An Exploration of Symbols and Teachings from all of Human History

 

The Secret Teachings of All Ages: An Encyclopedic Outline of Masonic, Hermetic, Qabbalistic and Rosicrucian Symbolical Philosophy, Being an Interpretation of the Secret Teachings concealed within the Rituals, Allegories, and Mysteries of all Ages – Manly P. Hall (1928)

             

            As can be surmised from the title above, this is one of those books that appeal to me above all others.  In these collected pages, Mr. Manly P. Hall digs into the lifetime of esoteric and comparative religion studies which he concentrates and arranges for my pleasure.  There is nothing I love more than a human being smart enough to read widely on any given subject, who proceeds to then coalesce everything they have put into their brains into a work of literature.  This is one such book, and due to both the density and depth of the subject, it has taken me a good while to complete.

Writing about such a book is very difficult.  Not only is the subject matter one that requires both rigor and imagination to understand, but Mr. Hall is discussing the entirety of human symbolical philosophy, going as far back as possible into our collective human past.  Even 5 years ago I do not think I was mentally prepared to absorb what Mr. Hall has provided.

This is one of those books used by countless other writers as source material.  It is encyclopedic in scope, and everything is explored with an honest and logical demeanor.  The myths and symbols described by Mr. Hall, whether pertaining to ancient Greek Mystery Schools, the Egyptian traditions, Freemasonry, Hebrew mysticism, or mystic Christian theology are explored without bias, and always with an eye on the hidden truths contained therein, truths which at many times in human development were either scandalous, dangerous, or subversive enough to be jailed or killed for.

Many people of recent times have sought to “discover” these ancient truths, either by personal study, seeking a guru of some kind, or joining organizations like the Freemasons or other fraternal bodies still using the ancient symbology.  While wisdom is to be found in all things, the search for these hidden truths requires a lifelong passion for learning and the ability to see beyond the basic definitions and interpretations offered by other seekers. Manly P. Hall is great at this. 

Often, the truths that must be hidden from the masses are not mystical or supernatural.  They are instead truths about the reality and world we all exist in but which the powers-that-be at any given time in history see as dangerous to either their respective status quo (i.e. the divine right of kingship, the infallibility of religious leaders, etc.), or to the mental “well-being” of the masses, usually treated as ignorant sheep, barely conscious enough to warrant the title Human.

Many of the key “secrets” of the ancient Mystery Schools actually dealt with what we would now call scientific data or mathematics.  For example, the ancient Greeks understood somehow that the Earth was a sphere travelling around our Sun, that human life was in no way separate from animal or plant life and that all life was in its various stages of development, and that the primacy of the “human” is an illusion.  These were not facts you could disseminate on pamphlets or by orators.  These facts lay outside the “truths” espoused by the political, social, and religious powers of the time, (sadly, in our modern world, they still do for many people). 

Shining beacons of human thought such as Aristotle and Pythagoras saw through the lies, and sought to understand the world based on their pure rational thought.  They created schools where hand-chosen successors would be taught these truths, once the veil of ignorance had been removed by proper education.  These students would then become learned “masters” and proceed to teach a select few in the next generation.  By this method, timeless knowledge and wisdom was transmitted secretly, while the masses of humanity remained ignorant.  These “illuminated” humans were so respected that after death they passed into legend and myth, alongside Prometheus, the being who took fire from the Gods and gave it to humanity.

Because of the volatility of the knowledge involved, symbols and allegory became the main methods of transmitting the information.  “For those with eyes to see and ears to hear...” is how many ancient texts begin.  Implied is that, within the text provided, are secret and important truths only understandable to those who have been taught the meaning of the symbols and the history of human understanding.  Using this knowledge, Mr. Hall explores our collective history.  Whole chapters are devoted to Qabbalistic symbolism, the New Testament and Christian mysticism, The Hermetic mysteries, and the development of the Tarot, just to provide a few examples.

