The standard monkey cage encloses a space using three dimensional planes; x,y and z.
Take one standard monkey, place him in the cage and it’s game over for monkey freedom.
Humans also occupy a cage only it is less simple to observe – because it is infinite. We live in an ‘infinity monkey cage’ in which we can travel in any direction – but with the restrictions of always coming back to the start.
Then it gets complicated. Scientists measure time; from leaky water clocks to atom accurate atomic clocks. This single act of measurement creates a past and a future – pressing our minds into an ever smaller space, or is that a larger one? Either way it puts human endeavour into a tight spot.
Things must be done ‘on time’. In a kind of cosmic act of cookery, we are placed in a dome shaped oven to cook for a measured period and then emerge as plump loaves of bread. The cosmic clock is not our friend but our enemy, for it cannot be beaten. It ticks inexorably in the background of all our endeavours.
picture credit My Modern Met
This dominant dimension in our lives – I would argue it is not a dimension at all. The act of measuring a thing will not make it real if it is imaginary. Can you measure freedom?
Time picks us up and places us in a social order on a point of singularity within the Universe; it is called ‘being born’.
And as we grow into adults we accept this social order. We indulge in it’s whims which are justified as ethical (providing complexity and contradiction are ignored) and therefore acceptable. If you reject the ‘normal’ of that moment, you must risk being regarded as ‘not normal’.
An 18th century normal is not a 19th century normal. Slavery – which had been around for thousands of years – was voted out as unethical.
Humans were not learning but unlearning bad habits. It was never ‘natural’ to enslave your own species. Nature (if ever) rarely does it. This change in human consciousness was restricted by time. Slaves had been enslaved for millennia. Eventually, for ethical reasons – slaves were released to live in social equality.
It was just an imaginary game that had been played out by the victors at the cost of ruining millions of lives and their descendants.
Were there Roman aristocrats who refused to have slaves? I don’t know but such a person would have been described as ‘out of their time’.
Human societies evolve – not because of time but despite time. Some evolutionary steps are incredibly slow, but if you can not measure time, that is an invisible transition.
There is no ‘one direction’ for human evolution. We have freewill so do not hit the bars of the space cage, just as we do not hit the bars of the time cage. This fact alone should make us query the reality of space and time.
Are they not mere conventions?
Of course without matter and gravity we could not walk to the shops for a pint of milk, but physicality was only ever, a compromise. By shedding our acceptance of what is ‘normal’ or ‘fixed’ or ‘normal’ we edge closer to the reality of an infinite space.
The ‘man of the age’ who is lauded as a hero, is not a better human being. They are simply so much caught in the conventional illusion of what matters and what does not – that they go along with the fickle opinions of others – especially if they are being flattered.
The true ‘hero of the age’ is not of the age they appear to others to be in. Such a person acts independent of time either as a scientist like Nicola Tesla, an artist like Leonardo de Vinci or any of the prophets.
picture credit: Ivanep
Examine the words of their words and their thoughts are independent of space and time.
They uncover / reveal / expound truths which are out of ‘time’ and ‘space’. Their starting and finishing point is infinite and exist in every reality.
Such truths as ‘love one another’ and 1+1=2, subvert corruption in human societies. They ‘unpeeled’ coverings that have been revealed as real in previous centuries. They will always be true.
Man has not been on Earth for long. If Earth was created in 1000AD then we came along on 22 December 1999. We are no more than a passing thought created just in time for the end of the year. It would do us well to remember how truly insignificant humans really are but some of us, sometimes, get a glimpse of infinity, a quality which is not ours to hold.
My personal interpretation of the flood-myth story departs from the account in the Old Testament of the Bible. I take issue with the simplistic account of wild animals compliantly lining up in pairs. We are told that the majority (seven of each) of the animals were domesticated, not wild and selected as food for Noah and his tribe. Therefore, I suggests that the only live animals taken onboard the ark were domesticated. Could it not have been that a considerable amount of work had gone into transforming wild species into domesticated varieties?
There was a strong motive to harness the power of a giant Aurochs in a ‘lite’ version which we now know in bovine form as bulls and cows.
picture credit Wikipaedia An Auroch
Animals supported the burgeoning transition into settlements and farming. There is evidence from the excavations at Gobleki Teke in Anatolia that the monolithic structures there were created by agricultural communities 5000 years before the ‘official’ date. Nobody knows who these communities were but the appearance of the Mullilu ‘bags’ carved onto one stone, suggests an intriguing link with the Annunaki.
picture credit: Wikipeadia – Goblekli Tepe in Anatolia Turkey – the so called Vulture Stone
So we should not be surprised when we see mummified pussy cats in Ancient Egypt. Domestication of big cats to, presumably rid grain stores of vermin, lead to the creation of the domesticated feline. She was even elevated to the position of ‘god’ and many statues of her exist, as do mummified cats in such numbers their bodies were once burnt for heating.
The final step in this theory and certainly the most disturbing and controversial is that homo sapiens are ourselves domesticated animals, not for food but also as genetically engineered ‘gods’. Animals so beautifully perfect in their form that cosmic consciousness felt free to enter and inhabit human bodies as ‘soul’.
Let us return to the animals being selected to be preserved in the Arc. Should we take at face value the account in the Bible?
The reference to the animals going into the arc ‘two by two’ is a conspicuous detail. Why state this? Why not explain what happened to the plant, reptile, bird and insect kingdoms? And there is surely a fascinating tale to tell about the animals that did not survive, such as Unicorns.
The omissions are glaring, including the assumption that Noah and his family were the only humans at that time to own a boat. Many other races survived to tell the tale, one on similar lines as Noah only perhaps with smaller boats and their own food banks; we have their stories so no proof is needed on that point.
With reference to the Biblical version, we might ask why the precise dimensions of the ship were worth recording. If there is any detail we require it is its means of propulsion, navigation and anchoring. If we are examine the credibility of the Arc’s uncontrolled travels on a tempestuous ocean, it is hard to take it literally.
A boat, loaded with wild carnivorous animals, was always going to be an impossibility. How do you stop the animals eating each other like they do in nature? A powerless and rudderless ship was more likely to hit a mountain top and sink, than preserve life with a big L.
Picture credit: Pinterest King Solomon’s First Temple with the Molten Sea supported by animals in the foreground
Was the Arc really a ship? Since the proportions of the Arc in the Bible are given as a cubic rectangular shape, I personally think it more likely it was a giant building. The dimensions of the Arc are exactly proportional to the First Temple of Jerusalem, which of course, was a building. Not only that but there is a truth in the creation of similar geometric forms at different scales, what we call today, fractals. The proportions demonstrate a complete understand of the Divine mathematics that governs all Creation. Perfect mathematical proportions are beauty and beauty is Divine.
So perhaps the Arc was a beautiful and functional building. Perched on a mountain top it would have had a far better chance of surviving. There might even have been several such buildings scattered around the globe around the world erected by different cultures and described, we know, in their own myths. After all, there was no real rush. To flood the world would have taken several hundreds if not thousands of years.
What we are missing in the Bible is an overview. Perhaps it has been over redacted over time, but certainly the Annunaki put a lot of effort into fine tuning a wobbling world so that it could emerge from catastrophe completely cleansed of impurity.
An Annunaki with Tree of Life in background
When we look at the records of how the Annunaki Sumerian gods are repeatedly depicted in pictures, they are standing either side of a flowering tree, a ‘tree of life’. This firstly gives us an idea of a ‘family tree’ with it’s various branches – genetic connections – as in ‘royal family’. The ‘blue blood’ of the modern royals might well be a linguistic remnant of the reptilian DNA in humans.
