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 )

We may all need a New Model for the Universe...

A New Model of the Universe: Principles of the Psychological Method in Its Application to Problems of Science, Religion and Art – P.D. Ouspensky (1929)

SUN RA Reading List

            This is the second book off of Sun Ra’s Reading List that I have read so far. Both are profound, and complex works attempting to attack and explain vastly different subjects.  Whereas the first book, The Two Babylons, was one man’s exploration of the sources and roots of Roman Catholic ideology and imagery back through time to perhaps the most ancient human civilization we know of, this book is an attempt to explain what countless mystics, theologians, and schools of thought have been unable to.  In this text, P.D. Ouspensky sets out to provide us fellow humans a way into the ideas and knowledge that have been kept “Hidden” or as “Mysteries” throughout human existence.  It is a deep dive indeed.

            This is a long and complex work.  It contains various sections written by Ouspensky at various times in his life.  There are parts where the author discusses his own life, and the experiences and events that led him to explore what many ignore, or consider unknowable.  This led him to learn about religions, cults, esoteric groups, secret teachings, and the Mystery Schools, even going so far as traveling worldwide to learn from those they call Masters in remote lands.  Ouspensky is not your typical seeker, as he is very well-versed in science, human psychology, and the human mind’s neurological activity, at least as well-versed as a layman could be in the late 19^th/early 20^th century.  He is constantly questioning his experiences, and relates how many “seekers” latch onto the first realization/epiphany they experience, never pushing forward to deeper truths.

            Ouspensky begins the book by discussing what modern society (his world in the 1890-1920 period) believed or sought to understand about esotericism.  He details the various sidetracks that people slid into in their search for hidden knowledge, including the lies and chicanery practiced by the Spiritualists of that era.  He explains that the true esoteric knowledge is knowledge about the world we all share that is only suitable or understandable by a select few, who need to have prior training or study to even comprehend these things.  He details how modern society has no place for these mysteries, leaving many to believe ridiculous lies and dogma because they have no access to the actual truths. 

            He then proceeds to explore the concept of the 4^th dimension, time, and how it applies to our existence.  Much like Einstein did, Ouspensky seeks to understand the metaphysical implications of a four-dimensional world.  Similar to the tale Flatland, Ouspensky starts with a point in space (0 Dimension) and shows how that point moving in time creates a line (1 Dimension).  A line, being 1D can move in two ways in time.  Along its length, the line gets longer.  However, if the line moves in time perpendicularly equal to its length, then that line becomes a square (2 Dimensions).  If that square moves in time perpendicular to itself you end up with a cube (3 Dimensions).  We live in this seemingly 3 Dimensional world.  The trick part is, how do we conceive of a square, seemingly solid, moving perpendicular to itself to create a 4 Dimensional figure?  How does that figure then move perpendicular to itself to create a 6 Dimensional figure?  It is a very heady topic.

            Subsequent chapters explore the idea of a “super” man as it has been handed down through time.  This is not an extra-powerful man, but a man that has transcended this 3^rd Dimension in his mind, and become a 4 Dimensional being, without the usual intellectual issues and emotional failures that humans naturally possess.  Per Ouspensky, history provides us with examples of these ascended humans, such as Gautama Buddha, and Jesus of Nazareth.  Due to this, Ouspensky spends a good amount of time on what the Christ story actually means, and why the New Testament is a radically different sort of text than the Old Testament.  His claim is that the Gospel stories are disguised metaphors for the journey a human must make to transcend this 3D existence or materiality, and gain a new existence (a rebirth/reincarnation) as an enlightened 4 Dimensional being.

            Ouspensky goes on to explore at depth that various systems that humans have used to understand, teach, and sometimes to disguise, sacred wisdom.  He analyzes the Tarot and its imagery, the four systems of Yoga, Dreams and the claims of Hypnotism.  The author then spends some time detailing his own personal journey into what he calls Experimental Mysticism, the active exploration of the mind, and his results are surprisingly lacking in gullibility.  This leads to what he titled the book, which is a New Model of the Universe.  This new model is intended as an exploration of what the new quantum and relativity sciences imply for our existence, hidden dimensions, and how we will evolve in the future.

For someone writing nearly 100 years ago, I found Mr. Ouspensky to have a very modern mind, cynical when it is needed, open when it is important, and willing to explore side streets and backwaters in search of truth.  This is a good example for others to follow.  I am confident that much of what P.D. Ouspensky has written is closer to the “truth”, if there is any truth to actually be found, than most any other work of esoteric wisdom I have come across.  It makes sense why this book resonated with Sun Ra enough for him to include it in his lesson plans.

