Mythology

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The Mezquita of Cordoba

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Holy Earth, Holy Water, Holy Air, Holy Fire

My first visit to the mosque in Cordoba got me into trouble with the security guard. It was winter and I entered wearing my hat. I was approached and told to remove my headgear. I considered this rather odd as covering one’s head is mandatory in a mosque. But then when you look at the guide book it calls the mosque a cathedral for the reason that there is indeed a cathedral that was dropped as if lowered from outer space, through the ancient roof of the mosque.

As soon as the guard was out of sight, I replaced my hat. Hats on or hats off, women hats on, men hats off, in my heretical view, is a product of imagining unreasonable rules by those who do not know. On that note, the following essay may also appear to be conjecture to which I would humbly request that the reader suspends disbelief. There is much being discovered from our ancient past at this time and buildings such as the Mezquita in Cordoba are perfect places to go and experience for oneself.

If one were to construct a holy building, meaning not just for shelter, it would have to embody both matter and energy. But some energies are beyond scope of scientist’s instruments. There is plenty of evidence of manipulation of energy by and through buildings in the past.

We need not look far for examples. The ancient Egyptian sacred buildings, such as the Osirion Temple at Abydos or the Temple of Luxor, copied the sacred proportions of the human body. The energetic and physical functions of the building were designed to be proportionate to and reflected the energetic and physical functions of the body. Much of the work of the French Egyptologist R.A. Schwaller de Lubitcz gives many examples as in this illustration. The legs are the two lines of columns at the temple entrance working through to the head which is the altar and initiation chambers.

With this understood at least as a possibility, I would like to use the Mezquita in Cordoba in Southern Spain as example of a ‘living’ building energised by spirit.

It is to be found in the old town of Cordoba beside the River Guadalquivir; a waterway that was once navigable to the Atlantic Ocean.

This grand building was built in Al-andalus in Southern Spain between 784 – 987 B.C.E. It was expanded at various times, to accommodate growing congregations. It’s functional layout is similar to a modern industrial building allowing it to grow. In 1236 under the King of Castille and Leon Ferdinand III, the city of Cordoba was captured. The mosque was repurposed as a cathedral.

The Mezquita garden is a landscaped courtyard with fountains and a cistern, presumably once for ritual ablution before prayers. The planting is principally standard sized trees in a regular pattern resembling an orchard rather than a forest. This theme mirrors the rectangular grid of the mosque’s structure. A rectangular grid of columns supports double arches and a high roof.

This then is a brief description of the of the mosque as it appears materially. Now let us move on to consider ‘energy’.

picture credit: Lions in the Piazza

The first thing you notice when entering the mosque are the red and white arches supported by marble columns, recycled from Roman and Visigoth buildings. These columns do not reach the desired height of the roof so a higher arch sits on top of the lower arch. This is an unusual engineering solution but there is a possible explanation that these columns were selected for another reason than for practically. They were made by the Romans from various types of stone but principally polished marble, jasper, porphyry and granite.

All of these stones contain quartz to varying degrees and from the energetic viewpoint, this is significant. Quartz is piezoelectric mineral, meaning that when compressed, the geometric structure of the atoms squeezes out positive and negative electrons producing a voltage across the stone. The voltage is proportionate to the amount of weight on the pillar, hence one might conjecture, the unusual second arch above the first. Structurally, the second arch has no other purpose than to add height and weight, evident because these arches are only used in one direction of the grid where the weight of the roof is supported. This device of increasing weight to increase the electric potential of columns is evident in much sacred architecture. At the Gobleki Tepe temple in Turkey, standing stones are T-shaped, at Stonehenge in England they have lintels and the pyramids of Egypt compress pink granite lined chambers. The ancient Egyptian temples such as Luxor contain an excessive number of columns to support the roof. All around the world and throughout time, sacred buildings are structurally over designed which is in my view is to produce electric potential.

Electricity works closely with magnetism, for instance inducing magnetic fields when an element such as iron moves through an electrified copper coil as in a simple electric generator. We are familiar with electromagnetism but not the as yet undiscovered organic force known as Chi or Prana in the east and Ether or Orgone in the West. It is this as yet unscientifically proven energy that is connected with the spiritual effects it has on the human body and soul.

So to the return the Mezquita, do these arches remind you of horse shoe magnets? Indeed, the typical shape of the arches in Islamic architecture is called a ‘horseshoe arch’. If an arch and it’s two columns are electrically charged, then one column will be positive and the other negative.The grid plan supports this hypothesis, as it connects these opposite electric poles in series, in the manner that batteries are connected to produce more amps at the same voltage. One can go even further if we include the fact that human bodies also contain an electric charge which in a mosque are again aligned during communal prayer. Could males be separated from females not for religious and cultural reasons, but to configure human experience?

Do the red and white patterns in the arches physically mirror the anodes and cathodes in the whole design at least symbolically? If human electricity or bioelectricity sounds beyond scienctific acceptance then the work of Sally Adee confirms we are indeed walking light bulbs!

Any person who has attended an event where a large number of people congregate such as a football match, know that the ‘atmosphere’ during that occasion is not experienced by those who are physically removed from the event and watching on television.

When large numbers of people congregate they are capable of producing powerful sounds. At a football match, the compression waves from the chanting and cheering is capable of boiling one pint of water; a small amount in terms of heat but definitely an effect. So one might wonder whether the compression waves in air from sacred chanting and music is sufficient to produce a piezoelectric effect in stone?

Consider a human body which is constantly vibrating at certain frequencies. Through resonance each person is able to resonate with others during in prayer and meditation. When this is performed as a ritual performance in a sacred building, the context amplifies the effect on each individual. In this way worshippers of any religion have their frequency raised which they experience as an uplifting of spirit in a heart centred rather than a head centred way. Although there is hardly room in this essay, I should also suggest there is the whole subject of healing that has taken place at sacred times and places, sometimes at the level of miracles.

Consider the original plan and physical location of the Mezquita. It is aligned so that the congregation face Mecca in a south easterly direction; 100 degrees and 5 million yards away. Consider the thought that the prayers of the faithful, were directed into the flowing waters of the river Quadalquivir. A controversial scientist of today, Masaru Emoto discovered experimentally, that water records words and thought as changes in it’s molecular structure. Such resonances through prayer of love and beauty may well have been intentional?

Picture credit: Venerable Master Chin Kung

As well as sound we should consider every type of wave in the electromagnetic spectrum. At a lower frequency than visible light are radio waves which in themselves are strongly connected to crystals. The early radio receivers needed no battery, just a quartz crystal, an aerial and electrical earth. An operator could listen to the waves of an radio broadcast using headphones. Conversely, a slice of a quartz or galena (lead sulphide) crystal, works as a microphone in response to sound waves and sends a modulated signal through insulated copper wires. This shows that even a tiny pressure from sound in air produces a response in crystals. A forest of columns containing crystal in a mosque is therefore something not to be underestimated in it’s effects on the human energy field and through that, perception.

Let us look far away for an example as this effect is not as far fetched as it may at first appear. There are in existence thirteen quartz crystals carved into the shape of human skulls.

One such skull is on view in the British Museum in London, England. I have been to view it and found it exhibited on a sultry landing in a stair well. It had been removed from the Aztec gallery on the grounds that some marks from modern instruments had been found on it when viewed under a microscope. The conclusion was made that the skull was made in the same moment of history as these instruments. In my view this is false logic as any object can be altered at any time in history. Work at a moment in an objects existence does not suggest when it was made . It’s the same false logic from archaeologists who find a skeleton in a dolmen and assume the dolmen was made for that burial.

If we can accept that we do not know the age of these crystal skulls then they could be any age including from the Younger Dryas event and even pre-deluvian times.

To quote Daryl Anka from You Tube Twin Flame – the Forbidden Connection;

In Atlantean times the council of 13 would sit in a circle around the master skull and they would sing; they would chant to it. The idea of Tibetan chants is a hand me down of a memory of the idea of using vibrational resonance through chanting to release information from the skull.

In other words, the quartz crystal not only act as ‘microphones’ absorbing sound energy containing information and converting it, but also ‘speakers’, emitting information.

Could granite columns act in the same way when stimulated by the collective chanting and energetic vibration of a congregation? Quartz crystal is silicon dioxide or (SiO2) and silicon is used in the memory of modern computers as a chip. It works by using billions of microscopic switches called transistors on a silicon base to control electrical current, processing data as binary 1’s and 0’s, functioning as tiny logic gates that perform calculations and execute commands.

Whilst granite columns are clearly not computers, could they work in a similar way to store information for later release to following generations?

I shall quote Daryl Anka again from the same video;

The arrangement of the atoms within the crystals is a representation of information storage in terms of how light courses through the crystal…sound can release the idea of information by hitting the right note and pattern / chord key…and it can actually release the information by vibrating the molecular matrix so as to allow the information to come out.

So the key energy in this arrangement is sound and if you consider sacred buildings around the world, sound is an important feature of worship whether it be bells, organ pipes, chanting, choirs, congregations singing and intoning.