Understanding the symbols and myths Mr. Hall describes opens the mind to the interconnectedness of all human thought.  This does not just cover facts and data, but the esoteric studies of human consciousness as understood by our ancient predecessors.  Many religions besides Christianity discuss a concept of the Trinity, or the triune nature of a “god.”  Manly P. Hall describes how this is actually a description of the human being themselves.  According to the ancients and the mystics, each human is composed of three parts.  There is the physical mind and body, built from the same components as the Earth around us (ashes to ashes, dust to dust).  There is the “soul,” which describes the individual ego contained within our physical minds.  There is also the “spirit,” which designates the part of each of us that is imbued with a small piece of the divine, for as we are of the universe, the universe is of us.  As has been stated by many, “we are the Universe seeing, studying, and trying to understand itself.”  This is a deep truth, and something which shatters the dogmatic lies imprinted on much of humanity by religions.  It means we are all part of the divine.  The divine is part of all of us, and it does not stop at humans.  All animals, plants, fungi, rocks, minerals, and chemicals are divine as well, possessing their own path through what we call “life.”  The same applies to aggregations of matter, such as planets, stars, galaxies, etc. 

The cells in your body are alive.  The cells in your body are mostly replaced after 6-8 years have passed.  You are alive, regardless of whether the cells in your body are the ones you had at 11 years old, or the ones you have now at your current age.  Something apart from the physical stayed in your body and keeps it being YOU.  You are not alone in life.  You interact with everything around you in so many ways that the human mind ignores around 99% of all stimuli.  We are filters for the Universe.  The problem lies in that too many of us believe that only the stuff we “filter” out is real.  We rely on our frankly inadequate minds to process an infinite Universe.  The ancient Masters were hoping to improve humanity by sharing this information.  They just understood that one must be ready for learning, for learning is change, and change can be very disruptive, even when for the best.  Even today, in our “modern” world, most people are not ready to receive true wisdom.

I could write on and on about this book, but it is best for you to read it yourself if it sounds interesting.   Quite often, I would find myself reading a passage or sentence which led my mind to connect ideas/thoughts previously unaffiliated. Manly P. Hall has a way of guiding his readers, much like the old masters did their students.  He sometimes does not flatly state things, as much as provide the reader with a starting point for their own exploration.  I love this.  I read to be enlightened, and to have my mind think new thoughts.  In that, this book was a glorious triumph.  I expect to hunt down a physical copy and re-read this work again sometime.  Much like classic literature, there will always be something new to discover about myself, and my fellow humans in this book.

(This book can be read online here: https://www.teerpaakofficial.hu/_files/200000685-62e3262e34/Manly%20P.%20Hall%20-%20TheSecretTeachingsOfAllAges.pdf )

Terence McKenna explores Mind-Expansion and the Human Condition

Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge, A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution – Terence McKenna (1992)

            I first read this book when it came out in 1992, around my sophomore year in college.  Much of the insight of this book was lost on me, as I had not yet had time to understand the very far-reaching socio-historical implications of Terence McKenna’s scholarship.  Picking it up again, after 25 years of growth and reading and experience, only served to impress me even more.  This is a highly important book, and should become a foundation for the changes that humanity must make as a whole in order to thrive, and in order to better live in harmony with the life-world that we take for granted.

            One of the most intriguing questions regarding the development of our species is when and how the roaming primates developed a higher level of consciousness from the other primates on Earth.  There are many proposed ideas, most of them based on theology/mythology and not actual grounded empirical knowledge.  Terence McKenna was one of the very first to propose that the naturally occurring hallucinogenic plants and fungi helped expand the minds of the hominids, who would ingest these items in their search for food.  In a sense, he proposes that these hallucinogenic properties created the first “shamans” who then had to figure out a way to explore the rich world that natural plant hallucinogens open up.  He has much evidence for this, and it does help explain the sudden rise of what we call modern humans (Homo Sapiens Sapiens) around 100,000-250,000 years ago, and their/our amazing ability to process information and solve problems.

            After discussing the origins of the human exploration of mind-altering substances, Terence McKenna goes into a very depressing but integral analysis of the role that substance addiction and use affected our human culture.  After the matriarchal, communal, tribal stages of life, where the shamans (initially female, as they were the ones gathering plants and mushrooms and testing them as food, and then both female and male) would open up their minds with these natural compounds, to better understand the needs of the tribe or the patient.  After several millennia, humanity began to live in larger aggregations, in locations that were fixed, and the access to the natural hallucinogens waned.  In this time, the fermented juices and grains began to be used for intoxication as wine and beers.  This new substance was then used much as the old hallucinogens were.