(You can download and read this book in PDF form here: http://www.baytallaah.com/bookspdf/78.pdf )

Finally, A Plain-Spoken Mystic Gets to the Heart of the Matter

The Ancient Secret of the Flower of Life, Vol. 1 – Drunvalo Melchizedek (1990)

            This is a deep dive indeed.  As I am always on the look-out for weirdness and bizarre books I try to keep a running list of odd tomes that authors often reference, or use as source material.  I prefer to go read the actual source than to read someone’s interpretation of it.  I want to do the interpreting!  Because of this I found myself seeking out Drunvalo Melchizedek’s engrossing and enlightening work describing his experiences in researching what mystics call “Sacred Geometry.”  This is the first volume of two, and serves as an introduction to the idea of sacred geometry, where it comes from, and what it means to the whole of existence.

            (Let me make something clear before I continue.  I read about many things.  I read about ideas I do not hold, and viewpoints I do not agree with.  I am always seeking new data, and new ways of thinking about the multiverse we all inhabit.  I am a supporter of new ideas, not a “believer” in new ideas.  Does that make sense? It may be that everything discussed in this book by Drunvalo Melchizedek is accurate and real, but I am not the person to judge.  I can only try and understand the content of this book based upon the countless other books and experiences I have been fortunate enough to acquire.)

            The author wants to explain sacred geometry, and specifically, the image called by ancients and mystics The Flower of Life, and where this all comes from.  This requires us as readers to accept that the author is channeling ancient entities/angels who provide him with the information he seeks to share with us.  This may seem weird, but I have read of many “normal” authors whose fiction they claim comes unbidden from who-knows-where?  Stephen King, a very prolific author, has discussed how whole story ideas and book plots have come to him as if he tapped some source outside of himself.  Countless other artists and creative people claim the same.  I choose to take Mr. Melchizedek at his word about his sources, but of course I reserve judgement.

            According to the author, what we term the age of modern man, or human civilization, is actually just the most recent flowering of humanity.  He states that in the wisdom received from angels and the being Thoth he was informed that not only did vast ancient civilizations exist throughout the Earth hundreds of thousands of years before Egypt’s Old Kingdom, but that they have influenced our collective culture, religions, and beliefs.   This is all quite a standard trope in “received wisdom” writings, but in this case the message is not hidden under layers of obfuscation or cryptic word-play.  Drunvalo Melchizedek comes right out and tells you everything in a plain manner, with a lot of visual assistance through photos and diagrams.

Mystics have always held that there is one key feature of the Universe.  As above, so below.  Many take that to mean that heaven is like Life, while others take it to mean that outer space follows the same laws as the planet where we live.  Yet others see this statement as an indicator that, in order to know the Universe one can study the Self, or vice versa, if you wish to know the Self, you can find your answers by looking at our Universe.  Either way it is true.  However, the ideal of Sacred Geometry is that the human body, by its proportions, can show the same mathematical relationships that are seen by measuring the heavens. 

I do not want to just give examples and details, because they are all of a piece, and need to be taken in all together for the desired effect.  The author shares information in several different ways, in order that both our Left (feminine) brain and our Right (masculine) brain both understand everything.  I found this really cool.  I am a hyper masculine thinker, deeply rooted in logic and reasoning, but my subconscious is where my allegorical and metaphorical thinking takes place, and that is where my art comes from.  Because of this, I am aware that the brain can sometimes be processing information subconsciously while the conscious brain is occupied with the day to day job of keeping alive.

This first volume holds as its aim the goal of sharing with the reader exactly what is Sacred Geometry, why it matters, and how this knowledge was handed down through time.  It succeeded in piquing my curiosity for Volume 2.  Volume 2 seeks to explain how each individual can create their own transcendent spiritual body, called the Mer-Ka-Ba.  It is this spiritual creation that allows a human to transcend this mortal coil, and create a body crafted of pure consciousness.  Various synthetic, structural Mer-Ka-Ba’s have been created through time by beings residing here on Earth, attempting to create a planet where the population has the possibility of transcending their corporeal existence.  Supposedly our planet is here precisely for that, and this is what the man named Emmanuel, who people choose to call Jesus the Christ, was trying to impart to his followers, only to have this personal revelation be hidden by crooks who sought only to ensure their wealth and power and their status as intermediaries between humanity and the gods (of course, I am talking about organized religions, priests, rabbis, clerics, monks, etc., the very same people who worked with those in Roman government to wrongfully accuse and execute their Messiah.)  I cannot wait to see what Volume 2 holds.  If it is anything like Volume 1, it will give me a lot to think about!

(This book can be purchased here: The Ancient Secret of the Flower of Life Vol. 1 )

(This book can be downloaded and read as a PDF here: PDF Download )

Grant Morrison ran out of steam before finishing the Invisibles

The Invisibles Omnibus – Grant Morrison (1994-2000)

            The Invisibles Omnibus collects all the issues released of the Invisibles series which ran from 1994 to 2000.  Compiling comic books like this can be an issue as many are created to be open-ended, allowing the story to continue with new writers and artists indefinitely.  In the early 90’s a wave of comic book writers started to break away from the corporate comic book structure, in which anything created is the sole property and responsibility of the parent company.  They wanted to control, to “own” the content they were creating, without having to resort to the comparatively limited publishing and distribution capabilities of small presses and underground publishers.  This allowed some of the industry’s top people to set up deals with the big publishers, where they would hold the rights to the material and essentially have free rein as to what stories they wished to craft, and where the stories would lead to and ultimately end.  Neil Gaiman took this and ran with it in the Sandman series.  Alan Moore did so as well with a sequence of amazing titles.  One of their contemporaries was Grant Morrison, the British writer that penned the entire run of the Invisibles for the Vertigo imprint.

            Both Moore and Morrison are fringe thinkers, interested in the esoteric, occult, and mysterious in the world we exist in.  Both draw from the mass of occult literature and their own personal studies into the weird to write their stories.  Whereas Alan Moore’s work has a serious, intellectual feel to it, as if you are being told a preposterous story by the world’s wisest man, Grant Morrison’s work is like spending a month with a LSD-addled speed-freak who wants to share everything they have heard/seen/read/experienced regarding the Occult and esoteric, and whose narrative cannot be fully trusted due to the disjointed, haphazard nature of his mind.  It is an odd difference, and one which has divided the two writers.

            The Invisibles is an exciting book, for the most part.  It is an interesting tale, for the most part.  It is clever and witty, for the most part.  Perhaps it would have benefitted me to read just one issue’s worth of it every month like comic book fans have to do.  Since I do not have that luxury of time, I had to read it over the course of a month.  The story, like so many others, builds and builds as we meet new characters, explore their lives, both past, present, and future, and discover countless conspiracies, secrets and horrors, until it comes at you like an onrushing tsunami, unstoppable and violent.  It really does “fry your brain” at times with the vast amount of freaky conspiracy and magic, all with double and triple meanings and outcomes. This tempo and intensity are not sustainable in a work of literature of this length.  The book drags heavily around the ¾ mark, and the ending is nowhere near as inspired as the earlier parts of the book.  Perhaps, having aged many years since he began the work, Grant Morrison’s anarchic sensibility was tempered by time and wisdom.  Who knows?  All I can say is that for all the wild information contained within, I do not see how anyone who was not already deeply familiar with the weirdness presented in this book would enjoy the story, which is the standard “secret society exists to fight another secret society, both of which are mortal enemies of each other, or ARE THEY?”  Boring.

            The Invisibles is one of those works where the creator decided to throw everything including the kitchen sink at the page and see what sticks.  While I was entertained mostly, and informed very slightly (I already knew about nearly every aspect of weird that Morrison details in this book), I was left with an empty feeling.  There is no real substance behind this book.  I do not think it will hold up well as the years go by.  It in fact becomes a tedious read toward the latter parts.  Part of this is due to the inability of Morrison to craft an ending as satisfactory and weird as his beginning and middle, and part of it is due to the lack of cohesive focus in the way the story is presented.

            The very best work is crafted by either an individual or by equal partners who see things through from beginning to end.  The Invisibles did not use the same artist for the run of the comic.  In fact, many issues have 4-6 different illustrators drawing the story, which to me distracts from the tale being told.  Art and the decisions made in the process of making Art require purpose, actual purpose.  Neil Gaiman’s Sandman epic did not use the same artist for every tale, but it did use the same artist for all the cover art, and the same artist for each complete “chapter” of the stories.  This adds a cohesion that is absent in the Invisibles.  The book suffers from this greatly.  Comic books are the ultimate combination of Art and Words.  The very best of the genre is created by dedicated teams.  The Dark Knight Returns was a masterpiece, and it was only helped by the fact that the same writer (Frank Miller), artists (Frank Miller, Klaus Jansen), and colorist (Lynn Varley) handled every panel of every page of every issue.  Alan Moore’s The Watchmen also benefitted greatly from the partnership of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.  Having the artist and the writer share in the design, layout, and creation of any comic greatly improves it.  

            While there are many cool things in this comic, it never captured me, and I never felt any affinity to any of the characters involved.   Much of it seemed overly complex, and disjointed, for no discernible reason.  Every two pages the story flips from one sub-plot to another, creating a very shitty reading rhythm. It’s like Grant Morrison tried to create magic through a comic book and did so purely by regurgitating every single occult and conspiratorial idea he had ever run into, but without the humor and intelligence of The Illuminatus Trilogy for example, or the deep exploration of history found in Alan Moore’s From Hell, a far more disturbing and beautiful book.  Oh well.  Live and learn.  On to the next book.

(This book can be purchased here:  The Invisibles Omnibus  )

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  )