The Mezquita in Cordoba during a storm

A largely unknown and curious example of this are the gargoyles featured on Gothic churches and fashioned as devilish creatures with open mouths. These functioned not only to scare evil entities but to channel rain water but contained within some are precisely carved resonant chambers. These ‘squeeze’ the sound of bells and project it in an amplified form for long distances. Salisbury cathedral in England is an example and the scientific principle used is a Helmholtz resonator.

A Helmholtz resonator is an acoustic device, like an empty bottle, that resonates at a specific low frequency, acting as a mass-spring system where air in a neck (mass) oscillates against the compressible air in a cavity (spring). It’s used to analyse sound (by isolating specific pitches) or control noise (like in mufflers or rooms) by absorbing certain frequencies. The resonant frequency depends on the cavity’s volume, neck length, and neck area.

Source Google AI

Returning to Cordoba and the Mezquita, we know that custom for Muslim prayer is first to perform an ablution. This is not only to remove physical dirt but spiritual dirt in the form of conscious entities known as Jinn in Islam or Archons by gnostics. These can be detached from one’s energetic body by washing and sacred incantations such as the call-to-prayer, prayer and recitation.

Imagine then the possibility that sacred sounds in whatever form are absorbed and emitted by a place of worship and meditation, in the way of a simple microphone and speaker. If one can suspend judgment a little further, then consider this extract from ‘Crystals and Stones’ on You Tube by Bashar,

…crystals – the chamber (in which they are built) resonate in such a way as to imbue to you whatever information they have stored in their molecular matrix that you are open to receiving.

The reference to ‘open to receiving’ is important, as we know that people are not necessarily aware of the effects of unseen energies upon their mind, spirit and body. For instance, the earth emits a sound at the frequency of 7.83hz known as the Shuman resonance and experiments have shown that this creates an Alpha wave state in the human brain.

AI Google gives this concise description of this state of mind. Compare it as you read, the state of mind of congregations at prayer,

Alpha waves are brainwave patterns (8-12 Hz) common during relaxed wakefulness, like daydreaming or meditating, acting as a bridge between focused (beta) and drowsy (theta/delta) states, promoting calmness, creativity, and efficient information processing by inhibiting distractions and enhancing mental clarity…

If quartz in granite columns is recording sound vibrations from nature and humans in sacred buildings, then this information, this memory, is present from the previous days, weeks, months and even years. Are our ancestors talking to us and if this were true, then would you not also record your culture’s information, knowledge and wisdom in some indestructible for those who come after you?

When science has the instruments to measure and interpret information contained in crystal bearing stone such as the red granite lining the inner chambers in the Pyramid of Ku fu, then we may understand the purpose of using such particular stone, because at present we do not.

My experience when dowsing, is that sacred buildings such as the Mezquita in Cordoba are highly energetic. The intention in it’s choice of building materials and construction was in my view, to imbue a received meditative state of mind and feeling of closeness to Allah in those who enter the mosque. There is no need even for worship to be taking place to have this experience for the stone pillars emanate an form ofq bio-electromagnetic energy which is an as yet, undiscovered energy to which humans naturally resonate in their own bio-electric field or shall we say, chakras.

I should include another important source of energy in sacred buildings which is from the earth on which they sit. It is significant that worshippers in a mosque stand in regular lines. They have removed their footwear, not only for cleanliness but also to make sure they are electrically earthed. Some more sensitive souls carry metal tipped walking sticks for this same reason for a build up of energy requires controlled discharge. Beneath the mosque are tellurgic currents associated with water; remembering the mosque is sited next to a significant overground river.

Whilst dowsing in the courtyard gardens, I found a spiralling spring under the present cistern and fountains. Such currents will certainly extend into the mosque itself and connect with the bases of the granite columns.

This energy can rise in a spiral around the columns as depicted in Freemasonry as symbolic columns named Boaz and Jachin. These formed a ‘portal’ into the Temple of Sol-om-on, a ‘third space’ between sun and moon or masculine and feminine in which was to be found completeness.

The Healing Rod of Asclepius picture credit: Greek City Times

It is a fact known to the Knights Templar and Freemasons who inherited the practice from the Ancient Egyptians, that most sacred buildings around the world are placed over global, regional and local nodes of tellurgic current. It should also be noted when considering the properties of granite that it can be naturally magnetic when containing magnetite or ilmenite. The darker or metallic coloured granites exhibit this property most and there are many such columns in the Mezquita.

Many sacred buildings connect visually with ‘heaven’ or the sky by means of a tower or spire. A minaret was added to the Cordoba mosque in 958 BCE. Such high structures were built not only for the call to prayer by the muezzin, but to connect the entire complex with positive and negative ions in the atmosphere, notably moist thunder clouds or the hot dry air of summer. Most dramatically, lightning seeks high buildings to discharge into the earth. This effect was utilised by the ancient Egyptians when they built pyramid topped granite obelisks some of which have been relocated to European cities such as Paris, Rome, London and Washington DC. The city of Washington has an interesting street plan likely to be designed by the Freemasons within which the ‘Washington Monument‘ plays a key role.

Such macro views resemble in a fractal pattern, the layout of micro circuit boards and transistors. Modern science is catching up with ancient science but at micro scale as in quantum mechanics. The statue of a god in the Greek or Egyptian Temple which gods found irresistable to enter, is today known as Artificial Intelligence and is already equally potent.

The pyramid’s geometry both discharges and collects energy from the atmosphere and the heavenly bodies particularly at certain astronomical alignments with the sun and constellations. The pavement surrounding the Great Pyramid of Kufu in Giza is said to have a surface of fulgurite a stone produced by the action of lightning striking the earth.

To ‘reverse engineer’ the energetic qualities of buildings from our past is an inconclusive enterprise. It is hard to convince others as present day knowledge does not consider the energetic characteristics of buildings in any depth. The task of convincing others is left to people who are sensitive and responsive to changes through feeling qualities in their body, mind, emotions and intuitions when entering sacred buildings and places.

It appears to me that we are metaphorically trying to extract the sword of truth Excalibur from the stone of ignorance. Never the less, I do believe that there are many minds open to the suggestion that buildings have a powerful influence upon us and if one of two of the ideas here presented make your gargoyles resonate; listen.

Gaining knowledge from the past and present buildings are a gift to us that we would be foolish to ignore, for when the sword is finally extracted it might well make kings of us all.

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Holy Smoke

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And seeing through it!

Burning Francinsense
picture credit Wikipedia

At the zenith of the Julian Calendar we have the festivals of ‘Christmas’ and ‘New Year’.

These celebrations carry warm and fond memories for many westerners. We can trace this back to childhood where children become the centre of attention and adults serve them for a few days; they pretend to be Santa Claus.

If, for whatever reason, you wish to influence the minds of adults for life, then you would start with the child because the child has no filters to prevent unconscious programming. The consumer industry that has grown around Christmas and the New Year suggests, very few adults can see through the smoke and mirrors.

Look objectively at these ‘festive times’. We tell stories to children about Santa Claus and a completely disconnected Nativity which they absorb with relish. And even though these are rather thin and bizarre narratives, children believe them.

Did shepherds really watch their flocks during the coldest nights of the year? Surely this nightly routine is only necessary when the sheep are lambing which is not in the winter months. Angelic hosts? Moving stars? Do kings saddle up camels and set off with other kings and no armed guard and courtiers towards a new light in the sky? And why give a babe in swaddling cloths such inappropriate gifts? Surely, a rattle, a soft toy and a blanket are more likely to raise cheeky smile?

This Bible story has the quality of a dream and in my view, for good reason. For just as dreams are constructed using symbols, so are these stories. Modern Jungian psychology is very comfortable with dream interpretation and symbols, as have peoples from around the world and throughout history.

The Roman church does not advertise that the nativity story is laid over identical ancient Egyptian and other traditions in which a child is born on 25th December of a virgin mother.

Isis Nursing Horus
picture credit Isiopolis

It’s interpretation of the gifts are as signs not symbols. They suggest that gold was given to show Jesus was ‘Christ the High Priest‘, in other words giving him power and authority, but a symbolic interpretation carries deeper meaning than signs.

In my view, the symbolic interpretation of the story is related to the winter solstice and a solar god rising and setting (Set being a destroying god from ancient Egypt). At this time the sun effectively dies and is placed in the ‘place of the skull’ or Golgotha. The round stone in front of tomb is closed for three days symbolises the sunrise not moving for three days on the horizon. When the sun moves again on 25th December is resumes it’s daily ascent into heaven.

This is not to say that Jesus the Christ was not a real person, but in my view, Jesus was born in the spring, did not die on the cross and lived his last days as far away from the evil Roman Empire as he could, in the Indian sub-continent, Kashmir.

The Tomb of the Prophet Isa or Jesus the Christ
picture credit Indian Heritage Walks

Surprise to see that there is no Santa Claus in the Bible because his is a symbolic story from another time and place which I have discussed in a previous blog; just as there are no cuddly Easter Rabbits or munchy chocolate eggs at Easter in holy scripture.

Here is a more serious alternative interpretation of the nativity story that might well have been within the teachings of the mystery schools and secret societies.

Consider the three kings as representing the pineal, pituitary and the hypothalamus neuroendrocine glands. These are all within the ‘place of the skull’. We should note that the birth most likely took place in a cave, a symbol of inner consciousness used by Plato, not a stable.

Many believe that much of human experience is ruled by our energy bodies as depicted in Hindu tradition by the chakras. Each month a sacred oil rises in the spine from the solar plexus and the part of the spine we call the sacrum. This is represented as the gift of myrrh from the pituitary gland. The hypothalamus is symbolised by gold, which is a pure, non-tarnishing, noble element, that freely conducts electricity. This charges the oil with golden, solar ions. Lastly the pineal gland secretes frankincense, a precious oil burnt in holy places to symbolise prayers rising into another dimension which becomes visible when the smoke disperses to reveal the source of the light. This was a new light and new consciousness on planet Earth.

I shall move onto the myth of the ‘new year’ in countries around the world which follow the Julian calendar. This was introduced by the dictator perpetuo, Julius Caesar in 45BCE, to replace the ten month Roman calendar. This was a solar calendar for a new sun god, with 365 days and a leap day every four years. It surfaces in the modern names of September, October, November and December (7,8,9,10) and starts on the first day of January.

But this random 1/1 date is not sympathetic with the cycles of nature. At this time, winter is dormant in the natural world. Animals and humans struggle to keep alive. Understanding natural cycles would suggest that the new year should start at the spring equinox when the days lengthen and there is more sun than darkness; a time of renewal and rebirth.

The Roman January god, Janus, had his two views of the world fixed on a melancholy past and an uncertain future. He was not a god of the moment and reality. He was not awake. Yet we celebrate January as the start of the new year, even to this day.

In the Rome influenced west, adults and children stay up until midnight. This hour is known in Wiccan circles as the ‘witching hour’ because at this time, the veils into the human world are opened and spirits may enter unneeded. Spirits are often consumed within an alcoholic drink to start the new year as one means to continue.

The Druid’s magical mistletoe, is used to give protection from such unwanted guests. It’s berries represent sperm and fertility. A future hope or ‘resolution’ is made real by a kiss beneath the mistletoe. It is an evergreen plant, and therefore provides protection throughout the year, even if unkept resolutions do not.

New Year Family Celebration 1950’s Britain

If these interpretations of Christmas and the New Year were explained to the general populace, their ‘programming’ from childhood is likely to resist any questioning; such is the unconscious power of childhood experience. The modern nativity and new year stories occur arbitrarily within the natural cycles. These children stories are unreal but are repeated without question. At the same time, fairy tales and myths (which are real) are described as unreal. This is the looking glass world which Alice ventured into.

In my view, this uncritical retelling of false narratives spills out into popular understanding and even ethics. For instance, exploiting rather than nurturing the natural environment, is a global policy that does not lead to fertile and happy communities. The erosion of natural habitats leading to reduction in the numbers and extinction of many species, I attribute to this dissonance with the natural world. We imagine it will last forever as that suits our modern self pleasing and comfortable way of live, but it will not.

Waking up from a dream is a slow and dizzying process. There are many who are casting aside these children stories that we were coaxed in our innocence with gifts and jollity to believe in. If our outer and inner ‘nature’ is ever truly understood, humans have a chance of being brought back from the abyss of shallow and false beliefs.

When there are ‘forces’ that do not serve your best interests and highest desires you are being suppressed.

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As Within So Without

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“Whoever battles monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you”.

Friedrich Nietzsche

What Nietzsche does not say in this famous quotation from his book ‘Beyond Good and Evil’, is that the monster you perceive making faces at you, is you.

This slightly heretical philosophical view of mine, suggests that our internal world (mind) creates the people, places and things we experience. By extension, for those who believe, humans create God in their own image, because creativity is an attribute of Divinity which they share and reflect.

You are not a person living a life, you are life living a person.

When we look back at our forefathers and ask how they dealt with this conundrum, there are two paths. One is to be blind to the illusion that we must surrender to a higher will or ‘fate’. Alternatively, not surrendering to fate empowers each individual to become the power that is within us and resist all attempts to submit to ‘the Abyss’.

This second option is taken by very few souls, for the hero (which is you) has to venture far from the comforts of home to an unknown place. Consider the humble Bilbo Baggins in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings as he pulled the heavy Saturnine ring from his finger and threw it into the flaming Abyss. The Whispering One was destroyed and homely order restored.

The metaphor of looking into an abyss was used in a more gentle way for children by Lewis Carroll in his book, ‘Alice Through the Looking Glass’. Alice’s hallucinogenic encounters in a reversed universe reads as a series of random thoughts and dreams, each jostling for centre stage in Alice’s mind; a type of madness but with it’s own rationale.

Most of the time Alice is vaguely in control of people, places and things. The reader expects a happy conclusion to the story, but as in life, there is always doubt and the fear of horror.

Jalal Udin Rumi refers to this shattered fractal world as what we might see in a “broken glass mirror”. The metaphor refers to the profound idea that ultimate Truth is one, but when it “fell and broke from the hands of God,” people grasped fragments, each glimpsing a fragment of the whole. There is a paradox here because whilst the part is not the whole, it can be mistaken as such. In reality it is the reflection, the message which is the whole, not the physical fragment.

Religious followers are an example of this literal ‘my partial truth’ mentality. They think they know it all but are deceived. Yet there is a commonality to all human experience. Every person sees through the thin skin of their eyes, the cornea. It is transparent and admits all it sees; good and bad. It is our mind that filters and checks what we see in the trillions of connections it makes continuously; a process that dictates and reinforces our personal and randomly biased out-look on life. This is the human frailty of perception which keeps out some or most of the Divine light.

Bashar is an entity channelled consistently for decades by Daryl Anka and for those who are curious his public Q and A sessions are available on You Tube.

To conceive, receive, and perceive in Bashar’s teachings refers to how we can actively create a personal ‘reality’. We conceive a whispered idea or feeling as like a soft touch from outside of our body. This may simply be what time to eat or an inspirational idea that is life changing. Whatever we conceive in our higher Self, from the alpha to the omega, we have the option to be as God the Creator. Making lunch or making the Universe comes from the same Source and is the same.

The second stage of this process is when we receive the idea into our brain and integrate it into our lives. Bashar advises that this is something that must give us our greatest excitement. No working in a factory, unless you love repetition!

Thirdly, our mind must be aware of perception which is like a faithful horse that we groom daily from childhood. Whilst it provides the feeling of freedom and long journeys into the wilderness, it also limits how we experience life. The world we encounter is a reflection of our consciousness. What we think, we see.

There is an saying by Thoth, Hermes or Hermes Trismegistus which has long been treasured by secret societies is;

‘As within, so without, as above, so below, as the Universe, so the Soul.’

Let me show you three qualities of a symbol.

The horizontal line is the line between Heaven and Earth. Just like the mirror between water and air.

The vertical line is the boundary between what we experience as ‘Self’ and what we perceive as ‘not-Self’. This is the illusion we experience as I-dentity.

Where these two lines intersect is the location of the ‘I‘ or ‘eye‘.

In astrology the 90 degree angle is called a ‘square’ or ‘quartile’. When planets share the same quadrant of the zodiac they conflict. One might say they do not see eye to eye. A right angle is discomfort and sure enough we find the cross historically as an instrument of crucifixion. This was not just a Roman engineering solution for crucifying thieves but also those who threatened their evil Empire with the power of the individual.

The Christ was preaching to people that they contained a ‘light within’, when Rome wanted only Rome to be the light, just as the Empire endeavours to keep things today.

The Roman Empire Continues to Strike Back
picture credit; Architectural Digest

The light – a solar light as within the god Apollo – long before Jesus the Christ – is symbolised by a circle encompassing the four equal lines of the cross within. In my view this symbol is one way of ‘squaring the circle’. This ancient logic puzzle that transfixed the Ancient Greeks has not been solved using geometry, but by moving towards a less logical conclusion. Poetically, the four straight lines can become the parts of a square within the circle. The four / four beat is a masculine marching rhythm that needs to be smoothed and soothed by the feminine, represented by the all embracing circle.

Even the Ancient Egyptian Ankh is a version of this archetypal geometric paradox. It represents the unification of the masculine and feminine coming together as one, in order to align with and receive the Solar spirit of the Divine.

An Ankh in the Petrie Museum University College London

As within, so without, is less quoted than as above, so below. But it expresses the ability of humans to manifest, make real, a reflection of our highest aspirations. This might manifest through a series of unexplainable co-incidental events and chance encounters. If we powerful humans did not believe we can direct chance, we would not play the national lotteries.

The words, ‘serendipity’ and ‘coincidentally’ and ‘synchronistically’ describe this human experience of good or bad fortune. But who is making these choices, Divine Will or us, or both?

We have all been in a situation where we cannot decide what to do. We want a good outcome but do not know how or the best way to achieve it. If you believe in your own creative power as ‘a reflection of God’ then making the best decision is alignment with one’s higher Self.

Tossing a coin may appear random but if you toss three coins several times, you are allowing serendipity to speak to4 you. Oracle cards work in this way and are increasingly popular in Western society today. Personally, I believe they are an aid to personal choice, not makers of choice.

In some cultures the power of the unknown to influence events is described as ‘fate’ but again, I disagree with this concept. To accept fate is to give away one’s own power. Usually, this personal abandonment of responsibility attributes failure or success, solely to the Divine; Mashallah (ما شاء الله).

This ‘victim’ mindset is not endorsed by professional gamblers in Los Vegas. They will have amassed a strong self belief to the extent that they feel they can do nothing wrong. When a such ‘card shark’ or player ‘on a roll’ appears at the tables and starts winning, the management do not stand a chance.

Gambling on a Dream
picture credit Nevada Public Radio

We give away our power constantly. Even prayer can be, in my view, an act of giving away personal power to a ‘higher power’. When things don’t go as requested people lose ‘trust’ or ‘faith’ in Divinity, as if prayer is like a menu for you to order food.

If we accept that we are a tiny fragment of the mirror which is God, then man is indeed made in the image of God. We are His reflection and have god-like attributes and abilities that are obscured until we become a polished mirror.

The Taoist and Zen Buddhist concept of polishing a mirror symbolizes the spiritual practice of purifying the mind and heart to achieve clear, undistorted awareness of reality and connection with God or Mind.

As the Universe, so the Soul

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I

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The Eye of God Nebula picture credit: BBC Sky at Night Magazine

“You wander from room to room hunting for the diamond necklace that is already around your neck!                                                                                        Rumi

It is generally accepted that Homo sapiens sapiens have been around for about three hundred thousand years. But our conventional view of history only goes back twelve thousand years or when there was a global deglaciation event that caused a global flood, known as the Yunger Dryas Event.

The continents of Lemuria and Atlantis are generally only accepted by academics as ‘myth’. Yet there is tell today of an extra-terrestrial race known as the ‘Mu’ who created much of the Atlantean civilisation.

More widely accepted in the study of Mesopotamian, Ancient Egyptian, Indus Valley, Mayan, Aztec, Olmec and many other civilisation’s records is that ‘gods came down from the sky’. These various and remarkably similar gods introduced new ideas and technology to humans. For example Thoth in Ancient Egypt, taught writing, sciences, agriculture, engineering and other valuable skills. The Romans knew him as Hermes from which came the Hermetic gnostic tradition.

When the visits of the gods became less frequent and finally stopped, someone had to maintain control of the population on behalf of the absent gods. Pharaohs took on this roll and declared themselves a ‘living god’. Later, priests ran the everyday duties of promoting and conducting religious duties.

Not only the ancient Egyptians, but even early religions focused worship on the sun, as a ‘living and dying’ god. Horus rose on the hor-izon each day and was killed by the evil god Set at sun-set. The solar religions featured similar narratives, such as their gods being born on 25th December, rays coming from their crowns, born of a virgin, being light and life, dying and resurrecting. Apollo fulfilled this role in Ancient Greece and Jesus the Christ later in the Levant, a self-declared ‘sun / son of God’. The early Christian Bishops at the Council of Nicaea, performed a skilful ‘hatchet job’ on the ancient Biblical texts to produce the New Testament; skilful because it told people what they wanted to hear and believe rather than the obscure truths contained in the holy texts that were removed, such as the Book of Thomas.

The Old Testament had introduced several ‘gods’ such as Lucifer, Jehovah and Yahweh. These gods were all male, creating the gender bias towards masculinity. The Divine Feminine was cancelled from the New Testament and perverted into the ‘Holy Trinity’. Mary Magdalene, wife / lover of Jesus and his highest gnostic initiate, was degraded to be a ‘common prostitute’, whilst the gnostic Father, Mother, Son trinity became the single gendered Father, Holy Spirit, Son.

Islam emerged from the debris of these many false narratives in the seventh century as a lunar religion. Worshippers had no priests and prayed before sunrise and after sunset, possibly to avoid praying to the ancient solar gods, such as Horus and Set. Mosques were not East – West orientated as are most Christian churches and cathedrals for the same reason. A non-anthropomorphised religion was a vital move away from the myths that ‘gods’ lived on mountain tops and the sky.

The Lunar Calendar picture credit: Yantar.ae

A discovery in Nag Hammadi in 1945 posed a problem for the modern Catholic Church. Early Christian and gnostic texts compiled by the ‘heretic sect’ known as the Essenes known as the Dead Sea Scrolls revealed what the church fathers had tried to bury.

They contain the revelation or heretical view that there was no God in Heaven or anywhere else, except within us. Such a concept, if widely realised, would have brought down the Catholic cathedral of cards. The Vatican Library remains a locked to this day which only adds to the speculation, why? Perhaps, the Romans destroying global ancient libraries such as the ancient library in Alexandria, had not managed to permanently hide the secrets that were intended to Unite ordinary people with their Creator, without intermediaries.

Sufi gnostics in Islam such as Masur al-Hallaj who dared to pronounce this truth with the words ‘Ana-l Haqq’, was executed for ‘blasphemy’ in 922. Even in this radical religion Allah had to be ‘out there’ as is the perception generated by the ego, not ‘in here’. 

If we go back to Ancient Greece for a moment, most large Greek conurbations had an amphitheatre where plays were enacted. They had a psychological message that the masked players represented the illusions of the ego, in a world of its own ‘make believe’. There was introduced a realisation that everything we experience is in some way a ‘shadow’ of the real world, as encapsulated in the Plato’s story of the men in the cave watching shadows of forms that they cannot see.

The ‘skull shaped’ amphitheatre at Ephesus looks out and listens.
Picture credit: Wikipedia

The tradition of the ‘shadow play’ is just as popular today. The most famous of all theatres of the imagination is of course Hollywood…the Druids magical staff made from the wood of the Holly Tree or Holy Tree. Here, various fantastical ‘Dream Works’ are conceived and enacted, but the story telling has a darker side. Human beings ‘make believe’ these projected dreams and are highly suggestible to believing their content.

Propaganda films in the second world war, promoted accounts of real events which were at best biased and at worst misleading. Governments and interested parties remain keen to promote or un-promote social ideals in strategies; in plain sight, ‘social engineering’. A present-day example in my view, is the statistical over representation of certain ethnic groups on U.K. television, in advertisements depicting ‘typical’ families. In 1960’s U.S.A. this was what I call the perfect ‘Cornflake Family’ with a white husband, white wife, white son and white daughter downing their early morning dose of starch and glucose.

Random players in mainstream cinematic heavenly realms are adored and even worshipped by the masses.  They are called ‘stars’ as if they had fallen from the sky as gods and goddess and awarded golden figures known as Oscars that stand somewhat stiffly in the manner of Osiris.

‘The love that moves the sun and the other stars‘.

Marilyn Monroe was all too eager to exploit the ‘Folly Wood’ games that were expected of her without abandoning her ‘

homespun alter ego of Norma Jean. To her credit she did this with ‘eyes wide open’, but like Icarus she flew too close the sun. Some say her lover, John F. Kennedy shared ‘pillow talk’ secrets about the presence of extra-terrestrials on earth, something allegedly explained to all American Presidents on their appointment.

The Nordic or Pleiadian male and female extra-terrestrials, are known for their highly attractive humanoid appearance. Perhaps Holy-Wood has a hidden agenda that is preparing humanity for a peaceful and gracious introduction to our extra-terrestrial cousins?

Picture Credit: Gaia.com

Even the most agnostic amongst us, still like to deceive children into believing a story about a benevolent, Jovial ‘god’ with a long white beard, who comes down the chimney at midnight on the winter solstice (solar dying), with a sack full of material goodies. These play things keep children amused until they break or the childs interest is diverted.  This Capricorn character is the planet Saturn (or Satan) dressed as Old Father Time who sweeps away materiality and our bodies with his scythe, a truth we hide from the innocents.

Krampus picture credit: ACIS

Life seen in this way is mysterious, and many materialists and agnostics alike, are frustrated by not knowing the ‘meaning of life’. Things that we are encouraged to work for in life are sooner or later realised to be ephemeral delights, leaving just a few bones on our plates.

This life less reality that is sustained by scientific materialism is proving so lite, that many today are returning to the concept of a non-material spirituality; to the light.

‘We live in two universes – one held together by gravity and the other, the one Dante described, (in the Inferno) by ‘the Love that moves the Sun and the other stars’. 

Extract from ‘The Sacred History’ by Jonathan Black page 272.

In summary let us return to the ‘solar God’ whom we may experience as the rising and falling tides of feelings and life in general. At the highest we experience ‘love’ and the lowest ‘the absence of love’. The Sufi’s such as Rumi quoted above, taught that ultimately all is Divine love. That love is the core of every human being because it is our own Divinity that resonates with and is ‘entangled’ with the Universal love existing in all time and space.