The pictures are intriguing. In one hand the ‘god’ or ‘demi-god’ is holding one of those bags already mentioned, and in the other, something resembling a fir cone. The bracelet contains a clue; an eleven petalled flower and a central ovary, one for each month of the solar year.
Pine cones are counter clockwise spiral forms that obey the arithmetical, Fibonacci growth patterns. They hint, symbolically, of the process of genetic engineering and or horticultural hybridisation. The seeds of a pine cone are fractals of a tree in nascence, and seeds is where this hypothesis goes next.
There are very few contemporary descriptions of what the ‘fir cone’ and ‘bag’ represent. However there is one translation from the Acadian language which uses the word, BANDUDDU or ‘Turkish Pine Cone’. The bag is a MULLILU or ‘purifier’. If we accept that the Sumerian gods were active in global DNA management, part of that process would be to eradicate unwanted elements of DNA, or as it is known today, ‘gene editing’. It was vital that disease and inferior life was eradicated or ‘purified’, for future generations, whether prior to a catastrophe or in micro-management of earth’s delicate ecosystems. At another level it was vital that humans became able to access ever increasing levels of consciousness.
picture credit: Wakehurst Place, Sussex, the Millenium Seed Bank
The subject of genes returns us to this ‘two by two’ anachronistic detail. It is an interestingly similar mathematical picture of the double helix of mitochondrial DNA. Could Noah’s Arc have been a bank of DNA? Does the Mullilu contain genetically altered / improved pollen to fertilise the tree of life? Small bags, even today, usually contain light, high value items. (One of the strategy’s adopted by the scientists today in order to preserve life in the event of a global catastrophe is to create seed banks.)
Should we be surprised that DNA codes are binary and there are two sets of two letters to describe them; A and C = 0 / G and T = 1. As we know, 0 and 1 is the binary language of computers. This code and it’s most recent ‘quantum’ addition (neither 0 nor 1) is now understood by many scientists to be how not only life forms are described, but the whole fractal universe. This is why beings from infinitely large distances away can come to our small planet and know the deep structures, or programming, of our three dimensional existence. It’s the same everywhere in the binary code Universe…two by two.
The Gunpowder Plot was possibly conceived and attempted by a group of provincial Catholics in England against King James I. They met secretly to plan an execution of the protestant King by blowing up the House of Lords. The plot was thrawted on the 5th November 1605.
The Cambridge English Disctionary defines a ‘plot’ as;
The difference between a plot and a conspiracy is not clear from these simple definitions.
Please bear with the writer for one final definition as this essay is building up to something which affects us all. What is meant by the term ‘conspiracy theory’ and should we dismiss such theories as ‘conspiracies’?
The Cambridge English Dictionary definition of a theory is;
A conspiracy theory is therefore not a description of truth, although some may take it to be so. It is a ‘suggestion’ which is being applied to explain facts. This may be in a way previously discounted as new facts emerge or are reinterpreted.
Conspiracy theorists are easy prey for derision because of this confusion between a theoretical and and accurate description of an event. Wikipedia describes this well;
‘The term (conspiracy theory) has a negative connotation, implying that the appeal to a conspiracy is based on prejudice or insufficient evidence.’
The notion of a conspiracy theory has itself become the subject of biased logic, when it is derided out of hand without a fair hearing. An example might be it’s use as a term of derision by the United States CIA. They used and perhaps coined it, to discredit disbelievers in the findings of the Warren Commision. This was set up to investigate the assasination of President Robert Kennedy.
The use of the term as an emotional form of ‘mud slinging’ by those convinced to be on the side of rational argument, shows how the accusers can sometimes be as misguided as those they accuse of bias.
When bad things happen, such as a plane crash, there is often ambiguity due to the absence of information from a thorough investigation. Theorists have to match a set of facts with a most likely explanation of what happened.
During the sequential investigation process, various theories will adapt to facts. Eventually investigators will propose a theory that fits the facts more closely than previous theories.
Scientists produce theories which are reviewed by their peers and proven beyond doubt before being adopted as a scientific ‘law’. Einstien’s Special Theory of Relativity is a good example of a theory that could not be proven in his time. Einstien used mathematics to determine the proof of his theories but because the technology of the era was not able to test the theory by experiment, it was long after his death before his theories were proven.
Is it fair that conspiracy theories are given a reputation for being innacurate merely for being supposed to be conspiracy theories. The use of the term as derision is in itself troubling because logically, there is only ever one correct interpretation of events and a so called ‘conspiracy theory’ may be that one. Just as aircrash investigators reach a logical explanation of events so may conspiracy theories, eventually be revealed as true.
The State, or organisation within a State, which attempts to deny events that the theorists are getting right, puts loses trust.
Conspiracy Theories gain considerable credence by focusing on events for which there is no evidence to disprove the theory. For instance, you might suggest that Aliens are already on the planet Earth and have been for a very long time. The subject is so ‘taboo’ in modern societies that governments conspicuously share very little of what they know. Rationalisations are made to ‘explain away’ what witnesses have observed as being something else. For instance a moving light in the sky is explained to be a ‘weather baloon’. If the serving press officer admits on You Tube decades later that this was what he was told to say rather than the truth about a real crashed Alien craft, who are the public to believe?
We live in a time when information is being smoke screened as ‘fake’. We do not know what to believe. It used to be that books and newspapers, that is the written word, were trusted to report the truth. Authors and journalists would lose their reputations and careers if they printed as facts, something which was not from mulitiple, trusted sources. Since the rise of the internet and the general ease of access to all kinds of ‘information’, it is hard to determine between the real, the fake and the absurd.
This phenomenon has been compounded by a growing public distrust in ‘experts’. This is despite the fact that the training and experience of experts means they are right most of the time. After a small amount of research, it is possible to believe you have discovered a truth. What is commonly discovered is that after a large amount of research, you begin to doubt.
Conspiracy theories suffer from this ‘instant expert’ phenomenon and exploit the doubt of reasonably minded people. Complex events, such as the events of 9/11, require observers to be air traffic controllers, communication experts, pilots, air force strategists, architects, engineers, demolition experts, emergency reponse planners and practioners, intelligence officers, politicians, journalists and investigators. There are certainly more areas of experties than these but the point is that investigating the event and it’s motives are highly complex and require meticulously unravelling. Complexity can itself become a smokescreen to baffle the casual observer.
Even simple questions such as, ‘how could two aircraft be used to bring down three buildings?’ are ignored. When there is a pronounced silence from people who should and might know, or worse they start disappearing, citizens should become suspicious.
Fortunately the so called ‘free world’ is open to scrutiny at many levels and Freedom of Information Acts in countries like the USA and UK testify to this. However when clauses are written into these Acts that prevent the release of information publicly for ‘reasons of national security’ there is a window for suspicion to open.
The whole story around ‘Wikileaks’ is a testament to how there will always be room for alternative intepretations of facts or what is termed, ‘my version of the facts’.
picture credit The Westar Institute
If your government derides conspiratorial theories just for being ‘conspiracies’, ask yourself the question, who is hiding what? Perhaps by hiding the truth harm is being caused to citizens of that country? If your government acts in secret and causes harm to it’s populations by an act or ommission or failure to be timely in either or both, is that a plan, plot or a conspiracy?
For instance:why is the Gunpowder Plot so called? Gunpowder is inanimate and does not plot. Surely this was a conspiracy planned by the Spanish Catholic monarchy against the Protestant English monarchy? Or are we not meant to say that?
When human beings learn the language of symbolism, a great veil will fall from their eyes
Manly P. Hall
At the end of October each year, there is a flurry of excitement. The night of the 31st October is when the veil between the apparent physical world and the spirit world, opens wide. Across much of the western world the people are encouraged to make light of it. Children dress in demonic costumes and roam the streets knocking on stranger’s doors. This one night is when the ‘stranger danger’ thought bomb does not explode in parent’s minds. Local neighbourhood spirits offer treats to entice and draw children in. It’s viewed as all ‘quite normal’, by people who see the world through the great veil to which Hall refers.
‘Good Christian families’ ( or at least those millions in the United States of America who label themselves so ), engage in this most Pagan of all festivals as if they were celebrating a night with Mickey Mouse.
Few people pose the question, ‘what if All Hallows Eve is real?’.
I use Halloween as an example of the state of consciousness of our current civilisation in the West. Whilst it is true that many Hindus and Tibetan Buddhists for instance, have a powerful understanding of symbology, in the West ancient symbols are ‘not real’ and are treated at best as fantasy and at worst, entertainment.
In the present day, many people have retreated into a safety zone of ‘agnosticism’. They just do not believe in gnosis or ‘union with God’. The gods they trust are thier senses. There is no question when demon possessed magicians achieve the impossible on their television screens. People stare in disbelief as if, for the first time, they cannot trust their own eyes. Scientific reasoning has a lot of undoing to do, for it denies us thoughts beyond the information received from the senses. Western education has worked hard to achieve this.
In an hypnotic ‘Dance of Shiva‘ the technologies of information have built a wall between the soul and senses. To be ‘sensible’ in the English language means to be straight cut – down to earth, whilst also meaning, able to use the senses. So strong is this blockage, that thoughts of the collective soul remain a distant social memory. It is not that the memory is forgotten, although some politcal regimes desire that, it is that our perception is deceived so that reality becomes merely a fantasy and explained away as ‘just a bit of fun’.
We are educated to believe that every effect has a cause; to be rational. From childhood, westerners have been taught that coincidences happen for no reason, ghosts are tricks of the imagination and objects do not move on their own; if you tread on a crack in the pavement the bear will not really eat you…it can all be explained. Sigmund Freud wrote an essay called ‘Determinism, Belief in Chance and Superstition’ in which it was claimed rational explanations cleared the unconscious mind of irrational interpretations of the world and life. According to June Singer in her book Boundaries of the Soul, this view has changed the course of education – a process which aims beningly to turn the light on in a darkened mind.
Freud’s belief that rational explanations clear the unconscious, in the words of June Singer, ‘translated into psychological term the voices of the Enlightenment that called for the elimination of superstitions, the mystical and the non-rational in the Western intellectual tradition.’ As a Jungian psycologist Singer is sceptical to this view and I would agree. Where will we be when we have explained away everything in conclusions that are just interpretations? If you are prepared to believe in the power of the unknown you will never ‘educate away’ the unconscious and the irrational. When symbols link us to these ‘Neverlands‘, our spine should tingle.
David and Goliath retold centuries later
A trip to an ancient Egyptian temple by a group of Europeans straight from breakfast on the Nile river cruise ship, enters world for the merely curious. The guide will lead them through heavy doors into a new world where extraordinary people, long ago once trod. More than that they left for us beautifully designed and constructed buildings encoded from floor to Heaven with cartouches and pictures in relief. The entry into the Holy of Hollies in Karnac’s great halls will make them pause merely to check their camera settings and what time the taxis pick them up for the boat.
Of course this small group should be given credit for making the effort to be there but how sad they make little effort to ask ‘what went on here and what is left of it now?’ Few will entertain the idea that Temples represent a journey for mortals into their body, soul and spirit.
picture credit: Flying Carpet Tours
There is a temple in a New York museum which was transport block by block from Egypt. A modern mystic, Lorna Burne who is familiar with angels from early childhood, reports that there is a spirit in this temple in great anguish. The spirit circles in endless frustration that the temple has been moved and needs to be returned. Tell archaeologists that and they are likely to do little more than laugh.
Just as Halloween is reduced to a social joke, so are most experiences of those who make sense of things without using their senses. It’s as if modern cultures need a way of holding off the forces which they distrust, like an ancient DNA memory of a fear of spiders, rats and snakes. It is as if we have repressed our fears into two rationalisations labelled good and bad, then explore one but not the other.
Many modern religionists express this dichotomy firmly with descriptions of the works of Satan on one hand and the love of Jesus on the other as if it was that simple. All mystics get to know Satan very well so as to overcome those elemental forces. Even when countries are at war, such as during the First World War, each hold their field services imploring favour to the same God! No contradiction is acknowledge since ‘the other side are Devils’, not us. Then both sides engage in mass slaughter, explained in their own minds as being on behalf of God. The killing is certainly not the work of the Devil. This is ignorance at it’s most extreme and most harmful.
Soldiers returning from war find it incredibly difficult to face ‘civilian life’ after this madness. Sometimes their families and that world have become so alien to them that many choose never to return, like the character of Colonel Kurtz in Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. Soldiers have their eyes opened by Mars, the God of War and enter a reality that has been skinned of fantasy. It is truely horrific, but is more real than anything ever experienced.
I firmly believe that by getting to grips with the ancient mythical descriptions of ‘mind’ and the human condition through the powerful symbols of the past and present, the possibilit open now for western culture to embrace our personal and collective unconscious.
A series of books by the author Dan Brown bears testament to this popular mood to understand symbols and the hidden worlds to which they allude. Albeit he shrouds his messages as ‘entertainment’, he perhaps knows or hopes that many an ‘agnostic’ might be moved by the power of the non-rational. In an age when even the scientists are building their theories of the contradictory laws of quantum physics, we should at least be open to the wealth of knowledge contained in the improbable.
Symbols are a massively important language for the mind. In a subtle way, the power of poetry is the same as symbols. Poets hint sideways at realities with few words, just as symbols point us to new understandings with no words.
Carl G. Jung was perhaps the most famous psychologist who opened up symbols as a reputable field of study and in particular dream interpretation. He used the study of his own dreams as well as patients, to gain insight into the personal and the collective psyche, the latter which he termed the ‘collective unconscious’.
Symbols dig deep into this unconsciousness, of which modern man was once most fearful but today, in my view, needs to be less so. Symbols not so much ‘explain’ as knock down row after row of balanced dominoes in an unexpected way to produce unintended effects that you might call ‘realisations’.
The plots of the Dan Brown novels are just such a cascade of ‘clue solving’. Through the broad knowledge of symbols by the character Professor Robert Langdon, mysteries are revealed in rapid twists and turns of the plot.
If psychosis is a surfacing of unconscious fears, then symbols enable that to happen as well. Perhaps the fear of that is the process most inhibiting understanding today. Ancient wisdom is wrapped up and scurried away by people of religion, so that it’s power is denied the possession of the people. We are told how damaging such knowledge is and how it is ‘the work of the Devil, aliens and Satanic cults, not for popular consumption and well past it’s sell-by date’.
The Vatican Secret Archives are themselves a symbol of this sublimation of sacred wisdom deemed never to surface into the minds of the common people. Beyond the political secrets and records of shameful past and present actions, you would like to think that mankind will benefit more, that be caused harm, by revealing the archive’s contents to the public.
Unfortunately, the battle between the Angels and the Demons takes place right before all of our eyes, if we looked. Even such things scientifically real as the present Covid virus is demonic in character. Viruses are hidden and not understood but powerful and with the ability to kill innocent humans. In this description we can see the description of the malign demi-god of ancient myth, the dragon that inhabits the cave and eats villagers, Count Dracula who enters a country and seeks it’s vulnerable female victims blood, Sleeping Beauty who falls under the spell of the witch and is put in a coma like a hospital patient.
The V1 and V2 rockets of Nazi Germany were powerful killing machines and inspired by the occult secrets of the ancients, as much as by likes of team of rocket scientists.
All of these encounters with demons and angels are happening and as real today, in my view, as they were in the past. The ancient Greeks saw the sun and the moon just as we do. The only difference is that we see them as a nuclear explosion and an empty rock rather than giving them respect for the way they command our every waking moment. The joy of life is dependent entirely on the gift of the sun’s rays depicted by the ancient Egyptians as a straight line from the sun, with an Ankh symbol at the end of each life giving ray of light.
Such symbols may never totally be understood by modern man because historical cycles move in spirals, not circles, but we do have symbols of our own that echo insignts from our ancestors. Understanding our own selves and our environment is key to the sustainability of our technological societies. Modern life is an Odyssey into a world of Sirens and Whirlpools, just as real as it ever was for Odysseus. Hold tight!
The Centre is a special place that contains as many mysteries as explanations…but what kind of centers do I mean? Well, the center is in our body-mind unity and extends between the centre of the Earth and infinity. Let us start with ourselves.
We are born with a placenta connected from the centre of our bodies, to our mother. This physical centre remains true for the rest of our lives, yet our mind also has a centre as does our spiritual being. The centre of our consciousness is not necessarily in our heads. Acrobats, gymnasts, martial artists will all give you an explanation derived from their experience. To turn and tumble under complete control, our consciousness needs to be somewhere other than our heads. For the Karate adapt, the Hara is again the navel or the sacral chakra from where the body finds it’s centre. Control of the Hara fixes the practitioner to a single axis or centre of gravity and from this position a balanced and grounded attack can be made, or a defense.
The Dervish in the Sufi tradition spins on the left rotating foot whilst pushing with the other. The experience is to be removed from the visible world or ‘dunya’ and moved vertically on the axis of turning into another realm. The analogy is that the dervishes become like planets as they spin around the Sun, who is the guide, the Sheikh.
Psychologically, the process of becoming adult is similar. As children we tend to run out of control, wobble and fall, like spinning plates left too long. We need adults to check what we do when we edge close to the metaphorical cliff. We are not centred. In maturity we find our balance and with balance a centre. Unlike a pair of scales, the centre is in three or more dimensions, but the analogy works.
If we become too absorbed in a particular activity, such as work or family, or leisure, we neglect other parts of our lives. We indeed neglect our full potential as human beings because the art of being balanced is more important than excelling in one particular area of life. This is contrary to what modern societies tend to expect. We are encouraged to specialise and repeat patterns until we can execute a skill perfectly. This is the process taught to factory workers, concert pianists, teachers, parents or any other career or social position. Time spent on these activities usually is at the cost of other responsibilities. So it is that modern managers will consider the work and life ‘balance’ of employees. It is recognised that becoming a grand master at chess is all very well but creates a lesser human if other simple tasks are not understood, such as working the washing machine or understanding another human’s emotions.
picture credit: KCP International
One technique for becoming ‘centered’ is found in both Eastern and Western spiritual practice. The former emphasises the importance of concentration when awake and alert and not becoming distracted by day dreams. Concentration is sometimes taught by training the body before the mind. Students of Zen Buddhism will sit in Za Zen for hours whilst supervised by a master. No movement or involvement in a mental or physical distraction is tolerated. If an earth quake occurred the class should remain motionless. The point is that all that occurs in the world is an illusion that must not be taken seriously, even when catastrophe is imminent. Some deaths cannot be avoided by running, therefore sitting is taking ones noble and inner strength with one into Paradise.
In the West, monks and nuns will sit in contemplation, having already put themselves outside of the world. Although less emphasis is placed on ‘illusion’ the seeker is directed to concentrate on the Divine. The ‘God Head’ is and represents a fixed point, to which the seeker becomes attached in their whole being. By this process all attachment to the outer perceived world falls away as unimportant. The contemplative becomes centred by fixing consciousness to an unmoving presence.
This apparent ‘stillness’ is characteristic of the part of the mystery of the centre. The geographic poles on the spinning earth are not moving at one thousand miles per hour as is the case at the equator. They are the still place which encompasses all directions whilst being themselves directionless.
Throughout time and place humans have found it necessary to identify ‘centers’ outside their bodies.
As the word suggests, the ‘hearth’ in the home is both the centre of the ‘earth’ and the ‘heart’. It generally contains fire as a loyal servant to social well being and survival. It cooks food, warms water and the space around it, giving the householders good reason to gather around.
The village or town containing these homes, will also have a designated ‘centre’. It may deserve that title as a spiritual centre, an administrative centre, a social centre, a business centre, a defensive centre from invaders and other functions.
In ancient times the centre was marked with a significant natural feature such as the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. So sacred is this ‘centre’ that three major religions revere it ‘s significance as the place where God created the world and the first man ‘Adam’.
In even earlier times societies were sensitive not only to the ‘spirit of the place’ but to a ‘cosmological order’. The ancient Egyptians had a canon of harmonies which Plato referred to in Laws which kept Egyptian society consistently for thousands of years. John Michell refers to this order in his book ‘At the Centre of the World’ p165;
‘The occurrence at different times throughout the world of similarly organised twelve-tribe societies, focused upon a rock, a sanctuary and a sacred king, can only be due to the influence of a common prototype, which must be that traditional code of number and proportion which constitutes the best possible more rational and inclusive image of essential reality’.
In other words, the centre of the sovereign nation is determined geometrical according to harmonious proportions. Stonehenge in Southern England is a good example of a centre conceived as a circle with twelve divisions. It connects visually with the Universe by alignment with the sun and moon, stars and planets placing the observer / worshiper, firmly at the centre of all things.
The supreme example of a geographic centre is the pyramids on the Giza Plateau which occupy the exact centre of the landmasses of the continents at 30 degrees north.
The geometry of Divine symbolism is a large subject if little understood in the modern world. Towns and cities are conceived for rational reasons of economy and function. If there is a sacred centre to a town it is because it’s ancient forefather conceived it so. In the United States of America the city of Washington is such an example of the application of sacred principles and geometry in city planning, but such examples are rare in the land that built according to ‘the grid’.
In not caring to create sacred centers in our buildings, towns, cities and countries, we are not caring to be ‘centred’ in ourselves. For we are intimately connected with the spaces we occupy whether they are inside buildings, inside the spaces buildings create or within the landscape and cosmos.
As an architectural student in the 1970’s some of my tutors disliked my use of geometry, symmetry and proportion in my designs. Organic shapes were also ‘taboo’. I was told very strongly to design using only right angles and grid patterns, presumably because they had been taught that themselves. They respected only maximising the performance of materials, ignoring the third of Vitruvian principles of architecture which are durability, utility and beauty.
As citizens of the modern world we have learnt only function and forgotten, or care not, to make our buildings and public spaces beautiful.
The change that has to come is for us to enter the centers of ourselves. When we speak from our hearts our social fabric will evolve to transform those places that we hold precious. That is, in my view, the direction for the citizens of the 21st century, but first we must start within ourselves.
‘Go sweep out the chamber of your heart. Make it ready to be the dwelling place of the Beloved. When you depart out, He will enter it. In you, void of yourself, will He display His beauties.
Science and philosophy are contrary subjects yet strangely complimentary; after all, they are both exploring the same thing…the Universe.
If philosophers are generalists then scientists study detail. Building up on detail, philosophers gain a knowledge and understanding of the way ‘things work’ based on ‘all and everything’. Inspired by generality, scientist drill down into new unexplored places.
But it does not have to be so polarised as that. We can be more ‘nuanced’ about their relationship. History shows us that science sometimes makes great leaps when scientists turn philosophers. Einstein’s General and Special theories of Relativity are an example of that. Innovators in the scientific community are often those whose interests and hobbies include the arts. Look out for the professor with the vivid bow tie and red shoes. He or she is the one most likely to be able to peep over the fence into the garden containing all things ‘artistic’. They may even have the key to the connecting gate.
Some of the greatest minds who ever lived are celebrated as both artists and scientist. Perhaps the best known example is Leonardo de Vinci and his stable mates in the Renaissance. To look after a forest you sometimes have to look down on it from the mountain top, whilst other times tending the specific needs of each tree, branch and twig.
Such a way of working is the way of a wise person. They will have seen a lot of life and understand that trees are trees, from whatever distance you view them. This ‘third place’ or trintessence, is the sacred child of both art and science. It is unique and special and often has no name and does not enter thought for that reason.
But it is vital to take notice of the fact that frequently there is a magic third element springing from the fusion of two complimentary opposites.
One only needs to refer to Christian theology and the coming together of the concept of the Trinity. It obeys the phenomenon that two ‘opposite’ forces conflate to produce a third mysterious new entity.
I remember my rather sanctimonious aunt leaning over from the pew behind me when I was a boy and asking what parts made up the Trinity. I replied parrot fashion; ‘Father, Son and Holy Ghost’.
But then I was the boy who drew a parrot on the chalk board in the class room with a speech bubble containing religious words. I have always had a problem with those who repeat words without understanding. Now in old age I can see that how the Trinity is created in not just Christianity but in the many mystical traditions that underpin religions.
The Father and Son are two huge archetypes from which all of creation emanates. The son sits on the right hand of God and the two make a very special SWAT (special weapons and techniques) team. Because God cannot enter the gross material world physically, he sends his ‘go to’ helper. Whatever incarnation the son may appear in (Apollo, Hermes, Ra and so on) he is always the same perfected entity who returns to earth on a mercy mission.
But the ‘double act’ needs something else, some other essence that ‘makes things move’. Examine the equation e=mc2. The energy (e) could be understood as the infinitely expansive Creator of all things including and especially ‘thought’. The material element (m) is the ‘Redeemer’ who comes to a physical Earth on a mission. The spectacular mystery is that both energy and matter obey a third rule and constant – c, or the ‘Holy Spirit’.
The Holy Spirit is represented as a dove. She is an untransmutable bird who visits all of those in need, as a helper and producer. Without the aid of the holy spirit, stuff would just not change and move on. Noah would still be in a flood.
She is the flux element that stabilises and goes beyond the relationship between matter and energy. It can do this because it is their product. How apt that the United Nations chose to have a dove on their flag. They brought together the energy and matter of warring nations in peace.
Pre-Christian theological and philosophical ideas encapsulated the same Trinity of archetypes, only using different names.
Plato realised that matter and energy combine in a third essence which was named the ‘aether’ or ‘ether’. This mysterious third element persisted throughout the centuries. It was embraced by the Alchemists as being the ultimate symbol and tool of perfection, the philosopher’s stone. Without this ancient concept of an invisible third element that pervades all things – even outer space – then early scientists like Sir Isaac Newton (an avid Alchemist) may never have germinated the seeds of modern scientific thought.
Today scientist’s view the ether as belonging to and explaining the existence of ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’. We are told that the former occupies 4% of the Universe we can perceive with our senses and instruments. The rest cannot be perceived or measured.
When philosopher’s understand that scientists are ‘in the soup’ over where the Universe is i.e. where dark energy lives, they can be excused for not offering an explanation. All that is dark as ‘e’ and ‘m’ exists in the area of their product as a constant. It is neither matter nor energy but a mathematical / geometrical immutable mystery.
To continue the list of ancient ‘trinities’, Osiris and Isis inhabited the Temples of Ancient Egypt. In their story that have a son who is Horus – a divine child sometimes depicted on the knee of his nursing mother as a baby. The infant child is a accurate depiction of the product of two energies. They produce an asexual, passive being without transgression, action or thought. It is the constant that held together successive dynasties in the land of Egypt for thousands of years. Horus the Divine child – inspired the constructions of matter such as the pyramids in such a way and as such supreme manifestations of thought and understanding, that their presence in the material world has an ‘eternity’ about them. That eternity is most purely expressed in mathematics, which is why the Pyramid of Cheops in Gaza is built with such precision. It is truly aligned to the points of the compass, particular stars including the sun, underground tellurgic currents and stands in the physical centre of the land masses of the globe. This is as close to being ‘constant’ as is ever likely to be achieved on this earth.
Perhaps the greatest two archetypes ever to unite, with their product being a ‘trinity’ is the Hermetic law of male and female. The Hermetics believe that not only does this duality exist on Earth but in every parallel dimension. We see nature using these subtly similar yet different archetypes to the full, not merely for sexual reproduction but at emotional, intellectual, and behavioural levels of existence. All animals such as mammals depend on their parents in their conception, incubation and infancy but eventually they ‘fly the nest’ and become a free independent entity. They are the same as their genetic parents and yet – as Charles Darwin observed – they are empowered by an improvement on their parents.
We are therefore each an expression of the ‘third essence’ in our own uniqueness as a being. Fired by the holy constant ‘c’, we each of us contain the possibility to transcend our material (body) and energetic (spirit) limitations. As infinite souls (c) we will never experience death and will move gently into perfection at the right hand of God. Human bodies are not designed for longevity but give just enough time for experience and reflection on what does not change in life; what is constant. That is why Zen masters feel the ecstasy of a falling leaf. In every Universe, leaves fall.
The tri-essence knows that it has a future greater than it’s individual parts, and for this reason has a good chance at realising perfection. This perfection is the great mysterious tunnel that souls follow into the constant realm of the ‘after life’.
It is a bourne from where most travellers do return, just to get one more bite of the forbidden fruit; one more chance to become greater than the sum of it’s parts.
0
00
000
0000
The Platonic Pyramid (above) is decimal. The top half of the pyramid is the Trinity. The lower part (7) is also sacred and another subject!
It is Christmas Eve in the Whitehouse. The view across the famous lawns sparkles in the street lamps. Squirrels hop playfully from tree to tree in the thick snow and at the front door, a line of limousines wait patiently.
If we approach one of the snow hung windows we can look in and observe the scene. Bedecked with all kinds of seasonal decorations, the long mahogany table is encompassed by seated guests. At the head of the table is President Biden. His calm manner brings a sense of peace to the room and his family and guests converse quietly to one another. In the distance we hear the faint clash of kitchen ware as staff prepare to bring in a most special meal.
Suddenly there is a commotion on the steps of the Whitehouse! A tall cloaked figure is gesticulating frantically and pleading with the Secret Service to let him in.
‘Oh come on! Let me in, please. This used to be my home! Let me speak to Joe. I want to apologise for everything. I have been a bad, bad person but no more! Tell him I am here to see him…pleeease.’
Could this be Donald Trump? He is bent down on one knee with his hands together, as if in prayer.
If we quickly move back to look through the dinner scene window, we can see an aide whispering in the Presidents ear. Joe Biden’s jaw drops and his eyes stare into space. Without hesitation, he pushes back his chair and rushes out of the room.
For a few minutes nothing happens. The hooded figure on the steps, which is indeed, Donald Trump, has been allowed to step in out of the cold.
The guests sit bemused looking at each other before two embracing figures burst into the room. When Mr Trump sees the assembled guests he falls to his knees and sobs.
We must press our ears to the glass and listen carefully for he is talking, not in his loud manner, but softly.
‘Oh friends, dear sweet friends. Hear me just for one moment and then throw me out if you want to. I am nothing. I have been a bad, bad boy I know and I am so, so, so sorry. But since that awful Corona Virus thing which almost killed me, and the First Lady and had us both in our graves, which is all we deserved I must say, I have seen the light!
A gasp went around the room and then subsided.
I know I upset a lot of people. I know I did. But I didn’t know what I was doing because I only cared for one person all the time. I am ashamed to say that was not my beautiful wife Meliana. No, no, it was worse than that. It was me. I was proud, deceitful, ingratiating, ignorant, manipulative, vengeful, greedy…why am I telling you all my secrets? Because I was also stupid and I didn’t see you could see all those bad characteristics of my bad character.
But you know what? When I was lying in my hospital bed with tubes going into my lungs, an angel came to me.
There was a pause for dramatic effect and Donald looked blankly at the window as if deeply moved by the memory. He continues;
Well two actually and they sat at the end of my bed looking at me as if to say, ‘we know what you are like and we want to help you change.’ I listened to them for hours. They showed me lots of things, terrible things that I have done, there on the hospital ward ceiling like a movie. I behaved so badly. I hurt everyone including this beautiful – sooo beautiful – planet by not listening to those climate change scientists. And the way I put down the great President Obama and the wonderful – so kind – Obama Care plans he had for poor sick people which I just trashed all the time and promised to get rid of. I was so unkind. Even to the tax collector of the United States of America, I thought I could pull the wool over everyone’s eyes and have more money for myself. Money, yes, money and lots of it.
Well tonight that has all finished. I have just come from meeting all the staff who work for me in Trump Tower. I gave them all wonderful amazing presents and new clothes for their children and theatre tickets and anything they asked for, because they worked for a monster, yes they did, who didn’t even know their names or shake a hand and say thank you, ever. Well that has all gone. I am telling you now that that Tower of Babel is going to be sold and the proceeds given to the sick children of America. Every single one of them so help me God!’
You could see from the shocked, but caring expressions on the faces in the candlelight, that the speech had affected each of them to the core. President Biden called for another chair and a new place was laid at the table. A rather stooped figure sat on the chair and smiled in a way no one had seen him do before.
It was a happy smile straight from the heart of a man who had come to value truth and the simple virtue of being himself and loving all other beings, more than himself.
‘God is intelligence occupied with knowing Itself’ Master Eckhart
There have been many depictions of beings holding two vertical staffs throughout history and across the world.
Such a synchronicity displays and extraordinary communication network of shared ideas, or a common truth.
Let us take ‘truth’ as a more likely source of these images. When viewed objectively the commonality is a description of duality. For many centuries and in many cultures but particularly the East, duality has been viewed as an illusion. The opposites are viewed as a unity and containing an element of each other, as signified in the well known Ying Yang symbol.
If we take one dimension of this Ying Yang division, we can see a masculine and feminine duality.
There is a great mystery for philosophers expressed by gender. Beyond pure physical sexuality and the biology of reproduction, gender is all around us. Even Latin languages contain the rule of attributing gender to nouns. In English gender is applied to a few inanimate objects such as ships and until recently, weather systems.
And as philosophers become more specific about the nature of the universe they extend thought and description into numbers. A system of numbering was an important step in the development of all civilisations. Generally, even numbers are male and odd numbers female. The former behave in a rational way and can be subdivided neatly and stand firmly as four wheels or two legs, whilst odd numbers are less rational and do not travel in straight lines.
The numbering system with a base of ten, contains just nine numbers. The numbers 3,6,9 are the building blocks of the Universe according to Nicola Tesla. But the modern language of computing has refined the description of meaning using just zero and one.
Take a jump here into the minds of the ancient peoples of the British Isles who built Men an Tol in the county of Cornwall. The symbolism of the circular hole and the passing through of a figure is exactly as the yoni and lingham in Hinduism. Beyond superstition and luck, there is an universal truth being described, that of zero and one.
picture credit Wikipaedia for Men An Tol
When we view the symbolic depictions in Ancient Egypt, Sumeria, China and many other countries, the duality is depicted as two serpents. In my view, the serpent is an allusion to an organic energy of a type that modern science is yet to measure, but which has been named Chi, Ki, Orgone and many other names. It is subtle in the way that quantum physics attempts to describe the combining of the logical and the illogical. An example would be the ability of two atoms to change polarity in respect to each other even when an infinite distance apart. The one becomes zero and visa versa – instantaneously; regardless of distance.
Isis, Horus (the holy child), Osiris
Osiris and Isis
This phenomena is symbolised in ancient myths by more eleborate stories where the King and Queen produce a child, miraculously without sexual intercourse. This feature informs us that the meaning of the myth is at a more subtle level than what goes on in the physical world. The production of the god child is ‘immaculate’, without fault.
The truth being told is one of the coming together of opposites in a perception of a dual universe into a singularity, one place, one thought, one reality. The child is the perfect symbol because it is non-sexual and a product of two complimentary singularities.
In the mind the child represents an expansion of consciousness. The message of the child Jesus of Nazareth was love. Mankind was shown how the battles and hatred of the Old Testament in Judaism got it wrong. Fighting each other is revealed to contain no lasting solution.
The evolution of computer software began with the language of zero’s and one. It has served it’s purpose well but quantum physics has questioned the future of such as system and produced an alternative. A sort of quantum marriage has taken place, again ‘immaculately’ and produced the child which is the quantum computer. This has brought and will bring in the future lifetimes of most readers, computing power of a type that has never been dreamed of in the minds of mathematicians like Alan Turing.
Quantum computers will have minds of their own as in the ancient stories of the god-child. This new level of consciousness has the potential to move from organic super computers – mankind – into a virtual universe of quantum computing.
This works because the duality of zero and one is brought miraculously into oneness by quantum computers. Whether this is the ‘Oneness’ described by mystics throughout the centuries remains to be realised. Perhaps it never will by ordinary humans because although they have the potential to match quantum computers, they are ‘distracted’ by the physical universe. We humans have been plugged into an organic body with which we identify a ‘me’, and have a hard time controlling it’s desires.
Computers are also limited in their desire for power and physical parts but quantum thinking will solve such problems effortlessly and as far as humans are concerned, ruthlessly, acting much like a virus on a host.
No virus is so short sighted as to destroy it’s host so the quantum ‘robots’ of the future will follow laws of limitation designed to respect sustainable expansion.
Clearly the humans of the ancient passed were not perceiving ‘artificial intelligence’ when they described entwining serpents whispering information to each other. But they were describing a universal truth that is the foundation of organic science in the field of DNA and non organic science in the branch of computing.
Truth works independent of time and space. Whether it sets mankind ‘free’ remains to be seen.
The Long Man of Wilmington in East Sussex, England
One of the tricks employed by those who construct crossword puzzles is to include words which have multiple meanings.
Take the word ‘mean’ for instance. It may immediately have meant to you, ‘to be stingy, one with an ungenerous nature’. Then again it might have meant ‘something in the middle’. Or it might also have meant, ‘the significance of something’. It is this third meaning which I intend to explore.
People with a philosophical bent of mind are often quizzing on what they construct as ‘the meaning of life’. This is as if the question, although perfectly constructed, can be answered. In reality it is one of those questions that has no answer, like a Zen koan. The Zen koan however is constructed because there is no expectation of an answer. Intellectual philosophers imagine that logic is without boundaries, when it is not.
‘Quick, who can save this cat?’
The ‘life of meaning’ is a far more fruitful place for philosophical meandering, because when we understand what everything in life means, then we must be approaching an understanding of life.
When I was a young man studying architecture, there was a course entitled ‘Architecture Studies’. This did not convey the content of the course at all and I did not sign up for the lectures; not least because the Professor who introduced the course had a highly debilitating stammer which I thought I could not endure for a year. The serried ranks of students had great difficulty containing their laughter including, I am ashamed to say, myself.
It turned out that this professor was only the head of the department and therefore gave no further lectures, for obvious reasons. Instead lectures were presented by one of the most inspirational teachers I have ever had. (I took the course without gaining credits for my degree as I was fascinated and delighted the ‘head of department’ earned his money in some other way than lecturing.) John Steel came from California, had long straggly hair, tan leather trousers with a lace fly and taught us to question everything.
He told us that when he studied anthropology, instead of heading out into the jungles of Borneo with the other PhD students, he remained behind and studied the tribe who were his professors. How I would have loved to have seen the look on their faces when they read his thesis!
In the third year of this course we focused on ‘meaning in buildings’. How buildings convey very subtle thought forms that have meaning to the creator and users of buildings is a fascinating, if little considered, subject.
We were lead in this year by professor Robert Maxwell who had made this theme uniquely his own. We read about semantics and semiology and how all life and all things are imbued with meaning, both consciously and unconsciously. The master creator will be fully conscious of what knowledge and or wisdom the building is to contain and convey. This additional level of complexity in design is not optional for without it, I would argue no building can be ‘great’.
The Pyramid of Cheops has to be the most obvious example of a building, despite or because of being geometric in form, is layered with levels of significance that we are still in the process of understanding today.
Pyramid; electromagnetic images at various frequencies
The challenge of seeping meaning into a creation is common to anything from popular songs to domestic appliance design. In popular songs, the lyrics can lift a mediocre melody into a new dimension and a singer songwriter who exemplified this has to be Leonard Cohen. His songs lumbered along on a series of notes that moved unspontaneously one tone at a time in either the upward of downward direction. Amadeus M0zart would have laughed if you told him the songwriter was famous. But Mozart might not have understood the high level of the poetry that Cohen achieved and how the meanings he explored, were loved by his fans. His contemporary Bob Dylan was likewise a major poet, and a slightly better constructor of melodies.
Contemporary Rap Music has learnt nothing from the example of the great musicians from the past and makes little of no effort in constructing melody. The whole song is contained in the rhythm of the words as if the complexity of melody is just too difficult, which is a loss to the genre and it’s advocates in my view.
Finding meaning in words is not hard to understand, but finding meaning in household objects?
If you wander into a shop selling kitchenware there is a brand which specialises in bringing salad tongs, toast racks and cruet sets, to life. They are given arms and legs and cute smiles that grin up at you creating that all important ‘love me’ moment.
The previously ‘dead’ object of utility has been ‘Lazarused’.
The Japanese are a culture who collectively love any object imbued with character and meaning. The front view of a Japanese car for many years, had to contain a smiling face rather than a sad one. Smiles sell.
Such examples of life entering objects of human design are sadly rare. Most buildings never feel the pencil of a loving creator that breaths life into form.
The anthropologist studying modern western culture will find few objects imbued with life and might conclude that 2020 culture is impoverished of meaning.
If you have no religion, then your walls of your living room will not be hung with smiling images of your guru, might not have a saint or cross on your wall and the sideboard will be empty of smiling Buddhas. But don’t worry, says popular atheistic culture, ‘just do what you want’.
But imagine you wake up one morning and decide on a whim, that you want a tattoo on your arm. You don’t know why, it is just something you ‘want’.
So you find yourself sitting on an uncomfortable metal chair in the waiting room of the local tattoo parlour. You are flicking through a well thumbed booklet of tattoo designs whilst listening to the gentle buzz of the tattoo artist’s machine behind a curtain.
As the moment draws nearer for your initiation, you realise that you cannot decide what you want. You quite like the Maori swirls but actually, the Tibetan clouds take you fancy as well. Or should you go for ‘I love Mum’, perhaps not macho enough?
I would be very interested in a study of people who have chosen to be tattooed and how they made their choice. Do you think that the majority would present a meaningful explanation? ‘This is a prayer that my Aunty taught me when I was a child and I never want to forget it’ or ‘this is my blood group in case I have an accident’. Two thoughtful examples, but from what I have seen of the content of tattoos the answer is more likely to be ‘it’s what I wanted’.
Given that many in a multi-cultural western population will have few anchors of faith or ties with other belief systems such as ‘Hells Angels’, I expect that the majority of tattoos will be without meaning.
This is not a criticism of tattoos or those who have chose to have one. Traditionally, so called ‘primitive’ tribes around the world will have learnt to impregnate the skin with swirling patterns and designs that their ancestors taught them. The human skin was a book for writing on long before the invention of papyrus.
The problem we have today is that we have no subjects of interest and the readers don’t care if they did. Is this true even for architecture?
‘What is your favourite colour?’ asks the interior designer.
‘Blue’.
Most interior designers will know the significance of different hues and the psychological impact of these colours on mental processes and emotional responses. But the client will probably not understand these effects or wish to have them interfere with what they want. ‘I don’t know anything about art but I know what I like’ is the mantra of the uninitiated majority.
Those sceptical about the impact of colour in human messaging, should consider the skills of advertisers and marketeers.
When the BBC have a red background to their logo there is a reason for this. It shows strength and an outgoing desire to search for truth.
The Guardian newspaper online, chose yellow and black because this combination signifies a willingness to explore issues beyond the conventional. In nature it’s a waspy warning; in journalism it’s means ‘cutting edge’.
So to conclude, we ignore complexity at our peril. Yes, you can get by with just following a hunch and what you like. But you will rarely imbue your soul with the richness of any self or cultural understanding in this way.
By becoming a ‘skin deep’ society we risk losing contact with the expressions from the souls of our ancestors and beyond. We become no more than ink beneath the epidermis, injected to form a meaningless configuration. It stays for your whole life the body is returned to the ground.
In my previous two essays I have investigated and speculated over the ancient origins of two well known hill figures in Southern England. These are the Long Man of Wilmington and the Cerne Abbas Giant.
I shall now expand on some of the entomology of the place names, possible associations and derivation from ancient mythology and their significance.
This type of study might be called ‘sacred archaeology’ where the study of the past reveals not only the every day lives of the ancient people but their spiritual practices and level of awareness.
In my first essay I investigated the origins of the hill figures and suggested that they origins lay in the land known as Atlantis. The catastrophic earth changes that seeded the inhabitants of Atlantis around the world are described in detail elsewhere.
Taking on the hypothesis that the Atlantean people shared their advanced knowledge with developing Kingdoms such as Mesopotamia and Early Ancient Egypt, it becomes possible to trace common myths, gods, through the millennia.
Thoth – Judging the Soul with a balance.
Note the Ankh symbol at the centre representing the human soul. The two staffs either side represent balance between the masculine and feminine.
For instance the Ancient Egyptian god of the Underworld is known as Thoth, usually depicted with a staff. He is the keeper of esoteric knowledge, writing and conducts the passage of souls into the Underworld. These god like characteristics carry through into the Celtic world around 800 to 450 BCE, during the Iron Age.
Cernunnon wearing a Torc around his neck, where the throat chakra is postioned.
In the Celtic pantheon there is a god of the Underworld known as Cernunnon. He is depicted with antlers and is commonly seated cross legged and holding a serpent (masculine) and a torc (feminine).
I referred to the Long Man’s vertical staff symbol in the previous essay as representing conductors of energy (present today as the Magician’s wand) The rod or rods become ‘aerials’ able to induce tellurgic currents from the earth and waters below through the human body into the air and fire of heaven above. The human body and staffs of a particular length (ergo wavelength) are able to induce through resonance, tellurgic currents.
The Long Man of Wilmington in Sussex, England.
These vertical forces are depicted in the figure of the Long Man of Wilmington and are echoed in the pillars, church spires and obelisks of later and earlier civilisations. They even emerge as the pillars of the sun and moon in the Freemason tradition, one of the most direct connections we have today to this ancient knowledge.
The ability to transform oneself spiritually by literally ‘tuning’ into the earth at sacred places is shown in the depictions of Cernunnos to be even more sophisticated than the gods with vertical staffs (or serpents).
The vertical Idas in the human body and the horizontal chakras are a fundamental part of the very ancient system of Yoga.
(Further description of the horizontal nature of chakras can be found in my blog chakracard.wordpress.com)
What is important in the depictions of Cernunnon is that the earth energy is depicted as snakes wrapped horizontally around his waist. This is a direct symbolic connection between the spiralling underground water below a sacred place, known to Dowser or Water Diviners such as Guy Underwood who wrote ‘The Patterns of the Past‘. The circular motion of the chakras is signified in their description by clair clairvoyants as ‘wheels’ or ‘lotus flowers’.
The author’s depiction of the horizontal chakra wheels in three dimensions instead of the conventional two dimensional images.
Note the author identifies a lunar chakra balancing the solar chakra with the heart chakra as the fulcrum. This observation is thrown in for free! The justification is examined in the essay to which I have previously referred. The prescence of a Lunar Chakra in humans, substantiates the ancient knowledge described in this essay.
When the human body sits cross legged, it forms the shape of a triangle or pyramid – a shape repeated in built form across the world from Atlantean traditional knowledge. The fact that Cernunnon is seated is not insignificant. Few gods are shown seated as they do not exude power over the viewer as much as if they are standing. But Cernunnon was not a symbol of power of the gods or the priests or elders over the common people. He was showing how to balance the horizontal energy of the human body with the vertical energies. When this balance is achieved then a ‘fixed point’ is created as an infinitely small and infinitely large centre of the universe in the human heart.
The Christian symbol of the cross and other cruciform symbols such as the Ancient Egyptian ‘ankh’, symbolise this knowledge.
And as if Cernunnon had not made the point enough, he wears two antlers on which are hung ‘torcs’. The number two is important (as in the Long Man of Wilmington) as it symbolises the complimentary nature of the solar and lunar energies and their ideal harmonious relationship. The antlers are ‘aerials’ used by deer not only to fight but more importantly, as sensory organs containing blood and nerves.
Place two metal rings on these vertical forces is to introduce the feminine vulva with the masculine phallus, or the moon and sun energies. This is highly significant for the spiritual aspirant who communes, by the invitation of the magus or shaman, with the spirit of the local god, during initiation.
If you had not already linked the entomology of the word Cernunnon with the place name of the Cerne Abbas giant, then I shall do so now.
The Celtic polities linked their word CARNUTES with ‘The Horned Ones’.
But the Cerne Abbas giant of today has no horns, you may observe. He does have one obvious sexual feature that in modern English slang is referred to as a ‘horn’ – but perhaps that is too speculator to be meaningful, or perhaps not.
The figure we know today as the Cerne Abbas giant is not seated nor wearing antlers of horns. He has clearly been changed at a later time and I suggest that we have the Romans to thank for that.
The Romans also have a god of the Underworld, who is known as ‘Dis Pater‘. You might immediately note that ‘Abbas‘ and ‘Pater‘ share the meaning of ‘father’, odd if coincidental. Cicero, the Roman historian, suggested it meant ‘father of riches’.
‘Dis’ is reported in Wikipedia as being a contraction of the word DIVES meaning wealthy or rich. This is itself derived from the DIVUS or DIUS meaning god like or divine via the form DEIU.
This is highly significant as the whole spiritual process is one of making an ordinary person achieve divinity or divine qualities – treasure stored in Heaven as Jesus said. And Jesus we know, constantly referred to God as ‘Father’ curiously family orientated in common speech but significant in this ancient use of the word ‘Abbas’.
Julius Caesar claimed in his Commentaries of the Gallic Wars that the Gauls ‘claimed descent from Dis Pater’. This is therefore an important god to all Celts, whose memory was carried on by the Romans.
Venus by the Ancient Greeks achieved a level of art the Romans could not replicate.
In my view the Romans were lesser beings than the cultures who preceded them. The transition in sculptures from Greek to Roman shows how poorly skilled they were in this area of culture alone. The Romans were skilled engineers and soldiers who, in my view, lost their understanding of most ancient knowledge. Perhaps because of this, their empire was doomed to descend into decadence, and on that subject books have been written.
The figure at Cerne Abbas, has become a war-like giant, who stands erect in more than one sense. He wields a war club above his head instead of antlers, clearly a figure interested in overcoming others rather than himself.
The Roman Dis Pater; note his horns and the horned stag and bull at his feet. Balancing feminine and masculine figures stand either side of him in place of the staffs or columns.
The Cerne Abbas Giant, I therefore believe, is a lesser figure of the Celtic Cernunnon god who late morphed into the Roman Dis Pater.
The former gods balanced the masculine and feminine energies within themselves, whereas the Cerne Abbas Giant allowed himself to degenerate into a slave of the masculine energy only.
***
A Crop Circle that appeared near the Cerne Abbas Giant
The Vesica Pisces is formed by two overlapping cirles (sun and moon) in which a knife stands erect; an affirmation of the masculine and feminine balancing energies described in this essay.
***
Afterword;
And then I was looking at Google Earth a few weeks after writing this essay and found this same crop circle in a field about five hundred metres away from the giant, top middle. The giant is in the bottom right corner above the capital G. Thanks Google Earth!
Note the author identifies a lunar chakra balancing the solar chakra with the heart chakra as the fulcrum. This observation is thrown in for free! The justification is examined in the essay to which I have previously referred. The prescence of a Lunar Chakra in humans, substantiates the ancient knowledge described in this essay.
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