            Once humans managed to distill alcohol, to get purity and strength, it all went to shit.  The problems we face today of alcoholism, rage, violence, and neglect have been around ever since humans distilled the “spirit” of the wine into a potent and toxic drug.  The next drugs to overtake all of humanity, and to continue helping in the degradation of the tribal units, were caffeine, sugar, and tobacco.  Tea initially carried the caffeine addiction but it was not until the spread of coffee, and of the mass manufacture of refined sugar, that caffeine addiction and abuse became a very real thing, and just as deadly as any other drug out there.  Combine this with tobacco, and you have a large amount of the population living constantly in an “altered consciousness” state.  The high from sugar is just as euphoric and the crash just as brutal, as tobacco or caffeine.  The massive and mind boggling extent of the human slave trade was a direct result of the addiction to sugar and the rum that can be created from it.  The Dutch and the British set up a very neat system.  They would gather up slaves in Africa, sell them in the New World to coffee, sugar, and tobacco plantations, buy vast amounts of rum, sugar, and tobacco, sell it all for a massive profit in the UK and Europe, and then go right back to buying humans and selling them off.  This lasted for HUNDREDS of years.

            Once these substances were in use, the state and the merchants combined forces to create vast networks of distribution for these substances.  The British government controlled the tea trade much like drug cartels do so today.  They then decided to get into the opium trade, purposefully flooding China with opium in an effort to make a nation of subservient addicts.  They almost succeeded.  At every step of the way, these drugs were refined and made even more potent and deadly.  Opium was refined to morphine, and thought to be a cure for opium addiction.  Heroin was refined from morphine, and likewise was supposed to combat morphine addiction.  The power of heroin to destabilize and subsume a population is evident when McKenna describes the purposeful distribution by the CIA of an exceedingly pure heroin brought in from Vietnam and surrounding areas.  It was called China White and was released to only the black neighborhoods, creating generations of junkies, unable to stand up for their rights.  Our government and in fact, most governments, use these drug cartels to their own ends.  Most of them are propped up by our support.  Pathetic.

            Terence McKenna continues on to describe his plan for the elimination of what he calls “the Dominator Culture” that we all live in today.  Instead of human unity, our culture pushes and prizes division.  Instead of legalizing natural substances capable of helping people deal with addictions, trauma, and which open the mind to possibilities unknown, our Dominator Culture sets hallucinogens as CLASS 1 drugs, meaning they have absolutely no medicinal, social, scientific value, which is a flat out lie.  It is solely a means by which to control those who would study these amazing plants and fungi.  However, they easily allow the deadliest and most addictive of drugs to be widely marketed and sold in every corner.  Alcohol, tobacco, and sugar products are what keep people subservient, diseased, and mentally dull.  It suits their interests.  It does not suit our own individual rights.  This is why there was such a crackdown on the hippies.  Their drug taking did not lead to subservience and a drone-like ability to do meaningless 9-5 jobs.  They had to be broken and humiliated.  We must all remain robots.  That is what they want and they are succeeding.

(This book can be read here:  https://archive.org/stream/TerenceMckenna-FoodOfTheGods.pdf/TerenceMckenna-FoodOfTheGods_djvu.txt )

(This book can be purchased here:  AMAZON  )

What Exactly Did the Ancient Mystics Experience, and Why?

The Cult of the Seer in the Ancient Middle East: A Contribution to Current Research on Hallucinations Drawn from Coptic and Other Texts – Violet MacDermot (1971)

            Sometimes I find myself drawn to read a reference work.  I really love reference materials, as they gather and explore a large amount of data into one cohesive book.  I have always enjoyed pouring information into my grey matter and seeing the connections made therein.  Having read quite a few books in the past two years dealing with the rise of worship, the human need for ritual, the neurophysiology of the human brain and how it affects what is called the mystical, and the development of mythology and the mythological basis for all of our religious belief systems, I figured that this book was indeed for me.  In this masterwork, Violet MacDermot has gathered together writings from the Egyptians, the Coptic Christians, the Gnostic Christians and the Hebrews, and seeks to understand the means by which these people enabled, experienced, and interpreted mystic visions/hallucinations.  It is an exhaustive book, and well worth going back to as a reference source.

