Thoughts and Stuff

DOCTOR ATTACKS POLITICAL CORRECTNESS, NATIONAL DEBT IN FRONT OF OBAMA

2013-02-11T09:09:00.001-06:00

by Billy Hallowell

Dr. Benjamin Carson delivered a noteworthy National Prayer Breakfast keynote speech in President Barack Obama’s presence...

Carson attacked political correctness as a “dangerous” threat to free speech and encouraged Americans to boldly share their views...

The pediatric neurosurgeon also provided his theories about the national debt, deficits, taxation and health care, taking stances that were opposed to the president’s position...

Obama watched intently as Carson spoke for more than 25 minutes

One of the more unique speeches delivered at this morning’s National Prayer Breakfast came from Dr. Benjamin S. Carson, a world-renowned pediatric neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Taking the stage before President Barack Obama’s faith-filled address, Carson spoke for more than 25 minutes, tackling issues ranging from education to personal responsibility. His keynote, while predicated upon the theme of Jesus Christ as his ultimate role model, also took a starkly political tone, advocating against some of the very policies the president has implemented.

At the beginning of his speech, Carson shared an intense disdain for political correctness. Without getting too specific on the issue front, he said that Americans should stop being afraid to speak up and defend their beliefs; he also encouraged people to respect the individuals they disagree with. Carson held little back, condemning political correctness as “a horrible thing” that is “dangerous,” as it hampers freedom of thought and expression.

“We’ve reached a point where people are actually afraid to talk about what they want to say, because somebody might be offended,” Carson said, noting the example of people refraining from saying “Merry Christmas.” “We’ve got to get over this sensitivity and it keeps people from saying what they really believe.”

Carson encouraged discussion about societal issues, also pointing out education as an essential conundrum the country needs to confront. He highlighted his own path from poverty to success, sharing very personal details about his parents and early family life and subsequently described the importance of helping students seeking to advance academically through his Carson Scholars Fund.

The speech took an interesting turn when the doctor cautioned that moral decay and fiscal irresponsibility can have dire consequences — even for powerful countries like America. Here, he became even more pointed and impassioned.

“I think particularly about ancient Rome. Very powerful — nobody could even challenge them militarily…they destroyed themselves from within,” Carson continued. “Moral decay. Fiscal irresponsibility.”

While he said America’s issues are dire, he was positive that the nation can fix its ways, as there are bright and innovative people who simply need to come together to address the problems at hand.

“And one of our big problems right now…our deficit is a big problem,” he said, as Obama watched him intently. ”Think about it — and our national debt — $16 and a half trillion dollars.”

To illustrate just how massive the debt is, Carson told the audience that if they counted one number per second, it would take them 507,000 years to get to the sum total. The doctor said that the massive fiscal blunder is something that the nation must contend with. From there, he moved on to taxation, seemingly taking a stance in direct opposition to Obama’s.

“What about our taxation system — so complex there is no one that can possibly comply with every jot and tittle,” he noted, going on to call for a simpler (i.e. flat tax) system. ”When I pick up my Bible, you know what I see — I see the fairest individual in the universe — God — and he’s given us a system. It’s called tithe.”

Source Material: The Blaze

Unbridled Growth of Federal Power

2013-02-11T08:29:00.000-06:00

The systematic dismantling of the constitution creates the greatest crisis in American history, and the unbridled growth of Federal Power.

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The Importance of Having a Constitution

In its most general sense, a Constitution is the fundamental, underlying framework of government for a nation or state. Most countries have a Constitution. The United States has a Constitution, and is a Constitutional government, because it requires everyone, regardless of position or office, to abide by higher law. The United States Constitution establishes both the government's power, and the fundamental rights belonging to all people who reside within the borders

While most of the world's constitutions are written, they need not be. For instance, Great Britain has an unwritten Constitution. When the British refer to the term constitution, they are referring to their collective legal traditions, including: the Magna Carta of 1215, the English Bill of Rights of 1687, Acts of Parliament, and the collective decisions of the British Courts (known as the common law).

When people in the United States refer to the Constitution, they are often referring to the written document that lays out the structure and function of the federal government, and that contains the Bill of Rights. People also may refer to their own state Constitutions.

The Provisions of the U.S. Constitution

Written in 1787 and ratified in 1789, the U.S. Constitution is the oldest national Constitution still in use.

The U.S. Constitution contains seven Articles.

Article I established the Legislative Branch of government.
Article II established the Executive Branch of government.
Article III established the Judicial Branch of government.
Article IV regulated the relations of individual states with each other.
Article V established a means for amending the Constitution.
Article VI established the Constitution as the Supreme Law of the Land.
Article VIII established a procedure for ratifying the Constitution.
There are 27 Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, of which only 25 are active.

The first Ten Amendments are known as the Bill of Rights. They list specific rights of the people which the government may not infringe upon. They were added immediately after the Constitution was ratified. (e.g., freedom of religion).

The Eighteenth Amendment prohibited the sale or transportation of alcohol, and the Twenty-first Amendment repealed the Eighteenth.

The remaining amendments either alter portions of the Constitution, or expand individual rights.

The Importance and Strength of the U.S. Constitution

One of the primary roles of any Constitution is to limit the powers of a government by informing all of the citizenry of those powers a government may legitimately possess.

No Constitutions: Historically, many rulers did not write Constitutions, in an attempt to keep all power to themselves. For instance, King Louis XIV of France (who did not have a Constitution) is famous for saying, "I am the State" - meaning that the law was whatever he said it was. A Constitution exists to prohibit such unchecked concentrations of power.

The British Constitution and the Revolution: Although they saw many benefits of the unwritten British Constitution, the Founders argued that, without reducing basic principles of government to writing, they were too easy for rulers to manipulate. Indeed, the Founders justified the Revolution by arguing that the British King and Parliament routinely violated the British Constitution. Thus, they established a written Constitution for America.

Empty Constitutions: Even if Constitutions are written, they are empty, if the government is free to ignore their provisions at will. For instance, the former Soviet Union had a Constitution, which it often disregarded.

The U.S. Constitution: The ultimate strength of the U.S. Constitution is that it not only establishes a government, but it establishes a government which, to use Thomas Jefferson's words, can "govern itself." In other words, the document not only lets all people know the limits of the government's power, but, the system of checks and balances that it has created ensures that these limits will be obeyed.

Constitutional Protections Against Government Abuse

The American Revolution was, in large part, fought because the colonists believed that the British King and Parliament were violating their rights - namely, their right to be free from taxation without representation. When the colonists won independence, they made sure that the new government they created would respect their rights. Today, a variety of Constitutional provisions and laws specifically prevent the government from infringing upon individual rights.

Certain provisions within the first Seven Articles of the Constitution protect individual rights. For instance, the Ex Post Facto clause of Article I, Sections 9 and 10, prohibits both the federal and state governments from punishing persons for actions that were not crimes when they were committed.

The Bill of Rights is the name given to the first Ten Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. It lists specific rights that the government may not violate.

The First Amendment protects freedoms of religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition.
The Second Amendment protects the right to keep and bear arms.

The Third Amendment prevents soldiers from being housed in private homes by the government, except during times of war.

The Fourth Amendment sets the requirements for issuing search warrants, and prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.

The Fifth Amendment protects several rights, including: the right to remain silent, to not be tried twice for the same crime, to have a grand jury review a criminal case before a formal charge is brought, to not have the government seize private property without paying for it, and to not be prosecuted for a crime and/or deprived of your life, liberty, or property without being heard (known as Due Process of Law).

The Sixth Amendment provides rights relating to a criminal trial, including: the right to an attorney, to cross examine witnesses, to make sure that relevant witnesses are compelled to attend the trial, to have an impartial jury, and to have a speedy trial.

The Seventh Amendment provides for the right to a jury trial in most civil (non-criminal) trials.

The Eighth Amendment prohibits excessive fines, bail, and cruel and unusual punishments.

The Ninth Amendment reserves to the people rights not otherwise specified.

The Tenth Amendment protects the powers of the states.

The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment applies most of the provisions of the Bill of Rights to the States. The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits the States from using the law to treat people differently without sufficient justification.

Voting is one of a citizen's most important rights in a democracy. Several Constitutional provisions deal with this right, including: the Fifteenth Amendment (gave newly freed slaves the right to vote); the Nineteenth Amendment (gave women the right to vote); the Twenty-Third Amendment (gave residents of the District of Columbia the right to vote in Presidential elections); and the Twenty-Sixth Amendment (lowered the federal voting age to 18).

Laws Prohibiting the Infringement of Individual Rights

The Constitution only prohibits the government from infringing upon individual rights. With the exception of the Thirteenth Amendment's prohibition of slavery, it does not prohibit private individuals from doing so.

The Heritage Guide to the Constitution

FAA Releases New Drone List—Is Your Town on the Map?

2013-02-10T08:46:00.000-06:00

The Federal Aviation Administration has finally released a new drone authorization list. This list, released in response to EFF’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, includes law enforcement agencies and universities across the country, and—for the first time—an Indian tribal agency. In all, the list includes more than 20 new entities over the FAA’s original list, bringing to 81 the total number of public entities that have applied for FAA drone authorizations through October 2012.

Click Here To see if your city is on the List

Some of these new drone license applicants include:

The State Department
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
Barona Band of Mission Indians Risk Management Office (near San Diego, California)
Canyon County Sheriff’s Office (Idaho)
Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office (Northwest Oregon)
Grand Forks Sheriff’s Department (North Dakota)
King County Sheriff’s Office (covering Seattle, Washington)

And several new entities in Ohio, including:

Medina County Sheriff’s Office
Ohio Department of Transportation
Sinclair Community College
Lorain County Community College

The list comes amid extensive controversy over a newly-released memo documenting the CIA’s policy on the targeted killing of American citizens and on the heels of news that Charlottesville, Virginia has just become one of the first cities in the country to ban drones. This new list should contribute to the debate over whether using domestic drones for surveillance is consistent with the Constitution and with American values.

As we’ve written in the past, drone use in the United States implicates serious privacy and civil liberties concerns. Although drones can be used for neutral, or even for positive purposes, drones are also capable of highly advanced and, in some cases, almost constant surveillance, and they can amass large amounts of data. Even the smallest drones can carry a host of surveillance equipment, from video cameras and thermal imaging to GPS tracking and cellphone eavesdropping tools. They can also be equipped with advanced forms of radar detection, license plate cameras, and facial recognition. And, as recent reporting from PBS and Slate shows, surveillance tools, like the military’s development of gigapixel technology capable of “tracking people and vehicles across an entire city,” are improving rapidly.

EFF hopes this list will spur more people to ask their local law enforcement agencies about their drone programs. EFF has partnered with MuckRock to make it easier to ask for and disseminate this information. We also encourage people to ask hard questions of government officials about who is funding drone development in their communities and what policies the government will demand agencies follow if they fly drones. We need greater transparency and citizen push-back to protect Americans from privacy-invasive domestic drone use.

You can find the new list here.

Published with authorization of Electronic Frontier Foundation

Source Material: Liberty Crier

Who Killed Princess Diana? The Royal Family Did It?

2013-02-03T10:12:00.002-06:00

The royal family did it?

Not everyone was satisfied with the official version of events, however. Within hours of the announcement of her death, rumors of a plot to assassinate Princess Diana had begun to swirl. The main culprits: the royal family, assisted by the British intelligence service.

Why, you ask, would the House of Windsor want Princess Diana dead? Because, the whisper campaign went, she was poised to embarrass the crown by marrying Dodi Al Fayed, a Muslim, who would become stepfather to Princes William and Harry, the heirs to the British throne. It was even speculated that Diana was pregnant with Al Fayed's child.

These paranoid accusations gained more traction than they deserved thanks to their tabloid appeal, not to mention the tireless championing of Mohamed Al Fayed, Dodi's father, who refuses to this day to believe the fatal car crash was a mere accident. It was suggested that an agent of MI6, the British intelligence service, was present at the scene, posing as a member of the press. It was suggested that a mysterious vehicle, a white Fiat Uno, was used by the conspirators to block the limousine's path, forcing it to collide with the pillar. It was suggested that recordings from closed-circuit cameras in the Alma Tunnel which ought have documented the precise sequence of events were either tampered with or summarily disposed of. And so on.

None of these assertions have held up under scrutiny. Diana was not, in fact, pregnant, according to tests run on samples of her blood collected at the scene. Nor were Diana and Dodi planning to get married, according to sources close to the principals. There were no unaccounted-for vehicles, least of all a phantom Fiat, involved in the crash. Of the 10 traffic cameras located in and around the tunnel, none were properly positioned to record the accident itself. And no convincing evidence of government involvement has ever been found.

Source Material: David Emery

And yet...

A handwritten letter in which Diana, Princess of Wales indicated that the Prince of Wales was plotting to kill her so he could marry Tiggy Legge-Bourke, the former nanny to Princes William and Harry, has been shown at the inquest into her death.

The note was sent to Paul Burrell, the princess’s then butler, in October 1993, 10 months after her separation from Prince Charles was announced, which you could see here.

She wrote, “I am sitting here at my desk today in October, longing for someone to hug me and encourage me to keep strong and hold my head high. This particular phase in my life is the most dangerous – my husband is planning ‘an accident’ in my car, brake failure and serious head injury in order to make the path clear for him to marry Tiggy. Camilla is nothing but a decoy, so we are all being used by the man in every sense of the word.”

The letter has been shown at the inquest at the Royal Courts of Justice in London to witnesses who have been challenged over their assertions that the princess did not fear for her safety.

Mohamed Fayed, the father of the princess’s boyfriend, Dodi Fayed, claimed that the couple were killed by MI6 on the orders of Prince Philip to prevent them marrying and having a Muslim baby.

Michael Mansfield, QC, representing Mr Fayed, has suggested to close friends of the princess that she had expressed fears for her safety, which they have denied.

During questioning on Tuesday, the letter was shown to Lucia Flecha da Lima, the wife of the former Brazilian ambassador to London and one of the princess’s closest confidantes. She revealed that the princess had never expressed fears for her safety, saying, “I still don’t believe in it. Paul Burrell was perfectly capable of imitating Princess Diana’s handwriting. I don’t believe she was fearing for her life, especially from Prince Charles, the future king of your country.”

The inquest has already been told that in October 1995 the princess told Lord Mishcon, her solicitor, that “reliable sources” had informed her of the prince’s plans “that she and Camilla would be put aside”.

Source Material: Prince Charles Plans to Kill Me - Sponkit

Occam's razor (also written as Ockham's razor, Latin lex parsimoniae) is a principle of parsimony, economy, or succinctness used in logic and problem-solving. It states that among competing hypotheses, the one that makes the fewest assumptions should be selected.

Diana Inquest: Who Killed Princess Diana?

The Bodyguard's Story: Diana, the Crash, and the Sole Survivor

Unsolved Mystery - The Assassination of JFK

2013-02-02T10:30:00.004-06:00

Bobby Kennedy was perhaps America’s first conspiracy theorist. Robert Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy conclude that JFK was the victim of a domestic plot, aka. ‘JFK’s assassination was an inside job.’ I know, those words are ringing in your ears the way ’9/11 was an inside job’ do, but given time, history and technology you are probably much more willing to think about this possibility 45 years after the fact. In fact, Lyndon Johnson suspected the assassination resulted from a struggle for power in Cuba. While Richard Nixon demanded all documents related to the Bay of Pigs invasion when he was President. Think about this possibility for a moment, because it is one that is rarely investigated or given credence to especially because the only people with access to evidence that would link Cuba includes federal agents with clearance at or above the Top Secret level.

Cuba?

Over the decades since JFK’s assassination, did anyone stop and wonder what the heck Cuba and power had to do with it? When crazy old man Lyndon Johnson spouted his theories, did you ever wonder how he could possibly come to such wacky conclusions? For those scholars and theorists that did consider our government as ‘motivated’ to kill a sitting President, how was Cuba relevant and what the heck would give anyone the idea that Cuba had a role in all of this? Was it the Cuban Missile Crisis, communism, world domination? What exactly about Cuba would prompt any President, historian or scholar to question the role of Cuba in inciting a plot to assassinate John F Kennedy?

Quick reference from Wikipedia:

The 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion was an unsuccessful attempted invasion by armed Cuban exiles in southwest Cuba, planned and funded by the United States, in an attempt to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro. This action accelerated a rapid deterioration in Cuban-American relations, which was further worsened by the Cuban Missile Crisis the following year.

The, there’s Operation Norwoods, the document that has been declassified for some time now has gone viral once again on the Internet, but few people outside if the youtube generation have ever heard of it. Essentially, it exposes a plot cooked up by higher-ups in our government to create false flags, terrorist scenarios and fake other events to make it appear as though Cuba attacked the United States both inside our borders and on foreign lands.

Operation Northwoods, or Northwoods, was a 1962 plan by the U.S. Department of Defense to stage acts of simulated or real terrorism on US soil and against U.S. interests and then put the blame of these acts on Cuba in order to generate U.S. public support for military action against the Cuban government of Fidel Castro. As part of the U.S. government’s Operation Mongoose anti-Castro initiative, the plan, which was not implemented, called for various false flag actions, including simulated or real state-sponsored acts of terrorism on U.S. and Cuban soil. The plan was proposed by senior U.S. Department of Defense leaders, including the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Lyman Louis Lemnitzer.

Idealism, Hope, and the American Dream

The CIA and possibly other ‘unknown’ federal agencies have done their part to destabilize governments around the world. The CIA is every young boy’s fantasy. It becomes a dream of every teen and the reality of many Ivy League graduates and other brilliant minds and military heroes throughout the U.S. Was idealism, justice, and integrity the key to JFK’s assassination? Was his death ‘necessary’ to keep the lid tight on American State Secrets and if there was a plot by our CIA to assassinate the president, will it ever be revealed or “declassified”? Sounds like something out of Hollywood!

I’m not sure that answers that will close this mystery out will come in my lifetime if ever. For all of the excitement that this event brings in the form of sadness, shock, and disbelief, it seems that the various theories seem more like concoctions of wild creative imaginations, even more so than the outlandish claim that “it was just some crazy guy with no motive” that pulled off one of the greatest assassinations in world history. The only concern I have immediately, is IF our Department of Defense was involved, could it happen again?

Like reading excellent works of fiction that pose some very profound possibilities try;

DEADLY DELUSION by Jim Jarman

Another thought for the day can be found at:

http://thoughts-and-stuff-zwright.blogspot.com/2012/06/what-were-implications-of-executive.html

June 2012 - An Interesting Month for Weather and Unusual Events

2013-01-20T12:00:00.002-06:00

The Month of June 2912 marked an unusual event...

Venus passed in front of the sun and this will not occur again until the year 2117. It was marked by a number of unusual events that occurred world wide during that month...including the weather, animal and insect activity, and health related events.

The transit of Venus explained

During the transit, Venus passed between Sun and Earth. The planet becomes visible from Earth as a small dot against the Sun's disk.

Although Venus is almost four times larger than the moon, it blocks a much smaller portion of the Sun's face than the moon does during a solar eclipse. This is because it is much further away from Earth.

Venus is the second planet from the Sun, Earth is the third. On a clear night Venus can also be seen as a bright “star” in the sky, especially shortly after sunset or before sunrise. This is why it is also referred to as “evening star” or “morning star”.

When was the transit in my city?

Local times for the 2012 transit of Venus

Location	Beginning of transit or sunrise	End of transit or sunset
Honolulu	12:10 (12:10 p.m.), June 5	18:44 (6:44 p.m.), June 5
Los Angeles	15:06 (3:06 p.m.), June 5	20:02 (8:02 p.m.), June 5 (sunset)
New York	18:03 (6:03 p.m.), June 5	20:24 (8:24 p.m.), June 5 (sunset)
London	04:45 (4:45 a.m.), June 6 (sunrise)	05:54 (5:54 a.m.), June 6
Paris	05:49 (5:49 a.m.), June 6 (sunrise)	06:55 (6:55 a.m.), June 6
Delhi	05:23 (5:23 a.m.), June 6 (sunrise)	10:22 (10:22 a.m.), June 6
Tokyo	07:10 (7:10 a.m.), June 6	13:47 (1:47 p.m.), June 6
Sydney	08:16 (8:16 a.m.), June 6	14:44 (2:44 p.m.), June 6
Auckland	10:15 (10:15 a.m.), June 6	16:43 (4:43 p.m.), June 6

It takes Venus 6 hours and 40 minutes to travel across the Sun's disk. Seen from the Earth's center (geocentric coordinates) the transit began at 22:09:29 and ended at 04:49:27 Universal Time (UT).

Depending on the observer's actual geographic location, times will differ by up to several minutes (see table below to the right).

Note: Times are stated in Universal Time - a time standard based on the Earth's rotation. Click on the links to see corresponding local times worldwide.

June 5, 22:09:29 UT: the planet's first contact with the outer rim of the Sun's disk.
June 5, 22:27:26 UT: Venus becomes fully visible in front of the Sun.
June 6, 01:29:28 UT: moment of “greatest transit” (the closest Venus appears to the center of the Sun's disk).
June 6, 04:31:30 UT: Venus reaches the opposite side of the Sun's rim
June 6, 04:49:27 UT: the planet completes its transit across the Sun's disk.

Lincoln's Assassin John Wikes Booth Survived and Lived Until 1903!

2013-01-17T10:34:00.004-06:00

John St. Helen & John Wilkes Booth

JOHN WILKES BOOTH

Some believe that Lincoln’s assassin was not killed by Union soldiers, but escaped and lived until 1903.

CASE DETAILS

Autopsy revealed similarities between men

In April of 1865, after President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, two thousand Union troops searched for the killer: an actor named John Wilkes Booth. On April the 26th at 4:00 AM, soldiers surrounded a tobacco barn on Garrett Farm, near Port Royal in Virginia. They had information that Lincoln’s assassin was inside the barn. A man surrendered, but it was not John Wilkes Booth, but 21-year-old David Herold, known to be one of Booth’s co-conspirators.

Lieutenant Edward Doherty decided to smoke Booth out by setting the barn ablaze. The soldiers were under strict orders to take Booth alive. But as the troops moved in, a sergeant shot a man who was hiding inside. Two soldiers dragged the body from the inferno, but was it really John Wilkes Booth? Historian Nate Orlowek doesn’t think so:

“There is tremendous physical evidence that proved beyond a doubt that John Wilkes Booth, in reality, was not killed by the Federal Government Officers as they claimed. In fact, he lived until January 13th, 1903, when he died in Enid, Oklahoma territory.”

Four of Booth’s co-conspirators were hung

Those who challenge the official account believe that in the confusion following the Civil War, evidence may have been recorded incorrectly or perhaps even covered up. Even some high-ranking military officers questioned the official story of Booth’s death. In the early 1900s, John Shumaker, the army’s General Counsel to the Department of the Army wrote: “The evidence put forth by the government to support the conclusion that the body was that of John Wilkes Booth was so insubstantial that it would not stand up in a court of law.”

Nate Orlowek and Dr. Arthur Chitty each spent years independently studying the Lincoln assassination. According to Dr. Chitty, they arrived at the same conclusion:

“The most persuasive evidence to me, at Garrett’s Barn, that the man in the barn was not Booth is the fact that his friend David E. Herold came out of the barn and the first thing he said was, ‘The man in there is not Booth.’”

Historian James Hall disagrees and cites a 40-page statement made by David Herold to government investigators just 36 hours after Herold’s arrest:

“Herold referred to Booth ten times by name when he was discussing what went on in the barn while it was being surrounded by the solders. To me, that’s conclusive. I can’t see where they get the idea that he’d come running out and say it’s not Booth.”

Booth’s papers were found in the Garrett barn

Dr. Chitty claims Herold was pressured into changing his story:

“He was in fear of his life. He had been incarcerated with a canvas bag over his head and just a little hole to be fed through. He was under terrible emotional strain and was trying to save his neck, and so, therefore, when he thought that he would survive by changing his story, he changed his story.”

According to Nate Orlowek, other eyewitnesses also refuted the government’s identification of the man killed at Garrett’s Farm:

“Lieutenant William C. Allan worked for the United States Secret Service in 1865. In August of 1937, his widow, Mrs. Helen Allan, told a journalist that her husband had told her that he saw the man at Garrett’s farm who had been killed and that the man had red hair. And that the government knew that that man was not Booth, but they were determined to foist this man on the nation as Booth.”

Every historical account says Booth’s hair was jet black. Eyewitness testimony about the red-haired man was supported by two other Union soldiers: Joseph Zisgen and Wilson Kenzie. Nate Orlowek says the men were friends with Booth in New Orleans:

“Kenzie was a Quartermaster and was free to go wherever he wanted, basically, within the military lines. And so he went with Zisgen to Garrett’s barn because he had an interest in what was going to happen to Booth.”

Six physicians recorded their findings in an affidavit

In 1922, when he was 77 years old, Kenzie detailed what he saw at Garrett’s Farm in a sworn affidavit:

“As I rode up, Joe Zisgen called ‘Here, come here Sergeant, this ain’t John Wilkes Booth at all.’ I could see the color of his hair. I knew at once it wasn’t he. His body was exposed and he had no injured leg.”

Nate Orlowek says the men were told to keep the truth a secret:

“And he said that the officers told them there will be dire consequences for anyone who tells the truth. The military really meant business and they were not going to risk their lives just to tell the truth.”

Orlowek says the government autopsy was performed by a physician who was acquainted with Booth:

“Doctor John F. May was a Washington surgeon who removed a tumor from the back of Booth’s neck a few months before the assassination in 1865. His statement is now in the National Archives. Like all the other government records on the case, it was held secret for seventy years.”

Dr. Chitty claims that, like the others, Dr. May was also pressured into lying:

“John Frederick May wanted to tell the truth and he recognized that this was not Booth, but it was made pretty clear to him very early on that ‘this better be Booth.’ And so we have the curious affidavit which starts out saying ‘I’m sure this is Booth.’ And then goes on to say, ‘But it doesn’t look like Booth. But this is certainly Booth.’ Signed, John Frederick May.”

Nate Orlowek sites a lack of documentation:

“Now, had the government really believed that that body was Booth’s, they would have taken pictures of it, they would have had many, many, hundreds of people identify it, but the war department didn’t do that. The government knew that that man was not Booth.”

The body was secretly buried in the basement of the Old Naval Prison in Washington. But if John Wilkes Booth was not killed at Garrett’s barn, then what happened to him?

In 1865, the government moved quickly to close the books on the Lincoln assassination. The trial of John Wilkes Booth’s co-conspirators resulted in four hangings and three life sentences. The details of the conspiracy were classified as “secret” and hidden away. Today, some experts believe that Booth actually escaped, and that he lived in the South under assumed names for another 38 years.

In 1907, an attorney from Texas named Finis Bates published a book, called “The Escape and Suicide of John Wilkes Booth.” In its pages, Bates claimed that he learned the true story of Booth from a man named John St. Helen of Granbury, Texas. In 1877, when John St. Helen was seriously ill and afraid he was about to die, he made a startling confession to Finis Bates. He said his real name was John Wilkes Booth. Nate Orlowek:

“Well, Bates, of course, thought this guy was crazy. He had been told, as everyone else had, that Booth had been killed in 1865, so he thought the man was just hallucinating. And Booth said to him, ‘No, I really am John Wilkes Booth, and now that I’ve told you my secret, I want to give you the whole story.’ So he poured out for Bates a very long confession, detailing in great detail the kidnap conspiracy, the murder conspiracy, how he got out of Washington, how he escaped altogether.”

St. Helen explained that all the bridges out of Washington were closed after nightfall and heavily guarded. But he had been given a password that allowed him to cross. According to Nate Orlowek, one of the guards on duty that night, a man named Frederick Demond, wrote a letter that supports this account:

“In that letter, Demond says that at about 10 P.M. that night, a Captain rode up to the bridge and said if anyone comes up using a certain password, let ‘em through. And that password was ‘T.B. Road.’ Demond says that was very peculiar because never before had anyone been allowed to cross the bridge using a password.”

Not everyone who was on the bridge that night agreed. Author and historian James O. Hall:

“Sergeant Silas Cobb, who was in charge of this squad at the bridge, didn’t say anything about passwords. All he said was, ‘I thought these people were proper people to go across the bridge and I let ‘em cross’”.

Booth had broken his leg while fleeing. After secretly seeing a doctor, he continued his escape hidden in the back of a wagon. Though he was a fugitive, Booth made the dangerous decision to take personal papers that could identify him as Lincoln’s assassin.
At one point, says Nate Orlowek, it was believed that soldiers were approaching:

“He thought they were Northern soldiers, so he was hurriedly yanked out of the back of the wagon and hustled into the woods. When that happened, his papers and other personal affects fell out.”

Booth sent a messenger back for the papers. But then another messenger arrived with bad news: Union soldiers were closing in. Booth could no longer wait for his papers and left immediately. It was the man sent back to retrieve Booth’s papers who was in the Garrett barn when it was surrounded by Union troops. This man carried Booth’s papers, so he was identified as the assassin.

As it turned out, St. Helen didn’t die after his deathbed confession. He left town as soon as he recovered. Finis Bates was convinced the story was true. Historian James Hall isn’t:

“Can you imagine a young lawyer talking to a bar owner down in Texas. A gullible young lawyer. So he just fills him full of a great big long story. And later on Bates, that was the name of this young lawyer, embroidered the story nicely. And wrote a book about it.”

Is it possible that John St. Helen was really John Wilkes Booth? A comparison of photographs does show a striking resemblance.

In 1903, while staying at a boarding house in Enid, Oklahoma, Nate Orlowek says
John St. Helen committed suicide by drinking a glass of wine laced with strychnine:

“Bates had the body preserved. He took many pictures of the body. And eventually, he had the body mummified to preserve it for posterity, to prove once and for all that the government had fooled us all and he was not going to allow that cover up to stand.”

In 1931, six Chicago physicians examined the mummified body of John St. Helen and recorded their findings in an affidavit. They specifically noted a scarred right eyebrow, a crushed right thumb, and a broken left leg. John Wilkes Booth is known to have had all three of these unusual characteristics.

Did John Wilkes Booth actually escape Union Troops only to kill himself 38 years later in an Oklahoma boarding house? Those who would know took that secret to their graves.

Update:

Though the story of Booth’s escape seems hard to believe, the Smithsonian Institute concluded it was worth a closer look. The Smithsonian even proposed exhuming the body of the man killed at Garrett’s farm, the man officially named as John Wilkes Booth. The Booth family agreed. However, a state court refused permission. The mystery surrounding Lincoln’s assassin still remains.

Source Material: John Wilkes Booth Did Indeed Survive

Do Directed Energy Weapons Really Exist? Is There Such a Thing As A Death Ray?

2013-01-17T10:18:00.003-06:00

A directed-energy weapon (DEW) emits energy in an aimed direction without the means of a projectile. It transfers energy to a target for a desired effect. Intended effects may be non-lethal or lethal. Some such weapons are real, or are under active research and development.

The energy can come in various forms:

Electromagnetic radiation, in lasers or masers
Particles with mass, in particle beam weapons (Technically a form of micro-projectile weapon)
Sound, in sonic weapons

Weapons that use energy to disable or destroy equipment or people are referred to as energy directed weapons. Examples include lasers, high-power microwave weapons, and charged particle beam weapons.

Are directed energy weapons currently operational? Yes. Take HAARP for instance.

By Karal Ayn Barnett

The U.S. military has created a Tesla-like device, the High Altitude Auroral Research Project, known euphemistically as HAARP. But there is no angelic music emanating from this hellish instrument, a joint Air Force- Navy venture. In fact, some scientists believe that the mere test of the transmitter can cause irreversible harm to the environment.

According to patent applications, HAARP was created to manipulate the upper atmosphere of earth, to control the weather, and to disrupt communications over large areas. It could quite possibly be the prototype for a particle beam weapon with military applications -- one patent remains classified. HAARP is also expected to communicate with submarines submerged some 12,000 miles away.

At the risk of sounding Cassandra-like, many people believe that HAARP portends very bad things, for us and for our world. But how do we know? What evidence is there that bad things will happen from this scientific venture that attempts to direct the "highest levels of electromagnetic radiation ever transmitted on Earth" into the ionosphere, disrupting the upper atmosphere surrounding our planet? It's just an experiment, says the Air Force, "pure research." But what are the repercussions of such research? Nobody knows.

"What is clear," noted one study," is that at one gigawatt and above a variety of instability processes are triggered." By any stretch of the imagination, "instability processes" can only mean that the outcome is unpredictable. And that has got more than a few people worried.

A concerned reporter at OMNI magazine asked HAARP's inventor, MIT physicist Dr. Bernard Eastlund about HAARP'S destructive capabilities. To many, it is the instability of the project that poses the greatest threat. But apparently Eastlund could only foresee the whiz-bang science. "You can virtually lift part of the atmosphere," he told OMNI. "You can make it move, do things to it."

It does things, all right. But not always the things that the project engineers want it to do. Phase One of the HAARP Project has already been completed. One- to three-million volts of electrons were transmitted via an inverted cone into the ionosphere just "to see what will happen," according to one engineer. And we are now well into Phase Two.

None of us know what will happen in the future because of the HAARP Project, and that's part of the problem. According to environmental investigative reporter William Thomas, the previous electromagnetic experiments have already disrupted the path of the jet stream, resulting in weird weather all over the globe. Bewildered meteorologists who know nothing of HAARP and who cannot understand the dramatic weather changes in terms of traditional meteorology, innocently claim El Nino and La Nina as the cause. But are they? These weather wizards who spout the El Nino/La Nina theory could unknowingly be protecting dark projects such as HAARP from public scrutiny by promoting this seemingly innocent cover story. Meanwhile, the damage goes on.

Alaskan pilots fear the electronic navigation anomalies that will result from the HAARP tests, causing pilots to become deaf and dumb, if not blind, in the air. Or, they fear that their planes could suddenly plunge to the ground because of electrical interference. HAARP's project engineers claim to have handled that problem. However, after a number of crashes were linked to electrical interference, the Joint Electromagnetic Interference (JEMI) investigation revealed that "radio waves at certain frequencies can bring down an aircraft by putting it into an uncommanded turn or dive, or by turning off its fuel supply."

Others fear a disruption in communications as the power grid overloads, blacking out major cities -- a logical conclusion that even the U.S. Air Force acknowledges. In its official HAARP FACT SHEET the Air Force concludes that "ionospheric disturbances at high latitudes Ö act to induce large currents in electric power grids."

Alaskan residents are concerned about the carcinogenic emissions from the power lines and generators as even more powerful transmitters and antennae are added for future experiments.

But people everywhere should fear the group of scientists, military experts, and corporations like Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO), who fund the project, who hold the profit potentials, and who have authority to decide how HAARP will be used. Public safety and environmental concerns seem to be last on their list of agendas. They are experimenting with a device that has the potential for global destruction, a device that can focus billions of watts of power into the ionosphere. Apparently, HAARP officials are willing to take the risks without knowing the full consequences on the world or its inhabitants. It's insanity.

Harvard-trained physicist Dr. Richard Williams, now working at Princeton, calls HAARP tests, "irresponsible acts of global vandalism." At a conference addressing fellow physicists, Williams warned that HAARP "might become a serious threat to the earth's atmosphere. With experiments on this scale," Williams said, "irreparable damage could be done in a short time."

Alaskan physician, Dr. Nick Begich, concurs. His book, ANGELS DON'T PLAY THIS HAARP, co-written by investigative reporter Jeane Manning, contends that ever- increasing electromagnetic pulses could punch a hole in the planet's magnetic field, leaving us completely vulnerable to intense solar radiation.

The present hole in the Ozone is miniscule compared to the devastating potential of a massive rupture, the authors suggest. Yet there are even now ever-increasing reports of skin cancer and other carcinomas linked to current ozone depletion. What horror does the future hold? "Without the ionosphere's electrical shielding," Manning said, "our own sun would fry us with gamma radiation, X-rays and short wavelengths of UV light. We think that the holes in the ozone layer letting in some UV rays is bad. Wait'll we've got cosmic rays coming through at killing wavelengths." If HAARP further disrupts the ozone, the consequences could be dire, and deadly, the authors conclude.

HAARP has the potential to destroy virtually all life forms on earth -- not just the "intelligent" kind. And we have to make that qualified distinction because the principals involved in the HAARP project seem astonishingly unconcerned about the negative ramifications of their invention. Rather, they seem as giddy as children at Christmas time with their new toys. A "Plans and Activities" report jointly issued by the U.S. Air Force Geophysics Lab and Naval Research enthusiastically announced the "exciting and challenging aspect of ionospheric enhancement" of the HAARP Project.

The genesis of energy directed weapons was the work of Albert Einstein. Einstein's 1905 Special Theory of Relativity related electric and magnetic forces in the equation E=mc2. The equation demonstrated that even particles of small mass moving at the speed of light possess tremendous energy.

Energy directed weapons concentrate large amounts of energy at a specific wavelength and frequency and then direct the beam of energy at the intended target. Because the particles are moving at a speed that approaches the speed of light, the beam will have a devastating amount of energy.

Rationale for energy directed weapons. Those who favor energy directed weapons argue that their development would increase the ability to fight and win a conflict.

In theory, energy directed weapons would operate at or near the speed of light. Even rapidly moving missiles would be essentially motionless to the beam. For example, a missile 50 kilometers away moving at 20,000 feet per second would only move five feet from the time a energy weapon was "fired" until contact. As well, the weapons could operate over thousands of kilometers, even in space. Finally, as long as there was power to generate the high energy, no other ammunition is required.

The use of energy directed weapons in space, particularly on Earth-orbiting satellites, has been proposed. One reason is that conventional weapons do not operate well or at all in the semi-vacuum of Earth orbit. Energy directed weapons face no such limitation. Another reason is the proliferating use of space for offensive weapons. In 1972, only nine nations were known to have ballistic missiles. By 2001, this number had grown to at least 28 nations. This increase has bolstered the argument for the ability to defend and if necessary retaliate from space.

Laser weapons. A laser—an acronym for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation"—emits a tightly focused beam of specific radiation that does not diverge from the beam path. Chemical lasers use reactive energy between compounds (i.e., oxygen/iodine and deuterium/fluoride). Solid state lasers use electricity to produce the beam. Chemical lasers currently produce much more energy than do solid-state lasers. This power, however, comes at the expense of a large volume for the great quantities of chemicals required.

High power laser light can damage or permanently destroy the eyes, and obliterate objects in its path. For example, a weapon called the Saber 203 is a "laser grenade" that is capable of temporarily blinding those in the path of the ray. The weapon was deployed, but never used with United States troops during the 1990 Gulf War, and with troops deployed to Somalia in 1995. Another weapon called the Dazer fires up to 50 laser pulses per minute. It is being used by U.S. Special Operations Command forces.

Research by the U.S. Army and Navy to develop lasers for air and sea has been underway since the early 1970s. A chemical laser weapon capable of being mounted on the next generation of fighter jet (Joint Strike Fighter) and destroyer (DDX) is scheduled to be ready for testing in 2010. As of 2002, a chemical laser was to be built aboard a modified Boeing 747 aircraft. The airborne chemical laser, which will be the first in the U.S., is controversial because of the possibility of environmental damage from the chemicals carried aboard the aircraft.

Military use of lasers is currently confined to low-power units that measure the distance to a target or help aim other weapons. Lasers could become much more formidable weapons. For example, experts agree that a 25 to 100 kilowatt laser would be powerful enough to disable equipment hundreds of miles away, and could burn through metal, such as the outer casing of a missile, dozens of miles away.

High-power microwave weapons. High-power microwave (HPM) weapons are also known as Radio Frequency weapons and Ultra-Wideband weapons. HPM weapons have been in development by the United States, Russia, China, and other countries for decades. The weapons produce high-energy bursts; a typical HPM weapon consists of a power source that can be electrical or explosive, a microwave generator, and an antenna to direct the beam of radiation. The intense surge of energy that is emitted disables electronics in vehicles, communications equipment, and other weapons. Such a weapon was successfully field tested by the U.S. in April 2001.

Particle beam. Development of the particle beam weapon (PBW) began in the U.S. in the late 1950s, under the code name Seesaw. A PBW operates by accelerating components of a hydrogen atom—either the negatively charged electron or the positively charged proton—to almost the speed of light, and then focusing these atoms into a beam. The destructive power of the particle beam is due to the collision of the positively or negatively charged ions with the atoms of the target. The energy transfer causes an explosion, which obliterates the target.

The charged version of a particle beam weapon would be utilized where there is an atmosphere. The neutral particle beam weapon, which is not as powerful, is more suitable to the friction-free atmosphere of space, where it retains enough power to be destructive. A space version of a PBW does not yet exist. Among the developmental limitations is an aiming system capable of accuracy over thousands of kilometers, and the maintenance of a tightly focused beam over such vast distances (a beam composed of like-charged particles will tend to broaden out, as the particles repel one another).

Limitations and criticisms of energy directed weapons. Because energy directed weapons are beamed at the target, they are "line of sight" weapons. Unless technological changes allow the beams to be precisely bent or reflected, objects that are not directly in front of the beam will not be targeted. In contrast, a conventional weapon such as bomb can destroy its target even when the weapon is slightly off the intended destination. Furthermore, laser beams are blocked by clouds, limiting their use to all but fair weather.

Those who oppose energy directed weapons argue that civilian casualties and infrastructure damage will be greater than with the present methods of warfare. Also the weapons could be an ideal terrorist tool. The source of energy directed weapons could be disguised, and no traces are left behind.

The collateral effects of energy directed weapons such as lasers are still unclear. While an enemy target would certainly be disrupted or even destroyed, the possibility of damage to civilian structures (i.e., equipment in hospitals) or civilians themselves (i.e., disruption of pacemakers) has made the deployment of energy directed weapons controversial. Even if the energy weapon can be contained in a relatively narrow beam prior to the strike, dispersion of the energy at ground level will likely occur. It is this traveling shock wave of energy that could produce the collateral damage.

For Additional Information: Haarp: The Ultimate Weapon of the Conspiracy (Mind-Control Conspiracy)

Angels Don't Play This Haarp: Advances in Tesla Technology

How To Learn More and Study Less. Is That Possible? Yes!

2013-01-11T11:06:00.000-06:00

A young university graduate who has completed a 4-year MIT course in one-year through self-study.

Most people know that our education systems are archaic, flawed and are based on rote-based memorization. Students have to by-heart tons and tons of information and reproduce it during exams. Not only is blind memorization by repetition energy sapping for school and college students, it is an ineffective learning process. More often than not, blind memorization leads to lower grades and self-confidence. Even if a student manages to get better grades by memorizing, none of the concepts have been understood well and hence nothing sticks once the exam is over!

This young Canadian graduate called Scott Young has researched and proven that smart students (him included) don't spend hours memorizing stuff, but subconsciously use techniques that work with the way the neurons in their brains learn concepts. Scott says, "Smart people aren’t just gifted – they have a different learning strategy, that all students can learn." Scott calls this the holistic approach to learning. Based on his personal experience and experience and results seen by thousands of students around the world he has devised a comprehensive study technique course called Learn More, Study Less. His complete video course, ebook and Ninja Edition (which comes with 2-months free of Learning on Steroids which offers weekly emails, learning forums and access to Scott if a student wants coaching or help) have already helped thousands of students across the world.

Scott’s course and The Holistic Learning Strategy focusses on Constructs, Models and Highways from a theoretical perspective. Without getting too technical, a construct is defined as a set of tightly interlinked instructions in the brain, and if for example a person’s language construct is highly developed they will find learning languages much easier. So, if constructs are the door to holistic learning, Models are the key. Models are smaller constructs which are portable. Models could be visualizations that help you start learning a concept and build a construct. Finally Highways link the constructs which are like buildings or many buildings in a city. Highways are essential to link concepts and draw parallels, this is what makes a person creative and think creatively as a result of the Holistic Learning Process in Learn More, Study Less.

The process and the experiential tools and techniques that are addressed in this course are as follows:

1.Acquiring Ideas

•Speed Reading
•Flow-Based Note Taking

2.Linking Ideas

•Metaphor
•Visceralization (Visualization plus relating to ideas)
•Diagraming

3.Handling the Arbitrary

•Linking
•Pegging
•Information Compression

4.Extending Ideas

•Practical Usage
•Model Debugging
•Project-Based Learning

For More Information: Learn More and Study Less - A Holistic Approach

Self Improvement Through Subliminal Messages

2013-01-11T10:42:00.002-06:00

Why is it that some people find success easily and others do not? Why is it not that each one us has the same stress handling capability? Have you ever thought about all these things?

I have always often pondered over these issues whenever I am down in my life. I have seen people who are happy no matter what condition they are in. I am not referring to the rich and elite people. They need not always be happy. But for some people it seems that everything happening in their life is amazing.

Our mind plays a huge role in shaping up our life. Our mind is subjected to a lot of thoughts each second. These may be positive and may be even negative. You must have heard this,” It’s all in the mind”. I never believed in it until recently when I started having faith in this fact.

I used to be a lot depressed earlier. No matter how much I control to evade my negative thoughts, I cannot stop them. Instead, the more I focus on them, the more they flood my mind. This was a fight I waged a long time, until one day when I found a solution to end this struggle.

It is said you become what you consume. Same is the case with your thoughts. You don a personality similar to what your thoughts are about. Thoughts though invisible and untangible can play a huge role in shaping up your personality. You finding success or failure largely depends upon your thought pattern. You sure must also have experienced that if you thing negative you become negative and your mood stays negative too. But having said that, should we ignore the gross reality that life presents in front of us.

So let me tell you about the solution I mentioned earlier. You must have heard about subliminal objects like subliminal music, subliminal audios, videos etc. many people don’t believe in it. I too was among them till very recently. But the fact is, each one of us is being subjected to subliminal thoughts each moment of our life and unknowingly it is affecting our lives.

Don’t believe me? Fine. Try this out. Before you go to work tomorrow, watch a sad movie and I am sure you will be in a bad mood compared to when you watch a good movie.

If you happen to have a friend with whom you are not comfortable, or who only talks negative, you are sure to be in an upset mood if you happen to meet him.

The news, media, people we meet etc are the sources which always bombard us with these negative subliminal messages. So wouldn’t it be better if we try to influence our subconscious mind with some positive subliminal messages!

Nothing happens by itself. What you sow, so you reap. If you do good deeds, good things will happen to you. And so is for positive thoughts. We have to influence our subconscious mind with positive thoughts so that it drives us to do good deeds and actions.

You become what you think. What I found is that you cant lie to yourself. You cannot convince yourself of things which your are not. You have to move in that direction if you want to become that. You have to initiate things yourself.

Everyone expects good things to happen to them without they taking any pains for them. But that is certainly never going to happen. What you give as input will come out as results. It is a simple rule. Give your best input and you will get the best results.

How to go about it? You have to consciously indulge your subconscious mind into thinking positive. This is possible with help from subliminal effect. I have become positive because I have used subliminal messages and music to become so. I have very few occasions when I am in a bad mood. Now I find that I can handle things with more ease than I found them to be earlier because I have remarkably improved my confidence.

Your thoughts shape up your personality. So you can decide where you want to drive your life into. Begin now with positive thoughts, use subliminal messages and gradually you will become positive and success will be at your heels.

For More Information: Subliminal Messages the Way To True Self Improvement

The Mystical Tarot - More Truth Than Fiction

2013-01-11T10:20:00.000-06:00

By Terry Dalton

While this is an interesting article on the Tarot, if you are interested in a Free Reading scroll to the bottom for more information.

Tarot dates back some 5000 years and initially comprised 22 cards called the Major Arcana. The Tarot is based on a form of Numerology and the twenty two cards represented the journey of an apprentice (The Fool) through various stages until he reached the end of his journey having acquired the full spiritual knowledge to become a Magi (The Magician). In later years, the French added a further 56 cards called the Minor Arcana in order to play the game of Tarot. The 56 cards of the Minor Arcana are divided into four suits: Wands, Coins, Swords and Cups. Most professional clairvoyants dismiss the Minor Arcana and only use the 22 cards of the Major Arcana.

Tarot spreads

An instruction book will tell you that there are several spreads:- Celtic Cross, Tree of Life etc. Again, my opinion is that you should ignore these and devise a spread which is personal to you!

Throughout my career I have always rebelled against regimentation. No two people are the same, we are all unique. No book can provide intuition. You must use your own!

Reading Tarot cards is all about sensing and feeling, not interpreting a card from a book! Professional clairvoyants use the Tarot as a focus and, during a reading, will seldom mention the card upon which they are focusing. Beware the reader who says, for example, " I've got the King of Cups and it means....." That reader is probably telling you something he has learned, rather than "sensed" or "felt" However, a professional might say "looking at the cards in front of me, I sense and feel ........" which will prove he is a genuine clairvoyant.

Upside down or Reverse Tarot cards

The meaning of reverse cards depends upon the card and the reading. Suppose, for instance, that you are asking about a relationship and the spread of cards includes a man and a woman. One is the right way up, the other is reversed. This would indicate that the people concerned are going in the opposite direction.

Reading the cards

The Major Arcana is indeed beautiful and mystical. The following meanings are supplied by Graham.

0 The Fool

Positive Unrestrained and naïve, an innocent, childish nature, fun loving

Negative Making poor decisions by failing to learn from past experience, clownish

I The Magician

Positive Creative genius, flair, impressive skilful, ability to inspire

Negative Use of skills to destroy, control or deceive other people

II The High Priestess

Positive Wisdom, patience, someone who listens and has a helpful nature

Negative Opinionated, shallow, interfering, running other people's lives

III The Empress

Positive An accomplished female, perhaps rich or in a position of authority

Negative A female with an inflated ego or abuser of power

IV The Emperor

Positive An accomplished male, perhaps rich or in a position of authority

Negative A male with an inflated ego or abuser of power

V Jupiter

Positive Kind, generous, philanthropic, relaxed, easy going, jovial, proud

Negative Lazy, complacent, reliant on others for support, a sponger, pompous

VI The Lovers

Positive Harmony, new love or deep appreciation between two people

Negative Unrequited love, a secret affair or other form of betrayal

VII The Chariot

Positive Triumph through hard work, panache, style, daring, courage, flair

Negative Failure through lack of caution or taking on too much

VIII Justice

Positive Getting what you deserve, reward for past efforts

Negative Getting what you deserve, retribution for past misdemeanours

IX The Hermit

Positive Caution, need for isolation or contemplation, ageing, older person

Negative Physical deterioration, antisocial, reclusive, outcast, over cautious

X The Wheel of Fortune

Positive Imminent change for the better, good luck through trusting in fate

Negative Imminent change for the worse, failure of a new venture

XI Strength

Positive Strengthening of body or mind, success in head-on confrontation

Negative Failure through underestimating the opposition, aggressive nature

XII The Hanged Man

Positive Letting others have control, standing back, waiting to see what happens

Negative Complete loss of power, helplessness, someone else calls all the shots

XIII Death

Positive Major transition, a drastic turning point preceded by loss, starting afresh

Negative Physical death or loss of someone close, sad endings, extreme danger

XIV Temperance

Positive Kind, patient, sympathetic, helpful, spiritually evolved, protective

Negative Too good to be true, a dreamer, unrealistic, opting out

XV The Devil

Positive A need to face up to phobias, fear, oppression or violence

Negative Victim of crime, physical or mental abuse, bullying, black magic

XVI The Lightning Struck Tower

Positive Rebuilding after a serious blow, coming to terms with disaster

Negative Sudden, utter disaster, financial ruin, physical or mental breakdown

XVII The Star

Positive Contentment, happy retirement, finding an ideal niche in life

Negative Wasting time, failing to deliver, basking in self-glory

XVIII The Moon

Positive Dreamer, poet, person who is not what (s)he seems, ability to disguise

Negative Deceit, betrayal of trust, infidelity, someone with a hidden agenda

XIX The Sun

Positive Open, honest, a good example to follow, encouraging, positive attitude

Negative Someone who loses out by being too honest and open

XX Judgement

Positive The moment of truth, reward for good effort, promotion, recognition

Negative The moment of truth, condemnation for past failure, relegation, redundancy

XXI The World

Positive Success, getting what you want, prosperity, major financial gain, travel

Negative Materialistic, greedy, hedonistic, corrupt

Minor Arcana

The following are suggestions only, based on the astrological system.

Ace Unity, self awareness, self development, personal interests, clothing, fashion

Two Duality, money, investment, security, comfort, luxury items

Three Illicit love, talking, school, travel, letters, email, siblings, neighbours

Four Home, family, mother, protection, self defence

Five Luck, gambling, love affairs, children, hobbies, pleasures, art

Six Health, healing, nutrition, work, training, service, duty, pets

Seven Partnerships, marriage, divorce, compromise, cooperation

Eight Legal matters, wills, sex, psychic activity, mysteries, transformation, death

Nine New horizons, freedom, long journeys, wisdom, study, hands-on learning

Ten Career, vocation, reputation, status, ambition, father

Page (Jack) Friends, social life, meetings, politics, humanitarian actions, independence

Cavalier (Prince) Compassion, charity, escapism, institutions, inner self, isolation

Queen Beauty, feminine strengths, superior or influential female, wife

King Authority, masculine strengths, superior or influential male, husband

Swords (Fire)

Assertion, drive, leadership, aggression, domination, quickness, power, stress, combat, yang.

Pentacles (Earth)

Steadiness, stability, support, practicality, materialism, money, inertia, common sense, yin.

Wands (Air)

Intellect, thought, ideas, communication, procrastination, variety, opinions, change of mind, travel.

Cups (Water)

Emotion, love, hate, sensitivity, loyalty, dependence, intensity, artistic talent, change of heart.

For More Information: Free Tarot Reading

Will The World End Or Is It Just More of The Same...A Downward Spiral And The Beginning Of A new Age

2012-12-13T10:19:00.000-06:00

An Excellent Commentary on the State of Affairs.

Politicians brought the United States into our current fiscal mess, with the help of The Federal Reserve and bankers.

We have entrusted politicians to solve the problem. Really? The same political elite who created the problems will solve them? And what is your current belief structure regarding the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy?

We have way too much debt and far too much government spending. The supposed plan is to increase debt forever and without end (sounds like a prayer) and to marginally decrease the rate of increase in spending – and call it a spending cut. If I call a donkey a mosquito, is it really a mosquito, or just a renamed donkey? If I have a debt and spending problem and my plan is to continue spending excessively, should I expect my problem to persist or disappear? If I have a serious drinking problem, should I expect to cure it with vodka?

So, the world is not going to end on December 21 or January 1. More of the same will beget more of the same.

But what does worry me are the actions that we, the supposedly most intelligent species on the planet, have made over the past several hundred years. Actions have consequences. Consider these actions:

Creation of Fractional Reserve Banking: This allows bankers to create money “from thin air” and loan it to businesses, individuals, and governments and collect the interest on that created money. The result is that debt increases, additional interest must be paid, and the financial services portion of the economy increases at the expense of the manufacturing economy. The paper shufflers won, and the manufacturers of useful and valuable products lost.

Creation of Central Banks: Central banks, not the free market, currently control the money supply and interest rates, enable politicians to spend excessively and government to expand more rapidly than the productive economy. Consequently, the economy becomes overburdened with debt, interest payments, and government regulations. What could go wrong?

Corporate control over the government and regulatory process: If a business owns many politicians, it can purchase the legislation and regulation it desires. The US tax code is an estimated 70,000 pages of legislation and regulations, as purchased by wealthy and powerful special interests. Intelligent action or payoff action?

Demonetization of gold and the use of unbacked paper money: When paper money is not backed by gold (silver, oil, etc.), then the total quantity of money in circulation can increase almost without limit. Hence, the purchasing value of the money decreases and prices rise. Consumer price inflation is guaranteed.

Politicians, bureaucrats, and bankers control markets and make decisions that should be left to free markets. Another writer likened that process to handing a Stradivarius to a gorilla. Freer markets do a better job of managing the economy, money supply, interest rates, prices, and production. How do we know? Ask the survivors of the hyperinflations in the last century.

Source Material: http://www.thedailysheeple.com/the-end-of-the-world-what-me-worry_122012

Texas Secession Petition Grows On White House Website, Over 60,000 Signatures

2012-11-13T08:06:00.001-06:00

By Jana Kasperkevic

WASHINGTON - When the White House promised that any online petition getting more than 25,000 signatures would get a thorough review and an official response, officials probably weren't thinking about requests for secession.

But on Monday - less than a week after President Barack Obama's re-election - a petition on the White House website calling for Texas to secede from the union has received more than 35,000 signatures, far more than similar requests from other states.

The White House website states that "if a petition gets enough support," which it defines as 25,000 signatures within 30 days, "White House staff will review it, ensure it's sent to the appropriate policy experts, and issue an official response." Shortly after 2:30 p.m. Central time on Monday, the petition passed that threshold.

The petition, created Friday, argues, "The U.S. continues to suffer economic difficulties stemming from the federal government's neglect to reform domestic and foreign spending." It further claims that American citizens are suffering "blatant abuses of their rights," pointing to the Transportation Security Administration and the National Defense Authorization Act, which allows for indefinite detention of terror suspects.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry has previously made comments suggesting he would consider withdrawing from the U.S.

"When we came into the nation in 1845, we were a republic, we were a stand-alone nation," Perry said in 2009. "And one of the deals was, we can leave anytime we want. So we're kind of thinking about that again."

Perry later clarified that he does not support secession and Monday his spokeswoman said he doesn't support the petition. "Governor Perry believes in the greatness of our Union and nothing should be done to change it," said spokeswoman Catherine Frazier. "But he also shares the frustrations many Americans have with our federal government."

She added: "Now more than ever our country needs strong leadership from states like Texas. We cannot allow Washington's tax and spend, one-size-fits-all mindset to jeopardize our children's future, undermine our personal liberties and drive our nation down a dangerous path to greater dependence of government."

No one seems to be taking the petition all that seriously.

I think it would take a civil war, frankly," said David Cole, constitutional law professor at Georgetown University Law School. "If I'm not mistaken, this was tried once before."

Texas is not the only state whose residents are petitioning for secession. It has been joined by a number of states, including North Carolina, Alabama, and Kentucky.

But as of Monday night, no other state had come close to the required 25,000 signatures.

On Monday afternoon, a counter-petition opposing secession popped up on the White House site. As of Monday night, it had just three signatures.

Source Material: http://www.chron.com

For More Information: Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century

Jehovah; The God of The Hebrews

2012-11-10T08:33:00.003-06:00

MUCH OF THE Old Testament is devoted to describing the origins and early history of the Hebrew people. According to the Bible, the Hebrews descended from a clan which lived in the Sumerian city of Ur around 2000 to 1500 B.C. The clan was befriended and ruled by a personality named Jehovah. The Bible claims that Jehovah was God.

According to the Biblical narrative, Jehovah encouraged the clan to leave Ur and settle in Haran—a caravan center in northeastern Mesopotamia. There, Jehovah later told the clan’s new patriarch, Abraham, to lead his tribe on a migration towards Egypt. The tribe complied, and over the ensuing generations it slowly made its way through Canaan towards the Nile River. Starvation finally forced the tribe to enter the Egyptian region of Goshen where the Hebrew sat first lived well under the pharaoh, but upon the coming of a new king to the Egyptian throne, the Hebrews were forced into slavery.

The Bible states that after four hundred years of servitude in Egypt, the Hebrews were led on an exodus out of Egypt by Moses under the watchful eye of Jehovah. By that time, the Hebrews numbered in the hundreds of thousands. After a long trek and many bloody battles, the Hebrew tribes returned to and conquered Canaan, which was the “Promised Land” pledged to them centuries earlier by Jehovah.

And so, according to the Bible, was born the Jewish religion.

Jehovah was clearly an important character in this Biblical story. Who was he? Was Jehovah God, as the Bible alleges? Was he a myth, as skeptics with a secular orientation would have us believe? Jehovah appears to have been neither.

The name Jehovah comes from the Hebrew word “Yahweh,” meaning “he that is” or “the self-evident.” This appellation conveys the idea that the Biblical Jehovah was a pure spiritual being; a true Supreme Being, if you will. But was he?

Old Testament descriptions of Jehovah have provided afield day for UFO writers, and for good reason. Jehovah travelled through the sky in what appears to have been a noisy, smoking aircraft.

A Biblical description of Jehovah landing on a mountaintop describes him this way:
. .. there were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the sound of the trumpet was exceedingly loud;* and all of the people that were in the camp trembled.

* A trumpet-like sound accompanied many appearances of Jehovah.

And Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet with God; and they stood at the lower part of the mountain.

And Mount Sinai was altogether covered with smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire: and the smoke from the fire billowed upwards like the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain quaked greatly.

GENESIS 19:16-19
If an ancient Hebrew were to observe the rumbling, smoke, and flame of a modern rocketship, the description would not have been much different than this Biblical narrative of Jehovah. A later visit by Jehovah contained the same phenomena:

And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they moved away and stood far off.

GENESIS 20:18
Lest it be assumed that these descriptions might be of a volcano, further sightings reveal that Jehovah was a moving object:
And the Lord travelled before them [the Hebrew tribes] by day in a pillar of cloud, to lead them the way; by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light; to go by day and night:

He took not away the pillar of the cloud by day, or the pillar of fire by night, from in front of the people.

EXODUS 13:21-22
Exodus 14:24, 40:34-38, and Numbers 19:1-23 contain identical descriptions of Jehovah as he led the Hebrew tribes to the Promised Land.

The ancient Hebrew eyewitnesses responsible for the above descriptions were not able to get a closer look at Jehovah. The Bible points out that no one was permitted to approach Jehovah’s mountaintop landing sites except Moses and a few select leaders. Jehovah had threatened to kill anyone else who tried. The early Bible therefore contains only descriptions of Jehovah as eyewitnesses saw him from a distance. It was not until much later that one of the Bible’s most famous prophets, Ezekiel, was able to get a closer look and describe Jehovah in greater detail.

Ezekiel’s description is probably the most often-quoted Biblical passage in UFO literature. Ezekiel’s detailed account of strange aerial objects has created speculation of such intensity that even one Bible publisher, Tyndale House, prefaced its introduction to the Book of Ezekiel with the title, “Dry Bones and Flying Saucers?”.

At the risk of boring some readers with yet another repetition of Ezekiel’s famous words, I reproduce them here for the benefit of those who are not familiar with them:
Now it occurred in my thirtieth year, in the fourth month, as I was among the captives by the river of Chebar, that the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God.
And I looked, and behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire flashed, causing a brightness about it, and out of the midst of it gleamed something like a pale yellow metal.
Also out of the midst of it appeared four living creatures. And this was their appearance: they had the likeness of men.

And their feet were straight feet; and the sole of their feet was shaped like the sole of a calf s foot; and they sparkled like burnished brass.

And they had human hands under their four-sided wings. Their wings were joined together; and they did not turn when they went, they all went straightforward.

As for the appearance of their faces, they had the face of a man, and the face of a lion on the right side: and they had the face of an ox on the left side: they also had the face of an eagle.
In amongst the living creatures glowed something like coals of fire or lamps, which moved up and down between the creatures: and the fire was bright, and from out of the fire flashed lightning.
And the living creatures ran and returned by flashes of lightning.

Now as I looked upon the living creatures, I saw four wheels upon the ground, one by each of the living creatures, with their four faces.

The appearance of the wheels and their composition was like the color of shiny amber: and all four wheels had one likeness: and their appearance and their composition was like a wheel in the middle of a wheel.
And when the living creatures went, the wheels went with them: and when the living creatures were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up.

And the appearance of the sky upon the heads of the living creature was reflected as the color of the terrible crystal stretched over their heads above.

And when they went, I heard the noise of their wings, like the noise of great waters, as the voice of the Almighty, like the din of an army. When they stood still, they lowered their wings.
And there was a voice from the crystal covering that was over their heads when they stood and had let down their wings.

EZEKIEL 1:1-25
The voice told Ezekiel that it was the “Lord God.” (Ezekiel 2:4).

The first portion of Ezekiel’s vision resembles earlier Biblical descriptions of Jehovah: a moving fiery object in the sky emitting smoke. As the object moved closer, Ezekiel was able to observe that the thing was made of metal. Out of the metal object emerged several humanlike creatures, apparently wearing metal boots and ornamented helmets. Their “wings” appeared to be retractable engines which emitted a rumbling sound and helped the creatures to fly. Their heads were covered by glass or something transparent that reflected the sky above. They appeared to be in some sort of circular vehicle or a vehicle with wheels.

We can safely conclude from the above passage that “Jehovah” was not a Supreme Being. He appears to have been a succession of Custodial management teams operating over a time span of many human generations. To enforce human obedience, those teams used their aircraft to perpetrate the lie that they were “God.”

The Custodial teams known as “Jehovah” helped the Brotherhood of the Snake embark on a program of conquest to spread the new “one God” religion. Moses, the man chosen to command the Hebrew tribes on their exodus out of Egypt to the Promised Land, was a high-ranking member of the Brotherhood. One hint of this fact comes from the Bible itself in which we are told how Moses was raised as a child:
In which time Moses was born, and was exceedingly fair, and was raised in his father’s house for three months:

And when he was cast out, Pharaoh’s daughter took him up, and raised him as her own son. And Moses became learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and in deeds.

THE ACTS 7:20-22
Egyptian historian and High Priest, Manetho (ca. 300 B.C.), states that Moses had received much of his education in the Brotherhood under Akhenaton, the very pharaoh who pioneered monotheism:
Moses, a son of the tribe of Levi [one of the Hebrew tribes], educated in Egypt and initiated at Heliopolis [an Egyptian city], became a High Priest of the Brotherhood under the reign of Pharaoh Amenhotep [Akhenaton]. He was elected by the Hebrews as their chief and he adapted to the ideas of his people the science and philosophy which he had obtained in the Egyptian mysteries; proofs of this are to be found in the symbols, in the Initiations, and in his precepts and commandments. . .. The dogma of an “only God” which he taught was the Egyptian Brotherhood interpretation and teaching of the Pharaoh who established the first monotheistic religion known to man.‘ *

* This passage raises the question of when the Jewish exodus from Egypt had occurred. If Moses was a High Priest of the Brotherhood under Akhenaton, as Manetho states, but did not lead the exodus until the reign of Rameses II, as many historians believe, then Moses must have been an extremely old man at the time of the exodus. (Rameses II did not rule until almost one hundred years after Akhenaton.) The Bible, in Deuteronomy 34:7, states that Moses was 120 years old when he died. Claims of such advanced age may be difficult to accept in our modem day, but if it is true about Moses, then both Manetho and modern scholars would be correct in their datings.

Strong evidence in support of Manetho’s statement is found in the early teachings of Judaism, which were deeply mystical and utilized many Brotherhood symbols. Many of those mystical teachings are still taught today in the Jewish Cabala: a secret religious philosophy of Jewish rabbis. The Cabala continues to utilize a complex array of mystical symbols. Modern Israel’s national logo, the six-pointed Star of David, has been a Brotherhood symbol for thousands of years.

Early human writers often portrayed mankind’s Custodial “Gods” as bloodthirsty creatures prone to excessive violence. Sadly, those lamentable qualities did not improve with Jehovah. During the trek from Egypt to the Promised Land, Jehovah demanded unflagging obedience from the Hebrews. Many humans rebelled and Jehovah reacted with extreme cruelty. Jehovah reportedly killed up to 14,000 Hebrews at a time for disobedience. He used a variety of killing methods, such as spreading diseases, just as other Custodial “Gods” had done earlier in Sumeria.

When the Hebrew armies reached Canaan, Jehovah displayed a genuinely psychopathic bent. To establish the Hebrews in their new homeland, Jehovah ordered the Hebrew armies to embark on a campaign of genocide to depopulate all of the region’s existing cities and towns. Under the new leadership of a man named Joshua, the first city to fall in Jehovah’s seven-year holocaust was Jericho. According to the Bible, the Hebrew army, numbering in the tens of thousands, slaughtered everyone in Jericho except, ironically, a prostitute because she had earlier betrayed her own people by helping two Hebrew spies:
And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword.

JOSHUA 6:21
After that was accomplished:
.. . they burnt the city with fire, and all that was therein: only the silver, and the gold, and the vessels of brass and of iron, they put into the treasury of the house of the Lord.

JOSHUA 6:24
The next target was Ai, a city with a population of 12,000 inhabitants. All of the citizens of Ai were butchered and the city was burned to the ground. This savagery was perpetrated city after city:
So Joshua killed all in the country of the hills, and of the south, and of the valleys, and of the springs, and all their kings: he left none remaining, but utterly destroyed all that breathed, as the Lord God of Israel commanded.

JOSHUA 10:40
The genocide was justified by saying that the victims were all wicked. This could not have been the true reason because children and animals were also slaughtered. It is hardly fair to massacre an entire city for the crimes of a few; neither is it right to murder a child for the crimes of its parents. The real crime, according to the Bible, was that the natives of the region had become disobedient. The more obedient Hebrews were therefore elected by Jehovah to wipe out the natives and replace them.

There is some debate today about whether the Hebrew assimilation into Canaan was as genocidal as portrayed in the Bible. Modern archaeological digs into some of the battle sites named in the Bible (such as Hazor, Lachish and Debir) have revealed evidence of violent destruction during the time of Joshua. Other sites have yielded less conclusive evidence. Many people understandably prefer to play down the Biblical bloodshed as much as possible. To whatever degree the Biblical story of the conquest of Canaan is true, it does tell us something very important about genocide:

Genocide is often a tool for promoting rapid political or social change by quickly replacing one group of people with another. For this reason, genocide has emerged as a significant historical phenomenon in connection with many Brotherhood efforts at bringing about rapid political and social change.

People who are familiar with Jewish moral teachings may be surprised at the brutal behavior ascribed to Jehovah and the Hebrews. The most famous of the Jewish moral teachings are, of course, the Ten Commandments, which were reportedly given to Moses by Jehovah during the Hebrews’ trek to the Promised Land. After Moses’ death, Jehovah and the armies of Israel clearly violated the Commandments in a big way. Thou shalt not kill was transgressed when the Hebrews massacred the inhabitants of Canaan.

The Hebrews ignored the commandment Thou shalt not steal when they robbed the dying cities of their precious metals. They were no better about adhering to the commandment Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house ... nor any thing that is thy neighbor’s when they committed genocide to take away the land of their neighbors. This behavior is puzzling because many Biblical commandments do establish a decent code of conduct. For example, the Hebrews were admonished never to cooperate with a wrongdoer by giving false testimony. Another commandment stressed the importance of individual responsibility in the face of group pressure by stating,

“You shall not go along with a group in doing evil.”

Tolerance for outsiders was made law with,

“You shall not vex a stranger, nor oppress him... .”

Thieves were usually required to pay restitution to their victims. How do we account for the existence of such humane commandments in the face of such barbaric behavior? *

* Not all Old Testament commandments were humane by today’s standards. Freedom of worship was not tolerated. Slavery was an accepted institution and Hebrew men were allowed to sell their daughters into slavery. The eye-for-an-eye, tooth-for-a-tooth form of punishment does not always result in justice.

Part of the answer may lie in the words of Manetho:

The wonders which Moses narrates as having taken place upon the Mountain of Sinai [the mountain upon which Jehovah reportedly gave Moses many of the Commandments], are in part, a veiled account of the Egyptian initiation which [Moses] transmitted to his people when he established a branch of the Egyptian Brotherhood in his country.... 2

If Manetho’s words are true, then many of the Commandments may have come from human sources within the Brotherhood rather than from Custodial sources. This would indicate the continued presence of genuine humanitarians within the Brotherhood despite Custodial dominance. Moses himself appears to have been, at least to some degree, such a humanitarian. The Bible describes Moses as a man of moderation who frequently intervened on behalf of the Hebrews when Jehovah was about to mete out a violent punishment. As we shall see several times in this book, lingering humanitarian influences within the Brotherhood have often come to the surface, but sadly, not enough to entirely undo the corrupting influences.

Another puzzling aspect of the Biblical genocide story was the behavior of the people being slaughtered. According to the Bible, only one city surrendered. The rest chose to fight and be butchered. When confronted with an overpowering Hebrew army, and perhaps even a thundering “God” in the sky, is it not likely that more besieged cities would surrender, or at least offer to vacate Canaan peaceably?

The Bible presents an interesting explanation of why that did not happen:
There was not a city that made peace with the children of Israel, save the Hi-vites, the inhabitants of Gib-eon, all others they took in battle.

For it was the Lord who hardened their hearts, that they would go against Israel in battle, that he might destroy them utterly, and that they might find no favor, but that he might destroy them....
JOSHUA 11:19-20

The above passage states that Jehovah had manipulated the victim peoples into fighting the Hebrews so that the victims could be destroyed. This is a stunning and important admission, for it would imply that Jehovah or other Custodians dominated other cities in the region and used their influence to manipulate people into fighting the Hebrews. This would not have been the first time it happened. The Bible reports similar manipulations in an earlier episode. When the Hebrews were still slaves in Egypt, Jehovah had instructed Moses to go to the pharaoh to ask that the Hebrew tribes be freed. Jehovah, however, had influence over the pharaoh and Moses had been warned in advance that Jehovah would cause the pharaoh to say “no.”

According to the Bible, Jehovah had a definite reason for manipulating the pharaoh in that fashion:
And the Lord said to Moses, Go to the Pharaoh: for I have hardened his heart, and the heart of his servants, that I might show my powers before him:

And so that you may tell in the ears of your son, and your son’s son, what things I had brought about in Egypt, and my miracles which I have done among them: that you may know that I am the Lord.
EXODUS 10:1-2

After hearing those words, Moses went to the pharaoh a number of times to renew his pleas for the Hebrews’ freedom. Each plea was rejected and each rejection was followed by a calamity visited upon the Egyptians by Jehovah. The calamities included vermin infestations, plagues, boils on the skin caused by a fine dust settling over the countryside, and finally the murder of each eldest son in Egypt during a night known as the “Passover.” It was only after the Passover that Jehovah stopped “hardening the heart” of the pharaoh so that the Hebrew tribes could leave Egypt.

Many scholars would argue that Biblical references to Jehovah “hardening the hearts” of Israel’s enemies merely expresses the religious idea that all human thought and emotion come ultimately from “God,” and therefore such writings should not be taken literally. In this case, we should take the Bible seriously because it has described a very real political phenomenon: two or more parties being manipulated into conflict with one another by an outside third party.

One of the most famous philosophers to discuss third-party manipulation as a tool of social and political control was Niccolo Machiavelli, the sixteenth century philosopher. Although Machiavelli was not the first to write about these matters, his name has become synonymous with unscrupulous political cunning.

Machiavelli authored several unsolicited “how-to” manuals for the benefit of a local prince. Those writings have become literary classics. In them, Machiavelli describes several of the techniques used by various Italian rulers to maintain control over a population. One method was to breed conflict.

In his treatise, The Prince, Machiavelli wrote:

Some princes, so as to hold securely the the state, have disarmed their subjects, others have kept their subject towns distracted by factions [disputes] .. .3
Machiavelli cited a specific example:

Our forefathers, and those who were reckoned wise, were accustomed to say that it was necessary to hold Pistoia [an Italian city] by factions and Pisa by fortress; and with this idea they fostered quarrels in some of their tributary towns so as to keep possession of them the more easily.4

Human disunity was a valuable commodity to the princes because it made the people less able to mount a challenge. Machiavelli described the exact steps to be taken by anyone wishing to employ this tool:
The way to set about this is to win the confidence of the city which is disunited; and, so long as they do not come to blows, to act as arbitrator between the parties, and, when they come to blows, to give tardy support to the weaker party, both with a view to keeping them at it and wearing them out; and, again because stronger measures would leave no room for any doubt that you were out to subjugate them and make yourself their ruler.

When this scheme is carried out, it will happen, as always, that the end you have in view will be attained. The city of Pistoia, as I have said in another discourse and apropos of another topic, was acquired by the republic of Florence by just such an artifice; for it was divided and the Florentines supported now one, now the other, party and, without making themselves obnoxious to either, led them on until they got sick of their turbulent way of living and in the end came to throw themselves voluntarily into the arms of Florence.5

Despite the effectiveness of this technique, Machiavelli advised against using it because it can backfire on the perpetrator. The success of the technique depends upon at least one of the manipulated parties not being aware of the true source of the problem. If both parties should discover that they are being manipulated into hostilities by an outside third party, not only will those hostilities usually cease, but the parties will, more often than not, unite in a common dislike for the perpetrator. This phenomenon can be observed on a personal level when two friends discover that a third “friend” has been saying derogatory things about each one to the other behind their backs. For the technique to be effective, the perpetrator must remain hidden from view as the source of the conflict.

To summarize the observations of Machiavelli, we find that breeding conflict between people can be an effective tool for maintaining social and political control over a populace. For the technique to be effective, the instigator must do the following:

1 - Erect conflicts and “issues” which will cause people to fight among themselves rather than against the perpetrator.
2 - Remain hidden from view as the true instigator of the conflicts.
3 - Lend support to all warring parties.
4 - Be viewed as the benevolent source which can solve the conflicts.

As noted earlier in the Tower of Babel story, the Custodial “Gods” wanted to keep mankind disunited and under Custodial control. To accomplish this, the Biblical story of Jehovah indicates that Custodians implemented the Machiavellian technique of creating factionalism between human beings. The Bible states that Custodians encouraged the factions they controlled to battle one another. All. the while, the Custodians have proclaimed themselves the ”God” and “angels” to whom people should turn in order to find a solution to all of the warfare. This is the classic sequence straight out of Machiavelli.

For such Machiavellian efforts to remain successful over a long period of time, factionalism would need to be bred constantly and the Custodians would need to remain permanently hidden from view as the perpetrators. Both of these needs were met in the organizational structure of the corrupted Brotherhood. The Brotherhood was being forged into a far-flung network of politically powerful secret societies and religions which could successfully organize people into competing factions; at the same time, Brotherhood traditions of secrecy effectively disguised its organizational hierarchy.

This secrecy became a screen behind which Custodians could hide at the top of the Brotherhood hierarchy behind veils of myth and thereby obscure their role as instigators of violent conflict between human beings. In this fashion, the network of Brotherhood organizations became the primary channel through which wars between human beings could be secretly and continuously generated by the Custodial society, thereby carrying out the Custodial intentions announced in the Tower of Babel story. The Brotherhood also became the channel through which Custodial institutions could be imposed upon the human race.

Wars serve another Custodial purpose revealed in the Bible. The Adam and Eve story mentioned “God’s” intention to make physical survival an all-consuming chore from birth until death. Wars help bring this about because they absorb large-scale resources and offer little to enhance life in return. Wars tear down and destroy what has already been created—this makes a great deal of extra effort necessary just to maintain a culture. The more a society engages in building war machines and fighting wars, the more the people of that society will find their lives consumed in tedium and repetitious toil because of the parasitic and destructive nature of war. This is as true today as it was in 1000 B.C.

It is easily observed that people will fight and quarrel without any outside prompting. There is hardly a creature on Earth that does not at some time in its life attack another. One clearly does not need a manipulative third party for a dispute to arise between groups of people. Third parties simply cause disputes and conflicts to be more frequent, severe, and protracted. Spontaneous, uninfluenced fights tend to be quick, awkward and centered around a single visible dispute. The way to keep fighting artificially alive is to create unresolvable “issues” which can only be settled by the complete annihilation of one of the opponents, and then by helping the opposing teams sustain their struggle against one another by equalizing their fighting strengths.

To keep a whole race in a constant state of strife, issues over which members of the race will fight one another must be generated continuously, and fervent warriors must be bred to fight for those causes. These are the precise types of conflicts which have been created by the Brotherhood network all the way up until today. These artificial conflicts have embroiled the human race in the unrelieved morass of wars which have so blighted human history.

Detecting Brotherhood involvement in human events is sometimes tricky. The job is made easier by following the use of several of the Brotherhood’s most important mystical symbols. Those symbols act as colored threads weaving in and out of view by which we can trace the role of the Brotherhood network in shaping history. One of the most significant of the symbols is, curiously, an apron.

For More Information:
The God Idea of the Ancients

A Mystical and Historical Treatise on The Apocalypse

2012-11-10T08:16:00.000-06:00

THE presence of the Temple of Diana at Ephesus marked that city as sacred to the Mystery religion, for the Seven Wonders of the ancient world were erected to indicate the repositories of recondite knowledge. Of Ephesus, H. P. Blavatsky writes:

"It was a focus of the universal 'secret' doctrines; the weird laboratory whence, fashioned in elegant Grecian phraseology, sprang the quintessence of Buddhistic, Zoroastrian, and Chaldean philosophy. Artemis, the gigantic concrete symbol of theosophico-pantheistic abstractions, the great mother Multimamma, androgyne and patroness of the 'Ephesian writings,' was conquered by Paul; but although the zealous converts of the apostles pretended to burn all their books on 'curious arts, τα περιεργα, enough of these remained for them to study when their first zeal had cooled off." (See Isis Unveiled.)

Being a great center of pagan learning, Ephesus has been the locale for many early Christian myths. The assertion has been made that it was the last domicile of the Virgin Mary; also that the tomb of St. John the Divine was located there. According to legend, St. John did not depart from this life in the usual manner but, selecting his vault, entered it while still alive, and closing the entrance behind him, vanished forever from mortal sight. A rumor was current in ancient Ephesus that St. John would sleep in his tomb until the return of the Savior, and that when the apostle turned over on his sepulchral couch the earth above moved like the coverlets of a bed.

Subjected to more criticism than any other book now incorporated in the New Testament, the Apocalypse--popularly accredited to St. John the Divine--is by far the most important but least understood of the Gnostic Christian writings. Though Justin Martyr declared the Book of Revelation to have been written by "John, one of Christ's apostles," its authorship was disputed as early as the second century after Christ. In the third century these contentions became acute and even Dionysius of Alexandria and Eusebius attacked the Johannine theory, declaring that both the Book of Revelation and the Gospel according to St. John were written by one Cerinthus, who borrowed the name of the great apostle the better to foist his own doctrines upon the Christians. Later Jerome questioned the authorship of the Apocalypse and during the Reformation his objections were revived by Luther and Erasmus. The once generally accepted notion that the Book of Revelation was the actual record of a "mystical experience" occurring to St. John while that seer was an exile in the Isle of Parmos is now regarded with disfavor by more critical scholars. Other explanations have therefore been advanced to account for the symbolism permeating the volume and the original motive for its writing. The more reasonable of these theories may be summed up as follows:

First, upon the weight of evidence furnished by its own contents the Book of Revelation may well be pronounced a pagan writing--one of the sacred books of the Eleusinian or Phrygian Mysteries. As a corollary, the real author of a work setting forth the profundities of Egyptian and Greek mysticism must have been an initiate himself and consequently obligated to write only in the symbolic language of the Mysteries.

Second, it is possible that the Book of Revelation was written to reconcile the seeming discrepancies between the early Christian and pagan religious philosophies. When the zealots of the primitive Christian Church sought to Christianize pagandom, the pagan initiates retorted with a powerful effort to paganize Christianity. The Christians failed but the pagans succeeded. With the decline of paganism the initiated pagan hierophants transferred their base of operations to the new vehicle of primitive Christianity, adopting the symbols of the new cult to conceal those eternal verities which are ever the priceless possession of the wise. The Apocalypse shows clearly the resultant fusion of pagan and Christian symbolism and thus bears irrefutable evidence of the activities of these initiated minds operating through early Christianity.

Third, the theory has been advanced that the Book of Revelation represents the attempt made by the unscrupulous members of a certain religious order to undermine the Christian Mysteries by satirizing their philosophy. This nefarious end they hoped to attain by showing the new faith to be merely a restatement of the ancient pagan doctrines, by heaping ridicule upon Christianity, and by using its own symbols toward its disparagement. For example, the star which fell to earth (Rev. viii. 10-11) could be construed to mean the Star of Bethlehem, and the bitterness of that star (called Wormwood and which poisoned mankind) could signify the "false" teachings of the Christian Church. While the last theory has gained a certain measure of popularity, the profundity of the Apocalypse leads the discerning reader to the inevitable conclusion that this is the least plausible of the three hypotheses. To those able to pierce the veil of its symbolism, the inspired source of the document requires no further corroborative evidence.

In the final analysis, true philosophy can be limited by neither creed nor faction; in fact it is incompatible with every artificial limitation of human thought. The question of the pagan or Christian origin of the Book of Revelation is, consequently, of little importance. The intrinsic value of the book lies in its magnificent epitome of the Universal Mystery--an observation which led St. Jerome to declare that it is susceptible of seven entirely different interpretations. Untrained in the reaches of ancient thought, the modem theologian cannot possibly cope with the complexities of the Apocalypse, for to him this mystic writing is but a phantasmagoria the divine inspiration of which he is sorely tempted to question. In the limited space here available it is possible to sketch but briefly a few of the salient features of the vision of the seer of Patmos. A careful consideration of the various pagan Mysteries will assist materially also in filling the inevitable gaps in this abridgment.

In the opening chapter of the Apocalypse, St. John describes the Alpha and Omega who stood in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks. Surrounded by his flaming planetary regents, this Sublime One thus epitomizes in one impressive and mysterious figure the entire sweep of humanity's evolutionary growth--past, present, and future.

"The first stages of man's earthly development," writes Dr. Rudolph Steiner, "ran their course at a period when the earth was still 'fiery'; and the first human incarnations were formed out of the element of fire; at the end of his earthly career man will himself radiate his inner being outwards creatively by the force of the element of fire. This continuous development from the beginning to the end of the earth reveals itself to the 'seer,' when he sees on the astral plane the archetype of evolving man. * * * The beginning of earthly evolution stands forth in the fiery feet, its end in the fiery countenance, and the complete power of the 'creative word,' to be finally won, is seen in the fiery source coming out of the mouth." (See Occult Seals and Columns.)

In his Restored New Testament, James Morgan Pryse traces the relationship of the various parts of the Alpha and Omega to the seven sacred planets of the ancients. To quote:

"The Logos-figure described is a composite picture of the seven sacred planets: he has the snowy-white hair of Kronos ('Father Time'), the blazing eyes of 'wide-seeing' Zeus, the sword of Arcs, the shining face of Helios, and the chiton and girdle of Aphrodite; his feet are of mercury, the metal sacred to Hermes, and his voice is like the murmur of the ocean's waves (the 'many waters'), alluding to Selene, the Moon-Goddess of the four seasons and of the waters."

The seven stars carried by this immense Being in his right hand are the Governors of the world; the flaming sword issuing from his mouth is the Creative Fiat, or Word of Power, by which the illusion of material permanence is slain. Here also is represented, in all his symbolic splendor, the hierophant of the Phrygian Mysteries, his various insignia emblematic of his divine attributes. Seven priests bearing lamps are his attendants and the stars carried in his hand are the seven schools of the Mysteries whose power he administers. As one born again out of spiritual darkness, into perfect wisdom, this archimagus is made to say: "I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive forever more, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death."

In the second and third chapters St. John delivers to the "seven churches which are in Asia" the injunctions received by him from the Alpha and Omega. The churches are here analogous to the rungs of a Mithraic ladder, and John, being "in the spirit," ascended through the orbits of the seven sacred planets until he reached the inner surface of the Empyrean.

"After the soul of the prophet," writes the anonymous author of Mankind: Their Origin and Destiny, "in his ecstatic state has passed in its rapid flight through the seven spheres, from the sphere of the moon to that of Saturn, or from the planet which corresponds to Cancer, the gate of men, to that of Capricorn, which is the gate of the gods, a new gate opens to him in the highest heaven, and in the zodiac, beneath which the seven planets revolve; in a word, in the firmament, or that which the ancients called crystallinum primum, or the crystal heaven."

When related to the Eastern system of metaphysics, these churches represent the chakras, or nerve ganglia, along the human spine, the "door in heaven" being the brahmarandra, or point in the crown of the skull (Golgotha), through which the spinal spirit fire passes to liberation. The church of Ephesus corresponds to the muladhara, or sacral ganglion, and the other churches to the higher ganglia according to the order given in Revelation. Dr. Steiner discovers a relationship between the seven churches and the divisions of the Aryan race. Thus, the church of Ephesus stands for the Arch-Indian branch; the church of Smyrna, the Arch-Persians; the church of Pergamos, the Chaldean-Egyptian-Semitic; the church of Thyatira, the Grecian-Latin-Roman; the church of Sardis, the Teuton-Anglo-Saxon; the church of Philadelphia, the Slavic; and the church of Laodicea, the Manichæan. The seven churches also signify the Greek vowels, of which Alpha and Omega are the first and the last. A difference of opinion exists as to the order in which the seven planers should be related to the churches. Some proceed from the hypothesis that Saturn represents the church of Ephesus; but from the fact that this city was sacred to the moon goddess and also that the sphere of the moon is the first above that of the earth, the planets obviously should ascend in their ancient order from the moon to Saturn. From Saturn the soul would naturally ascend through the door in the Empyrean.

In the fourth and fifth chapters St. John describes the throne of God upon which sat the Holy One "which was and is, and is to come." About the throne were twenty-four lesser seats upon which sat twenty-four elders arrayed in white garments and wearing crowns of gold. "And out of the throne proceeded lightnings and thunderings and voices: and there were seven lamps of fire burning before the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God." He who sat upon the throne held in His right hand a book sealed with seven seals which no man in heaven or earth had been found worthy to open. Then appeared a Lamb (Aries, the first and chief of the zodiacal signs) which had been slain, having seven horns (rays) and seven eyes (lights). The Lamb took the book from the right hand of Him that sat upon the throne and the four beasts and all the elders fell down and worshiped God and the Lamb. During the early centuries of the Christian Church the lamb was universally recognized as the symbol of Christ, and not until after the fifth synod of Constantinople (the "Quinisext Synod," A.D. 692) was the figure of the crucified man substituted for that of Agnus Dei. As shrewdly noted by one writer on the subject, the use of a lamb is indicative of the Persian origin of Christianity, for the Persians were the only people to symbolize the first sign of the zodiac by a lamb.

Because a lamb was the sin offering of the ancient pagans, the early mystic Christians considered this animal as an appropriate emblem of Christ, whom they regarded as the sin offering of the world. The Greeks and the Egyptians highly venerated the lamb or ram, often placing its horns upon the foreheads of their gods. The Scandinavian god Thor carried a hammer made from a pair of ram's horns. The lamb is used in preference to the ram apparently because of its purity and gentleness; also, since the Creator Himself was symbolized by Aries, His Son would consequently be the little Ram or Lamb. The lambskin apron worn by the Freemasons over that part of the body symbolized by Typhon or Judas represents that purification of the generative processes which is a prerequisite to true spirituality. In this allegory the Lamb signifies the purified candidate, its seven horns representing the divisions of illuminated reason and its seven eyes the chakras, or perfected sense-perceptions.

The sixth to eleventh chapters inclusive are devoted to an account of the opening of the seven seals on the book held by the Lamb. When the first seal was broken, there rode forth a man on a white horse wearing a crown and holding in his hand a bow. When the second seal was broken, there rode forth a man upon a red horse and in his hand was a great sword. When the third seal was broken there rode forth a man upon a black horse and with a pair of balances in his hand. And when the fourth seal was broken there rode forth Death upon a pale horse and hell followed after him. The four horsemen of the Apocalypse may be interpreted to signify the four main divisions of human life. Birth is represented by the rider on the white horse who comes forth conquering and to conquer; the impetuosity of youth by the rider on the red horse who took peace from the earth; maturity by the rider on the black horse who weighs all things in the scales of reason; and death by the rider on the pale horse who was given power over a fourth part of the earth. In the Eastern philosophy these horsemen signify the four yugas, or ages, of the world which, riding forth at: their appointed times, become for a certain span the rulers of creation.

Commenting on the twenty-fourth allocution of Chrysostom, in The Origin of all Religious Worship, Dupuis notes that each of the four elements was represented by a horse bearing the name of the god "who is set over the element." The first horse, signifying the fire ether, was called Jupiter and occupied the highest place in the order of the elements. This horse was winged, very fleet, and, describing the largest circle, encompassed all the others. It shone with the purest light, and on its body were the images of the sun, the moon, the stars, and all the bodies in the ethereal regions. The second horse, signifying the element of air, was Juno. It was inferior to the horse of Jupiter and described a smaller circle; its color was black but that part exposed to the sun became luminous, thus signifying the diurnal and nocturnal conditions of air. The third horse, symbolizing the element of water, was sacred to Neptune. It was of heavy gait and described a very small circle. The fourth horse, signifying the static element of earth, described as immovable and champing its bit, was the steed of Vesta. Despite their differences in temperature, these four horses lived harmoniously together, which is in accord with the principles of the philosophers, who declared the world to be preserved by the concord and harmony of its elements. In time, however, the racing horse of Jupiter burned the mane of the horse of earth; the thundering steed of Neptune also became covered with sweat, which overflowed the immovable horse of Vesta and resulted in the deluge of Deucalion. At last the fiery horse of Jupiter will consume the rest, when the three inferior elements--purified by reabsorption in the fiery ether--will come forth renewed, constituting "a new heaven and a new earth."

When the fifth seal was opened St. John beheld those who had died for the word of God. When the sixth seal was broken there was a great earthquake, the sun being darkened and the moon becoming like blood. The angels of the winds came forth and also another angel, who sealed upon their foreheads 144,000 of the children of Israel that they should be preserved against the awful day of tribulation. By adding the digits together according to the Pythagorean system of numerical philosophy, the number 144,000 is reduced to 9, the mystic symbol of man and also the number of initiation, for he who passes through the nine degrees of the Mysteries receives the sign of the cross as emblematic of his regeneration and liberation from the bondage of his own infernal, or inferior, nature. The addition of the three ciphers to the original sacred number 1.44 indicates the elevation of the mystery to the third sphere.

When the seventh seal was broken there was silence for the space of half an hour. Then came forth seven angels and to each was given a trumpet. When the seven angels sounded their trumpets--intoned the seven-lettered Name of the Logos--great catastrophes ensued. A star, which was called Wormwood, fell from heaven, thereby signifying that the secret doctrine of the ancients had been given to men who had profaned it and caused the wisdom of God to become a destructive agency. And another star--symbolizing the false light of human reason as distinguished from the divine reason of the initiate--fell from heaven and to it (materialistic reason) was given the key to the bottomless pit (Nature), which it opened, causing all manner of evil creatures to issue forth. And there came also a mighty angel who was clothed in a cloud, whose face was as the sun and his feet and legs as pillars of fire, and one foot was upon the waters and the other upon the land (the Hermetic Anthropos). This celestial being gave St. John a little book, bidding him eat it, which the seer did. The book is representative of the secret doctrine--that spiritual food which is the nourishment of the spirit. And St. John, being "in the spirit," ate his fill of the wisdom of God and the hunger of his soul was appeased.

The twelfth chapter treats of a great wonder appearing in the heavens: a woman clothed with the sun, the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars. This woman represents the constellation of Virgo and also the Egyptian Isis, who, about to be delivered of her son Horus, is attacked by Typhon, the latter attempting to destroy the child predestined by the gods to slay the Spirit of Evil. The war in heaven relates to the destruction of the planet Ragnarok and to the fall of the angels. The virgin can be interpreted to signify the secret doctrine itself and her son the initiate born out of the "womb of the Mysteries." The Spirit of Evil thus personified in the great dragon attempted to control mankind by destroying the mother of those illumined souls who have labored unceasingly for the salvation of the world. Wings were given to the Mysteries (the virgin) and they flew into the wilderness; and the evil dragon tried to destroy them with a flood (of false doctrine) but the earth (oblivion) swallowed up the false doctrines and the Mysteries endured.

The thirteenth chapter describes a great beast which rose out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns. Faber sees in this amphibious monster the Demiurgus, or Creator of the world, rising out of the Ocean of Chaos. While most interpreters of the Apocalypse consider the various beasts described therein as typical of evil agencies, this viewpoint is the inevitable result of unfamiliarity with the ancient doctrines from which the symbolism of the book is derived. Astronomically, the great monster rising out of the sea is the constellation of Cetus (the whale). Because religious ascetics looked upon the universe itself as an evil and ensnaring fabrication, they also came to regard its very Creator as a weaver of delusions. Thus the great sea monster (the world) and its Maker (the Demiurgus), whose strength is derived from the Dragon of Cosmic Power, came to be personified as a beast of horror and destruction, seeking to swallow up the immortal part: of human nature. The seven heads of the monster represent the seven stars (spirits) composing the constellation of the Great Dipper, called by the Hindus Rishis, or Cosmic Creative Spirits. The ten horns Faber relates to the ten primordial patriarchs. These may also denote the ancient zodiac of ten signs.

The number of the beast (666) is an interesting example of the use of Qabbalism in the New Testament and among early Christian mystics. In the following table Kircher shows that the names of Antichrist as given by Iranæus all have 666 as their numerical equivalent.

James Morgan Pryse also notes that according to this method of figuring, the Greek term ἡ φρην, which signifies the lower mind, has 666 as its numerical equivalent. It is also well known to Qabbalists that Ἰησους, Jesus, has for its numerical value another sacred and secret number--888. Adding the digits of the number 666 and again adding the digits of the sum gives the sacred number--9 the symbol of man in his unregenerate state and also the path of his resurrection.

The fourteenth chapter opens with the Lamb standing on Mount Zion (the eastern horizon), about Him gathered the 144,000 with the name of God written in their foreheads. An angel thereupon announces the fall of Babylon--the city of confusion or worldliness. Those perish who do not overcome worldliness and enter into the realization that spirit--and not matter--is enduring; for, having no interests other than those which are material, they are swept to destruction with the material world. And St. John beheld One like unto the Son of Man (Perseus) riding upon a cloud (the substances of the invisible world) and bearing in his hand a sharp sickle, and with the sickle the Shining One reaped the earth. This is a symbol of the Initiator releasing into the sphere of reality the higher natures of those who, symbolized by ripened grain, have reached the point of liberation. And there came another angel (Boötes)--Death--also with a sickle (Karma), who reaped the vines of the earth (those who have lived by the false light) and cast them into the winepress of the wrath of God (the purgatorial spheres).

The fifteenth to eighteenth chapters inclusive contain an account of seven angels (the Pleiades) who pour their vials upon the earth. The contents of their vials (the loosened energy of the Cosmic Bull) are called the seven last plagues. Here also is introduced a symbolic figure, termed "the harlot of Babylon, "which is described as a woman seated upon a scarlet-colored beast having seven heads and ten horns. The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet and bedecked with gold, precious stones, and pearls, having in her hand a golden cup full of abominations. This figure may be an effort (probably interpolated) to vilify Cybele, or Artemis, the Great Mother goddess of antiquity. Because the pagans venerated the Mater Deorum through symbols appropriate to the feminine generative principle they were accused by the early Christians of worshiping a courtesan. As nearly all the ancient Mysteries included a test of the neophyte's moral character, the temptress (the animal soul) is here portrayed as a pagan goddess.

In the nineteenth and twentieth chapters is set forth the preparation of that mystical sacrament called the marriage of the Lamb. The bride is the soul of the neophyte, which attains conscious immortality by uniting itself to its own spiritual source. The heavens opened once more and St. John saw a white horse, and the rider (the illumined mind) which sat upon it was called Faithful and True. Out of his mouth issued a sharp sword and the armies of heaven followed after him. Upon the plains of heaven was fought the mystic Armageddon--the last great war between light and darkness. The forces of evil under the Persian Ahriman battled against the forces of good under Ahura-Mazda. Evil was vanquished and the beast and the false prophet cast into a lake of fiery brimstone. Satan was bound for a thousand years. Then followed the last judgment; the books were opened, including the book of life. The dead were judged according to their works and those whose names were not in the book of life were cast into a sea of fire. To the neophyte, Armageddon represents the last struggle between the flesh and the spirit when, finally overcoming the world, the illumined soul rises to union with its spiritual Self. The judgment signifies the weighing of the soul and was borrowed from the Mysteries of Osiris. The rising of the dead from their graves and from the sea of illusion represents the consummation of the process of human regeneration. The sea of fire into which those are cast who fail in the ordeal of initiation signifies the fiery sphere of the animal world.

In the twenty-first and twenty-second chapters are pictured the new heaven and the new earth to be established at the close of Ahriman's reign. St. John, carried in the spirit to a great and high mountain (the brain), beheld the New Jerusalem descending as a bride adorned for her husband. The Holy City represents the regenerated and perfected world, the trued ashlar of the Mason, for the city was a perfect cube, it being written, "the length and the breadth and the height of it are equal." The foundation of the Holy City consisted of a hundred and forty-four stones in twelve rows, from which it is evident that the New Jerusalem represents the microcosm, patterned after the greater universe in which it: stands. The twelve gates of this symbolic dodecahedron are the signs of the zodiac through which the celestial impulses descend into the inferior world; the jewels are the precious stones of the zodiacal signs; and the transparent golden streets are the streams of spiritual light along which the initiate passes on his path towards the sun. There is no material temple in that city, for God and the Lamb are the temple; and there is neither sun nor moon, for God and the Lamb are the light. The glorified and spiritualized initiate is here depicted as a city. This city will ultimately be united with the spirit of God and absorbed into the Divine Effulgency.

And St. John beheld a river, the Water of Life, which proceeded out of the throne of the Lamb. The river represents the stream pouring from the First Logos, which is the life of all things and the active cause of all creation. There also was the Tree of Life (the spirit) bearing twelve manner of fruit, whose leaves were for the healing of the nations. By the tree is also represented the year, which every month yields some good for the maintenance of existing creatures. Jesus then tells St. John that He is the root and the offspring of David and the bright and morning star (Venus). St. John concludes with the words, "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen."

An Open Letter to The American People and Our Elected Officials

2012-11-09T08:57:00.002-06:00

On the night of December 23, 1913 the United States Congress passed the Federal Reserve Act and thereby committed the greatest act of TREASON in history. It surrendered this nation's sovereignty and sold the American people into slavery to a cabal of arch-charlatan international bankers who proceeded to plunder, bankrupt, and conquer this nation with a money swindle.

The "money" the banks issue is merely bookkeeping entries. It cost them nothing and is not backed by their wealth, efforts, property, or risk. It is not redeemable except in more debt paper. The Federal Reserve Act forced us to pay compound interest on thin air. We now use worthless "notes" backed by our own credit that we cannot own and are made subject to compelled performance for the "privilege."

From 1913 until 1933, the United States paid the "interest" with more and more gold. The structured inevitability soon transpired: the Treasury was empty, the debt was greater than ever, and the United States declared bankruptcy. In exchange for using notes belonging to bankers who create them out of nothing on our own credit, we are forced to repay in substance (labor, property, land, businesses, resources - life) in ever-increasing amounts. This may be the greatest heist and fraud of all time.

When a government goes bankrupt, it loses its sovereignty. In 1933 the United States declared bankruptcy, as expressed in Roosevelt's Executive Orders 6073, 6102, 6111, and 6260, House Joint Resolution 192 of June 5, 1933, confirmed in Perry v. United States, (1935) 294 U.S. 330-381, 79 L.ed 912, as well as 31 USC 5112, 5119, and 12 USC 95A.

The bankrupt United States went into receivership, reorganized in favor of 115 creditors and new owners. In 1913, Congress turned over America... lock, stock and barrel to a handful of criminals whose avowed intent from the beginning was to plunder, bankrupt, conquer, and enslave the people of the United States of America and eliminate this nation from the face of the earth. The goal was, and is, to absorb America into a one-world private commercial government, a "New World Order."

With the Erie R.R. v Tompkins case of 1938, the Supreme Court confirmed their success. We are now in an international private commercial jurisdiction in colorable admiralty-maritime under the Law Merchant. We have been conned and betrayed out of our sovereignty, rights, property, freedom, common law, Article III Courts, and... our Republic. The Bill of Rights has been statutized into "civil rights" in commerce.

America has been stolen. We have been made slaves, i.e. permanent debtors, bankrupt, in legal incapacity, rendered commercial "persons," "residents," and corporate franchisees known as "citizens of the United States" under the so-called "14th Amendment." Said "Amendment," which was never ratified - see Congressional Record, June 13, 1967; Dyett v. Turner, (1968) 439 P2d 266, 267; State v. Phillips, 1975 (affirmed) - created a citizenship for corporations, abstract statutory entities which are the products and definitions of the legislature and are fully taxable and regulatable thereby. Thomas Jefferson's prophecy has come to pass: "If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of currency... the banks... will deprive the people of all property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."

Since 1933 what is called the "United States Government" is a privately owned corporation of the Federal Reserve/IMF. It is merely an instrument whereby the banksters administer their ongoing subjugation and plunder of what was once considered "the last great hope of human freedom." All "public servants," officials, Congressmen, politicians, judges, attorneys, law enforcement officers, States and their various agencies, etc., are the express agents of these foreign principals - see Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938; 22 USC 286 et seq, 263A, 185G, 267J, 611(C) (ii) & (iii); Treasury Delegation Order #91 - who have stolen the country by clever, intentional, and unrelenting fraud, trickery, treachery, non-disclosure, mis-representation, intrigue, coercion, conspiracy, murder (example: the murder of President John F. Kennedy and the continuing cover-up), etc. If there is a greater tragedy in human history it is hard to know what it is.

An insidious aspect of this is that "officials" like you may think you are "public servants," or upholding the "law," or other hoaxes. In truth you are conscientiously and assiduously serving the arch-enemies of yourselves, your own rights, your fellow citizens, continued... human rights, life, and freedom in general. YOU are seditiously administering the plunder, bankruptcy, conquest, destruction, dismantling, and elimination of your country. YOU are systematically defrauding, extorting, impoverishing, and injuring human life on the basis of crimes and lies of such magnitude, depth, and proportions as to be beyond human comprehension.

By so doing, you are committing TREASON and PERFIDY so immense as "to make the angels weep." If you and your fellow "officials" do not understand the real situation, you are ignorant, naive, deceived, and conned. You are sheer dupes. If you do know and are parties to it, you are guilty of evil and heinous BETRAYAL. You are in such case TRAITORS and CRIMINALS. All of you "in power" are therefore, either fools or knaves, either of which eminently invalidates your "authority" and renders null and void absolutely all moral obligation to pay allegiance or to obey the TREASONOUS SYSTEM you enforce with such mechanical viciousness.

If, you, "public servants" had any shred left of humanity, awe, heart, clarity, sanity, access to your true being and conscience, you would instantly resign and do everything possible to inform the American people of their plight and help us retrieve our rights and our country. Only by such means can you even begin to atone for your endless crimes against humanity, the lives you so arrogantly and mindlessly butcher with the "meat-grinder of the law."

You DID NOT CREATE the lives you "legally" assault; they DO NOT belong to you. Ignorance of the law - moral and natural law - is no excuse. You cannot engage in bringing harm to life and, like the Nazi's defense at Nuernberg, presume that because you do so under the "authority" of an imaginary, abstract, unreal legal fiction called "government" you are freed of the consequences of your acts. Moral and natural law are not obviated by ignorance, hubris and self-righteous militancy. Your entire system - from the ground up - is deceit and fraud. It is illicit in essence and ab initio. As Broom's Maxims 297, 729 put it: "A right of action cannot arise out of fraud." Honor is earned by honesty and integrity, not under false and fraudulent pretenses. The color of the cloth one wears cannot cover up the usurpations, lies, and treachery. "When black is fraudulently declared to be white, not all will live in darkness."

More and more people are awakening to the truth. What do you think the American people will do as they discover that they have no more country, that they are slaves to mortal enemies, that they have been tricked and betrayed by their "leaders" who sold them out? what do you think they will do when they realize that all their alleged "public servants" are willing or stupidly compliant parties to the plunder, bankruptcy, subjugation, and ruin of their lives and country?

Thomas Jefferson wrote: "An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens." Lincoln said: "Just as I would not be a slave, neither would I be a master." I will not participate in your corrupt, arrogant, and cruel fraud, either as perpetrator or victim. The great Indian poet Tagore wrote: "Power takes as ingratitude the writhing of its victims."

I will no longer sit here and writhe. The TYRANNY over this nation MUST END! If you continue with this course, you will have natural and moral law and higher powers to answer to, not to mention all those you have wronged under phony color of law. You will also have your own laws turned against you, as you have turned the law against us. To transform the shield of protection into a sword of exploitation, subjugation, and plunder is perfidy. You have now been placed on notice. All further actions on your part will be willful!

For More Information:

Reclaim Liberty: 3-Step Plan for Restoring Our Constitutional Government

The Fraternity of the Rose Cross - The Rosicrucians

2012-11-05T09:55:00.001-06:00

WHO were the Rosicrucians? Were they an organization of profound thinkers rebelling against the inquisitional religious and philosophical limitations of their time or were they isolated transcendentalists united only by the similarity of their viewpoints and deductions? Where was the "House of the Holy Spirit, " in which, according to their manifestoes, they met once a year to plan the future activities of their Order? Who was the mysterious person referred to as "Our Illustrious Father and Brother C.R.C."? Did those three letters actually stand for the words "Christian Rosie Cross"? Was Christian Rosencreutz, the supposed author of the Chymical Nuptials, the same person who with three others founded "The Society of the Rose Cross"?

What relationship existed between Rosicrucianism and mediæval Freemasonry? Why were the destinies of these two organizations so closely interwoven? Is the "Brotherhood of the Rose Cross" the much-sought-after link connecting the Freemasonry of the Middle Ages with the symbolism and mysticism of antiquity, and are its secrets being perpetuated by modern Masonry? Did the original Rosicrucian Order disintegrate in the latter part of the eighteenth century, or does the Society still exist as an organization, maintaining the same secrecy for which it was originally famous? What was the true purpose for which the "Brotherhood of the Rose Cross" was formed? Were the Rosicrucians a religious and philosophic brotherhood, as they claimed to be, or were their avowed tenets a blind to conceal the true object of the Fraternity, which possibly was the political control of Europe? These are some of the problems involved in the study of Rosicrucianism.

There are four distinct theories regarding the Rosicrucian enigma. Each is the result of a careful consideration of the evidence by scholars who have spent their lives ransacking the archives of Hermetic lore. The conclusions reached demonstrate clearly the inadequacy of the records available concerning the genesis and early activities of the "Brethren of the Rose Cross."

THE FIRST POSTULATE

It is assumed that the Rosicrucian Order existed historically in accordance with the description of its foundation and subsequent activities published in its manifesto, the Fama Fraternitatis, which is believed to have been written in the year 1610, but apparently did not appear in print until 1614, although an earlier edition is suspected by some authorities. Intelligent consideration of the origin of Rosicrucianism requires a familiarity with the contents of the first and most important of its documents. The Fama Fraternitatis begins with a reminder to all the world of God's goodness and mercy, and it warns the intelligentsia that their egotism and covetousness cause them to follow after false prophets and to ignore the true knowledge which God in His goodness has revealed to them. Hence, a reformation is necessary, and God has raised up philosophers and sages for this purpose.

In order to assist in bringing about the reformation, a mysterious person called "The Highly Illuminated Father C.R.C.," a German by birth, descended of a noble family, but himself a poor man, instituted the "Secret Society of the Rose Cross." C.R.C. was placed in a cloister when only five years of age, but later becoming dissatisfied with its educational system, he associated himself with a brother of Holy Orders who was setting forth on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. They started out together, but the brother died at Cyprus and C.R.C! continued alone to Damascus. Poor health prevented him from reaching Jerusalem, so he remained at Damascus, studying with the philosophers who dwelt there.

While pursuing his studies, he heard of a group of mystics and Qabbalists abiding in the mystic Arabian city of Damcar. Giving up his desire to visit Jerusalem, he arranged with the Arabians for his transportation to Damcar. C.R.C. was but sixteen years of age when he arrived at Damcar. He was received as one who had been long expected, a comrade and a friend in philosophy, and was instructed in the secrets of the Arabian adepts. While there, C.R.C. learned the Arabic tongue and translated the sacred book M into Latin; and upon returning to Europe he brought this important volume with him.

After studying three years in Damcar, C.R.C. departed for the city of Fez, where the Arabian magicians declared further information would be given him. At Fez he was instructed how to communicate with the Elementary inhabitants [probably the Nature spirits], and these disclosed to him many other great secrets of Nature. While the philosophers in Fez were not so great as those in Damcar, the previous experiences of C.R.C. enabled him to distinguish the true from the false and thus add greatly to his store of knowledge.

After two years in Fez, C.R.C. sailed for Spain, carrying with him many treasures, among them rare plants and animals accumulated during his wanderings. He fondly hoped that the learned men of Europe would receive with gratitude the rare intellectual and material treasures which he had brought for their consideration. Instead he encountered only ridicule, for the so-called wise were afraid to admit their previous ignorance lest their prestige be impaired. At this point in the narrative is an interpolation stating that Paracelsus, while not a member of the "Fraternity of the Rose Cross," had read the book M and from a consideration of its contents had secured information which made him the foremost physician of mediæval Europe.

Tired, but not discouraged, as the result of the fruitlessness of his efforts, C.R.C. returned to Germany, where he built a house in which he could quietly carry on his study and research. He also manufactured a number of rare scientific instruments for research purposes. While he could have made himself famous had he cared to commercialize his knowledge, he preferred the companionship of God to the esteem of men.

After five years of retirement he decided to renew his struggle for a reformation of the arts and sciences of his day, this time with the aid of a few trusted friends. He sent to the cloister where his early training had been received and called to himself three brethren, whom he bound by an oath to preserve inviolate the secrets he should impart and to write down for the sake of posterity the information he should dictate. These four founded the "Fraternity of the Rose Cross." They prepared its secret cipher language and, according to the Fama, a great dictionary in which all forms of wisdom were classified to the glorification of God. They also began the work of transcribing the book M, but found the task too difficult because of the demands of the great numbers of sick who came to them for healing.

Having completed a newer and larger building, which they called the "House of the Holy Spirit," they decided to include four new members in the Fraternity, thus increasing the number to eight, seven of whom were German. All were unmarried. Working industriously together, they speedily completed the arduous labor of preparing the documents, instructions, and arcana of the Order. They also put the house called "Sancti Spiritus" in order.

They then decided to separate and visit the other countries of the earth, not only that their wisdom might be given to others who deserved it but also that they might check and correct any mistakes existing in their own system. Before separating, the Brethren prepared six rules, or by-laws, and each bound himself to obey them. The first rule was that they should take to themselves no other dignity or credit than that they were willing to heal the sick without charge. The second was that from that time on forever they should wear no special robe or garment, but should dress according to the custom of the country wherein they dwelt. The third stated that every year upon a certain day they should meet in the "House of the Holy Spirit," or, if unable to do so, should be represented by an epistle. The fourth decreed that each member should search for a worthy person to succeed him at his own demise. The fifth stated that the letters "R.C." should be their seal, mark, and character from that time onward. The sixth specified that the Fraternity should remain unknown to the world for a period of one hundred years.

After they had sworn to this code five of the Brothers departed to distant lands, and a year later two of the others also went their way, leaving Father C.R. C. alone in the "House of the Holy Spirit." Year after year they met with great joy, for they had quietly and sincerely promulgated their doctrines among the wise of the earth.

When the first of the Order died in England, it was decided that the burial places of the members should be secret. Soon afterward Father C.R.C. called the remaining six together, and it is supposed that then he prepared his own symbolic tomb. The Fama records that none of the Brothers alive at the time of its writing knew when Father C.R.C. died or where he was buried. His body was accidentally discovered 120 years after his death when one of the Brothers, who possessed considerable architectural skill, decided to make some alterations in the "House of the Holy Spirit." [It is only suspected that the tomb was in this building.]

While making his alterations, the Brother discovered a memorial tablet upon which were inscribed the names of the early members of the Order. This he decided to transfer to a more imposing chapel, for at that time no one knew in what country Father C.R.C. had died, this information having been concealed by the original members. In attempting to remove the memorial tablet, which was held in place by a large nail, some stones and plastering were broken from the wall, disclosing a door concealed in the masonry. The members of the Order immediately cleared away the rest of the débris and uncovered the entrance to a vault. Upon the door in large letters were the words: POST CXX ANNOS PATEBO. This, according to the mystic interpretation of the Brethren, meant, "In 120 years I shall come forth."

The following morning the door was opened and the members entered a vault with seven sides and seven corners, each side five feet broad and eight feet high. Although the sun never penetrated this tomb, it was brilliantly illuminated by a mysterious light in the ceiling. In the center was a circular altar, upon which were brass plates engraved with strange characters. In each of the seven sides was a small door which, upon being opened, revealed a number of boxes filled with books, secret instructions, and the supposedly lost arcanum of the Fraternity.

Upon moving the altar to one side a brass cover was disclosed. Lifting this revealed a body, presumedly that of C.R.C., which, although it had lain there 120 years, was as well preserved as though it had just been interred. It was ornamented and attired in the robes of the Order, and in one hand was clasped a mysterious parchment which, next to the Bible, was the most valued possession of the Society. After thoroughly investigating the contents of the secret chamber, the brass plate and altar were put back in place, the door of the vault was again sealed, and the Brothers went their respective ways, their spirits raised and their faith increased by the miraculous spectacle which they had beheld.

The document ends by saying in effect, "In accordance with the will of Father C.R.C., the Fama has been prepared and sent forth to the wise and learned of all Europe in five languages, that all may know and understand the secrets of the august Fraternity. All of sincere soul who labor for the glory of God are invited to communicate with the Brethren and are promised that their appeal shall be heard, regardless of where they are or how the messages are sent. At the same time, those of selfish and ulterior motives are warned that only sorrow and misery will attend any who attempt to discover the Fraternity without a clean heart and a pure mind."

Such, in brief, is the story of the Fama Fraternitatis. Those who accept it literally regard Father C.R.C. as the actual founder of the Brotherhood, which he is believed to have organized about 1400. The fact that historical corroboration of the important points of the Fama has never been discovered is held against this theory. There is no proof that Father C.R.C. ever approached the learned men of Spain. The mysterious city of Damcar cannot be found, and there is no record that anywhere in Germany there existed a place where great numbers of the halt and sick came and were mysteriously healed. A. E. Waite's The Secret Tradition in Freemasonry contains a picture of Father C.R.C. showing him with a long beard upon his breast, sitting before a table upon which burns a candle. One hand is supporting his head and the other is resting the tip of its index finger on the temple of a human skull. The picture, however (see plate at head of chapter), proves nothing. Father C.R.C. was never seen by other than members of his own Order, and they did not preserve a description of him. That his name was Christian Rosencreutz is most improbable, as the two were not even associated until the writing of the Chymical Nuptials.

THE SECOND POSTULATE

Those Masonic brethren who have investigated the subject accept the historical existence of the "Brotherhood of the Rose Cross" but are divided concerning the origin of the Order. One group holds the society originated in mediæval Europe as an outgrowth of alchemical speculation. Robert Macoy, 33°, believes that Johann Valentin Andreæ, a German theologian, was the true founder, and he also believes it possible that this divine merely reformed and amplified an existing society which had been founded by Sir Henry Cornelius Agrippa. Some believe that Rosicrucianism represented the first European invasion of Buddhist and Brahmin culture. Still others hold the opinion that the "Society of the Rose Cross" was founded in Egypt during n the philosophic supremacy of that empire, and that it also perpetuated the Mysteries of ancient Persia and Chaldea.

In his Anacalypsis, Godfrey Higgins writes: "The Rosicrucians of Germany are quite ignorant of their origin; but, by tradition, they suppose themselves descendants of the ancient Egyptians, Chaldeans, Magi, and Gymnosophists." (The last was a name given by the followers of Alexander the Great to a caste of naked Wise Men whom they found meditating along the river banks in India.) The consensus among these factions is that the story of Father C.R.C., like the Masonic legend of Hiram Abiff, is an allegory and should not be considered literally. A similar problem has confronted students of the Bible, who have found not only difficult, but in the majority of cases impossible, their efforts to substantiate the historical interpretation of the Scriptures.

Admitting the existence of the Rosicrucians as a secret society with both philosophic and political ends, it is remarkable that an organization with members in all parts of Europe could maintain absolute secrecy throughout the centuries. Nevertheless, the "Brothers of the Rose Cross" were apparently able to accomplish this. A great number of scholars and philosophers, among them Sir Francis Bacon and Wolfgang von Goethe, have been suspected of affiliation with the Order, but their connection has not been established to the satisfaction of prosaic historians. Pseudo-Rosicrucians abounded, but the true members of the "Ancient and Secret Order of The Unknown Philosophers" have successfully lived up to their name; to this day they remain unknown.

During the Middle Ages a number of tracts appeared, purporting to be from the pens of Rosicrucians. Many of them, however, were spurious, being issued for their self-aggrandizement by unscrupulous persons who used the revered and magic name Rosicrucian in the hope of gaining religious or political power. This has greatly complicated the work of investigating the Society. One group of pseudo-Rosicrucians went so far as to supply its members with a black cord by which they were to know each other, and warned them that if they broke their vow of secrecy the cord would be used to strangle them. Few of the principles of Rosicrucianism have been preserved in literature, for the original Fraternity published only fragmentary accounts of its principles and activities.

In his Secret Symbols of the Rosicrucians, Dr. Franz Hartmann describes the Fraternity as "A secret society of men possessing superhuman--if not supernatural--powers; they were said to be able to prophesy future events, to penetrate into the deepest mysteries of Nature, to transform Iron, Copper, Lead, or Mercury into Gold, to prepare an Elixir of Life, or Universal Panacea, by the use of which they could preserve their youth and manhood; and moreover it was believed that they could command the Elemental Spirits of Nature, and knew the secret of the Philosopher's Stone, a substance which rendered him who possessed it all-powerful, immortal, and supremely wise."

The same author further defines a Rosicrucian as "A person who by the process of spiritual awakening has attained a practical knowledge of the secret significance of the Rose and the Cross. * * * To call a person a Rosicrucian does not make him one, nor does the act of calling a person a Christian make him a Christ. The real Rosicrucian or Mason cannot be made; he must grow to be one by the expansion and unfoldment of the divine power within his own heart. The inattention to this truth is the cause that many churches and secret societies are far from being that which their names express."

The symbolic principles of Rosicrucianism are so profound that even today they are little appreciated. Their charts and diagrams are concerned with weighty cosmic principles which they treat with a philosophic understanding decidedly refreshing when compared with the orthodox narrowness prevalent in their day. According to the available records, the Rosicrucians were bound together by mutual aspirations rather than by the laws of a fraternity. The "Brothers of the Rose Cross" are believed to have lived unobtrusively, laboring industriously in trades and professions, disclosing their secret affiliation to no one--in many cases not even to their own families. After the death of C.R.C., most of the Brethren apparently had no central meeting place. Whatever initiatory ritual the Order possessed was so closely guarded that it has never been revealed. Doubtless it was couched in chemical terminology.

Efforts to join the Order were apparently futile, for the Rosicrucians always chose their disciples. Having agreed on one who they believed would do honor to their illustrious fraternity, they communicated with him in one of many mysterious ways. He might receive a letter, either anonymous or with a peculiar seal, usually bearing the letters "C.R.C. "or "R.C. "upon it. He would be instructed to go to a certain place at an appointed time. What was disclosed to him he never revealed, although in many cases his later writings showed that a new influence had come into his life, deepening his understanding and broadening his intellect. A few have written allegorically concerning what they beheld when in the august presence of the "Brethren of the Rose Cross."

Alchemists were sometimes visited in their laboratories by mysterious strangers, who delivered learned discourses concerning the secret processes of the Hermetic arts and, after disclosing certain processes, departed, leaving no trace. Others declared that the "Brothers of the Rose Cross" communicated with them through dreams and visions, revealing the secrets of Hermetic wisdom to them while they were asleep. Having been instructed, the candidate was bound to secrecy not only concerning the chemical formulæ which had been disclosed to him but also concerning the method by which he had secured them. While these nameless adepts were suspected of being ''Brothers of the Rose Cross," it could never be proved who they were, and those visited could only conjecture.

Many suspect the Rosicrucian rose to be a conventionalization of the Egyptian and Hindu lotus blossom, with the same symbolic meaning as this more ancient symbol. The Divine Comedy stamps Dante Alighieri as being familiar with the theory of Rosicrucianism. Concerning this point, Albert Pike in his Morals and Dogma makes this significant statement: "His Hell is but a negative Purgatory. His heaven is composed of a series of Kabalistic circles, divided by a cross, like the Pantacle of Ezekiel. In the center of this cross blooms a rose, and we see the symbol of the Adepts of the Rose-Croix for the first time publicly expounded and almost categorically explained."

Doubt has always existed as to whether the name Rosicrucian came from the symbol of the rose and cross, or whether this was merely a blind to deceive the uninformed and further conceal the true meaning of the Order. Godfrey Higgins believes that the word Rosicrucian is not derived from the flower but from the word Ros, which means dew. It is also interesting to note that the word Ras means wisdom, while Rus is translated concealment. Doubtless all of these meanings have contributed to Rosicrucian symbolism.

A. E. Waite holds with Godfrey Higgins that the process of forming the Philosopher's Stone with the aid of dew is the secret concealed within the name Rosicrucian. It is possible that the dew referred to is a mysterious substance within the human brain, closely resembling the description given by alchemists of the dew which, falling from heaven, redeemed the earth. The cross is symbolic of the human body, and the two symbols together--the rose on the cross--signify that the soul of man is crucified upon the body, where it is held by three nails.

It is probable that Rosicrucian symbolism is a perpetuation of the secret tenets of the Egyptian Hermes, and that the Society of Unknown Philosophers is the true link connecting modern Masonry, with its mass of symbols, to ancient Egyptian Hermeticism, the source of that symbolism. In his Doctrine and Literature of the Kabalah, A. E. Waite makes this important observation: "There are certain indications which point to a possible connection between Masonry and Rosicrucianism, and this, if admitted, would constitute the first link in its connection with the past. The evidence is, however, inconclusive, or at least unextricated. Freemasonry per se, in spite of the affinity with mysticism which I have just mentioned, has never exhibited any mystic character, nor has it a clear notion how it came by its symbols."

Many of those connected with the development of Freemasonry were suspected of being Rosicrucians; some, as in the case of Robert Fludd, even wrote defenses of this organization. Frank C. Higgins, a modern Masonic symbolist, writes: "Doctor Ashmole, a member of this fraternity [Rosicrucian], is revered by Masons as one of the founders of the first Grand Lodge in London." (See Ancient Freemasonry.) Elias Ashmole is but one of many intellectual links connecting Rosicrucianism with the genesis of Freemasonry. The Encyclopædia Britannica notes that Elias Ashmole was initiated into the Freemasonic Order in 1646, and further states that he was "the first gentleman, or amateur, to be 'accepted'."

On this same subject, Papus, in his Tarot of the Bohemians, has written: "We must not forger that the Rosicrucians were the Initiators of Leibnitz, and the founders of actual Freemasonry through Ashmole." If the founders of Freemasonry were initiated into the Great Arcanum of Egypt--and the symbolism of modern Masonry would indicate that such was the case--then it is reasonable to suppose that they secured their information from a society whose existence they admitted and which was duly qualified to teach them these symbols and allegories.

One theory concerning the two Orders is to the effect that Freemasonry was an outgrowth of Rosicrucianism; in other words, that the "Unknown Philosophers" became known through an organization which they created to serve them in the material world. The story goes on to relate that the Rosicrucian adepts became dissatisfied with their progeny and silently withdrew from the Masonic hierarchy, leaving behind their symbolism and allegories, but carrying away the keys by which the locked symbols could be made to give tip their secret meanings. Speculators have gone so far as to state that, in their opinion, modern Freemasonry has completely absorbed Rosicrucianism and succeeded it as the world's greatest secret society. Other minds of equal learning declare that the Rosicrucian Brotherhood still exists, preserving its individuality as the result of having withdrawn from the Masonic Order.

According to a widely accepted tradition, the headquarters of the Rosicrucian Order is near Carlsbad, in Austria (see Doctor Franz Hartmann). Another version has it that a mysterious school, resembling in general principles the Rosicrucian Fraternity, which calls itself "The Bohemian Brothers," still maintains its individuality in the Schwarzwald (Black Forest) of Germany. One thing is certain: with the rise of Freemasonry, the Rosicrucian Order in Europe practically disappeared, and notwithstanding existing statements to the contrary, it is certain that the 18th degree (commonly known as the Rose-Croix) perpetuates many of the symbols of the Rosicrucian Fire Alchemists.

In an anonymous unpublished manuscript of the eighteenth century bearing the earmarks of Rosicrucian Qabbalism appears this statement: "Yet will I now give the over-wise world a paradox to be solved, namely, that some illuminated men have undertaken to found Schools of Wisdom in Europe and these for some peculiar reason have called themselves Fratres Rosa: Crucis. But soon afterwards came false schools into existence and corrupted the good intentions of these wise men. Therefore, the Order no longer exists as most people would understand existence, and as this Fraternity of the Seculo Fili call themselves Brothers of the Rosie Cross, so also will they in the Seculo Spiritus Sancti call themselves Brothers of the Lily Cross and the Knights of the White Lion. Then will the Schools of Wisdom begin again to blossom, but why the first one chose their name and why the others shall also choose theirs, only those can solve who have understanding grounded in Nature."

Political aspirations of the Rosicrucians were expressed through the activities of Sir Francis Bacon, the Comte de St.-Germain, and the Comte di Cagliostro. The last named is suspected of having been an emissary of the Knights Templars, a society deeply involved in transcendentalism, as Eliphas Levi has noted. There is a popular supposition to the effect that the Rosicrucians were at least partial instigators of the French Revolution. (Note particularly the introduction to Lord Bulwer-Lytton's Rosicrucian novel Zanoni.)

THE THIRD POSTULATE

The third theory takes the form of a sweeping denial of Rosicrucianism, asserting that the so-called original Order never had any foundation in fact but was entirely a product of imagination. This viewpoint is best expressed by a number of questions which are still being asked by investigators of this elusive group of metaphysicians. Was the "Brotherhood of the Rose Cross" merely a mythical institution created in the fertile mind of some literary cynic for the purpose of deriding the alchemical and Hermetic sciences? Did the "House of the Holy Spirit" ever exist outside the imagination of some mediæval mystic? Was the whole Rosicrucian story a satire to ridicule the gullibility of scholastic Europe? Was the mysterious Father C.R.C. a product of the literary genius of Johann Valentin Andreæ, or another of similar mind, who, attempting to score alchemical and Hermetic philosophy, unwittingly became a great power in furthering the cause of its promulgation? That at least one of the early documents of the Rosicrucians was from the pen of Andreæ there is little doubt, but for just what purpose he compiled it still remains a matter of speculation. Did Andreæ himself receive from some unknown person, or persons, instructions to be carried out? If he wrote the Chymical Nuptials of Christian Rosencreutz when only fifteen years old, was he overshadowed in the preparation of that book?

To these vital questions no answers are forthcoming. A number of persons accepted the magnificent imposture of Andreæ as absolute truth. It is maintained by many that, as a consequence, numerous pseudo-societies sprang up, each asserting that it was the organization concerning which the Fama Fraternitatis and the Confessio Fraternitatis were written. Beyond doubt there are many spurious orders in existence today; but few of them can offer valid claims that their history dates back farther than the beginning of the nineteenth century.

The mystery associated with the Rosicrucian Fraternity has resulted in endless controversy. Many able minds, notable among them Eugenius Philalethes, Michael Maier, John Heydon, and Robert Fludd, defended the concrete existence of "The Society of Unknown Philosophers." Others equally qualified have asserted it to be of fraudulent origin and doubtful existence. Eugenius Philalethes, while dedicating books to the Order, and himself writing an extended exposition of its principles, disclaims all personal connection with it. Many others have done likewise.

Some are of the opinion that Sir Francis Bacon had a hand in the writing of the Fama and Confessio Fraternitatis, on the basis that the rhetorical style of these works is similar to that of Bacon's New Atlantis. They also contend that certain statements in the latter work point to an acquaintance with Rosicrucian symbology. The elusiveness of the Rosicrucians has caused them to be favorite subject's for literary works. Outstanding among the romances which have been woven around them is Zanoni. The author, Lord Bulwer-Lytton, is regarded by some as a member of the Order, while others assert that he applied for membership but was rejected. Pope's Rape of the Lock, &c. Comte de Gabalis by Abbé de Villars, and essays by De Quincy, Hartmann, Jennings, Mackenzie, and others, are examples of Rosicrucian literature. Although the existence of these mediæval Rosicrucians is difficult to prove, sufficient evidence is at hand to make it extremely probable that there existed in Germany, and afterwards in France, Italy, England, and other European countries, a secret society of illuminated savants who made contributions of great import to the sum of human knowledge, while maintaining absolute secrecy concerning their personalities and their organization.

THE FOURTH POSTULATE

The apparent incongruities of the Rosicrucian controversy have also been accounted for by a purely transcendental explanation. There is evidence that early writers were acquainted with such a supposition--which, however, was popularized only after it had been espoused by Theosophy. This theory asserts that the Rosicrucians actually possessed all the supernatural powers with which they were credited; that they were in reality citizens of two worlds: that, while they had physical bodies for expression on the material plane, they were also capable, through the instructions they received from the Brotherhood, of functioning in a mysterious ethereal body not subject to the limitations of time or distance. By means of this "astral form" they were able to function in the invisible realm of Nature, and in this realm, beyond reach of the profane, their temple was located.

According to this viewpoint, the true Rosicrucian Brotherhood consisted of a limited number of highly developed adepts, or initiates, those of the higher degrees being no longer subject to the laws of mortality; candidates were accepted into the Order only after long periods of probation; adepts possessed the secret of the Philosopher's Stone and knew the process of transmuting the base metals into gold, but taught that these were only allegorical terms concealing the true mystery of human regeneration through the transmutation of the "base elements" of man's lower nature into the "gold" of intellectual and spiritual realization. According to this theory, those who have sought to record the events of importance in connection with the Rosicrucian controversy have invariably failed because they approached their subject from a purely physical or materialistic angle.

These adepts were believed to have been able to teach man how to function away from his physical body at will by assisting him to remove the "rose from the cross." They taught that the spiritual nature was attached to the material form at certain points, symbolized by the "nails" of the crucifixion; but by three alchemical initiations which took place in the spiritual world, in the true Temple of the Rose Cross, they were able to "draw" these nails and permit the divine nature of man to come down from its cross. They concealed the processes by which this was accomplished under three alchemical metaphoric expressions: "The Casting of the Molten Sea," "The Making of the Rose Diamond," and "The Achieving of the Philosopher's Stone."

While the intellectualist flounders among contradictory theories, the mystic treats the problem in an entirely different manner. He believes that the true Rosicrucian Fraternity, consisting of a school of supermen (not unlike the fabled Mahatmas of India), is an institution existing not in the visible world bur in its spiritual counterpart, which he sees fit to call the "inner planes of Nature"; that the Brothers can be reached only by those who are capable of transcending the limitations of the material world. To substantiate their viewpoint, these mystics cite the following significant statement from the Confessio Fraternitatis: "A thousand times the unworthy may clamour, a thousand times may present themselves, yet God hath commanded our ears that they should hear none of them, and hath so compassed us about with His clouds that unto us, His servants, no violence can be done; wherefore now no longer are we beheld by human eyes, unless they have received strength borrowed from the eagle." In mysticism the eagle is a symbol of initiation (the spinal Spirit Fire), and by this is explained the inability of the unregenerated world to understand the Secret Order of the Rose Cross.

Those professing this theory regard the Comte de St.-Germain as their highest adept and assert that he and Christian Rosencreutz were one and the same individual. They accept fire as their universal symbol because it was the one element by means of which they could control the metals. They declared themselves the descendants of Tubal-cain and Hiram Abiff, and that the purpose of their existence was to preserve the spiritual nature of man through ages of materiality. "The Gnostic sects, the Arabs, Alchemists, Templars, Rosicrucians, and lastly the Freemasons, form the Western chain in the transmission of occult science." (See The Tarot of the Bohemians translated by A. E. Waite from the French of Papus.)

Max Heindel, the Christian mystic, described the Rosicrucian Temple as an "etheric structure" located in and around the home of a European country gentleman. He believed that this invisible building would ultimately be moved to the American continent. Mr. Heindel referred to the Rosicrucian Initiates as so advanced in the science of life that "death had forgotten them."

For More Information:
The Rosicrucians: The History, Mythology, and Rituals of an Esoteric Order

A Commentary On The Biblical Tabernacle in the Wilderness

2012-11-05T09:45:00.003-06:00

THERE is no doubt that much of the material recorded in the first five books of the Old Testament is derived from the initiatory rituals of the Egyptian Mysteries. The priests of Isis were deeply versed in occult lore, and the Israelites during their captivity in Egypt learned from them many things concerning the significance of Divinity and the manner of worshiping It. The authorship of the first five books of the Old Testament is generally attributed to Moses, but whether or not he was the actual writer of them is a matter of controversy. There is considerable evidence to substantiate the hypothesis that the Pentateuch was compiled at a much later date, from oral traditions. Concerning the authorship of these books, Thomas Inman makes a rather startling statement:

"It is true that we have books which purport to be the books of Moses; so there are, or have been, books purporting to be written by Homer, Orpheus, Enoch, Mormon, and Junius; yet the existence of the writings, and the belief that they were written by those whose name they bear, are no real evidences of the men or the genuineness of the works called by their names. It is true also that Moses is spoken of occasionally in the time of the early Kings of Jerusalem; but it is clear that these passages are written by a late hand, and have been introduced into the places where they are found, with the definite intention of making it appear that the lawgiver was known to David and Solomon." (See Ancient Faiths Embodied in Ancient Names.)

While this noted scholar undoubtedly had much evidence to support his belief, it seems that this statement is somewhat too sweeping in character. It is apparently based upon the fact that Thomas Inman doubted the historical existence of Moses. This doubt was based upon the etymological resemblance of the word Moses to an ancient name for the sun. As the result of these deductions, Inman sought to prove that the Lawgiver of Israel was merely another form of the omnipresent solar myth. While Inman demonstrated that by transposing two of the ancient letters the word Moses (משה) became Shemmah (שמה), an appellation of the celestial globe, he seems to have overlooked the fact that in the ancient Mysteries the initiates were often given names synonymous with the sun, to symbolize the fact that the redemption and regeneration of the solar power had been achieved within their own natures. It is far more probable that the man whom we know as Moses was an accredited representative of the secret schools, laboring--as many other emissaries have labored--to instruct primitive races in the mysteries of their immortal souls.

The true name of the Grand Old Man of Israel who is known to history as Moses will probably never be ascertained. The word Moses, when understood in its esoteric Egyptian sense, means one who has been admitted into the Mystery Schools of Wisdom and ~as gone forth to teach the ignorant concerning the will of the gods and the mysteries of life, as these mysteries were explained within the temples of Isis, Osiris, and Serapis. There is much controversy concerning the nationality of Moses. Some assert that he was a Jew, adopted and educated by the ruling house of Egypt; others hold the opinion that he was a full-blooded Egyptian. A few even believe him to be identical with the immortal Hermes, for both these illustrious founders of religious systems received tablets from heaven supposedly written by the finger of God. The stories told concerning Moses, his discovery in the ark of bulrushes by Pharaoh's daughter, his adoption into the royal family of Egypt, and his later revolt against Egyptian autocracy coincide exactly with certain ceremonies through which the candidates of the Egyptian Mysteries passed in their ritualistic wanderings in search of truth and understanding. The analogy can also be traced in the movements of the heavenly bodies.

It is not strange that the erudite Moses, initiated in Egypt, should teach the Jews a philosophy containing the more important principles of Egyptian esotericism. The religions of Egypt at the time of the Israelitic captivity were far older than even the Egyptians themselves realized. Histories were difficult to compile in those days, and the Egyptians were satisfied to trace their race back to a mythological period when the gods themselves walked the earth and with their own power established the Double Empire of the Nile. The Egyptians did not dream that these divine progenitors were the Atlanteans, who, forced to abandon their seven islands because of volcanic cataclysms, had immigrated into Egypt--then an Atlantean colony--where they established a great philosophic and literary center of civilization which was later to influence profoundly the religions and science of unnumbered races and peoples. Today Egypt is forgotten, but things Egyptian will always be remembered and revered. Egypt is dead--yet it lives immortal in its philosophy, and architectonics.

As Odin founded his Mysteries in Scandinavia, and Quexalcoatl in Mexico, so Moses, laboring with the then nomadic people of Israel's twelve tribes, established in the midst of them his secret and symbolic school, which has came to be known as The Tabernacle Mysteries. The Tabernacle of: the Jews was merely a temple patterned after the temples of Egypt, and transportable to meet the needs of that roving disposition which the Israelites were famous. Every part of the Tabernacle and the enclosure which surrounded it was symbolic of some great natural or philosophic truth. To the ignorant it was but a place to which to bring offerings and in which to make sacrifice; to the wise it was a temple of learning, sacred to the Universal Spirit of Wisdom.

While the greatest, minds of the Jewish and Christian worlds have realized that the Bible is a book of allegories, few seem to have taken the trouble to investigate its symbols and parables. When Moses instituted his Mysteries, he is said to have given to a chosen few initiates certain oral teachings which could never be written but were to be preserved from one generation to the next by word-of-mouth transmission. Those instructions were in the form of philosophical keys, by means of which the allegories were made to reveal their hidden significance. These mystic keys to their sacred writings were called by the Jews the Qabbalah (Cabala, Kaballah).

The modern world seems to have forgotten the existence of those unwritten teachings which explained satisfactorily the apparent contradictions of the written Scriptures, nor does it remember that the pagans appointed their two-faced Janus as custodian of the key to the Temple of Wisdom. Janus has been metamorphosed into St. Peter, so often symbolized as holding in his hand the key to the gate of heaven. The gold and silver keys of "God's Vicar on Earth," the Pope, symbolizes this "secret doctrine" which, when properly understood, unlocks the treasure chest of the Christian and Jewish Qabbalah.

The temples of Egyptian mysticism (from which the Tabernacle was copied) were--according to their own priests--miniature representations of the universe. The solar system was always regarded as a great temple of initiation, which candidates entered through the gates of birth; after threading the tortuous passageways of earthly existence, they finally approached the veil of the Great Mystery--Death--through whose gate they vanished back into the invisible world. Socrates subtly reminded his disciples that Death was, in reality, the great initiation, for his last words were:

"Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt?" (As the rooster was sacred to the gods and the sacrifice of this bird accompanied a candidate's introduction into the Mysteries, Socrates implied that he was about to take his great initiation.)

Life is the great mystery, and only those who pass successfully through its tests and trials, interpreting them aright and extracting the essence of experience therefrom, achieve true understanding. Thus, the temples were built in the form of the world and their rituals were based upon life and its multitudinous problems. Nor only was the Tabernacle itself patterned according to Egyptian mysticism; its utensils were also of ancient and accepted form. The Ark of the Covenant itself was an adaptation of the Egyptian Ark, even to the kneeling figures upon its lid. Bas-reliefs on the Temple of Philæ show Egyptian priests carrying their Ark--which closely resembled the Ark of the Jews--upon their shoulders by means of staves like those described in Exodus.

The following description of the Tabernacle and its priests is based upon the account of its construction and ceremonies recorded by Josephus in the Third Book of his Antiquities of the Jews. The Bible references are from a "Breeches" Bible (famous for its rendering of the seventh verse of the third chapter of Genesis), printed in London in 1599, and the quotations are reproduced in their original spelling and punctuation.

THE BUILDING OF THE TABERNACLE

Moses, speaking for Jehovah, the God of Israel, appointed two architects to superintend the building of the Tabernacle. They were Besaleel, the son of Uri, of the tribe of Judah, and Aholiab, the son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan. Their popularity was so great that they were also the unanimous choice of the people. When Jacob upon his deathbed blessed his sons (see Genesis xlix), he assigned to each a symbol. The symbol of Judah was a lion; that of Dan a serpent or a bird (possibly an eagle). The lion and the eagle are two of the four beasts of the Cherubim (the fixed signs of the zodiac); and the Rosicrucian alchemists maintained that the mysterious Stone of the Wise (the Soul) was compounded with the aid of the Blood of the Red Lion and the Gluten of the White Eagle. It seems probable that there is a hidden mystic relationship between fire (the Red Lion), water (the White Eagle), as they were used in occult chemistry, and the representatives of these two tribes whose symbols were identical with these alchemical elements.

As the Tabernacle was the dwelling place of God among men, likewise the soul body in man is the dwelling place of his divine nature, round which gathers a twelvefold material constitution in the same manner that the tribes of Israel camped about the enclosure sacred to Jehovah. The idea that the Tabernacle was really symbolic of an invisible spiritual truth outside the comprehension of the Israelites is substantiated by a statement made in the eighth chapter of Hebrews: "Who serve unto the paterne and shadowe of heavenly things, as Moses was warned by God, when he was about to finish the Tabernacle." Here we find the material physical place of worship called a "shadow" or symbol of a spiritual institution, invisible but omnipotent.

The specifications of the Tabernacle are described in the book of Exodus, twenty-fifth chapter: "Then the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speake unto the children of Israel that they receive an offering for me: of every man, whose heart giveth it freely, yee shall take the offering for me. And this is the offering which ye shall take of them, gold and silver, and brass, and blue silke, and purple, and scarlet, and fine linnen and goats haire. And rammes skinnes coloured red, and the skinnes of badgers, and the wood Shittim, oyle for the light, spices for anoynting oyle, and for the perfume of sweet favour, onix stones, and stories to be set in the Ephod, and in the breastplate. Also they shall make me a Sanctuary, that I may dwell among them. According to all that I shew thee, even so shall ye make the forme of the Tabernacle, and the fashion of all the instruments thereof."

The court of the Tabernacle was an enclosed area, fifty cubits wide and one hundred cubits long, circumscribed by a wall of linen curtains hung from brazen pillars five cubits apart. (The cubit is an ancient standard of measurement, its length being equal to the distance between the elbow and the extreme end of the index finger, approximately eighteen inches.) There were twenty of these pillars on each of the longer sides and ten on the shorter. Each pillar had a base of brass and a capital of silver. The Tabernacle was always laid out with the long sides facing north and south and the short sides facing east and west, with the entrance to the east, thus showing the influence of primitive sun worship.

The outer court served the principal purpose of isolating the tent of the Tabernacle proper, which stood in the midst of the enclosure. At the entrance to the courtyard, which was in the eastern face of the rectangle, stood the Altar of Burnt Offerings, made of brass plates over wood and ornamented with the horns of bulls and rams. Farther in, but on a line with this altar, stood the Laver of Purification, a great vessel containing water for priestly ablutions. The Laver was twofold in its construction, the upper part being a large bowl, probably covered, which served as a source of supply for a lower basin in which the priests bathed themselves before participating in the various ceremonials. It is supposed that this Laver was encrusted with the metal mirrors of the women of the twelve tribes of Israel.

The dimensions of the Tabernacle proper were as follows:

"Its length, when it was set up, was thirty cubits, and its breadth was ten cubits. The one of its walls was on the south, and the other was exposed to the north, and on the back part of it remained the west. It was necessary that its height should be equal to its breadth (ten cubits)." (Josephus.)

It is the custom of bibliologists to divide the interior of the Tabernacle into two rooms: one room ten cubits wide, ten cubits high, and twenty cubits long, which was called the Holy Place and contained three special articles of furniture, namely, the Seven-Branched Candlestick, the Table of the Shewbread, and the Altar of Burnt Incense; the other room ten cubits wide, ten cubits high, and ten cubits long, which was called the Holy of Holies and contained but one article of furniture--the Ark of the Covenant. The two rooms were separated from each other by an ornamental veil upon which were embroidered many kinds of flowers, but no animal or human figures.

Josephus hints that there was a third compartment which was formed by subdividing the Holy Place, at least hypothetically, into two chambers. The Jewish historian is not very explicit in his description of this third room, and the majority of writers seem to have entirely overlooked and neglected this point, although Josephus emphatically states that Moses himself divided the inner tent into three sections. The veil separating the Holy Place from the Holy of Holies was hung across four pillars, which probably indicated in a subtle way the four elements, while at the entrance to the tent proper the Jews placed seven pillars, referring to the seven senses and the seven vowels of the Sacred Name. That later only five pillars are mentioned may be accounted for by the fact that at the present time man has only five developed senses and five active vowels. The early Jewish writer of The Baraitha treats of the curtains as follows:

"There were provided ten curtains of blue, of purple, and scarlet, and fine-twined linen. As is said, 'Moreover thou shall make the tabernacle with ten curtains of fine-twined linen, and blue, and purple, and scarlet.' * * * There were provided eleven curtains of goats' hair, and the length of every one of them was thirty cubits, * * *. Rabbi Judah said, 'There were two covers-the lower one of rams' skins dyed red, and the upper one of badgers' skins. '"

Calmet is of the opinion that the Hebrew word translated "badger" really means "dark purple" and therefore did not refer to any particular animal, but probably to a heavily woven waterproof fabric of dark and inconspicuous color. During the time of Israel's wanderings through the wilderness, it is supposed that a pillar of fire hovered over the Tabernacle at night, while a column of smoke traveled with it by day. This cloud was called by the Jews the Shechinah and was symbolic of the presence of the Lord. In one of the early Jewish books rejected at the time of the compiling of the Talmud the following description of the Shechinah appears:

"Then a cloud covered the tent of the congregation, and the glory of the Lord filled the Tabernacle. And that was one of the clouds of glory, which served the Israelites in the wilderness forty years. One on the right hand, and one on the left, and one before them, and one behind them. And one over them, and a cloud dwelling in their midst (and the cloud, the Shechinah which was in the tent), and the pillar of cloud which moved before them, making low before them the high places, and making high before them the low places, and killing serpents and scorpions, and burning thorns and briars, and guiding them in the straight way." (From The Baraitha, the Book of the Tabernacle.)

THE FURNISHINGS OF THE TABERNACLE

There is no doubt that the Tabernacle, its furnishings and ceremonials, when considered esoterically, are analogous to the structure, organs, and functions of the human body. At the entrance to the outer court of the Tabernacle stood the Altar of Burnt Offerings, five cubits long and five cubits wide but only three cubits high. Its upper surface was a brazen grill upon which the sacrifice was placed, while beneath was a space for the fire. This altar signified that a candidate, when first entering the precincts of sanctuary, must offer upon the brazen altar not a poor unoffending bull or ram but its correspondence within his own nature. The bull, being symbolic of earthiness, represented his own gross constitution which must be burned up by the fire of his Divinity. (The sacrificing of beasts, and in some cases human beings, upon the altars of the pagans was the result of their ignorance concerning the fundamental principle underlying sacrifice. They did not realize that their offerings must come from within their own natures in order to be acceptable.)

Farther westward, in line with the Brazen Altar, was the Laver of Purification already described. It signified to the priest that he should cleanse not only his body but also his soul from all stains of impurity, for none who is not clean in both body and mind can enter into the presence of Divinity and live. Beyond the Laver of Purification was the entrance to the Tabernacle proper, facing the east, so that the first rays of the rising sun might enter and light the chamber. Between the encrusted pillars could be seen the Holy Place, a mysterious chamber, its walls hung with magnificent drapes embroidered with the faces of Cherubs.

Against the wall on the southern side of the Holy Place stood the great Candlestick, or lampstand, of cast gold, which was believed to weigh about a hundred pounds. From its central shaft branched out six arms, each ending in a cup-shaped depression in which stood an oil lamp. There were seven lamps, three on the arms at each side and one on the central stem. The Candlestick was ornamented with seventy-two almonds, knops, and flowers. Josephus says seventy, but wherever this round number is used by the Hebrews it really means seventy-two. Opposite the Candlestick, against the northern wall, was a table bearing twelve loaves of Shewbread in two stacks of six loaves each. (Calmet is of the opinion that the bread was not stacked up but spread out on the table in two rows, each containing six loaves.) On this table also stood two lighted incensories, which were placed upon the tops of the stacks of Shewbread so that the smoke of the incense might be an acceptable aroma to the Lord, bearing with it in its ascent the soul of the Shewbread.

In the center of the room, almost against the partition leading into the Holy of Holies, stood the Altar of Burnt Incense, made of wood overlaid with golden plates. Its width and length were each a cubit and its height was two cubits. This altar was symbolic of the human larynx, from which the words of man's mouth ascend as an acceptable offering unto the Lord, for the larynx occupies the position in the constitution of man between the Holy Place, which is the trunk of his body, and the Holy of Holies, which is the head with its contents.

Into the Holy of Holies none might pass save the High Priest, and he only at certain prescribed times, The room contained no furnishings save the Ark of the Covenant, which stood against the western wall, opposite the entrance. In Exodus the dimensions of the Ark are given as two and a half cubits for its length, one cubit and a half its breadth and one cubit and a half its height. It was made of shittim-wood, gold plated within and without, and contained the sacred tablets of the Law delivered to Moses upon Sinai. The lid of the Ark was in the form of a golden plate upon which knelt two mysterious creatures called Cherubim, facing each other, with wings arched overhead. It was upon this mercy seat between the wings of the celestials that the Lord of Israel descended when He desired to communicate with His High Priest.

The furnishings of the Tabernacle were made conveniently portable. Each altar and implement of any size was supplied with staves which could be put: through rings; by this means it could be picked up and carried by four or more bearers. The staves were never removed from the Ark of the Covenant until it was finally placed in the Holy of Holies of the Everlasting House, King Solomon's Temple.

There is no doubt that the Jews in early times realized, at least in part, that their Tabernacle was a symbolic edifice. Josephus realized this and while he has been severely criticized because he interpreted the Tabernacle symbolism according to Egyptian and Grecian paganism, his description of the secret meanings of its drapes and furnishings is well worthy of consideration. He says:

"When Moses distinguished the tabernacle into three parts, and allowed two of them to the priests, as a place accessible and common, he denoted the land and the sea, these being of general access to all; but he set apart the third division for God, because heaven is inaccessible to men. And when he ordered twelve loaves to be set on a table, he denoted the year, as distinguished into so many months. By branching out the candlestick into seventy parts, he secretly intimated the Decani, or seventy divisions of the planets; and as to the seven lamps upon the candlesticks, they referred to the course of the planets, of which that is the number. The veils too, which were composed of four things, they declared the four elements; for the plain linen was proper to signify the earth, because the flax grows out of the earth; the purple signified the sea, because that color is dyed by the blood of a sea shell-fish; the blue is fit to signify the air; and the scarlet will naturally be an indication of fire.

"Now the vestment of the high-priest being made of linen, signified the earth; the blue denoted the sky, being like lightning in its pomegranates, and in the noise of the bells resembling thunder. And for the Ephod, it showed that God had made the universe of four (elements); and as for the gold interwoven, * * * it related to the splendor by which all things are enlightened. He also appointed the breastplate to be placed in the middle of the Ephod, to resemble the earth, for that has the very middle place of the world. And the girdle which encompassed the high-priest round signified the ocean, for that goes round about and includes the universe. Each of the sardonyxes declares to us the sun and the moon, those, I mean, that were in the nature of buttons on the high-priest's shoulders. And for the twelve stones, whether we understand by them the months, or whether we understand the like number of the signs of that circle which the Greeks call the Zodiac, we shall not be mistaken in their meaning. And for the mitre, which was of a blue colour, it seems to me to mean heaven; for how otherwise could the name of God be inscribed upon it? That it was also illustrated with a crown, and that of gold also, is because of that splendour with which God is pleased."

It is also symbolically significant that the Tabernacle was built in seven months and dedicated to God at the time of the new moon.

The metals used in the building of the Tabernacle were all emblematic. Gold represents spirituality, and the golden plates laid over the shittim-wood were emblems of the spiritual nature which glorifies the human nature symbolized by the wood. Mystics have taught that man's physical body is surrounded by a series of invisible bodies of diverse colors and great splendor. In the majority of people the spiritual nature is concealed and imprisoned in the material nature, but in a few this internal constitution has been objectified and the spiritual nature is outside, so that it surrounds man's personality with a great radiance.

Silver, used as the capitals for the pillars, has its reference to the moon, which was sacred to the Jews and the Egyptians alike. The priests held secret ritualistic ceremonies at the time of the new and the full moon, both of which periods were sacred to Jehovah. Silver, so the ancients taught, was gold with its sun-ray turned inward instead of objectified. While gold symbolized the spiritual soul, silver represented the purified and regenerated human nature of man.

The brass used in the outer altars was a composite substance consisting of an alloy of precious and base metals. Thus, it represented the constitution of the average individual, who is a combination of both the higher and the lower elements.

The three divisions of the Tabernacle should have a special interest to Freemasons, for they represent the three degrees of the Blue Lodge, while the three orders of priests who served the Tabernacle are preserved to modern Masonry as the Entered Apprentice, the Fellow Craftsman, and the Master Mason. The Hawaiian Islanders built a Tabernacle not unlike that of the Jews, except that their rooms were one above another and not one behind another, as in the case of the Tabernacle of the Israelites. The three rooms are also the three important chambers of the Great Pyramid of Gizeh.

THE ROBES OF GLORY

As explained in the quotation from Josephus, the robes and adornments of the Jewish priests had a secret significance, and even to this day there is a religious cipher language concealed in the colors, forms, and uses of sacred garments, not only among the Christian and Jewish priests but also among pagan religions. The vestments of the Tabernacle priests were called Cahanææ; those of the High Priest were termed Cahanææ Rabbæ. Over the Machanese, an undergarment resembling short trousers, they wore the Chethone, a finely woven linen robe, which reached to the ground and had long sleeves tied to the arms of the wearer. A brightly embroidered sash, twisted several times around the waist (a little higher than is customary), with one end pendent in front, and a closely fitting linen cap, designated Masnaemphthes, completed the costume of the ordinary priest.

The vestments of the High Priest were the same as those of the lesser degrees, except that certain garments and adornments were added. Over the specially woven white linen robe the High Priest wore a seamless and sleeveless habit, sky-blue in color and reaching nearly to his feet. This was called the Meeir and was ornamented with a fringe of alternated golden bells and pomegranates. In Ecclesiasticus (one of the books rejected from the modern Bible), these bells and their purpose are described in the following words: "And he compassed him with pomegranates, and with many golden bells round about, that as he went, there might be a sound and a noise that might be heard in the temple, for a memorial to the children of his people." The Meeir was also bound in with a variegated girdle finely embroidered and with gold wire inserted through the embroidery.

The Ephod, a short vestment described by Josephus as resembling a coat or jacket, was worn over the upper part of the Meeir. The threads of which the Ephod was woven were of many colors, probably red, blue, purple, and white, like the curtains and coverings of the Tabernacle. Fine gold wires were also woven into the fabric. The Ephod was fastened at each shoulder with a large onyx in the form of a button, and the names of the twelve sons of Jacob were engraven upon these two stones, six on each. These onyx buttons were supposed to have oracular powers, and when the High Priest asked certain questions, they emitted a celestial radiance. When the onyx on the right shoulder was illuminated, it signified that Jehovah answered the question of the High Priest: in the affirmative, and when the one on the left gleamed, it indicated a negative answer to the query.

In the middle of the front surface of the Ephod was a space to accommodate the Essen, or Breastplate of Righteousness and Prophecy, which, as its name signifies, was also an oracle of great power. This pectoral was roughly square in shape and consisted of a frame of embroidery into which were set twelve stones, each held in a socket of gold. Because of the great weight of its stones, each of which was of considerable size and immense value, the breastplate was held in position by special golden chains and ribbons. The twelve stones of the breastplate, like the onyx stones at the shoulders of the Ephod, had the mysterious power of lighting up with Divine glory and so serving as oracles. Concerning the strange power of these flashing symbols of Israel's twelve tribes, Josephus writes:

"Yet will I mention what is still more wonderful than this: For God declared beforehand, by those twelve stones which the High Priest bare upon his breast and which were inserted into his breastplate, when they should be victorious in battle; for so great a splendor shone forth from them before the army began to march, that all the people were sensible of God's being present for their assistance. Whence it came to pass that those Greeks, who had a veneration for our laws, because they could not possibly contradict this, called the breastplate, 'the Oracle'."

The writer then adds that the stones ceased to light up and gleam some two hundred years before he wrote his history, because the Jews had broken the laws of Jehovah and the God of Israel was no longer pleased with His chosen people.

The Jews learned astronomy from the Egyptians, and it is not unlikely that the twelve jewels of the breastplate were symbolic of the twelve constellations of the zodiac. These twelve celestial hierarchies were looked upon as jewels adorning the breastplate of the Universal Man, the Macroprosophus, who is referred to in the Zohar as The Ancient of Days. The number twelve frequently occurs among ancient peoples, who in nearly every case had a pantheon consisting of twelve demigods and goddesses presided over by The Invincible One, who was Himself subject to the Incomprehensible All-Father. This use of the number twelve is especially noted in the Jewish and Christian writings. The twelve prophets, the twelve patriarchs, the twelve tribes, and the twelve Apostles--each group has a certain occult significance, for each refers to the Divine Duodecimo, or Twelvefold Deity, whose emanations are manifested in the tangible created Universe through twelve individualized channels. The secret doctrine also caught the priests that the jewels represented centers of life within their own constitutions, which when unfolded according to the esoteric instructions of the Temple, were capable of absorbing into themselves and radiating forth again the Divine light of the Deity. (The East Indian lotus blossoms have a similar meaning.) The Rabbis have taught that each twisted linen thread used in weaving the Tabernacle curtains and ornamentations consisted of twenty-four separate strands, reminding the discerning that the experience, gained during the twenty-four hours of the day (symbolized in Masonry by the twenty-four-inch rule) becomes the threads from which are woven the Garments of Glory.

THE URIM AND THUMMIM

In the reverse side of the Essen, or breastplate, was a pocket containing mysterious objects--the Urim and Thummim. Aside from the fact that they were used in divination, little is now known about these objects. Some writers contend that they were small stones (resembling the fetishes still revered by certain aboriginal peoples) which the Israelites had brought with them out of Egypt because of their belief that they possessed divine power. Others believe that the Urim and Thummim were in the form of dice, used for deciding events by being cast upon the ground. A few have maintained that they were merely sacred names, written on plates of gold and carried as talismans.

"According to some, the Urim and the Thummim signify 'lights and perfections,' or 'light and truth' which last present a striking analogy to the. two figures of Re (Ra) and Themi in the breastplate worn by the Egyptians." (Gardner's The Faiths of the World.)

Not the least remarkable of the vestments of the High Priest was his bonnet, or headdress. Over the plain white cap of the ordinary priest this dignitary wore an outer cloth of blue and a crown of gold, the crown consisting of three bands, one above the other like the triple miter of the Persian Magi. This crown symbolized that the High Priest was ruler not only over the three worlds which the ancients had differentiated (heaven, earth, and hell), but also over the threefold divisions of man and the universe--the spiritual, intellectual, and material worlds. These divisions were also symbolized by the three apartments of the Tabernacle itself.

At the peak of the headdress was a tiny cup of gold, made in the form of a flower. This signified that the nature of the priest was receptive and that he had a vessel in his own soul which, cuplike, was capable of catching the eternal waters of life pouring upon him from the heavens above. This flower over the crown of his head is similar in its esoteric meaning to the rose growing out of a skull, so famous in Templar symbology. The ancients believed that the spiritual nature escaping from the body passed upward through the crown of the head; therefore, the flowerlike calyx, or cup, symbolized also the spiritual consciousness. On the front of the golden crown were inscribed in Hebrew, Holiness unto the Lord.

Though robes and ornaments augmented the respect and veneration of the Israelites for their High Priest, such trappings meant nothing to Jehovah. Therefore, before entering the Holy of Holies, the High Priest removed his earthly finery and entered into the presence of the Lord God of Israel unclothed. There he could be robed only in his own virtues, and his spirituality must adorn him as a garment.

There is a legend to the effect that any who chanced to enter the Holy of Holies unclean were destroyed by a bolt of Divine fire from the Mercy Seat. If the High Priest had but one selfish thought, he would be struck dead. As no man knows when an unworthy thought may flash through his mind, precautions had to be taken in case the High Priest should be struck dead while in the presence of Jehovah. The other priests could not enter the sanctuary therefore, when their leader was about to go in and receive the commands of the Lord, they tied a chain around one of his feet so that if he were struck down while behind the veil they could drag the body out.

For More Information:
The Ark of the Covenant - Investigating the Ten Leading Claims: Including Pharaoh Shishak's Siege of Solomon's Temple, Ethiopia's Ark, the Garden Tomb ... & Knights Templar, Parker's 1911 Dig, the L

Martial Law and Financial Collapse! Welcome To The New America.

2012-10-30T09:51:00.003-05:00

The U.S. government has been scheming on how to provide for continuity of government for many decades now.

According to Peter Santilli, an informant who is an ex-marine and worked on portions of the contingency plans known as Rex 84, civil unrest will come after a financial collapse.

The Readiness Exercise 1984, a.k.a. Rex 84, outlines continuity of government wherein the U.S. Constitution is suspended, martial law is declared and the U.S. military command take over state and local governments in order to ensure stabilization of our nation at any cost. Any American who is deemed a “national security threat” would be detained in an interment or FEMA camp.

The author of Rex 84 was Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, National Security Council (NSC) White House aids and NSC liaison to FEMA.

Rex 84 is the plan; the triggers are a series of executive orders. It is the continuity of government under specific contingency strategies that are laid out in various operations guide manuals.

Operation Garden Plot is a subprogram of Rex 84.

Twice before, Rex 84 was implemented - during the LA riots and on 9/11. In these scenarios, only small portions of the entire set of documents were used. Within the series of contingency plans, implementation of them depends on the severity of the situation.

Some of the plans include internment camps where all or portions of the active or inactive military bases would be transformed into work camps where all considered to be dissonant would be held. The NORTHCOM army manuals clearly state that NATO forces will be used in every phase of the operation.

According to Santilli, procedures to move conventional, chemical and nuclear bombs across the nation without detection have been facilitated without notice by the U.S. military.

Back in 1986, during his military service where he was involved with weapons transportation, Santilli describes how an unmarked refrigerated trailer driven by a civilian driver was used to transport chemical or conventional weapons to various strategic bases both above and underground.

Santilli was a specialist in aviation deployed weapons, which made him the perfect candidate to the assignment of weapons transportation.

The refrigerated truck, allocated by the administration department on base, was directed to the commissary, where the unsuspecting driver believed that he was transporting food. The weapon was placed at the head of the trailer, and covered up with either food stores (like cans of soup) or body bags. In the event that the truck is stopped en route, the weapon would be well hidden and go undetected by inspectors on the public highways.

A U.S. Marine Corp bill of lading was the paperwork necessary to move the commercial refrigerated truck through weigh stations on public highways without any question. Santilli remembers that there was not one incident where he had to enact any security measures to ensure the delivery was made.

Santilli, who was assigned to ride in the cab of the truck with the driver, says that his orders were to make sure the truck arrived at its destination. He was informed by his superiors that if there were problems concerning potential civil unrest, he was to radio into his superiors for aid by either air or ground support.

Should the situation warrant serious attention; crowd control methods would be implemented.

One possible scenario was the use of cluster bomb units (CBUs) that will emit upon detonation, a “sleep and kill” chemical weapon that will not disturb infrastructure, but is lethal to all living things within the effected zone. Santilli describes these particular 3 unit CBUs as shaped like water-heaters with a coned top and plunger-like device.

Once deployed in the air, a parachute assists these CBUs to the targeted area. And when detonated, a deadly chemical gas will kill every human and animal in the specified cordoned area.

This is just one example, says Santilli, as to the lengths the U.S. armed forces are trained to make sure continuity of government is preserved.

Santilli explained that the use of foreign troops on U.S. soil, as described in Rex 84 and other subsequent manuals, would have a two-fold purpose.
Firstly, to provide extra security in designated areas, cities or highways; and secondly, as scapegoats were violent action used against American citizens should the U.S. military be directed to attack civilians.

The refrigerated truck, carrying the chemical or conventional weapon with Santilli riding shotgun travelled to underground bases like the one at Yuma Proving Ground which is a ammunitions testing range for pilots. Nestled underneath the ground is a secret military base.

Santilli explains that his knowledge of Rex 84 provides that within the document, one of the scenarios that would cause a complete suspension of the U.S. Constitution, Bill of Rights and implement martial law would be a financial collapse.

He says once the collapse occurs, the U.S. government and defense agencies estimate they have a 72 hour window to activate all procedures to ensure continuity of government as well as a lockdown of the general population as civilian unrest, riots and outbreaks of violence are anticipated.

A source in the Deutsche Bank claims that in 2008 our financial and monetary system completely collapsed and since that time the banking cartels have been “propping up the system” to make it appear as if everything was fine. In reality our stock market and monetary systems are fake; meaning that there is nothing holding them in place except the illusion that they have stabilized since the Stock Market Crash nearly 5 years ago.

Since this time, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in conjunction with FEMA and other federal agencies have been quickly working to set in place their directives of control under a silent martial law.

The Deutsche Bank informant says that the cause for the bailout of the banks was a large sum of cash needed quickly to repay China who had purchased large quantities of mortgage-backed securities that went belly-up when the global scam was realized.

When China realized that they had been duped into buying worthless securitized loans which would never be repaid, they demanded the actual property instead. The Chinese were prepared to send their “people” to American shores to seize property as allocated to them through the securitized loan contracts.

To stave this off, the American taxpayers were coerced by former President Bush and former U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson.

During that incident, the U.S. Senate was told emphatically that they had to approve a $700 billion bailout (below video) or else martial law would be implemented immediately.

That money was funneled through the Federal Reserve Bank and wired to China, as well as other countries that were demanding repayment for the fraudulent securitizations.

To further avert financial catastrophe, as well as more debt or property seizure threats by the Chinese, the Euro was imploded there by plunging most of the European countries into an insurmountable free-fall for which they were never intended to recover.

All the money that those banks claimed they needed to avert collapse was also sent to the Chinese to add to the trillions of dollars lost during the burst of the housing bubble on the global market.

The only saving grace has been the U.S. dollar being the global reserve currency.

However, now this prop is showing signs of wear as foreign nations like China, Russia, India and Iran are dealing in gold as currency and purchasing gold on the market at an exponential rate.

In 1970, Henry Kissinger made a deal with the Saudi Arabian government that American debt would be purchased in exchange for cheap oil. Since then Iran has taken control over the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) by their use of gold as currency which has threatened the direct value of the U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency.

This scenario with Iran coupled with the massive leaps forward in U.S. military presence on American streets and the emergence of FEMA camps across the nation pose an obvious turn of events and explains exactly why we are witnessing the silent implementation of martial law.

The war with Iran has to do with gold, its use as currency and its exposure of the central banking cartel’s lack of gold which defines a fiat currency’s worth. And right now, the U.S. dollar is absolutely worthless.

The Deutsche Bank informant says that the financial collapse that happened in 2008 will be realized here in America very soon. Once that happens, there must be full implementation of marital law to control the potential riots and control over citizens that will be desperate to feed their families.

The attacks of recent on the 2nd Amendment play a significant role in attempting “amicably” to remove the possibility of civilian retaliation against the U.S. military’s presence throughout the nation.

However, if they cannot remove the guns from our hands in time, they will continue on with the guidelines set out in Rex 84 with directives to kill any dissenters that refuse to obey.

Source Material: by Susanne Posel

The Plot Against America

Before The Big Bang?

2012-10-30T09:31:00.002-05:00

What was God doing before he created the world? The philosopher and writer (and later saint) Augustine posed the question in his ’’Confessions’’ in the fourth century, and then came up with a strikingly modern answer: before God created the world there was no time and thus no ’’before.’’ To paraphrase Gertrude Stein, there was no ’’then’’ then.

Until recently no one could attend a lecture on astronomy and ask the modern version of Augustine’s question -- what happened before the Big Bang? -- without receiving the same frustrating answer, courtesy of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity, which describes how matter and energy bend space and time.

If we imagine the universe shrinking backward, like a film in reverse, the density of matter and energy rises toward infinity as we approach the moment of origin. Smoke pours from the computer, and space and time themselves dissolve into a quantum ’’foam.’’

’’Our rulers and our clocks break,’’ explained Dr. Andrei Linde, a cosmologist at Stanford University. ’’To ask what is before this moment is a self-contradiction.’’
But lately, emboldened by progress in new theories that seek to unite Einstein’s lordly realm with the unruly quantum rules that govern subatomic physics -- so-called quantum gravity -- Dr. Linde and his colleagues have begun to edge their speculations closer and closer to the ultimate moment and, in some cases, beyond it.

Some theorists suggest that the Big Bang was not so much a birth as a transition, a ’’quantum leap’’ from some formless era of imaginary time, or from nothing at all. Still others are exploring models in which cosmic history begins with a collision with a universe from another dimension.

All this theorizing has received a further boost of sorts from recent reports of ripples in a diffuse radio glow in the sky, thought to be the remains of the Big Bang fireball itself. These ripples are consistent with a popular theory, known as inflation, that the universe briefly speeded its expansion under the influence of a violent antigravitational force, when it was only a fraction of a fraction of a nanosecond old. Those ripples thus provide a useful check on theorists’ imaginations. Any theory of cosmic origins that does not explain this phenomenon, cosmologists agree, stands little chance of being right.

Fortunately or unfortunately, that still leaves room for a lot of possibilities.

’’If inflation is the dynamite behind the Big Bang, we’re still looking for the match,’’ said Dr. Michael Turner, a cosmologist at the University of Chicago. The only thing that all the experts agree on is that no idea works -- yet. Dr. Turner likened cosmologists to jazz musicians collecting themes that sound good for a work in progress: ’’You hear something and you say, oh yeah, we want that in the final piece.’’

One answer to the question of what happened before the Big Bang is that it does not matter because it does not affect the state of our universe today. According to a theory known as eternal inflation, put forward by Dr. Linde in 1986, what we know as the Big Bang was only one out of many in a chain reaction of big bangs by which the universe endlessly reproduces and reinvents itself.

’’Any particular part of the universe may die, and probably will die,’’ Dr. Linde said, ’’but the universe as a whole is immortal.’’

Dr. Linde’s theory is a modification of the inflation theory that was proposed in 1980 by Dr. Alan Guth, a physicist. He considered what would happen if, as the universe was cooling during its first violently hot moments, an energy field known as the Higgs field, which interacts with particles to give them their masses, was somehow, briefly, unable to release its energy.

Space, he concluded, would be suffused with a sort of latent energy that would violently push the universe apart. In an eyeblink the universe would double some 60 times over, until the Higgs field released its energy and filled the outrushing universe with hot particles. Cosmic history would then ensue.

Cosmologists like inflation because such a huge outrush would have smoothed any gross irregularities from the primordial cosmos, leaving it homogeneous and geometrically flat. Moreover, it allows the whole cosmos to grow from next to nothing, which caused Dr. Guth to dub the universe ’’the ultimate free lunch.’’

Subsequent calculations ruled out the Higgs field as the inflating agent, but there are other inflation candidates that would have the same effect. More important, from the pre-Big-Bang perspective, Dr. Linde concluded, one inflationary bubble would sprout another, which in turn would sprout even more. In effect each bubble would be a new big bang, a new universe with different characteristics and perhaps even different dimensions. Our universe would merely be one of them.
’’If it starts, this process can keep happening forever,’’ Dr. Linde explained. ’’It can happen now, in some part of the universe.’’

The greater universe envisioned by eternal inflation is so unimaginably large, chaotic and diverse that the question of a beginning to the whole shebang becomes almost irrelevant. For cosmologists like Dr. Guth and Dr. Linde, that is in fact the theory’s lure.

’’Chaotic inflation allows us to explain our world without making such assumptions as the simultaneous creation of the whole universe from nothing,’’ Dr. Linde said in an e-mail message.

Questions for Eternity
Trying to Imagine The Nothingness

Nevertheless, most cosmologists, including Dr. Guth and Dr. Linde, agree that the universe ultimately must come from somewhere, and that nothing is the leading candidate.

As a result, another tune that cosmologists like to hum is quantum theory. According to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, one of the pillars of this paradoxical world, empty space can never be considered really empty; subatomic particles can flit in and out of existence on energy borrowed from energy fields. Crazy as it sounds, the effects of these quantum fluctuations have been observed in atoms, and similar fluctuations during the inflation are thought to have produced the seeds around which today’s galaxies were formed.

Could the whole universe likewise be the result of a quantum fluctuation in some sort of primordial or eternal nothingness? Perhaps, as Dr. Turner put it, ’’Nothing is unstable.’’

The philosophical problems that plague ordinary quantum mechanics are amplified in so-called quantum cosmology. For example, as Dr. Linde points out, there is a chicken-and-egg problem. Which came first: the universe, or the law governing it? Or, as he asks, ’’If there was no law, how did the universe appear?’’

One of the earliest attempts to imagine the nothingness that is the source of everything came in 1965 when Dr. John Wheeler and Dr. Bryce DeWitt, now at the University of Texas, wrote down an equation that combined general relativity and quantum theory. Physicists have been arguing about it ever since.

The Wheeler-DeWitt equation seems to live in what physicists have dubbed ’’superspace,’’ a sort of mathematical ensemble of all possible universes, ones that live only five minutes before collapsing into black holes and ones full of red stars that live forever, ones full of life and ones that are empty deserts, ones in which the constants of nature and perhaps even the number of dimensions are different from our own.

In ordinary quantum mechanics, an electron can be thought of as spread out over all of space until it is measured and observed to be at some specific location. Likewise, our own universe is similarly spread out over all of superspace until it is somehow observed to have a particular set of qualities and laws. That raises another of the big questions. Since nobody can step outside the universe, who is doing the observing?

Dr. Wheeler has suggested that one answer to that question may be simply us, acting through quantum-mechanical acts of observation, a process he calls ’’genesis by observership.’’

’’The past is theory,’’ he once wrote. ’’It has no existence except in the records of the present. We are participators, at the microscopic level, in making that past, as well as the present and the future.’’

In effect, Dr. Wheeler’s answer to Augustine is that we are collectively God and that we are always creating the universe.

Another option, favored by many cosmologists, is the so-called many worlds interpretation, which says that all of these possible universes actually do exist. We just happen to inhabit one whose attributes are friendly to our existence.

The End of Time
Just Another Card In the Big Deck

Yet another puzzle about the Wheeler-DeWitt equation is that it makes no mention of time. In superspace everything happens at once and forever, leading some physicists to question the role of time in the fundamental laws of nature. In his book ’’The End of Time,’’ published to coincide with the millennium, Dr. Julian Barbour, an independent physicist and Einstein scholar in England, argues that the universe consists of a stack of moments, like the cards in a deck, that can be shuffled and reshuffled arbitrarily to give the illusion of time and history.

The Big Bang is just another card in this deck, along with every other moment, forever part of the universe. ’’Immortality is here,’’ he writes in his book. ’’Our task is to recognize it.’’

Dr. Carlo Rovelli, a quantum gravity theorist at the University of Pittsburgh, pointed out that the Wheeler-DeWitt equation doesn’t mention space either, suggesting that both space and time might turn out to be artifacts of something deeper.

’’If we take general relativity seriously,’’ he said, ’’we have to learn to do physics without time, without space, in the fundamental theory.’’

While admitting that they cannot answer these philosophical questions, some theorists have committed pen to paper in attempts to imagine quantum creation mathematical rigor.

Dr. Alexander Vilenkin, a physicist at Tufts University in Somerville, Mass., has likened the universe to a bubble in a pot of boiling water. As in water, only bubbles of a certain size will survive and expand, smaller ones collapse. So, in being created, the universe must leap from no size at all -- zero radius, ’’no space and no time’’ -- to a radius large enough for inflation to take over without passing through the in-between sizes, a quantum-mechanical process called ’’tunneling.’’

Dr. Stephen Hawking, the Cambridge University cosmologist and best-selling author, would eliminate this quantum leap altogether. For the last 20 years he and a series of collaborators have been working on what he calls a ’’no boundary proposal.’’ The boundary of the universe is that it has no boundary, Dr. Hawking likes to say.

One of the keys to Dr. Hawking’s approach is to replace time in his equations with a mathematical conceit called imaginary time; this technique is commonly used in calculations regarding black holes and in certain fields of particle physics, but its application to cosmology is controversial.

The universe, up to and including its origin, is then represented by a single conical-shaped mathematical object, known as an instanton, that has four spatial dimensions (shaped roughly like a squashed sphere) at the Big Bang end and then shifts into real time and proceeds to inflate.

’’Actually it sort of bursts and makes an infinite universe,’’ said Dr. Neil Turok, also from Cambridge University. ’’Everything for all future time is determined, everything is implicit in the instanton.’’

Unfortunately the physical meaning of imaginary time is not clear. Beyond that, the approach produces a universe that is far less dense than the real one.

The Faith of Strings
Theorists Bring On The ’Brane’ Worlds

But any real progress in discerning the details of the leap from eternity into time, cosmologists say, must wait for the formulation of a unified theory of quantum gravity that succeeds in marrying Einstein’s general relativity to quantum mechanics -- two views of the world, one describing a continuous curved space-time, the other a discontinuous random one -- that have been philosophically and mathematically at war for almost a century. Such a theory would be able to deal with the universe during the cauldron of the Big Bang itself, when even space and time, theorists say, have to pay their dues to the uncertainty principle and become fuzzy and discontinuous.

In the last few years, many physicists have pinned their hopes for quantum gravity on string theory, an ongoing mathematically labyrinthean effort to portray nature as comprising tiny wiggly strings or membranes vibrating in 10 or 11 dimensions.

In principle, string theory can explain all the known (and unknown) forces of nature. In practice, string theorists admit that even their equations are still only approximations, and physicists outside the fold complain that the effects of ’’stringy physics’’ happen at such high energies that there is no hope of testing them in today’s particle accelerators. So theorists have been venturing into cosmology, partly in the hopes of discovering some effect that can be observed.

The Big Bang is an obvious target. A world made of little loops has a minimum size. It cannot shrink beyond the size of the string loops themselves, Dr. Robert Brandenberger, now at Brown, and Dr. Cumrun Vafa, now at Harvard, deduced in 1989. When they used their string equations to imagine space shrinking smaller than a certain size, Dr. Brandenberger said, the universe acted instead as if it were getting larger. ’’It looks like it is bouncing from a collapsing phase.’’

In this view, the Big Bang is more like a transformation, like the melting of ice to become water, than a birth, explained Dr. Linde, calling it ’’an interesting idea that should be pursued.’’ Perhaps, he mused, there could be a different form of space and time before the Big Bang.

’’Maybe the universe is immortal,’’ he said. ’’Maybe it just changes phase. Is it nothing? Is it a phase transition? These are very close to religious questions.’’
Work by Dr. Brandenberger and Dr. Vafa also explains how it is that we only see 3 of the 9 or 10 spatial dimensions the theory calls for. Early in time the strings, they showed, could wrap around space and strangle most of the spatial dimensions, keeping them from growing.

In the last few years, however, string theorists have been galvanized by the discovery that their theory allows for membranes of various dimensions (’’branes’’ in string jargon) as well as strings. Moreover they have begun to explore the possibility that at least one of the extra dimensions could be as large as a millimeter, which is gigantic in string physics. In this new cosmology, our world is a three-dimensional island, or brane floating in a five-dimensional space, like a leaf in a fish tank. Other branes might be floating nearby. Particles like quarks and electrons and forces like electromagnetism are stuck to the brane, but gravity is not, and thus the brane worlds can exert gravitational pulls on each other.

’’A fraction of a millimeter from you is another universe,’’ said Dr. Linde. ’’It might be there. It might be the determining factor of the universe in which you live.’’

Worlds in Collision
A New Possibility Is Introduced

That other universe could bring about creation itself, according to several recent theories. One of them, called branefall, was developed in 1998 by Dr. Georgi Dvali of New York University and Dr. Henry Tye, from Cornell. In it the universe emerges from its state of quantum formlessness as a tangle of strings and cold empty membranes stuck together. If, however, there is a gap between the branes at some point, the physicists said, they will begin to fall together.

Each brane, Dr. Dvali said, will experience the looming gravitational field of the other as an energy field in its own three-dimensional space and will begin to inflate rapidly, doubling its size more than a thousand times in the period it takes for the branes to fall together.

’’If there is at least one region where the branes are parallel, those regions will start an enormous expansion while other regions will collapse and shrink,’’ Dr. Dvali said.
When the branes finally collide, their energy is released and the universe heats up, filling with matter and heat, as in the standard Big Bang.

This spring four physicists proposed a different kind of brane clash that they say could do away with inflation, the polestar of Big Bang theorizing for 20 years, altogether. Dr. Paul Steinhardt, one of the fathers of inflation, and his student Justin Khoury, both of Princeton, Dr. Burt Ovrut of Penn State and Dr. Turok call it the ekpyrotic universe, after the Greek word ’’ekpyrosis,’’ which denotes the fiery death and rebirth of the world in Stoic philosophy.

The ekpyrotic process begins far in the indefinite past with a pair of flat empty branes sitting parallel to each other in a warped five-dimensional space -- a situation they say that represents the simplest solution of Einstein’s equations in an advanced version of string theory. The authors count it as a point in their favor that they have not assumed any extra effects that do not already exist in that theory. ’’Hence we are proposing a potentially realistic model of cosmology,’’ they wrote in their paper.

The two branes, which form the walls of the fifth dimension, could have popped out of nothingness as a quantum fluctuation in the even more distant past and then drifted apart.

At some point, perhaps when the branes had reached a critical distance apart, the story goes, a third brane could have peeled off the other brane and begun falling toward ours. During its long journey, quantum fluctuations would ripple the drifting brane’s surface, and those would imprint the seeds of future galaxies all across our own brane at the moment of collision. Dr. Steinhardt offered the theory at an astronomical conference in Baltimore in April.

In the subsequent weeks the ekpyrotic universe has been much discussed. Some cosmologists, particularly Dr. Linde, have argued that in requiring perfectly flat and parallel branes the ekpyrotic universe required too much fine-tuning.

In a critique Dr. Linde and his co-authors suggested a modification they called the ’’pyrotechnic universe.’’

Dr. Steinhardt admitted that the ekpyrotic model started from a very specific condition, but that it was a logical one. The point, he said, was to see if the universe could begin in a long-lived quasi-stable state ’’starkly different from inflation.’’ The answer was yes. His co-author, Dr. Turok, pointed out, moreover, that inflation also requires fine-tuning to produce the modern universe, and physicists still don’t know what field actually produces it.

’’Until we have solved quantum gravity and connected string theory to particle physics none of us can claim victory,’’ Dr. Turok said.
In the meantime, Augustine sleeps peacefully.

Source Material:
by Dennis Overbye
(NYT) SCIENCE DESK

Before the Big Bang: The Prehistory of the Universe

Enoch & the Nephilim - A Religious and Mythological Perspective

2012-10-30T09:16:00.000-05:00

The Evidence Mounts

"More and more we are finding that mythology in general though greatly contorted very often has some historic base. And the interesting thing is that one myth which occurs over and over again in many parts of the world is that somewhere a long time ago supernatural beings had sexual intercourse with natural women and produced a special breed of people."

-Francis A. Schaeffer
Evidence for the existence of the Nephilim goes beyond the biblical record. The story of Lamech, found in the Genesis Apocryphon, relates how Lamech had been away from home on a long journey. When he finally came back, he discovered to his chagrin, that his wife, Bat-Enosh (sometimes spelled as "Bit- Enosh," i.e. the daughter of Enosh) had given birth to a baby boy in his absence. He was sure that the child had not been sired by him, and what is more, the child bore no resemblance to him or to anyone else in the family. Adding to the mystery was the fact that the boy was extremely beautiful, and when he opened his eyes he lighted up the whole house.

"I have begotten a strange son," said Lamech, "...his nature is different and he is not like us, and his eyes are as the rays of the sun, and his countenance is glorious. And it seems to be that he is not sprung from me but from the Angels..." (1)

Lamech did what most husbands would have done: he reproached his wife for infidelity. Bat-Enosh, however, swore by all that was sacred that Lamech himself must have fathered the child. She had not known any other man, not a stranger and note this--not a Watcher or Heavenly Being.

How enlightening for our study! Who were these Watchers or Heavenly Beings? According to the Book of Daniel they were fallen angels (Daniel 4:13,17, 23).

Here is the statement made by Bat-Enosh as it reads in the Lamech Scroll:
"My lord and kinsman, remember my delicate feelings. How (ever), the occasion is indeed alarming, and my soul (is writhing) in it's sheath. I will tell you everything truly."

Then she saw how perturbed her husband was, and decided to repress her passion and indignation a little:
"My lord and kinsman, (I will ignore) delicate feelings and swear to you by the Holy (and) Great One, the Sovereign of heaven (and earth) that this seed came from you, conception was by you, and this fruit was planted by you and not by some stranger or any of the Watchers or heavenly beings. (Have done with) this troubled and marred expression and this gloomy mood. I am telling you the truth." (2)

Lamech by this time must have begun to realize that the child born could have been conceived by one of these Watchers or Heavenly Beings. If so, his child belonged to the Nephilim.

MYSTERY OF NOAH'S BIRTH

Not completely sure as to what to believe, Lamech sought the advice of his father on the matter. Methuselah listened attentively as Lamech revealed this strange story, then promised his son that he would seek the advice of his father, the wise and godly Enoch. Since the family's reputation was at stake, something had to be done.

Enoch, whose name meant "the intelligent" or "the learned," sensed the meaning of what had happened. He sent Methuselah home with the disturbing news that the Earth would soon be visited by a terrible catastrophe and judgment. It was clear that corruption had taken place, and that the human race had become tainted. God would soon be moving in judgment, and human flesh would perish. And as for this little boy, whose birth remained a mystery, he should be raised by Lamech, and should be called Noah. What is more, little Noah had been specially chosen by God to survive this coming judgment, and would be the progenitor of the new inhabitants of planet Earth.

Despite the mystery surrounding his birth, Noah could not be one of the Nephilim, as we shall see in a later chapter. There is no doubt, however, that the unusual circumstances of his birth convinced Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech and Bat-Enosh that strange things were happening on the Earth.

The Genesis Apocryphon is not the only extrabiblical documentation. Numerous other documents indicate the existence of the Nephilim. I do not place these documents on par with Scripture, nevertheless they seem to corroborate Scripture. My sole purpose for introducing them is simply to state that they exist and that they share common features with the Scriptures.

My task is similar to that of Montaigne:
"Gentlemen, all I have done is make a bouquet from flowers already picked, adding nothing but the string to tie them together." (3)

One such document is the Book of Enoch. This is a composite volume, and, although not know in Europe until the 18th Century, it was a veritable best-seller in the days of Christ. In the centuries immediately preceding and following the coming of Christ, this book was widely read and discussed, and its impact was tremendous. Without question it is the most notable apocalyptical work outside the canonical Scriptures. R. H. Charles, an outstanding authority in this field tells us that,

"the influence of 1 Enoch on the New Testament has been greater than that of all the other apocryphal and pseudoepigraphical books put together."
For one thing, the book of Enoch gave to the world the concept of a pre-existent Messiah, and by so doing prepared the way for Christian doctrine. It was from this same book that the Manual of Discipline (found at Qumran) received its solar calendar. What is more, this book became so influential that it became an exemplar and a catalyst for the burgeoning apocalyptic literature of the time. Indeed, it can be claimed, that the Book of Enoch was one of the most important apocalyptic books ever written.

Tertullian and some of the other Church Fathers considered it of such import that they included it as part of the sacred canon of Scripture. Jude 14 is a direct quote from Enoch 1:9, 5:4, and 27:2. There is also in the Book of Enoch a doctrine that one finds nowhere else. Other authors tell us that each nation has its sar or parton, and that of Israel was Michael, or sometimes God Himself. However, in the Book of Enoch we are told that,

"God was Israel's shepherd till the last years of the Kingdom of Judah; then in disgust He turned them over, not to their own guardian, but to the sarim of the Gentiles." (4)

An amazing book! Such a doctrine prefigures and predicts the "times of the Gentiles" mentioned in the Bible. Yet, of all mysteries, this book remained neglected for more than 1,800 years, and continues to remain neglected, and even shunned, in the 20th Century.

ENOCH

Who was this Enoch, whose name is attached to the book? Enoch is mentioned in the Scriptures, but we are told little about him. Just four verses in all--two in the Old Testament, and two in the New. That little, however, is sufficient to distinguish him as one of the outstanding men of all times. He is listed as the seventh of the ten patriarchs between Adam and Noah. He was the father of Methuselah, the man holding the world's record for longevity. Interestingly, Enoch became a believer and started "walking with God" after his son was born. Soon he became known for his exceptional piety and godliness. The most remarkable fact of all is that he did not die.

"Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him."

He is one of the only two men mentioned in the Bible who were translated to Heaven without tasting death.

In the Book of Enoch other significant facts are given about this patriarch. It claims that Enoch will return to Earth at the end of time, and that he will be one of the two martyrs (or witnesses) slain on the streets of Jerusalem.

The Book of Yasher adds still more detail. It tells how Enoch would periodically withdraw himself from earthly company, and visit the ten heavens. He would then return to Earth with a divine luster on his face, just as Moses emerged from the presence of God on Mt. Sinai, and knew not that his face shone. Such was the regard in which Enoch was held by some of the Jewish mystics that they referred to him as "the lesser Yahweh"-- a title bordering on the blasphemous.

In the Book of Jude (verses 14-15), we are told of a prophecy Enoch made concerning the coming of the Lord. This may well be the oldest literary statement in existence. In it, Enoch predicts:

"Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him."

It is obvious that Jude had access to the Book of Enoch, and he did not hesitate to quote from it.

Most scholars claim that the Book of Enoch could not have been written by the Enoch of the Bible. Because of this, the book is labeled a pseudoepigrapha. What happened, they suggest, is that a much later author compiled the work--probably around the 2nd Century B.C.--and used a number of different sources. The author then added the name of the biblical Enoch. In this way, he was assured of the book's acceptance! Whether or not this was so, is not our present concern. But even if it were true, it is obvious that the compiler of the book must have used ancient sources that were at his disposal. He was not so much the author as the compiler or redactor of the book. What could be more honest, more modest, than for a compiler to attach to his book not his own name but that of his oldest source. And who older than Enoch?

AN ANCIENT ASTRONAUT

Enoch obviously had access to knowledge and information completely beyond the reach of mortal man at that stage in man's development. Some of this knowledge Enoch couches in terminology that is allegorical and symbolical, and its meaning frequently escapes us. However, beneath the abstruse verbal descriptions there is some amazing data. The fact that it is conveyed in imaginative and allegorical terminology should not be allowed to detract from its basic accuracy.

The important question in considering the Book of Enoch is whether it contains any reference to the strange and bizarre event recorded in Genesis 6? Does it have anything to say about the "sons of God" and the "daughters of men" coming together in sexual union? Yes it does, many times. It contributes a number of details not found in the Genesis record. But none of these facts contradict in any way what is told us in Genesis. Instead, they elaborate on the facts already given. What, then, is this additional information?

One item of interest is Enoch's account of a visit to the "fifth heaven," where he saw giants with their "faces withered, and the silence of their mouth perpetual." Enoch calls them the "Grogori" or "fallen angels," who broke their vows, married the daughters of men, and "befouled the earth with their deeds." He also mentions that "giants were born and marvelous big men and great enmity."

THE WATCHERS

Significantly, the Book of Enoch (like the Genesis Apocryphon) refers to these "sons of God" as Watchers. A term, as already noted, found in the Book of Daniel. (5) Why this particular word should be used, we are not told; possibly because part of their function was to keep vigil. R.H.C. Charles, who translates the word "watchers" as "the angels, the children of heaven," obviously believed they referred to one and the same beings.

The Book of Enoch alleges that two hundred of these Watchers descended to Earth in the days of Jared (Genesis 5:18), and some of them are given names. The worst one of all is called Azazel. The name occurs in other Jewish documents, like the Apocalypse of Abraham. Azazel is accused of having "scattered over the earth the secrets of heaven and hath rebelled against the Mighty One." His name is also found in ancient Jewish ritual concerning the Day of Atonement. On that day, the iniquities of the people of Israel were laid on the scapegoat, and then the scapegoat was driven away "to Azazel, to the wilderness" (Leviticus 16). Azazel was a demon who inhabited a region in the Judean wilderness.

There is an interesting aside on Azazel in a brilliant essay by Dr. Jacob Z. Lauterbach explaining certain "stray references to the activity of Satan on Yom Kippur." The ritual of that day, said Lauterbach, sought to negate Satan's efforts in three ways: The Azazel sacrifice to appease him; the smoke of the incense to drive him away; and the white robes of the High Priest, so different from his usual vestments, a disguise to mislead him. (6)

In the Book of Jubilees a different reason is given as to why the Watchers came to Earth. It was in order "to instruct the children of men and to bring about justice and equity on the Earth." However, the story ends in the same way: instead of instigating justice and equity, they lusted after the women of Earth, and merited the full judgment of God.

SECRETS OF THE COSMETIC TRADE

According to the Book of Enoch, these Watchers instructed the people of Earth in many studies, including the use of charms and enchantments, the arts of magic, and the secrets of the cosmetic trade. And the Book of Jubilees adds to the list, "a medical herbal" which Noah wrote down at the dictation of the angels.

It is interesting how the early Church Fathers used some of these details for preaching purposes and moralistic instruction. Foremost among these was Tertullian, and certainly one of the most original. He asks with astringent irony why should the angels have to instruct the women of Earth in the cosmetic arts? Surely, if they had succeeded in charming angels without any cosmetic aids, it were an easy matter to charm men!

ASTROLOGY, WEAPONS, ET AL

Another study in which the Watchers instructed earthlings was astrology, with all its concomitant evils. And last but not least, they instructed men how to fashion weapons of destruction, particularly swords, knives and shields. Comyns Beumont deduces that they also made ammunition, and even explosives. (7)

The Book of Enoch confirms the Book of Genesis to the letter when it states:
"There arose much godlessness, and they committed fornication, and they were led astray, and became corrupt in all their ways." (8)
Things got so bad on planet Earth, according to the Book of Enoch, that the archangels of heaven--Michael, Uriel and Gabriel-- reported the matter to the Most High God:

The whole earth has been filled with blood and unrighteousness. And now, behold, the souls of those who have died are crying and making their suit to the gates of heaven, and their lamentations have ascended; and cannot cease because of the lawless deeds which are wrought upon the earth.

CLASSIFIED MATERIAL

God was moved to anger at these Watchers, because of the horrible practices that they had introduced upon the Earth. And there was something else: God was angry at the fact that they had disclosed certain secrets, and were teaching them to their sons, the Nephilim. We are not told exactly what these secrets were, except that they were "eternal secrets" which men of Earth were striving to learn, and which God did not intend for fallen man to discover.

Things deteriorated rapidly, and soon the Nephilim were practicing the most repulsive and revolting behavior. They began to "devour one another's flesh, and drink the blood." This cannibalism shocked even the depraved citizens of Earth, to the extent that they brought accusation against the Watchers.

Enoch is instructed by the Most High to deliver this warning to the Watchers:
"Enoch, thou scribe of righteousness, go, declare to the watchers of heaven, who have left the high heaven, the holy eternal place, and have defiled themselves with women, and have done as the children of earth do, and have taken unto themselves wives: 'Ye have wrought great destruction on the earth: And ye shall have no peace nor forgiveness of sin.'"

These same Watchers in turn approached Enoch to mediate on their behalf, and to write out a petition in their favor. God, however, rejects the petition and Enoch is summoned to speak to the Watchers again:
"Go, say to the Watchers of heaven, who have sent thee to intercede for them: 'Ye should intercede for men, and not men for you. Wherefore have ye left high, holy and eternal heaven, and lain with women and defiled yourselves with the daughters of men, and taken wives unto yourselves and done like the child of earth and begotten giants as sons. And although ye were holy, spiritual living and eternal life, you have defiled yourselves with the blood of women, and have begotten children with the blood of flesh, have lusted after flesh and blood as those who do die and perish.'"

And as for the giants or Nephilim produced by them:
"The giants, who are produced from the spirits and flesh, shall be called evil spirits upon the earth...Evil spirits have proceeded from their bodies; because they are born from men and from the holy Watchers is their beginning and primal origin... And the spirits of the giants afflict, oppress, attack, do battle, and work destruction on the earth...And these spirits shall rise up against the children of men and against the women, because they have proceeded from them...thus shall they destroy until the day of the consummation, the great judgment in which the age shall be consummated over the Watchers and the godless, yea, shall be wholly consummated. And now as to the Watchers... say to them therefore: 'Ye have no peace.'"

Such was the message given to Enoch, who transmitted it to the Watchers and their progeny on Earth.

The next question is: How was this information preserved for us? How did the succeeding generation learn these facts? The Book of Enoch supplies the answer:
"And now, my son Methuselah, I tell thee everything and write it down for thee: I have revealed everything to thee, and handed thee the books which have to do with all these things. My son Methuselah, preserve the books that come from thy father's hand and hand them on to the coming generations of the world."
Enoch was also given a message to deliver to Noah, telling him that the whole Earth was to be destroyed. He was also to instruct Noah in the way of escape, so that his seed be preserved for all generations.

Unquestionably, the Book of Enoch confirms the biblical record that the Earth was defiled and polluted by the incursion of extraterrestrial beings, and particularly by their shameful behavior with the "daughters of men." And as in the Book of Genesis, so in the Book of Enoch, God is incensed with this sexual coupling between celestial and terrestrial beings, and begins to move in an act of terrible judgment.

"And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth" (Genesis 6:7).

THE SONS OF JARED

Other books, like The Book of Jubilee add a few more details to this awesome story. It reveals the date when these heavenly Watchers descended to Earth--461 Annus Mundi, a date which Bishop Usher would interpret as 3543 B.C. It also notes that these Watchers were specifically associated with Jared, the fifth in line from Adam.

Interestingly, there is an American organization called " The Sons of Jared." Their publication is called, "The Jaredite Advocate." The aim of this group, as far as one is able to understand is to declare war on all the descendants of the Watchers--including notorious kings and dictators, who have tyrannized mankind. A sort of celestial Mafia!

Regarding this association with Jared, the Book of Jubilees tells us:
"And in the second week of the tenth jubilee of Mahalelel took unto him a wife Dinah, the daughter of Barakel, the daughter of his brother's brother and she bore him a son in the sixth year and he called his name Jared for in his days the angels of the Lord descended on the earth, those so named the Watchers." (9)

OTHER ANCIENT DOCUMENTS

Another minor source of data is the Zadokite Document. This was discovered about a half century ago in the attic of an old synagogue in Cairo and is thought to be related to the Dead Sea Scrolls. This document also refers to the descent of the Watchers, and to their giant offspring:

"Because they walked in the stubbornness of their hearts, the Watchers of heaven fell, yea, they were caught thereby because they kept not the commandments of God. So too their sons whose bodies were as mountains. They also fell." (10)

The Apocalypse of Baruch is another ancient document which confirms the story of the fallen angels. Written in Syriac, it adds this new concept to the story of the fallen angels: that the source of the corruption was the sinfulness of mankind. It was human sin that caused the angels to fall.

A series of booklets called The Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, purporting to come from the twelve sons of Jacob, (11) also refer to the fallen angels. They contain nothing like the detail of the Book of Enoch, but they do make an interesting statement: the women of Earth were the prime movers in alluring and enticing the angels. In this they agree with the Apocalypse of Baruch. They also introduce a brand new element, suggesting that the act in which the angels and the women participated was more psychological than physical:

"Thus they allured the Watchmen before the flood, for as these continually beheld them, they lusted after them and conceived the act in their mind; for they changed themselves into the shape of men and appeared to them when they were with their husbands; and the women, lusting in their minds after their forms, gave birth to giants." (12)

It appears from this Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs that the "lusting" and the "conceiving" were in the mind. Nonetheless, the results were physical enough--they gave birth to giants!

Jewish documents are not the only ones which refer to fallen angels. The Koran contains brief reference to two angels, Harut and Maru who came to Earth. Their fall takes place when a beautiful woman appears before them. The angels had been warned in advance that there were three things they were not to do: admit existence of other gods; murder; drink intoxicants. It was precisely these three things that the charming woman demanded, if the angels were to enjoy her favors. Finally the angels agreed to drink wine--as the least of the three sins--and their paramour granted their desires.

FOLKLORE AND FABLES

Another source of information is the abundance of myths, legends, folklore and fables that speak of "giants" upon the Earth in ancient times, and how there was sexual union between demi-gods from Heaven and women from Earth. Many scholars believe that myths emerged from a kernel of historical fact. According to Andrew Tomas, mythology and folklore are "thought- fossils depicting the story of vanished cultures in symbols and allegories." If this is so, do we find anything in myths and legends resembling the bizarre event of Genesis 6? There are indeed numerous such traditions among many nations.

Most people are acquainted with the mythologies of ancient Greece and Rome. The gods or semi-gods in these traditions go under different names, but their behavior has a common denominator. Whether these gods are called Zeus or Jupiter, Poseidon or Neptune, Aphrodite or Venus, Eros or Cupid...their sex orgies, promiscuities, cruelties and violence are all of the same cloth. And so are their offspring.

The Genesis story, according to Tom Horner, corresponds precisely to the Age of the Heroes in ancient Greece. These heroes were also "spawned by divine fathers and human mothers. One of them was Hercules." (14)

The story of Zeus also is well known. Promotheus was aware of the secret that Zeus had no control over his lusts, and aware also of the names of the women whom he would seduce. Because of this and other reasons, Zeus planned for Promotheus to be chained in the Caucasius, where an eagle would feed on his liver each day. But each night his liver would be renewed. In this way, the torture of Promotheus was endless. Eventually however, he and Zeus were reconciled. But cruelty was not the only distinctive of Zeus. There seemed to be no boundaries or limits to his lust, and numerous women were seduced by him, including Thetis, Europa, Leda, Metis and Dione.

Emile Gaverluk says:

"Zeus' amorous victories illustrate the. actions of uncontrolled spirit-beings lusting after human flesh. The whole story of Greek mythology is an expanded version of that astonishing verse in the Bible: 'The sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair, and took them wives of all they chose.' (Genesis 6.-2)...The mythology of the past is a startling revelation of the uncontrolled behavior of both spirit-beings and rebellious man." (15)

But the mythologies of Greece and Rome are not the only ones that relate such strange events. Erich Von Daniken has supplied us with a wealth of samples from around the world. (16) We admit that his speculative outbursts frequently outmatch his theological soundness, nevertheless we are indebted to him for bringing to our attention many incontrovertible facts which others had left buried and undisturbed.

Ancient Sumerian records tell of gods descending from the stars and fertilizing their ancestors. This interbreeding of gods from heaven and women from earth is supposed to have produced the first men upon earth.

The native inhabitants of Malekula, in the New Hebrides believe that the first race of men were direct descendants of the sons of heaven.

The Incas held that they were the descendants of the "sons of the Sun."

The Teutons claimed that their ancestors came with the flying Wanen.

Some of the South Sea islanders trace their ancestry to one of the gods of heaven, who visited them in an enormous gleaming egg.

The Koreans believed that a heavenly king, "Hwanin," sent his son, "Hwanung," to earth, married an earth woman who gave birth to Tangun Wanggom. It was he who was supposed to have welded all the primitive tribes together into one kingdom.

The ancient tradition Tango-Fudoki in Japan tells the story of the Island Child. The only difference here is that it was a man from earth and a maiden from heaven that came together in marriage, and spent their time together in heaven and not on earth.

From India comes the Mahabharata and other ancient Sanskrit texts, which tell of "gods" begetting children with women of earth, and how these children inherited the "supernatural" skills and learning of their fathers.

A similar mythology is found in the Epic of Gilgamesh, where we read of "watchers" from outer space coming to planet Earth, and producing giants.

An early Persian myth tells that before the coming of Zoroaster, demons had corrupted the Earth, and allied themselves with women.

When these and many other accounts, are all tied together, they amaze us by their common core. Each one refers, with slight variations, to the traffic between "the sons of God" and "the daughters of men"; to the sexual activities in which they engaged; and to the unusual and abnormal offspring they produced. A further convincing element in this string of samples, is that these myths and legends belong to people so far removed from each other by time, space and language that collaboration or conspiracy is out of the question. How then does one explain this phenomenon?

FABLE OR FACT

Could it be, that at some distant point in time these bizarre events actually did take place? Rather than being the fertile product of the imagination of primitive man, they were simply man's crude description of what actually happened? Beings from Heaven and beings from Earth did actually come together, did generate children, and did produce the Nephilim.

Later, of course, many of these myths and legends developed an overgrowth of fictional imagery and imaginative fantasy, which clung to them like moss to the mill. There can be little doubt, however, that beneath this dense overgrowth lies the plant of truth. What began history, ended up as legend.

Above all else, we are convinced that the Bible speaks of these things. The basic message of the apocryphal documents and the various mythologies find corroboration in God's Word. Spirit beings from outer space did arrive on Earth, and did produce these unnatural offspring. By this cross-breeding, man became more and more absorbed with evil and violence; the human race became tainted and corrupted; and soon the Earth was unsalvagable. These extraterrestrial being by means of genetic manipulation had succeeded in contaminating God's special creation; so much so, that their destruction, as well as that of man became a moral necessity.

Notes:
1. R. H. C. Charles, Fragments of the Book of Noah (London: Oxford University Press).
2. Theodor H. Gaster, The Dead Sea Scriptures (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Co., Inc., 1956), p. 257.
3. Michel Eyquem de Montaign (1533-92).
4. Bernard J. Bamberger, Fallen Angels (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1952), p. 25.
5. Daniel 4:13, 17, 23.
6. Jacob Z. Lauterbach, Hebrew Union College Annual, IV, 173ff.
7. Comyns Beaumont, The Riddle of Prehistoric Britain (London: Rider & Co., Ltd.).
8. Trans. by R.H.C. Charles, (London).
9. Dr. R.H.C. Charles, The Book of Jubilees (London: A & C Black, 1902).
10. Theodore H. Gaster, The Scriptures of the Dead Sea Sect (London: Secker & Wartburg, 1957).
11. Bernard J. Bamberger, Fallen Angels (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1952), p. 27.
12. Ibid., p. 31.
13. Andrew Tomas, We Are Not The First (New York: Bantam Books, Inc., 1973).
14. Tom Hoover, Sex in the Bible (Rutland, Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1974), p. 145.
15. Emil Gaverluk, Did Genesis Man Conquer Space? (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 1974), p. 89.
16. Erich Von Daniken, Gods from Outer Space (New York: Bantam Books, Inc., 1972) pp. 161-162.

The Books of Enoch: A Complete Volume Containing 1 Enoch (The Ethiopic Book of Enoch), 2 Enoch (The Slavonic Secrets of Enoch), 3 Enoch (The Hebrew Book of Enoch)

Qabbalistic Keys to the Creation of Man

2012-10-28T10:10:00.003-05:00

HENRIE STEPHEN, in A World of Wonders, published in 1607, mentions a monk of St. Anthony who declared that while in Jerusalem the patriarch of that city had shown him not only one of the ribs of the Word made flesh and some rays from the Star of Bethlehem, but also the snout of a seraph, a finger nail of a cherub, the horns of Moses, and a casket containing the breath of Christ! To a people believing implicitly in a seraph sufficiently tangible to have its proboscis preserved, the more profound issues of Judaistic philosophy must necessarily be incomprehensible. Nor is it difficult to imagine the reaction taking place in the mind of some ancient sage should he hear that a cherub--which, according to St. Augustine, signifies the Evangelists; according to Philo Judæus, the outermost circumference of the entire heavens, and according to several of the Church Fathers, the wisdom of God--had sprouted finger nails. The hopeless confusion of divine principles with the allegorical figures created to represent them to the limited faculties of the uninitiated has resulted in the most atrocious misconceptions of spiritual truths. Concepts well-nigh as preposterous as these, however, still stand as adamantine barriers to a true understanding of Old and New Testament symbolism; for, until man disentangles his reasoning powers from the web of venerated absurdities in which his mind has lain ensnared for centuries, how can Truth ever be discovered?

The Old Testament--especially the Pentateuch--contains not only the traditional account of the creation of the world and of man, but also, locked within it, the secrets of the Egyptian initiators of the Moses concerning the genesis of the god-man (the initiate) and the mystery of his rebirth through philosophy. While the Lawgiver of Israel is known to have compiled several works other than those generally attributed to him, the writings now commonly circulated as the purported sixth and seventh books of Moses are in reality spurious treatises on black magic foisted on the credulous during the Middle Ages. Out of the hundreds of millions of pious and thoughtful students of Holy Writ, it is almost inconceivable that but a mere handful have sensed the sublimity of the esoteric teachings of Sod (the Jewish Mysteries of Adonai). Yet familiarity with the three Qabbalistical processes termed Gematria, Notarikon, and Temurah makes possible the discovery of many of the profoundest truths of ancient Jewish superphysics.

By Gematria is meant not only the exchange of letters for their numerical equivalents but also the method of determining by an analysis of its measurements the mystic purpose for which a building or other object was constructed. S. L. MacGregor-Mathers, in The Kabbalah Unveiled, gives this example of the application of Gematria:

"Thus also the passage, Gen. xviii. 2 VHNH SHLSHH, Vehenna Shalisha, 'And lo, three men,' equals in numerical value 'ALV MIKAL GBRIAL VRPAL, Elo Mikhael Gabriel Ve-Raphael,' These are Mikhael, Gabriel and Raphael; 'for each phrase = 701."

Assuming the sides of a scalene to be 11, 9, and 6 inches, a triangle of such dimensions would then be an appropriate symbol of Jehovah, for the sum of its three sides would be 26, the numerical value of the Hebrew word IHVH. Gematria also includes the system of discovering the arcane meaning of a word by analyzing the size and arrangement of the strokes employed in the formation of its various letters. Gematria was employed by the Greeks as well as the Jews. The books of the New Testament--particularly those attributed to St. John--contain many examples of its use. Nicephorus Callistus declared the Gospel according to St. John to have been discovered in a cavern under the Temple at Jerusalem, the volume having been secreted "long anterior to the Christian æra." The existence of interpolated material in the fourth Gospel substantiates the belief that the work was originally written without any specific reference to the man Jesus, the statements therein accredited to Him being originally mystical discourses delivered by the personification of the Universal Mind. The remaining Johannine writings--the Epistles and the Apocalypse--are enshrouded by a similar veil of mystery.

By Notarikon each letter of a word may become the initial character of a new word. Thus from BRASHITH, first word in the book of Genesis, are extracted six words which mean that "in the beginning the Elohim saw that Israel would accept the law." Mr. MacGregor-Mathers also gives six additional examples of Notarikon formed from the above word by Solomon Meir Ben Moses, a mediæval Qabbalist. From the famous acrostic ascribed to the Erythræan Sibyl, St. Augustine derived the word ΙΧΘΥΣ, which by Notarikon was expanded into the phrase, "Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior." By another use of Notarikon, directly the reverse of the first, the initial, last, or middle letters of the words of a sentence may be joined together to form a new word or words. For example, the name Amen, ἁμήν, maybe extracted from ארנימלרנאטז, "the Lord is the faithful King." Because they had embodied these cryptic devices in their sacred writings, the ancient priests admonished their disciples never to translate, edit, or rewrite the contents of the sacred books. .

Under the general heading of Temurah several systems may be grouped and explained in which various letters are substituted for other letters according to prearranged tables or certain mathematical arrangements of letters, regular or irregular. Thus the alphabet may be broken into two equal parts and written in horizontal lines so that the letters of the lower row can be exchanged for those of the upper row, or vice versa. By this procedure the letters of the word Kuzu may be exchanged for those of IHVH, the Tetragrammaton. In another form of Temurah the letters are merely rearranged., שתיה is the stone which is found in the center of the world, from which point the earth spread out on all sides.

When broken in two the stone is שת יה, which means "the placing of God."(See Pekudei Rakov, 71, 72.) Again, Temurah may consist of a simple anagram, as in the English word live, which reversed becomes evil. The various systems of Temurah are among the most complicated and profound devices of the ancient Rabbins.

Among theological scholars there is a growing conviction that the hitherto accepted translations of the Scriptural writings do not adequately express the spirit of the original documents.

"After the first copy of the Book of God," writes H. P. Blavatsky, "has been edited and launched on the world by Hilkiah, this copy disappears, and Ezra has to make a new Bible, which Judas Maccabeus finishes; * * * when it was copied from the horned letters into square letters, it was corrupted beyond recognition; * * * the Masorah completed the work of destruction; finally, we have a text, not 900 years old, abounding with omissions, interpolations, and premeditated perversions." (See Isis Unveiled.)

Prof. Crawford Howell Toy of Harvard notes:

"Manuscripts were copied and recopied by scribes who not only sometimes made errors in letters and words, but permitted themselves to introduce new material into the text, or to combine in one manuscript, without mark of division, writings composed by different men; instances of these sorts of procedure are found especially in Micah and Jeremiah, and the groups of prophecies which go under the names of Isaiah and Zachariah." (See Judaism and Christianity.)

Does the mutilated condition of the Holy Bible--in part accidental--represent none the less a definite effort to confuse the uninitiated reader and thus better conceal the secrets of the Jewish Tannaim? Never has the Christian world been in possession of those hidden scrolls which contain the secret doctrine of Israel, and if the Qabbalists were correct in their assumption that the lost books of the Mosaic Mysteries have been woven into the fabric of the Torah, then the Scriptures are veritably books within books. In rabbinical circles the opinion is prevalent that Christendom never has understood the Old Testament and probably never will. In fact, the feeling exists--in some quarters, at least--that the Old Testament is the exclusive possession of the Jewish faith; also that Christianity, after its unrelenting persecution of the Jew, takes unwarranted liberties when it includes strictly Jewish writings in its sacred canon. But, as noted by one rabbi, if Christianity must use the Jewish Scriptures, it should at least strive to do so with some degree of intelligence!

In the opening chapter of Genesis it is stated that after creating light and separating it from darkness, the seven Elohim divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament. Having thus established the inferior universe in perfect accord with the esoteric teachings of the Hindu, Egyptian, and Greek Mysteries, the Elohim next turned their attention to the production of flora and fauna and lastly man. "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. * * * So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, * * *."

Consider in thoughtful silence the startling use of pronouns in the above extract from "the most perfect example of English literature." When the plural and androgynous Hebrew word Elohim was translated into the singular and sexless word God, the opening chapters of Genesis were rendered comparatively meaningless. It may have been feared that had the word been correctly translated as "the male and female creative agencies," the Christians would have been justly accused of worshiping a plurality of gods in the face of their repeated claims to monotheism! The plural form of the pronouns us and our reveals unmistakably, however, the pantheistic nature of Divinity. Further, the androgynous constitution of the Elohim (God) is disclosed in the next verse, where he (referring to God) is said to have created man in his own image, male and female; or, more properly, as the division of the sexes had not yet taken place, male-female. This is a deathblow to the time-honored concept that God is a masculine potency as portrayed by Michelangelo on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The Elohim then order these androgynous beings to be fruitful. Note that neither the masculine nor the feminine principle as yet existed in a separate state! And, lastly, note the word "replenish." The prefix re denotes "back to an original or former state or position," or "repetition or restoration." (See Webster's International Dictionary, 1926.)

This definite reference to a humanity existing prior to the "creation of man" described in Genesis must be evident to the most casual reader of Scripture.

An examination of Bible dictionaries, encyclopedias, and commentaries discloses the plural form of the word Elohim to be beyond the comprehension of their respected authors and editors. The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge thus sums up the controversy over the plural form of the word Elohim: "Does it now or did it originally signify plurality of divine being?" A Dictionary of the Bible, edited by James Hastings, contains the following conclusion, which echoes the sentiments of more critical etymologists of the Bible: "The use of the plur. Elohim is also difficult to explain." Dr. Havernick considers the plural form Elohim to signify the abundance and super-richness existing in the Divine Being. His statement, which appears in The Popular and Critical Bible Encyclopædia, is representative of the efforts made to circumvent this extremely damaging word. The International Standard Bible Dictionary considers the explanations offered by modern theologians--of which Dr. Havernick's is a fair example--to be too ingenious to have been conceived by the early Hebrews and maintains that the word represents the survival of a polytheistic stage of Semitic thought. The Jewish Encyclopedia supports the latter assumption with the following concise statement:

"As far as epigraphic material, traditions, and folk-lore throw light on the question, the Semites are shown to be of polytheistic leanings."

Various schools of philosophy, both Jewish and Gentile, have offered explanations erudite and otherwise of the identity of Adam. In this primordial man the Neo-Platonists recognized the Platonic Idea of humanity--the archetype or pattern of the genus homo. Philo Judæus considered Adam to represent the human mind, which could understand (and hence give names to) the creatures about it, but could not comprehend (and hence left nameless) the mystery of its own nature. Adam was also likened to the Pythagorean monad which by virtue of its state of perfect unity could dwell in the Edenic sphere. When through a process akin to fission the monad became the duad--the proper symbol of discord and delusion--the creature thus formed was exiled from its celestial home. Thus the twofold man was driven from the Paradise belonging to the undivided creation and cherubim and a flaming sword were placed on guard at the gates of the Causal World. Consequently, only after the reestablishment of unity within himself can man regain his primal spiritual state.

According to the Isarim, the secret doctrine of Israel taught the existence of four Adams, each dwelling in one of the four Qabbalistic worlds. The first, or heavenly, Adam dwelt alone in the Atziluthic sphere and within his nature existed all spiritual and material potentialities. The second Adam resided in the sphere of Briah. Like the first Adam, this being was androgynous and the tenth division of its body (its heel, Malchuth) corresponded to the church of Israel that shall bruise the serpent's head. The third Adam--likewise androgynous--was clothed in a body of light and abode in the sphere of Yetzirah. The fourth Adam was merely the third Adam after the fall into the sphere of Assiah, at which time the spiritual man took upon himself the animal shell or coat of skins. The fourth Adam was still considered as a single individual, though division had taken place within his nature and two shells or physical bodies existed, in one of which was incarnated the masculine and in the other the feminine potency. (For further details consult Isaac Myer.)

The universal nature of Adam is revealed in the various accounts concerning the substances of which he was formed. It was originally ordained that the "dirt" to be used in fashioning him was to be derived from the seven worlds. As these planes, however, refused to give of their substances, the Creator wrenched from them by force the elements to be employed in the Adamic constitution. St. Augustine discovered a Notarikon in the name of Adam. He showed that the four letters, A-D-A-M, are the first letters of the four words Anatole Dysis Arktos Mesembria, the Greek names for the four corners of the world. The same author also sees in Adam a prototype of Christ, for he writes:

"Adam sleeps that Eve may be formed: Christ dies, that the Church may be formed. While Adam sleeps, Eve is formed from his side. When Christ is dead, His side is smitten with a spear, that there flow forth sacraments to form the church. * * * Adam himself was the figure of Him that was to come."

In his recent work, Judaism, George Foote Moore thus describes the proportions of the Adamic man: "He was a huge mass that filled the whole world to all the points of the compass. The dust of which his body was formed was gathered from every part of the world, or from the site of the future altar. Of greater interest is the notion that man was created androgynous, because it is probably a bit of foreign lore adapted to the first pair in Genesis. R. Samuel bar Nahman (third century), said, when God created Adam, He created him facing both ways (דיו פרעופים); then He sawed him in two and made two backs, one for each figure.

The Zohar holds the concept of two Adams: the first a divine being who, stepping forth from the highest original darkness, created the second, or earthly, Adam in His own image. The higher, or celestial, man was the Causal sphere With its divine potencies and potentialities considered as a gigantic personality; its members, according to the Gnostics, being the basic elements of existence. This Adam may have been symbolized as facing both ways to signify that with one face it looked upon the proximate Cause of itself and with the other face looked upon the vast sea of Cosmos into which it was to be immersed.

Philosophically, Adam may be regarded as representative of the full spiritual nature of man--androgynous and nor subject to decay. Of this fuller nature the mortal man has little comprehension. Just as spirit contains matter within itself and is both the source and ultimate of the state denominated matter, so Eve represents the lower, or mortal, portion that is taken out of, or has temporal existence in the greater and fuller spiritual creation. Being representative of the inferior part of the individual, Eve is the temptress who, conspiring with the serpent of mortal knowledge, caused Adam to sink into a trancelike condition in which he was unconscious of his own higher Self. When Adam seemingly awoke, he actually sank into sleep, for he no longer was in the spirit but in the body; division having taken place within him, the true Adam rested in Paradise while his lesser part incarnated in a material organism (Eve) and wandered in the darkness of mortal existence.

The followers of Mohammed apparently sensed more accurately than the uninitiated of other sects the true mystic import of Paradise, for they realized that prior to his fall the dwelling place of man was not in a physical garden in any particular part of the earth but rather in a higher sphere (the angelic world) watered by four mystical streams of life. After his banishment from Paradise, Adam alighted on the Island of Ceylon, and this spot is sacred to certain Hindu sects who recognize the old Island of Lanka--once presumably connected with the mainland by a bridge--as the actual site of the Garden of Eden from which the human race migrated. According to the Arabian Nights (Sir Richard Burton's translation), Adam's footprint may still be seen on the top of a Ceylonese mountain. In the Islamic legends, Adam was later reunited with his wife and after his death his body was brought to Jerusalem subsequent to the Flood for burial by Melchizedek. (See the Koran.)

The word ADM signifies a species or race and only for lack of proper understanding has Adam been considered as an individual. As the Macrocosm, Adam is the gigantic Androgyne, even the Demiurgus; as the Microcosm, he is the chief production of the Demiurgus and within the nature of the Microcosm the Demiurgus established all the qualities and powers which He Himself possessed. The Demiurgus, however, did not possess immortality and, therefore, could not bestow it upon Adam. According to legend, the Demiurgus strove to keep man from learning the incompleteness of his Maker. The Adamic man consequently partook of the qualities and characteristics of the angels who were the ministers of the Demiurgus. It was affirmed by the Gnostic Christians that the redemption of humanity was assured through the descent of Nous (Universal Mind), who was a great spiritual being superior to the Demiurgus and who, entering into the constitution of man, conferred conscious immortality upon the Demiurgic fabrications.

That phallic symbolism occupies an important place in early Jewish mysticism is indisputable. Hargrave Jennings sees in the figure of Adam a type of the lingam of Shiva, which was a stone representative of the creative power of the World Generator.

"In Gregorie's works * * *," writes Jennings, "is a passage to the effect that 'Noah daily prayed in the Ark before the Body of Adam,' i.e., before the Phallus--Adam being the primitive Phallus, great procreator of the human race. 'It may possibly seem strange,' he says, 'that this orison should be daily said before the body of Adam,' but 'it is a most confessed tradition among the eastern men that Adam was commanded by God that his dead body should be kept above ground till a fullness of time should come to commit it פדככאלאועto the middle of the earth by a priest of the Most High God.' This means Mount Moriah, the Meru of India. 'This body of Adam was embalmed and transmitted from father to son, till at last it was delivered up by Lamech into the hands of Noah.'" (See Phallicism.)

This interpretation somewhat clarifies the Qabbalistic assertion that in the first Adam were contained all the souls of the Israelites. (See Sod.) Though according to the Aurea Legenda Adam was buried with the three seeds of the Tree of Knowledge in his mouth, it should be borne in mind that apparently conflicting myths were often woven around a single individual. One of the profound mysteries of Qabbalism is that set forth in the Notarikon based upon the letters of the name Adam (ADM). These three letters form the initials of the names Adam, David, and the Messiah, and these three personalities were said to contain one soul. As this soul represents the World Soul of humanity, Adam signifies the involving soul, the Messiah the evolving soul, and David that condition of the soul termed epigenesis.

In common with certain philosophic institutions of Asia, the Jewish Mysteries contained a strange doctrine concerning the shadows of the Gods. Gazing down into the Abyss, the Elohim beheld their own shadows and from these shadows patterned the inferior creation.

"In the dramatic representation of the creation of man in the Mysteries," writes the anonymous Master of Balliol College, "the Aleim [Elohim] were represented by men who, when sculpturing the form of an Adamite being, of a man, traced the outline of it on their own shadow, or modelled it on their own shadow traced on the wall. This is how the art of drawing originated in Egypt, and the hieroglyphic figures carved on the Egyptian monuments have so little relief that they still resemble a shadow."

In the ritualism of the early Jewish Mysteries the pageantry of creation was enacted, the various actors impersonating the Creative Agencies. The red dirt from which the Adamic man was fashioned may signify fire, particularly since Adam is related to the Yod, or fire flame, which is the first letter of the sacred name Jehovah. In John ii. 20 it is written that the Temple was forty and six years in the building, a statement in which St. Augustine sees a secret and sacred Gematria; for, according to the Greek philosophy of numbers, the numerical value of the name Adam is 46. Adam thus becomes the type of the Temple, for the House of God-like primitive man--was a microcosm or epitome of the universe.

In the Mysteries, Adam is accredited with having the peculiar power of spiritual generation. Instead of reproducing his kind by the physical generative processes, he caused to issue from himself--or, more correctly, to be reflected upon substance--a shadow of himself. This shadow he then ensouled and it became a living creature. These shadows, however, remain only as long as the original figure of which they are the reflections endures, for with the removal of the original the host of likenesses vanish with it. Herein is the key to the allegorical creation of Eve out of the side of Adam; for Adam, representative of the idea or pattern, is reflected into the material universe as a multitude of ensouled images which collectively are designated Eve. According to another theory, the division of the sexes took place in the archetypal sphere; hence the shadows in the lower world were divided into two classes consistent with the orders established in the Archetype. In the apparently incomprehensible attraction of one sex for the other Plato recognized a cosmic urge toward reunion of the severed halves of this archetypal Being.

Exactly what is to be inferred by the division of the sexes as symbolically described in Genesis is a much-debated question. That man was primarily androgynous is quite universally conceded and it is a reasonable presumption that he will ultimately regain this bisexual state. As to the manner in which this will be accomplished two opinions are advanced. One school of thought affirms that the human soul was actually divided into two parts (male and female) and that man remains an unperfected creature until these parts are reunited through the emotion which man calls love. From this concept has grown the much-abused doctrine of "soul mates" who must quest through the ages until the complementary part of each severed soul is discovered. The modern concept of marriage is to a certain degree founded upon this ideal.

According to the other school, the so-called division of the sexes resulted from suppression of one pole of the androgynous being in order that the vital energies manifesting through it might be diverted to development of the rational faculties. From this point of view man is still actually androgynous and spiritually complete, but in the material world the feminine part of man's nature and the masculine part of woman's nature are quiescent. Through spiritual unfoldment and knowledge imparted by the Mysteries, however, the latent element in each nature is gradually brought into activity and ultimately the human being thus regains sexual equilibrium. By this theory woman is elevated from the position of being man's errant part to one of complete equality. From this point of view, marriage is regarded as a companionship in which two complete individualities manifesting opposite polarities are brought into association that each may thereby awaken the qualities latent in the other and thus assist in the attainment of individual completeness. The first theory may be said to regard marriage as an end; the second as a means to an end. The deeper schools of philosophy have leaned toward the latter as more adequately acknowledging the infinite potentialities of divine completeness in both aspects of creation.

The Christian Church is fundamentally opposed to the theory of marriage, claiming that the highest degree of spirituality is achievable only by those preserving the virginal state. This concept seemingly originated among certain sects of the early Gnostic Christians, who taught that to propagate the human species was to increase and perpetuate the power of the Demiurgus; for the lower world was looked upon as an evil fabrication created to ensnare the souls of all born into it--hence it was a crime to assist in bringing souls to earth. When, therefore, the unfortunate father or mother shall stand before the Final Tribunal, all their offspring will also appear and accuse them of being the cause of those miseries attendant upon physical existence. This view is strengthened by the allegory of Adam and Eve, whose sin through which humanity has been brought low is universally admitted to have been concerned with the mystery of generation. Mankind, owing to Father Adam its physical existence, regards its progenitor as the primary cause of its misery; and in the judgment Day, rising up as a mighty progeny, will accuse its common paternal ancestor.

Those Gnostic sects maintaining a more rational attitude on the subject declared the very existence of the lower worlds to signify that the Supreme Creator had a definite purpose in their creation; to doubt his judgment was, therefore, a grievous error. The church, however, seemingly arrogated to itself the astonishing prerogative of correcting God in this respect, for wherever possible it continued to impose celibacy, a practice resulting in an alarming number of neurotics. In the Mysteries, celibacy is reserved for those who have reached a certain degree of spiritual unfoldment. When advocated for the mass of unenlightened humanity, however, it becomes a dangerous heresy, fatal alike to both religion and philosophy. As Christendom in its fanaticism has blamed every individual Jew for the crucifixion of Jesus, so with equal consistency it has maligned every member of the feminine sex. In vindication of Eve philosophy claims that the allegory signifies merely that man is tempted by his emotions to depart from the sure path of reason.

Many of the early Church Fathers sought to establish a direct relationship between Adam and Christ, thereby obviously discounting the extremely sinful nature of man's common ancestor, since it is quite certain that when St. Augustine likens Adam to Christ and Eve to the church he does not intend to brand the latter institution as the direct cause of the fall of man. For some inexplicable reason, however, religion has ever regarded intellectualism--in fact every form of knowledge--as fatal to man's spiritual growth. The Ignaratitine Friars are an outstanding example of this attitude.

In this ritualistic drama--possibly derived from the Egyptians--Adam, banished from the Garden of Eden, represents man philosophically exiled from the sphere of Truth. Through ignorance man falls; through wisdom he redeems himself. The Garden of Eden represents the House of the Mysteries (see The Vision of Enoch) in the midst of which grew both the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Man, the banished Adam, seeks to pass from the outer court of the Sanctuary (the exterior universe) into the sanctum sanctorum, but before him rises a vast creature armed with a flashing sword that, moving slowly but continually, sweeps clear a wide circle, and through this "Ring Pass Not" the Adamic man cannot break.

The cherubim address the seeker thus:

"Man, thou art dust and to dust thou shalt return. Thou wert fashioned by the Builder of Forms; thou belongest to the sphere of form, and the breath that was breathed into thy soul was the breath of form and like a flame it shall flicker out. More than thou art thou canst not be. Thou art a denizen of the outer world and it is forbidden thee to enter this inner place."

And the Adam replies:

"Many times have I stood within this courtyard and begged admission to my Father's house and thou hast refused it me and sent me back to wander in darkness. True it is that I was fashioned out of the dirt and that my Maker could not confer upon me the boon of immortality. But no more shalt thou send me away; for, wandering in the darkness, I have discovered that the Almighty hath decreed my salvation because He hath sent out of the most hidden Mystery His Only Begotten who didst take upon Himself the world fashioned by the Demiurgus. Upon the elements of that world was He crucified and from Him hath poured forth the blood of my salvation. And God, entering into His creation, hath quickened it and established therein a road that leadeth to Himself. While my Maker could not give me immortality, immortality was inherent in the very dust of which I was composed, for before the world was fabricated and before the Demiurgus became the Regent of Nature the Eternal Life had impressed itself upon the face of Cosmos. This is its sign--the Cross. Do you now deny me entrance, I who have at last learned the mystery of myself?"

And the voice replies: "He who is aware, IS! Behold!"

Gazing about him, Adam finds himself in a radiant place, in the midst of which stands a tree with flashing jewels for fruit and entwined about its trunk a flaming, winged serpent crowned with a diadem of stars. It was the voice of the serpent that had spoken.

"Who art thou?" demands the Adam.

"I," the serpent answers, "am Satan who was stoned; I am the Adversary--the Lord who is against you, the one who pleads for your destruction before the Eternal Tribunal. I was your enemy upon the day that you were formed; I have led you into temptation; I have delivered you into the hands of evil; I have maligned you; I have striven ever to achieve your undoing. I am the guardian of the Tree of Knowledge and I have sworn that none whom I can lead astray shall partake of its fruits."

The Adam replies:

"For uncounted ages have I been thy servant. In my ignorance I listened to thy words and they led me into paths of sorrow. Thou hast placed in my mind dreams of power, and when I struggled to realize those dreams they brought me naught but pain. Thou hast sowed in me the seeds of desire, and when I lusted after the things of the flesh agony was my only recompense. Thou hast sent me false prophets and false reasoning, and when I strove to grasp the magnitude of Truth I found thy laws were false and only dismay rewarded my strivings. I am done with thee forever, O artful Spirit! I have tired of thy world of illusions. No longer will I labor in thy vineyards of iniquity. Get thee behind me, rempter, and the host of thy temptations. There is no happiness, no peace, no good, no future in the doctrines of selfishness, hate, and passion preached by thee. All these things do I cast aside. Renounced is thy rule forever!"

And the serpent makes answer: "Behold, O Adam, the nature of thy Adversary!" The serpent disappears in a blinding sunburst of radiance and in its place stands an angel resplendent in shining, golden garments with great scarlet wings that spread from one corner of the heavens to the other. Dismayed and awestruck, the Adam falls before the divine creature.

"I am the Lord who is against thee and thus accomplishes thy salvation, " continues the voice. "Thou hast hated me, but through the ages yet to be thou shalt bless me, for I have led thee our of the sphere of the Demiurgus; I have turned thee against the illusion of worldliness; I have weaned thee of desire; I have awakened in thy soul the immortality of which I myself partake. Follow me, O Adam, for I am the Way, the Life, and the Truth!"

Mystical Qabalah

The Qabbalah, the Mysterious Doctrine of Israel

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ALBERT PIKE, quoting from Transcendental Magic, thus sums up the importance of Qabbalism as a key to Masonic esotericism:

"One is filled with admiration, on penetrating into the Sanctuary of the Kabalah, at seeing a doctrine so logical, so simple, and at the same time so absolute. The necessary union of ideas and signs, the consecration of the most fundamental realities by the primitive characters; the Trinity of Words, Letters, and Numbers; a philosophy simple as the alphabet, profound and infinite as the Word; theorems more complete and luminous than those of Pythagoras; a theology summed up by counting on one's fingers; an Infinite which can be held in the hollow of an infant's hand; ten ciphers and twenty-two letters, a triangle, a square, and a circle,--these are all the elements of the Kabalah. These are the elementary principles of the written Word, reflection of that spoken Word that created the world!" (Morals and Dogma.)

Hebrew theology was divided into three distinct parts. The first was the law, the second was the soul of the law, and the third was the soul of the soul of the law. The law was taught to all the children of Israel; the Mishna, or the soul of the law, was revealed to the Rabbins and teachers; but the Qabbalah, the soul of the soul of the law, was cunningly concealed, and only the highest initiates among the Jews were instructed in its secret principles.

According to certain Jewish mystics, Moses ascended Mount Sinai three times, remaining in the presence of God forty days each time. During the first forty days the tables of the written law were delivered to the prophet; during the second forty days he received the soul of the law; and during the last forty days God instructed him in the mysteries of the Qabbalah, the soul of the soul of the law. Moses concealed in the first four books of the Pentateuch the secret instructions that God had given him, and for centuries students of Qabbalism. have sought therein the secret doctrine of Israel. As the spiritual nature of man is concealed in his physical body, so the unwritten law--the Mishna and the Qabbalah--is concealed within the written teachings of the Mosaic code. Qabbalah means the secret or hidden tradition, the unwritten law, and according to an early Rabbi, it was delivered to man in order that through the aid of its abstruse principles he might learn to understand the mystery of both the universe about him and the universe within him.

The origin of Qabbalism is a legitimate subject for controversy. Early initiates of the Qabbalistic Mysteries believed that its principles were first taught by God to a school of His angels before the fall of man. The angels later communicated the secrets to Adam, so that through the knowledge gained from an understanding of its principles fallen humanity might regain its lost a estate. The Angel Raziel was dispatched from heaven to instruct Adam in the mysteries of the Qabbalah. Different angels were employed to initiate the succeeding patriarchs in this difficult science. Tophiel was the teacher of Shem, Raphael of Isaac, Metatron of Moses, and Michael of David. (See Faiths of the World.)

Christian D. Ginsburg has written:

"From Adam it passed over to Noah, and then to Abraham, the friend of God, who emigrated with it to Egypt, where the patriarch allowed a portion of this mysterious doctrine to ooze out. It was in this way that the Egyptians obtained some knowledge of it, and the other Eastern nations could introduce it into their philosophical systems. Moses, who was learned in all the wisdom of Egypt, was first initiated into it in the land of his birth, but became most proficient in it during his wanderings in the wilderness, when he not only devoted to it the leisure hours of the whole forty years, but received lessons in it from one of the angels. * * * Moses also initiated the seventy Elders into the secrets of this doctrine and they again transmitted them from hand to hand. Of all who formed the unbroken line of tradition, David and Solomon were most initiated into the Kabbalah." (See The Kabbalah.)

According to Eliphas Levi, the three greatest books of Qabbalism are the Sepher Yetzirah, The Book of Formation; the Sepher ha Zohar, The Book of Splendor; and the Apocalypse, The Book of Revelation. The dates of the writing of these books are by no means thoroughly established. Qabbalists declare that the Sepher Yetzirah was written by Abraham. Although it is by far the oldest of the Qabbalistic books, it was probably from the pen of the Rabbi Akiba, A.D. 120.

The Sepher ha Zohar presumably was written by Simeon ben Jochai, a disciple of Akiba. Rabbi Simeon was sentenced to death about A.D. 161 by Lucius Verus, co-regent of the Emperor Marc Aurelius Antoninus. He escaped with his son and, hiding in a cave, transcribed the manuscript of the Zohar with the assistance of Elias, who appeared to them at intervals. Simeon was twelve years in the cave, during which time he evolved the complicated symbolism of the "Greater Face" and the "Lesser Face." While discoursing with disciples Rabbi Simeon expired, and the "Lamp of Israel" was extinguished. His death and burial were accompanied by many supernatural phenomena. The legend goes on to relate that the secret doctrines of Qabbalism had been in existence since the beginning of the world, but that Rabbi Simeon was the first man permitted to reduce them to writing. Twelve hundred years later the books which he had compiled were discovered and published for the benefit of humanity by Moses de León. The probability is that Moses de León himself compiled the Zohar about A.D. 1305, drawing his material from the unwritten secrets of earlier Jewish mystics. The Apocalypse, accredited to St. John the Divine, is also of uncertain date, and the identity of its author has never been satisfactorily proved.

Because of its brevity and because it is the key to Qabbalistic thought, the Sepher Yetzirah is reproduced in full in this chapter. So far as is known, the Sepher ha Zohar has never been completely translated into English, but it can be obtained in French. (S. L. MacGregor-Mathers translated three books of the Zohar into English.) The Zohar contains a vast number of philosophical tenets, and a paraphrase of its salient points is embodied in this work.

Few realize the influence exerted by Qabbalism over mediæval thought, both Christian and Jewish. It taught that there existed within the sacred writings a hidden doctrine which was the key to those writings. This is symbolized by the crossed keys upon the papal crest. Scores of learned minds began to search for those arcane truths by which the race should be redeemed; and that their labor was not without its reward, their subsequent writings have demonstrated.

The theories of Qabbalism are inextricably interwoven with the tenets of alchemy, Hermeticism, Rosicrucianism, and Freemasonry. The words Qabbalism and Hermeticism are now considered as synonymous terms covering all the arcana and esotericism of antiquity. The simple Qabbalism of the first centuries of the Christian Era gradually evolved into an elaborate theological system, which became so involved that it was next to impossible to comprehend its dogma.

The Qabbalists divided the uses of their sacred science into five sections. The Natural Qabbalah was used solely to assist the investigator in his study of Nature's mysteries. The Analogical Qabbalah was formulated to exhibit the relationship which exists between all things in Nature, and it revealed to the wise that all creatures and substances were one in essence, and that man--the Little Universe--was a replica in miniature of God--the Great Universe. The Contemplative Qabbalah was evolved for the purpose of revealing through the higher intellectual faculties the mysteries of the celestial spheres. By its aid the abstract reasoning faculties cognized the measureless planes of infinity and learned to know the creatures existing within them. The Astrological Qabbalah instructed those who studied its lore in the power, magnitude, and actual substance of the sidereal bodies, and also revealed the mystical constitution of the planet itself. The fifth, or Magical Qabbalah, was studied by such as desired to gain control over the demons and subhuman intelligences of the invisible worlds. It was also highly valued as a method of healing the sick by talismans, amulets, charms, and invocations.

The Sepher Yetzirah, according to Adolph Franck, differs from other sacred books in that it does not explain the world and the phenomena of which it is the stage by leaning on the idea of God or by setting itself up as the interpreter of the supreme will. This ancient work rather reveals God by estimating His manifold handiwork. In preparing the Sepher Yetzirah for the consideration of the reader, five separate English translations have been compared. The resulting form, while it embodies the salient features of each, is not a direct translation from any one Hebrew or Latin text. Although the purpose was to convey the spirit rather than the letter of the ancient document, there are no wide deviations from the original rendition. So far as known, the first translation of the Sepher Yetzirah into English was made by the Rev. Dr. Isidor Kalisch, in 1877. (See Arthur Edward Waite.) In this translation the Hebrew text accompanies the English words. The work of Dr. Kalisch has been used as the foundation of the following interpretation, but material from other authorities has been incorporated and many passages have been rewritten to simplify the general theme.

At hand also was a manuscript copy in English of the Book of the Cabalistick Art, by Doctor John Pistor. The document is undated; but judging from the general type of the writing, the copy was made during the eighteenth century. The third volume used as a reference was the Sepher Yetzirah, by the late Win. Wynn Westcott, Magus of the Rosicrucian Society of England. The fourth was the Sepher Yetzirah, or The Book of Creation, according to the translation in the Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East, edited by Prof. Charles F. Horne. The fifth was a recent publication, The Book of Formation, by Knut Stenring, containing an introduction by Arthur Edward Waite. At hand also were four other copies--two German, one Hebrew, and one Latin. Certain portions of the Sepher Yetzirah are considered older and more authentic than the rest, bur the controversy regarding them is involved and nonproductive that it is useless to add further comment. The doubtful passages are therefore included in the document at the points where they would naturally fall.

THE SEPHER YETZIRAH, THE BOOK OF FORMATION

Chapter One

1. YAH, the Lord of Hosts, the living Elohim, King of the Universe, Omnipotent, the Merciful and Gracious God, Supreme and Extolled, Dweller in the Height whose habitation is Eternity, who is Sublime and Most-Holy, engraved His name and ordained (formed) and created the Universe in thirty-two mysterious paths (stages) of wisdom (science), by three Sepharim, namely, Numbers, Letters, and Sounds, which are in Him one and the same.

2. Ten Sephiroth (ten properties from the Ineffable One) and twenty-two letters are the Foundation of all things. Of these twenty-two letters three are called "Mothers," sewn "Double," and twelve "Simple."

3. The ten numbers (Sephiroth) out of Nothing are analogous to the ten fingers and the ten toes: five over against five. In the center between them is the covenant with the Only One God. In the spiritual world it is the covenant of the voice (the Word), and in the corporeal world the circumcision of the flesh (the rite of Abraham).

4. Ten are the numbers (of the Sephiroth) out of Nothing, ten--not nine; ten--not eleven. Comprehend this great, wisdom, understand this knowledge and be wise. Inquire into the mystery and ponder it. Examine all things by means of the ten Sephiroth. Restore the Word to Its Creator and lead the Creator back to His throne again. He is the only Formator and beside Him there is no other. His attributes are ten and are without limit.

5. The ten ineffable Sephiroth have ten infinitudes, which are as follows:

The infinite beginning and the infinite end;
The infinite good and the infinite evil;
The infinite height and the infinite depth;
The infinite East and the infinite West;
The infinite North and the infinite South;
and over them is the Lord Superlatively One, the faithful King. He rules over all in all from His holy habitation for ages of ages.
6. The appearance of the ten spheres (Sephiroth) out of Nothing is as a flash of lightning or a sparkling flame, and they are without beginning or end. The Word of God is in them when they go forth and when they return. They run by His order like a whirlwind and prostrate themselves before His throne.

7. The ten Sephiroth have their end linked to their beginning and their beginning linked to their end, cojoined as the flame is wedded to the live coal, for the Lord is Superlatively One and to Him there is no second. Before One what can you count?

8. Concerning the number (10) of the spheres of existence (Sephiroth) out of Nothing, seal up your lips and guard your heart as you consider them, and if your month opens for utterance and your heart turns towards thought, control them, returning to silence. So it is written: "And the living creatures ran and returned." (Ezekiel i. 14.) And on this wise was the covenant made with us,

9. These are the ten emanations of number out of Nothing:

1st. The spirit of the living Elohim, blessed and more than blessed be the living Elohim of ages. His Voice, His Spirit, and His Word are the Holy Spirit.

2nd. He produced air from the spirit and in the air. He formed and established twenty-two sounds--the letters. Three of them were fundamental, or mothers; seven were double; and twelve were simple (single); but the spirit is the first one and above all.

3rd. Primordial water He extracted from the air. He formed therein twenty-two letters and established them out of mud and loam, making them like a border, putting them up like a wall, and surrounding them as with a rampart. He poured snow upon them and it became earth, as it reads: "He said to the snow be thou earth." (Job. xxxvii. 6.)

4th. Fire (ether) He drew forth from the water. He engraved and established by it the Throne of Glory. He fashioned the Seraphim, the Ophanim, and the Holy Living Creatures (Cherubim?), as His ministering angels; and with (of) these three He formed His habitation, as it reads: "Who made His angels spirits, His ministers a flaming fire." (Psalms civ. 4.)

By arranging the four letters of the Great Name, י ה ו ה, (I H V H), in the form of the Pythagorean Tetractys, the 72 powers of the Great Name of God are manifested.

5th. He selected three consonants (I, H, V) from the simple ones--a secret belonging to the three mothers, or first elements; א מ ש (A, M, Sh), air, water, fire (ether). He sealed them with His spirit and fashioned them into a Great Name and with this sealed the universe in six directions. He turned towards the above and sealed the height with י ה ו (I, H, V).

6th. He turned towards the below and sealed the depth withה י ו (H, I, V).

7th. He turned forward and sealed the East with ו י ה (V, I, H).

8th. He turned backward and sealed the West with ו ה י (V H, I).

9th. He turned to the right and sealed the South with י ו ה (I, V, H).

10th. He turned to the left and sealed the North with ה ו י (H, V, I).

NOTE. This arrangement of the letters of the Great Name is according to the Rev. Dr. Isidor Kalisch.

10. These are the ten ineffable existences out of nothing; From the spirit of the Living God emanated air; from the air, water; from the water, fire (ether); from the fire, the height and the depth, the East and the West, the North and the South.

Chapter Two

1. There are twenty-two basic (sounds and) letters. Three are the first elements (water, air, fire), fundamentals, or mothers; seven are double letters; and twelve are simple letters. The three fundamental letters א מ ש have as their basis the balance. At one end of the scale are the virtues and at the other the vices, placed in equilibrium by the tongue. Of the fundamental letters מ (M) is mute like the water, ש (Sh) hissing like fire, א (A) a reconciling breath between them. t

2. The twenty-two basic letters having been designed, appointed, and established by God, He combined, weighed, and exchanged them (each with the others), and formed by them all beings which are in existence, and all which will be formed in time to come.

3. He established twenty-two basic letters, formed by the voice and impressed upon the air by the breath. He set them to be audibly uttered in five different parts of the human mouth: namely, Gutturals, א ה ח ע; Palatals, ג י כ ק; Linguals, ד ט ל נ ת Dentals, ז ש ס ר ץ; Labials, ב ו מ ף.

4. He fixed the twenty-two basic letters in a ring (sphere) like a wall with two hundred and thirty-one gates, and turned the sphere forward and backward. Turned forward, the sphere signified good; when reversed, evil. Three letters may serve for an illustration: There is nothing better than ע נ ג (O, N, G), pleasure (joy), and nothing worse than נ ג ע (N, G, O), plague (sorrow).

5. How was it all accomplished? He combined, weighed, and changed: the א (A) with all the other letters in succession, and all the others again with א (A), and all again with ב (B); and so with the whole series of letters. Hence it follows that there are two hundred and thirty-one formations, or gates, through which the powers of the letters go forth; every creature and every language proceeded from One Name and the combinations of its letters.

6. He created a reality out of Nothing. He called the nonentity into existence and hewed colossal pillars from intangible air. This has been shown by the example of combining the letter א (A) with all the other letters, and all the other letters with א. By speaking He created every creature and every word by the power of One Name. As an illustration, consider the twenty-two elementary substances from the primitive substance of א. The production of every creature from the twenty-two letters is proof that they are in reality the twenty-two parts of one living body.

Chapter Three

1. The first three elements (the Mother letters, א מ ש) resemble a balance, in one scale virtue and in the other vice, placed in equilibrium by the tongue.

2. The three Mothers, א מ ש, enclose a great, wonderful, and unknown mystery, and are sealed by six wings (or elementary circles), namely, air, water, fire--each divided into an active and a passive power. The Mothers, א מ ש, gave birth to the Fathers (the progenitors), and these gave birth to the generations.

3. God appointed and established three Mothers, א מ ש, combined, weighed, and exchanged them, forming by them three Mothers, in the universe, in the year, and in man (male and female).

4. The three Mothers, א מ ש, in the universe are: air, water, and fire. Heaven was created from the elementary fire (or ether) ש, the earth, comprising sea and land, from the elementary water, מ, and the atmospheric air from the elementary air, or spirit, א, which establishes the balance among them. Thus were all things produced.

5. The three Mothers, א מ ש, produce in the year heat, coldness, and the temperate state. Heat was created from fire, coldness from water, and the temperate state from air, which equilibrates them.

6. The three Mothers, א מ ש, produce in man (male and female) breast, abdomen, and head. The head was formed from the fire, ש; the abdomen from the water, מ; and the breast (thorax) from air, א, which places them in equilibrium.

7. God let the letter א (A) predominate in primordial air, crowned it, combined it with the other two, and sealed the air in the universe, the temperate state in the year, and the breast in man (male and female).

8. He let the letter מ (M) predominate in primordial water, crowned it, combined it with the other two, and sealed the earth in the universe (including land and sea), coldness in the year, and the abdomen in man (male and female).

9. He let the letter ש (Sh) predominate in primordial fire, crowned it, combined it with the other two, and sealed heaven in the universe, heat in the year, and the head of man (male and female).

Chapter Four

1. The seven double letters, ב ג ד כ פ ר ת (B, G, D, K, P, R, Th), have a duplicity of pronunciation (two voices), aspirated and unaspirated, namely: פּ ת, רּ ר, פּ פ, כּ כ, דּ ד, גּ גThey serve as a model of softness and hardness, strength and weakness.

2. The seven double letters symbolize wisdom, riches, fertility life, power, peace, and grace.

3. The seven double letters also signify the antitheses to which human life is exposed. The opposite of wisdom is foolishness; of riches, poverty; of fertility, sterility; of life, death; of power, servitude; of peace, war; and of beauty, deformity.

4. The seven double letters point out the six dimensions, height, depth, East and West, North and South, and the Holy Temple in the center, which sustains them all.

5. The double letters are seven and not six, they are seven and not eight; reflect upon this fact, search into it and reveal its hidden mystery and place the Creator on His throne again.

6. The seven double letters having been designed, established, purified, weighed, and exchanged by God, He formed of them seven planets in the universe, seven days in the Year, and seven gateways of the senses in man (male and female). From these seven He also produced seven heavens, seven earths, and seven Sabbaths. Therefore He loved seven more than any other number beneath His throne.

7. The seven planets in the universe are: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, and Moon. The seven days in the Year are the seven days of the week (possibly the seven creative days are meant). The seven gateways in man (male and female) are two eyes, two ears, two nostrils, and the mouth.

8. NOTE. Knut Stenring differs from other authorities in his arrangement of the planets and days of the week in the following seven stanzas. Kircher has still a different order. Rev. Dr. Isidor Kalisch, Wm. Wynn Westcott, and The Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East adopt the following arrangement.

1st. He caused the letter. ב (B) to predominate in wisdom, crowned it, combined each with the others, and formed by them the Moon in the universe, the first day in the year, and the right eye in man (male and female).

2nd. He caused the letter ג (G) to predominate in riches, crowned it, combined each with the others, and formed by them Mars in the universe, the second day in the year, and the right ear in man (male and female).

3rd. He caused the letter ד (D) to predominate infertility, crowned it, combined each with the others, and formed by them the Sun in the universe, the third day in the year, and the right nostril in man (male and female).

4th. He caused the letterכ (K) to predominate in life, crowned it, combined each with the others, and formed by them Venus in the universe, the fourth day in the year, and the left eye in man (male and female).

5th. He caused the letter פ (P) to predominate in power, crowned it, combined each with the others, and formed by them Mercury in the universe, the fifth day in the year, and the left ear in man (male and female).

6th. He caused the letter ר (R) to predominate in peace, crowned it, combined each with the others, and formed by them Saturn in the universe, the sixth day in the year, and the left nostril in man (male and female).

7th. He caused the letter ת (Th) to predominate in grace, crowned it, combined each with the others, and formed by them Jupiter in the universe, the seventh day in the year, and the mouth of man (male and female).

9. With the seven double letters He also designed seven earths, seven heavens, seven continents, seven seas, seven rivers, seven deserts, seven days, seven weeks (from Passover to Pentecost), and in the midst of them His Holy Palace. There is a cycle of seven years and the seventh is the release year, and after seven release years is the Jubilee. For this reason God loves the number seven more than any other thing under the heavens.

10. In this manner God joined the seven double letters together. Two stones build two houses, three stones build six houses, four stones build twenty-four houses, five stones build 120 houses, six stones build 720 houses, and seven stones build 5,040 houses. Make a beginning according to this arrangement and reckon further than the mouth can express or the ear can hear.

Chapter Five

1. The twelve simple letters ה ו ז ח ט י ל נ ס ע צ ק (H, V, Z, Ch, T, I, L, N, S, O, Tz, Q) symbolize the twelve fundamental properties: speech, thought, movement, sight, hearing, work, coition, smell, sleep, anger, taste (or swallowing), and mirth.

2. The simple letters correspond to twelve directions: east height, northeast, east depth; south height, southeast, south depth; west height, southwest, west depth; north height, northwest, north depth. They diverge to all eternity and are the arms of the universe.

3. The simple letters having been designed, established, weighed, and exchanged by God, He produced by them twelve zodiacal signs in the universe, twelve months in the year, and twelve chief organs in ` human body (male and female).

4, The signs of the zodiac are: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces. The months of the year are: Nisan, liar, Sivan, Tammuz, Ab, Elul, Tisri, Marcheshvan, Kislev, Tebet, Sebat, and Adar. The organs of the human body are: two hands, two feet, two kidneys, gall, small intestine, liver, esophagus, stomach, and spleen.

5. NOTE. In the following twelve stanzas, Knut Stenring again differs, this time as to the arrangement of properties:

1st. God caused the letter ה (H) to predominate in speech, crowned it, combined it with the others, and fashioned by them Aries (the Ram) in the universe, the month Nisan in the year, and the right foot of the human body (male and female).

2nd. He caused the letter ו (V) to predominate in thought, crowned it, combined it with the others, and fashioned by them Taurus (the Bull) in the universe, the month liar in the year, and the right kidney of the human body (male and female).

3rd. He caused the letter ז (Z) to predominate in movement, crowned it, combined it with the others, and fashioned by them Gemini (the Twins) in the universe, the month Sivan in the year, and the left foot of the human body (male and female).

4th. He caused the letter ח (Ch) to predominate in sight, crowned it, combined it with the others, and fashioned by them Cancer (the Crab) in the universe, the month Tammuz in the year, and the right hand of the human body (male and female).

5th. He caused the letter ט (T) to predominate in hearing, crowned it, combined it with the others, and fashioned by them Leo (the Lion) in the universe, the month Ab in the year, and the left kidney of the human body (male and female).

6th. He caused the letter י (I) to predominate in work, crowned it, combined it with the others, and fashioned by them Virgo (the Virgin) in the universe, the month Elul in the year, and the left hand of the human body (male and female).

7th. He caused the letter ל (L) to predominate in coition, crowned it, combined it with the others, and fashioned by them Libra (the Balance) in the universe, the month Tisri in the year, and the gall of the human body (male and female).

8th. He caused the letter נ (N) to predominate in smell, crowned it, combined it with the others, and fashioned by them Scorpio (the Scorpion) in the universe, the month Marcheshvan in the year, and the small intestine in the human body (male and female).

9th. He caused the letter ס (S) to predominate in sleep, crowned it, combined it with the others, and fashioned by them Sagittarius (the Archer) in the universe, the month Kislev in the year, and the stomach in the human body (male and female).

10th. He caused the letter ע (O) to predominate in anger, crowned it, combined it with the others, and fashioned by them Capricorn (the Goat) in the universe, the month Tebet in the year, and the liver in the human body (male and female).

11th. He caused the letter צ (Tz) to predominate in taste (or swallowing), crowned it, combined it with the others, and fashioned by them Aquarius (the Water Bearer) in the universe, the month Sebat in the year, and the esophagus in the human body (male and female).

12th. He caused the letter ק (Q) to predominate in mirth, crowned it, combined it with the others, and fashioned by them Pisces (the Fishes) in the universe, the month Adar in the year, and the spleen in the human body (male and female).

6. He made them as a conflict, He arranged them as provinces and drew them up like a wall. He armed them and set one against another as in warfare. (The Elohim did likewise in the other spheres.)

Chapter Six

1. There are three Mothers or first elements, א מ ש (A, M, Sh), from which emanated three Fathers (progenitors)--primordial (spiritual) air, water, and fire--from which issued the seven planets (heavens) with their angels, and the twelve oblique points (zodiac).

2. To prove this there are three faithful witnesses: the universe, the year, and man. There are the twelve, the balance, and the seven. Above is the Dragon, below is the world, and lastly the heart of man; and in the midst is God who regulates them all.

3. The first elements are air, water, and fire; the fire is above, the water is below, and a breath of air establishes balance between them. The token is: the fire carries the water. The letterמ (M) is mute; ש (Sh) is hissing like fire; there is א (A) among them, a breath of air which reconciles the two.

4. The Dragon (Tali) is in the universe like a king upon his throne; the celestial sphere is in the year like a king in his empire; and the heart is in the body of men like a king in warfare.

5. God also set the opposites against each other: the good against the evil, and the evil against the good. Good proceeds from good, evil from evil; the good purifies the bad, the bad the good. The good is reserved for the good, and the evil for the wicked.

6. There are three of which each stands by itself: one is in the affirmative (filled with good), one is in the negative (filled with evil), and the third equilibrates them.

7. There are seven divided three against three, and one in the midst of them (balance). Twelve stand in warfare: three produce love and three hatred; three are life-givers and three are destroyers.

8. The three that cause love are the heart and the two ears; the three that produce hatred are the liver, the gall, and the tongues; the three life-givers are the two nostrils and the spleen; and the three destroyers are the mouth and the two lower openings of the body. Over all these rules God, the faithful king, from His holy habitation in all eternity. God is One above three, three are above seven, seven are above twelve, yet all are linked together.

9. There are twenty-two letters by which the I AM (YAH), the Lord of Hosts, Almighty and Eternal, designed and created by three Sepharim (Numbers, Letters, and Sounds) His universe, and formed by them all creatures and all those things that are yet to come.

10. When the Patriarch Abraham had comprehended the great truths, meditated upon them, and understood them perfectly, the Lord of the Universe (the Tetragrammaton) appeared to him, called him His friend, kissed him upon the head, and made with him a covenant. First, the covenant was between the ten fingers of his hands, which is the covenant of the tongue (spiritual); second, the covenant was between the ten toes of his feet, which is the covenant of circumcision (material); and God said of him, "Before Abraham bound the spirit of the twenty-two letters (the Thora) upon his tongue and God disclosed to him their secrets. God permitted the letters to be immersed in water, He burned them in the fire and imprinted them upon the winds. He distributed them among the seven planets and gave them to the twelve zodiacal signs.

Mystical Qabalah

A Culture In Decline

2012-10-27T10:38:00.004-05:00

Peter Joseph is an independent filmmaker and social activist. He has written, directed, narrated, scored and produced three documentary films called Zeitgeist: The Movie (2007), Zeitgeist: Addendum (2008) and Zeitgeist: Moving Forward (2011). He is the founder of the Zeitgeist Movement and on the Steering Committee of "Project Peace on Earth." [wikipedia]

America clocked up a record last week. The latest drop in house prices meant that the cost of real estate has fallen by 33% since the peak – even bigger than the 31% slide seen when John Steinbeck was writing The Grapes of Wrath.

Unemployment has not returned to Great Depression levels but at 9.1% of the workforce it is still at levels that will have nerves jangling in the White House. The last president to be re-elected with unemployment above 7.2% was Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

The US is a country with serious problems. Getting on for one in six depend on government food stamps to ensure they have enough to eat. The budget, which was in surplus little more than a decade ago, now has a deficit of Greek-style proportions. There is policy paralysis in Washington.

The assumption is that the problems can be easily solved because the US is the biggest economy on the planet, the only country with global military reach, the lucky possessor of the world's reserve currency, and a nation with a proud record of re-inventing itself once in every generation or so.

All this is true and more. US universities are superb, attracting the best brains from around the world. It is a country that pushes the frontiers of technology. So, it may be that the US is about to emerge stronger than ever from the long nightmare of the sub-prime mortgage crisis. The strong financial position of American companies could unleash a wave of new investment over the next couple of years.

Let me put an alternative hypothesis. America in 2011 is Rome in 200AD or Britain on the eve of the first world war: an empire at the zenith of its power but with cracks beginning to show.

The experience of both Rome and Britain suggests that it is hard to stop the rot once it has set in, so here are the a few of the warning signs of trouble ahead: military overstretch, a widening gulf between rich and poor, a hollowed-out economy, citizens using debt to live beyond their means, and once-effective policies no longer working. The high levels of violent crime, epidemic of obesity, addiction to pornography and excessive use of energy may be telling us something: the US is in an advanced state of cultural decadence.

Empires decline for many different reasons but certain factors recur. There is an initial reluctance to admit that there is much to fret about, and there is the arrival of a challenger (or several challengers) to the settled international order. In Spain's case, the rival was Britain. In Britain's case, it was America. In America's case, the threat comes from China.

Britain's decline was extremely rapid after 1914. By 1945, the UK was a bit player in the bipolar world dominated by the US and the Soviet Union, and sterling – the heart of the 19th-century gold standard – was rapidly losing its lustre as a reserve currency. There had been concerns, voiced as far back as the 1851 Great Exhibition, that the hungrier, more efficient producers in Germany and the US threatened Britain's industrial hegemony. But no serious policy action was taken. In the second half of the 19th century there was a subtle shift in the economy, from the north of England to the south, from manufacturing to finance, from making things to living off investment income. By 1914, the writing was on the wall.

In two important respects, the US today differs from Britain a century ago. It is much bigger, which means that it benefits from continent-wide economies of scale, and it has a presence in the industries that will be strategically important in the first half of the 21st century. Britain in 1914 was over-reliant on coal and shipbuilding, industries that struggled between the world wars, and had failed to grasp early enough the importance of emerging new technologies.

Even so, there are parallels. There has been a long-term shift of emphasis in the US economy away from manufacturing and towards finance. There is a growing challenge from producers in other parts of the world.

Frenzy

Now consider the stark contrast between this economic recovery and the pattern of previous cycles. Traditionally, a US economic recovery sees unemployment coming down smartly as lower interest rates encourage consumers to spend and the construction industry to build more homes. This time, it has been different. There was a building frenzy during the bubble years, which left an overhang of supply even before plunging prices and rising unemployment led to a blitz of foreclosures.

America has more homes than it knows what to do with, and that state of affairs is not going to change for years.

Over the past couple of months, there has been a steady drip-feed of poor economic news that has dented hopes of a sustained recovery. Optimism has now been replaced by concern that the United States could be heading for the dreaded double-dip recession.

In the real estate market, which is the symptom of America's deep-seated economic malaise, the double dip has already arrived. Tax breaks to homeowners provided only a temporary respite for a falling market and millions of Americans are living in homes worth less than they paid for them. The latest figures show that more than 28% of homes with a mortgage are in negative equity. Unsurprisingly, that has made Americans far more cautious about spending money. Rising commodity prices exacerbate the problem, since they push up inflation and reduce the spending power of wages and salaries.

Macro-economic policy has proved less effective than normal. That's not for want of trying, though. The US has had zero short-term interest rates for well over two years. It has had two big doses of quantitative easing, the second of which is now ending. Its budget deficit is so big it has led to warnings from the credit-rating agencies, in spite of the dollar's reserve currency status. And Washington has adopted a policy of benign neglect towards the currency, despite the strong-dollar rhetoric, in the hope that cheaper exports will make up for the squeeze on consumer spending.

Policy, as ever, is geared towards growth because the great existential fear of the Fed, the Treasury and whoever occupies the White House is a return to the 1930s. Back then, the economic malaise could be largely attributed to deflationary economic policies that deepened the recession caused by the popping of the 1920s stock market bubble. The feeble response to today's growth medicine suggests that the US is structurally far weaker than it was in the 1930s. Tackling these weaknesses will require breaking finance's stranglehold over the economy and measures to boost ordinary families' spending power and so cut their reliance on debt. It will require an amnesty for the housing market. Above all, America must rediscover the qualities that originally made it great. That will not be easy.

Age of Greed: The Triumph of Finance and the Decline of America, 1970 to the Present (Vintage)

Source Material;
Larry Elliott, Economics editor
The Guardian
http://gu.com/p/2phf8

2012-10-26T13:06:00.003-05:00

The Masonic Legend of Hiram Abiff

The tale of Hiram Abiff as passed down in Masonic Lodges underpins the third degree. It starts with his arrival in Jerusalem, and his appointment by Solomon as chief architect and master of works at the construction of his temple. As the temple is nearing completion, three fellowcraft masons from the workforce ambush him as he is alone in the building, demanding the secrets of a master mason. Hiram is challenged by each in turn, and at each refusal to divulge the information his assailant strikes him with a mason's tool (differing between jurisdictions). He is injured thus at the South and North entrances (leading to the ante-rooms in the wooden construction surrounding the temple proper), and finally at the main entrance in the East he is struck dead.[8] His murderers hide his body under a pile of rubble, returning at night to move the body outside the city, where they bury it in a shallow grave marked with a sprig of acacia. As the Master is missed the next day, Solomon sends out a group of fellowcraft masons to search for him. The loose acacia is accidentally discovered, and the body exhumed to be given a decent burial. The hiding place of the "three ruffians" is also discovered, and they are brought to justice. Solomon informs his workforce that the secrets of a master mason are now lost, and replaces them with the gestures and ejaculations of the masons who discovered his body.[9] Such is the general legend as related in the Anglo-American jurisdictions. [Wikipedia]

WHEN Solomon--the beloved of God, builder of the Everlasting House, and Grand Master of the Lodge of Jerusalem--ascended the throne of his father David he consecrated his life to the erection of a temple to God and a palace for the kings of Israel. David's faithful friend, Hiram, King of Tyre, hearing that a son of David sat upon the throne of Israel, sent messages of congratulation and offers of assistance to the new ruler. In his History of the Jews, Josephus mentions that copies of the letters passing between the two kings were then to be seen both at Jerusalem and at Tyre. Despite Hiram's lack of appreciation for the twenty cities of Galilee which Solomon presented to him upon the completion of the temple, the two monarchs remained the best of friends. Both were famous for their wit and wisdom, and when they exchanged letters each devised puzzling questions to test the mental ingenuity of the other. Solomon made an agreement with Hiram of Tyre promising vast amounts of barley, wheat, corn, wine, and oil as wages for the masons and carpenters from Tyre who were to assist the Jews in the erection of the temple. Hiram also supplied cedars and other fine trees, which were made into rafts and floated down the sea to Joppa, whence they were taken inland by Solomon's workmen to the temple site.

Because of his great love for Solomon, Hiram of Tyre sent also the Grand Master of the Dionysiac Architects, CHiram Abiff, a Widow's Son, who had no equal among the craftsmen of the earth. CHiram is described as being "a Tyrian by birch, but of Israelitish descent," and "a second Bezaleel, honored by his king with the title of Father." The Freemason's Pocket Companion (published in 1771) describes CHiram as "the most cunning, skilful and curious workman that ever lived, whose abilities were not confined to building alone, but extended to all kinds of work, whether in gold, silver, brass or iron; whether in linen, tapestry, or embroidery; whether considered as an architect, statuary [sic]; founder or designer, separately or together, he equally excelled. From his designs, and under his direction, all the rich and splendid furniture of the Temple and its several appendages were begun, carried on, and finished. Solomon appointed him, in his absence, to fill the chair, as Deputy Grand-Master; and in his presence, Senior Grand-Warden, Master of work, and general overseer of all artists, as well those whom David had formerly procured from Tyre and Sidon, as those Hiram should now send." (Modem Masonic writers differ as to the accuracy of the last sentence.)

Although an immense amount of labor was involved in its construction, Solomon's Temple--in the words of George Oliver--"was only a small building and very inferior in point of size to some of our churches." The number of buildings contiguous to it and the vast treasure of gold and precious stones used in its construction concentrated a great amount of wealth within the temple area. In the midst of the temple stood the Holy of Holies, sometimes called the Oracle. It was an exact cube, each dimension being twenty cubits, and exemplified the influence of Egyptian symbolism. The buildings of the temple group were ornamented with 1,453 columns of Parian marble, magnificently sculptured, and 2,906 pilasters decorated with capitals. There was a broad porch facing the east, and the sanctum sanctorum was upon the west. According to tradition, the various buildings and courtyards could hold in all 300,000 persons. Both the Sanctuary and the Holy of Holies were entirely lined with solid gold plates encrusted with jewels.

King Solomon began the building of the temple in the fourth year of his reign on what would be, according to modern calculation, the 21st day of April, and finished it in the eleventh year of his reign on the 23rd day of October. The temple was begun in the 480th year after the children of Israel had passed the Red Sea. Part of the labor of construction included the building of an artificial foundation on the brow of Mount Moriah. The stones for the temple were hoisted from quarries directly beneath Mount Moriah and were trued before being brought to the surface. The brass and golden ornaments for the temple were cast in molds in the clay ground between Succoth and Zeredatha, and the wooden parts were all finished before they reached the temple site. The building was put together, consequently, without sound and without instruments, all its parts fitting exactly "without the hammer of contention, the axe of division, or any tool of mischief."

Anderson's much-discussed Constitutions of the Free-Masons, published in London in 1723, and reprinted by Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia in 1734, thus describes the division of the laborers engaged in the building of the Everlasting House:

"But Dagon's Temple, and the finest structures of Tyre and Sidon, could not be compared with the Eternal God's Temple at Jerusalem, * * * there were employed about it no less than 3,600 Princes, or Master-Masons, to conduct the work according to Solomon's directions, with 80,000 hewers of stone in the mountain, or Fellow Craftsmen, and 70,000 labourers, in all 153,600 besides the levy under Adoniram to work in the mountains of Lebanon by turns with the Sidonians, viz., 30,000, being in all 183,600."

Daniel Sickels gives 3,300 overseers, instead of 3,600, and lists the three Grand Masters separately. The same author estimates the cost of the temple at nearly four thousand millions of dollars.

The Masonic legend of the building of Solomon's Temple does not in every particular parallel the Scriptural version, especially in those portions relating to CHiram Abiff. According to the Biblical account, this Master workman returned to his own country; in the Masonic allegory he is foully murdered. On this point A. E. Waite, in his New Encyclopædia of Freemasonry, makes the following explanatory comment:

"The legend of the Master-Builder is the great allegory of Masonry. It happens that his figurative story is grounded on the fact of a personality mentioned in Holy Scripture, but this historical background is of the accidents and not the essence; the significance is in the allegory and not in any point of history which may lie behind it."

CHiram, as Master of the Builders, divided his workmen into three groups, which were termed Entered Apprentices, Fellow-Craftsmen, and Master Masons. To each division he gave certain passwords and signs by which their respective excellence could be quickly determined. While all were classified according to their merits some were dissatisfied, for they desired a more exalted position than they were capable of filling. At last three Fellow-Craftsmen, more daring than their companions, determined to force CHiram to reveal to them the password of the Master's degree. Knowing that CHiram always went into the unfinished sanctum sanctorum at high noon to pray, these ruffians--whose names were Jubela, Jubelo, and Jubelum--lay in wait for him, one at each of the main gates of the temple. CHiram, about to leave the temple by the south gate, was suddenly confronted by Jubela armed with a twenty-four-inch gauge. Upon CHiram's refusal to reveal the Master's Word, the ruffian struck him on the throat with the rule, and the wounded Master then hastened to the west gate, where Jubelo, armed with a square, awaited him and made a similar demand. Again CHiram was silent, and the second assassin struck him on the breast with the square. CHiram thereupon staggered to the east gate, only to be met there by Jubelum armed with a maul. When CHiram, refused him the Master's Word, Jubelum struck the Master between the eyes with the mallet and CHiram fell dead.

The body of CHiram was buried by the murderers over the brow of Mount Moriah and a sprig of acacia placed upon the grave. The murderers then sought to escape punishment for their crime by embarking for Ethiopia, but the port was closed. All three were finally captured, and after admitting their guilt were duly executed. Parties of three were then sent out by King Solomon, and one of these groups discovered the newly made grave marked by the evergreen sprig. After the Entered Apprentices and the Fellow-Craftsmen had failed to resurrect their Master from the dead he was finally raised by the Master Mason with the "strong grip of a Lion's Paw."

To the initiated Builder the name CHiram Abiff signifies "My Father, the Universal Spirit, one in essence, three in aspect." Thus the murdered Master is a type of the Cosmic Martyr--the crucified Spirit of Good, the dying god--whose Mystery is celebrated throughout the world. Among the manuscripts of Dr. Sigismund Bastrom, the initiated Rosicrucian, appears the following extract from von Welling concerning the true philosophic nature of the Masonic CHiram:

"The original word חירם, CHiram, is a radical word consisting of three consonants ח ר and ם i. e. Cheth, Resh and Mem. (1) ח, Cheth, signifies Chamah, the Sun's light, i. e. the Universal, invisible, cold fire of Nature attracted by the Sun, manifested into light and sent down to us and to every planetary body belonging to the solar system. (2) ר, Resh, signifies ריח Ruach, i. e. Spirit, air, wind, as being the Vehicle which conveys and collects the light into numberless Foci, wherein the solar rays of light are agitated by a circular motion and manifested in Heat and burning Fire. (3) ם, or מ Mem, signifies majim, water, humidity, but rather the mother of water, i. e. Radical Humidity or a particular kind of condensed air. These three constitute the Universal Agent or fire of Nature in one word, חירם, CHiram, not Hiram."

Albert Pike mentions several forms of the name CHiram: Khirm, Khurm, and Khur-Om, the latter ending in the sacred Hindu monosyllable OM, which may also be extracted from the names of the three murderers. Pike further relates the three ruffians to a triad of stars in the constellation of Libra and also calls attention to the fact that the Chaldean god Bal--metamorphosed into a demon by the Jews--appears in the name of each of the murderers, Jubela, Jubelo, and Jubelum. To interpret the Hiramic legend requires familiarity with both the Pythagorean and Qabbalistic systems of numbers and letters, and also the philosophic and astronomic cycles of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Brahmins. For example, consider the number 33. The first temple of Solomon stood for thirty-three years in its pristine splendor. At the end of that time it was pillaged by the Egyptian King Shishak, and finally (588 B.C.) it was completely destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar and the people of Jerusalem were led into captivity to Babylon. (See General History of Freemasonry, by Robert Macoy.) Also King David ruled for thirty-three years in Jerusalem; the Masonic Order is divided into thirty-three symbolic degrees; there are thirty-three segments in the human spinal column; and Jesus was crucified in the thirty-third year of His life.

The efforts made to discover the origin of the Hiramic legend show that, while the legend in its present form is comparatively modem, its underlying principles run back to remotest antiquity. It is generally admitted by modem Masonic scholars that the story of the martyred CHiram is based upon the Egyptian rites of Osiris, whose death and resurrection figuratively portrayed the spiritual death of man and his regeneration through initiation into the Mysteries. CHiram is also identified with Hermes through the inscription on the Emerald Table. From these associations it is evident that CHiram is to be considered as a prototype of humanity; in fact he is Plato's Idea (archetype) of man. As Adam after the Fall symbolizes the Idea of human degeneration, so CHiram through his resurrection symbolizes the Idea of human regeneration.

On the 19th day of March, 1314, Jacques de Molay, the last Grand Master of the Knights Templars, was burned on a pyre erected upon that point of the islet of the Seine, at Paris, where afterwards was erected the statue of King Henry IV. (See The Indian Religions, by Hargrave Jennings.)

"It is mentioned as a tradition in some of the accounts of the burning," writes Jennings, "that Molay, ere he expired, summoned Clement, the Pope who had pronounced the bull of abolition against the Order and had condemned the Grand Master to the flames, to appear, within forty days, before the Supreme Eternal judge, and Philip [the king] to the same awful tribunal within the space of a year. Both predictions were fulfilled."

The close relationship between Freemasonry and the original Knights Templars has caused the story of CHiram to be linked with the martyrdom of Jacques de Molay. According to this interpretation, the three ruffians who cruelly slew their Master at the gates of the temple because he refused to reveal the secrets of his Order represent the Pope, the king, and the executioners. De Molay died maintaining his innocence and refusing to disclose the philosophical and magical arcana of the Templars.

Those who have sought to identify CHiram with the murdered King Charles the First conceive the Hiramic legend to have been invented for that purpose by Elias Ashmole, a mystical philosopher, who was probably a member of the Rosicrucian Fraternity. Charles was dethroned in 1647 and died on the block in 1649, leaving the Royalist party leaderless. An attempt has been made to relate the term "the Sons of the Widow" (an appellation frequently applied to members of the Masonic Order) to this incident in English history, for by the murder of her king England became a Widow and all Englishmen Widow's Sons.

To the mystic Christian Mason, CHiram. represents the Christ who in three days (degrees) raised the temple of His body from its earthly sepulcher. His three murderers were Cæsar's agent (the state), the Sanhedrin (the church), and the incited populace (the mob). Thus considered, CHiram becomes the higher nature of man and the murderers are ignorance, superstition, and fear. The indwelling Christ can give expression to Himself in this world only through man's thoughts, feelings, and actions. Right thinking, right feeling, and right action--these are three gates through which the Christ power passes into the material world, there to labor in the erection of the Temple of Universal Brotherhood. Ignorance, superstition, and fear are three ruffians through whose agencies the Spirit of Good is murdered and a false kingdom, controlled by wrong thinking, wrong feeling, and wrong action, established in its stead. In the material universe evil appears ever victorious.

"In this sense," writes Daniel Sickels, "the myth of the Tyrian is perpetually repeated in the history of human affairs. Orpheus was murdered, and his body thrown into the Hebrus; Socrates was made to drink the hemlock; and, in all ages, we have seen Evil temporarily triumphant, and Virtue and Truth calumniated, persecuted, crucified, and slain. But Eternal justice marches surely and swiftly through the world: the Typhons, the children of darkness, the plotters of crime, all the infinitely varied forms of evil, are swept into oblivion; and Truth and Virtue--for a time laid low--come forth, clothed with diviner majesty, and crowned with everlasting glory!" (See General Ahiman Rezon.)

If, as there is ample reason to suspect, the modern Freemasonic Order was profoundly influenced by, if it is not an actual outgrowth of, Francis Bacon's secret society, its symbolism is undoubtedly permeated with Bacon's two great ideals: universal education and universal democracy. The deadly enemies of universal education are ignorance, superstition, and fear, by which the human soul is held in bondage to the lowest part of its own constitution. The arrant enemies of universal democracy have ever been the crown, the tiara, and the torch. Thus CHiram symbolizes that ideal state of spiritual, intellectual, and physical emancipation which has ever been sacrificed upon the altar of human selfishness. CHiram is the Beautifier of the Eternal House. Modern utilitarianism, however, sacrifices the beautiful for the practical, in the same breath declaring the obvious lie that selfishness, hatred, and discord are practical.

Dr. Orville Ward Owen found a considerable part of the first thirty-two degrees of Freemasonic ritualism hidden in the text of the First Shakespeare Folio. Masonic emblems are to be observed also upon the title pages of nearly every book published by Bacon. Sir Francis Bacon considered himself as a living sacrifice upon the altar of human need; he was obviously cut down in the midst of his labors, and no student of his New Atlantis can fail to recognize the Masonic symbolism contained therein. According to the observations of Joseph Fort Newton, the Temple of Solomon described by Bacon in that utopian romance was not a house at all but the name of an ideal state. Is it not true that the Temple of Freemasonry is also emblematic of a condition of society? While, as before stated, the principles of the Hiramic legend are of the greatest antiquity, it is not impossible that its present form may be based upon incidents in the life of Lord Bacon, who passed through the philosophic death and was raised in Germany.

In an old manuscript appears the statement that the Freemasonic Order was formed by alchemists and Hermetic philosophers who had banded themselves together to protect their secrets against the infamous methods used by avaricious persons to wring from them the secret of gold-making. The fact that the Hiramic legend contains an alchemical formula gives credence to this story. Thus the building of Solomon's Temple represents the consummation of the magnum opus, which cannot be realized without the assistance of CHiram, the Universal Agent. The Masonic Mysteries teach the initiate how to prepare within his own soul a miraculous powder of projection by which it is possible for him to transmute the base lump of human ignorance, perversion, and discord into an ingot of spiritual and philosophic gold.

Sufficient similarity exists between the Masonic CHiram and the Kundalini of Hindu mysticism to warrant the assumption that CHiram may be considered a symbol also of the Spirit Fire moving through the sixth ventricle of the spinal column. The exact science of human regeneration is the Lost Key of Masonry, for when the Spirit Fire is lifted up through the thirty-three degrees, or segments of the spinal column, and enters into the domed chamber of the human skull, it finally passes into the pituitary body (Isis), where it invokes Ra (the pineal gland) and demands the Sacred Name. Operative Masonry, in the fullest meaning of that term, signifies the process by which the Eye of Horus is opened. E. A. Wallis Budge has noted that in some of the papyri illustrating the entrance of the souls of the dead into the judgment hall of Osiris the deceased person has a pine cone attached to the crown of his head. The Greek mystics also carried a symbolic staff, the upper end being in the form of a pine cone, which was called the thyrsus of Bacchus. In the human brain there is a tiny gland called the pineal body, which is the sacred eye of the ancients, and corresponds to the third eye of the Cyclops. Little is known concerning the function of the pineal body, which Descartes suggested (more wisely than he knew) might be the abode of the spirit of man. As its name signifies, the pineal gland is the sacred pine cone in man--the eye single, which cannot be opened until CHiram (the Spirit Fire) is raised through the sacred seals which are called the Seven Churches in Asia.

There is an Oriental painting which shows three sun bursts. One sunburst covers the head, in the midst of which sits Brahma with four heads, his body a mysterious dark color. The second sunburst--which covers the heart, solar plexus, and upper abdominal region--shows Vishnu sitting in the blossom of the lotus on a couch formed of the coils of the serpent of cosmic motion, its seven-hooded head forming a canopy over the god. The third sunburst is over the generative system, in the midst of which sits Shiva, his body a grayish white and the Ganges River flowing out of the crown of his head. This painting was the work of a Hindu mystic who spent many years subtly concealing great philosophical principles within these figures. The Christian legends could be related also to the human body by the same method as the Oriental, for the arcane meanings hidden in the teachings of both schools are identical.

As applied to Masonry, the three sunbursts represent the gates of the temple at which CHiram was struck, there being no gate in the north because the sun never shines from the northern angle of the heavens. The north is the symbol of the physical because of its relation to ice (crystallized water) and to the body (crystallized spirit). In man the light shines toward the north but never from it, because the body has no light of its own but shines with the reflected glory of the divine life-particles concealed within physical substance. For this reason the moon is accepted as the symbol of man's physical nature. CHiram is the mysterious fiery, airy water which must be raised through the three grand centers symbolized by the ladder with three rungs and the sunburst flowers mentioned in the description of the Hindu painting. It must also pass upward by means of the ladder of seven rungs-the seven plexuses proximate to the spine. The nine segments of the sacrum and coccyx are pierced by ten foramina, through which pass the roots of the Tree of Life. Nine is the sacred number of man, and in the symbolism of the sacrum and coccyx a great mystery is concealed. That part of the body from the kidneys downward was termed by the early Qabbalists the Land of Egypt into which the children of Israel were taken during the captivity. Out of Egypt, Moses (the illuminated mind, as his name implies) led the tribes of Israel (the twelve faculties) by raising the brazen serpent in the wilderness upon the symbol of the Tau cross. Not only CHiram but the god-men of nearly every pagan Mystery ritual are personifications of the Spirit Fire in the human spinal cord.

The astronomical aspect of the Hiramic legend must not be overlooked. The tragedy of CHiram is enacted annually by the sun during its passage through the signs of the zodiac.

"From the journey of the Sun through the twelve signs," writes Albert Pike, "come the legend of the twelve labors of Hercules, and the incarnations of Vishnu and Buddha. Hence came the legend of the murder of Khurum, representative of the Sun, by the three Fellow-Crafts, symbols of the Winter signs, Capricornus, Aquarius, and Pisces, who assailed him at the three gates of Heaven and slew him at the Winter Solstice. Hence the search for him by the nine Fellow-Crafts, the other nine signs, his finding, burial, and resurrection." (See Morals and Dogma.)

Other authors consider Libra, Scorpio, and Sagittarius as the three murderers of the sun, inasmuch as Osiris was murdered by Typhon, to whom were assigned the thirty degrees of the constellation of Scorpio. In the Christian Mysteries also Judas signifies the Scorpion, and the thirty pieces of silver for which he betrayed His Lord represent the number of degrees in that sign. Having been struck by Libra (the state), Scorpio (the church), and Sagittarius (the mob), the sun (CHiram) is secretly home through the darkness by the signs of Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces and buried over the brow of a hill (the vernal equinox). Capricorn has for its symbol an old man with a scythe in his hand. This is Father Time--a wayfarer--who is symbolized in Masonry as straightening out the ringlets of a young girl's hair. If the Weeping Virgin be considered a symbol of Virgo, and Father Time with his scythe a symbol of Capricorn, then the interval of ninety degrees between these two signs will be found to correspond to that occupied by the three murderers. Esoterically, the urn containing the ashes of CHiram represents the human heart. Saturn, the old man who lives at the north pole, and brings with him to the children of men a sprig of evergreen (the Christmas tree), is familiar to the little folks under the name of Santa Claus, for he brings each winter the gift of a new year.

The martyred sun is discovered by Aries, a Fellow-Craftsman, and at the vernal equinox the process of raising him begins. This is finally accomplished by the Lion of Judah, who in ancient times occupied the position of the keystone of the Royal Arch of Heaven. The precession of the equinoxes causes various signs to play the rôle of the murderers of the sun during the different ages of the world, but the principle involved remains unchanged. Such is the cosmic story of CHiram, the Universal Benefactor, the Fiery Architect: of the Divine House, who carries with him to the grave that Lost Word which, when spoken, raises all life to power and glory. According to Christian mysticism, when the Lost Word is found it is discovered in a stable, surrounded by beasts and marked by a star. "After the sun leaves Leo," writes Robert Hewitt Brown, "the days begin to grow unequivocally shorter as the sun declines toward the autumnal equinox, to be again slain by the three autumnal months, lie dead through the three winter ones, and be raised again by the three vernal ones. Each year the great tragedy is repeated, and the glorious resurrection takes place." (See Stellar Theology and Masonic Astronomy.)

CHiram is termed dead because in the average individual the cosmic creative forces are limited in their manifestation to purely physical--and correspondingly materialistic--expression. Obsessed by his belief in the reality and permanence of physical existence, man does not correlate the material universe with the blank north wall of the temple. As the solar light symbolically is said to die as it approaches the winter solstice, so the physical world may be termed the winter solstice of the spirit. Reaching the winter solstice, the sun apparently stands still for three days and then, rolling away the stone of winter, begins its triumphal march north towards the summer solstice. The condition of ignorance may be likened to the winter solstice of philosophy; spiritual understanding to the summer solstice. From this point of view, initiation into the Mysteries becomes the vernal equinox of the spirit, at which time the CHiram in man crosses from the realm of mortality into that of eternal life. The autumnal equinox is analogous to the mythological fall of man, at which time the human spirit descended into the realms of Hades by being immersed in the illusion of terrestrial existence.

In An Essay on the Beautiful, Plotinus describes the refining effect of beauty upon the unfolding consciousness of man. Commissioned to decorate the Everlasting House, CHiram Abiff is the embodiment of the beautifying principle. Beauty is essential to the natural unfoldment of the human soul. The Mysteries held that man, in part at least, was the product of his environment. Therefore they considered it imperative that every person be surrounded by objects which would evoke the highest and noblest sentiments. They proved that it was possible to produce beauty in life by surrounding life with beauty. They discovered that symmetrical bodies were built by souls continuously in the presence of symmetrical bodies; that noble thoughts were produced by minds surrounded by examples of mental nobility. Conversely, if a man were forced to look upon an ignoble or asymmetrical structure it would arouse within him a sense of ignobility which would provoke him to commit ignoble deeds. If an ill-proportioned building were erected in the midst of a city there would be ill-proportioned children born in that community; and men and women, gazing upon the asymmetrical structure, would live inharmonious lives. Thoughtful men of antiquity realized that their great philosophers were the natural products of the æsthetic ideals of architecture, music, and art established as the standards of the cultural systems of the time.

The substitution of the discord of the fantastic for the harmony of the beautiful constitutes one of the great tragedies of every civilization. Not only were the Savior-Gods of the ancient world beautiful, but each performed a ministry of beauty, seeking to effect man's regeneration by arousing within him the love of the beautiful. A renaissance of the golden age of fable can be made possible only by the elevation of beauty to its rightful dignity as the all-pervading, idealizing quality in the religious, ethical, sociological, scientific, and political departments of life. The Dionysiac Architects were consecrated to the raising of their Master Spirit--Cosmic Beauty--from the sepulcher of material ignorance and selfishness by erecting buildings which were such perfect exemplars of symmetry and majesty that they were actually magical formulæ by which was evoked the spirit of the martyred Beautifier entombed within a materialistic world.

In the Masonic Mysteries the triune spirit of man (the light Delta) is symbolized by the three Grand Masters of the Lodge of Jerusalem. As God is the pervading principle of three worlds, in each of which He manifests as an active principle, so the spirit of man, partaking of the nature of Divinity, dwells upon three planes of being: the Supreme, the Superior, and the Inferior spheres of the Pythagoreans. At the gate of the Inferior sphere (the underworld, or dwelling place of mortal creatures) stands the guardian of Hades--the three--headed dog Cerberus, who is analogous to the three murderers of the Hiramic legend. According to this symbolic interpretation of the triune spirit, CHiram is the third, or incarnating, part--the Master Builder who through all ages erects living temples of flesh and blood as shrines of the Most High. CHiram comes forth as a flower and is cut down; he dies at the gates of matter; he is buried in the elements of creation, but--like Thor--he swings his mighty hammer in the fields of space, sets the primordial atoms in motion, and establishes order out of Chaos. As the potentiality of cosmic power within each human soul, CHiram lies waiting for man by the elaborate ritualism of life to transmute potentiality into divine potency. As the sense perceptions of the individual increase, however, man gains ever greater control over his various parts, and the spirit of life within gradually attains freedom. The three murderers represent the laws of the Inferior world--birth, growth, and decay--which ever frustrate the plan of the Builder. To the average individual, physical birch actually signifies the death of CHiram, and physical death the resurrection of CHiram. To the initiate, however, the resurrection of the spiritual nature is accomplished without the intervention of physical death.

The curious symbols found in the base of Cleopatra's Needle now standing in Central Park, New York, were interpreted as being of first Masonic significance by S. A. Zola, 33° Past Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Egypt. Masons' marks and symbols are to be found on the stones of numerous public buildings not only in England and on the Continent but also in Asia. In his Indian Masons' Marks of the Moghul Dynasty, A. Gorham describes scores of markings appearing on the walls of buildings such as the Taj Mahal, the Jama Masjid, and that: famous Masonic structure, the Kutab Minar. According to those who regard Masonry as an outgrowth of the secret society of architects and builders which for thousands of years formed a caste of master craftsmen, CHiram Abiff was the Tyrian Grand Master of a world-wide organization of artisans, with headquarters in Tyre. Their philosophy consisted of incorporating into the measurements and ornamentation of temples, palaces, mausoleums, fortresses, and other public buildings their knowledge of the laws controlling the universe. Every initiated workman was given a hieroglyphic with which he marked the stones he trued to show to all posterity that he thus dedicated to the Supreme Architect of the Universe each perfected product of his labor. Concerning Masons' marks, Robert Freke Gould writes:

"It is very remarkable that these marks are to be found in all countries--in the chambers of the Great Pyramid at Gizeh, on the underground walls of Jerusalem, in Herculaneum and Pompeii, on Roman walls and Grecian temples, in Hindustan, Mexico, Peru, Asia Minor--as well as on the great ruins of England, France, Germany, Scotland, Italy, Portugal and Spain." (See A Concise History of Freemasonry.)

From this viewpoint the story of CHiram may well represent the incorporation of the divine secrets of architecture into the actual parts and dimensions of earthly buildings. The three degrees of the Craft bury the Grand Master (the Great Arcanum) in the actual structure they erect, after first having killed him with the builders' tools, by reducing the dimensionless Spirit of Cosmic Beauty to the limitations of concrete form. These abstract ideals of architecture can be resurrected, however, by the Master Mason who, by meditating upon the structure, releases therefrom the divine principles of architectonic philosophy incorporated or buried within it. Thus the physical building is actually the tomb or embodiment of the Creative Ideal of which its material dimensions are but the shadow.

Moreover, the Hiramic legend may be considered to embody the vicissitudes of philosophy itself. As institutions for the dissemination of ethical culture, the pagan Mysteries were the architects of civilization. Their power and dignity were personified in CHiram Abiff--the Master Builder--but they eventually fell a victim to the onslaughts of that recurrent trio of state, church, and mob. They were desecrated by the state, jealous of their wealth and power; by the early church, fearful of their wisdom; and by the rabble or soldiery incited by both state and church. As CHiram when raised from his grave whispers the Master Mason's Word which was lost through his untimely death, so according to the tenets of philosophy the reestablishment or resurrection of the ancient Mysteries will result in the rediscovery of that secret teaching without which civilization must continue in a state of spiritual confusion and uncertainty.

When the mob governs, man is ruled by ignorance; when the church governs, he is ruled by superstition; and when the state governs, he is ruled by fear. Before men can live together in harmony and understanding, ignorance must be transmuted into wisdom, superstition into an illumined faith, and fear into love. Despite statements to the contrary, Masonry is a religion seeking to unite God and man by elevating its initiates to that level of consciousness whereon they can behold with clarified vision the workings of the Great Architect of the Universe. From age to age the vision of a perfect civilization is preserved as the ideal for mankind. In the midst of that civilization shall stand a mighty university wherein both the sacred and secular sciences concerning the mysteries of life will be freely taught to all who will assume the philosophic life. Here creed and dogma will have no place; the superficial will be removed and only the essential be preserved. The world will be ruled by its most illumined minds, and each will occupy the position for which he is most admirably fitted.

The great university will be divided into grades, admission to which will be through preliminary tests or initiations. Here mankind will be instructed in the most sacred, the most secret, and the most enduring of all Mysteries--Symbolism. Here the initiate will be taught that every visible object, every abstract thought, every emotional reaction is but the symbol of an eternal principle. Here mankind will learn that CHiram (Truth) lies buried in every atom of Kosmos; that every form is a symbol and every symbol the tomb of an eternal verity. Through education--spiritual, mental, moral, and physical--man will learn to release living truths from their lifeless coverings. The perfect government of the earth must be patterned eventually after that divine government by which the universe is ordered. In that day when perfect order is reestablished, with peace universal and good triumphant, men will no longer seek for happiness, for they shall find it welling up within themselves. Dead hopes, dead aspirations, dead virtues shall rise from their graves, and the Spirit of Beauty and Goodness repeatedly slain by ignorant men shall again be the Master of Work. Then shall sages sit upon the seats of the mighty and the gods walk with men.

The Hiram Key: Pharaohs, Freemasonry, and the Discovery of the Secret Scrolls of Jesus