Washington Rebel

American Maverick: Thomson Jay Hudson

Thomson Jay Hudson (1834-1903)

There was a golden age in British and American thinking and writing that spanned, roughly, the end of our Civil War through World War II, wherein intellectual integrity and genuine human genius shined through the works of inquiring minds.  I have often wondered why and how we got so many great books and great thinkers from that era.  Perhaps it was because education necessarily consisted of the Trivium: (oppressed) students were expected to clear basic hurdles of math and literature and history before they could be graduated, as opposed to the soft-soap idea of not wanting to discriminate against . . . . someone.  In the days before children were educated to the work house (an idea championed by the common dolt of today as a matter of professed self-interest), per John Dewey's reforms, they received a university education, per John Henry Newman.  I am frequently reminded of two things I grew up with:

1) A teacher and mentor from the Forks High School system whose uncle in the Montana Wilderness lived in a sheeper cabin lined, wall to wall, with books on language and history and Indians and Hebrews and Optics and Science and Music and . . . . an "uneducated" man who could hold his own on almost any topic, with grand flourishes thrown in for sport; and

2) the comment my father frequently made that the math we we struggled with in junior high they had to know to advance to the fourth grade.  My father could speak to that, as he was held back one year!

To give you a flavor of where our country has traveled in this regard, here is a quote from marxists.org about John Dewey:

Get On it

   

Hentoff took to heart the words from his mentor, I. F. "Izzy" Stone, the renowned investigative journalist who died in 1989: "If you're in this business because you want to change the world, get another day job. If you are able to make a difference, it will come incrementally, and you might not even know about it. You have to get the story and keep on it because it has to be told."  America Under Barack Obama -- an Interview with Nat Hentoff

This is a Rebel Blog.  Some of the folks who read here -- or post here -- are more traditional in their Christianity than I am.  My "religion", if you would call it that, would come under the specific heading, Celtic-Dreamer-Jewish-Hindu-Egyptian.  Take your pick.

(On the subject of Christianity, I try to avoid disputes.  Suffice it to say I believe the literalists commandeered that historic moment called Jesus Christ and turned it into a Wal-Mart display.  That's all I have to say on the matter.)

As a Rebel, I take the position that America is a Roscicrucian nation.   (Some would say Masonic.)  What do I mean by that?  There was a critical period in European History (not taught much in the schools, I'm afraid) called the Rosicrucian Enlightenment.  It boils down to this: the very educated and rebellious European elite of the 17th Century saw formal religion as a detriment to science, and saw science as a method of proving and confirming religion.  It was the early Rosicrucians that gave us Deism (an outgrowth of utilizing Science to study the "Mind of the Maker"); who insisted that no civilization worthy of the name civilized proscribed or prescribed religion (by their standards, truly, Islam is, and remains, heathen); it was them who championed the idea, via secret societies, that liberty was the natural destiny of man and his sole key to happiness and should not be impeded by the State.  This alone is the single Key to understanding the precipice we're perched on.  You can read about that aspect in The Discovery of Freedom.

The Enlightenment, as we understand it, and, therefore, the United States, began in an intellectual rebellion with the publications of two controversial "manifestoes", the Fama Fraternitatis and the Confessio.  Didn't know that, did you?  Think ol' Cicero's pulling your leg, don't you?  Aren't Rosicrucians those dumb asses with the stupid ads in stupid magazines?

The Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross is what people like Dan Brown are sensationalizing with his books (the People Magazine version of history).  Think of it this way: the rose super-imposed on a cross is symbol of the spiritual flowering of a human individual.  One bar of the cross is scientific inquiry (horizontal), the other bar revelation (vertical).  Think about that for a bit and ask yourself, Does this not describe the direction taken by the West?  Did you not know you were given a key to your freedom by these courageous geniuses, your spiritual forbears?

Whether you acknowledge it or not, that is what has shaped your destiny as a Westerner.  Think about what I just told you in light of this observation:

What Cicero Was On About

 

In his final installment of What I Learned as a Prosecutor, Cicero offered that I should run the next lap.  He meant something specific, which I aim to address.  Sometimes El Cicerooney is shy about expressing what he knows to be true, as you all know.  I have heard him say, often, 'The world is filled with yapping Pomeranians pretending the fingerling between their legs makes them a giant."  He takes delight in the cryptic, you may have found.