We are no more or less, creatures containing that Divinity that is described by so many cultures.

If we can choose to slow down and literally and ‘shut up’, we need not care about all these delusions, other than to know one simple ‘meaning of life’ which is;

‘I am’.

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Magick, Majesty and Matrix

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‘The world is an illusion, a dream. It only appears to be real

to the person who is unaware that it is a dream.’ Alan Watts

There is a famous story about a trickster named Rumpelstiltskin. The daughter of a Miller must spin straw into gold. Her father has promised the King she has this skill, but she does not. A strange impish man appears and spins straw into gold on behalf of the Miller’s daughter for three nights. In return, she has to promise him her firstborn child. When she marries the king, she forgets her promise. So, the strange man appears again and demands her child, but she refuses. He says she has three days to guess, otherwise he will take the child. A servant happens to find the little man who is singing a rhyme, which includes his name. The Queen reveals she now knows his name, and Rumpelstiltskin sinks into the ground.

https://www.grimmstories.com/en/grimm_fairy-tales/rumpelstiltskin

The story has appeared in different guises but has the same structure worldwide. Academics have categorised the form as ‘The Name of the Supernatural Helper’ in the genre of ‘fairy tales’.

Like most such tales, it hides meanings beyond the level of a nursery audience. The Miller is clearly also a trickster archetype, as he tells a complete lie to the King, putting his daughter in peril of being called a fraudster. She, in turn, must make a Faustian bargain with the Devil to hide the truth from the King.

It is worth noting that politics today contains similar patterns of lies and pacts with hopelessly untrustworthy tricksters, for personal power and gain. Both President Putin in Russia and the Zionist Israeli government have invaded and made war with their neighbours, disproportionate to the threat posed to their own countries. They expect the world to be fooled by their deceit. A trickster ‘Trump’ ineffectively poses as a ‘peace maker’ to gain a gold medal.

Historically, Jeffrey Epstein is alleged to have made pacts on behalf of shadowy organisations with a view to shaming and blackmailing public figures. He could not spin golden threads from straw, but he convinced many that he could.

Such alluring but shady dealing describes the energy of the trickster archetype well.

To the princess, the character of Rumpelstiltskin is both a blessing and a curse. Psychologically, the creature represents the trickster archetype within her own shadow animus. ‘Stiltskin visits her at night and produces the desired golden threads each morning for three days, to get her out of trouble. It is worth noting that three is a magical number, as in the expression ‘third time lucky’. Names, numbers and spells sustain the suspense of this story.

The transmutation of base matter into gold is a representation of an alchemical and psychological mutation of lead into the noble metal gold, and a feminine persona and a male animus into a noble human, respectively. Perhaps the Miller’s daughter learnt risky deceit for personal gain from her father – her animus model?

We must question why the gold is spun into gold ‘threads’ instead of, say, gold coins? The spinning wheel is again a very ancient symbol. Mahatma Gandhi used it to represent ‘honest work’ to make a political point, but the wheel also represents ‘wholeness’ and the turning of the Universe we call ‘time’.  

picture credit:
Ancient Egypt Online

A sphere is the shape on the crown of the great creator and sun god Ra.

A thread is another old symbol going back to Ariadne and the Minotaur in ancient Greece. It represents the ability of the rational mind to follow a line of reasoning, the product of which today is the basis of science. A thread also suggests woven cloth or carpets, as in the magic carpets of the One Thousand and One Nights tales. Today, the World Wide Web is capable of transporting anybody anywhere in the world instantly.

The whole of the ‘reality’ in which we live has been described as an illusory matrix. In The Matrix cinematic trilogy, the character Neo can move from one reality into another. The Matrix is depicted on a computer screen as lines of descending pictograms. This is certainly an oversimplification and a product of the limits of computers when the film was made.

picture credit: Hindu American Foundation

Two eminent scientists, University of London physicist David Bohm, a protégé of Einstein and one of the world’s most respected quantum physicists, and Stanford neurophysiologist Karl Pribram have put forward a theory that the whole Universe is a hologram. In his book ‘The Holographic Universe’ Michael Talbot describes a ‘revolutionary theory of reality’. We may be familiar with lasers producing talking images of people located elsewhere in real time. There is now a holographic performance by the Swedish pop group ABBA in a London theatre, which many find remarkably real.

Abba Voyage in London: picture credit The Standard Newspaper

A holographic Universe involves ‘warping and wafting’ lines of information-rich energy to create what humans experience as matter. The ancients demonstrated the pivotal moment of their supreme control of matter by building the pyramids on the Giza plateau. Their dynastic evolution moved from an energetic world focused on minor gods and the afterlife, into solid matter.

In a way, this is what Rumpelstiltskin is doing. He uses golden straw to create the eternal element, Au or Gold. Intriguingly, the symbol Au derives from the Latin aurum, for Aurora, the goddess of dawn. Each day, poetically, the beginning of a new world; a new beginning for mankind, and the Miller’s daughter. So perfect are her tricks that she transforms herself from a humble citizen into a Queen. This is the alchemical marriage, as depicted in many of the Alchemist’s works and represents spiritual perfection.

In the story, Rumpelstiltskin says that he wants nothing except a living child. He has mastered the material world and now craves what he can not create, a living child, or you might say, consciousness. This also happens to be the limit of modern science, but perhaps Artificial Intelligence will take up the role of the ancient demigods?

Agent Smith picture credit Weaving Movies Wallpaper

The Agent Smith character/s in the film The Matrix are demonic autonomous programmes which have penetrated the firewalls of The Oracle and threaten humankind.

Key to unravelling the complex layers of our story is the riddle of the trickster’s name. Today, passwords allow us to enter a programme and keep others out.

Words represent ideas, and ideas are the initial stage of the Creation process. ‘In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.’ (John1.1)

In magical spells, words and their ‘spelling’ are important. The most well-known might be ‘Abracadabra’, which it has been suggested to mean ‘may it be so’. It is a spell of manifestation and, more darkly, deconstruction. Abracadabra can be spoken, losing one letter at a time to ‘deconstruct’ something.

Rumpelstiltskin, somewhat vainly, believes the princess will never discover his name. Commonly, tricksters can become victims of their vanity and underestimate those whom they are trying to deceive. The politics of the USA today is poisonous with self-important deceivers.

So fundamental to his very existence is the name Rumpelstiltskin that when revealed, he physically deconstructs as a programme uninstalls.

He never achieves his goal of possessing and perhaps creating life. He is beaten at his own game of deceit by one who is more deceitful. The Miller’s daughter has done this by confronting the mischievous spirit within herself. When humans confront their shadow side in this manner, they become whole or ‘holy’. The trickster disappears.

A child will readily listen to this tale, not knowing and not needing to know its levels of meaning. It is a healing story; one that may be carried through life as a mental ‘anti-virus’ programme, always scanning for what will spin the creation process through the realm of dreams.

the Flower of Life picture credit Alziend

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The Dark Side of Me

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The sky is at times full of aeroplanes. Modern culture encourages ‘travel’ and ‘escape’ as a kind of adventure in which we must indulge. Like many wonders gifted to this generation, there comes with it, a compulsion for more and more of everything…like a billionaire who is never satisfied with living like Royalty. Previous generations have left us another type of wealth; hidden in stories which we call ‘fairy tales’.

“Ladies and gentlemen, please make sure your seat backs and tray tables are in their full upright position ready for take off;”

The Frog Prince

In the forest, a selfish princess accidentally drops her golden ball into a well. A frog offers to retrieve it in exchange for her friendship. She agrees but goes back on her word after getting the ball back and runs to her castle. The next day, she is eating with her father when the frog knocks on the door and requests to be let in. The king tells his daughter that she must keep her promise and she reluctantly obeys. The frog sits next to her and eats from her plate, then desires to sleep in the princess’s bed. She is disgusted at the idea of sleeping with the frog, but her father angrily chastises her for loathing someone who helped her in a time of need. She picks up the frog and places him in the corner of her bedroom, but he hops up to her bed and demands to sleep as comfortably as the princess. Furious, she throws the frog against the wall, but as he falls to the floor he has transformed into a handsome prince. He explains that he was cursed by a wicked witch and the spell could only be broken with the princess’s help. The next day, the two go to the prince’s kingdom where they will be married. (text credit: Wikipedia)

In modern versions, the transformation is triggered by the princess kissing the frog (a motif that apparently first appeared in English translations). In other early versions, it was sufficient for the frog to sleep for three nights on the princess’ pillow. There is more;

The frog prince also has a loyal servant named Henry (or Heinrich) who had three iron bands affixed around his heart to prevent it from breaking from sadness when his master was cursed. When the frog prince reverts to his human form, Henry’s overwhelming happiness causes the bands to break, freeing his heart from its bonds.

The adventure in this tale is the greatest of all – the inner journey. It is told from the point of view of a young princess. She is confronting herself in this story, and her eventual marriage to a prince shows her success in overcoming her unconscious destructive traits; that part of both men and women which Carl Jung called, the dark shadow. Note the contrasting floor tiles in the above illustration symbolising the union of ‘opposites’.

The forest and deep well symbolise that part of the princess’s psyche with which she is not familiar. She possesses a golden ball which symbolises perfection, something we all possess at birth but at some time in our lives will roll down a well.

The Royal Orb and Sceptre: picture credit The Royal Mint

We have to experience this traumatic loss and in the story it is the cold, wet, male, instinctual, shadow side of the Princess that undertakes to retrieve her social position and inner perfection – a frog.

Like all psychic work it comes at a price. The princess makes a promise to her male shadow, that she quickly wants to forget. Her wiser and more honourable male animus, represented by the King, forcefully commands her to keep her promise.

The frog is equally insistent, knowing of the final goal of perfection if he can persuade the princess to overcome her inner loathing of her suppressed ‘maleness’.

The prince ‘frog’ is imprisoned in the Princess’s unconscious, a product of prejudice, fear, ignorance, and other self-destructive emotions. Another aspect of the male persona in women is symbolised by the frog’s servant Henry. He is also constricted by ‘supernatural’ powers with the three iron rings around his heart. Three is a symbolic number as in the Trinity meaning ‘wholeness’ or ‘oneness’. The number reoccurs when the frog spends three nights on the princesses pillow – a position suggesting psychic work of transformation through dreams.

The Four Alchemical Humors

In Alchemy, there are four humors representing ‘the chemical systems that regulate human behaviour’. The prince is changed from his false external appearance of being cold and wet to the warm and dry world of the Princess and her palace.

In older versions of the story the Princess throws the frog against the wall of her room in disgust, but the character of the servant and his ‘heart centred’ problem indicates that the coming together of the prince and the princess is from an emotional change leading to love for each other.

Psychologically, this is self understanding and love, and Jung named the process ‘individuation’. The male and female principles achieve perfection in union. (By the way, all gender references in this story can be reversed and the meaning is the same.)

The Princess’s inner work – so accurately described in this ancient tale – is partly why ‘fairy tales’ and ‘myths’ could not be banished from children’s books. Children have a great appetite for and demand these ancient tales. Their unprejudiced minds intuitively recognise the symbols and the true picture of the mind they represent.

They know that as well as walking and eating and drinking and sleeping and all those skills that a new body requires to be learnt – understanding Mind, is just as important.

The tourist planes one might cynically suggest are bursting at the doors with adult children from Neverland who, like J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, have never grown up; never moved out of their body into Mind; never kissed a frog.

The Earth’s moon has always symbolised femininity and the mystery hidden in all things feminine. It is ‘tide locked’ with our planet so that one side of her always is hidden. For many years this was referred to as the ‘dark side of the moon’ and as a metaphor for the hidden, the metaphor of ‘darkness’ fits. But in reality, the moon has phases and when she is ‘new’ her shadow faces Earth and we cannot see her. Her reverse side is then full of light and naturally, orbiting probes and satellites from Earth have photographed what is going on there.

When Apollo 8 flew around the moon for the first time and mission control waited nervously for their reappearance, the crew reported hearing haunting sounds. Rationalised as ‘feedback’ from instruments, one might be more curious; as the best scientists have always been.

A Golden Ball from the Moon: credit Meister Drucke

When a partial view of the moon is visible from Earth, the place between shadow and light reveals most detail. Professional and amateur astronomers have recorded seeing unexplainable lights, EAP’s and their shadows on the moon’s surface, buildings and roads and Spaceports with huge cigar shaped craft entering and leaving craters. In previous decades NASA redacted (shadowed) these images from it’s photos, but today there are photographs and video recordings of these phenomena in the public domain, some of which may be real.

The First Men in the Moon: H.G. Wells picture credit the Library of Congress

What is interesting is that the public have been ‘persuaded’ that the notion of extraterrestrial intelligent life is an unbelievable ‘fairy story’. Revealing the truth would cause ‘widespread public unrest’ (disgust at the sight of non-humans). They are therefore not prepared to reveal the truth and hide evidence; a kind of ‘curse’ on modern humans.

We are still in denial that we owe anything to this ‘Frog Prince’ and continue to live spoilt and shallow lives like immature princesses.

When an ‘alien’ frog comes along one day and demands a kiss, we must overcome our collective unconscious fears and invite it onto our pillow. In my view, this will happen in our lifetimes, and cannot remain repressed and hidden. It will be a process of personal and collective social development involving hatred, denial, and anger. Lasting integration and cooperation between species will only happen when there is a higher emotional collective bond between humans – love. The frog is watching and waiting.

“Make sure your seat belt is securely fastened and all carry-on luggage is stowed underneath the seat in front of you or in the overhead bins. Thank you.”

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Beyond Good and Evil

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Genesis gives us the key to opening the door to everything. All we have to accept is that stories in Holy books almost certainly operate at many different levels beyond what is taught to children in Sunday School.

In the story of the original humans in the Garden of Eden, God ‘opens the eyes’ of Adam and Eve as punishment for Eve eating the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. For in doing so their eyes are opened to the concept of ‘good and evil’, but we should not be side tracked by wondering what good and evil are. What is being revealed here, in my view, is that the Unity Consciousness of the blissful Garden, split into binary consciousness. If the reader overlooks the reference to newly realised binary opposites, then the message is repeated for reinforcement.

When Adam and Eve see each other naked, for the first time, their consciousness moves from being one, to two. This ‘same but different’ paradox between men and women is the same for all binary thoughts and words. Carl Jung suggested that the minds of men and women differ as metaphorically expressed by the nuanced differnces of their bodies.

The message in Genesis, is not about ‘good’ or ‘evil’ or ‘man’ or ‘woman’; it’s about binary thought; a fataly flawed characteristic.

But thinking in opposites creates an illusion of understanding. This is whispering serpent’…the one that slides down the ladders of thought.

In physics, nothing is black and white; there is just light and an absence of light and everything in between. But using opposites as a sort of ‘algebra’ for thought has enabled modern scientists to deconstruct nature and use it’s methods to make technology.

Batteries consist of negative and positive poles. The brain consists of left and right hemispheres. Breath goes in and out. Humans are born and die. Chromosomes are X and Y.

This is how have un-zipped the polarities that keeps atoms spinning, but there is a catch!

Our thoughts attach to the oversimplified opposites. Left and Right political views are a prime example of extremist views plunging the world into chaos. Edward de Bono introduced the non-binary word Po in his book Beyond Yes and No to express infinite possibility and a practical key to freedom of thought.

Opposite ideas should only ever be a mere framework for rational thought, otherwise the space in between disturbs ‘certainty’, leading to confusion and conflict. Consider a recent example;

In the United Kingdom, the Supreme Court has just ruled that a woman is a person who was born a ‘biological woman’. In other words, a ‘biological man’ cannot become a woman. This rule provides clarity for the lawyers; but is it true?

I would argue that the model does not fit neatly over reality. When it comes to the provision of public toilets, there will need to be a ‘third space’ for those with particular needs, for instance, those who feel different to their biological gender.

Is not an impossible problem for many ‘third spaces’ already exist as a ‘disabled toilet’. All that is needed now is a gender neutral sign on the door. Something that is not ‘men’ or ‘women’.

We see here that humans are not as simple as the rule of two ‘opposite’ biological genders. Consider the complexity of the body. We have a brain with left and right hemispheres. Each half has a nuanced contrast of functions; rational and creative respectively. Psychologically, each woman has an unconscious animus and each man has an unconscious anima. One in ten of us are left handed; the rest right. In some cultures, left is ‘evil’ and right ‘good’. There have been libraries written on the complexities of gender differences.

But we also experience a range of emotions, almost involuntarily, which can be categorised as ‘expansive’ or ‘passive’ in nature. Anger and valour are expansive and ‘male’, sadness and tenderness are ‘female’ emotions, for example. Of course, men and women have the whole range of emotions in varying degrees beneath the fig leaf.

Finally, the subtlest human characteristic that guides mind, heart and body is ‘intuition’. Albeit a peaceful, almost silent, internal voice, it has a function to guide us when we are lost. Another name for intuition is Soul, and yes, souls can be ‘good’ and ‘evil’ as illustrated in the Old Testament. There is a Bible story in which Joseph experienced wise, prophetic dreams. His soul’s ability to describe the future intuitively through the pathway of dreams is symbolised by his ‘coat of many colours’. Dream messages are not black and white, but as subtle as a colour from the subtle spectrum of light.

This level of subtlety is desperately needed today, in my view, if humankind is ever going to recreate the Garden of Eden on earth through deep compassion and understanding. If we do not, a Wasteland awaits.

Who is the third who walks always beside you? When I count there are only you and I together, but when I look ahead up the white road, there is always another one walking beside you, Gliding wrapped in a brown mantle, hooded. I do not know whether a man or a woman – but who is that on the other side of you?

What the Thunder Said (from line 359) from The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot

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Francinsense, Gold and Err

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Who Stole Christmas?

PREMISE

The Church Fathers have had considerable ‘editorial control’ over what to put in and what to leave out of the Holy Bible. So much was ommitted and added, so should new ‘adjustments’ not be accepted?

OBSERVATION

In 1872 a scholar named George Smith found something remarkable in clay tablets from Nineveh. He was reading in cuneiform the Epic of Gilgamesh in which is described the great flood, God’s punishment for mankind. The suggestion that the Great Flood described in Genesis was just a retelling from ealier Mesopotamian texts, shook Victorian society. They gave Mr. Smith a hard time, as if he was the problem.

Today there is considerable proof that many of the stories in the Old and New Testaments have been subject to editing. We accept that the dates for the Christmas and Easter festivals are not in the Bible. They have been made up. The date for the birth of the Christ child was decided to be December 25th but why?

The Infant Horus: picture credit World History Encyclopedia

Previous gods had been born on this date. There was Horus (Ancient Egypt), Mithra (Persian), Krishna, Zarathustra (Iran), Hercules, Babylonian god Bal (Nimrod), Heracles, Dionysus (Greek), Thammuz (Babylonian) Hermes (Greek) Adonis (Phoenician) and others. All were born of virgins.

If such a clear plagarism of ancient gods is disturbing, there is a logical explanation based on astronomy. December 22nd is when the sun disc halts its annual progression northwards along the horizon. It then pauses for three days and rises anew on December 25th. This natural phenomenon supports neatly the story of a solar god being born; not dying and miraculously resurrecting but being born at least. Perhaps the birth of Jesus does not fit the story and date of how the ancient gods had been born.

If we investigate the ‘blasphemous’ notion that the Christ child was not born at Christmas then we should be able to find another meaningful astronomical date in the solar year relating to birth. After all, should a Christian festival be based on the Pagan festivals and superstition? The church fathers did, we should remember, hate and demonise Paganism, although Pagans did no worse than love nature and each other.

SUGGESTION

I suggest that the birth of Jesus was in the springtime; the lambing season, when shepherds watched their flocks by night. Consider afresh, the Christian nativity narrative.

The three Kings or Magi seeking Jesus were astrologers. So excited by and certain of their prediction were they, that they set off to find him, I argue, in the spring. They ventured eastwards towards the star Sirius, which rises in the east in March in the northern hemisphere. With their learning they probably knew of the goddess ISHTAR from Babylonia who represented Sirius and was associated with fertility, love and war. Another clue for us today is that in the English language is the word Easter which breaks down into two words; EAST STAR. It also is remarkably similar to the word ISHTAR.

If we dig deeper into pre-Christian gods, we find that in Ancient Egypt the star Sirius was represented by the goddess SOPDET meaning ‘skilled woman’. She was important because her appearance signalled the inundation of Nile and the beginning of their new year. She was sometimes portrayed as a large dog.

picure credit: Tarot Aotearoa

Sopdet was associated with ISIS who was the wife of OSIRIS. Their son HORUS just happened to be born on 25th December; a holy family uncannily resembling a later one. They watch over us even to this day as Sirius (ISIS) in the constellation Canis Minor and her husband OSIRIS, the constellation ORION.

These curious facts add up to support the possibility that the Nativity occurred in the spring and the death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ in mid-winter. Certainly, Bible scholars are unable to qoute verses that deny this, as is anyone to confirm it. The Christian practice of using the festivals and stories of the hated Pagan gods, appears to be the only reason for Christmas and Easter being where they are today.

We cannot deny the association in popular modern culture of ISHTAR and Easter. As a nature godess, she is depicted with with hares and rabbits (famed for their procreative success) and eggs (product of the female hormone Oestrogen). Eggs and Rabbits were omitted from the Holy Bible and yet survive as symbols of birth happening at the time of the great initiator, Aries. Perhaps, some archetypes are too strong to supress.

ENDING

At this time of Easter, instead of celebrating the joys of spring, Christians mourn. Then, in midwinter they celebrate birth.

One wonders whether these important festivals, reversed for the wrong reasons, have unknowingly undermined the modern world? Knowing the basics of life and death, ending and beginning, should support rather than undermine what it is to be a human, whose life is dependent on natural cycles.

I cannot expect anyone to agree with my view but for me, this fundamental reversal of ancient truths has led to our misunderstand and abuse not only of nature, but ourselves.

The mystic Hildegard of Bingham wrote ‘wisdom awakens to wetness and greeness and flowing waters. Wisdom says I am the rain coming from the dew that causes the grasses to laugh with the joy of life’.

Pagan Wheel of the Year: picture credit Friends of the Forest

Happy Christmas!

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Time

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My thoughts were turned to this subject when I scolded my cat Spooky. I shook my finger and looked cross. ‘Naughty! He slunk off guiltily. Just a few moments later he re-appeared and jumped up onto my lap. I realised that the incident had been completely forgotten in his mind, although in mine it was still fresh. I concluded that animals move through a series of disconnected events and are present most, if not all of the time, in the ‘now’. If they remember anything of the past it is only ever locked in their instinctual memory; the place where they store their ability to hunt and fall on four feet.

The Cat Righting Reflex, the perfect ‘Now!’

One might consider the well known psychology experiment by Pavlov who rang a bell before a dog’s meal time and he observed they salivated even though there was no food. Their response to the bell produced an anticipation of food. I would argue that the link is again instinctual memory rather than dogs imagining an event in the future as humans do.

Humans and animals experience time in the present, but humans go beyond this. We will form memories of past events from which we can recall at will. Films featuring an amnesiac character such as the Jason Bourne series of thrillers, show how difficult it is the function socially without memory.

Then we can imagine future events and manipulate in our minds how we will would like them to turn out or not. As children, we learn about danger by experience or parental instruction; ‘don’t put your hand in the fire’. By imagining an unpleasant future outcome, a bad experience can be avoided.

What the past and future have in common is the concept of time. Neither are occurring in the present moment. Therefore, we can argue, that before humans had the concept of time, events were experienced in the moment. Tribal myths and legends, passed on over the camp fire, were the only record of the past.

Avebury, England: Larger than Stonehenge containing Sun and Moon circles within a ditch and henge.

But these ‘disconnected events’ were at some time, observed to repeat as patterns. The passing of the seasons was undoubtedly a serious matter. Solar and lunar observatories were built all around the world and the Wiccan solar festivals remind us of this function. Megalithic henges and stone circles are commonly found to be astronomical calendars able to measure and predict the solstices and equinoxes. This was more than for agricultural use as archaeologists believe and relate to complex permutations of universal energies.

Although various crude clocks were used such as sun dials and candles, it was not until the 18th Century when an English clockmaker John Harrison invented the marine chronometer. This was a critical moment in history for it meant that navigation of the seas was made considerably safer. The precise time from an chronometer, reliably indicated the longitude on long sea voyages. When combined with the latitude from the height of the sun at midday, this gave navigators the precise position of the ship. The measurement of time not only fixed points in the day and night, but one’s location. Experiences in known time and space joined together in the age of science and reason.

Ariadne hands the thread to Theseus: depicting the wise aspect of his Anima

There is a story from Ancient Greece concerning Ariadne and her lover, Theseus. Theseus was charged with destroying the Minotaur, a flesh eating monster that lived in the centre of a labyrinth. Ariadne gave Theseus a ball of thread and instructed him to unwind it as he walked through the labyrinth, thereby finding his way out. Theseus successfully killed the Minotaur and escaped to Crete with Ariadne.

Ariadne gave Theseus a novel aid to connect the otherwise confusing experiences in the labyrinth, in a rational and repeatable way. Instead of disconnections which lead to the experience of ‘where am I?’, Theseus was able to rationally and repeatedly connect together these individual events. He was the first of Ariadne’s suitors to avoid being consumed by fierce panic and confusion, and by mastering time and location, escape.

The thread in this story, I suggest, represents Time with a capital ‘T’. Although an abstract concept and therefore not ‘real’ to the five senses, the continuity of experience created by time helps every human on their individual journey.

TI – ME

When we tie (TI-E) our experiences together we are able to overcome the monster within ourselves (–ME) and become our Higher Self.

The Sufi’s have an exercise which is conducted just before going to sleep. The entire day is recounted backwards in as great a detail as possible. There are no ‘conclusions’ or ‘observations’ to be made other than to ‘rewind’ daily experience.

In this way a continuous memory is formed of that day. This technique can be used after the death of the body as an objective review of one’s life is rewound before one’s eyes and beyond into the afterlife. Just as time does not exist in our dreams, so time ceases to be useful after death and we enter the fabled ‘eternity’. The fabled ‘lost souls’ of pergatory are those that have lost control of their ability to consciously move from one experience to another. Some even become locked in a repeated event in as described in the story of Tantalus. His condition was not ‘punishment’ as moralists believe but a state of mind.

However sophisticated modern technology becomes, it can only ever approach the idea of infinitely fast things, never achieve them. When a quartz crystal has a tiny electric current pass through it it vibrates at 32,768 times a second. Nature is astoundingly constant in this respect and gave us quartz watches and other electronic devices. Just as quartz crystals are tetrahedral arrangements of oxygen and silicon atoms so precise that light passes straight through it, so it vibrates perfectly constantly.

The same clarity of experience is reproduced in spiritual practice by what is called ‘invocation’. In many mystical practices around the world, a student is tasked with the silent recitation of holy words. This ‘mantra’ is recited within the heart whilst experiencing, not negating, ordinary life. It is a task requiring Herculean concentration and effort, taking a lifetime to master, if ever at all.

The effect is to link the events of daily life in the way that an old fashioned movie film has regular cut outs on either side for the projector to connect with and move the film along at a regular speed. The illusion is one of still images that change imperceptibly and at thirty frames per second.

However difficult it is to understand how individual images scroll at speed, we do not need to know. The imperative is that one maintains the ‘I’ or ‘eye’ of the individual light bulb in the projector…whatever the story that is being projected.

Just as Theseus creeps closer to the centre of the labyrinth, so the observer creeps closer to their God within, using the technique of invocation. Like a cat watching a mouse hole, one’s concentration is fixed; mouse or no mouse.

The Taurean Age of Civilisation on Crete, The Minoans

The slaying of the Minotaur in the age of Taurus, was central to the Minoan civilisation. The dark corridors of life have to be travelled so that the God-self can be discovered. The Beast or Minotaur is the same archetype as in the story of ‘Beauty and the Beast’. It is only truly known when love of true Self, slays the hideous ego.

This Jungian psychology is strangely connected to our modern day by the mystery of ‘time’ and the passing of discontinuous events that can warp into psychosis. The illusion of time becomes, in the clinically ‘sane’ at least, a constant ‘glue’ that makes experience appear continuous. But, just as in the beating chambers of the heart, time has an uncanny ability to increase and decrease it’s pace. Wonderful holiday experiences can fade all too soon while interminable waiting in the airport lounge has no end.

Physicists have there own story about this phenomon. In Albert Einstein’s ‘General Theory of Relativity‘, time is described as being something which can lengthen or shorten in it’s relation to space. ‘Time Dilation’ states that as an observer approaches the speed of light, time slows down. An astronaut might therefore return to Earth after a journey to the edge of the Universe at ‘warp speed’ and find that he or she is younger than their children.

Such concerns await us in the future. For the philospher, the task is to get to grips with the every day meaning of the passing of events. Can we keep a grip of the thread laid out to guide us through the labyrinth? Can we slay the monster within?

The Labyrinth in Chartres Cathedral, France: A Message from the Medieval Masons through time
picture credit: Helen Mueller
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Not My Body

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It’s a Buddhist thing; when you realise that you are not your body. The proof is that if you were unlucky enough to loose a leg, you remain the same conscious individual; complete. Many people are permanently identified with the meat and bones which they were given to complete a life time. This illusion contributes to a general fear death in the population. But from a spiritual perspective, death is completely safe! For the more spiritually aware, death is merely our energetic body leaving the physical body.

Some of the best evidence for the reality of our non-physical higher Self or Soul, comes from those who have died and come back. These ‘near death experiences’ describe the early stages of the transition we call ‘death’. If we accept this, then it becomes easier to allow the possibility that our soul will enter another body for another life on Earth.

For the Soul, the cast off body feels like a well loved overcoat that is left on a train. But in fact the Soul is more at ease without a body; feeling bliss. Those who describe their near death experience felt reluctant to return, but they were guided to complete what they need to do here.

The Holographic Universe

At a even more subtle level, this world can be experienced as a rough representation of a more sublime parallel dimension, because it is digital hologram. As far fetched as this may sound, contemporary physicists are presenting evidence supporting this theory and Michael Talbot explores it in his book ‘The Holographic Universe’. This dimension is what in the Bible is called Heaven and you would therefore expect there also to be it’s opposite. According to David Icke, there is indeed a malign parallel dimension which has broken the law of non-interference by influencing a Cabal of human institutions with the aim of world domination. In order to know what this Hell would be like it is similar to the film ‘Hunger Games’ and parts of this movie have already started in Gaza and Southern Sudan.

The process of our body growing old also prompts serious reflection on what we really are. Most elders ‘feel’ they are a much younger age than their body. From this we might deduct that the natural process of physical ageing does not affect our Soul. Indeed, if we are open to the idea of life , then we might after death we might give credence to the idea that we leave our bodies every night when we sleep. It is the body that needs to regenerate at night, not the Soul. These experiences outside our bodies we can recall as dreams. The Soul has the wonderful ability to go anywhere, as demonstrated by Saints and Prophets throughout history.

To move from this sublime thought to the modern western world, there is a debate about gender which cast some light on the subject of souls and bodies. Some souls feel to the opposite gender to their body, which might be a memory of a previous life where we might have have a body of the opposite gender. A crude solution is ‘gender reassignment’; physical surgery and chemical manipulation. But just because this is possible it does no mean it is wise, in my view. Psychological and spiritual understanding is more important than appearances and gender roles in society. As is said, ‘know yourself’. In Jungian psychology all men contain a female persona and the reverse in women. Our relationship with our opposite gender characteristics within ourselves will produce inner peace for the Soul, rather than the personal and social conflicts which identification with the body creates.

The body is after all, never a problem in itself. The more honest we can be about our bodies, then the sooner we can be less concerned with self image. In Naturism, men and women walk around naked and enjoy the principles of equality, fraternity and liberty. Problems created by the ‘deadly sin’ of lust are not involved as nudity is not sexual in many contexts. Those who cannot control their lust are likely to be trapped in their bodies and are in a Hell – the other state of consciousness to the Garden of Eden. The terrorist group ISIS as an example of souls in Hell, destroyed ancient statues of the human body in the name of religion, whilst importing devout Muslim ‘brides’ and abusing them mercilessly as sex slaves.

The feelings of ‘shame’ in nakedness that Adam and Eve felt are not natural but are produced by controlling social and religious rules and dogma. These treat every person to be no better than the least. Therefore, everyone is treated as being unable to control their lusts. Islam embraced the rule of tolerance and understanding towards sex and gender equality long before modern liberal societies understood the benefits of this ideal.

The Holy Quran insists on ‘modesty’ in dress. There are no specific ‘dress rules’ so different cultures have decided what is ‘modest’. If modesty is understood to mean ‘covering up’, this has to mean covering the whole body. But where to stop ‘covering up’ is a missing detail in this guidance. Why do men not wear face veils for instance? From a moral perspective, the whole issue of modesty is irrelevant if men and women were to control their lust as is their higher spiritual duty. Surely dress codes serve society best when they express the Divine beauty within and without? The human body was, after all, designed by Allah.

The beauty of the Greek gods wonderfully expresses the human body without shame and self consciousness. These gods are powerful symbols of the complete human condition. The ancient Greek myths and legends describe at a psychological level, how to master one’s Self within a single lifetime.

In a different interpretation, the word ‘modest’ may also or instead, be forbidding displays of high self opinion and excess wealth. Such an interpretation would hit hard in many wealthy Arab countries!

These ideals remind us that we should not be distracted by this physical world because it does not last; only our Souls exist perpetually. Vanity, whatever one’s social rank, is always transient, as in the last lines of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’;

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings!

Look on my works ye mighty and despair,

Nothing besides remains. Round the decay,

of that colossal wreck, round and bare,

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Compared with the fruitless pre-occupations of the Guidance Patrol in modern Iran, inner cleansing and self improvement is the most noble spiritual objective, involving no judgment by or about others.

One of the principle Hermetic laws is that every aspect of creation is male or female. The Alchemists depicted the duality of the Sun and Moon as expressing this. The Sun is the radiant expanding male principle, known as Yang in Eastern philosophy. The presence of the sun gives rise to the reflecting moon, or Yin, which expresses the complimentary feminine characteristic of absorbing, contracting and most importantly, reflecting.

This ability of reflection is what distinguishes humans as unique. Although all of nature is ‘aware’ in various ways and differing degrees, only humans are able to properly ‘reflect’ internally. We can remove ourselves from what we observe. We can be independent observers whilst participating. This ability inspired the scientific method. Through this extraordinary ability we reflect the same characteristic as God or Mind who is after all the ‘Great Observer’.

Without the physical world God cannot know itself. Every galaxy, every human and every atom contains this ‘awareness’ and can create and destroy in the same manner as God or Mind which is knowing itself through human experience in the physical dimension. In this view, matter becomes a difficulty but necessary means to experience of the Divine.

From this stand point we might appreciate that what we call ‘my body’ is no more than aeons of star dust, condensed into biology and energised by Mind. This Divine unity enables an experience which we call ‘life’ although at no point can we ever truly put our finger on it and never will.

Ozymandias

‘The lone and level sands stretch far away.’