            A book of this scope has many themes to explore.  One of the main ones is the change in mystical visions from the time of the Egyptian ascetics to the Hellenic/Greek times, to that of the early Hebrew mystics and then the Christian saints and martyr seers.  It explores the details of the ritual, religious life of an Egyptian believer, and then details how this differed from the life of the hermit mystic.  During and before the time of the Egyptian kingdoms, the role of ritual and religion was to help the individual understand their place in the larger scheme of things.  This included the general understanding that the divine was to be found in all things, both living and inanimate, and that to serve the greater community was the utmost goal.  The individual themselves is not of primal importance.  They are just a cog in the greater machine.  The gods depended upon the people’s rituals to ensure their endless cycles of birth, death, and rebirth.  Without strict regulations on rituals and religious services, the whole fabric of human society would have crumbled (in their eyes), and the legitimacy of their divine rulers (kings or pharaohs) would be devalued.  MacDermot provides countless examples translated from original source materials to show that the Egyptian devout felt their participation integral to the orderliness of the world around them.  The mystics at this time would do everything the opposite of what was expected from society.  They would remove themselves from the towns and cities, living alone in the deserts.  They would avoid the ritual prayers and ceremonies of the regular folk, and instead focus their whole energies into meditation, fasting, and the attempt to have the soul be rid completely of the trappings of the normal Egyptian world.  Because of this they found divinity in themselves, the full realization of it coming only very near death, as one lets go of this world and the soul moves onto the next.  Instead of ensuring proper mummification so that their body would be reunited with their soul in the afterlife, they sought a total wasting away, allowing their soul to unify with the divine and avoid the endless repetition of birth/death/rebirth.  This would prove to be very influential to the Hellenic, Hebrew, and Christian mystics who came after them.

            It seems that every new culture strives to erase the ideas of the past, or at least refute them.  The Greek philosophers did not agree with the Egyptian mystics.  They saw the world as a quite different place, and their mystical visions changed accordingly.  Many of them came to believe that the material world was one of pure degradation, always rotting, always in a state of decline, and that the spiritual world, the world of ideal forms and of the spirit, was one of perfection.  The Hellenic mystics would use many of the same techniques as the Egyptian mystics to bring about ecstatic visions.  Everything from fasting, to physical deprivation, to ritual dance, to chanting, to a secluded desert hermit life was utilized.  Their end goals were different though.  They did not come from a society that demanded everyone adhere to a specific set of ritual. Instead, they lived in a world where the philosophers told them that the divine/ideal was to be reached through pure thought, through philosophy, as it were.  They would meditate on the ideal, seeking to eliminate all thought of the base natural world from their minds.  Even though their aims were different, the visions described and experiences claimed were very similar to those of their predecessors in Egypt.  This continues on through the Hebrew and the early Christian mystical tradition.

            After the Egyptians and the Greeks, the mystics of the Hebrew and the early Christian faith were a bit different.  They did not see the world as divinity manifested (Egyptian) or as a shadow of the divine (Greeks), but instead they saw a strict duality of good versus evil.  Many tended to believe in the Manichean thought that the natural world is a wholly evil construct, one in which the body is purely a prison for the divine soul.  Because of this, any and all human activity was derided as either evil, or drawn from evil.  Of course, these activities were merely the residue of the earlier ages of religious thought.  Sex was evil, where before it was a personal experience of divinity.  Orgiastic feasts were evil, where before they allowed the community to share in the bounty that divinity had provided on the Earth.  To the mystic seers even the idea of organized religion was an evil, created on Earth to draw humans away from the truly divine, which could only be achieved by the total obliteration of the self, both physical and mental.  It really is insane how humanity creates its gods and means of worship, and then rails against it at a later time, only to then destroy and rail against the latest religious ideas.  

For modern Americans, a nice view from the balcony can be an ecstatic experience.

