The modern Ideas about consciousness began in ancient Egypt

The Spiritual Technology of Ancient Egypt: Sacred Science and the Mystery of Consciousness – Edward F. Malkowski (2007)

            The human race has a deep fascination with the relatively ancient Egyptian culture, especially the amazing technological and architectural wonders left behind by the Old and New Kingdoms of several thousand years ago.  To some researchers however, the blind obsession with the physical leftovers of the Egyptian culture blinds people into ignoring the other aspects of that culture that allowed it to survive and thrive for thousands of years.  The philosophical, theological, and cosmological ideas of the Egyptians, and their effect on the history of human thought, science, and religious belief, are what are explored by Mr. Malkowski in this cool book.

            It seems odd that, for all the praise lavished on the Egyptians amazing technological achievements in architecture, writing, and fine arts, not too many people explore the deep roots that our modern religious thought has in the ideas of Egypt.  People forget that Moses was raised in the Pharaoh’s house, taught as any noble Egyptian would be, to read and write, and do mathematics, and analyze theology and philosophy.  The wisdom he learned there was what he later applied while leading the Hebrews to their “promised land.”  The ideas he shared with them, from Mosaic law to the Ten Commandments, all have precedent in the Egyptian philosophy and theology.  These ideas are what scholars refer to as the “Mysteries.” 

            These Egyptian “mysteries” were in fact esoteric knowledge about the biggest questions humans have.  Why are we here?  What created existence? How do we know we are real? What is time?  What is our purpose?  These and many other questions are explored by Mr. Malkowski from the vantage point of the Egyptians.   These ideas are big, shocking to those ruled by religious dogma, and because of this they have been kept “hidden,” taught only to those who actively seek out the information.  For example, there is no moment of creation, after which the world just existed.  We are all a part of creation at every point in our lives, for once creation begins, it does not end.  The entire Universe is in a constant state of self-creation, and consciousness is an integral part of the Universe understanding itself.  Because of this, we are all divine, due to our local consciousness being just a small sliver of the overall Universal consciousness, which many label as god. 

            The idea of “sin” is taken very literally by close-minded believers.  They want a set of rules.  This is good, and this is bad. Do only the good, and ask for forgiveness for the bad.  That is not the truth of sin.  That is how organized groups use the concept of sin to control the population.  The Egyptians, the Greeks after them, the early Christians and Gnostics, and many other groups since have understood sin to be a different thing.  Since humans are a combination of the material (physical body and brain) and the divine (non-local consciousness), a true life is led by those who see and accept both aspects of themselves.  This duality is a critical thing.  SIN, as it was viewed by the Egyptians and the mystics that followed, is the state where a human has become solely obsessed and focused on his physical self, whether that is as a denial of their own consciousness, or in partaking of what people call the Seven Deadly Sins, all of which deal with the obsession of the material self to the exclusion of the divine self.  This is what Jesus talked about when he said that everyone is with god if they so choose, and that being away from the divine is the true sin.
  

            Some groups of people, (the Zoroastrian faith for one) took this Egyptian mystery influence to the extreme and saw the material world as purely base and un-divine.  Instead of striking a balance between the physical and the divine, they sought to purge anything physical and focus solely on the divine.  Other religions, (organized Christianity for example) decided to do away with the “mysteries” and instead focus on dogma as societal control.  They ignored the teachings and words of Jesus, reading them literally (exoterically) instead of as allegory (esoterically).  Because of this, for the last thousand years, much of the Egyptian wisdom has been ignored, and their philosophy and theology treated as just an odd curiosity, a mish-mash of beliefs and gods and conflicting ideas.  This is a real delusion, causing us to think of the greatest civilization of humanity’s past as amazing in technology but ridiculous and laughable in their theology.  What an error we make.  When deep ideas are expressed, they must be expressed in story or allegory in order to make an actual impact on a human.  People do not like being told flat out what they should or should not do or believe.  It is better to share such information in a form that will allow for the receiver to explore the ideas.  This is why, when discussing the biggest issues, Jesus in the Bible spoke in pure allegory.  The problem with allegory is that, once the culture moves on, those symbols no longer mean what they used to.  We modern humans have no basis to understand an Egyptian allegory, much like an ancient Egyptian would not be able to comprehend an allegory containing modern symbols, such as the “mushroom cloud,” “Superman,” “Coca Cola,” etc.

            There is so much more in this book to explore, like the idea that the three great pyramids at Giza are far older than the Egyptian civilization, or that the language of the Egyptians is a hold-over from that previous civilization.  The world is an ever changing place and only our ego keeps us from accepting that the people of the past were not grunting savages, but instead exactly the same as you or I, seeking answers to the difficult questions, and working to help sustain their civilization.  

(This book is available for purchase here:  The Spiritual Technology of Ancient Egypt  )

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  )

Until all humans have Liberty, none of us are truly free

Freedom is a Two-Edged Sword – Jack Parsons (1946)

            Mr. John “Jack” Parsons was one of the men most responsible for the Rocket Age, almost singlehandedly advancing the science of rocketry to the level that, just a few decades after his untimely death, led humanity to land on the Moon.  He was also a grade-A mystic, mingling with the Occult leaders of the day, including a long relationship with Aleister Crowley and his Ordo Templi Orientis, a “school” of magic which focused mostly on sexual magic techniques.

            Freedom is a Two-Edged Sword is one of several treatises that Jack Parsons wrote in the 1940’s.  In it he discusses how freedom consists of a duality, using the metaphor of a blade “…of which one edge is liberty and the other responsibility, on which both edges are exceedingly sharp."  This duality was once fully accepted and worshipped, until the patriarchal religions of the world began to destroy it by tearing down the role of Woman, and her seemingly magical position as conceiver, bearer, birther and protector of LIFE.  Some of the most poignant language used by Jack Parsons is in the defense of the magic, the power of Woman.  That this was written in 1946, decades before the modern Feminist movement is a testament to his foresight. 

            Another large part of this treatise consists of the definition and description of true Liberty, as it applies to all humankind.  He discusses the false liberals who only want everyone to think as they do, but not to have the Liberty to think as they see fit.  He describes certain inalienable rights that are part of every human, and which are exceedingly worn away at by the fascist powers that be.  As Mr. Parsons puts it,

“Freedom is meaningless where its expression is controlled by powerful groups such as the press, the radio, the motion picture industry, churches, politicians and capitalists. Freedom must be insured.

It can only be insured by the allegiance to the principle that man has certain inalienable rights; among which are the rights:

·         To live his private life, insofar as it concerns only himself, as he sees fit.

·         To eat and drink, to dress, live and travel as, where and he will.

·         To express himself; to speak, write, print, experiment and otherwise create as he desires.

·         To work as he chooses, when he chooses and where he chooses at a reasonable and commensurate wage.

·         To purchase his food, shelter, deical and social needs and all other services and commodities necessary to his existence and self-expression at a reasonable and commensurate price.

·         To have a decent environment and upbringing during his childhood until he reaches a responsible majority.

·         To love as he desires, where, how and with whom he chooses, in accordance only with the desires of himself and of his partner.

·         To the positive opportunity to enjoy these rights as he sees fit, without obstruction on the one hand or compulsion on the other.

·         Finally, in order to protect his person, his property and his rights, he should have the right to kill an aggressor if necessary. This is the purpose of the right to keep and bear arms.”

It is amazing to think that this man was promoting these ideas over 60 years ago, and yet humanity as a whole has yet to achieve this.  There are parts of the world where this is all true, and even in those parts, the Liberty described is being slowly eroded by those who would seek to control the masses, instead of empowering them to be all they can be, as they so choose.

I choose to blast my noise-rock skronk for all to hear!

There may be a lot of esoteric, occult, mystical slants to Mr. Parsons’ writing but the core of it is a cry for humanity to respect itself, to love itself, and to include everyone as part of the human family.  His rage at those that seek to prevent this is evident in every word.  I will definitely be reading more!  I am in full agreement with Mr. Parsons that “…the liberty of the individual is the foundation of civilization.”  While many Americans are taught to seek and protect “freedom,” the real thing they should be seeking and protecting is LIBERTY.  Freedom is a value held inside one’s own mind.  You can be free inside and still be a captive.  What is actually needed is LIBERTY.  Liberty is a value of action.  You either have the liberty to live as Mr. Parsons outlined above, or you don’t.  Until all humans have liberty, none of us are truly free.

(This treatise can be read or downloaded in .pdf form here: http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/bb/babalon210.htm )


(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.”