The Mystery of the Cathedrals
Finally received a copy of the Mystery of the Cathedrals by Fulcanelli. Maximus recommended it. Also on my plate are Cultural Amnesia, by Clive James, recommended by my friend DAS, and the Passion of the Western Mind by Richard Tarnas, recommended by Hoh River Boy. Before I tell you what I'm seeing in my beloved America, compare these two quotes:
The earliest theory of salvation is the Egyptian theory. The Egyptian Mystery System had as its most important object, the deification of man, and taught that the soul of man if liberated from its bodily fetters, could enable him to become godlike and see the Gods in this life and attain the beatific vision and hold communion with the Immortals (Ancient Mysteries, C. H. Vail, P. 25).
Plotinus defines this experience as the liberation of the mind from its finite consciousness, when it becomes one and is identified with the Infinite. This liberation was not only freedom of the soul from bodily impediments, but also from the wheel of reincarnation or rebirth. It involved a process of disciplines or purification both for the body and the soul. Since the Mystery System offered the salvation of the soul it also placed great emphasis upon its immortality. The Egyptian Mystery System, like the modern University, was the centre of organized culture, and candidates entered it as the leading source of ancient culture. According to Pietschmann, the Egyptian Mysteries had three grades of students (1) The Mortals i.e., probationary students who were being instructed, but who had not yet experienced the inner vision. (2) The Intelligences, i.e., those who had attained the inner vision, and had received mind or nous and (3) The Creators or Sons of Light, who had become identified with or united with the Light (i.e., true spiritual consciousness). W. Marsham Adams, in the "Book of the Master", has described those grades as the equivalents of Initiation, Illumination and Perfection. For years they underwent disciplinary intellectual exercises, and bodily asceticism with intervals of tests and ordeals to determine their fitness to proceed to the more serious, solemn and awful process of actual Initiation.
Their education consisted not only in the cultivation of the ten virtues, which were made a condition to eternal happiness, but also of the seven Liberal Arts which were intended to liberate the soul. There was also admission to the Greater Mysteries, where an esoteric philosophy was taught to those who had demonstrated their proficiency. (Ancient Mysteries C. H. Vail P. 24–25). Grammar, Rhetoric, and Logic were disciplines of moral nature by means of which the irrational tendencies of a human being were purged away, and he was trained to become a living witness of the Divine Logos. Geometry and Arithmetic were sciences of transcendental space and numeration, the comprehension of which provided the key not only to the problems of one's being; but also to those physical ones, which are so baffling today, owing to our use of the inductive methods. Astronomy dealt with the knowledge and distribution of latent forces in man, and the destiny of individuals, laces and nations. Music (or Harmony) meant the living practice of philosophy i.e., the adjustment of human life into harmony with God, until the personal soul became identified with God, when it would hear and participate in the music of the spheres. It was therapeutic, and was used by the Egyptian Priests in the cure of diseases. Such was the Egyptian theory of salvation, through which the individual was trained to become godlike while on earth, and at the same time qualified for everlasting happiness. This was accomplished through the efforts of the individual, through the cultivation of the Arts and Sciences on the one hand, and a life of virtue on the other. There was no mediator between man and his salvation, as we find in the Christian theory. Reference will again be made to these subjects, as part of the Curriculum of the Egyptian Mystery System. Stolen Legacy
The esoteric view of humanity is that Man must measure. He cannot be sane if he is not rational. He cannot be rational if negelects his soul and the soul, of necessity, includes its primary instrument of expression, the mind. Here is the Catholic statement of that same idea:
Christianity taught men to regard education and culture as a work for eternity, to which all temporary objects are secondary. It softened, therefore, the antithesis between the liberal and illiberal arts; the education of youth attains its purpose when it acts so "that the man of God may be perfect, furnished to every good work" (2 Timothy 3:17). In consequence, labour, which among the classic nations had been regarded as unworthy of the freeman, who should live only for leisure, was now ennobled; but learning, the offspring of leisure, lost nothing of its dignity. The Christians retained the expression, mathemata eleuthera, studia liberalia, as well as the gradation of these studies, but now Christian truth was the crown of the system in the form of religious instruction for the people, and of theology for the learned. The appreciation of the several branches of knowledge was largely influenced by the view expressed by St. Augustine in his little book, "De Doctrinâ Christianâ". As a former teacher of rhetoric and as master of eloquence he was thoroughly familiar with the Artes and had written upon some of them. Grammar retains the first place in the order of studies, but the study of words should not interfere with the search for the truth which they contain. The choicest gift of bright minds is the love of truth, not of the words expressing it. "For what avails a golden key if it cannot give access to the object which we wish to reach, and why find fault with a wooden key if it serves our purpose?" (De Doctr. Christ., IV, 11, 26). In estimating the importance of linguistic studies as a means of interpreting Scripture, stress should be laid upon exegetical, rather than technical grammar. Dialectic must also prove its worth in the interpretation of Scripture; "it traverses the entire text like a tissue of nerves" (Per totum textum scripturarum colligata est nervorum vice, ibid., II, 40, 56). Rhetoric contains the rules of fuller discussion (praecepta uberioris disputationis); it is to be used rather to set forth what we have understood than to aid us in understanding (ibid., II, 18). St. Augustine compared a masterpiece of rhetoric with the wisdom and beauty of the cosmos, and of history -- "Ita quâdam non verborum, sed rerum, eloquentiâ contrariorum oppositione seculi pulchritudo componitur" (City of God XI.18). Mathematics was not invented by man, but its truths were discovered; they make known to us the mysteries concealed in the numbers found in Scripture, and lead the mind upwards from the mutable to the immutable; and interpreted in the spirit of Divine Love, they become for the mind a source of that wisdom which has ordered all things by measure, weight, and number (De Doctr. Christ., II, 39, also Wisdom, xi, 21). The truths elaborated by the philosophers of old, like precious ore drawn from the depths of an all-ruling Providence, should be applied by the Christian in the spirit of the Gospel, just as the Israelites used the sacred vessels of the Egyptians for the service of the true God (De Doctr. Christ., II, 41).
In an e-mail conversation with a young friend the other day, he wisely observed that most people "have a hard time getting to know themselves." I have learned from experience that some people in this world are slated to deal with themselves, i.e., to live the solitary existence of the warrior. Most people, though they hardly realize it, are content to be products of the cultural market place. It is the true character cream of the crop who devotes him or herself to vigorous self-education. The difference is simple: the warrior is willing to train himself; the cultural cypher lives the habit of making excuses. Liberal Education? That's on old, patriarchal "blind." Right and wrong? Artificial formulations. Superior culture? Nah. They're all equal, roughly.
I have said before, and will say again, I don't hate Obama. What I fear and loathe is what my beloved America has become.
America -- which, you may note, is suspiciously similar in spelling and meter to Alexandria -- was destined to be a republic of self-directed citizens, not a cultural mishmash of relativistic mediocrity. As we have careened toward democratic sameness, we have lost some of our virtue.
How do you measure virtue?
Here is one, of hundreds, of examples. For decades in this country, when Freemasonry was vigorous and Catholicism a suspect minority, both Masons and Catholics competed to build the superior culture. Both sides were dedicated to a liberal arts education among the general populace. (For Catholics, that always included minority populations as well.) In one of the old common schools, students faithfully diagrammed sentences, studied Greeks and Romans, and were expected to appreciate literature and drama. The result was a common citizenry that could quote from the Bible and from Homer and who were enthusiastic about the Lincoln-Douglas debates, which rolled on for hours at a time. Our cultural commonality today is Homogenized Pap. That is how Obama got elected; that is how most people seemed to miss that George Bush was not "hearing God speak" so much as he was attempting to apply principle. They couldn't argue about principle. They could only shout 'Bush is Hitler!' This ridiculous state of affairs marks our official national transition from negligence -- educating the plebe for factory work -- to outright recklessness, so beautifully summarized by Neo-Neocon:
It’s very sobering, but I don’t think the phenomenon represents a grounded ideological turn to the Left so much as a coming together of a group of trends that have been building for decades: MSM bias towards a more liberal and even Leftist point of view, the norming of PC thinking, historic revisionism to emphasize America’s flaws and errors, the glorification of emotion over logic as a mode of thought, and the need to be thought of as a good and kind person and the identification of those traits with liberalism. And it will take a great dose of reality, and the ability to make connections between policies and their effects, to change this drift. Has America Gone Left?
My friends, I wish more could see the danger we are in. What, precisely, is that danger?
We have abandoned the Soul for The View.
We are, in short, fucked.
Stephen, the Crazy Irishman
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