             If anything, books such as these that aggregate the religious literature over thousands of years and dozens of cultures go to show the deep schizophrenia that exists in the human mind when it is forced to believe something that is essentially a fairy tale explanation for the way the world appears to us.  Mystics to this day continue on with these self-mortification practices, starving themselves, ingesting hallucinogenic substances, enduring endless pain and discomfort, and separating themselves from the society at large, all to attempt to commune with a non-existent divinity.  So many people have died and suffered at the hands of those that believe their rituals are the true ones, and that any others must be stopped at any cost.  Currently there is a war going on in Islam, between different cults, each claiming they are the one true way to salvation and the divine.  The same thing goes on in Christianity, as the orthodox and the charismatic Pentecostals fight it out in the court of public opinion, as well as in our legislatures.  No one talks about this.  It is a hard subject to broach.  The more one learns about humanity’s religious history, the more one sees how it is all a very carefully constructed house of cards, ready to fall down at any moment, but taking up vast amounts of resources and time from millions of blindly faithful people that could be better served in the betterment of humanity at large.

            The best part of this book consists of the translations of source materials that Ms. MacDermot has gathered up.  It is quite amazing to see the literal plagiarism used to prop up the stories about saints and martyrs and mystics.  The people who wrote about the Christian martyrs used the writings about Hellenic mystics as source material, copying nearly every detail.  The Hellenic mystery cult writers did the same thing with the writings of the Egyptians.  So many things are accepted at face value because some learned wise man wrote it down thousands of years ago.  It is ridiculous.  Every new religion has to usurp the rituals and holidays of the ones that came before it, and by doing so, usually turn out to employ the exact same means that were deemed blasphemous or heretic.  The very early Christians followed the rules Jesus gave very strictly.  Jesus said to leave your family, to avoid sex, to not worship idols, to avoid working, to basically stop taking part in society and society’s rituals.  The Christian church however, created “sacraments” to ensure that the masses would still take care of their familial obligations, would still marry and have many children, would still pray to images of saints and martyrs, would still find employment to pay the 10% tithe required by the church, and would continue in their yearly rituals, disguised as Christian holidays (Easter = Ishtar, Christian Saint Feast days replacing those of previous religions, etc.).  In other words, the Church forced its followers to adhere to the very same things that their namesake, Jesus Christ, instructed them to avoid.  If that does not let you know it is all a crock of shit, then perhaps you should read this book and start the exploration for yourself.

(This book is out of print but can be purchased used here: AMAZON  )

The Symbols are all around us!

Secret Symbolism in Occult Art – Fred Gettings (1987)

The Hidden world calls yet again.  The word “Occult” means different things to different people.  To some, it describes only the knowledge that is “against god” in some manner.  To others, it describes the hidden world that is all around us, and of which we are all a part, but that remains mostly hidden, except for insights gleamed by mystics, shamans, sensitives, and other spiritually enlightened people.  One thing that is most certain, is that “occult” does not mean “forgotten.”  The ideas explored in the world of Occult knowledge are impregnated throughout our human world, and the symbols of those ideas can be found anywhere from a fishing village in Greece to the mightiest and most grandiose cathedrals of Roman Catholicism. 

The title of this book is a bit misleading, as all occult things are by nature secret, and the only way to describe any experiences of the world hidden from daily life is to use metaphor and symbol, for normal language does not have the capability to convey what these mystics experience.  People who believe in the occult-ed world feel that there exist many other planes of existence, apart from the material plane we find ourselves living in, and that our souls, composed of a different type of energy/matter, move on to a different plane of existence when our physical body dies.  Because we are all connected by virtue of our co-existence in the Universe, we can explore these separate realms through meditation, drugs, ritual, trance, and psychic abilities.

While all of that may sound like pure jibber-jabber, the influence of this type of thought is pervasive throughout our human culture.  The symbols of the Occult have been used and understood for thousands of years, and now are found in so many places that no one questions where they come from.  For example, in much of the Christian religious iconography, the saints and venerated folk are depicted with glowing halos of energy.  Christians claim this is a sign of their holiness.  However, the symbolic halo was originally used thousands of years earlier, by many different people to denote someone who had crossed over to the Aetheric plane from the material plane.  It is easy to see how this would relate to portraying someone who had a one-on-one encounter with god.

