instance, social in the second instance, are driving the epidemic of gluttony and substance abuse that are the bane of civilization. Few, however, are those who would return to the enforced asceticism of neolithic scarcity in order to be rid of this affliction.

The diatribe against human nature, so common among moralists of every stripe, argues that unlike animals that have remained loyal to the law of "God and Nature," human beings pursue their own perverse deviations, which in the Judaeo-Christian myth, derives from the sin of Eve, who, out of desire for a new taste-treat, succumbed to the serpent's lure and ate of the Fruit of Knowledge, aka The Apple. Thus, while animals lack free-will, and can neither be saved or damned, humans are said to suffer from the curse of free-will, that can only be cured by subjugation to the Divine Will, for which moral instruction in the form of Religion, is required. Thus, sin all comes down to appetite, and even today we find that the sin of gluttony must be countered with the virtue of "Dieting."]

It was left with the early and ignorant Christian fathers to degrade the philosophical and highly scientific idea of this emblem into the absurd superstition called the “Devil.” But the Pagans have always shown a philosophical discrimination in their symbols. The primitive symbol of the serpent symbolised divine Wisdom and Perfection, and had always stood for psychical Regeneration and Immortality. Hence Hermes, calling the serpent the most spiritual of all beings; Moses, initiated in the wisdom of Hermes, following suit in Genesis; the Gnostic’s Serpent with the seven vowels over its head, being the emblem of the seven hierarchies of the Septenary or Planetary Creators. Hence, also, the Hindu serpent Sesha or Ananta, “the Infinite,” a name of Vishnu, whose first Vahan or vehicle on the primordial waters is this serpent. Yet they all made a difference between the good and the bad Serpent, between the former, the embodiment of divine Wisdom in the region of the Spiritual, and the latter, Evil, on the plane of matter. Jesus accepted the serpent as a synonym of Wisdom, and this formed part of his teaching: “Be ye wise as serpents,” he says. “In the beginning, before Mother became Father-Mother, the fiery Dragon moved in the infinitudes alone”. The Aitareya Brahmana calls the Earth Sarparajni, “the Serpent Queen,” and “the Mother of all that moves.” Before our globe became egg-shaped “a long trail of Cosmic dust moved and writhed like a serpent in Space.” The “Spirit of God moving on Chaos” was symbolized by every nation in the shape of a fiery serpent breathing fire and light upon the primordial waters, until it had incubated cosmic matter and made it assume the annular shape of a serpent with its tail in its mouth, which symbolises not only Eternity and Infinitude, but also the globular shape of all the bodies formed within the Universe from that fiery mist. The Universe, as well as the Earth and Man, cast off periodically, serpent-like, their old skins, to assume new ones after a time of rest. The serpent is, surely, a not less graceful or a more unpoetical image than the caterpillar and chrysalis from which springs the butterfly, the Greek emblem of Psyche, the human soul.

-- The Secret Doctrine -- The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy, by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

Statistics: Posted by admin — Fri Sep 25, 2015 8:29 am

Man had fallen, but not by the tempting of the serpent. For, with the Phoenicians, the serpent was deemed to partake of the Divine Nature, and was sacred, as he was in Egypt. He was deemed to be immortal, unless slain by violence, becoming young again in his old age, by entering into and consuming himself. Hence the Serpent in a circle, holding his tail in his mouth, was an emblem of eternity.

-- Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, by Albert Pike

***

A serpent, having its tail in its mouth and thus forming a circle, held to represent "the immensity of the power of God," which has neither beginning nor end.

-- The Ancient and Primitive Rite of Memphis and Misraim, Excerpts from "A New Encyclopaedia of Freemasonry," by Arthur Edward Waite

***

En-Sof in Hebrew literally means "there is no end...the very absolute as such, or positive nothing ...the principle of unconditional unity or 'unityness' as such, the principle of freedom from all forms, from all manifestations, and, consequently, from all being)... eternally finds its opposite in itself, so that only through a relationship to this opposite can it assert itself, so that it is perfectly reciprocal."

-- Vladimir Solov'ev on Spiritual Nationhood, Russia and the Jews, by Judith Deutsch Kornblatt

***

"A living mobile trinity of moments": [Hegelian] Dialectics describes the movement of the subject of history, the spirit [Geist], passing through three main stages: first it is posed in itself (an sich, thesis), then it develops out of itself and for itself in its manifestation (fur sich, antithesis), in order to return then into itself (an und fur sich, synthesis) and be with itself as an actualised and manifested being.

-- History, Sophia and the Russian Nation, by Manon de Courten

***

"The outer darkness is a great dragon, whose tail is in his mouth, outside the whole world and surrounding the whole world. And there are many regions of chastisement within it. There are twelve mighty chastisement-dungeons and a ruler is in every dungeon and the face of the rulers is different one from another....the soul[s] of the blasphemers and of those who are in the doctrines of error and of all who teach doctrines of error, and of those who have intercourse with males, and of those stained and impious men and of atheists and murderers and adulterers and sorcerers, -- all such souls then, if while still in life they do not repent but remain persistently in their sin, and all the souls which have stayed behind without, that is those which have had the number of the circuits which are appointed them in the sphere, without having repented, -- well, at their last circuit will those souls, they and all the souls of which I have just told you, be led out of [?] the jaws of the tail of the dragon into the dungeons of the outer darkness. And when those souls of the doors of the dungeons have been led into the outer darkness into the jaws of his tail, he turneth his tail into his own mouth and shutteth them in. Thus will the souls be led into the outer darkness....

And the disk of the sun was a great dragon whose tail was in his mouth and who reached to seven powers of the Left and whom four powers in the form of white horses drew.

-- Pistis Sophia, translated by G.S.R. Mead

[I]n the idea of each power the lower derives its intelligibility from the higher: and the highest must be presumed to inhere latently or potentially in the lowest, or this latter will be wholly unintelligible, inconceivable -- you can have no conception of it. Thus in sensibility we see a power that in every instant goes out of itself, and in the same instant retracts and falls back on itself: which the great fountains of pure Mathesis, the Pythagorean and Platonic Geometricians, illustrated in the production, or self-evolution, of the point into the circle.

-- On the Constitution of the Church and State, According to the Idea of Each; With Aids Toward a Right Judgment on the Late Catholic Bill, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

***

In October of the same year, Jung presented two talks to the Psychological Club. The first was titled "Adaptation." This took two forms: adaptation to outer and inner conditions. The "inner" was understood to designate the unconscious. Adaptation to the "inner" led to the demand for individuation, which was contrary to adaptation to others. Answering this demand and the corresponding break with conformity led to a tragic guilt that required expiation and called for a new "collective function," because the individual had to produce values that could serve as a substitute for his absence from society. These new values enabled one to make reparation to the collective. Individuation was for the few. Those who were insufficiently creative should rather reestablish collective conformity with a society. The individual had not only to create new values, but also socially recognizable ones, as society had a "right to expect realizable values." The second talk was on "Individuation and collectivity." He argued that individuation and collectivity were a pair of opposites related by guilt. Society demanded imitation. Through the process of imitation, one could gain access to values that were one's own. In analysis, "Through imitation the patient learns individuation, because it reactivates his own values."...

Jung argued that one needed to separate oneself from the unconscious by presenting it visibly as something separate from one. It was vital to differentiate the I from the non-I, namely, the collective psyche or absolute unconscious. To do this, "man must necessarily stand upon firm feet in his I-function; that is, he must fulfil his duty toward life completely, so that he may in every respect be a vitally living member of society."

-- The Red Book: Liber Novus, by C.G. Jung

However greatly the soul itself labours, it cannot actively purify itself so as to be in the least degree prepared for the Divine union of perfection of love, if God takes not its hand and purges it not in that dark fire.

-- Dark Night of the Soul, by St. John of the Cross

***

According to the Rosicrucian tenets, as handled and explained by the profane for once correctly, if only partially, so “Light and Darkness are identical in themselves, being only divisible in the human mind”; and according to Robert Fludd, “Darkness adopted illumination in order to make itself visible” (On Rosenkranz). According to the tenets of Eastern Occultism, Darkness is the one true actuality, the basis and the root of light, without which the latter could never manifest itself, nor even exist. Light is matter, and Darkness pure Spirit. Darkness, in its radical, metaphysical basis, is subjective and absolute light; while the latter in all its seeming effulgence and glory, is merely a mass of shadows, as it can never be eternal, and is simply an illusion, or Maya.

-- The Secret Doctrine -- The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy, by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky