http://bycommonconsent.com/2007/04/05/bcc-papers-2-2-barney/

http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/studies/?vol=1&id=28

Bokovoy has ***always*** written stimulating and excellent research. This fine article is no exception.

Washington, DC Metro Station on a cold January morning in 2007.

The man with a violin played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time approx. 2 thousand people went through the station, most of them on their way to work. After 3 minutes a middle aged man noticed there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried to meet his schedule.

4 minutes later:

the violinist received his first dollar: a woman threw the money in the hat and, without stopping, continued to walk.

6 minutes:

A young man leaned against the wall to listen to him, then looked at his watch and started to walk again.

10 minutes:

A 3-year old boy stopped but his mother tugged him along hurriedly. The kid stopped to look at the violinist again, but the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. Every parent, without exception, forced their children to move on quickly.

45 minutes:

The musician played continuously.  Only 6 people stopped and listened for a short while. About 20 gave money but continued to walk at their normal pace.  The man collected a total of $32.

1 hour:

He finished playing and silence took over. No one noticed. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin worth $3.5 million dollars. Two days before Joshua Bell sold out a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100.

http://www.shields-research.org/General/SEHA/SEHA_Newsletter_127-2.PDF

By Kerry A. Shirts

Can a man boast and yet be a true prophet of God? Critics of the church sometimes quote Joseph Smith in a negative fashion to try and demonstrate he was not a humble man, and hence could not be a true prophet of God. Here is how they usually put it:

Joseph Smith actually bragged that he did more than Jesus.

Well that calls for taking a look at what Joseph Smith actually said.

"A large majority of the whole have stood by me. Neither Paul, John, Peter, nor Jesus ever did it. I boast that no man ever did such a work as I. The followers of Jesus ran away from Him; but the Latter-day Saints never ran away from me yet . . . " (History of the Church, Vol. 6, p. 408-409).

It is important to keep in mind the biblical passage that Joseph Smith was commenting on. The passage is Paul’s own boasting in 2 Corinthians 11. And my, what an arrogant cuss Paul appears to be in that chapter! Yet, Paul’s demeanor was

The double ἀμὴν ἀμὴν – “amen, amen,” at the beginning of Jesus’ proclamation usually translated as “verily, verily,” when used in formulas means certainty and solemnness, i.e., “it is the truth.” It is used for emphasis. This is straight forward powerful verification of what Jesus is about to say. There is no hyperbole, exaggeration, or falseness in what comes next, and it is absolutely startling!

The verb ποιήσει, to do,  as in “ these shall he do,” is in the future active indicative. The indicative mood in Greek  is the mood of assertion, where the writer portrays something as actual (as opposed to possible or contingent on intention). Depending on context, the writer may or may not believe the action is real, but is presenting it as real. The adjective μείζονα – “greater” is in the accusative plural, involving all who believe in Jesus as he proclaimed, to be performed greater works than he has done! How can this possibly be? Jesus caused the lame to walk, the blind to see, the deaf to hear, and the dead to raise. How can mere humans do greater works than God?

Jesus said his followers would do "greater works." The Greek adjective μείζονα – “greater” is the comparative adjective neuter plural from "megas". This is not necessarily greater miracles and not greater spiritual works in quality, but greater in quantity. Whether in quality or quantity, it is an astonishing claim of Jesus to note that more and greater will occur after he leaves. Joseph Smith is a perfect fulfillment of Christ's saying here. John often uses erga (erga – which is an undertaking, a deed, a work or action) for the miracles of Christ (John 5:36; 7:3,21; 10:25,32,38, etc.). It is the Father who does these works (14:10).

The ablative in the Greek, of the English words "greater works than these,” according to Gerald L. Stevens, ("New Testament Greek" United Press of America, 1994, pp. 100-101), is a function of comparison or source. It is actually a separation as well. Thus a substantive in the genitive provides the standard of the comparison (ablative function). The word "than" necessarily must be supplied in the translation. Thus we have John 5:20 in the ablative:

John 5:20 For the Father loveth the Son, and sheweth him all things that himself doeth: and he will shew him greater works than these, that ye may marvel.

Notice further Christ's words in the same chapter in later verses.

John 5:36 But I have greater witness than that of John: for the works which the Father hath given me to finish, the same works that I do, bear witness of me, that the Father hath sent me.

Again this is in the ablative, but notice that his greater works shows the Father is the witness that he has been sent. Now Christ's words become triply powerful when he tells the disciples:

John 14:12 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.

That is why I think when critics use the quote of Joseph Smith as a tool against him as if he is merely bragging, they miss the point of these words, teachings, and incredible doctrines from Christ. They are fulfilled by those who do not only the works of Christ, but go on to do greater things. Frederick Field, (“Notes on the Translation of the New Testament,” Hendrickson, reprint, 1994: 101) reminded us that this verse is not talking about doing more wonderful miracles than Jesus did, it is more in line with a comparison of the results of the two ministries. This is precisely how Joseph Smith taught, which critics misunderstand as him being arrogant and bragging. He describes results of the ministries. This is actually how Newman and Nida understood the meaning of “greater works than these.” They noted that the impact of geographical and temporal limitations upon Jesus during his ministry would be the limiting factor. His followers would not have these limitations, and hence the number of converts would be far “greater” in magnitude than the work Jesus performed in his ministry. (“A Translator’s Handbook on the Gospel of John,” UBS, 1980: 462).  Marcus Dods noted that “These ‘greater’ works were the spiritual effects accomplished by the disciples, especially the great novel fact of conversion.” (In W. Robertson Nicoll, editor of “The Expositor’s Greek Testament,” Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1976, 5 vols., quote in vol. 1:824, note ver. 12).  

We see that Jesus’ words mean what he said. His followers are to do greater works than he. This is an astonishing doctrine when we realize that this means man will do greater works than God on earth did! Yet that is what Christ taught. Joseph Smith may not be so much bragging, as merely pointing out some facts which Christ himself said would be. It is a beautiful fulfillment of Jesus’ prophecy seen in this light. And in fact, by implication, if Jesus’ works shows the Father witnesses of him, how much more so does the Father witness of those whose works are not only those of Jesus, but in fact, greater than his, as he taught?

^{At the same time, however, scholars observe that the Slavonic pseudepigraphon shows attempts to depart from the overt anthropomorphism of this prophetic book. Christopher Rowland, for example, notes that the shift from anthropomorphism is apparent in the portrayal of the divine throne in ch. 18 of the Apocalypse of Abraham.Notwithstanding the many allusions to Ezekiel 1 in the depiction of the throne room in chs. 18 and 19 of the Apocalypse, Rowland highlights a radical paradigm shift in the text's description of the deity, noting "a deliberate attempt... to exclude all reference to the human figure mentioned in Ezek 1." For Rowland, this shift entails that "there was a definite trend within apocalyptic thought away from the direct description of God." (p. 54)}

^{I think it is fascinating to see that the later we get in the literatures, the *more* they change what the early nature andtype of God was. We definitely know, however, that to the early Jews, God was a person, like they were, only far more exalted. He was not an abstract philosophical principle or something along the lines of the Greek philosophers and gymnosophists. God was very personal, so personal in fact, that he actually made us directly in His own image. The Jews took Genesis 1:26-27 quite frankly, at face value. There is no philosophy there, just description. When you look at a man, or a woman, you look at the image and form of God. And Orlov does not miss this significance either. Observe how he describes a scholarly approach to understanding this:}

the Image of God

by August H. Konkel

April 1992

Διοασκαλια (Journal “Didaskalia”)

A primary text for the Biblical doctrine of being in God's image as male and female is Genesis 1:26-27. The starting point for understanding the significance of these verses must be the function of the keywords within an ancient near eastern context. The use of the words likeness (Hebrew dmwt) and image (Hebrew slm) is best illustrated in the oldest known Aramaic inscription, found at the edge of a ruined city now known as Tell Fekherye close to the Syrian-Turkish frontier. The inscription was found in 1979 by a farmer enlarging his field with a bulldozer. The inscription is on a life size basalt statute of a man standing with his hands clasped at the waist and wearing a short sleeved tunic that reaches down to his ankles. The inscription is a dedication of a statue of Hadad-yis'i, ruler of Guzan, to the storm god Hadad. The word dmwt (Aramaic lines 1 & 15) is used in an exact parallel with the word slm (Aramaic lines 12 & 16) to describe the image. This is the same pair of words found in parallel in Genesis 1:26 to describe mankind in the image of God (cf. Gen 5:1,3). It is significant that the words appear to be used interchangeably, and therefore need not occur in a consistent order, just as we find in Genesis (cf. Gen 5:3). It is also notable that likeness (dmwt) does not qualify image (slm) but is a term parallel with it. Both terms are interchangeable as a reference to the statue itself.

The statue represents the dedicator, the king of Guzan, whose name is Hadad-yis'i, meaning "Hadad is my salvation." Hadad, equivalent to the biblical Baal, was the name of the storm God of Syria and Mesopotamia, and other sources prove he was a leading deity at Guzan. This statue, dedicated to him, is indicative of his standing. The statue is the image of the king who offers his obeisance to the god and who seeks prosperity from him in return. The image is either a slm or a dmwt, indicating that the use of the latter term in Genesis 1:26 is not a theologically motivated qualification of the more concrete slm as is frequently asserted. The Genesis text is unequivocally asserting that man as a physical being represents God, just as a statute would represent a king or a god. There seems to have been a fluidity in terminology between living, visible images and their static representations in stone, wood, or metal.

Kerry's note - I thought it interesting that the words are used of a physical likeness and image of what that statue was to represent, and that physically. In other words, as this ancient construct of the Aramaic and Hebrew is used, we are to understand the composers of the Bible understood that it is our physicality which represented God, who also has arms, legs, mouth, head, etc. It is a physical likeness, not an ephemeral "moral" likeness as some commentators wish it to mean.

Quick Notes by Kerry A. Shirts

Jan 5, 2010

The Sermon on the Mount has Jesus teaching “Blessed are the poor in Spirit…” Just what on earth does that mean? When we read “poor” we almost automatically take it as the opposite of being rich in wealth. Poor verses rich. However, though the Greek can present us with this allusion, it is an illusion. A better translation is available rather than the rather wooden literal translation as we are used to reading it.

However, first some very interesting exegesis on the grammatical aspects of the Greek show us surprise after surprise in getting to a better translation, which we will now explore. ptochos (πτωχός), to be sure, is “an adjective describing “one who crouches and cowers,” is used as a noun, “a beggar” (from ptosso, “to cower down or hide oneself for fear”), Luke 14:13, 21 (“poor”); 16:20, 22; as an adjective, “beggarly” in Gal. 4:9, i.e., poverty-stricken, powerless to enrich, metaphorically descriptive of the religion of the Jews. While prosaites is descriptive of a “beggar,” and stresses his “begging,” ptochos stresses his poverty-stricken condition.” (Vine’s Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words)

Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer demonstrated that the Greek οἱ πτωχοὶ τῷ πνεύματι correlates with the עָנָו (ʿā∙nāw – “afflicted”) of Isaiah 61:1 (“…good news to the afflicted – עָנָו) which is the quality of humbleness, humility, unpretentiousness, i.e., a quality of sincere and straightforward behavior, suggesting a lack of arrogance and pride, of whom Moses was a prime example when we read that he was a “meek” man, (Numbers 12:3) the Hebrew being עָנָו  (ʿanaw), the Greek Septuagint giving us the adjective πρᾶος (praos), meaning “gentle, meek.”  The point of Jesus teaching is that he “transports the idea of the poor from the politico-theocratic realm (the members of the oppressed people of God, sunk into poverty and external wretchedness) into the purely moral sphere by means of the dative of more precise definition, τῷ πνεύματι, the poor in reference to their spirit, the spiritually poor, that is, those who feel, as a matter of consciousness, that they are in a miserable unhappy condition. He then notes that Chrysostom essentially gives the correct idea here of “the lowly and broken-hearted.” [Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer, Critical and Exegetical Handbook of the Gospel of Matthew, Alpha Publications, reprint, 1979: 112, and note 4.] Isaiah 57:15 says the contrite and lowly of spirit וְאֶת־דַּכָּא וּשְׁפַל־רוּחַ The word דַּכָּה dakkāh, means “crushing” while לשָׁפָ can mean “modest” and  it has the sense of a humble, despondent, meek, or contrite spirit. It has nothing to do with vows of voluntary poverty as some early Christian church fathers taught. (Meyer, p. 113).

The TDNT assesses Matthews “poor in spirit” thusly - It refers to those who know themselves to be completely dependent on God’s mercy. Matthew thereby takes the edge off Jesus’ blessing, but at the same time secures it against the misinterpretation that external poverty by itself guarantees salvation. Matthew’s interpretation articulates precisely the attitude already indirectly addressed in the saying of Jesus taken up in 11:5.

 The exhortation in Mark 10:21 expands the demand Jesus makes of some of those called to follow him to leave their possessions; it now demands that they sell their possessions and give the proceeds to the poor (alluding to the traditional Jewish idea that alms secure a treasure in heaven). The goal here is to clarify paradigmatically (following or imitatio becomes a paradigm for faith in the post-Easter community) just how radically and definitively one’s decision of faith in Jesus will tear one away from other commitments and to show what one must be prepared to do in a given concrete case, or just how difficult it is for a rich person to realize such an exclusive commitment to Jesus.

The Greek μακάριος (makarios) translated as “blessed” according to W. Robertson Nicoll “represents the new concept of felicity.” He also notes that to be ‘poor in spirit’ “is not to be taken objectively, as if spirit indicated the element in which the poverty is manifest – poor intellect, but subjectively poor in their own esteem. Self-estimate is the essence of the matter and is comparable to real wealth. Only the noble think meanly of themselves. The soul of goodness is in the man who is really humble. Poverty laid to heart passes into riches.” {Kerry says – “I would also propose saying that lack of arrogance in one’s heart passes into riches – not necessarily monetary either}[ W. Robertson Nicoll, editor, The Expositor’s Greek Testament, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, reprint, 1976, quotes in Vol. 1: 97.]

 This leads us finally to a remarkably excellent source for scriptural understanding and exegetical insight, and a more wonderful translation, namely the Lowe Nida Greek-English Lexicon πτωχὸς τῷ πνεύματι: (an idiom, literally ‘poor in spirit’) pertaining to one who is humble with regard to his own capacities (in the one New Testament occurrence, namely, Matt 5.3, this humility is in relationship to God)—‘to be humble.’ μακάριοι οἱ πτωχοὶ τῷ πνεύματι ‘happy are those who are humble before God’ Mt 5.3. A literal translation of πτωχὸς τῷ πνεύματι may lead to serious misunderstanding, since ‘poor in spirit’ is likely to mean either ‘lacking in the Holy Spirit’ or ‘lacking in ambition or drive.’ In order to indicate clearly that this poverty or need is related in some way to spiritual realities, one may translate ‘happy are those who recognize their need of God.'

By Kerry A. Shirts

Dec 26, 2009

 It is a given that Masonic teaching declares “G” is for “God.” It also stands for the science of “Geometry.” I believe this letter “G” can also represent “Gematria” the sacred analysis of the letters of Hebrew and Greek showing numerical relations among words possessing the same value, which in turn actually demonstrate geometrical shapes of significance, based on scriptural words, phrase, and whole paragraphs; “Greek (the language of the scriptures, the Holy Bible being one of the three great lights of Masonry), and “Gnosis” one of the most significant words in the Bible (even though it’s not mentioned all that much as such), as well as one of the most fascinating movements among Early Christianity. What I wish to do in this paper is analyze the Gnosis, using Greek and historical literature dealing with the subject. It is precisely the acquisition of “Knowledge” (γνῶσις - gnōsis) that Masonry is all about. Not for

γνῶσις (gnōsis) is fascinating as described in the Bible, not to mention within the movement and about the movement we now understand as Gnosticism. It is more than knowledge, though that is one of its descriptions. In one of the Gnostic books discovered at Nag Hammadi, “On the Origin of the World,”  it teaches that when the man and woman first recognized their nakedness , “they saw that they were naked of spiritual understanding [gnosis].” It was the luminous epinoia that “awakened their consciousness.” Epinoia has no exact English equivalent term, though the cluster of words surrounding the Greek verb noein can mean “perceive,” “think,” or “be aware.”[1] However, the Gnostics were not mere thinkers as such, but often referred to as “knowers.”[2] For Paul, this knowledge as he noted was γνώσεως Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ τοῦ κυρίου μου – “knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” Gnosticism was initially Christian, though the later Church Fathers claimed they were heretics.[3] Though we now understand the historical situation of “the early Christian church in fact did not compromise a single orthodoxy from which emerged a variety of competing heretical minorities. Instead, Early Christianity embodied a number of divergent forms, no one of which represented the clear and powerful majority of believers against all others. In some regions, what was later to be termed “heresy” was in fact the original and only form of Christianity.”[4] There were Essenes, Zadokites, Pharisees, Saduccees, Zealots, Gnostics, Nazoreans, Herodians, Maccabaeans, Ebionites, etc.[5] To Paul, γνῶσις (gnōsis) “is the necessary result of intimate communion with Christ.”[6] Gnosis arrived at from the actual Gnostic materials found at Nag Hammadi itself show that it means “a personal acquaintance with an object, often a person…If one is introduced to god, one has gnosis of god. The ancient gnostics described salvation as a kind of gnosis or acquaintance , and the ultimate object of that acquaintance was nothing less than god.”[7] And “self-knowledge is the key to the Gnostic religious quest, but not self-knowledge as an egotistic, personal, or individual matter. Rather, self-knowledge as the realization of our origin in God and our destiny to return there again.”[8] Gnosis was an individual enterprise where both women and men could come to know God “without any need for the mediation of rabbis, priests, bishops, imams, or other religious officials.”[9]

 In spite of this approach to the individual needs, desires, and religious predilections, Gnosticism is understood to be a movement within Christianity, not as a foreign import nor a parasite as has been often indicated.[10] It is interesting that St. Paul has traditionally been seen as an opponent against Gnosticism, yet, as Elaine Pagels has demonstrated, the Gnostics themselves claim that it is precisely Paul’s letters is where they received their gnostic theology! The Naassenes as well as one of the most powerful and influential Gnostics, Valentinus, revered Paul, whom they saw as the foremost Apostle who was a Gnostic initiate himself. The Valentinians “allege that their secret traditions offers direct access to Paul’s own teaching of wisdom and gnosis.”[11]

One of the problems the Gnostics ran into was their objections to being told what to think and do in Christian churches. They understood the need for faith, yet “…yearned to become spiritually ‘mature,’ to go beyond such elementary instruction [from the bishops] toward higher levels of understanding. And this higher awareness they called gnosis.”[12] And it was precisely this attitude which caused Irenaeus, the bishop at Lyons, among other Christian leaders, to rail against the Gnostics for all they were worth. The Gnostics taught that the divine spark in all men and women has fallen into a world of shadows, and has lost its way from the realm of light. The way of return is to understand who we really are, we are that divine spark. Gnosis is thus defined as “…true knowledge of what is (ta onta) in contrast to mere perception (aesthesis) or opinion whose truth is not guaranteed (doxa). Unlike episteme (understanding), the term is hardly ever used in an absolute sense, but requires an object in the genitive case: it emphasizes the act of knowing rather than knowledge itself.”[13] Knowing comes from personal truths coming from within, not truths taught from without, whether taught by a church, a school, or group of people. “To know oneself, at the deepest level, is simultaneously to know God: this is the secret of gnosis… Orthodox Jews and Christians insist that a chasm separates humanity from its creator: God is wholly other. But some of the Gnostics who wrote these gospels [such as the famous Gospel of Mary, Thomas, Philip, Truth, etc.] contradicted this: self-knowledge is knowledge of God; the self and the divine are identical.”[14] The Naassene sermon taught clearly “…an elevated spiritual state that is nothing less than the face of the Almighty…”[15] The Gospel of Thomas (saying 77) indicates this powerfully – “Jesus said, I am the light which is over everything. I am the All; (from me) the All has gone forth, and to me the All has returned.” The commentary teaches “Jesus is the inner man; he is also the light of the world (John 8:12). As in the Martyrdom of Peter (chapter 10) and in Gnostic writings, he is “the All,” the totality of authentic being. The fullness of deity dwells in Him (Colossians 2:9); in him everything was created (came into existence), and he is the goal of everything (Colossians 1:16-17). For the Gnostic, this goal is not future but present.”[16] When Jesus also states in saying 77 that he is in the wood that is split, or the stone that is lifted, this reflects that “philosophical position presented by the Greco-Roman author Lucian of Samosata, Hermotimus 81: ‘God is not in heaven, but rather permeates all things, such as pieces of wood and stones and animals, even the most magnificent…”[17]

It is by participation in the mysteries[18] that one gains gnosis, not merely reading about them, or being told about what they are. The Gospel of Philip is very helpful here – “Humans mate with humans, horses with horses, donkeys with donkeys, each species with its own. Likewise our breath seeks another breath, our intelligence seeks intelligence, and every clarity seeks its light. Become more humans and humans will love you; become more spiritual, and the spirit will unite with you. Become more intelligent, and the Logos will unite with you.”[19] Ulrich Wilkins contends that the complete Wisdom Mystery sets the goal of “…none other than God Himself… to reach Him in the gnosis and episteme theou is the goal of the way… the regeneration of the devotee takes place.”[20] One of the early Gnostics, Sylvanus, who elaborated on the Alexandrian Christian tradition, taught that mankind (both male and female) had the capacity to appropriate divine Wisdom. He begged the Gnostics “do not bring grief or trouble to the divine (θεῖον) [which is] within you. But when you will care for it, will request of it that you remain pure, and will become self controlled in your soul and body , you will become a throne of wisdom and one belonging to God’s household.

But before all else, know your birth. Know yourself, that is, from what substance [οὐσία] you are, or from what race, or from what species. Understand that you have come into being from three races [γένος]: from the earth, from the formed [πλάσμα], and from the created… the created, however, is the mind, which has come into being in conformity with the image [εἰκών] of God. The divine mind has substance [οὐσία] from the Divine, but the soul is that which he (God) has formed [πλάσσω] for their own hearts.”[21] The Delphic maxim “know thyself” (γνωθι σαυτον) is similar to Philo’s injunction: “know thyself  (γνωθι σαυτον) and the parts of which thou dost consist, what each is, and for what it is made, and how it is meant to work.”[22]

“Gnosis is presented as “knowledge obtained by discourse and dialectic, beginning with visual, direct observation. Of course, in the case of invisible realities, knowledge will come through the eyes of the mind, which are able to grasp the realities of the ideal world (as e.g. Plato’s reflections on mathematics suggest). To achieve this knowledge one does not require a particular organ or special method, but simply the coherent, systematic application of the natural ability to see, to verify and to check the data received along the way.”[23] Gnosis taught a doctrine which was understood in the earlier Jewish Enoch texts, discovered in the 1800’s by Bruce the explorer. “Every human being has a mortal lower self called the eidolon (εἴδωλον) and an immortal Higher Self called the Daemon (δαιμων). The eidolon is the embodied self, the physical body, and personality. The Daemon is the Spirit, the true self, which is each person’s spiritual connection to God. The mysteries were designed to help initiates realize that the eidolon is a false self and that their true identity is the immortal Daemon.”[24] Theocritus taught the Daemon was a god, goddess, of individual gods or goddesses, while Empedocles taught it was “the unspecified agency affecting human fortunes.” The Daemons were δαίμονες, οἱ, souls of men of the golden age, acting as tutelary deities, according to Hesiod.[25] The goal of gnosis was the meeting and combining with our own higher selves, knowing of our divinity. This is something no church, group, or leader of any sort can teach us, it is experienced. What churches, groups, and leaders can do however is instruct us and help us through initiations meant to get us in tune with the higher realms. Hence the mystery plays and their importance. There are rituals which help guide us into the path of discovery that no teaching can do. Worldwide brotherhood is not something you read about in books, but something you participate in and with others. Brotherhood, not only among our lower realms here in this world (where it really does properly begin), but brotherhood among all the worlds, a prominent Kabbalistic teaching as well.

Enoch discovered when he was taken to heaven (the Bible tells just one verse about Enoch, while the Enoch literature has grown enormously since Bruce’s discovery, giving us Ethiopic, Old Slavonic [Russian], Greek, and Hebrew books of Enoch) that the one like a Son of Man sitting on the throne was his higher self! And he was transformed into the Angel Metatron, a celestialized being form his former lowly mortal self. He became the scribe of heaven, and the great teacher for humanity. In some traditions he was called “The Little YHWH” clearly showing his transformation into a god.[26] This type of transformation in the Gnostic literature and philosophy “is now also used in an absolute way to indicate a form of meta-rational knowledge, which is the gift of the divinity and has in it the power to save the one who achieves it.”[27] What is startling to come to understand is the ancient rituals of the Holy of Holies of Solomon’s Temple which was known for centuries concerned a human being who “...could become divine when he stood in the presence of God. He was reborn, presumably as Son of God, as Psalm 2 and 89 testify.”[28]

Masonic tradition is right on par with emblazoning, emphasizing, and conforming its rituals after the pattern of Solomon’s Temple! The Jewish sacrifices in ancient times, we read, were for the direct transformation of the animal in we humans into the divine “through the redemptive sacrifice of that which is animal.” Amazingly enough, the term “son” used in the Old Testament when Israel was addressed at Exodus 4:22-23 “is applied to the collective nation of Israel.”[29] The whole point of the mysteries of the sacrifice was “the ritual drawing down of divine holiness into the sacrifice and its communication to the celebrants through ingestion which signified [of the sacrificial animal – ridding man of his animal nature] and could be experienced as the God within.”[30] The entire point of the ancient Jewish spirituality and achievement through the Hebraic Priesthood in the ancient Temple of Solomon, giving them the meaning of life was the “unification of the infinite and finite that fulfils and models the purpose of Creation. This purpose is the generation both of the supernal son and those higher human souls who can recognize their identity with the supernal son and so achieve the unification of these two levels of divine sonship.”[31] Leet hints and informs us (I can’t go into details in this paper, but I am going to in another one later) that the Old Testament rituals in the ancient Holy of Holies in Solomon’s Temple can be glimpsed by David’s last words when he describes him “as a man who was raised on high, a word [raised] that can also mean resurrected and anointed... the king became the ‘firstborn’ and he called the LORD his Father. These are the exact themes of Psalm 110, and must have been the king-making rites in the holy of holies. Resurrection, Sonship, and Messiahship (i.e. anointing) were all elements of the same process.”[32]

Interestingly enough, up into Gnostic times, the Son of Man was identified with man, and man is called the seed of the Son of Man, and Jesus called the High Father, “The Man.” Man, Son of Man and God are all tied together as the same in Gnostic philosophy. The formula, according to Borsch, goes like this: “man = high god or his emanation; Son of Man = the emanation or image of the man (sometimes regarded as the savior) and son of the Son of Man = the first true Gnostic (regarded as either the true believer or himself as the saviour).”[33] Philo of Alexandria, one of the earliest eye witnesses to early Christianity, along with Josephus, came to the conclusion, after an enormous amount of philosophical and theological investigation, that “Only part of man is related to God, that is his rational soul or mind, and it is that part of man that Philo calls ‘divine’... man’s nous is divine because it is in a model-copy relation or a part-whole relation to the divine Logos.”[34] For Philo the idea of a full knowledge we know was the equivalent to the apocalyptists concept of the divine wisdom (personified in the Book of Proverbs as the Divine Female). This vision of God is what transforms the human mystic to the angelic state. “All who lived in the knowledge of the One are rightly called sons of God... it was the Logos who brought the seeker into the presence of God.”[35] But notice here, it is a seeker who is looking and deliberately wishing to improve his and her life who is brought into the stronger light, and deeper wisdom of the universe.

Gnosis was not tied to a singular movement such as Christianity, and in fact, is older than Christianity, being had in the ancient Jewish, and the Ancient Far East as well in the Hindu/Buddhist traditions. It is the acquiring of light and knowledge of ourselves and others. The startling thing about it is the realization that not just one or two people, groups, or even nations are divine, but rather the real power of the Gnosis is understanding that all are divine! And isn’t this a perfect place to begin the wonderful Masonic concept of a universal brotherhood among all mankind? Just how would you treat a divine being? Take it literally and seriously and ask, just how WOULD you treat others if you realized with certainty that they really are a divine being?! It sort of changes absolutely everything we think about others as well as ourselves doesn’t it. The Masonic ideology of a universal brotherhood is a perfect place to begin acquiring the Gnosis, which comes from God and through our studies of Geometry, which ties all disciplines and themes together in a most literal way. Through an inter-disciplinary approach to acquiring truth and understanding (emphasized by study of the seven liberal arts from antiquity and still entirely relevant for us today), Masonry automatically develops a genuine brotherhood (not one based on the desire to cheat, lie, and steal from others), which has no strings attached, except those which elevates our fellow men (and women), and causes, as we are told, good men to become better. So “G” is certainly pointing our minds and eyes towards “G”od, very appropriately enough. It also puts us into a frame of mind to learn and emulate the Divine Mind of God, especially through the discipline of “G”eometry, which discipline leads directly to “G”nosis about God, from God, and with God, together with mankind, and our place in this magnificent universe we inhabit.  

Endnotes

1.    Elaine Pagels, Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas, Random House, 2003: 164-165.

2.    Violet MacDermot, The Fall of Sophia, Lindisfarne Books, 2001: 8.

3.    For an excellent treatment of this see Simone Petrement, le Dieu separe: les origins du gnosticisme, translated by Carol Harrison as A Separate God: The Christian Origins of Gnosticism, HarperSanFransisco, 1990.

4.    Bart D. Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament, Oxford University Press, 1993:7.

5.    The fascinating discussions of Robert Eisenman in this regard are his four books, The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered, Element Books, 1992;  The Dead Sea Scrolls and the First Christians, Element Books, 1996; James the Brother of Jesus, Viking Books, 1996; The New Testament Code, Watkins Publishing, 2006.

6.    W. Robert Nicoll, The Expositor’s Greek Testament, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 5 vols, reprint Sept 1976, quote in Vol. 3:455.

7.    Bentley Layton, The Gnostic Scriptures, Doubleday and Co., 1987: 9.

8.    Stevan Davies, The Secret Book of John, the Gnostic Gospel, Skylight Paths Publications, 2005: xvi-xvii.

9.    Marvin Meyer, “Gnosticism, Gnostics, and the Gnostic Bible,” in The Gnostic Bible, Edited by Willis Barnstone, Marvin Meyer, New Seeds Publishing, 2006: 1.

10.   L. Michael White, From Jesus to Christianity, HarperSanFransisco, 2004: 398. James M. Robinson, one of the main editor of the Nag Hammadi Coptic texts, held the view that Gnosticism was a syncretistic religion, gathering in all elements from the various religions of its time (Judaism, Hermeticism, Christianity) and coming up with its own eclectic religious themes. See Robinson, The Nag Hammadi Library In English, 3^rd revised edition, 1988, E.J. Brill, 9-11. Birger A. Pearson, Gnosticism and Christianity in Roman and Coptic Egypt, Studies in Christian Antiquity, T &T Clark International, 2004:18-19 proposed Gnosticism was an offshoot of Judaism.

11.   Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Paul: Gnostic Exegesis of the Pauline Letters, Trinity Press International, 1975: 1. Cf. Everett Ferguson’s discussion of Basilides, the Gnostic, being the earliest witness to the New Testament as scripture, and how the Gnostic Valentinus’ system of scripture was adapted by Irenaeus, only with a different content of books as scripture. The very first commentary on the scripture was by the Gnostic Heracleon, a commentary on the Gospel of John, in Lee Martin McDonald, James A. Sanders, editors, The Canon Debate, Hendrickson Publishers, 2002: 313.

12.   Elaine Pagels, Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, Vintage Books, 1988: 59-60.

13.   Giovanni  Filoramo, L’attesa della fine, Storia della gnosi, translated by Anthony Alcock, as A History of Gnosticism, Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, reprinted 1992: 38-39.

14.   Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels, Vintage Books, 1981: xix.

15.   Mark H. Gaffney, Gnostic Secrets of the Naassenes: The Initiatory Teachings of the Last Supper, Inner Traditions, 2004: 203.

16.   Robert M. Grant, David Noel Freedman, The Secret Sayings of Jesus, Barnes & Noble edition, 1993: 177-178.

17.   Marvin Meyer, The Gospel of Thomas, the Hidden Sayings of Jesus, HarperSanFransisco, 1992: 98.

18.   Eugene Seaich, A Great Mystery: The Secret of the Jerusalem Temple, Gorgias Press, 2008: 38-39.

19.   Jean-Yves LeLoup, The Gospel of Philip: Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and the Gnosis of Sacred Union, Inner Traditions, 2003: 143.

20.   In Seaich, Ibid., p. 39.

21.   Pearson, Ibid., p. 96-97.

22.   Pearson, Ibid., p. 97.

23.   Filoramo, Ibid., p. 39.

24.   Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, The Jesus Mysteries, Harmony Books, 1999: 101.

25.   Liddell, H. G., Scott, R., Jones, H. S., & McKenzie, R. (1996). A Greek-English lexicon. "With a revised supplement, 1996." (Rev. and augm. throughout) Oxford; New York: Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press. P. 366.

26.   See the excellent treatment of the Enoch literatures, as well as Enoch’s transformation in Andrei Orlov’s ingenious scholarly analysis, The Enoch-Metatron Tradition, Mohr-Siebeck, 2003.

27.   Filoramo, Ibid., p. 39.

28.   Margaret Barker, The Great High Priest: The Temple Roots of Christian Liturgy, T & T Clark, 2003: 219.

29.   Leonora Leet, The Secret Doctrine of the Kabbalah: Recovering the Key to Hebraic Sacred Science, Inner Traditions, 1999: 32.

30.   Leonora Leet, Renewing the Covenant: A Kabblastic Guide to Jewish Spirituality, InnerTraditions, 1999: 45.

31.   Leonora Leet, The Universal Kabbalah: Deciphering the Cosmic Code in the Sacred Geometry of the Sabbath Star Diagram,  InnerTraditions, 2004: 8.

32.   Margaret Barker, The Great High Priest, p. 219.

33.   Frederick H. Borsch, The Christian and Gnostic Son of Man, Studies in Biblical Theology, 2^nd series, SCM Press LTD, 1970: 80-81.

34.   D. T. Runia, “God and Man in Philo of Alexandria,” in Journal of Theological Studies, 39/1 (1988): 73.

35.   Margaret Barker, “Temple Imagery in Philo: An Indication of the Origin of the Logos?,” in Templum Amicitiae: Essays on the Second Temple Presented to Ernst Bammel, JSOT Press, Sheffield, 1991: 90.

Kerry A. Shirts, F.C. Dec. 13, 2009

I just recently received my Fellow Craft Degree in Free Masonry this last week and was duly impressed with the whole ritual, initiation, and instruction. Twice now I have been hoodwinked, once as an Entered Apprentice, and the 2^nd time as a Fellow Craft, and twice when the blindfold was lifted from my eyes, the first thing I saw was that bright shining letter “G” piercing the darkness as the first form of light in the East above the Worshipful Master’s chair. We are instructed that it stands for “God.” In the Fellow Craft, we are also taught that it stands for “Geometry.” Geometry is by far one of the most important of the 7 Liberal Arts which we are importuned to sincerely begin paying attention to, studying, practicing, and teaching. There simply could be no architecture, whether on earth, or in heaven, without the science, the art, the wonder, that is Geometry.

In my readings through the years of various ancient authors and of sundry subjects, it occurred to me that the instruction that ”G” is for “God and “Geometry” is probably intended to tease our minds into recognizing, if not downright establishing, more connections, themes, ideas, and ideals than these two words alone, magnificent as they are. Right off the top of my head it quickly dawns on a Fellow Craft

“G” is for “God” the Great Architect of the universe. Albert Pike, in discussing various Eastern religions views of God, notes that God is identified as “One great and incomprehensible Being existing from all Eternity – everything we behold and we ourselves are portions of him. The soul, mind or intellect of gods and men and all sentient creatures are detached portions of the Universal Soul.”[1] Masonic philosophy, he admonishes us, is the great gathering of all truths from all areas into one whole, and this universal “Kabbalistic” theme “like Masonry, it incessantly trends toward spiritual perfection…”[2]

James T. Tresner, a 33^rd degree Mason, recently discussing the significance of a lost speech of Albert Pike, in Heredom, the journal of the Scottish Rite Research Society. He showed many points of Pike’s teaching about how a Mason should conduct himself, and the reasons for his charitable and tolerant attitude with his fellow man, thus emulating “God.” The kind of Deity one conceives of, definitely causes us to live in certain ways and manners. “Therefore Masonry strives to help each Mason form a truer concept of Deity… Masonic charity should be like God’s charity. If He can forgive us, we can surely forgive others… no one can KNOW that his concept of faith and Deity is right, however strongly he BELIEVES it. That knowledge is reserved for another life. The nature of God cannot be determined by a majority vote.”[3] W. Kirk MacNulty, a 33^rd degree Mason, in a stimulating analysis of Kabbalah and Masonry made the point, among many others, that in the Fellow Craft degree, the letter G stands for both Geometry and the Name of Deity, quoting Bernard Jones, “we shall not be far wrong when we teach the Fellow Craft that the letter “G” denotes God who is the Grand Geometrician of the Universe.” MacNulty, in placing the Masonic symbols on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, puts the letter “G” in Keter (the crown) not because it is the Divine Presence, but because it allows us a glimpse of the Name of Deity. “The Fellow Craft may now practice the second of the Theological Virtues, Hope.”[4]    

This theme of spiritual perfection and hope of being or even becoming Divine was had in many ancient cultures and religions from around the world. We now understand Masonry as standing directly on that same path. We now realize why Horace taught, as did Virgil, that Octavian was a god already on earth, identifying him with Hermes, while the immortality and identity of Augustus with Jupiter in heaven becomes more intelligible.[5] In the neo-Platonic view, (ca 300-600 A.D.) God as a destroyer, as is sometimes understood from reading about the Deity in the Old Testament, is given a most fascinating context. “What does God destroy? When one is conscious of the Divine Presence, that Presence (God) destroys everything unlike itself. That is because the neo-Platonic point of view was that “God is everything that is real, everything unlike God is an illusion, an illusion that is dispelled when one is conscious of the Divine Presence.”[6] The Bahir (a Jewish book of mysticism attributed to Rabbi Nehuniah ben HaKana, a Talmudic sage of the first century) teaches that the Divine Presence is called Tzedek, since it is Righteousness itself.[7] Interestingly enough, the gnosis, according to Clement of Alexandria, one of the most prominent Early Christian Fathers, was the perfection man achieved by living through the process and the living of the Godly attributes one had. Gnosis, as practical teachings applied to living the life of Godliness leads to deification.[8] The greatest of these Godly attributes according to St. Paul was charity (1 Corinthians 13). Our letter “G” in Masonry meaning God with geometry, gnosis, charity, and the study of the seven liberal arts are seen to be spot on! And there is much more.

In Early Christianity we are told that “Deification was often seen as the telos (goal) of human existence and of Salvation.”[9] The Pseudo-Dionysius was the first to define the word Theosis as “Divinization consists of being as much as possible like and in union with God.”[10] The mystical Kabbalistic Jewish teaching is that man as a microcosm is made in the image of God because the Tree of Life and its sephiroth can be superimposed onto the body of man (the tree is in us, because of its Godly attributes, of which are shared with mankind according to some teachings), and this image is described by the term ha-male meaning “fullness” which is directly equivalent to the Gnostic term pleroma (divine) fullness, of which man partakes.[11] In the Mithraic mysteries the soul upon dying returns to that original home of his beyond the stars in the heavenly spheres, and in fact “is connected with its own star.” The Milky Way in fact, is seen as the celestial path for the soul to travel to get back to the stars and become on of them in what Cumont has called “celestial immortality,” which can also be found in Plato’s Timaeus, “where each soul is said to be connected with its own star.”[12] “The Orphic belief that purified souls went up to stars, nay even became stars,” is shown by Jane Harrison.[13]

In light of our Masonic injunctions to study the seven liberal arts, especially geometry, and including astronomy (specifically mentioned in the Fellow Craft lecture as well), these themes at once poignantly interest us. In the Genesis Apocryphon of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Noah is described as glowing when he was born, and his father, Lamech, was seriously upset with his wife because he thought she had conceived Noah by an affair with the gods! Noah is described as being so incredibly brilliant that he “lit up the rooms of the house like rays of the sun.”[14] This theme of ancient heroes being begotten of the gods is also found in Plutarch who noted that Theseus, like Romulus himself, (one of the founders of Ancient Rome), were “sprung from the gods.” Theseus was begotten by Neptune according to Pittheus. Alexander was even said to have been descended through Hercules and been begotten by the Egyptian god Ammon.[15] Pythagoras himself was said to be a son of God and so descended from God.[16] Our letter “G” can easily, and obviously mean “Godly” as surely as it stands for “God” also. And this “Godliness,” and “Goodness” encompasses mankind with it. Macrobius as well rightly taught “Know, therefore, that you are a god, if, indeed, a god is that which quickens, feels, remembers, foresees, and in the same manner rules, restrains, and impels the body of which it has charge as the supreme God rules the universe…to make it clear that the soul is not only immortal but is a god.”[17]

In the Hermetic book called “Asclepius” it declares the divine part of man resides in the head and our root is in heaven, whence was the birth of our souls from the beginning. Plato had said that man is a plant of heaven, he is like an inverted tree, the roots of which are turned to heaven and its top toward the earth.[18] Coomaraswamy demonstrated the exact same conception is in the Rig Veda, Upanishads, and  in the other Eastern literatures.The theme is being “rooted in the dark ground of the Godhead” which tree represents the axis of the universe from earth to heaven.[19] In the Zohar, in the Hebrew tradition the Tree of Life spreads downwards from above, and is entirely bathed with light from the sun.[20] The ancient Norse Yggdrasil was another such tree.[21] In Mesoamerica the yaxche tree is significantly a world axis as well, giving us hints of the theme of Jacob’s Ladder, the ascent between the worlds, another significant Masonic theme, of which I will write on in another paper. The maize tree “symbolizes the original act of creation, sacrifice, and rebirth,” all significant Masonic themes as well.[22] The esoteric hint is in the Tarot Major Arcana card called “The Hanged Man,” which I also am in the process of writing about. Significantly, he hangs upside down from a tree, in the shape of the Hebrew letter Tav, an earthly, human representation of the upside down Tree of Life. In the B.O.T.A. deck, he has a Golden (another “G” word) halo of Glory (yet another “G” word) encircling his head signifying the Logos, significantly enough.[23] Interesting, in Livy we learn that when a man was condemned for treason, his head was veiled and he was hanged upside down on a barren tree, everything the opposite in the Hanged Man, and men in Masonry, who submit to civil authority and are taught excellence in citizenship of their nations.[24]

The Hermetic books also teach that Hermes was the equivalent and in fact was the Biblical Patriarch Enoch.[25] Enoch was equated, or else became the Arch-Angel Metatron, “The Measurer of the earth and of the Lord.”[26] This is precisely the definition of Geometry! The “measure” of man is in the Bible, the “cubit,” the length of the bent arm to the square (!) from the elbow to the tip on the middle finger. This cubit, called an “ell” “(hence ell.bow demonstrated when the arm is bent, or ‘bowed’). In Greek elbow is eolene, and the deities name “is imprinted on the creation through this measure.” When the arm to the square is rotated 90 degrees upright, it looks exactly like the Egyptian hieroglyph “neter” which is the word for “God.”[27]

In the inscribed star maps in the coffins and tombs of the kings and Pharaohs of Egypt in the Middle Kingdom, we learn that “the stars were regarded as gods or as the souls of the blessed dead.”[28] Mankind’s tie in with not only God but the entire Cosmos was believed and lived for. We read literally hundreds of descriptions of how the King rules over the stars, ferries his way over the Eastern Horizon to them, climbs the stairway of the sky to get to them, summons them, is set in the sky as a star, etc. Not only the ascension is prominent, but the circumambulation about the stars as the heavenly aspect of his kingdom is understood.[29] Walter Wreszinski discusses this in his article "Das Buch vom Durchwandeln der Ewigkeit nach einer Stele im Vatikan," showing the significance of this cosmological uniting and wandering through the Cosmos precisely because the Egyptians were initiated and ritualized their lives as Masons have our rituals for the same purposes precisely, to become “Good” and live “Great” lives the “Glory” be to “God” as we unite all in Brotherhood. The ideology through the rituals are exactly the same.

Wenn du dich zum Himmel erhebst, wird dein Arm nicht gehindert, wenn du zur Unterwelt niedersteigst, wirst du nicht abgehalten. Du wandelst auf dem Wege der Götter, die im Horizonte wohnen, und du bereitest deine Stätte bei den Bewohnern des Westens. Du umwandelst den Himmel hinter den... Gestirnen und umkreisest das Firmament der Unterwelt mit den Sternen. Du kommst als Bote der Herren des Horizontes und folgst denen die in der Unterwelt sind. Du vereinigst dich mit dem Herrn der Ewigkeit, wenn er am Tage aufgeht, und mit dem Herrn der Unendlichkeit, wenn er eintritt in der Nacht. Geöffnet ist dir diese Erde als einem Edlen der Lüfte.

“When you rise to the heaven, your arm is not hindered, if you descend to the underworld, you are not kept away. You continue on the way of the Gods that live on the horizon, and you make ready your place with the Westerners. You circulate in the heavens in their times... You circumambulate with the stars in the heavens of the underworld. You come as the messenger of the Lords of the Horizon and accompany those that are in the underworld. You unite with the Lord of Eternity, when he rises on his course in the day, and with the Lord of Infinity, when he enters the night. This earth is opened for you as a noble one of the airs.”[30]

Edward F. Wente’s analysis proves that the Egyptians were not all about funerals alone, nor were their literatures such as the Coffin Texts, Pyramid Texts, Books of the Dead, Books of Breathings, etc., the exclusive property and for use for the dead, rather, the Egyptians were “involving the initiations of living persons… some of the vast amount of funerary literature was familiar to living Egyptians.”[31] Dr. Thomas Milton Stewart, a 33^rd degree Mason and Past Master, in discussing the significance of the Egyptian Book of the Dead and Masonic ritual in general, concludes that “For the soul must win his way by his own personal effort, relying on the promptings of the Divinity within. He aids himself by assuming identity with the great gods, but he must have made some success in developing his capacity and powers of his own nature similar to those of the god in whose likeness he masquerades for the time being, or failure will result. That is to say, the acts in life must mould character along those lines that make for permanency in the next world. He must “Fight the good fight and lay hold on eternal life” as Timothy puts it in the New Testament.”[32] The Egyptian Book of Wandering Through Eternity describes precisely this reward.

Du schreitest zu dem Orte, zu dem du willst, du fährst nordwärts, und südwärts von Elephantine bis zum Delta an den Festen aller Götter. Du steigst auf die heilige Barke mit den Seligen, dein Sitz ist vorn im Götterschiff.

“You proceed to the place, to which you want, you travel northwards, and southwards from Elephantine up to the delta at the festivals of all the Gods. You climb on the sacred Barke with the blessed ones, your seat is in the front of the Ship of the God.”

To be allowed onto the ship of the God is to traverse eternity with the gods. This is one of the ultimate goals of the Egyptains. Heaven is not a boring place where there are simply seats and seats row after row of happy folk with nothing else to do except sing forever. That isn’t heaven at all in this view. Heaven is to move, to travel, to enjoy seeing new sights, and enjoy good company. Heaven is learning, and working on our ignorance. There is nothing static about heaven in these views of these ancient documents anywhere. It is energetic, alive, diffuse, interesting. The ultimate blessing is to share these exciting learning and enjoying experiences with friends and family. And this is precisely how the Book of Wandering Through Eternity ends.

Kraft, Freudigkeit, zu eilen bei Tag und Nacht im Horizonte der Ewigkeit... Dein Name bleibt und wächst, dein Haus dauert und hat Bestand auf Erden, indem dein Sohn gesegnet ist auf einem Sitze und deine Kindeskinder dauernd gemacht sind hinter dir, unvergänglich, immer und ewig.

“Strength, joyfulness, hurry along with day and night in the horizon of the eternity... Your name remains and grows, your house lasts and has continuance on Earth, in that your son is blessed on a throne (seat) and your grandchildren are continually behind you, immortal, always and eternally (forever and ever).”[33]

The value of reading the Egyptian ideas is for comparison for our own assumptions about what we wish to have; what we wish to be, or what we hope is truthful, righteous, and just. By comparing/contrasting ideologies, we become a better people. Studying their rituals, laws, governments, religions, sciences causes us to “Grow” in “Goodness” and “Godliness” towards all men who really are our brothers. Our living rituals connect us together in our lives right now and prepare us for the next life, precisely as the Egyptian ones did from the so-called “Book of the Dead,” a mis-translation of the more correct title “Book of Going Forth By Day.”[34] A powerful lesson for expanding our awareness of the letter “G” in our lodges given us by Stewart is that “knowledge is based on experience. Symbols have a different meaning for the reason that a symbol represents a definite individual experience which could be reproduced in the life experience of another individual despite the lapse of time. This then becomes also a criterion for truth. Religion likewise was based on experience, it was simply the application of the temple teachings to the living of a life. The putting into practice of the ethical teachings such as are found in the 125^th Chapter of the Book of the Dead.”[35] What this precipitates is the “participation in Deity.” The end view of all the Egyptians, Hermeticists, Theurgists and the Greek and Christian mysteries alike was the “conscious and hypostatic union of the soul with Deity and its participation in the life of God.”[36] The reason for our rituals, our dramas, our participations in life, bringing about a world-wide Brotherhood is precisely because, as the ancients taught, and as Masons regard, “in man we have faculties, capacities, and powers as attributes of the Individual Intelligence, or the Spark of Divinity.”[37]

The “Gnosis” and “Geometry” and its sister discipline “Gematria,” as well as “Glory” and “Great Work” (Alchemy” and other disciplines) will have to wait for the 2^nd part of this paper, as this is long enough for us to comprehend that the letter “G” is not merely chosen for lack of a better letter, or without significant meaning and use in our own lives, and more especially in our Masonic lives.

To be Continued…

Endnotes

1. Albert Pike, Morals and Dogma, 604. Hereafter cited as M&D.
2. Pike, M&D, p. 625.
3. James T. Tresner, “St. John’s Day Among the Creek: A Rediscovered Speech of Albert Pike,” in Heredom: The Transactions of the Scottish Rite Research Society, Edited by S. Brent Morris, Vol. 8 (1999-2000): 140. These are only a few of the points in the speech Pike made.
4. W. Kirk MacNulty, “Kabbalah and Freemasonry,” in Heredom: The Transactions of the Scottish Rite Research Society, Edited by S. Brent Morris, Vol. 7 (1998): 171.
5. George E. Duckworth, “Animae Dimidium Meae: Two Poets of Rome,” in Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, Vol. 87 (1956): 292f, and notes 45-47.
6. MacNulty, Ibid., p. 176.
7. Aryeh Kaplan, The Bahir: Illumination, Samuel Weiser, 1979: 45. In The Key of Solomon the King (Clavicula Salomonis) edited, and translated by S. Liddell MacGregor Mathers, TzDQ (Tzedeq) is specifically linked with Jupiter.
8. Morton Smith, Clement of Alexandria and the Secret Gospel of Mark, Cambridge University Press, 1973: 34.
9. Theosis: Deification in Christian Theology, Edited by Stephen Finlan, Vladamir Kharlamov, Princeton Theological Monograph Series, Pickwick Publications, (2006): 5.
10. Finlan. Kharmalov, Ibid., p. 5.
11. Simo Parpola, “The Assyrian Tree of Life: Tracing the Origins of Jewish Monotheism and Greek Philosophy,” in Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 52, No. 3 (1993): 173, and note 56.
12. David Ulansey, The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries: Cosmology & Salvation in the Ancient World, Oxford University Press, 1989: 86.
13. Jane Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, Princeton University Press, 1991: 205.
14. Joseph S. Fitzmyer, The Genesis Apocryphon of Qumran Cave 1 (1Q20), Editrice Pointificio Instituto Biblico, Roma, (2004): 122.
15. Plutarch, The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, translated by John Dryden, revised by Arthur Hugh Clough, Modern Library, n.d.,  pp. 3, 5, 801f for Alexander.
16. Arnold Hermann, To Think Like God: Pythagoras and Parmenides, The Origins of Philosophy, Parmenides Publishing, (2004): 23.
17. Macrobius, Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, edited, translated by William Harris Stahl, Records of Western Civilization, Columbia University Press, (1990): 222-223.
18. Walter Scott, Hermetica: The Ancient Greek and Latin Writings which Contains Religious or Philosophic Teachings Ascribed to Hermes Trismegistus, Kessinger Reprints Publishing, (1926): Vol. 3: 36, and note 1.
19. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, Traditional Art and Symbolism, Edited by Roger Lipsey, Princeton University Press, (1977): 377).
20. J. E. Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols, Barnes & Noble, (1971): 348.
21. Georgio de Santillana and Hertha von Deschend, Hamlet’s Mill: An Essay on Myth & the Frame of Time, Gambit Books, (1969): 223, where they mention the Yggdrasil, the world darkening Oak of the Kalevala, Pherecydes world oak tree draped with the starry mantle and the Tree of Life in Eden.
22. For a fabulous general treatment of this theme, Linda Schele, David Friedel, and Joy Parker, Maya Cosmos: Three Thousand Years on the Shaman’s Path, William Morrow and Co., (1993).
23. Paul Foster Case, The Tarot: A Key to the Wisdom of the Ages, BOTA, Revised edition, (1990): 135.
24. R. B. Onians, The Origins of European Thought About the Body, the Mind, the Soul, the World, Time, and Fate, Cambridge University Press, First Paperback, (1988):133, note 1.
25. Walter Scott, Hermetica: The Ancient Greek and Latin Writings which Contains Religious or Philosophic Teachings Ascribed to Hermes Trismegistus, Shambala Press, (1993): 43, note 3.
26. Andrei Orlov, The Enoch-Metatron Tradition, Mohr Siebeck (2005): 234ff.
27. Marke Pawson, Gematria, the Numbers of Infinity, Green Magic Press, (2004): 73. See  Erik Hornung, Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: The One and the Many, Cornell University Press, (1982): 34, for illustrations of different stylistic neters, as well as interesting discussion pp. 33-65.
28. Raymond O. Faulkner, “The King and the Star-Religion in the Pyramid Texts,” in Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 25, No. 3 (July 1966): 153.
29. Faulkner, Ibid., pp. 155-161.
30. Walter Wreszinski , "Das Buch vom Durchwandeln der Ewigkeit nach einer Stele im Vatikan," in Zeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache, 1908: 111-122).
31. Edward F. Wente, “Mysticism in Pharaonic Egypt?” in Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 41, No. 3 (1982): 161-162.
32. Thomas Milton Stewart, The Symbolism of the Gods of the Egyptians and the Light They Throw on Freemasonry, The Baskerville Press, (1927): 39.
33. Wreszinski, Ibid., p. 118.
34. John Gee, “The Use of the Daily Temple Liturgy in the Book of the Dead,” in Totenbuch-Forschungen, (2006): 73-86.
35. Stewart, Ibid., p. 58.
36. A. E. Waite, The Secret Tradition in Alchemy, Kessinger Reprint, n.d., p. 22.
37. Stewart, Ibid., p. 66.

By Kerry A. Shirts (Nov. 14, 2009)

 In a stimulating conversation I had with my fellow Masonic brother, David Nippur (next year’s [2010] Worshipful Master of our Lodge, Eagle Rock Lodge #19, in Idaho Falls, Idaho) and I were discussing the number symbolism in Masonry and he mentioned to me the singular importance of the number 3, not only in Masonry, but throughout antiquity, the Medieval Ages, and on into our own day. This piqued my interest in researching into its almost literal ubiquity through time.  I believe many stimulating themes of this number can help us appreciate why

The Masonic use of the number 3 is obvious considering the Blue Lodge has 3 degrees, that of Entered Apprentice, Fellowcraft, and Master Mason. The 3 principle officers of the lodge, as well as the 3 steps which the Worshipful Master resides from are all well known, not to mention the Three Greater Lights, and Three Lesser Lights of the Lodges in general. There is much other use of 3 besides this also. What interests me is how in antiquity 3 was understood in various multiple senses, whether cosmic, earthly, and even underworldly, the universe being divided into 3 basics constituents: the gods, the living, and the transfigured dead.[1] The number 3 to the Egyptians signified plurality, and many of their, for lack of a better word, “godheads” were trinities, such as Re, Isis, and Anubis, or Atum, Shu, and Tefnut. Three signified “a closed system which was both complete and interactive among its parts.”[2] What ought to particularly catch the attention of every Mason (think of where the officers – Worshipful Master, Jr. Warden, Sr. Warden - in the lodge are stationed, east, west, south, etc) is the theme of Amun,  Re and Ptah “According to this conception the solar deity Re was the god’s face, Ptah his body, and Amun his hidden identity – or to express it differently, his ba (spirit or double of the person) is in the sky, his body is in the west, and his cult image is in Heliopolis (Thebes – the City of Amun) Heliopolis the city of the sun.”[3] The triple aspect of the deities signified the sun in the morning, then again at high noon, and once again as it set in the west. It is of more than passing interest that not only do the actual Hieroglyphs have 3 levels of meaning, but the “Het-her” is something “referring to the divinity’s function to the abode of solar light in its incubation phase.  Het-her represents the Lunar principle that houses and reflects the sun. It also expresses the rhythms of the Lunar Principle in the sky on earth and in the inner life.”[4] Notice the conscious application of real things, objects, (in this instance, literally celestial orbs!) nay symbols, for personal use. The parallel in Masonry with say the 24 inch gauge and common gavel, among other items needs little commentary. The application of people to the sun in its various locations in the sky at different times of the day are deliberately applied in our Blue Lodges with the officers as well. This is the famous ancient Hermetic tradition of “As Above, So Below,” what is in heaven, is reflected on earth. We deliberately, as Ancient Free and Accepted Masons carry on this venerable tradition of tying ourselves cosmologically together, not only in brotherhood, but with earth and the heavens as well. This is the large picture with a vengeance! It is meant to be a broadening of our own consciences and decisions to help us realize life is not only about ourselves, but every decision we make, every action we perform has cosmological significance, because, after all, the cosmos is our actual home, not this mere planet we call earth.

This is in line with my conversation with Brother Nippur. When I saw once again the three pillars of strength, wisdom, and beauty in the Entered Apprentice lecture, I mentioned to him that those correspond beautifully to the three pillars of the Kabbalah Tree of Life. That was when he noted that the number 3 is significant in Masonry in many instances. The cosmological significance of Svayamatrnna – Janus Coeli, of the 3 perforated bricks (Svayamatrnna) “representing these worlds, Earth, Air, and Sky; the seasonal bricks, representing the year; and the Universal-Light bricks representing Agni, Vayu, Aditya,” are part of the superstructure of the regular fire altar, which correspond to the “three intervening ‘Universal Lights’ representing Agni, Vayu, and Aditya (Fire, Gale of the Spirit, and Sun) compose the vertical Axis of the Universe, the passageway from one world to another.”[5] So here we have concepts such that correspond to our own ashlar, (the bricks are referred to as “stones”!), 3 lights, a  superstructure of which we are preparing our own minds for, and incorporating the afterlife into our lives right now in Masonry through proper morality, goodly vicissitudes, etc. These 3 “stones” we read, are “also for vision of the world of heaven.” The fire altar we are taught “must have been ring-stones,” which have been found in all sizes on Indus Valley sites.  The point is, bringing it home for we Masons, is that “all things are connected with the sun in what is literally a common con-spiracy.”[6] As the center of the earth life is the altar, so the importance of the altar being centered with the sun is associated cosmologically with the axis mundi – the Axis of the universe tying all earthly life to the heavenly. Think of the Blue Lodge Masonic Altars, the ashlar, and the Worshipful Master, Jr. and Sr. Wardens as representing the sun in its different places in the sky during the day, and you are getting the idea!

The Kabbalistic text the Bahir teaches that the 3 princes are the Axis, the Sphere, and the Heart, which all comprise the pillar reaching to heaven which pillar is called Tzadik – Righteous.[7] We read that this pillar supports the entire world, in perfect correspondence to the Worshipful Master of the Blue Lodge who supports the entire lodge. In one of the most intriguing esoteric interpretations I have ever read, the Egyptian hieroglyphs for the very word “Kabbalah” are the hieroglyph of the Ka, the hieroglyph of the Ba, and the hieroglyph of the Akh – “Ka-ba-akh” – the ka being the upraised two arms meaning the independent life force, the ba is the nonphysical attributes of the personality, and the akh is the form which the blessed dead inhabited the underworld after the successful union of his ka and ba, which then existed for eternity.[8] This 3 fold aspect of a person is an interesting Egyptian as well as Kabbalistic interpretation, which we can certainly see echoed in the 3 degrees of Masonry offered in the Blue Lodges. The 3 mother letters of Hebrew, the Aleph, Mem, and Shin “exemplify the cosmic functions of expansive fire (shin), contractive water (mem), and the air that mediates between these opposing forces (aleph).”[9] The Hebrew letter Aleph itself is composed of 3 parts, which symbolizes the infinite eternal nature of God. The upper right segment of Aleph is actually a yod and its lower left segment is also a yod, which are both connected by a diagonal vav, each yod having a numerical value of 10, while the vav has the value of 6 = 26 (10 + 10 + 6 = 26) which is the numerical value of the Four-Letter-Divine-Name YHVH.[10] Interestingly, Aleph spelled backwards reads Peleh – “Mystery, Miracle,” etc. This letter has hidden forces precisely because of its quality of threeness![11] The Hebrew alphabet as a whole is perfectly divided into precisely 3 parts due to the nature of its letters, the 3 mother letters, the 7 double letters, and the 12 simple letters. The entire cosmos is built of the Hebrew letters, the  aligned elements to the 3 Mother Letters, the planets correspond to the 7 double letters, and the zodiac is aligned to the 12 simple letters. These three divisions correspond to the dimensions of the Cube of Space, of all things! The center of the cube and its 6 faces are formed from the 7 planetary double letters. The 12 edges of the cube that border the 6 exterior faces are formed from the 12 zodiacal simple Hebrew letters. Secretly, the three interior dimensions of this cube are formed from the 3 elemental mother letters.[12]

 Masons have new reasons now for thinking about the cube, which symbol, Albert Pike taught, “became the symbol of perfection.”[13] This cube becomes the cornerstone for the building of our lives.[14] In what can only be a startling correspondence, we read as well that the Kabbalistic text Sefer Yetzirah says the creation is the process of constructing the cube of infinite space! The “Pythagorean Sacred Science” which Sefer Yetzirah is explaining is based upon shape, sound, and number and its geometric enigma, one that explains the 12 diagonals to the cube of space, is the process about “how this relationship permits the cosmic expansion of the cube.”[15] The Holy of Holies of Solomon’s Temple was imitating this perfect cube! The Bible describes it as a perfect cube in shape. And if we are also ashlars, then from our own person, to the temple, to the earth, and into the cosmos the same imagery is utilized in teaching us about our own perfection, and possible infinite capacity to forever grow in light and knowledge. This is the astonishing power of symbolism, especially in our own Masonic traditions. And, it almost goes without saying, that a simple square, being just one side of a cube, when cut along the diagonal, gives rise to the triangle, of which our Pythagorean inheritance of Euclid’s 47^th proposition plays a peculiarly significant part in our Masonic tradition. In the ancient Jewish mysticism the hexagram (6 pointed star) and cube were the two most important symbols, the hexagram symbolizing creation, the cube symbolizing redemption. This was understood to be “Solomon’s seal.”[16]

A.E. Waite noted that in the Masonry and the connection to Kabbalah, the number 3 is in the moral order, the three theological virtues while in the physical order are the three principles of bodies. This actually indicates the alchemical elements Salt, Sulphur, and Mercury, which according to Waite, “indicates the Hermetic connections of this Grade. Three also denotes the triple Divine Essence.”[17] Is this one reason why a 5^th century love charm contains a triple repetition of the name of the god Thouth or Thoth, the ibis-headed Egyptian god whom the Greeks called “thrice-greatest Hermes”?[18] In another very interesting Greek Magical Papyrus we read “Helios ACHEBYKROM (which signifies the flame and radiance of the disk) whose is the glory, AAA, EEE, OOO because he was glorified by you Phos (Light)…”[19] Notice the triple invoking of the vowels. The triple lettered Jewish god IAO “is compiled entirely of mystic vowels… the letter Iota, being the middle of the 7 vowels, could be seen as representing the Sun or God of Light, while the last two letters, alpha and omega, signified the beginning and end. In the Gnostic texts known as the Pistis Sophia, Jesus gives the following analysis of the name IAO to his disciples: This is its interpretation: Iota, the universe came out; Alpha, they will turn them; Omega, will become the completion of all completions.”[20] In the Gnostic Book of Jeu after Jesus repeats words of prayers to the Father of Light, he specifically instructs his disciples to say Amen 3 times, which they do after every sentence.[21] In the 2^nd Book of Jeu, Jesus gives the disciples “the three baptisms” which are water, fire, and of the Holy Spirit.[22] Elsewhere in the Book of Jeu, we read of the 3 gates of the treasury, the 3 amens, the mystery of the 5 trees, and the mystery of the 7 voices, thus the numbers 3, 5, 7 come together which numbers ought to be familiar to absolutely every Fellowcraft Mason![23] We also read of the 3 amens, the 5 helpers, and the 7 voices.[24] The hidden aeon of the Father which belongs to the great powers of glory is called among the glories “thrice-born,” that is, “the one who has begotten three times, which is also called thrice-begotten, and is also called Hermes.”[25] Hermes Trismegistus signifies that Hermes exists on three levels at once. Being embodied is the middle in-between of the above and below.[26] The Hellenistic cosmological speculation was Trinitarian in nature. This is why the Pythagoreans saw the cosmos as “a dynamic union of complementary principles, joined through a mean term: the power of logos and harmonia, the power of mediation.”[27] The Philosophumena says thatamong the Naassenes, “Hermes is the Word who has expressed ad fashioned the things that have been, that are and that will be.”[28] Thus the ancient Egyptian theme of the relationship of two opposing forces itself being a third force. One, in becoming Two, becomes Three simultaneously. “The ‘becoming’ is the third force, automatically providing the innate and necessary (and mysterious) reconciling principle.”[29]

Interestingly enough, linguistically and phonetically, speaking “three” we hear its relation to words like “through” and “threshold” the prefix “trans” (“across,” “penetrate”) shows us that three takes us through or across the threshold and through past polarizing limits of the Dyad, or the number 2. Wherever we have three-ness, such as the three musketeers, three wishes, three wise men, there is “thoroughness,” the idea of rebirth, transformation, and success.[30] Perhaps this is why Giambattista Vico taught that the 3 ages of the world are: The Age of the Gods; The Age of the Heroes; the Age of Men.[31] The ancient doctrine from Anatolius declared that “the triad, the first odd number, is called perfect by some, because it is the first number to signify the totality – beginning, middle and end. When people exalt extraordinary events, they derive words from the triad and talk of “thrice-blessed,” “thrice-fortunate.” Prayers and libations are performed three times. Triangles both reflect and are the first substantiation of being plane; and there are three kinds of triangle – equilateral, isosceles and scalene. Moreover, there are three rectilinear angles – acute, obtuse, and right.”[32] “Three is a number rich in association with perfection and mystery.”[33] Philo taught in the Legum Allegoriae that “three is an image of a solid body, because a solid can be divided according to a three fold division.”[34] And Kabbalistically, the trinity is always completed by the quaternity, that is the triangle within a square.[35] From a Christian perspective “the number three, however, is employed in such relations as to suggest that it is especially the number of divine fullness in unity… its peculiar usage in connextion with the Divine Name gives mystical significance to the number three.”[36] The alchemists claimed that the Philosopher’s Stone shared the same name with the Creator of the world, for it, like the Creator, was three in one.[37] In one section of the Zohar we read of the Great Head of the Ancient of Days being three heads in one in the mysticism of Isaac Luria.[38] It is fascinating in this respect to learn that the Hebrew word “reshit” the root of the very first word in the Bible, “Beresheit” has 3 meanings. It means “beginning.” It also means “head.” And it means “wisdom.”[39] Intriguing ideas have been discovered by Robert Wang when he combined the Tarot with Kabbalah and found that in the suits, the four 3’s represent the realization of action owing to the Prince having been produced. The Three of wands means “Lord of established Strength.”[40] I can’t help but think of this correspondence with a Mason who has finished the 3^rd degree in the Blue Lodge from Entered Apprentice, to Fellowcraft, and finally as a “MASTER MASON.” Wang shows how the 3 of cups means “Lord of Abundance.” While the 3 of Swords means “The Great Initiator.” The 3 of Pentacles is “constructive building.” All of this appears to echo themes in the 3^rd degree of Masonry, the philosophy of it being to building men into greater brotherhood.[40]

And finally, one last terrifically fascinating concept with the number 3 and of one of our Holy Saints John, namely the Baptist.  In Greek gematria, John’s name comes to 1119. This number comes from the intriguing Kabbalistic numbers of 3 X 373. The number 373 is the gematric number of the LOGOS, the Word, the Measure, Proportion, Relation, etc. Thus 1119 is the triple Logos! Interestingly this might be representing as well, the Three Persons of the Godhead in the Baptism of Jesus as John recalled. In addition though we find that the associating words also equal 1119!

Helios Alpha & Omega (Sun, Beginning and End) = 1119

Logos, Logos, Logos (triple Word) = 1119

Eh Didache Theou (the teaching of God) = 1119

Baptisma + eh Metanoia (baptism & repentance) = 1119

There is an astonishing lot more to all this kind of working symbolisms which I shall forego elaborating on for now. There is enough to at least pique our curiousities, and intrigue our intellects.

Endnotes

1. John H. Taylor, Death and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt, University of Chicago Press, 2001: 15. 
2. Richard H. Wilkinson, Symbol & Magic in Egyptian Art, Thames & Hudson, 1994: 132.
3. Wilkinson, Ibid., p. 132.
4. Rosemary Clark, The Sacred Tradition in Ancient Egypt: The Esoteric Wisdom Revealed, Llewellyn Publications, 2004: 28. Cf. the Commentary on the Dream of Scipio by Macrobius, William Harris Stahl translator, Columbia University Press, 1990: 111, on the significance of the various astronomical cycles of the stars, moon, sun, etc.
5. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, The Door in the Sky, Coomaraswamy on Myth and Meaning, Princeton University Press, 1997: 6.
6. Coomaraswamy, Ibid., p. 7.
7. Aryeh Kaplan, The Bahir: Illumination, Samuel Weiser Inc., 1989: 38.
8. Robert Feather, The Secret Initiation of Jesus at Qumran: The Essene Mysteries of John the Baptist, Bear & Company, 2005: 89.
9. Leonora Leet, Renewing the Covenant: A Kabbalistic Guide to Jewish Spirituality, Inner Traditions, 1999: 80.
10. Rabbi Michael L. Munk, The Wisdom of the Hebrew Alphabet, Mesorah Publications, 13^th Impression, 2003: 44.
11. Aryeh Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah: The Book of Creation, Samuel Weiser Inc., 1997: 11.
12. David Allen Hulse, New Dimensions for the Cube of Space: The Path of Initiation Revealed by the Tarot upon the Qabalistic Cube, Samuel Weiser Inc., 2000: 4-5.
13. Albert Pike, Morals & Dogma, p. 5.
14. Kevin Townley, The Cube of Space: Container of Creation, Active Press, 1993: 3.
15. Leonora Leet, The Universal Kabbalah: Deciphering the Cosmic Code in the Sacred Geometry of the Sabbath Star Diagram, InnerTraditions, 2004: 5.
16. Leonora Leet, The Secret Doctrine of the Kabbalah: Recovering the Key to Hebraic Sacred Science, Inner Traditions, 1999: 326.
17. E. A. Waite, The Holy Kabbalah, University Books, Citadel Press, n.d., p. 551.
18. Kieren Barry, The Greek Qabalah: Alphabetic Mysticism and Numerology in the Ancient World, Samuel Weiser Inc., 1999: 98.
19. Hans Dieter Betz, The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation: Including the Demotic Spells, 2^nd ed., University of Chicago Press, paperback edition, 1996: 177-178.
20. Barry, Ibid., p. 48-49.
21. Carl Schmidt, The Books of Jeu and the Untitled Text in the Bruce Codex, E. J. Brill, 1978: 113.
22. Schmidt, Ibid., p. 133.
23. Schmidt, Ibid., p. 135. The 3 archons of light are mentioned on page 199.
24. Schmidt, Ibid., pp. 167, 171, 169, 129. There are also 9 watchers of the 3 gates of the treasury of light on p. 135.
25. Schmidt, Ibid., p. 273.
26. Dennis William Hauck, The Emerald Tablet: Alchemy for Personal Transformation, Penguin Arkana, 1999: 43.  
27. David Fideler, Jesus Christ Sun of God: Ancient Cosmology and Early Christian Symbolism, Quest Books, 1993: 298.
28. Jean Doresse, The Secret Books of the Egyptian Gnostics, MJF Books, 1986: 84.
29. John Anthony West, Serpent in the Sky: The High Wisdom of Ancient Egypt, Quest Books, 1993: 35.
30. Michael Schneider, A Beginner’s Guide to Constructing the Universe: The Mathematical Archetypes of Nature, Art, and Science, HarperPerennial, 1994: 39.
31. The New Science of Giambattista Vico, translated by Thomas Goddard Bergin and Max Harold Fisch, Cornell University Press,  1^st paperback, 1984: 20.
32. The Theology of Arithmetic: On the Mystical, Mathematical and Cosmological Symbolism of the First Ten Numbers, attributed to Iamblichus, translated b y Robin Waterfield, Phanes Press, 1988: 51. The Ancient Assyrians drew three jars of water from three wells in their ceremonies which constituted a significant magical act, see Theodor H. Gaster, Thespis: Ritual, Myth, and Drama in the Ancient Near East, Gordian Press, 1975: 275.
33. Hans Biedermann, Dictionary of Symbolism: Cultural Icons and the Meanings Behind Them, Meridian Books, 1994:240. In the Dead Sea Scrolls fragment 4Q534-536, “The Birth of Noah,” where Noah is born so perfect that he glows very brightly and it terrifies everyone(!), we read of 3 special books which are said to be “having to do with mystic knowledge of the age, or as it were, the Heavenly or Angelic Mysteries.” See in Robert Eisenmann, Michael Wise, The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered, Element Books, 1992: 34.
34. The Works of Philo Complete and Unabridged, translated by C. D. Yonge, Hendrickson Publishers, 1993:25.
35. S.L. MacGregor Mathers, The Kabbalah Unveiled, Samuel Weiser, 1^st paperback, 1983: 35. Significance ofthis symbol for the Tarot found in Richard Roberts, Joseph Campbell, Tarot Revelations, Vernal Equinox Press, 1987: 90-91.
36. Milton S. Terry, Biblical Hermeneutics: A Treatise on the Interpretation of the Old and New Testaments, Academie Books, n.d., p. 381-382. Cf. the Three Books of Occult Philosophy of Henry Cornelius Agrippa, translated by James Freake, Llewellyn,  7^th ed., 2004: 249f for more description of the number 3.
37. See Alexander Roob, The Hermetic Museum: Alchemy & Mysticism, Taschen, 1997: 472, under “Trinity,” the diagram of Cornelius Petraeus and its description quoted from Zosimos in the 4^th Century A.D.
38. Eliahu Klein, Kabbalah of Creation: The Mysticism of Isaac Luria Founder of Modern Kabbalah, North Atlantic Books, 2005: 258.
39. David Sheinkin, Path of the Kabbalah, Paragon House, 1986: 52.
40. Robert Wang, The Qabalistic Tarot: A Textbook of Mystical Philosophy, Marcus Aurelius Press, Revised edition, 2004: 72f.

http://www.lifeongoldplates.com/2009/10/review-matthew-b-browns-exploring.html

http://mormonmatters.org/2009/10/29/book-review-exploring-the-connection-between-mormons-and-masons/

In Freemasonry, the lambskin apron is of signal importance. As I have been pondering its significance, I have discovered some rather interesting themes surrounding the lamb as a symbol in ancient times. I cannot include all aspects of it for this little essay, but there is enough to help me appreciate why Masonry emphasizes its meaning and use.

The Christian emphasis on the lamb and its spiritual significance is noted by most commentators, yet it is much broader and deeper in time than

The lamb in the Apocalypse on the book which is on the altar in Freemasonry, “…represents the Shekhinah, that is, the presence of the glory of God on the Ark of the Covenant.”(2) The meek and lowly lamb “embodies the triumph of renewal.”(3) Interestingly, in a very similar vein with Freemasonry, we are to understand that in allegory there are three meanings to every symbol. “Taking sheep as an instance, there are three degrees: [I] the white and innocent thoughts of the mind; [2] the man himself who has become lamb-like; [3] the lamb of God.”(4)

The symbolism of the lamb of God originated because of the ancient cosmology. “The blood of the lamb is the solar life pouring into the world through the sign of Aries.”(5) Robert Eisler, in his fascinating exposition on Orpheus has demonstrated that the Ewe’s milk, instead of the cow or goat milk in antiquity was always used in a sacramental/Eucharistic sense. The theme of sacrificing the bull and the “magical reviving of the sacrificial lamb by boiling it in its mother’s milk,” take on an intensely interesting meaning when we are taught that these words have “an astral and cosmological significance, for according to a well known Pythagorean doctrine the souls had to pass on their way down as well as on their return to the sky through the galaxy… only as such could they pass through the galaxy and reach the blissful fields of heaven.”(6) The lamb is understood to be the “victory always to be won afresh of life over death.”(7) It was throughout the European and Asiatic (including China) regions over vast reaches of time that the lamb “was sacrificed on all the altars of pre-Christian cults.”(8) Because of its whiteness, as well as coming from the one animal understood as being pure and innocent, the milk of the lamb among all the pre-Christian peoples that we know anything of, “was a revered and precious liquid and nearly all the ancient religions used it as a perfect ritual substance…from one end of the ancient world to the other, it was related with the idea of prosperity and happiness.”(9)

 Endnotes

1.    Manley Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages, Philosophic Research Society, reprint, 1997: CLXXXVI.

2.    Louis Charbonneau Lassay, The Bestiary of Christ, Parabola Books, 1992: 74-75.

3.    Jean Chevalier, Alain Gheerbrant, The Penguin Dictionary of Symbols, Penguin Books, 1996: 585.

4.     Harold Bayley, The Lost Language of Symbolism, 2 Vols., Citadel Press, 1988: Vol. 1: 97.

5.    Manley Hall,  The Secret Teachings of All Ages, XCI.

6.    Robert Eisler, Orpheus the Fisher, Kessinger Publishing reprint, n.d.: 7-8, and note 2.

7.    Chevalier, Gheerbrant, Ibid., p. 585.

8.    Lassay, p. 78-79.

9.    Lassay, p. 80.

http://mormontimes.com/studies_doctrine/research_discoveries/?id=11256

In thinking on this, I mused to some friends that if this is a proper approach, we could always ask why did Jesus wait so loooooooong to be born on earth?! Why wait until the Meridian of Time and let 2000 years of history go by? Why let so many souls perish before the atonement occurred?  Why not just do it right from the very start and show up on the very FIRST day and perform the Atonement then?

A very dear friend of mine, Ted Jones (a phenomenal researcher) actually found this to be

De Lubac, Henri, Catholicism. Why did God wait so long to send His Son:
 
Celsus, Contra Celsum 4.7; “But what is fundamentally objectionable in all of this is the particularism attributed to God by Christians. Why was it only ‘after such a long age’ that it occurred to God to redirect the human race?  ‘Did he not care before?’  Also, why should God, after such a ‘long slumber,’ have sent some one ‘into one corner?’ [contra Celsum  6.78; cf. 4.36; 5.50: ‘one corner in the land of Judaea’].  He ought to have breathed [his spirit] into many bodies in the same way and sent them all over the world.  The comic poet wrote that Zeus woke up and sent Hermes to the Athenians and Spartans because he wanted to raise a laugh in the theatre.  Yet do you not think it is more ludicrous to make the Son of God to be sent to the Jews?’ [contra Celsum 6.78].”

“[Origen] grants that God does indeed intend that ‘this world as God’s work [should] be made complete and perfect in all its parts…. We should agree that in this point [Celsus] was right.’  But then comes the decisive difference: ‘…God does not take care, as Celsus imagines, only of the universe as a whole, but in addition to that He takes particular care of every rational being’ [contra Celsum 4.99]” (Frans Jozef van Beeck, S.J., God Encountered: A Contemporary Catholic Systematic Theology, Volume One: Understanding the Christian Faith (Harper and Row, 1989),  I.114-115)
 
3rd century anti-Christian Porphyry; fragments 81, 82
 
Ambrose, Epistle 18.27;
Chrysostom, In Rom, homily 5.5;  asked why did Christ not come sooner [Hom on Colossians 4; in LFC 14 (1843): 181-334; LNPF 13 (1890): 257-321] (Quasten, Patrology, 3.449).
Justin, Apology 1.46.1;
Irenaeus, AH 4.38;
Theodoret, On Providence 10; In Psalmen 2 (246 ff. with extracts 38, 39)
Augustine (251-2). 
Eusebius says the human race could not have received the teaching (that is why God waited so long) [History of the Church 1.2.16, 21-23]. 
Gregory of Nyssa asks “Why did God postpone his blessing?  Why did he not cut short the subsequent progress of vice right at the beginning?’ [Adv Apollinaris 53; Oratio 29, catechetica magna] (262-3, with note 55). 
 
Ep to Diognetus in Quasten, 1. 249-50: (ca 200 AD). Diognetus had asked why Christ had not come sooner [Ep. Diog 1; translation ANL 1; FOTC 1; ACW 6] 
Justin, in Thompson;
Augustine in Ralph Turner;
Augustine CD 10.32, in Wilken;
Luther, in Grislis;
Origen in Watson;
Ambrosiaster in Tavard. 
Julian also). 
 
William of Auverne asks: Why did Christ wait so long? (Henri de Lubac, Catholicism (San Francisco: Ignatius Books, 1988): 421): ‘But why did God leave the divine cult imperfect and wanting for so many thousands of years?  Why did he not take thought sooner for his glory and for our salvation?
One answer to such questions is this: if but a small fraction of the peoples of the world, the Jewish race alone, was capable of understanding, in the most simple and elementary way, wherein lay the perfection of the divine cult, and if to do even this they needed the persuasion of miracles, and something of the compelling power of many great afflictions, not to mention the help gained from knowledge handed on by their ancestors; surely the whole world and society of mankind was far more incapable of attaining to the required perfection in so great a matter.  And so God permitted his cult to be imperfect until the fullness of time was come (Gal 4), just as he permits children to be immature and the seed of plants and of animals to be small, till by gradual growth they reach their full and perfect stature.
To go further, the fundamental meaning of the question we are answering is this:  why are we born as infants, instead of as fully developed and mature men?  Why do certain animals lay eggs instead of bringing to birth fully developed offspring?  When God’s cult, the true religion, was first established in the world, it existed rather in the manner of a seed or an infant, because the community of mankind itself was immature and unfitted for anything more advanced’ [On the Sacrament of the Eucharist, chapter 2]
 
John Wesley, in William Ragsdale Cannon, The Theology of John Wesley, with special reference to the doctrine of justification (New York 1946): 159-60; “….There are many things of which [man] is ignorant [Sermon lxix.3.2].  Why did God keep his Son for so long a time apart from the world; and, when he came, why did he come only to the Jews [sermon lxix. 3. 3]?  Why is the New Zealander or the Hottentot cut off from the truths of the gospel /sermon lxix 3.1/?  These problems we cannot solve, for the answer to them lies in the unsearchable wisdom of God [sermon lxix.3.2].  But rather than raise these problems as objections to the Christian revelation, we should accept them as lessons of humility, trust, and patience [sermon lxix. 3. 4]”.
 
Arnobius, in McDonald: 76; The credibility of a religion must not be determined by its age, but by its divinity [Adv Gentes 2.71]”
 
Leo the Great:  The atonement was ordained from foundation of earth; ‘it is cause of salvation for all’.  ‘Those who believed its promise received no less than those who witnessed its fulfillment’ [3rd Sermon for Christmas 4]” (426-7).

The reason this struck me is due to my discussing, analyzing, exploring, and learning about the LDS scriptures. Critics usually contend the only way to approach them is to view them as totally phony, faked documents pretending to masquerade as real history. That is the "objective" approach we are always told. I have my serious doubts that Piatigorsky's comment will change anything, but it is a reminder that it is far more important to take things seriously of their own accord when exploring them, i.e., giving them the benefit of the doubt first, then exploring if anything significant occurs, rather than approaching all things as jabberwocky and gewgaw as a supposedly objective person does. I am specifically thinking of the Book of Mormon, which critics more often than not will approach it from an entirely negative stance in all out war against whatever it says. 

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