Another example is the portrayal of the Virgin Mary or Jesus Christ enclosed within a Vesica Piscis, which is a deeply rooted Occult symbol, both symbolizing the female, creative, life-giving impulse of the Universe, and the connection between the material world and the Aetheric.  The female symbolism is obvious, as the Vesica Piscis is symbolic of a vagina, of the eternal Feminine, and it makes sense to use the symbol to enclose the so-called Mother of God.  

"Let me save the little man from inside the boat" - Phife Dawg

The use of the Vesica Piscis for portrayals of Jesus Christ, however, have nothing to do with the feminine, and everything to do with the idea that Jesus dies, dwelt in the “Aetheric” realm (described as Hell in the Bible), and returned to Earth with a new awareness.  Because of this he is an enlightened one, worthy of being represented as one with greater knowledge and experience than the normal human.

He saw things we cannot imagine...

Part of my interest in symbols lies in their multiplicity of meaning.  A symbol can and does mean different things to different audiences.  They hold their power whether or not the viewer understands the symbol, but to someone who is versed in the lore of symbols and their meanings, seeing them opens up new pathways of understanding, new ways to approach a subject, and new forms of enlightenment.  To an average Christian, an upside down cross is a symbol of warped Christianity, of Satanism, of everything evil.  However, many Orthodox Christians see an upside down cross as a symbol of the piety of St. Peter, who chose to be crucified upside down in respect of his teacher Jesus having been crucified right-side up.  Context is everything, even in Occult matters.

(This book can be read online as a .pdf here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/36983769/Fred-Gettings-Secret-Symbolism-in-Occult-Art#scribd )

(This book can be purchased here:  AMAZON  )

The Gnostics all died, yet their works live on

Gnosis: An Esoteric Tradition of Mystical Visions & Unions – Dan Merkur (1993)

            The term “gnostic” is a bad word in organized Christian religious circles.  They use it to designate and denigrate the early Christians who interpreted Jesus’ teachings as being about the individual’s ability to experience direct communion with the Almighty.  Original Christianity, after being codified by Constantine and his cronies, taught that Jesus was the way to God, and that only he had the divine within him, all the rest of us being low, gutter matter in need of salvation and redemption.  The Gnostic Christians however, believed that Jesus taught that within each of us lies the divine, and that each of us is a “son of god,” capable of eternal life through direct mystical experience.

Some people seek a direct mystical experience with Elvis Presley

 

            Since the Gnostic view does not allow the creation of churches, devotion to the priesthood, or the blackmailing of the faithful into giving their money and energy to human-created temples, the organized churches tried to destroy everything the Gnostics wrote.  They attempted to erase their existence from the collective memory of humanity.  This drove the Gnostics into seclusion in the desert which is why we have the Gnostic works today.  They survived through isolation, and were found in remote caves in the mid-20^th century.  The thought police cannot destroy what we want to save.

            “Gnosis” is the Greek word for knowledge.  In religious terms, “gnosis” is the reception of wisdom from direct communion with the almighty divine.  Gnostic Christians, as well as their counterparts in Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, etc., teach that self-knowledge is the key, and once one knows oneself, one will be able to leave that knowledge behind and see the divine within us all.  Organized religions fear this.  They teach that only through the prayers of their interlocutors (priests, saints etc.) one can be “saved” which will allow, if one is lucky (or paid the church enough money) a union after death with god and life everlasting.

            Dan Merkur shares all the information he can, drawing parallels between the early days of Christianity and Islam, before the “rules” were codified by the priest classes.  Religion is a social control mechanism, and gnostic teachings go against everything taught by the con-artists we call priests, pastors, bishops, etc.  The Gnostic ideas are evident in all human spirituality, tracing back to pre-Egyptian days, and have retained their power via the work of mystics throughout the centuries.  There is mad wisdom to be found in Gnostic literature, and it is great that it survives to our time.  Many of the themes in esoteric realms such as astrology or alchemy are actually coded instructions to those seeking initiation into the mysteries.  I love reading about the many ideas killed by the assholes that enslave much of humanity through their “religions.”