Quoting Paul Case:

You yourself are completely filled, at all times, with the real presence of the hidden force.  All that you are is an assemblage of manifold veils that hide it, and by hiding it make it "occult."  Your body is made of it.  It is the substance of your food and drink, of the air you breathe, of the earth beneath your feet, of all your possessions.  This is the One Reality, manifest in all the things you know, and present in everything outside your present range of knowledge also.

The universe is a great ocean of vibrating electro- magnetic energy.  Psychologists assure us that this energy appears as "objects" when its vibrations are distinguished within relatively narrow fields perceptible to our senses.  If our sense organs should change very little, we should find ourselves in a new world, full of things unknown to us now.  Therefore these things actually exist, even now, though we can form no clear idea of what they are like.

Dreams and Cities and Ancient Forests

 

The World Dancer

Awhile back Cicero did a post on Ingrid Dean's book, Spirit of the Badge: 60 True Police Stories of Divine Guidance, Miracles & Intuition.  I was lucky enough to receive a very lovely thank you note from Ingrid regarding our coverage of that story.  She is certainly a keen and gentle soul, a real pleasure to have met.  Ingrid and I have been doing some corresponding about spirits and such.  And dreams.  The subject of dreams was broached.  It's a genuine pleasure to make contact with someone in Cicero's world who is not slavishly bound to arbitrary definitions, which are invariably called "truth" by their adherents.

I am one of life's fortunates to have not been stuck in a literalistic window display of Name and Form.  For me, life started out as a dream.  At age three I became aware of recurring dreams I had been having since age 2.  By means of this "device", my earliest root of memory is of being 2-years-old.  In other words, I have more dream memories of that time than physical memories, though I have some of those, too.  I am conscious of an unfolding psychic plant that emerged through the dark swirl of dreaming.  Dreamers out there know whereof which I speak.  The rest of you must mutter your discontent, I suppose, though,in point of fact, everyone of you is exactly the same creature as me, you're just not aware of it.  You're stuck with what you've been told.  People like me are "different" because we understand that what is called "reality" are coordinates on a Living Consciousness, not skyscrapers that must be worshipped.

The Quantum Activist

The Quantum Activist : Dr. Amit Goswami Movie Trailer from BlueDot Productions on Vimeo.

In our current world, there is massive pressure to join a gym and get those glutes hard as rock.  Of course, there is daily, hourly, constant pressure to succeed materially.  We don't pressure each other into raising literary consciousness, or moral consciousness, or spiritual consciousness.  We reward and punish each other according to homes, belongings, activities.  In sum, we're a dreary bunch, enslaved to a toxic mania.  We're mad as hatters, and it's all self-generated.

Apart from the Rosary, apart from Alcoholics Anonymous, there is no general training available for the source of most of our conflicts: how do you clear the subconscious mind of clutter?  Most people are walking textbooks of neurosis, but you don't see any readily available methods for housekeeping in that regard.  People are left to suffer.  They replace mental hygiene with crazed evasion.

Nor does it do any good to maniacally pursue "spiritual enlightenment."  The "liberal" and New Ager consider themselves ahead of the game by going to drum circles and dream retreats, et cetera, but they are exactly where Jesus said you would be if you pour new wine into old bottles.  Isn't that analogy incredible?  It describes precisely the business of trying to graft  a new consciousness onto an old system.  Like putting new clothes on a decomposed body.  Even if it looks good, it still stinks.  The "liberal" who seeks to impose utopian neuresthenia on the rest of us is himself a victim of superficial reasoning and toxic emotions, and is far, far too cowardly to even consider that possibility.  The nuanced conspiracy theorist who sees evil only in business but not in state coercion is an accomplice to evil, but can no more see that than a child can understand the intricacies of economy.  The people who will show us how to live are themselves half-wits.

Everywhere you look, the quality of consciousness is under scrutiny, though most people probably don't see it that way.  Take the banking bailouts that started under Bush -- what became TARP after Obama took office.  We keep shoveling money into the Big Satan called American business, knowing full well the only result will be the destruction of the dollar.  Why?  Because of something called "toxic assets."  What would Adam Smith have called a toxic asset?  He would have been forced to utilize the 19th century term for "pig in a poke."  We are financing undertakings that have no future and yet, someone is being enriched for all our efforts.  Meanwhile, the U.S. government shoves us all toward the financial abyss.  Why?  What are we proving?  Who are we serving?

Like alcholics, we're going to have to reform ourselves once all is lost.

It doesn't have to be that way.

But that's how it is.

Catalyzing Consciousness

That Big Krispy Kreme in the Sky

When you squeeze an orange, orange juice comes out - because that's what's inside. When you are squeezed, what comes out is what is inside.  Wayne Dyer

It is the rare person who can conceive of the Tarot as being an "intentional instrument of initiation."  The phrase itself inspires dread, ridicule, skepticism, confusion and, of course, numerous doctrainaire reflexes from every part of the sphere of consciousnes.  Only the most sober person can, first, allow that it may be true and, second, pursue the inquiry beyond its usual superficialities, such as fortune telling.  That I know this to be true of Tarot is the result of a nearly 40-year journey, going back to the wild, tumultuous Seventies; successful experimentation with self-hypnosis and study of the Edgar Cayce readings in the 80s; delving into the world of holographic kinesthesia, courtesy of Robert Monroe and Paramhansa Yogananda in the 90s; and, finally, settling into Builders of the Adytum even as "devout" Muslims were killing hard-working Americans at the start of this century.  (B.O.T.A. literature made it to my bookshelf in 1995 while participating in competitive speech via Toastmasters, but just sat there for five years.)  In reality, each of these stretches into new territory had their Genesis in one place: the Hoh Rain Forest.  It just took me 30 years to find the steps.

Merkabah

HBKRM

Patrice Chaplin: City of Secrets

'Mystical Legends - Girona, A City Of Secrets' from Carrie kirkpatrick on Vimeo.

Washington Rebel Previously reviewed Patrice Chaplin's book, City of Secrets, here.  In light of Cicero's observations regarding religion in his latest correspondence, it will come as no surprise to our regular readers that we regard the Grail myth as an initiatic -- or mythopoetic -- corpus;  emblematic, rather than symbolic.  Those who have delved into the Grail imagery know full well it has played a much more central role in Western history than is currently imagined, and this has nothing to do with Dan Brown's cute little books!

After Walter Stein, the 20th Century's leading Grail scholar was none other than Rudolf Steiner, a true hero by any reckoning.  Now comes the third, and most mysterious, installment: proof, so far as I'm concerned, that there was a Qabbalistic order in Spain entrusted with the ritual aspects of the Grail!  All Rosicrucian aspirants can appreciate the significance of this marvelous book, City of Secrets.  Can't wait for the sequel!!

Missa Luba: Kyrie (Muungano National Choir, Kenya)

Hildegard Von Bingen - Vision

Reading Mitch Horowitz

 

Annuit Coeptis: American First Person Series

Picked up my copy of Mitch Horowitz' Occult America yesterday.  It's a fantastic little reference source -- brisk, easy to read, and chock-full of Rebelesque "links."  I get the feeling Mitch was holding back a little -- not really laying out what he believes completely.  That feeling of restriction only makes the subject matter more intriguing.  You put the book down and you're ready for more, baby!

Of course the very first thing that disturbs most people is the word occult which, in their minds, can only mean "truck with the devil."  Indeed, for many who dabble in such things as "magick" and so on, it may have that very meaning, just as the word "conservative" denotes a mean-spirited war-monger by practitioners of kindly, open-minded "liberalism."  In other words, cultural permeations and persistent misuse of the King's English often renders a word meaningless.  Mitch comes to our rescue with a first-rate definition (I'll tweak it for him below):

Entrenched

  

"There is no possible source of evil, except good."  St. Augustine

The First Alchemical Stage: Bondage

Those unable to look beyond form become even more deeply entrenched in their beliefs, that is to say, in their mind.  We are witnessing not only an unprecedented influx of consciousness at this time but also an entrenchment and intensification of the ego.  Some religious institutions will be open to the new consciousness; others will harden their doctrinal positions and become part of all those other man-made structures through which the collective ego will defend itself and "fight back."  Some churches, sects, cults, or religious movements are basically collective ego entities, as rigidly identified with their mental positions as the followers of any political ideology that is closed to any alternative interpretation of reality.

But the ego is destined to dissolve, and all its ossified structures, whether they be religious or other institutions, corporations or governments, will disintegrate from within, not matter how deeply entrenched they appear to be.  The most rigid structures, the most impervious to change, will collapse first.  This has already happened in the case of Soviet Communism.  How deeply entrenched, how solid and monolithic it appeared, and yet within a few years, it disintegrated from within.  No one foresaw this.  All were taken by surprise.  There are many more such surprises in store in store for us.  Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth.