Libra – an explanation through teamwork

I had some years ago a good idea exchange on Johfra’s beautiful picture of Libra, and bring it here as it is illuminating.

Libra by
Franciscus Johannes Gijsbertus van den Berg – Johfra

More star-sign pictures here: 
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=39381&id=1839344728&l=af168900b8

From  October 2, 2010

Maya

This one is very interesting.

Kim

It is, see the colors, in the top it’s blue to the left and red to the right as in the Gemini picture, but the sphinxes below have the opposite colors. And Sun and Moon opposite also.

We have Seth to the left with two snakes wound around him as the Asclepius staff. He holds the “Crux Ansata” ☥ in his hand, connected to the intellectual soul, the Ego.
The Sun and Moon are placed in pathes formed like the eternity symbol.
To the right we have Isis with the cow horns.

http://Kimgraaemunch.wordpress.com/tag/sophia/

Maya

Aha, but these are the obvious things…my eyes go to the flowers and what is on the scale…i think that’s the story behind.

Kim, look at the godform closer…is that an ibis head maybe..cause sethian form has squared ears and a long, down-turned snout, a canine body with ans tail. its god of destruction, turmoil, illness…im not sure that would be allowed with that temper to do the weighing …tho he did like the company of fair Isis..but his main thing is to cause chaos (he has put him beneath you so that he can lift you up. He will groan beneath you as an earthquake… -Pyramid Texts, Spell 356)..
the flower is i think white lily, which has great alchemical significance..nymphea flower that Egyptians used in ceremony rites..

Kim

Of course, but my experience tells me that it’s better to start with the simple, partly because you get some success in the start, partly because the rest become smaller each time:)

It’s difficult to see whats in the scales, but a cobra in the left, an urn in the right? and why?

Maat was both the goddess and the personification of truth and justice. Her ostrich feather represents truth.

Maya

Yes looks to me like that, instead of a Maats feather a white cobra like figure..hard to see yes, on the other side,maybe a scarabeo in red representing the heart, cause it had that representation in the funerary ceremony rites, Isis and god-advocate..that speaks for the person. why?- ha, to tell you the truth i think i never answered any question that started with why

Kim

Maats feather sounds perfectly right to me, even managed the why. I didn’t know about Maat feathers! Wiki: the Ancient Egyptian concept of truth, balance, order, law, morality, and justice. And the heart sounds also perfectly right.
Justice without Compassion is unjust.
I think the whys are pretty interesting; why do people say and do what they do.

And you are right in Thoth too. Symbolizing mind. The heart of Ra.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoth

Maya

I see how it can be mistaken for Seth easily, cause has the same crux ansata as Seth in the hand, while Thoth is usually depicted with a scroll.

Kim

Has Thoth anything common with Scorpio?
Isis is familiar to Virgo, so on one side we have Virgo and on the other side we have Scorpio. Seth is more like Capricorn.

Maya

Im not sure with that actually, that’s your lore.

Kim

It states that he became associated with “the judgment of the dead” and that is a Scorpio thing: if the heart is sick, take it out.
Two star signs following each other are their direct opposites, Virgo is the opposite of Libra, and Libra is the opposite of Scorpio, but that don’t make Virgo and Scorpio the same, the sting are different.

Steiner mentions something about the sphinx’s stands for man’s four lowest sheath or bodies, what we have with us down to Earth.
The sphinx to the right is feminine I think, also in blue.

Maya

silver! )

Kim

I am gone a little dead now, but we still have a lot of details in the lower part we have to understand and integrate, but otherwise a nice job until now:)

The lily represents then Sophia, Mary or Isis, above we have the Rosicrucian Rose representing the Son, Horus and Jesus.
So the mother contains the lower part where the Son contains the upper part. The physical (sphinx=phys, ether, astral, soul) and the spiritual world.
Glass square = physical world.
Circle containing a Seven star containing the scales? Seven planets signifying the planetary powers within the Zodiac.

Maya

You made great analysis, glass square seems physical world yes, inside of which is a star with seven points (planets, metals-chakras) so reminds me of square-circle combination in Vitruvi’s microcosm macrocosm..so with that analogy glass square maybe representing a man, that has inside of him the little universe resembling the big.. And from which a rose springs and blooms.

Kim

Yes, beautiful, the circle are a micro-zodiac and the star, the seven planets or chakras, together the microcosm, in the cube which are the physical man.
And the rose springs and blooms in the spiritual world.
The two sphinx’ are the powers which manifest in the physical world who Steiner calls Lucifer and Ahriman.
What about the two hands?

Maya

I just been thinking most of the morning how the glass cube is very genius,and,has its own story with layers..and how very sentient,human..it is..and intimately how can this human side of the pic be even sad. I get the feeling that all the other parts of the pic, eccept lily, cube,and the rose are pure form satisfied..but not that part. It is because of the nature of the glass,and that is genius part. Glass when well polished regularly, gives a beautiful picture of the world,like a man who tends good for his soul,character,all…but when not,when it is unclean, you can’t see what is outside of the cube, and sort of becomes only thing we know-like man that leads very worldly life plagued with all negative sides of it..and it brings ignorance, and also,the sad part-cube becomes sort of prison,hopeless. So that is from perspective of a man inside the cube..but window is see through from both sides,and this view has to do how light comes in to the cube..so it can only if polished..and cube is sort of prism that breaks the light in many colours of the rainbow, seven mostly, so this forms a man,and gives light to the growing of the Rose. And that is the manifold creation. But this too has a sad side…and that is this, even with perfectly clean cube and light beautifully coming in, and things outside the cube visible, still the glass visible as it is, is the separator of Man and Cosmos,and its like attached,and influencing but not reachable from the state of being inside and polishing good, except but the rose, rose grows from it,and its only thing that connects humanity with the architecture of the universe. Thank you for clarifying this to me,and that you noticed the glass cube.
To just look at these picture is nice,and one can say they are beautiful then,but that’s just souls recognition automatic of whats beautiful,symmetry and colours..but i think they should be deciphered,observed well,really so many suggestions in them,underlying structure beyond mere looking.

Kim

Yes, they are fantastic, especially the rose symbolics as the only way out of the box, but it is as you say somewhat depressing, life is not simple. I hope we will see many roses flower in the coming years, though.
But there is something missing, the female mystery, as some calls it, what Douno hints at, another kind of joy and meaningfulness which is not signified in the picture.
I have also thought a little about the floor in the physical plane, the chess board they are standing on could signify the rigid rule of karma, and the glass box is a chess piece which is moved around by Lucifer and Ahriman.
What does the two hands with the fire refer to? The scale is also a cross and the top of the cross is a hand with a finger-pointing up, as we see John the Baptist in Raphael’s paintings.

Maya

I like the chess explanation of rule of karma! Very deep instead of the usual explanation of the masons,how it represents the architecture and geometry of the universe,and how world is lined with parallels and meridians,the order of GAOTU…but the chess game is more reasonable.. But whose hands?

Kim

Beautiful, I didn’t know, I haven’t used much time on the masons, but they are also right, Karma is the building block’s of the physical universe, that’s why it’s called maya, no pun intended:)

Maya

haha … You had to draw that from the pocket ha?

Kim

No, it was too difficult to resist:)
Above the yin/yang sign are what I think is two hands, looking a little like a flower, up from the hands stream a fire changing over into the cross.

Maya

I think it’s not the hands of the Prime Mover,but representing energy-thought-fire moving of individual as participant of divine fire,alchemist. I noticed that there aren’t depictions of God just architecture, and twofold energies in the set of the paintings. So i think it’s the Great Work symbol, on which depends the scale in the end, is it in equilibrium,and is the heart light as the feather.but thats just my impression

Kim

You just lost me a second:)
But, if it’s the great work symbol it’s logical to call the flame for the kundalini power. But where does the hands come from? Something with the Earth?

Maya

Hm…im not sure…but you are nudging me again..i got idea.. count the symbols from below to the sky ending with Sol+Luna, or chymical wedding..so its Fleur de Lys, cube with the star, rose, yin and yang as equilibrium (neutral), then the hands, then the cross of the scale with what seems to be rose in the cross, and ending with Sol and Luna betwixt.

Kim

Arh, couldn’t you have given the sum;) each time I count I find a new way and reaches a new number.
But it looks a little like the Tree of Life, but I only reaches nine.

Maya

Hahaha… The sum-never! I can count 7..so i thought could be connected with practical alchemy more…but yes you can count it like that too..

Kim

I reached 8 when I counted your list.
That I reached 9 was because I missed Kether, but it’s the lying 8 symbol, infinity, so it’s ten now.
The only problem is that we see the Kabbalah tree from the back:)

Maya

great..Ill get the mirror, you hold the picture… Remember how Temperance was alluding to the right pillar on gemini picture…i wouldn’t be surprised if things looked inverted either..

Eva and Adam

Kim

The gemini picture was ok in all aspects, it was also the reason I had the problems with Libra, why was the Father to the left and the Mother to the right?
If you look at old Adam and Eva figures and paintings, Adam were nearly always to the right, but more modern paintings have moved him to the left. Maja Hm, i think up to now we got fragments just with this one, ive been thinking about the story, the fire cleared it a bit. Ill try to write it in a bit.

Maya

Ok,a bit of stepping from Christian or egyptian or any other religious concept.back to alchemic basics. Alchemy is trait of fermenting the vital Spirit in and by its own Light – that’s universal and individual. We see on picture regions,celestial,terrestrial and sort of interior underground. Celestial is i think represented by plants-emotional,receptive-in a man a heart region (ok again, rose flower,Christ and all that), terrestrial-sensual represented by animal forms sphinx (half animal half human) – domination in mans body is the head, and thus why maybe the sphinx-symbol of intellectualism, correct answers (the tale of Oedipus and the question ) . Last sphere,underground i think its the glass cube, i thought of prisms – but glass isn’t only prism, its diamond too-thus mineral,in human body its lumbal region. The aim of Alchemy is to reverse the action in their order.. Aha yes,its the same thing i thought but forgot to tell you about Gichtels picture, it’s not to follow the orbiting its to reverse it. So the fire of natural life entering into fermenting opens, developed and sets free celestial Light..about the hands and light hermeticism or better say alchemy, is the magnetism of Light-thought to be the emanating spirit of Wisdom , Soph. So to understand the nature respecting that first cause man asks questions, as an extortion of Sphinx like forms of the true answer. About the white proliferation in the below of the picture i think it depicts the vegetable spirit – which is growth-causing. So we have pic of human vital spirit that has to be purified,weighed in order to be regenerated white flower(regeneration,in Egypt, while the blue is enlightenment. But we got it well all and cube too, a cage, prison,entrapped in the mineral-which also means the divine light is somewhat penetrating but hidden from it. Bah i need a thought to finish it.

Kim

Maya, it was too many ball’s in one, I didn’t catch a single one, constipation I think:)

By the way, which of the alchemy book’s do you recommend, when it should be clear and concise and all in all readable.

No, I caught one, the rose in the middle of the Cross, I hadn’t seen it.

Maya

me too…sort of picture had fallen behind, became blurred…and ive seen a beautiful one im thinking of and enjoying for 2 days now…this Libra picture is left in some corner of my head just..if you get new ideas about it please enlighten me..

Kim

I think we to a great extend have solved it.

Sun is Lucifer or Yang and the Moon is Ahriman or Yin, and they are in equilibrium.
Everything is build around the trinity, even the weight have a cross in the middle.

The key to Alchemy – The Trinities

When I were younger I started on Alchemy a few times, but always stopped again by reason of their weird vocabulary, but It’s a question about finding the key.

When studying a new religion, philosophy, or esoteric tradition, always look for the trinities, the three Logoi or their principles, and when you have found them, the rest opens up.

This trinity represents the earthly powers Lucifer, Ahriman, and Christ, but also as the Father, the Mother, and the Son;  masculine, feminine, and love;  Yang, Yin, and Tao;  Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu;  Rajas, Tamas, and Sattva;  Pingala, Ida, and Sushumna;  Sun, Moon, and Earth;  Chaos, Order, and Life;  Energy, Substance, and Consciousness;  right, left, and center cross at Golgotha;  right, left, and center pillar of Kabbalah; and  the three soul elements: sentient soul (Orektikon, nephesch), mind and heart soul (Kinetikon, ruach), and consciousness or spirit soul (Dianoetikon, n’schamah).

See, among other, Serpents of the Kundalini Fire

Paracelsus in “The life of Philippus Theophrastus Bombast of Hohenheim…” by Franz Hartmann

The Bible tells us that Man is made out of nothing; that is to say, his spirit, the real man, is from God, who is not a thing, but the eternal reality; but he is made into three somethings or substances, and these three constitute the whole of Man: they are himself, and he is they, and from them he receives all that is good or evil for him. Every state in which man can possibly enter is determined by number, measure, and weight. The “Three Substances” are the three forms or modes of action in which the universal primordial Will is manifesting itself throughout Nature, for all things are a Trinity in a Unity. The “Salt” represents the principle of corporification, the astringent or contractive and solidifying quality, or, in other words, the body; the “Sulphur” represents the expansive power — the centrifugal force, in contradistinction to the centripetal motion of the first quality — it is that which “burns,” i.e., the soul or light in all things; and the “Mercury” is the Life, i.e. that principle or form of will which manifests itself as life, or consciousness and sensation. Each of these forms of will is an individual power; nevertheless they are substantial, for “matter” and “force” are one, and originate from the same cause. The three substances, held together in harmonious proportions, constitute health; their disharmony constitutes disease, and their disruption death.

Salt is of course Yin, the solidifying, the calcifying, Gravity, and Sulphur is Yang, light or warms, negative Gravity, and Mercury is the equilibrium between these two, a liquid metal.

The trinity in Alchemy, based on Jacop Boehme and Paracelsus, are Sulphur, Salt, and Mercury, but in Anthroposophic medicine both Sulphur and Phosphorus are used interchangeable together with Salt and Mercury, with the same general description, except that Phosphorus connects to the Ego and Sulphur connects to the Astral body.

In Spiritual Science and Medicine (VI) by Rudolf Steiner (GA 112)

We should recognise that all that we divide and separate on earth, both in our thoughts and in our actions, in nature is actually united in some way or another. In our thoughts we separate what is subject to gravity, and therefore tends to salt formation, from that which bears the light and is therefore akin to the workings of light; and we separate both these categories from what is contained in the state of equilibrium between the two.But in nature there are no such absolute divisions. All these ways of working are connected one with another, adjusted to one another, so that they form highly intricate constructions, and one of these intricate structural systems is shown in the lustre of the metal gold; for it is through gold that the spiritual realm looks, as it were, right into the external world….

Thus it is most important to notice how in old writings all these primary principles, salt, mercury and phosphorus, were seen to be in every substance in different combinations, and to note the diligence with which it was sought to liberate and extract these three principles from a given substance.

In Spiritual Science and Medicine (V)

Ancient atavistic knowledge was indeed not without justification in calling phosphorus the Light-bearer. Men saw that phosphorus does carry and contain that imponderable light. What salt repels and holds at bay, phosphorus carries within it. Thus the substances at the opposite pole from salt, are those that appropriate, so to speak, the imponderable entities — principally light, but also others, for instance, warmth —and interiorise them, making them their inner properties….

Here then you have, in external nature, two states which are polar to one another; that which acts in a saline manner and that which acts in a phosphoric manner. And between them, there is a third group: that which acts Mercurially. Just as man is a threefold being, a creature with nerves and senses, with a circulatory system, and with metabolism; and as circulation is the bridge linking nerves and senses to the metabolic functions: so also there is a mediatory function in external nature. It comprises everything that possesses, to a great degree, neither the saline character nor the character of interiorising the imponderables, but — so to speak — holds the equipoise between these two, by manifesting in the form of drops. …. You will find accordingly, that these mercurial substances are mainly linked up with all that is calculated to bring about a  the activities for which phosphorous and saline substances are best qualified.

In Spiritual Science and Medicine (IV)

This should be an elementary piece of knowledge familiar to all; everything on our earth that is globular in form, whether within or external to the human frame, is the result of the interplay of two forces, one urging towards life, the other drawing life away….

…But the salt-process belongs to the region that I am now outlining, just as the sulphur process belongs to the region previously described.

Man has an inherent tendency to mineralisation [Salt]; just as the forces fundamental to the development of our internal flora and fauna can get “out of hand [Sulphur],” so also can the mineralising tendency.

In Anthroposophical Spiritual Science and Medical Therapy (II) by Rudolf Steiner (GA 313)

Small doses of phosphorus and sulfur have the effect of throwing out the astral body, which has stablished itself too strongly in the physical and etheric bodies. Sulfur works more on the astral body, phosphorus more on the ego. The ego, however, because it organizes the astral body throughout, actually acts in concert with it.

In Salt, Mercury, Sulphur by Rudolf Steiner (GA 220)

In olden times men did not use the abstract word think to express something that arose in the mind as a picture. When a real knower spoke about ‘thinking’ he spoke of the salt-process just described. Nor did he speak in an abstract way of the ‘will’ but of the astral forces laying hold of the airy element in man, of the sulphur-process from which the will is born. Willing was a process of concrete reality and it was said that the adjustment between the two — for they are opposite processes — was brought about by the mercury-process, by that which is fluid and yet has form, which swings to and fro from the etheric nature to the astral nature, from the fluidic to the aeriform.

Kamalas Garden

Litterature

Alchemy: The Evolution of the Mysteries by Rudolf Steiner.

More on alchemy
My album on Alchemy

Astrology, Karma & Nidanas

Nidanas and the Zodiac

The twelve Nidanas are the karmic powers keeping man reincarnating on the Earth. This is an experiment where I test the thesis: “They are the powers of the Zodiac, but they are not following the same sequence around the Zodiac as the star signs.”

The twelve Nidanas consists of three groups, the first group of four is the Cardinal signs, the next group are the Mutable and the last group are the Fixed star signs. In the following tables and zodiac I have placed the Nidanas on the zodiac following these principles. The following paragraph is by Rudolf Steiner, the tables are extended by me and the figure is my design, and I had reformatted and added star signs.

Nidanas and the Signs

When man returns from Devachan, the astral, etheric and physical forces arrange themselves around him according to twelve forces of karma which in Indian esotericism are called Nidanas:

Nidanas	Sign	Keywords	Comments from Wikipedia
Avidya	♈ Aries	Non-knowledge, ignorance	Not knowing suffering, not knowing the origination of suffering, not knowing the cessation of suffering, not knowing the way of practice leading to the cessation of suffering: This is called ignorance.
Sanskara	♋ Cancer	Organizing tendencies, desire	These three are fabrications: bodily fabrications, verbal fabrications, mental fabrications. These are called fabrications.
Vijnana	♎ Libra	Consciousness, understanding, intellectual knowledge	These six are classes of consciousness: eye-consciousness, ear-consciousness, nose-consciousness, tongue-consciousness, body-consciousness, intellect-consciousness.
Namarupa	♑ Capricorn	Names and form, distinction between name and form (subject and object)	Feeling, perception, intention, contact, and attention: This is called name. The four great elements, and the body dependent on the four great elements: This is called form.
Shadayadana	♊ Gemini	What the intellect makes of things	The eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body and mind are the six sense media.
Sparsha	♍ Virgo	Contact with existence	The coming together of the object, the sense medium and the consciousness of that sense medium is called contact.
Vedana	♐ Sagittarius	Feeling, karmic results of feelings and sensations	Feeling or sensations are of six forms: vision, hearing, olfactory sensation, gustatory sensation, tactile sensation, and intellectual sensation (thought).
Trishna	♓ Pisces	Thirst for existense	There are these six forms of cravings: cravings with respect to forms, sounds, smells, tastes, touch (massage, sex, pain), and ideas.
Upadana	♉ Taurus	A sense of comfort in existence	These four are clingings: sensual clinging, view clinging, practice clinging, and self clinging
Bhava	♌ Leo	Birth, individual existense	These three are becoming: sensual becoming, form becoming, formless becoming
Jati	♏ Scorpio	The urge towards birth	Birth is any coming-to-be or coming-forth. It refers not just to birth at the beginning of a lifetime, but to birth as new person, acquisition of a new status or position etc.
Jaramarana	♒ Aquarius	What frees from earthly existence

In Indian esotericism twelve forces are differentiated which draw man down again into physical existence.

1. Aries – The first of these forces is Avidja: ignorance.  Avidja is what draws us down again into physical existence for the simple reason that we shall only have fulfilled our mission on the Earth when we have extracted from it all possible knowledge.  On the other hand we have not fulfilled our mission as long as everything that we should learn from physical existence has not yet been extracted.
2. Cancer – After Avidja what next draws us back is what the earth contains because we ourselves have made it, which therefore belongs to our Organisation.  When a mason, for instance, has worked on the building of a cathedral, this has become a part of himself.  There is a reciprocal attraction between them.  What has an organ-creating tendency for the original instigator, whether it be the work of Leonardo da Vinci or the smallest piece of work, forms an organ in the human being and this is the cause of his return.  All that the man has done, taken together, is called Sanskara or the organising tendency which builds up the human being.  This is the second thing which draws him back.
3. Libra – Now comes the third.  Before the human being entered into any incarnation he knew nothing of an outer-world.  Self-awareness first began with the first incarnation; previously man had no consciousness of self.  He had first to perceive the outer objects on the physical plane before he could develop consciousness of self.  True as it is that what a man has done draws him back to the physical plane, so is it true that knowledge of things draws him back.  Consciousness is a new force which binds him to what is here.  This is the third element that draws him into a new earth-life.  This third force is called Vijnana = consciousness.
4. Capricorn – Up to this point we have remained very intimately within the human soul.  As the fourth stage appears what comes towards the consciousness from outside, what was indeed already there without man, but what he had first to learn to know with his consciousness-this was present outside in his previous existence, but only disclosed itself after his consciousness opened to it. It is the separation between subject and object, or, as the Sanscrit writer says, the separation between name and form (Namarupa).  Through this man reached the outer object.  This is the fourth force that draws him back, for instance the memory of a being to which he has attached himself.
5. Gemini – Next comes what we form as mental image in connection with an external object: for example, picturing a dog is merely making a mental image, which is however the essential thing for the painter.  It is what the intellect makes of a thing: Shadayadana.
6. Virgo – Now there is a further descent into the earthly.  The mental picture leads us to what we call contact with existence: Sparsha.  Whoever depends on the object stands at the stage of Namarupa; whoever forms pictures stands at the stage of Shadayadana.  The one however who differentiates between the pleasing and the unpleasing will reach the point where he prefers the beautiful to the unbeautiful.  This is called contact with existence: Sparsha.
7. Sagittarius – Somewhat different however from this contact with the outer-world is what at the same time stirs inwardly as feeling.  Now I myself come into action: I connect my feeling with one thing or another.  That is a new element.  Man becomes more involved.  It is called Vedana: Feeling.
8. Pisces – Through Vedana something quite new again arises, that is, longing for existence.  The forces which draw man back into existence awaken more and more strongly within himself.  The higher forces compel all human beings to a greater or lesser degree; they are not individual.  Eventually however, quite personal forces appear which draw him back again into the earthly world.  That is the eighth force. Trishna = Thirst for existence.
9. Taurus - Still more subjective than the thirst for existence is what is named Upadana: Comfort in existence.  With Upadana man has something in common with the animal, but he experiences it more spiritually and it is the task of man to spiritualise what is gross in this soul element.
10. Leo – Then comes individual existence itself, the sum of all the earlier incarnations when he was already on the earth: Bhava = individual existence, the force of the totality of earlier incarnations.  Previous incarnations draw him down into existence.
11. Scorpio – With this we have retraced the stages of the Nidanas up to individual birth.  The esotericist differentiates two further stages which go beyond the period of individual existence.  Here he differentiates a previous condition that gave the impetus towards birth, before man had ever been incarnated.  This is called Jata: what before birth gave the impetus to birth.
12. Aquarius – The impetus towards birth is interconnected with a different impulse. It brings with it the germ of dissolution, the urge to extricate oneself from individual birth.  What interests us is that this earthly existence of ours falls again into decay and we are freed, able to become old and die (jaramarana).

These are the twelve Nidanas which work like strings, drawing us ever and again down into existence. (The meaning of Nidana is string, loop.)

There are three groups which belong together:

Consciousness Soul Cardinal	Intellectual soul Mutable	Sentient Soul Fixed
Avidya	Shadayadana	Upadana
Sanskara	Sparsha	Bhava
Vijnana	Vedana	jati
Namarupa	Trishna	jaramarana

The soul has three members: the consciousness soul as the highest member, then the intellectual or mind soul and the sentient soul.  The first group of the Nidanas from Avidya to Namarupa is connected with the consciousness soul: the second group with the intellectual soul and the third, from Upadana to Jaramarana, with the sentient soul.
Vijnana is characteristic of the consciousness soul; Shadayadana of the intellectual soul and the last four are bound with the sentient soul.  These last four are present in both animal and man.
…

Skandhas

A person can affect his Karma to the degree in which he himself possesses Intuition; or he must receive it from the high initiates in the form of great moral laws.  Vijnana is the name used for the consciousness necessary for the overcoming of Karma.  And now let us think of a man living in the world, carrying out his actions and dying.  After his death something of him nevertheless remains here in this world which he has woven into it: Rupa, Vedana, Sanjna, Sanskara and Vijnana.  These five are the balance of his account: his personal destiny as Rupa; the destiny of the nation into which he is born, as Vedana; the actual fact of his birth on this earth as Sanjna. In addition, working with Sanskara, the desire nature, and Vijnana, the consciousness. These are the five Skandhas.
What a man gives out into the world remains as the five Skandhas in the world.  These are the foundation of his new existence.  They have progressively less effect when he has consciously developed something of the last two.  The more he has gained conscious power over Vijnana, the more does he gain the power of consciously incarnating in the physical body.  In their essential nature the Skandhas are identical with Karma.

1. Rupa: Corporality, Actions. ♑
2. Vedana: Feeling. ♐
3. Sanjna: Perception. ♊
4. Sanskara: Desire. ♋
5. Vijnana: Consciousness necessary to the overcoming of Karma. ♎

The above was from Steiner: Foundation of Esoreticism Lecture XIV and following lectures. e-book.

Elements of the Wheel

The wheel is is driven by its hub of Three Poisons: craving or attachment, aversion or hatred, and delusion or ignorance, and by the byproduct of our actions that are motivated by these three, karma.

The segments between spokes are the different realms into which sentient beings take rebirth.

The realms relate to six distinct conditions.
In the two higher realms, they are Pride and Jealousy:

0. Devas or gods – Pride.
Long enjoyable lives full of pleasure and abundance, full of meaningless distractions.

1. Ahuras or titans – Jealousy.
Pleasure and abundance like the gods, but fighting among themselves and with the gods, caused by jealousy.

In the Realm, where it is easiest to attain Enlightenment, humans are afflicted with five disturbing emotions:

6. Manushyas or humans – Desire.
Humans suffer from hunger, thirst, heat, cold, separation from friends, being attacked by enemies, not getting what they want, and getting what they don’t want. Suffer also from general sufferings of birth, old age, sickness and death.

The lower realms are associated with Ignorance, Desire and Anger:

3. Tiryakas or animals – Ignorance.
This is the animal realm where sentient beings from whales to insects are confined in fear and ignorance. Animals suffers by being attacked and eaten by other animals, and domesticated by being slaughtered.

5. Pretas or hungry ghosts – Greed.
Lives with constant hunger and thirst. When they reach the goal it either disappears or not what they expected. It’s the realm for those who, after death, are still so attached by desire to this world that they stay as ghosts.

4. Narakas or demons – Anger.
At the bottom is the hell realm showing both hot and cold forms of torment. The Sutra of Remembrance of the True Law describes 8 different hells but they are the product of our own mind.

In-between states are called bardo in Tibetan. This is also the locale of consciousness while it is not embodied, as in some dreaming.

In the following drawing animals and hungry ghosts have changed position.

There are different variations on the Wheel of Rebirth. In some there is a buddha figure in each segment; in others symbols are used to represent the dharma.

The 12 Links of Causality

On the outer edge or rim of the wheel are twelve images. They symbolically refer to the factors that interact to determine the consequences of activity or karma.

1. ♈ – At top is a blind man with his stick representing spiritual blindness; this is the state of ignorance in which we can easily lose our way. Sometimes we do not even know there is a way.
   
2. ♋ – Next is a potter at work on his own products. These are the deeds and actions we perform ~ the formations, preparations or samskaras. We are responsible for our own pots, not fate.
   
3. ♎ – A monkey playing in a tree. It depicts ordinary attention or consciousness which shifts continuously in the undisciplined mind. Meditation seeks to calm the monkey in order to gain access to the nature of consciousness.
   
4. ♑ – A boat with two people in it, Name and Form. These act together as the conditioned way in which we experience the world. The boat is the mind moving about on ‘reality’.
   
5. ♊ – Next is a house with six openings: five shuttered windows and a closed door. These are the five senses plus a sixth which is the faculty of apperception by which we interpret the input of the senses. That is, the sixth sense is apperception, recognition at the sub-conscious level.
   
6. ♍ – A man and a woman embracing demonstrates contact, the consequence of sensual perceptions.
   
7. ♐ – A person who has been struck in the eye by an arrow. He is wounded by emotion, the subsequent feelings that can have a “fatal” effect. They create suffering.
   
8. ♓ – A woman offering a drink to a man. It illustrates desire that has been stimulated by perceptions and emotions which leads us to drink more from the world of appearances.
   
9. ♉ – A person picking the fruit of his tree. He receives the consequence he expects will be sweet.
   
10. ♌ – A maiden about to cross the stream. In one version of the Wheel, there is one person beckoning another to go or to come back or a couple engaged in intercourse, a standing, leaping or reflective person..
    
11. ♏- A woman giving birth. The new life is determined by the fruits of the old and is attracted to the parents accordingly, in order to be born.
    
12. ♒ – One or two people carrying a burden burden. This is the body, a corpse wrapped up on its way to be disposed of. Other people suffer as they bear the burden of another’s death. Ending and starting a new round.
    

Through our own minds, we create the six realms of existence and move through them. We create the realms and moves through the endless cycle known as samsara.

IF

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

 

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

 

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;

If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;

 

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,

And stoop and build ‘em up with wornout tools:

 

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

 

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

 

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with kings – nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much;

 

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run -

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

And – which is more – you’ll be a Man my son!

 

Rudyard Kipling

According to the English magazine Masonic Illustrated, Kipling became a Freemason in about 1885, some six months prior to the usual minimum age of 21.[43] He was initiated into Hope and Perseverance Lodge No. 782 in Lahore. He later wrote to The Times of London, “I was Secretary for some years of the Lodge . . . , which included Brethren of at least four creeds. I was entered [as an Apprentice] by a member from Brahmo Somaj, a Hindu, passed [to the degree of Fellow Craft] by a Mohammedan, and raised [to the degree of Master Mason] by an Englishman. Our Tyler was an Indian Jew.” Kipling so loved his masonic experience that he memorialised its ideals in his famous poem, “The Mother Lodge”. Wikipedia

Creation of the Sun System and the Zodiac

The World Egg is the most universal symbol we have, and the Zodiac is the most developed form of it, but we find it  everywhere in all cultures, we just don’t recognize it as representing the world egg.

The Orphic Egg

See also this album: The World Egg and the Zodiac

We can find the history of the zodiac in the four heavenly beasts, Eagle, Lion, Ox and Man; they were the first members of the Zodiac, first later came the Cardinal signs, and later again the mutable, they came when man began developing these qualities, just as the outher planets first became visible when they became influential.

Amma created the egg, what became our sun system, not the whole universe. Within his egg, Amma began spinning around, forming the po seed. The po is the smallest invisible seed at the center.

Amma then placed seven ‘words’ [Planets] in the po, which began to vibrate strongly within the seed. The spiraling vibrations caused four clavicles to grow forth from the po.

These were the four heavenly beasts, the fixed star signs. These four powers were the main factors in developing the sentient soul, Eros of Plato, or Tamas of Hinduism.

These four Androgyne beings split into four male and four female, so we now had the cardinal and fixed star signs. The cardinal powers were necessary for developing the intellectual soul, or Logos of Plato, or Rajas of Hinduism.

The Dogon call these beings the Nommo Anagonno, ‘The Word (Nommo) that Became Fish-Man’ (Anagonno). The male and females got a son, and the mutable star signs was created. The mutable signs were necessary for developing the conscious soul, Thumos of Plato, or Sattva of Hinduism.

This Zodiac are fields going from the circumference around the sun system into the system, not just radiation, and not from the large universe, this is called the Tropical Zodiac.

Tropical Zodiac

The Egg, the Zodiac are spiraling through the universe so it’s changing position in relation to the stars, but the fields are constant in relation to the Sun system, to the vernal equinox:

Sun-system passing through the universe

It can also be seen in this fashion:

Sun system through the universe

Man is created in the likeness of God, here in embryonic form, folding itself out from the circular form:

Man Embryonic form

We are not a copy of the whole universe, we are a copy of our own sun system, not including far sun systems.

Auric form of man:

The Auric Egg

Lucifer gives visions. One has to break through them, otherwise one doesn’t break through the shell that’s around every man and covers the real spiritual world. Visions and voices are around us like the shell around a chick. One might see an angel in a vision and when one presses through the vision the angel will change into a snake, Lucifer’s symbol, for at the Temptation he appeared as a snake. Or one might see the colour blue in one’s meditation — if one breaks through it the blue can become red, and then it turns out that we saw our own passions. As a result of his temptation by Lucifer man doesn’t have everything that the Gods have; he received knowledge, but not life. Thereby everything that we know and perceive is permeated by Lucifer and Ahriman. … An ordinary man is like the chick that would consider its shell to be the real world. If the chick could see, it would see the egg’s contents as if it were the whole world. Likewise we see our eggshell or aura spread out around us as the blue dome of the heavens. If we break through our shell the sun and moon become darkened, the stars fall down onto the earth and the spiritual world spreads out in its place.

A man lives in his eggshell — his aura. The Elohim gave us our aura, and through the fall into sin it has become like a shell around us, and we’re in it like a chick in an egg. The stars in the heavens are our boundary and we must break through it with our soul force, just as a chick must break out of its shell through its own power. Then we get into a new world, just as a chick has a new world before it when it has crept out of the egg. And since men all have the same eggshell around them an astronomy could arise that lets the heavenly bodies move along the celestial dome. The egg shell is the Ex Deo nascimur. To break through it and to bring something with us into the spiritual world we must bring what penetrates the shell from the outer spiritual world and that’s common to all; and that’s the Christ. That’s why we say: In Christo morimur and hope that when we’ve broken through the shell we will be awakened again: Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus. Esoteric Lessons Part III

Formed as the world egg:

Mithras

Wael Al-Mahdi have made an analysis of the fight between Mittras and the bull, which have it’s like in the Gilgamesh epic. Today we have our mental focus in the Ego, the Intellectual soul or left brain hemisphere, but then our mental focus was in what we today call our subconsciousness, the Sentient soul or Limbic brain. This fight describes the change of focus from the sentient soul to our current ego, but it’s an ongoing fight between our ego and the subconsciousness, or rather it’s a fight between our superconsciousness and subconscioussness and the battleground is the ego. Wael Al-Mahdi writes that Mithras is the devine ego, but I see him as the ego, the lower I, where I see his father, the mighty Sol Invictus, as the higher I.

Let us now take a look at the symbolism of the Mithraic mysteries and try to make some sense of them. Mithras himself, in the manner of all epoch-making developments of the unconscious, appears suddenly and unexpectedly, from a rock. Here Mithras takes on the role of the divine ego – the ego of the average man transfigured and lifted up by energy from the unconscious harnessed through myth and ritual. In this Mithras is strong, solid, rocklike. The divine ego and the everyday ego (the one that worries about food, shelter, money etc) are not identical; the divine ego, despite its disctinctness but in keeping with unconscious manifestations, is foreign, in this instance, of exotic Persian origin. To symbolize freedom from the unconscious as enemy, and also the actual emancipation of freedman Mithraists, Mithras dons a Phrygian cap, the so-called liberty cap. With the rise of Mithras, miracles are performed, as he strikes a solid rock with the thunder of consciousness and live-giving water spouts from the rock. Here the dead and inanimate can produce life, just as a psychological impasse can give rise to a new lease on life; the Qur’an states of God, “He brings the living out of the dead, and the dead of the living.”

The central and most striking image of Mithraism is the tauroctony – the slaying of the bull. This supreme act of defiance, even hybris, is depicted on subterranean murals in Mithraea from Britain to Rome to Syria. The bull in his power and animal intransigence is the unconscious as enemy. He is the personification, or rather theriomorphization, of all the alien powers that ailed the forward looking man of action. He is the heaviness of the heart at dawn, he is the tightness of the chest before a dangerous act. He gives rise to the autonomous moods of self-doubt and self-loathing. He is boredom, lack of meaning, existential ennui. He represents every social disappointment, lack of control, failure to follow custom, and most dangerously, lack of adaptation. The evil father, father as a depressant, is in the bull – as is the evil friend, the devil, who both attacks the ego and forces to do evil. Every worthless feeling of the ego is projected onto him – and he is indeed a fitting target of projection. In short, he is the great No to life. He is the enemy within that must be vanquished if the conscious ego is to grow.

In contrast to conciliation myths, in which the ego tries to make peace with the unconscious, here the ego strikes with its readiest weapon – its will. After a long chase and a difficult haul to the womb-cave where a transformation can occur, Mithras’ right hand performs the unspeakable act of stabbing the bull’s neck. The cave serves a dual purpose are both regenerative womb and the unconscious cosmos which parallels the real cosmos. But there is respect in Mithras – out of respect, he pulls the animal back by the nostrils, never by the horn. Mithras’ face is serene, almost sublime – divinely devoid of emotion, Zen in his imperturbability – looking up towards his father, the mighty Sol Invictus, the Invincible Sun, as if saying, “Behold my most brazen act, father. Soon we are to become equals” Mithras is steadfast, unflinching – he takes full responsibility for his act, he never hesitates or backs down. As a result of Mithras’ challenging of the evil-animal father archetype, Father Sun emerges in a more human guise but with his divinity still intact.

In some reliefs the sacred bull bleeds wheat or grapes, symbolizing the paradox of the ability of the unconscious, even at is most evil, to heal after it harms. The killing of the bull is not a real-world death but an unconscious event that breathes life into a new psychological energy and outlook. But Mithras, this self-overcoming hero, is not alone in his daring act. Like all good heroes he has his sidekicks, the torchbearers, Cautes with his torch pointing up and Cautopates with his torch pointing down. They are his awareness of opposites, his ability to make distinctions, to discern opposites, and in their astral aspect symbolize his heavenly outlook. There is his dog too, lapping up the bull’s blood – his discipline, self-control, honed intellect, and the vital ability of self-obedience. On the scene is a serpent of wisdom and shrewdness, also drinking the life giving blood, for no quantum is wasted here. A sneaky scorpion sucks the ‘vim’ out of the bull’s genitals, literally ‘breaking his balls’ – energy that can be better utilized by the conscious hero Mithras. Mithraism and the Unconscious as Enemy

More on the Tropical vs. Sidereal Zodiac(Bruce Scofield):

We all know that this astrological system (Vedic) uses one or another version of the sidereal zodiac, the slight differences between them being measured by what is called the ayanamsha, the gap between the tropical and sidereal zodiac. The twelve sidereal-based zodiacal signs (rasis) used in this system are not particularly important overall, and they serve more as a background reference plane for planets than as a matrix for personality distinctions. The houses are important, however, but house boundaries between planets will remain roughly constant in a timed birth chart no matter which zodiac is employed. After reading a number of texts on the subject it became apparent to me that Hindu astrology was a tradition that was not concerned with extracting psychological insights from birth charts, it was more event-oriented.

and

In my opinion, Rudhyar remains the most important astrologer of the 20th century. He had something intelligent to say on just about every issue in astrology, including the sidereal-tropical problem. Rudhyar wrote that the sidereal zodiac, the zodiac of constellations, was a product of the myth-making faculty of the human psyche. These constellations, groupings of stars, are a remnant of an earlier age that saw the rise of agriculture, but they are not relevant to modern life. He felt it was unfortunate that both zodiacs use the same names for their 12-fold division of the yearly circle, and he regarded the tropical zodiac as being the proper framework on which to assess the evolution of mankind.

Tropical Zodiac

Or

The Sun orbiting the Earth equator defining signs of the Zodiac. 

 History of Tropical Zodiac

The classical zodiac was introduced in the neo-Babylonian period (ca. 7th to 6th century BC). At the time, the precession of the equinoxes had not been discovered. Classical Hellenistic astrology consequently developed without consideration of the effects of precession.

The discovery of the precession of the equinoxes is attributed to Hipparchus, a Greek astronomer active in the later Hellenistic period (ca. 130 BCE).

Ptolemy, writing some 250 years after Hipparchus, was thus aware of the effects of precession. He opted for a definition of the zodiac based on the point of vernal equinox, i.e. the tropical system.

While Ptolemy noted that Ophiuchus is in contact with the ecliptic, he was aware that the twelve signs were just conventional names for 30 degrees segments (especially since the Aries sign had ceased to be in contact with the Aries constellation already in his time). Wikipedia

He connected the thirty degree segments to the time of year, with the traditional names given.

Ophiuchus or Scorpio by Christian Borup

The Zodiac with the old rulers:

It is as a table with twelve seats, with the king and queen sitting together as Leo and Cancer for Sun and Moon,
with the ten other seats taken by the knights. From The Sons of Jacob and the Zodiac.

References

Reconciliation of the Tropical and Sidereal Zodiacs. Part III.

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it – on Thinking

Nothing is such a joy as to learn something new, so enjoy each time you are wrong, you get wiser. Only political thinkers are afraid loosing face.

Gautama Buddha

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. Do not believe in anything because it is spoken and rumoured by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything on the authority of your teachers and elders. But after observations and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason; conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it. (Chop Wood, Carry Water p. 281)

Buddha was once asked, “What is truth?” He replied, “Truth is that which can be used.”

Arthur Conan Doyle

Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.

Coleridge

He who begins by loving Christianity better than Truth will proceed by loving his own sect of church better than Christianity, and end by loving himself better than all.

Leo Tolstoy

The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him. 1897

Mohandas Gandhi 

Constant development is the law of life, and a man who always tries to maintain his dogmas in order to appear consistent drives himself into a false position.

Every formula of every religion has in this age of reason, to submit to the acid test of reason and universal assent.

Faith… must be enforced by reason… when faith becomes blind it dies.

Those who know how to think need no teachers.

And, not least

Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.

Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self-sustained.

Unknown author

Lie, n. :

A very poor substitute for the truth, but the only one discovered to date.

Sometimes we have to spend more time trying to understand, instead of pretending that we already do. kgm

Aristotle

Anybody can become angry, that is easy; but to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time, and for the right purpose, and in the right way, that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth.

Thomas Aquinas

Beware the man of one book. 

Soren Kierkegaard 

Personality is only ripe when a man has made the truth his own.

Eli Wamberg

Knowledge resides in brains that are filled with the thoughts of others, but wisdom resides in the souls of those who attentively listens to their own thoughts.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 

First and last, what is demanded of genius is love of truth.

Common sense is the genius of humanity.

Few people have the imagination for reality.

We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.

Nothing is more terrible than to see ignorance in action.

Plato

Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.

Socrates

Sokrates could save his life if he renounced his teachings, but he said: “I think it’s better to have my lyre or a chorus that I might lead out of tune and dissonant, and have the vast majority of men disagree with me and contradict me, than to be out of harmony with myself, to contradict myself, though I’m only one person.” 

True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.

C.G.Jung

Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol, morphine or idealism.

Follow that will and that way which experience confirms to be your own.

In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.

The word “belief” is a difficult thing for me. I don’t believe. I must have a reason for a certain hypothesis. Either I know a thing, and then I know it – I don’t need to believe it.

Albert Einstein 

Anyone who doesn’t take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.

Everyone should be respected as an individual, but no one idolized.

If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex… It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.

Everything should be as simple as it is, but not simpler.

No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.

Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.

He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice.

Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.

I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.

It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.

Hypatia

Reserve your right to think.

For even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.

Maimonides

Consequently he who wishes to attain to human perfection, must therefore first study Logic, next the various branches of Mathematics in their proper order, then Physics, and lastly Metaphysics. He, however, who begins with Metaphysics, will not only become confused in matters of religion, but will fall into complete infidelity.

Adyashanti

Enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth. It’s seeing through the facade of pretense. It’s the complete eradication of everything we imagined to be true.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Being wrong is erroneously associated with failure, when, in fact, to be proven wrong should be celebrated, for it elevates someone to a new level of understanding.

What we are trying in all these discussions and talks here, is to see if we cannot radically bring about a transformation of the mind. *Not accept things as they are* – but to understand it, to go into it, examine it, give your heart and your mind with every thing that you have to find out. A way of living differently. But that depends on you and not somebody else. Because in this there is no teacher, no pupil. There’s no leader, there is no guru, there’s no master, no savior. You yourself are the teacher, and the pupil, you’re the master, you’re the guru, you are the leader, you are everything! And, to understand is to transform what is“.

You must understand the Whole of life, not just one little part of it.
That is why you must read,
that is why you must look at the skies,
that is why you must sing and dance,
and write poems,
and suffer,
and understand,
for all that is life.

Elbert Hubbard

The more one knows, the more one simplifies.

One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.

The recipe for perpetual ignorance is: be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge.

If you can’t answer a man’s argument, all is not lost; you can still call him vile names.

Jesus Christ

If you live by what I say, you are truly my disciples. You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.

Saint Paul

For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. And do not marvel for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.

So, you have full responsibility for what you believe!

Confucius

If the root be in confusion, nothing will be well-governed. 

Dave Barry

We journalists… are also extremely impressed with scientists, and we will, frankly, print just about any wacky thing they tell us, especially if it involves outer space.

Thomas Henry Huxley

It sounds paradoxical to say the attainment of scientific truth has been effected, to a great extent, by the help of scientific errors.

Rita Dove

“If only the sun-drenched celebrities are being noticed and worshiped, then our children are going to have a tough time seeing the value in the shadows, where the thinkers, probers and scientists are keeping society together.”

Joseph Chilton Pearce

To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.

Play is the only way the highest intelligence of humankind can unfold.

Osho

Intellect may arrive at certain inferences, but intellect is an unconscious phenomenon. You are almost behaving sleepily. Intelligence is awakening, and unless you are fully awake, whatsoever you decide is bound to be wrong somewhere or other. It is bound to be so, it is doomed to be wrong, because it is a conclusion arrived at by an unconscious mind.
To bring intelligence into activity you don’t need more information, you need more meditation. You need to become more silent, you need to become more thoughtless. You need to become less mind and more heart. You need to become aware of the magic that surrounds you: magic that is life, magic that is God, magic that is in the green trees and the red flowers, magic that is in people’s eyes. Magic is happening everywhere! All is miraculous, but because of your intellect you remain closed inside yourself, clinging to your stupid conclusions arrived at in unconsciousness or given to you by others who are as unconscious as you are.
Savita, intelligence is certainly creative because intelligence brings your totality into functioning — not only a part, a small part, the head. Intelligence vibrates your whole being; each cell of your being, each fiber of your life starts dancing, and falls in a subtle harmony with the total. That’s what creativity is: to pulsate in absolute harmony with the total. That’s how one becomes a Buddha, Christ, Zarathustra. These are the real creative people.

Rudolf Steiner 

Many people think that they’re working for the good of mankind from morn till eve, but this is questionable. A clairvoyant can see that efforts coming from materialistic thinking have the wrong effect, and it may lie in some people’s karma that they should wait until they can do certain things. Then a higher being can whisper such a task in his ear, so that it’s not induced by outer circumstances. Life is a destructive process for someone who only devotes himself to outer sense impressions. A meditating esoteric doesn’t let his life be determined by outer circumstances as much. One who makes repeated meditational efforts isn’t exposed to astral confusions at night and makes himself ready to receive the instructions of spiritual beings. And it’s very necessary that we be instructed in this way.

— o —

The fact is, no art of any kind can be mastered without humour, especially the art of dealing with human beings. This means that part of the art of education is the elimination of ill-humour and crossness from the teachers, and the development of friendliness and a love full of humour and fantasy for the children, so that the children may not see portrayed in their teacher the very thing he is forbidding them to be.

— o —

Nevertheless one will sometimes have great trouble in controlling the children’s liveliness. You will succeed in controlling it if you possess a thing not sufficiently appreciated in this connection, namely humour. The teacher must bring humour into the class room as he enters the door.

— o —

The right attitude for raising oneself into the higher world is never a sentimental one. Mere sentimentality is of no use for the man who wants to toil up the spiritual heights, in the right way, for it always smacks of egoism. You know how often, when the highest spiritual subjects are being discussed, I mix with our considerations something not designed to take you out of the mood, but simply to banish any egoistic sentimentality from it. A genuine ascent to the spiritual must be undertaken in purity of soul (which is never destitute of humour), not from a motive of egoistic sentimentality.

— o —

Theosophists also often tend to turn away from the outer world. But a loving interest in our surroundings is absolutely necessary if one wants to make progress. One doesn’t have to neglect what one is striving for theosophically thereby.

— o —

The mood of meditation should not be: I will inwardly lie down in a warm nest, which must become warmer and warmer for me. Rather, our mood must be that we are about to dip into reality, to grasp something real. Devoted attention to little things, indeed to the least thing, is what it comes down to.

— o —

“Never should the phrase be heard that truths are accepted simply because I have voiced them! We should sin against the truth were we to say any such thing. One thing or another may be grounded on confidence; but that can never be made into a principle. Someone else may perhaps be better able to tread the path; but the rule to which every individual should adhere is this: not to accept things on authority, but to put them to the test.

…

Truth has to conquer its domain with complete disinterestedness. That is why, at bottom, nothing is more hated than the truth, the unvarnished truth. And so there may be many adherents here and there who actually cherish hatred deep down within them. No wonder that this hatred sometimes cuts through the force that builds a wall against it — cuts through this force because the hatred has been accumulating for so long. Such hatred is far more widespread than is imagined and it is a factor that must be reckoned with.

— o —

The occultist will never dream of imposing dogmas. He is one who tells what he has seen and tested in the astral and spiritual worlds or what has been revealed to him by trustworthy and reliable teachers. He does not desire to convert but to quicken in others the sense that has awakened in him and to enable them to see likewise.

— o —

The Rosicrucian way, which leaves the pupil with the greatest possible independence. … When we are on the physical plane, we perceive with the physical senses only what is to be found on that plane. Astral perceptions are valid for the astral plane; devachanic hearing is valid only in Devachan. Thus each plane has its own specific form of perception. But one activity — logical thinking — goes through all worlds. Logic is the same on all three planes. Thus on the physical plane you can learn something which is valid also for the higher planes; and this is the method followed by Rosicrucian training when on the physical plane it gives primary attention to thinking, and for this purpose uses the means available on the physical plane. A penetrative thinking can be cultivated by studying theosophical truths, or by practising mental exercises. Anyone who wishes further training for the intellect can study books such as Truth and Science, and The Philosophy of Freedom, which are written deliberately in such a way that a thinking trained by them can move with certainty on the highest planes. Even a person who studies these books and knows nothing of Theosophy might find his way about in the higher worlds. But, as I have said, the teachings of Theosophy act in the same way.

— o —

The first condition is the cultivation of absolutely clear thinking. For this purpose a man must rid himself of the will-o’-the-wisps of thought, even if only for a very short time during the day – about five minutes (the longer, the better). He must become the ruler in his world of thought.He is not the ruler if external circumstances, occupation, some tradition or other, social relationships, even membership of a particular race, the daily round of life, certain activities and so forth, determine a thought and how he works it out.

— o —

There is, in truth, no difference between esoteric knowledge and all the rest of man’s knowledge and proficiency. This esoteric knowledge is no more of a secret for the average human being than writing is a secret for those who have never learned it. And just as all can learn to write who choose the correct method, so, too, can all who seek the right way become esoteric students and even teachers….He must begin with a certain fundamental attitude of soul. In spiritual science this fundamental attitude is called the path of veneration, of devotion to truth and knowledge.Without this attitude no one can become a student. The disposition shown in their childhood by subsequent students of higher knowledge is well known to the experienced in these matters. There are children who look up with religious awe to those whom they venerate…. Only it must not be thought that this disposition leads to submissiveness and slavery. What was once a childlike veneration for persons becomes, later, a veneration for truth and knowledge. Experience teaches that they can best hold their heads erect who have learned to venerate where veneration is due; and veneration is always fitting when it flows from the depths of the heart. …If we do not develop within ourselves this deeply rooted feeling that there is something higher than ourselves, we shall never find the strength to evolve to something higher. The initiate has only acquired the strength to lift his head to the heights of knowledge by guiding his heart to the depths of veneration and devotion. The heights of the spirit can only be climbed by passing through the portals of humility. You can only acquire right knowledge when you have learned to esteem it. Man has certainly the right to turn his eyes to the light, but he must first acquire this right. … A person who darts from one impression of the outer world to another, who constantly seeks distraction, cannot find the way to higher knowledge. The student must not blunt himself to the outer world, but while lending himself to its impressions, he should be directed by his rich inner life.

…

This life of the soul in thought, which gradually widens into a life in spiritual being, is called by Gnosis, and by Spiritual Science, Meditation (contemplative reflection). This meditation is the means to supersensible knowledge. But the student in such moments must not merely indulge in feelings; he must not have indefinite sensations in his soul. That would only hinder him from reaching true spiritual knowledge. His thoughts must be clear, sharp and definite, and he will be helped in this if he does not cling blindly to the thoughts that rise within him. Rather must he permeate himself with the lofty thoughts by which men already advanced and possessed of the spirit were inspired at such moments. He should start with the writings which themselves had their origin in just such revelation during meditation. In the mystic, gnostic and spiritual scientific literature of today the student will find such writings, and in them the material for his meditation. The seekers of the spirit have themselves set down in such writings the thoughts of the divine science which the Spirit has directed his messengers to proclaim to the world.

— o —

For through his ego the human being attains to control of his sensations, feelings, thoughts, instincts, passions, and desires. Perception and thought cannot be left to themselves in the soul. They must be regulated through attentive thinking. It is the ego that employs these laws of thinking and through them brings order into the life of visualization and thought. It is similar with desires, instincts, inclinations, and passions. The ethical principles become guides of these soul powers. Through moral judgment the ego becomes the guide of the soul in this realm. If the human being now draws a higher ego out of his ordinary ego, the latter becomes independent in a certain sense. From this ego just as much of living force is withdrawn as is bestowed upon the higher ego. Let us suppose, however, the case in which the human being has not yet developed a sufficient ability and firmness in the laws of thought and in his power of judgment, and he wishes to give birth to his higher ego at this stage of development. He will be able to leave behind for his everyday ego only so much thought power as he has previously developed. If the measure of regulated thinking is too small, then there will appear a disordered, confused, fantastic thinking and judgment in the ordinary ego that has become independent. Because the new-born ego can only be weak in such a personality, the disturbed lower ego will gain domination over supersensible perception, and man will not show equilibrium in his power of judgment in observing the supersensible world. If he had developed sufficient ability in logical thinking, he would be able, without fear, to permit the ordinary ego to have its independence. — This is also true in the domain of the ethical. If the human being has not attained firmness in moral judgment, if he has not gained sufficient control over his inclinations, instincts, and passions, then he will make his ordinary ego independent in a state in which these soul powers act. It may happen that the human being in describing the knowledge he has experienced in the supersensible is not governed by the same high sense of truth that guides him in what he brings to his consciousness in the physical outer world. With such a demoralized sense of truth, he might believe anything to be spiritual reality that in truth is only his own fantastic imagining. Into this sense of truth there must act firmness of ethical judgment, certainty of character, keenness of conscience, which are developed in the lower, first ego, before the higher, second ego becomes active for the purpose of supersensible cognition.

— o —

In earthly existence we live in a world that is but a copy of true reality. Indeed, we only understand this physical world aright when we realize it to be this copy of reality. It behooves us, however, to feel the true reality within us; we must be aware of our connection with the spiritual world. And this is only possible if the bond that links us with pre-earthly existence remains intact.

This bond is strengthened by a love of truth and Integrity. Nothing establishes man’s true and original sense of existence so firmly as a feeling for truth and truthfulness. To feel himself in duty bound first to “prove all things” he utters, to set due restraint on all his words — this helps to consolidate the sense of existence that is worthy of his being. To be aware of the spirit within the physical body — with this, indeed, the sense of being is connected. There is, in effect, an intimate kinship between the physical body and this ideal of Truth.

— o —

After Atlantis was destroyed by water, continued evolution resulted in our contemporary fifth race, during which deductive reasoning was a special achievement. This enabled the human race to bring art and science to a high level of development, which previously had not been possible.

— o —

People think often enough that it is unnecessary to talk about the principles of man’s being, or the evolution of humanity or the different planetary evolutions, they would rather acquire beautiful feelings, they do not want to study earnestly. Nevertheless, however many beautiful feelings one acquires in one’s soul it is impossible to rise into the spiritual worlds by that alone. Rosicrucian theosophy does not try to arouse the feelings, but through the stupendous facts of the spiritual worlds to let the feelings themselves begin to resound. The Rosicrucian feels it a kind of impertinence to take people by storm with feelings. … It is only an empty phrase to say one should address oneself direct to the feelings, that is just indolence. Rosicrucian theosophy lets the facts speak, and if these thoughts flow into the feeling nature and overpower it, then that is the right way.”

…

Rosicrucian Theosophy does not wish to revel in feelings, it wishes to bring the facts of the spirit before your eyes. The pupil must take part, must let himself be stimulated by the facts which have been described, feelings and sensations must be aroused in him through them. In this sense Spiritual Science should become a powerful impulse for the sphere of feeling, but at the same time be that which leads us direct into the facts of supersensible perceptions, which lets them first arise as thoughts and then leads the seeker upwards into the higher worlds.

— o —

Just think how abstract modern thinking has become when it uses abstract words for something which, in its reality, is not understood!

— o —

Reality is not contained in the abstract concept; it is, however, contained in thoughtful observation, which does not one-sidedly consider either concept or percept alone, but rather the union of the two. PoF

Our highest endeavor must be to develop free human beings who are able of themselves to impart purpose and direction to their lives. The need for imagination, a sense of truth, and a feeling of responsibility—these three forces are the very nerve of education.

The Holy Nights of Christmas

The twelve holy nights before Christmas

This symbolizes the development of man from the creation and until the birth of Christ, when man had descended the deepest into the physical world. This period is called Mars in esoteric language.

It’s about the lower Abyss, the lesser Chemical Wedding, the union of soul and body. This is old European folk tradition and Rosicrucian esoteric knowledge.

The night after the 24′th is the birth of the Son of Man, Jesus, when we were the deepest into the physical, and he showed the way up of the Abyss.

The twelve holy nights after Christmas

This symbolizes the ascent of man from the deepest penetration into the physical world, from being mastered by the physical he now becomes master of the physical. This period is called Mercury in esoteric language.

It’s about the higher Abyss, the greater Chemical Wedding, the union of soul and spirit.

The night after the fifth is the birth of the Son of God, Christ, the Baptism of Jesus. The thought seeds is taken from here: De 12 hellige nætter. They are only a hint for contemplation, they are not mandatory and I may find some that are more relevant.

Night after	Zodiac	Thought seeds
Dec. 13	Aquarius	I am the water of life, which is shed for thirsty people.
Dec. 14	Pisces	I leave the Father’s house, but returns as savior.
Dec. 15	Aries	I step forward, and from the plane of thought I rule.
Dec. 16	Taurus	I see, and when the eye is opened, all is light.
Dec. 17	Gemini	I recognize my other self, and when this self fades away, I grow and shine.
Dec. 18	Cancer	I build a lighted house in which I dwell.
Dec. 19	Leo	I am it and it is I.
Dec. 20	Virgo	I am the mother and child. I am God, I am matter.
Dec. 21	Libra	I choose the road that goes between the two major power lines.
Dec. 22	Scorpio	I am warrior, and from the fight I stand victorious.
Dec. 23	Sagittarius	I see the goal. I reach this goal, and then I see another.
Dec. 24	Capricorn	I am bathed in celestial light, but turns, however, my back to the light.
Dec. 25	Aquarius	In the coming year my true home should be the shrine of love. I promise to obey the law of love.
Dec. 26	Pisces	I get my right to give love and remember that I had no right to demand love.
Dec. 27	Aries	I become member of the army of light promise to keep my place.
Dec. 28	Taurus	I undertake – of my own volition – the responsibility of the whole.
Dec. 29	Gemini	Although divided, we are one – I promise to protect this unity.
Dec. 30	Cancer	What the sun is to nature, is the warmth of love for our inner lives. I promise to protect and nurture this hearth.
Dec. 31	Leo	I will abide of my free will and without complaint from being taken away from my place if I had to give way or waver for any hardships faced by my loved ones.
Jan. 1	Virgo	I know that love is a universe, and that I only grasp its atom. I pledge to uphold its pure marriage with Earth.
Jan. 2	Libra	I promise toward the sinner to exercise judgment punishment: forgiveness, and help new covenant of love (as is God).
Jan. 3	Scorpio	I give of my heart full of creative power, which I got from love. Thus is my promise.
Jan. 4	Sagittarius	Love is the only ruler and creator, the only king. Love is my bow and my arrow. My pledge and my salary.
Jan. 5	Capricorn	I dedicate the spirit of this night that is born in me, to the work of love.

It’s interesting that Jeanne Darc was born the sixth of January where the Greek-Roman period ended and our current period started, she changed the face of Europe physically and spiritually she was the pioneer of modern man.

On Spiritual Research – Practical Guidelines

To understand and validate the esoteric knowledge there are other ways than clairvoyant faculties, and in the following I will list the things that I and others have found useful, with links to related texts.

Framework and Theories

• The primary thing is to build a consistent framework around ones knowledge, extending it when new knowledge comes to. Don’t make the structure bigger than you can hold it consistent, that is, if too many loose ends are floating around it’s too difficult to handle. I started with the Akasha Chronicles by Steiner, which is the Rosicrucian Cosmic History. More in Esoteric History of Man and Creation of the Sun System and the Zodiac
• If I didn’t have a theory, even if it was wrong, i couldn’t extend my knowledge. In research you will constantly be wrong on some points, but you will extend the area you are right all the time.
• Find a good consistent vocabulary to build the framework around. I use Steiner’s as no other esoteric language is as consistent and connected to our time. In the The Rosicrucian Cross I have relations between Kabbalah, esoteric and traditional names of the hierarchies/spiritual powers and in The Bodies of Man I have relations between the names of the layers of man in many spiritual traditions.
• Find a good structure to hang your knowledge on. I use the Kabbalah Tree of Life as no other structure is so clear, and every other major religion or spiritual tradition relates to the tree! More on the tree and it’s relations to other traditions here: The Rosicrucian Cross, Tao – The Equilibrium of Yin and Yang and Changing Hierarchies through Time.
• Remember Sherlock Holmes: When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Sources

• Never rely on one source. What ever you find it should be consistent with other sources and/or it’s inherent logic should be impeccable. Findings without supporting evidence or inconsistencies should be saved until further evidence for or against is found. As a teenager I was somewhat fascinated with UFOs but then decided to have no meaning about them as it lacked both hard evidence, logical support, and relevance for my life.
• When you read a text and feels confused it may not be your problem, not all authors know what they write about. A person who don’t know his topic have a tendency to write large texts where the one who understand it fully only need few lines.
• Everything are usable as sources: science, religion, esoteric literature, fairy tales, films, your every day life, observance of your own thinking, dreams, and so forth.
• Use Retrospect Inquiry before sleep to find and think through the important events of the day, our mind is the best crucible we have to learn how the mind functions. One way is to think it through backwards, but after a time they pop up by themselves. In  The Bodies of Man I have a comparison between the three soul components of man in various religious, esoteric and psychoanalytic systems. In steiners vocabulary they are Sentient soul, Intellectual soul, and Conscious soul and in physical they are known as Limbic brain, left brain hemisphere and right brain hemisphere, where the last is the least developed.
• Use your dreams to explore both your own consciousness but also other aspects of the physical and spiritual world. I have more on this in Dream Interpretation in Esoteric Work and Esoteric Aspects of the Isis figure
• If you find a seemingly inconsistency or lacking explanation, note it for future study, as it is often there the deeper understanding starts.
• Another possibility to collect spiritual knowledge without spiritual faculties are Astrology, which both have helped me get a clearer knowledge about myself, but also given me the astrologers clear and precise language, which no other psychological or spiritual tradition have. This opens for understanding of different kinds of esoteric literature which is indecipherable for non astrologers. An example in The Sons of Jacob and the Zodiac
• All this should relates back to spiritual knowledge, the Framework, otherwise it would be atomic knowledge without a unifying framework.

Areas of Research

• Understanding the physical laws of the universe, from the biggest to the smallest, “The Second Law of Thermodynamics”, This is Ahriman/Yin, Lucifer/Yang, and Christ/Tao in their most physical representation. Chaos or Order? No, Life!
• Understanding consciousness, starting with your own thinking. Is it possible to make Intelligent Machines?
• Understanding the laws behind the society of man. The Trap of Materialism
• Understanding the spiritual laws behind the physical life on Earth, the interaction between the physical and the spiritual, Ahriman and Lucifer, or Yin and Yang. Serpents of the Kundalini Fire and The Crucible
• Beware of conspiratorial theories.  Hanlon’s Razor

Love of Truth

The search for truth is foremost in esoteric science, not that there is a TRUTH, but everybody should strive to find truth. Truth is not relative, nor is it political, and neither can it build on feelings alone. Truth is like a diamond, each human soul have it’s own facet of this diamond describing it’s view on the reality.

Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth. Mohandas Gandhi

To find truth logic is necessary to find the way through the cacophony of information. Logic is valid on all planes, not only in the physical world, so it’s a vital tool wherever our search brings us:

“Consequently he who wishes to attain to human perfection, must therefore first study Logic, next the various branches of Mathematics in their proper order, then Physics, and lastly Metaphysics. He, however, who begins with Metaphysics, will not… only become confused in matters of religion, but will fall into complete infidelity.” ( – Maimonides)  Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it

Life itself will force people to learn logic, each time we make an error and recognize it, we are forced to think and understand the Why behind, and with time and enough incarnations we begin to see the logic behind existence.

Contemplative Inquiry

One way to think is Contemplative Inquiry, where the person sits with vertical back and open eyes and fully conscious, but letting the thoughts free on esoteric ideas, and in this way invite the higher I down into the thinking process. Thoughts on the physical world or closed eyes moves the focus to the physical noise, the background noise of the sentient soul.

Knowledge resides in the brain that is filled with thoughts of others, but wisdom resides in the souls of those who attentively listens to their own thoughts. Eli Wamberg

The research for knowledge will in itself change your life. The Eightfold Path 

Anima Sola – The Lonely Soul – From an Esoteric View

Anima Sola – From an Esoteric View

In the following I have some texts describing Anima Sola or Lonely Soul from Catholic lore, and Steiners description of the Homeless Souls and in relation to his description of Goethe’s distinctiveness.
From www.luckymojo.com/animasola.html

The Anima Sola or Lonely Soul is a Catholic depiction of a suffering person — almost always a woman — in chains amidst the barred prison doors and flames of Purgatory, the place where sinners go while awaiting final judgement.

It is said that those who die while wearing a blessed brown scapular, as directed by Our Lady of Mount Carmel, will not suffer long in Purgatory, but on the Saturday following their death, the Virgin of Mount Carmel will arrive bearing the Infant Jesus in her arms, accompanied by a group of angels, and at her direction, the angels will pull from the flames all those who died while wearing her scapular. Thus the Anima Sola, whose purgatorial chains are broken, is closely identified with the Carmelite devotion to Mary.

The Blessed brown scapular is the Etheric Mantle, the result of Illumination or Initiation, the background for the meeting with Christ in the Etheric. The releasing of Anima Sola of purgatory means that the person don’t die as a person, but continues living in the Etheric body. The first person known to wear the etheric mantle was Saint John, the Evangelist, and it’s reasonably to believe that it also were the case with Mary Magdalene.

From www.silvercrowcreations.com/MoreInfo.htm

The Anima Sola (Lonely Soul or Solitary Soul) has its roots in the Latin folk religions…

The woman appears penitent and reverent, and her chains have been released, so this sends quite an ambiguous message to the believer: she suffers and at the same time is released from suffering – perfectly representing Purgatory itself – a way-station for on the way to redemption to clear or burn away past sins.
…
Anima Sola is celebrated in folk religions much as a saint – and she hears the prayers of the living. She may bless and intercede on the prayer’s behalf to accelerate the conclusion of a purgatorial penance of a loved one who died in sin.
She might also be called up on to create a living purgatory for someone who has hurt the person praying to her.

The Lonely Souls becomes God’s helper. Even though some woman want to take all virtues in under the female brand, this is quite democratic, it’s distributed in pairs, one man one woman, Dual’s – Twin Spirits.

Homeless Souls

From The Homeless Souls

In contrast, there are a number of souls, particularly at present, whose interest is concentrated less on worldly happenings as they approach a new life on earth than on the question of how they can develop maturity in the spiritual world. Their interest lies in the spiritual world right up to the moment before they find their way to earth. As a consequence, when they incarnate they arrive with a consciousness which has its origins in spiritual impulses. With their spiritual ambitions they outgrow their environment, and are thus predestined and prepared to go their own way.

Thus the souls who descend from pre-earthly to earthly existence can be divided into two groups. One group, to which the majority of people today still belong, comprises those souls who can make themselves remarkably at home on earth; who feel thoroughly comfortable in their warm nest, which so fascinated them long before they came down to earth, even if it does occasionally appear unpleasant — but that is only appearance, maya.

Other souls, who may pass patiently through childhood — appearance is not always the decisive thing — are less able to make themselves at home, are homeless souls, and grow beyond the warmth of the nest much more than they grow into it. …

The things which are being sought by these souls on the byways of life, away from the major highways, manifest themselves in many ways. If the others did not find it so agreeable to take the well-trodden paths and did not put such obstacles in the way of homeless souls, the numbers of the latter would be much more obvious to their contemporaries. But it is widely apparent today how many souls have a hint of such homelessness about them.

The tendency to such homelessness could be anticipated: the rapidly growing evidence of a longing in homeless souls for an attitude to life which was not laid out in advance; a longing for the spirit in the chaos of contemporary spiritual life.

The Sign of the Rosicrucian

A chock, an accident, or a sickness can loosen the etheric body from the physical, making it possible for the person to look at the world and himself as spectator, that he is not as immersed into the physical world as is usual. This is the sign of the Rosicrucian. It is symbolized with Jacob’s wrestling with the Angel, one who is too absorbed in the physical don’t fight with his angel, the physical world is too fascinating. Jacob is marked physically after the ‘fight’ with his angel, who symbolizes the spiritual world or his higher I, himself; he is becoming less physical.

From “The Karma of Vocation” – On Goethe

With Goethe, this force of soul became even stronger, and yet he lived to an advanced age. What enabled him to live so long? You will recall that I reminded you yesterday of a fact that intervened significantly in Goethe’s life. After he had spent some years in Leipzig as a student, he became seriously ill and stood face to face with death. He virtually looked death in the face. This illness is, to be sure, a natural phenomenon in the organism. However, we never learn to understand a man who creates out of the elemental forces of the world — indeed, we never learn really to understand any man — unless we take into consideration such events in the course of his karma. What really happened to Goethe when he became ill in Leipzig? We may describe it as a complete loosening of the etheric body in which the life forces of the soul had been active until then. It was loosened to such an extent that, after this illness, he no longer had that closely knit connection between the etheric and the physical bodies that he had formerly possessed.
The etheric body, however, is the supersensible member in us that really makes it possible to form concepts, to think. Abstract concepts such as we have in ordinary life, the only concepts that are approved by most persons who are materialistically disposed, come about through the fact that the etheric body is, as it were, closely united with the physical by a strong magnetic union. It is also through this fact that we possess a strong impulse to project our will into the physical world, that is, provided the astral body is strongly developed. In the case of Robespierre, Mirabeau and Danton, we have an etheric body strongly united with the physical but also a powerfully developed astral body. This works, in turn, upon the etheric body, which establishes these human individualities strongly in the physical world. Goethe was also organized like this, but another force now worked in him and brought about a complication. The result was that the etheric body was loosened and remained so through the illness that had brought him to the point of death. When the etheric body is no longer so intimately united with the physical body, however, it no longer thrusts its forces into the physical but retains them. This explains the transformation Goethe passed through when he returned to Frankfurt. There, during his acquaintance with Fräulein von Klettenberg, the mystic, and with various medical friends who were devoted to studies in alchemy, and through the writings of Swedenborg, he really developed a systematic spiritual world conception. It was still somewhat chaotic, but nevertheless a systematic spiritual world conception, and he was profoundly inclined to occupy himself with supersensible things.
…
Here we see how a natural event seems to enter with immense significance into the life of a human being. Undoubtedly, it points to a deeper interrelationship than the one the biographers generally wish to reveal. The significance of an illness to a man cannot be explained on the basis of hereditary tendencies but rather points to the connection between a man and the world in such a way that this relationship must be conceived spiritually. You will note also how Goethe’s life was thus complicated; such experiences determine how we take things in and what we are ourselves.
…
This event of near death appeared in Goethe at the end of the sixties in Leipzig, but its force had been prepared long before that….In anyone possessing a compact connection between the physical and etheric bodies, the external world exerts its influence and, as it makes impressions on the physical body, they pass over immediately into the etheric body; this is one and the same thing. Such a person simply lives in direct contact with the impressions of the external world. In Goethe’s case, the impressions are, of course, made upon the physical body, but the etheric body does not immediately respond because it is loosened. As a result, such a person can be more isolated, in a sense, from his environment, and a more complicated process takes place when an impression is made on his physical body. If you establish a connection between this organic structure of Goethe and the fact that, as we learn from his biography, he lays himself open even to historic events without forcing them, you have then arrived at an understanding of the peculiar functioning of his nature. I told you that he took the autobiography of Gottfried of Berlichingen and, influenced only by the dramatic impulses received from Shakespeare, did not really alter much in it. So he did not call it a drama but The History of the Iron-handed Gottfried of Berlichingen, Dramatized. You see, this soft and almost timid handling of things, as I might call it, without taking hold of them forcefully is due to his quite unusual connection between the etheric and physical bodies.
…
Through what I have explained, a sort of chasm had been created between his unusual inner nature and the external world. Just as he does not alter by force what is living in the external world but only delicately modifies its form, he also does not carry his feelings and sensations, which he can experience only in his etheric body, through the physical body to such a firm contact with the external world — something that, in others, would have led to quite definite events in life.
…
There is really a tremendous difference between Goethe’s mood up to 1775 and that after 1775, a difference that may be compared with a mighty wakefulness followed by a subdued life. The word “Dumpfheit,” an inner feeling of numbness, comes into his mind when he describes his life in Weimar, where he engages himself so much in events but responds to them more than at an earlier age, when he had rebelled against them. It is peculiar that after this dampening down for ten years there followed a period when events confronted him in a more gentle way. Just as the life of sleep is by no means a direct effect of the preceding daytime life, so also this sleep life of Goethe was not at all the result of what had gone before.
If, however, as in the special case of Goethe, the astral body is brought into a more vivid relationship with the spinal cord system and the ego with the ganglionic, because the ether body has withdrawn from the head, then far more vivid intercourse occurs with what is going on in our surroundings. But it is concealed from us in normal life because it is only while we are asleep at night that we enter into relationship with our spiritual environment.
…
He was able to sense this because what lived mysteriously in his fellow men made an impression on him such as is made by one person on another only when an especially intimate relationship, indeed when love, develops between them. In such a case of ordinary life, the connection of the ego with the ganglionic system, and of the astral body with the spinal cord system is highly active, although this is not consciously perceived as such. Something very special is activated. But what is otherwise active only in a love relationship came about in Goethe vis à vis a far larger number of people, so that he experienced a tremendous, more or less subconscious, compassion for the poor fellows — excuse the expression — who did not know what their inner natures were going through as they were driven from class to class and from examination to examination.
…
They were nothing but actual experiences that he gained from the most extensive environment because his ganglionic and spinal cord life was stimulated to more than normal wakefulness. This was the opposite from the subdued head life, but it was a potentiality in him even in his boyhood. We can see this from his description of what became active in him: not only what ordinarily engages people, say in piano lessons, became active in him but also the entire being. Goethe partook much more in the happenings of real life as a whole person than others, and we must say, therefore, that he was more wide-awake during the day than they. During the time in his youth when he was working on Faust, he was more awake during the day, and because of this he also needed what I described yesterday as the time of sleep — the ten years in Weimar. This dampening was necessary.
…
The world must be protected, so to speak, from standing still. It seems trivial to say this, but it is nevertheless a profound mystery-truth: not all people can dream in this way. The forces with which they dream must first be applied in the external world to something different so that through it a foundation may be created for a further evolution of the earth. It would come to a standstill were all men to dream as I have indicated.

An astrological session exemplifying some of the above:

These homeless souls don’t have as massively an impact on the physical world as those with strong physical connections, but they may have a much more subtle influence on other people, may be changing other peoples destiny by putting inspirations into words. In this way they don’t create new karma, but resolves old karma.

From “From the Contents of Esoteric Classes“

Many people think that they’re working for the good of mankind from morn till eve, but this is questionable. A clairvoyant can see that efforts coming from materialistic thinking have the wrong effect, and it may lie in some people’s karma that they should wait until they can do certain things. Then a higher being can whisper such a task in his ear, so that it’s not induced by outer circumstances. Life is a destructive process for someone who only devotes himself to outer sense impressions. A meditating esoteric doesn’t let his life be determined by outer circumstances as much.

Esoteric Picture Collections with References and Texts

I believe that one picture replaces many words, so I have made some picture collections where I try to show the relationship between different religious and esoteric traditions. The following collages are entries into these collections. Most pictures both contains texts and references.

Variations around the Trinities

In all religions and esoteric traditions we have the three creative powers of the Trinity more or less hidden. These three powers are also known through their colors, with Red for the Father, Blue for the Mother, and typically Yellow for the Son, symbolizing all colors. The picture and label link to the collection:

See Variations around the Trinities

This is the main theme of this blog, and the most central texts are:

• Tao – The Equilibrium of Yin and Yang
  This symbol is known all over the world, from the old Celts, to the Romans, the Greeks, and so forth. The philosophy behind we find in all later religions and traditions, but of course extended with the understanding new cultures added.
• The Caduceus staff and the Tree of Life
  The Caduceus staff is the same as we know as the Indian Kundalini, Pinga, and Pengala, and the Kabbalah Tree of Life.
• Serpents of the Kundalini Fire
  The human body is a microcosmic version of macrocosmos, and it’s underlying spiritual structures are described in all religions, esoteric traditions, and healing systems, and I show these relations here.
• Chaos or Order? No, Life!
  We see the physical world as totally separate from the spiritual world, but the rules the physical world follows are based on the spiritual world, keywords are Chaos Theory and Second Law of Thermodynamics.
• The Three Crosses of Golgotha
  The three crosses on Golgotha has deep connotations to the spiritual background of our reality.
• The Rosicrucian Cross
  The Rosicrucian Cross is man incarnated in the physical world.
• Changing Hierarchies through Time
  Most understand God as an unchanging entity, but the godly evolve just as man does, or more correctly, we evolve together. This change are also reflected in the Kabbalah Tree of Life.

The World Egg and the Zodiac

The World Egg is the most universal symbol we have, and the Zodiac is the most developed form of it, but it’s everywhere, we just don’t recognize it as representing the world egg.

We can find the history of the zodiac in the four heavenly beasts, Eagle, Lion, Ox and Man; they were the first members of the Zodiac, first later came the Cardinal signs, and later again the mutable, they came when man began developing these qualities, just as the outer planets first became visible when they became influential. In the bible we find it in The Sons of Jacob and the Zodiac.

I have made a collection of pictures with text and references:

See The World Egg and the Zodiac

I have made “Creation of the Sun System and the Zodiac” for an illustrated overview of what was created, with the following extract as basis:

“The egg of Amma was closed, but made of four parts called ‘clavicules,’ themselves ovoid and joined as if they had extruded one from the others. Amma is four joined clavicules; it is only these four clavicles.” (Marcel Griaule & Germaine Dieterlen, Le renard pâle)

The sun system is ‘Amma’s Egg’ [the Zodiac], not the whole universe. Within his egg, Amma began spinning around, forming the po seed. The po is the smallest invisible seed at the center.

Amma then placed seven ‘words’ [Planets] in the po, which began to vibrate strongly within the seed. The spiraling vibrations caused four clavicles to grow forth from the po. These were the four heavenly beasts, the fixed star signs. These four Androgyne beings split into four male and four female, the cardinal and fixed star signs.

The Dogon call these beings the Nommo Anagonno, ‘The Word (Nommo) that Became Fish-Man’ (Anagonno). The male and female got a son, and the mutable star signs was created.

There are two levels of understanding, the macrocosmic, as mentioned above, but also the microcosmic:
“Hence, the eight ancestors were taken to heaven with the Nummo to learn the skills of civilisation. Later, each was given one of the eight grains of heaven, with which they returned to live with men, civilising them. They thus became the “civilising deities”, the Dogon equivalent of the Apkallu, or Seven Sages.” See The Old Granary.

This description of the Earth creation is only part of another greater history, the creation of man, which started long before Earth. In Esoteric History of Man I give a short overview of the path man has followed since the initial seed of man was created.

Francis Bacon and the American Project

What happens in the world have always been prepared from the spiritual world through highly developed people. In the time before Christ it was kings and priests who led the development, after Christ it was more incognito, but they were great personalities within all aspects of the society ingeniously infusing new ideas and changing the power structures from country to country op through Europe as the point of focus changed.

The American adventure wasn’t just a random thing, it was prepared through hundreds of years, but now the ideas behind have worn down, something new is needed.

I have collected some material behind the American project here, includes many pictures, texts, and references:

See Francis Bacon and the American Project

The driving force of history have always been a pair, the Hero and the Teacher as Alexander the Great and Aristotle. Was Francis Bacon the Teacher and King James I the Hero? Benjamin Franklin the Teacher and George Washington the Hero.

Description of the work done under the auspices of Francis Bacon:

1. To develop and improve the English language for future use so it could become an instrument for a new world of universal values across national borders, with America as a pilot project.
2. To formulate a renewed spiritually grounded whole philosophy of the future, uniting the physical, mental and spiritual, and built bridges between faith and enlightenment.
3. Providing for publication of books in England and in continental Europe, and in general to stimulate learning, study, individual discernment and human integrity.
4. To use theater and art as cultural and spiritual tool and through entertaining creativity to promote the formation, life-insight and consciousness transformation.
5. To launch scientific research on a group basis, with special focus on promoting new, empirical discovery methods, the reader universe laws.
6. Working in a ritual community for spiritual elevation, as has occurred in the helmet or the Knights of Solomon House, the Rosicrucian, Masonic work.
7. To tell about it for posterity and hide it in cryptographic codes, so it little by little would be possible for people to see and understand the work and be encouraged to continue development.

From Søren Hauge: Shakespeare Mysteriet

Pythagoras et al

Much of modern esoteric knowledge goes back to Pythagoras, but what we know about his teachings are mostly through indirect sources.

I have collected a number of pictures, texts and references here:

See Pythagoras et al

One of the most interesting topics, but least understood, is the Golden Mean which Plato said was the key to the universe: “Golden Mean, Key to the Universe?“.

I have written a note on “Origin of the usage of Left Path and Right Path“, as it has been misused in various discussions, but it goes at least back to Pythagoras.

 

Who are Gilgamesh and Enkidu

There are at least two levels or stories in this epos. There are the story about two human beings and their endeavors, and there is the story about mankind, where Enkidu symbolizes the sentient soul and Gilgamesh the Mind soul, the Ego.

On the personal plane we learn through Enkidu the descent into the physical plane and through Gilgamesh the ascent up from the physical plane.

I will here try to find the deeper aspects of these beings in the esoteric history of man, looking at them as persons and as symbols. The first part will mainly build on Rudolf Steiner’s “Occult History” lectures 1 and 2, concentrating on the persons of Gilgamesh and Enkidu, or Eabani as Steiner calls him. In the second part I will look at the events on the spiritual plane to show their symbolic nature.

Gilgamesh, Louvre

From Occult History by Rudolf Steiner

In Occult History Rudolf Steiner tells:

The picture I want to call up in your minds is that behind the whole evolutionary and historical process, through the millennia up to our own times, spiritual Beings, spiritual Individualities, stand as guides and leaders behind all human evolution and human happenings, and that in the greatest, most significant events in history, this or that human being appears with his whole soul, his whole being, as an instrument of spiritual Individualities standing and working with set purpose behind him. [1]

These beings are the highest developed persons within the human wave, and already on the old Moon were they selected for their part in the development of Earth. We know them as the twelve Bodhisattvas, the seven Sages, and as Christian Saints.

In the start of the second lecture RS elaborates on this theme:

We must realise that these Beings cannot take direct hold of the physical facts of our existence because, on account of the present stage of their development, they cannot incarnate in a physical Body which draws its constituents from the physical world. If, therefore, they desire to work within our physical world, they must make use of the physical human being — of his deeds, but also of his intellect, his powers of understanding. We find the influence and penetration of such Beings of the higher world the more clearly in evidence the farther back we go in the ages of the evolution of humanity. But it must not be imagined that this downpouring of forces and activities from the higher worlds into the physical world through human beings has ever ceased; it continues even into our own time. [2]

This is the definition of the Bodhisattvas and their helpers, who are guiding the human history through the recurring crises caused by the powers of resistance.

The Gilgamesh epic is a remarkable myth, describing the esoteric path as it is until our time and written as it was written for us.

By way of introduction, I want to draw your attention to how one of the most important happenings of the Egypto-Chaldean epoch is presented to us in a significant myth, and how this event is reflected, but at a lower stage, in the Greco-Latin epoch. [1]

The myth describes the development until the initiation, which first became possible later.

Gilgamish, then, was a personality who, owing to his particular condition of soul, participated in the most progressive spiritual elements and spiritual factors of the age — in everything that threw light far into the future and at that time could be attained only if such a personality went through a kind of initiation. Through the imparting of something that can be received only through a certain initiation, Gilgamish was to be enabled to provide a kind of leaven for the Babylonian culture. He had to experience an initiation up to a certain degree. [2]

Who are Gilgamesh?

As the previous quote says, Gilgamesh is a being with enormous potential.

Now Gilgamish was a personality who had many incarnations behind him and may therefore be called an “old” soul within the evolution of humanity…The souls who came down early have therefore more incarnations behind them in earth-evolution than those who came down later; hence we can call these latter, in contrast to the former, “younger” souls — souls who have taken less into themselves…

In the case of Gilgamish, the Being who was to reveal himself through him, and who could do so only by leading him presently to a kind of initiation, kept a guiding hand upon him from the outset and set him at the place where he came to recognise his own position in the history of the world…

The whole nature of an old soul will enable it early in life to grasp not only the essential element, the essential factor, in the existing culture, but also that which strikes into it as a new impulse, opening up a wide vista into the future. [2]

Gilgamesh incarnated back in Lemuria, maybe as the first of the development wave of man. Through his many incarnation he had reached a stage about where man were at  the time of the Maid of Orleans. 2 This is one of the reasons why RS uses the word personality about him, he has developed the Ego as no other person have at this time in history, he have lost all connections to the spiritual world, and is as Ahrimanic as a man can be, as the son of Adam, Cain. His task is to form the development of the Earth, he is the archetypal Hero.

The account begins: Gilgamesh, two-thirds god and one-third human, is the greatest king on earth and the strongest super-human that ever existed; [3]

It could be understood as nephesch (sentient soul) and ruach (mind soul) are full developed, but that n’schamah (consciousness soul) is not, two out of three.

Gilgamesh – The Archetypal Hero

Who are Enkidu?

Enkidu (Eabani) is a diametrical different being; Enkidu is a being with few incarnation, ego-less and without karma, he lives in innocence with the animals. Through Enkidu’s encounter with a woman he acquires karma and becomes part of humanity, becomes part of civilization.

Eabani is a kind of human being who, in comparison with Gilgamish, seems to be of an inferior nature, for we are told that he was clothed in the skins of animals, was covered with hair, was like a wild man. Nevertheless in his wild nature there was divine Inspiration, ancient clairvoyance, clairvoyant knowledge, clairvoyant perception.
…
Eabani is depicted as being clothed in skins of animals. This is an indication of his wild nature; but because of this very wildness he is still endowed with ancient clairvoyance an the one hand, and an the other hand he is a young soul who has lived through far, far fewer incarnations than other souls who have reached a high level of development. Thus Gilgamish represents a being who was ready for initiation but was not able to attain it, for the journey to the West is the journey to an initiation that was not carried through to the end.  [1]

In contrast to Gilgamesh, Enkidu is a young soul, without Ego, but with highly developed spiritual faculties, which Gilgamesh have lost. It can be said that Enkidu is the most Luciferic being born on Earth.

Enkidu’s task is to give Earth the Heavenly Wisdom to help man form the future. He is the archetypal Seer or Priest, as the son of Adam, Seth, the last born.

Enkidu letting wisdom stream out over the world

As it were through supersensible events, presented to us in the pictures of the myth I outlined to you yesterday, a friend was placed at the side of Gilgamish, a friend whose barbarity and uncivilised nature are indicated by the statement that his outer form was half animal. It is said that this friend had skins of animals on his body, which means that he was still covered with hair like the men of primeval times, that his soul was so young that it built for itself a body which showed the human being still in a savage state. Thus the more advanced Gilgamish had in Eabani a man at his side who, because of his young soul and the bodily Organisation conditioned by it, still possessed ancient clairvoyance. This friend was given to Gilgamish in order that he might find his own bearings in life. [2]

Here we see Enkidu placed as a helper for Gilgamesh, where the Luciferic Enkidu should bring equilibrium with the Ahrimanian Gilgamesh, helping him to purify humanity.

His name, moreover, implies a special relation with Enki, Lord of Earth and Wisdom, and may be translated “Enki’s knees” or “Enki’s creation.”  [4]

Enkidu represent wisdom.

Gilgamesh and Enkidu

These two are born again and again through history, as the bringer of Wisdom and of Form, as Teacher and Hero, as Aristotle and Alexander, or Aquinas and Christian Rosenkreutz.

In Gilgamish and Eabani, whose respective gifts differed so greatly, we see the same kind of co-operation transformed into the spiritual. In the historical facts of ancient times we find this at every turn. And it is important to understand it, for only then do we realise why it is that myths and sagas so often tell of friends who have to achieve something together — friends who are generally as unlike in their nature of soul as were Gilgamish and Eabani. [2]

In the bible we see them showing the shift from the old clairvoyance to the knew, for example as Esau (red and hairy hunter) and Jacob, or as Solomon and Hiram Abiff [Temple Legend]

The spiritual strength of these two are shown through

And on the very same day when a man, merely in order that his name might go down to posterity, throws the burning brand into the sanctuary of Ephesus, there is born the man who has achieved more than all others for the culture of personality — and on the very soil where the culture of were personality was meant to be overcome. Herostratus flings the burning torch on the day when Alexander the Great is born — the man who is all personality! Alexander the Great stands there as the shadow-image of Gilgamish. A profound truth lies behind this. In the Greco-Latin epoch, Alexander the Great stands there as the shadow image of Gilgamish, as a projection of the spiritual on to the physical plane. And Eabani, projected on to the physical plane, is Aristotle, the teacher of Alexander the Great. [1]

These great ‘personalities’ incarnates each hundred years, as Steiner describes in connection with Christian Rosenkreutz and Master Jesus, and it’s naive to believe that these big human beings only have been incarnated the few times as some seems to believe. If you read the Occult History and look for the word ‘personality’ it will point to further incarnations of these persons.

From the Gilgamesh Epic

Steiner tells that this epic describes physical reflections of the spiritual, and that should be considered in the mentioning of Ahriman and Lucifer in the following. I try here to show the two companions relation to the Ahrimanian and Luciferic, to explain their physical roles described in the previous chapter.

Gilgamesh is described as a man with all knowledge, showing him as a highly developed human being, with full control of the physical world, a doer:

This great hero who had all knowledge [nemequ ], Gilgamesh, built the great city of Uruk; the tablet invites us to look around and view the greatness of this city, its high walls, its masonwork, and here at the base of its gates, as the foundation of the city walls, a stone of lapis lazuli on which is carved Gilgamesh’s account of his exploits, the story you are about to hear. [3]

The text on the stone states that he is two third god and one third human, king and super human, but he oppresses his people harshly, uses his power egoistically for his own satisfaction.

The people call out to the sky-god Anu, the chief god of the city, to help them. In response, Anu creates a wild man, Enkidu, out in the harsh and wild forests surrounding Gilgamesh’s lands. This brute, Enkidu, has the strength of dozens of wild animals; he is to serve as the subhuman rival to the superhuman Gilgamesh.A trapper’s son, while checking on traps in the forest, discovers Enkidu running naked with the wild animals; he rushes to his father with the news. The father advises him to go into the city and take one of the temple harlots, Shamhat, with him to the forest; when she sees Enkidu, she is to offer herself sexually to the wild man. If he submits to her, the trapper says, he will lose his strength and his wildness.

Shamhat meets Enkidu at the watering-hole where all the wild animals gather; she offers herself to him and he submits, instantly losing his strength and wildness, but he gains understanding and knowledge. He laments for his lost state, but the harlot offers to take him into the city where all the joys of civilization shine in their resplendence; she offers to show him Gilgamesh, the only man worthy of Enkidu’s friendship. [3]

Here Enkidu incarnates to be the helper and companion of Gilgamesh. He is shown in his pre-human state running wild with the animals, and how he becomes human through creating karma, through lust for living.

“Ask him to give you a temple courtesan, so that the wild man may be subdued by a woman’s power. When next he comes down to drink at the watering place he will embrace her, and then the wild beasts will reject him.” And so it came to pass – six days and seven nights, joined with the courtesan.  [4]

The womans power is thinking and forming where Enkidu lived in wisdom. Six dayes and seven nights hints at the seven chakras who are prepared for the life on Earth.

Enkidu turned to the courtesan. She spoke; and as she spoke, he heard (with awareness and understanding): “You have become beautiful, like a god, Enkidu. Let me therefore lead you to the heart of Uruk, to the temple of Anu and Ishtar, where Gilgamesh is.” Enkidu agreed, though he boasted that he would cry out in Uruk that he alone is powerful; that he is the one who changes fates. The courtesan cautioned him that Gilgamesh is the stronger, he is “the joy-woe man, . . . ceaselessly active day and night.”  [4]

He is like a good now, he have become a sentient being, conscious of his own I. He wants to rule over Gilgamesh, but the courtesan told him that Gilgamesh, the Ego, the mind soul, was stronger than Enkidu, the sentient soul. These two soul-bodies are joined together, and even to this day they fight each other, only the day that they don’t fight each other, are they released.

Separation of the sexes – Twin Soul Aspects – Dual’s

He enters the Earth fully:

Back in the mountain wilderness, at the same moment that Ninsun is enlightening Gilgamesh, the courtesan does the same for Enkidu: “When I look at you, you have become like a god. Why do you yearn to run wild again with the beasts in the hills? Get up from the ground, up from the bed of a shepherd.” The advice of the woman came into Enkidu’s heart. She divided her clothing and covered him, and kept the other part for herself (an allusion to the separation of the sexes). She brought him to a shepherd’s house and taught him to eat cooked food, including bread, which he had not known. He drank wine, seven goblets, which made his mind loose and his heart light (intoxicated by material life). [4]

Cooked food, bread, and wine all weight the physical body down, binding the etheric body to the physical body.

Just as Uruk is the earthly reflection of its heavenly archetype, Enkidu, sometimes called Gilgamesh’s second self, is portrayed here as a reverse image or physical counterpart of Gilgamesh: the human-animal vehicle of spirit, soul, and higher mind. His name, moreover, implies a special relation with Enki, Lord of Earth and Wisdom, and may be translated “Enki’s knees” or “Enki’s creation.” Note also Enkidu’s transformation and evolution from an asexual, unselfconscious protohuman formed in the image of Anu to hermaphrodite (“joined with the courtesan”), followed by separation, final physicalization, and the awakening of understanding or self-conscious mind through “love” — in the Platonic sense of Eros (cf. Symposium, Diotima’s speech, §§202-4). [4]

Enki. About 2,500 BCE. Note the image of planets revolving around the Sun!

The sentient soul were the connection to the spiritual world, and wisdom, at that time. Here we also see the descent into the physical.

The fury suddenly died and Enkidu addressed Gilgamesh: “There is not another like you in the world . . . Enlil has given you the kingship, for your head is elevated above all other men. [4]

Here Enkidu gave tribute to Gilgamesh, representing the mind soul. The next tells about the sacred marriage between the sentient and mind soul, or the etheric and physical body:

The language of Gilgamesh, from his prophetic dreams (“I loved [Enkidu] and embraced [him] as a wife”) to the bridal bed in Uruk — Enkidu’s in retrospect — clearly refers to a “sacred marriage“: the spiritual union or blending of the inner and outer man. None of the extant material names a victor, but the Old Babylonian story given above suggests that the initial strife or “wrestling” is brought to an abrupt end by mutual recognition: Gilgamesh “bent his knees” (to Enkidu’s stature) and “planted his foot in the ground.” Both phrases are apparent wordplays on Enkidu’s name, indicating a successful (or “victorious”) bonding and assimilation. Enkidu’s subsequent acknowledgment and friendly embrace with Gilgamesh confirm their acceptance of the relationship.Up to this point the story has been prologue — an allegory about the evolution and creation both of mankind and of a truly human individual. From here on Gilgamesh and Enkidu go as one, faithful to each other until death. In the Sumerian stories, Enkidu remains the servant of Gilgamesh; in the Babylonian version, Gilgamesh’s mother adopts Enkidu — he becomes not only the servant, companion, and friend of Gilgamesh, but also his younger “brother.” Viewed as a single composite character, Gilgamesh-Enkidu represents the conjoining of heaven and earth, of spirit, soul(s), and body, in a full sevenfold partnership (5) necessary for one to succeed in the hero’s quest. [4]

The one tells that the sentient soul (Enkidu) is below (sevant of) the mind soul (Gilgamish), where he is a younger brother in the other tradition.

Both Enkidu and Gilgamesh gradually weaken and grow lazy living in the city, so Gilgamesh proposes a great adventure: they are to journey to the great Cedar Forest in southern Iran and cut down all the cedar trees. To do this, they will need to kill the Guardian of the Cedar Forest, the great demon, Humbaba the Terrible. Enkidu knows about Humbaba from his days running wild in the forest; he tries in vain to convince Gilgamesh not to undertake this folly. [3]

With Humbaba the terrible we are in Eden and he is known by Enkidu, which means they are related, and he guards the trees of wisdom and life. Enkidu, representing the Luciferic wisdom, is not ready to fight the Ahrimanic spirits, so he works against Gilgamesh.

This is part of the life of man, going through the twelve signs of the Zodiac:

At this point the story reveals a deeper motive which Gilgamesh feels but cannot fully comprehend, for he still lacks the maturity and perception to recognize its source. Woven into the Babylonian version of Gilgamesh is a rich thread of astronomical symbolism which here connects Gilgamesh’s journey with the twelve-day New Year festival of the Spring Equinox (Akitu), implying initiatory significance. This is confirmed when his mother Ninsun prays to Shamash (man’s solar and solarizing principle), asking why he gave Gilgamesh such a restless heart: “Now you push him to go on a long journey to the place of Humbaba, to face a battle he cannot know about, and travel a road he cannot know. . . . May your consort commend him to the watchmen of the night.” [4]

Gilgamesh and Enkidu with Humbaba

After receiving counsel from his mother, Gilgamesh and Enkidu set off (with seven warriors and fifty unmarried men in the Sumerian version) on an arduous journey to Enlil’s forest where they plan to destroy its seven-terrored guardian and to fell the Great Cedar. Enkidu led the way, for he knew the road to the forest, had seen Humbaba, and was experienced in battles.
…
As Gilgamesh and Enkidu approached the forest, their trepidation grew. Shamash sent a message from the sky: “Humbaba has removed six of his seven cloaks. … They saw the height of the Great Cedar. Where Humbaba walked, a path was made. The road was good… [4]

The seven is connected to the chakras, and the seven-terrored was the chakras to clean. The path is the path of Karma.

On the six days travel (and seven nights?) Enkidu interprets the dreams of Gilgamesh, demonstrating that he is closer to the spiritual world. On the entrance to the Cedar Forrest:

Enkidu loses his courage and turns back; Gilgamesh falls on him and they have a great fight. Hearing the crash of their fighting, Humbaba comes stalking out of the Cedar Forest to challenge the intruders. A large part of the tablet is missing here. On the one part of the tablet still remaining, Gilgamesh convinces Enkidu that they should stand together against the demon.  [3]

Gilgamesh wins over Lucifer/Enkidu and they work together against Ahriman.

Humbaba, who knows Gilgamesh is a king, taunts the king for taking orders from a nobody like Enkidu. [3]

Here the Ahrimanic Humbaba tries to split the two, but Enkidu now inspires Gilgamesh with courage. When man has won his fight with Lucifer, he works as helper for man, as a holy spirit.

On his knees, with Gilgamesh’s sword at his throat, Humbaba begs for his life and offers Gilgamesh all the trees in the forest and his eternal servitude. While Gilgamesh is thinking this over, Enkidu intervenes, telling Gilgamesh to kill Humbaba before any of the gods arrive and stop him from doing so. Should he kill Humbaba, he will achieve widespread fame for all the times to come. Gilgamesh, with a great sweep of his sword, removes Humbaba’s head. But before he dies, Humbaba screams out a curse on Enkidu: “Of you two, may Enkidu not live the longer, may Enkidu not find any peace in this world!” [3]

Here again Enkidu/Lucifer helps Gilgamesh against the Ahrimanic, which on it’s side bans the Luciferic from the physical plane. Enkidu dies, separates man from the spiritual, which introduces death, as man no longer remember his previous lives. The Sentient soul looses it’s sight into the spiritual world, the end of the old clairvoyance.

Gilgamesh allows his life to fall apart; he does not bathe, does not shave, does not take care of himself, not so much out of grief for his friend, but because he now realizes that he too must die and the thought sends him into a panic.  [3]

Shamash (the Sun) between Mashu’s Twin Peaks,
Akkadian, 3rd millennium BC (British Museum)

He now starts his journey on the pure physical plane incarnating through the twelve star signs:

He arrives at Mount Mashu, which guards the rising and the setting of the sun, and encounters two large scorpions who guard the way past Mount Mashu. They try to convince him that his journey is futile and fraught with danger, but still they allow him to pass. Past Mount Mashu is the land of Night, where no light ever appears. Gilgamesh journeys eleven leagues before the light begins to glimmer, after twelve leagues he has emerged into day. He enters into a brilliant garden of gems, where every tree bears precious stones. [3]

Ziggurat in the Eanna Sector at Uruk (Andre Parrot, Sumer)

---

References

1. Rudolf Steiner: Occult History, Lecture 1;

2. Rudolf Steiner Occult History, Lecture 2;

3.  Richard Hooker Mesopotamia Gilgamesh Summary, Washington State University;

4. W. T. S. Thackara The Epic of Gilgamesh: A Spiritual Biography

Full text of Gilgamesh Epic.

Temple Legend

• The Temple Legend by Rudolf Steiner
• The Masonic Legend by Max Heindel
• The Hiramic Legend by Manly P. Hall

Gilgamesh and Enkido in different traditions

Ancient Mesopotamia

Use back-button to go back to text!

---

Map

Dream Interpretation in Esoteric Work

Dreams in Esoteric Work

A Neglected Discipline

I grow up in a Rosicrucian family and my mother gave me a few rules about dream interpretation she had learned from her teacher. When I began dreaming some serious dreams around 49 it irritated me that there wasn’t any good esoteric theories for dream interpretation. The psychoanalysts had some theories, especially around C.G.Jung, but there was no immediate relation between Jung and the esoteric traditions.

I started a research to find that information and I found out that Jung took his starting point in the chtlonic religions, the elemental kingdoms, what relates to the subconscious, where the esoteric traditions took their starting point in the super conscious, the higher ‘I’, but Steiner had also a description of the subconscious and the Chthonic world. I found what the archetypes like anima, animus, false ego’s, I and the teacher also existed in the esoteric tradition of man, and in dreams.

Some years later I found a file on the internet describing old Christian (and Hebrew) dream interpretation, with thousand of years experience, and found out it was the same method as I had found.

I read Fritz Pearl’s dream interpretation and it confirmed my findings, just as also Erich Fromm did. Erich Fromm also told that man could interpret his dreams under hypnosis, but he lost the understanding after awakening. The dreams are sent to the astral body, physically represented by the limbic system, the subconscious, and from there we sometimes become aware of the dreams when we wake up. It seems to be a rest of an old communication channel from the super-conscious to the subconscious from before we developed our middle brain, our ‘I’.

Erich Fromm describes that this dreaming language are the same we find used in old fairy tales and in the bible, that these texts have more than one level of information, that our subconscious understand the deeper level where our conscious brain only understand the upper layer, just as in dreams. The subconscious uses the dreams to influence our conscious thinking indirectly, but when we interpret our dreams we can increase our progress immediately where the subconsciousness takes a long time to reach the goal, if ever.

Jung concentrates on the feeling’s in dream interpretation where the other concentrates on the symbols, like Chinese signs, as concrete guidance from God or the higher ‘I’, depending on context.

In the first part I have references to esoteric texts, in the second part a table relating the technical terms within different traditions including Jung, Steiner, Aristotle, and Kabbalah, and in the third part practical dream interpretation.

Esoteric views on Dream Interpretation

Erich Fromm writes in “The Forgotten Language”:

The Talmud says: “Dreams which are not interpreted are like letters which have not been opened.”

Rudolf Steiner has this general advice about the understanding of the spiritual world (GA156):

The only way we can experience anything from the spiritual world is to understand that we must take what it offers us as letters and words, which we must learn to read. That is it. And not to learn, to believe that we can spare ourselves learning to read the esoteric script, would be just as clever as someone taking a book and saying, “There are fools who say that something is expressed in this book. I thumb from page to page in it and see only pretty letters.” those who cannot read the letters absorb only what they see and are unconcerned about what is expressed.

He states that we should learn to understand the messages from the spiritual world, they are there to collect.

In Job’s book (33:1-18), which is a description of “The Dark Night of the Soul” also called Metanoia, it says:

Why do you complain to him that he responds to no one’s words?
For God does speak—now one way, now another— though no one perceives it.
In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls on people as they slumber in their beds, he may speak in their ears and terrify them with warnings, to turn them from wrongdoing and keep them from pride, to preserve them from the pit, their lives from perishing by the sword.

It continues telling that those who don’t hear the message of the dreams becomes sick, as they don’t heed the warnings.

From the Content of the Esoteric Classes we have the following around the methodology:

One gradually notices that one’s dream life takes on a more regular character. The spiritual world flows into this at first. Meditation is the occult key for this. One should get a notebook and briefly write down characteristic dreams in the morning. Thereby, one gets practice in retaining what flows to one from higher worlds. That’s the first elementary method to later get to bringing spiritual experiences through, that is, that they break through into bright day consciousness. Dreams that are only reminiscences from daily life or that are based on heart disturbances, headaches or other bodily conditions are only of value if they’re clothed in a symbolical form, for instance if the thumping heart appears as a cooking oven, or the painful brain as a dome into which animals creep, etc. Only the symbolism is of value here and not the dream’s content. For the symbolic form is initially used by the spiritual world to introduce us to the forces of higher worlds. That’s why one must pay attention to the fine points of this symbolism.

I would add, get a notebook and write the dreams down each time you wake, there can easily be more than one message a night. Even the bible recommends taking notes, Dan. 7.1:

… Daniel had a dream, and visions passed through his mind as he was lying in bed. He wrote down the substance of his dream. See also Dream Interpretation: A Biblical Understanding.

The persons who appear in dreams are all part of you, with few exceptions, if a person hinders you in the dream, it’s an aspect of yourself that are the cause (GA156), this is vital to understand, as it’s all too easy to project the dreams and problems onto others:

If, for example, one person fights or wounds another, you experience yourself as the inflictor of the wound and also as the soul that is wounded or attacked. You are everything in these images. You are utterly within them. If you had an image in front of you in which a beheading is depicted you experience yourself at the same time as the person who is beheaded and the person who does the beheading. That is how you experience yourself within this very fluctuating world of images. You yourself are every image and every movement in it.

Following Bobby Matherne is Fritz Perls dream interpretation (Gestalt Therapy) a good representative for this methology:

Fritz Perls taught people to interpret every component of a dream as a part of their own self. If you are driving a car and some one is skating in front of you slowing you down, you are both the driver of the car and the skater. If you then encounter a woman whose pickup truck is broken down, you are both the truck and the woman seeking help.

Steiner have the following, about dreams and the students relation to the higher self, From the Content of the Esoteric Classes, 10-26-’09:

Anyone who has a hidden opposition to his teacher will find that this feeling soon breaks through and adversely influences the effect of meditation. In an esoteric’s daily meditations he should keep it in mind that he’s mainly trying to get through to his higher self, and he should reflect on what this higher self is. He shouldn’t think that he’s supposed to bring something to this higher self — he should have an expectant attitude towards him and expect everything from him. Usually there are three ways in which it approaches a pupil on his path. The first way is a rather flitting one and it requires the attentiveness that an esoteric should have for all things. Namely, this is in a dream, and what happens there is what one calls a doubling of the ‘I’. For instance, one has a problem or wants to do something. Then someone appears to one in a dream who tells one what to do or who solves the problem, one who is better and cleverer than oneself. One should pay attention to such dreams.

The cleverer is what I later call the teacher. As most dreams are rather depressing, they tell where we go wrong and that we should do something to change it, it is very easy to get a somewhat strained relationship to the teacher, but the dreams are created in love to us, but the dream interface is so primitive that it can’t be done in a more gentle way.

The Hebrew and the Christians have worked with dream interpretation for many thousand of years, so it is no surprise that they are much more concrete than the abstract psychoanalysts, and when I found their description I saw that they matched my experiences.

From Christian Dream Interpretation

Discerning Dreams About Yourself
At least 95% of your dreams will be about you – your inner self, your current situation, your relationships. Your dreams come from your heart and will express the things that are important to your heart.
The most common area your spirit will reveal will be your emotional, heart struggles and sanctification issues, expressed symbolically. Body and health issues are also important to your spirit, so they may be revealed, again in a symbolic way. Your relationships to other people are important to your heart, so these may be conveyed in signs and symbols. And the circumstances and events that surround your life, ministry or vocation are also important to your heart, so these may be portrayed symbolically in your
dreams.

Jung and Steiner

If both Jung and Steiner were right, they had to have a common ground.  I don’t describe precisely what Animus and Anima are, as it’s explained better by others, but I show where they fit into the seven layer model of man, and how they fit into the model of Steiner, Aristotle and Plato. It may extend the understanding of both models.

The three Soul components:

• Orektikon, Eros, Sentient soul represents Anima for men and Animus for woman,
• Kinetikon, Logos, Intellectual soul, also called Heart and Mind soul, represents the Lower ‘I’/Persona/Ego, and
• Dianoetikon, Thumos, Consciousness soul, represents the Higher ‘I’.

The last soul component is the least developed, but we are currently working on it.

This table relates the Jung symbolism to various esoteric models, especially the model of Plato/Aristotle/Steiner:

	The Bodies of Man	Steiner Aristotle/Plato Hebrew	Age From – To Chakra	Feminine associations	Usage In Dreams
					Man	Woman
1	Physical body Malkuth	Physical Body	0 – (7) Root
2	Etheric body Yesod	Ether or Life body Threptikon	(7) – (14) Generative	Lilith	Anima	Animus
		Sentient body Aesthetikon	(14) – 21 Solar Plexus
3	Astral body Hod Kama
		Sentient soul Orektikon/Eros Nephesch	21 – 28 Heart	Maria Magdalene
					Lower I The Persona
4	Ego Netzach Nous Monad	Intellectual soul or Heart and Mind soul Kinetikon/Logos Ruach	28 – 35 Throat	Maria, Cleophas wife
		Consciousness soul or Spirit soul Dianoetikon/Thumos N’schamah	35 – 42 Brow	Virgin Sophia	Higher I The Divine Child
5	Manas Tiphareth Transformed astral body	Spirit self	42 – 49 Crown		The Teacher The Wise Man or Woman
6	Buddhi Chesed Transformed etheric body	Life spirit	49 – 56	The World Mother
7	Atma Geburah Transformed physical body	Spirit body	56 – 63

Karma and Dreams

My experience is that dreams 99,9% of the time has to do with the previous day. They are not good to tell you deep spiritual truth or intricate stories about the future, so it’s only in rare cases dreams contain other than help for your daily life.

When you go through the events of the  day, just before you sleep, you may recognize situations where you created karma, and by understanding what you did wrong, you may correct the error in the current life, instead of postponing it for future incarnations.

Dreams have a similar function, they try to instill your subconscious to evade the situation if or when it would happen again, but if you understand your dream, you can work consciously on it also, sparing yourself from many depressing experiences.

A few Examples:

If you dream that your car is broke or you can’t find the key’s, it means that you don’t do the right things.

If you jump on a trampoline it means you do a lot of work without getting anywhere.

If you are too late for the train, you didn’t take an oppurtunity which fate had set up for you.

If you start in kindergarten, you have behaved childish.

All of these dreams is a reference to the day before.

If we don’t react on the dreams, and handle the problems, the dreams may become nightmares.

I think dreams get more intense with age, as the possibility to understand and change the situation grows with maturity. You should see the dreams as messages from your Higher I telling you where you went wrong. These dreams are usually depressing as they tell you to correct things, but if you do well, you may get a dream in between where you fly on a private jet, move up to a higher class in school, even a chaste kiss for particularly good work in a complicated situation, and so on, showing progress.

Dream Symbols and interpretation

Anima/Animus

Anima/Animus represents the base unconscious Feelings and the Ether body, and are female actors in mens dreams and male actors in women’s dreams, for example your husband/wife, friends, colleagues, classmates, old girlfriends/boyfriends, or an unknown person.

As it concerns feelings, you seldom speak with your Anima/Animus, it’s mostly some kind of action, Love or some affection, or the opposite to that, showing the state between your feminine and masculine side.

Animus/Anima can in real seldom situations represent your physical body, maybe in connection with health problems. Remember, it’s the opposite of your own gender.

A.Andrew Gonzales,www.sublimatrix.com

Ego, Persona or Lower ‘I’

The Ego, the Lower ‘I’ represents Thinking, the dreamer in the dream. One of the goals is to unify the Lower ‘I’ with the corresponding Anima/Animus, that is Feeling and Thinking. Related to the Chymical Wedding.

Shadows or False Ego’s

There can also be other actors (Shadows), playing the role of False Ego‘s . Typically friends, classmates, colleagues, or less common, typically in groups, unknown players. These persons sometimes characterize traits which tells what the dream is about, but in all circumstances it’s easier for the “dreaming facility” to use an existing person than to create a new personality.

The Shadow’s I see as debris flowing around in the unconscious mind blocking the Chakras. They are the background for the plot of the dreams.

The False Ego’s are the persona’s we set up when relating to other people to hide us behind, protect our selves, or to impress other persons. Their role in the dreams are to show that they are there and to remove them you have to recognize them. There can of course be persons in the dream which is only extras just to give the background, but then they will be out of focus, they will be difficult to remember.

A friend of mine dreamed that she was playing on a tin drum in a concentration camp, followed by many anonymous people walking in ranks. It showed that her fear for other peoples views made her entertain a lot of false ego’es to please everybody, but it was a virtual hell for her soul.

Higher ‘I’, The Divine Child

The Higher ‘I’ represents the Willing, and is usually represented by a child, or teenager in the dream. Whatever happens to the child is a result of your life. The more the child prosper the better. The goal is to become the Divine Child.

The Wise Teacher

One more role is the Teacher, which I presumes represents the Spirit self, and in dreams usually is shown as your Father, Mother, a Teacher, or Chief from life, who you have some respect for. In dreams they often come down from upstairs or leave upstairs. Can be of both sexes, but I it’s mostly of the opposite gender.

Dream Symbols

Three other symbols which are paramount in dreams are your House, various Schools, and Transport Vehicles:

In dreams the House usually represents your physical and psychical state of development. Is it clean, is it in chaos, are you building on your second or third floor, is it finished? Working on the first floor tell’s about work on the higher consciousness, and windows or a television tell’s about spiritual vision.

The schools tell a little about how it is going, are you in a kindergarten, school, High School, or the University? Do you have a table? Have you forgotten your books? And so forth.

If you are reading Donald Duck or other zines you are wasting your time with inferior reading stuff.

Big golden or old looking books is about your collected wisdom, precisely what it means depend on context. It could be related to a chakra.

In dreams transport vehicles tells about how your journey is progressing. If you are riding a bicycle you are not doing especially well. Your car can go out of gasoline, or you can’t find the keys, you may have lost your ticket for the bus,  come late for the train. If everything is going as it should, which is more seldom, you may get a first class ticket for the airplane, or the train is waiting for you at the central station, saying that you have done right and you are on the track, even that a new period is started.

Numbers

It is extremely seldom to remember numbers in dreams, as it normally have no meaning. It’s like reading a book in a dream, without remembering the text, where the reading is vital not the text. If you remember a number it’s important to write it down quickly. What the number signifies depends on the context; it could be the number of days, time of day, number of hours, a specific date, and so forth.

Names

It’s also seldom to hear Noun’s in dreams, so when you hear one, try to find out what it stands for. Names in dreams can be quite humorous, but still contain vital information.

All the time my wife have been part of my dreams she had played the role of my anima, and other woman have also played the role, depending on the archetype needed in the message of the dream. 

Anonymous dream persons

Actual people from the real world are played by anonymous players, you have to use the context to decipher the real world implication.

The times where the dream have involved my wife or other real world people, it has been played by an anonymous character.

Periods

The table show seven-year periods connected to various chakras. Each period handles a given set of problems each person have to work with, and the chakras describe these. Cycles of Seven.

Here and Now

Most dreams are rather concrete, and they accentuate specific problems from the day before, and these problems are typically waves of underlying currents, life themes, waiting to be handled.

What makes dreams difficult to understand are that we live in the middle of our problems, that we can’t overview our own situation; but our dreams can, and if we learn to interpret our dreams it will help us to understand our own situation.

Dream Interpretation and Chakras

From time to time there are dreams telling about your progress or in which areas you have problems; here some symbols and colors related to the Chakras.

The Figure are the symbol of the Chakra, hold the cursor above the symbol, a short text maybe with a word in UPPERCASE, tells what which part to look for, as an example is Muladhara’s symbol a Square. Clicking on a symbol opens a Vortex of Light description of the Chakra. The Crown chakra has no dream symbol as I am aware of.

Chakra	Color	Animal	Figure	Comments
SahasraraCrown	Purple			Moon
Ajna Third Eye Pineal	Indigo			Clairvoyance, psychic abilities, imagination, dreaming, Venus.
VishuddhaThroat	Blue	White elephant		Pressure when you are not communicating your emotions properly, Mercury.
AhanhataHeart	Green	Birds, animals with antlers		Lack of compassion, Sun.
ManipuraNavel Solar Plexus	Yellow	Sacrificial animal		Personal Power, anger or a sense of victimization, Mars.
SvadhistanaSacralHara	Orange	Water animals		Emotional problems or sexual guilt, Jupiter.
MuladharaRoot	Red	Elephant, horse, and other big and heavy animals		Earth, survival, grounding, stillness, Saturn.

Literature

Dreams

Dream Interpretation: A Biblical Understanding

Af Herman Riffel:

Many believers read the scriptural accounts of dreams and never think it could happen to them. Today, though, many are realizing that God has never ceased using dreams and visions to guide, instruct, and warn. This book will give you a biblical understanding of dreams that you never had before!

Christian Dream Interpretation:

A short but very well written text on dream interpretation.

Discerning Dreams About Yourself
At least 95% of your dreams will be about you – your inner self, your current situation, your relationships. Your dreams come from your heart and will express the things that are important to your heart.
The most common area your spirit will reveal will be your emotional, heart struggles and sanctification issues, expressed symbolically. Body and health issues are also important to your spirit, so they may be revealed, again in a symbolic way. Your relationships to other people are important to your heart, so these may be conveyed in signs and symbols. And the circumstances and events that surround your life, ministry or vocation are also important to your heart, so these may be portrayed symbolically in your
dreams.

Myths-Dreams-Symbols

based on Eric Ackroyd1 & 2 and Edward C. Whitmont.

The Individuation Process: The Shadow, Anima/Animus, Mana personalities, the higher Self.

Site directory.

A Step-By-Step Approach

This Step by Step Approach describes Dream Interpretation in a way usable with my terminology. It also has descriptions of how to combine the I Ching with Dream Interpretation:

I find that a very useful guideline for dream interpretation, especially at first, is to take everything in the dream to represent an aspect of the dreamer.

For example, if the dream involves the person travelling in a car with their uncle, then the car represents some aspect of the person’s life, and the uncle also represents a part of the person. This isn’t the only way to interpret dreams, but it’s a very good starting point, I think.

Here’s the step-by-step approach that I use.
I hope that by going through the example and then trying the exercise you’ll start to get a feel for what’s involved in trying to interpret a dream, whether it’s your own or someone else’s.

Dream Encyclopedia

Example: The House in Your Dream
…..
Each dream image holds enormous data, emotional response, and created patterns of behaviour. So in considering the house in your dream you need to remember you are in touch with a full surround databank of fantastic information about you, your past and your possibilities. You can interact with this information by exploring it in the right way. And to help with this let us look at and question some of the possibilities your dream house might hold.
…..

Contains many interesting and usable entries about the Archetypes used in dreams.

Dream Dictionary

Example with House:

Seeing a house in your dream, represents your own soul and self. Specific rooms in the house indicate a specific aspect of your psyche. In general, the attic represents your intellect, the basement represents the unconscious, etc. If the house is empty, then it indicates feelings of insecurity. If the house is shifting, then it suggests that you are going through some personal changes and changing your belief system. Dreaming that you are cleaning your house means your need to clear out your thoughts and getting rid of old ways. You are seeking self-improvement. Seeing an old, run-down house in your dream, represents your old beliefs, attitudes and how you used to think or feel. A situation in your current life may be bringing about those same old attitudes and feelings. Alternatively, the old house may symbolize your need to update you mode of thinking. Dreaming that your house is broken into, suggests that you are feeling violated. It may refer to a particular relationship or current situation in your life. Alternatively, it indicates that some unconscious material is attempting to make itself known. There are some aspects of yourself that you have denied. Dreaming of a haunted house means unfinished emotional business, related to your childhood family, dead relatives, or repressed memories and feelings. Dreaming that a house disappeared, indicates that you are not feeling grounded. You feel uprooted by a particular circumstance or relationship in your life.

This entry looks quite ok, I havent checked other entries.

Dreams and Dreaming:

From Dreams and Dreaming:

Dreams as not really nonsensical, but a lot of them are crypted somehow. Major psychologists have studied how dreams work and why they appear, and whether they occur according to patterns, and which patterns. Carl Jung, Medard Boss, Calvin Hall, Montague Ullman and others have decreed that dreams do carry meanings, but you need to understand how dreaming functions. Dreams functions on their own terms. Through the basics of dream interpretations to get a hold on many of them.

Some dreams reflect mind content that pertains to tasks and problems and other issues the mind gets deeply involved in. And parts of the jumbled “video clips” within may just present “left-overs” from days before. Dream interpretations need to be tentative, perhaps open-ended too. Consider the deep feelings and messages involved in the recurrent and most impressive dreams you have had.

Decode and interpret the flows of various icons, images, scenes, actors, happenings, concomitant feelings so as to arrive at tentative or putative postulates about what impressive dreams could mean. In such work there is help in mulling over single, outstanding ideas or episodes inside the stream or flow of a single dream. Take notes of them and learn to draw special illustrations that serve you in a log book. all of it could help, but it may be time-consuming work that had better be done for the whole life. In short, you have to learn to assess well.

Carl Gustav Jung on Dreams:

Here we come upon something of the utmost importance for the applicability of dream-analysis: the dream describes the inner situation of the dreamer, but the conscious mind denies its truth and reality, or admits it only grudgingly.

More on Carl Jung’s Archetypes.

Jungian dream interpretation: a handbook of theory and practice

Comprehensive guide to an understanding of dreams in light of the basic principles of analytical psychology. Particular attention to common motifs, the role of complexes, and the goal and purpose of dreams.

Catching the Thread:

Sufism, Dreamwork, and Jungian Psychology

By Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Irina Tweedie

Aristotle

In  Greek Sculpture and the Four Elements J.L.Benson references Steiner on Aristotle’s description of the soul of man:

Aristotle distinguishes in man the vegetative soul, by which he means approximately what we call ether body, then the aesthetikon or sensitive soul, which we call the sentient or astral body. Next he speaks of orektikon which corresponds to sentient soul, then comes kinetikon corresponding to the intellectual soul, and he uses the term dianoetikon for the consciousness soul.

J.L.Benson writes in Greek Color Theories and the Four Elements :

To my knowledge Steiner, working closely with concepts from Goethe’s scientific work, is the only modern thinker to give full weight to the macrocosmic aspect of the microcosmic foursome. Above the physical body (which Aristotle dealt with en passant : de An. 411a he uses the term etheric body for Aristotle’s threptikon or nutritive soul, astral or sentient body for the aesthetikon or sensitive soul and ego for nous.

Rudolf Steiner

On dreams:

One gradually notices that one’s dream life takes on a more regular character. The spiritual world flows into this at first. Meditation is the occult key for this. One should get a notebook and briefly write down characteristic dreams in the morning. Thereby, one gets practice in retaining what flows to one from higher worlds. That’s the first elementary method to later get to bringing spiritual experiences through, that is, that they break through into bright day consciousness. Dreams that are only reminiscences from daily life or that are based on heart disturbances, headaches or other bodily conditions are only of value if they’re clothed in a symbolical form, for instance if the thumping heart appears as a cooking oven, or the painful brain as a dome into which animals creep, etc. Only the symbolism is of value here and not the dream’s content. For the symbolic form is initially used by the spiritual world to introduce us to the forces of higher worlds. That’s why one must pay attention to the fine points of this symbolism. In your case — according to your capacities — it’ll also be good if you compare the dreams that you become aware of with the experiences of the next day. For your dreams may soon take on a portentous character. If this happens we’ll say some more about how this thing can be made productive for your spiritual life. Please give these indications a try and tell me how things are going in about eight days.

The Essential Nature of Man from Theosophy.

Chakras

Vortex of Light

This site offers an abbreviated introduction to the Chakra System, applications for meditation and healing using this system, and its relationship to other healing systems.

Chrystal Links

Visual appealing page on the Chakras.

Kheper.net

Contains information on a deeper Esoteric level

Paracelsus in “The Life of Paracelsus” by Franz Hartmann

“If we desire to enter into communication with the spirit of a deceased person, we may make a picture representing that person, and write his name and the questions we wish to ask him upon it, and put that picture under our head after retiring to rest; and during our sleep the deceased appears to us in our dreams and answers our questions. But the experiment must be made in a spirit of unfaltering faith, full of confidence that it will succeed, else it will fail, because it is not the picture that brings the spirit, but our faith that brings us into communication with it; and the picture is only made for the purpose of assisting the imagination, and to make it more powerful (Philosoph., v.).

Previous version of the text

The earlier version:  What are the feminine and masculine sides we all talk about? My goal was to find the relation between Jung’s vocabulary and esoteric terminology, together with hints on dream interpretation, there are written much wrong on the subject.

<img class=”aligncenter” title=”borromeanrings_b” src=”http://kimgraaemunch.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/borromeanrings_b.gif?w=60&h=58&#8243; alt=”borromeanrings_b” width=”60″ height=”58″ />

Guideline to Dream Interpretation

When I first read this guide I thought it was very precise, it described the way the psychoanalyst looks at dreams, very concentrated around feelings.

With my experience and studies I found out that feelings don’t play such a vital role, if at all, in dreams. Dreams are more like Chinese signs build by symbols. The bible are filled with dreams and they are very specific, not the least based on feelings, the dream-interface is simply to complicated to transfer messages with feelings. To only look at feelings is like using a thermometer instead of a scanner when looking for cancer. There are written some good articles on Christian or Jewish dream interpretation, so look for pdf files “dream interpretation” and Christian, Hebrew or Jewish dream interpretation, eventually other religious tradition.

Unknown Author – taken from a Psychosynthesis paper and again taken from the interesting site: Plotinus by Alice Ouzounian.

I have just found this exquisite document about Dream Interpretation and as I can’t write it better I have put it on my blog. One additional hint, keep a Dream Journal, as it sharpens your memory and understanding through the process. If you are into spiritual work it’s always good to keep a journal over your experiences.

All dreams work to accomplish one of two things:

1. To solve the problems of your conscious, waking life.
2. To present you with access to new potentials and creativity. Because dreams come from all levels of your being, understanding the imagery and type of dream is the key to understanding and actualizing the messages you receive during sleep.

Symbolism

Symbols express those things for which we have no words. By working with them, we use both hemispheres of the brain and tap the subconscious mind more fully, which in turn opens the doors to our intuitive self.

A dream symbol could literally represent itself as well as its possible interpretations. The images and symbols may also represent aspects of your personality. When you begin to reflect on the symbols, always start by registering your first impressions but don’t stop with the obvious. Dreams are symbolic representations, not reproductions. The dream images always represent more than themselves, and so the more you work with them, the more you will understand them.

Dreams do not come to tell you what you already know. Look at the dream images and symbols as pieces of a puzzle that you can put together only by finding out what they mean to you.

[See Dream Interpretation in Esoteric Work about symbols.]

How do you relate to the dream?

1. Start by looking at how the dream could be reflecting something going on in your daily life.
2. Then move on to the more subtle, free association with the dream images.
3. What’s the first thing you would normally think about in connection to that symbol or image, activity or person appearing in your dream scenario?
4. doing more than representing themselves. They may also represent qualities or characteristics that you have “projected” on them. For example, you may dream of your grandfather, a man who was very kind to you. The quality of kindness is therefore associated with your grandfather, so dreaming of him could symbolize kindness. (You will know the difference between a symbolic representation of a quality or characteristic and a real “psychic” contact with a loved one.)
5. Examine the emotions within the dream scenario. What is the predominant emotion associated with the dream? Remember that it may be the emotion aroused that is the key and the scenario is simply a vehicle to deliver the message.
6. When you wake up, does a particular feeling remain? For example, are you frightened, frustrated, happy, excited?

Dreams often exaggerate emotions, qualities and situations to get a particular message across to you. This does not mean that you have that quality or will experience that situation to the intensity you experienced within the dream. When this occurs, you are often being given a strong thump on the head to pay attention! This is what nightmares do. They are dynamic calls for your attention. They show you your greatest fears, fears that must be confronted.

Dreams often come in a series. Various dreams in a single or successive nights may be different ways of saying the same thing. The subconscious mind may be communicating the same message to you in different ways to make sure that you get it. Look for relationships and symbols that reoccur and notice the similarities. Ask yourself what they have in common.

Proper dream interpretation leads towards greater understanding of yourself, but do not lose touch with your common sense in dream work. On the surface, dreams may seem to predict futures events or alarming situations, but do not jump to conclusions. With practice, you will be able to discern if a dream is precognitive (reflecting future events) or not.

Dreams use symbols to make you develop and understand your personal symbolic language. This language comes directly from your soul and uses symbols and images from impersonal archetypes and from personal experience to make a strong or subtle impact on your psyche. This symbolic language is unique, given just to you, in the hope that it will make you conscious of your real needs and problems. This language of the soul also helps you to unfold your creativity and activates the spiritual dimension within your psyche.
Painting by John Vega

A framework for dream work might be:

1. Determine the dream type, issue, crisis, a block, a resolution already included in the dream.
2. Make a list of the symbols in the dream.
3. Find out the relationships between symbols.
4. Find out the relationships between the dream ego and the symbols.
5. Find out the similarities and contrasts in the dream.
6. List what the dream ego is and is not doing in the dream
7. Find out about the ego’s relationships with other items in the dream.
8. Make a summary, and list what you have discovered.

This is a basic method of working with dreams that helps you develop self-analysis, observation, and a “conscious” and “lucid” state of consciousness. You can follow it up with different methods.

The Crucible

This star or “Christmas Tree” is a variant of the seven pointed star in Esoteric History of Man called the Crucible and is a Rosicrucian symbol.

Right side of man Outer planets Physical world Salt		Ahanhata- Heart Monad – Soul – Ego Mercury Gold	Left side of man Inner planets Spiritual world sulfur – phosphorus
Manipura Navel Solar Plexus Astral Tin				Vishuddha Throat Manas Quicksilver
Svadhistana Sacral-Hara Etheric Iron				Ajna Third Eye Pineal Buddhi Copper
Muladhara Root Physical Lead				Sahasrara Crown Atma Silver
Ahrimanic – Yin		From the Occult Sign of the Lamb	Luciferic – Yang

The drawing is interesting in more than one way:

• Following the lines we have the planets in the order of the development of our planet Earth: old Saturn, old Sun, old Mon, … and which we also have in our weekdays. (Esoteric History of Man).
• The planets in the ‘old’ esoteric sequence: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Mercury, Venus, Moon. In the exoteric, Mercury and Venus have changed place.
• The left side contains the Ahrimanic outer planets and the right side the Luciferic inner planets with the Sun in the Equilibrium. (Serpents of the Kundalini Fire).

My understanding are that these planets are connected to our Chakras, and there are many diverging theories about how these planets are connected to the Chakras. My thesis are that the sequence follows the tree above. Most people have the same planets for the lower three as here, but for the upper four there are many different theories. In former times the Sun was connected to the Solar Plexus, but as we have reached our current level of development it now corresponds to the heart.

My major problem are the connection between the Moon and the Crown Chakra, but it could be justified. There could also be other considerations. I would like some ideas if you have thought about it?

The symbolism appear in dreams, in connection with natural initiations, so the right understanding is necessary so just of this reason I wan’t to know the right relation. (What are the feminine and masculine sides we all talk about?)

It could be that the Crown Chakra is the old way to the gods and the new way goes through the heart, that would explain why the Moon, symbolizing the previous incarnation of the Earth, was connected to the Crown chakra and the Sun to the Heart chakra.

From Spiritweb on the Kumaras(Theosophy):

The Divine Mother is in you. Her abiding place, as you know, is the white four-petaled chakra at the base of the spine. This sacred fire is your life force. It is the energy that rises to meet the light that descends over the crystal cord. You can see the crystal cord on the Chart of the Presence. The energy of the Father-Mother God descends over the crystal cord and the sacred fire of the Mother rises from the base chakra. So, we are nourished by Father above and by Mother below and yet Father above contains Mother, and Mother below contains Father.

Man was created on the old Saturn incarnation of the Earth by The Mother, Thrones in Christian symbolism or Binah in Kabbalah (Diagram). The Crown Chakra is nearest to the Father of the old Moon, so it would be appropriate to have the Moon there. And in the middle between the Mother and the Father we have the Son in the Heart Chakra, in equilibrium.

Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Mercury, Venus, Moon

Chakana – The Incan Cross

Chakana, the Incan Cross, are equivalent to the Yin-Yang symbol and the Zodiac. Through a central axis a shaman journeyed in trance to the lower plane or Underworld and the higher levels inhabited by the superior gods. The snake, puma, and condor are totemic representatives of the three levels. (Axis Mundi)

From Wikipedia:

The stepped cross is made up of an equal-armed cross indicating the cardinal points of the compass and a superimposed square.

The square represents the other two levels of existence. The three levels of existence are Hana Pacha (the upper world inhabited by the superior gods), Kay Pacha, (the world of our everyday existence) and Ucu or Urin Pacha (the underworld inhabited by spirits of the dead, the ancestors, their overlords and various deities having close contact to the Earth plane). The hole through the center of the cross is the Axis by means of which the shaman transits the cosmic vault to the other levels.

The cross has 12 points and legend has it that these points represent the following sayings, affirmations and life points: I live, I work, I love, The underworld, The current world, The upper world, The cougar, The Eagle, The snake, Don’t Lie, Don’t Cheat, Don’t Steal.

The four flat sides represent the elements Water Air Earth Fire

North is air, south is water, east is fire and west is earth. The top arm is held in the East with the fire. The centre is the 5th element, the force of love emanating from the void.

The three rectangles could represent the physical world, the ether world, and the astral world, with each side representing one of the four elements in each world.

The three worlds are known all over the world:

• with Uku Pacha as the lower Chthonic underworld, with the snake as symbol, the Fixed modality of astrology, Tamas of the Gunas,
• the middle world, Kay Pacha, in which we live, have the puma as symbol, the Mutable modality of astrology, Sattva of the Gunas,
• and the higher world Hanan Pacha with the condor as symbol, the Cardinal modality of astrology, Rajas of the Gunas.

I have written more about these relations in Serpents of the Kundalini Fire, especially in connection to the Gunas, the Chakras, and the Kaballah Tree of Life.

From Oder of Incari:

The top section is the Hanag Pacha which is the upper world (super conscious) and the animal symbol for the upper world is the condor. It holds, within the steps, the principles of the tradition. They are Yachay, Llankay and Munay.

Yachay means knowledge in its basic expression, but its higher expression is wisdom. It is knowledge, which has been integrated through experience and is externalized as wisdom. We must live what we know and master it in our daily lives. Llankay (pronounced ylang kai) Llankay relates to work, labour and productivity. It is to work in an honest way and to be honest in your work. It is to work for the betterment and greater good of yourself and your family, your community and humanity (your greater family). Munay is a word that simply means love and is the principle present in all others. It is not simply the love between a man and a woman, a mother and a child, although these interactions can contain the infinite expressions of Munay. It is the expression of unconditional love. It contains a deep- seated compassion for all livings things and their suffering.

From A Dictionary of Symbols By Juan Eduardo Cirlot

Chthonian Demons
Various beings mentioned in mythologies come under this heading, such as the Greek harpies and Erinyes, the Hindu Rakshasas, the Arabic djinns, the Germanic elves and Valkyries, etc.

Chthonian Snake Goddess

In Aztec mythology, Cihuacoatl  (”snake woman”; also Cihuacóatl, Chihucoatl, Ciucoatl) was a motherhood and fertility goddess, haunting crossroads at night to take children. She also helped Quetzalcoatl create humanity by grinding the bones of our ancestors and mixing the result with Quetzalcoatl’s blood to form the clay from which humanity were molded. Here the soul (Quetzalcoatl’s blood) is born into the physical (the bones), giving the body of man (the clay) with the Ego.

Cihuacoatl – Snake Woman

The Naga Kanya (Cobra Women) are a race of fairy-like demigods born of the Nāga, which are water deities. They have the form of beautiful maidens, but usually maidens only from the waist up, while from the waist down they are serpents.

Nāga kanya – Hindu Snake Woman

The Japanese have Nure-onna (“wet woman”), here in an illustration from the Edo Period, by Sawaki Suushi.

Nure-onna – Snake Woman

The snake loa (spirit) are known in Benin and Haiti, she is the companion of the most popular god, Damballah-Wedo, also a serpent:

Aida Wedo – Haiti

From Pink Tentacle:

“Nure-onna is typically seen at the water’s edge, washing her long, flowing hair. In some stories, she carries a small child, which she uses to attract potential victims. When a well-intentioned person offers to hold the baby for Nure-onna, the child attached itself to the victim’s hands and grows heavy, making it nearly impossible to flee. In some stories, Nure-onna uses her long, powerful tongue to suck all the blood from her victim’s body.”

In Ancient Myth Steiner writes about the Greek Mysteries:

The Greeks revered in the Mysteries other Gods as well as the celestial Gods, namely, the Chthonic Gods. And of one who was initiated in the Mysteries one could say with truth: he learns to know the upper and the lower Gods, the Upper and the Lower Gods. The upper Gods were those of the Zeus-circle; but they only have rulership over what is spread out before the senses, and what the intellect can understand. The human being is more than this. Man is rooted with his being in the kingdom of the lower Gods, in the kingdom of the Chthonic Gods.

This Chthonic world consists of twelve elemental groups of beings, which are the real foundation of the visible physical world, and all kinds of magical systems around the Earth try to influence the physical world through these beings. Don Juan talk about the flyers, inorganic beings, in Castanedas books, the Gnostics talk about the Archons, alien predators, the wise Greek healer Daskalos talks bout the Elementals, and Jung talks about the Shadow.

See “Gnostic Parallels in the Writings of Carlos Castaneda” which are good and the best contribution on that web-address. I have collected some texts on Elementals building on the Christian view of Daskalos here.

Steiner writes in “The East in the Light of the West” about the cosmogony of Pherecydes:

In most remarkable words, Pherecydes spoke of the holy primordial triad, of Zeus, Kronos and Chthon, principles fundamental to the earth, having come over from pre-terrestrial ages; he also speaks of a further evolution. But in ancient times men did not clothe matters of this kind in such dry, crude concepts as they do today, they drew vivid pictures of what they saw and recognised in spiritual realms. Pherecydes said: ‘Chthon becomes Gea (today called earth), because of the gift of Zeus whereby she came to be covered as with a garment.’ This is a wonderful description of that evolution which I have just outlined in a few short words. The earth was alone; outside it were the sun and the moon, the spiritual kingdoms of Zeus and of Kronos. The sun from without began to work upon the earth and to fructify it in its then chaotic state; or, in the language of the old Greek sage, Zeus fructified Chthon. The beneficent influences of the kingdom of Zeus were sent down to the physical earth in the warmth and light of the sun. This was the gift made by Zeus to the earth. The earth covered herself with the garment of plant and animal forms, and with the forms of physical men. Chthon becomes Gea; therefore, because of the gift of Zeus the earth covers herself with a garment.

In Relation to Astrology

In  “Astrology, Psychology, and The Four Elements” writes Stephen Arroyo  about Zodiacal Signs as Energy Patterns:

The four elements of astrology (fire, earth, air, and water) are the basic building blocks of all material structures and organic wholes. Each element represents a basic kind of energy and consciousness that operates within each of us. Just as modern physics has shown that energy is matter, these four elements interweave and combine to form all matter. When the spark of life leaves a human body at death, the four elements all dissociate and return to their primal state. It is only life itself, manifesting in an organized, living whole, that holds together the four elements. All four are in every person, although each person is consciously more attuned to some types of energy than others. Each of the four elements manifests in three vibrational modalities: cardinal, fixed, and mutable. Hence, when we combine the four elements with the three modalities, we have twelve primary patterns of energy which are called the zodiacal signs.

Rahu and Ketu

From Rahu and Ketu in Hindu Mythology:

“According to mythological tales Rahu is the head of the dragon. Head as we know contain the brain and controls the functioning of the entire body. This suggests that Rahu is the controlling and active node. Ketu rules of the body, sends feelings and sensations to the brain. To analyse those sensations and take action if necessary is within the jurisdiction of Rahu. More precisely Ketu has the power of transforming the events into experience which turn into wisdom.”

Rahu and Ketu

The head is the Luciferic and the tail is the Ahrimanic, where Rahu relates to Dharma, and Ketu to Karma.

Literature

Wikipedia have a good reference article on the symbolism of serpents:

Wikipedia – Serpent(symbolism)

I look at the snake in European mythology in The Snake and the Heel in Mythos which build on Steiner’s lectures.

More on Incan religion in

Andean Mysticism and Healing the Plane(pdf) by Oakley E. Gordon, Ph.D.

Rahu and Ketu

Esoteric History of Man

The Planetary Cycles
Our Earth have gone through a number of incarnations, each incarnation alternates between pralaya, a cosmic night and manvantara, a cosmic day, just as we alternately pass through day and night, life and dead. Pralaya is the non-physical, preparatory stage and manvantara the physical or lower spiritual development stage.

Man have gone through three planetary Earth incarnations (AEons) before Earth, and are going through three after Earth before we have finished the complete development cycle. These seven Earth incarnations are called Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, Jupiter, Venus, and ending with Vulcan. The emanation of Sephira’s in the Kabbalah tree of life corresponds to these planetary cycles.

The Earth development phase is split in two parts: Mars, before the Son incarnates, and Mercury after this incarnation. In a seven pointed star it looks:

The sequence of the planetary development,
Mars is first part of Earth and Mercury last part of Earth development.

Just start with Saturn, and follow the arrows. It follow the week days:

♄ - Saturn	Samedi, Samstag, Lørdag	Saturday
☉ - Sun	Sonntag, Søndag	Sunday
☾ - Moon	Lundi, Montag, Mandag	Monday
♂ - Mars	Mardi, Dienstag, Tyr – Tirsdag, or Tiu	Tuesday
☿ - Mercury	Mercredi, Mittwoch, Odin – Onsdag	Wednesday
♃ - Jupiter	Jeudi, Donar – Donnerstag, Tor, Torsdag	Thursday
♀ - Venus	Vendredi, Freya — Freitag, Fredag	Friday

Until the middle of Earth round, all development have been made under strict guidance from higher hierarchies, first with the development of sentience on the Earth, through the lower ‘I’ is it possible for man to enter the development consciously.

You will not find a human being as he is today on Earth on any other planet. Beings, yes — but not human beings. The Earth exists in order that “I”-conscious human beings could be created. Through the first four Rounds the kingdoms of nature evolved in order that in the fourth man could be made a self-conscious being, who could reflect himself in his body. He will rise to higher levels of evolution, something that few can understand correctly. In the next, the fifth Round, the mineral kingdom will disappear. All mineral matter will be transformed to vegetable matter. Then the vegetable kingdom will reach its culmination and in the next Round the animal kingdom will form the lowest kingdom. During the seventh Round the human being will achieve his highest level of evolution. He will have become what planetary evolution intends. RS

The development of man in these first four phases goes through the four states as described by F.W.J. Schelling:

“Mind sleeps in stone, dreams in the plant, awakes in the animal and becomes conscious in man.”

Old Saturn

The first seed of man was created on the Earth incarnation called old Saturn, and it’s remnants is the Saturn of today.

Planetary seal of Old Saturn

Old Saturn was a planet which was made of warms. The creator is known as Saturn or Cronos or in Christian terminology, The Thrones [Binah].

Saturn – Cronus

The first seed of minerals were created here. At this time man created unconsciously the seed of what would become it’s Spirit Body (Atma). Man had at that time mineral-consciousness.

Man is the first-born of our creative process. But Saturn-man was very different from the man of today. He was for the most part a spiritual being; he would not have been visible to physical eyes. It was a kind of primal mineral, with no etheric body round it; hence we can say that man passed through the mineral kingdom; but to think of it as anything like our present-day mineral kingdom would be quite wrong. On Saturn there was no kingdom other than the human kingdom.  From “Evolution of the Earth”

Old Sun

The old Sun was a planet of Light, where a great part of the minerals of man was connected with the etheric, creating a higher life form with plant-consciousness.

If one looks at how after a pralaya old Saturn changed into old Sun with the spiritual gaze that moves over the planets one notices that Saturn’s warmth atmosphere condenses into air. Man gets an etheric body on the Sun. He is a shining being. Spiritual beings work through the Sun’s astral atmosphere upon the etheric body, ignite it and thereby make it shine. One calls this the sulfuric process.

Planetary Seal of Old Sun

Some of our development wave of Saturn didn’t connect to the Etheric, so they stayed on the mineral-level. Man creates here, under guidance, the seed for the Buddhi layer of the later development. Zeus is connected to the Old Sun.

Old Moon

The Old Moon is a watery planet, with earth like living plants. Here is man connected with Astral stuff, acquiring animal-consciousness.

When the Sun passes over to the Moon, air condenses to water. The Moon’s body is a water body. We notice something very strange about this water body. Single water drops change their position in an extremely lively manner and race around with inner mobility. I some respects one can compare this property of the water drops with mercury. That’s why one calls this principle that’s added on the Moon the mercurial principle. The parts are put together into forms by sounds, somewhat like Chladni’s sound figures. First two came together, then two pairs made four, etc., just as one still finds in new plant, animal and human forms. That’s the female principle. The male principle only arose later from pure earth forces. From “Esoteric Lessons“.

Planetary Seal of Old Moon

Some of our brethren from the Saturn development wave didn’t connect to the Astral so they stayed at the plant-level. Here creates man under guidance Manas. The Old Moon are connected to The Mother, Sophia, or Cthlon.

Earth

On this Earth we have, besides man, the minerals who stayed back on the Old Saturn, the plants who stayed back on the Old Sun, and the animals who stayed back on the Old Moon.

When the moon passed over to the earth, water condensed to earth. The precipitating salt process took place on the earth for the first time through the interaction of fire and water. Man arose from female and male and began to dissolve things again through thinking so that evolution could continue. Man received the erring I on earth. From “Esoteric Lessons“.

The Earth development phase is split in two parts: Mars, before the Son incarnates, and Mercury after this incarnation, which takes place in the middle manvantara..

First half of Earth called Mars

In the first part, called Mars, mankind descend into the Physical, into the dominion of the Cthlonic powers, through a kind of repetition of the first three planetary rounds.

Planetary Seal of Mars,
first part of Earth

Here Man acquires the seed of the Ego, which is needed to become a sentient being. See the table in Dream Interpretation in Esoteric Work

Second half of Earth called Mercury

Planetary Seal of Mercury,
second part of Earth

In the second part of Earth, called Mercury, we ascends again to the spiritual world, and we have been working on it for two thousand years now.

In the second part we develop what we previously have created the seed for together with the Gods, that is Sentient soul (Orektikon), the Intellectual soul (Kinetikon), and the Consciousness soul (Dianoetikon), The three aspects of Isis/Sophia. Those who don’t unite with the spirit, stays back.

New Jupiter

Planetary Seal of New Jupiter

The New Jupiter is known as the New Israel, or New Jerusalem, Paradise or Shambhala, which already exist in embryonic form. Here we will develop Angelic Consciousness. All creation of Old Saturn are one Wave, and it’s our responsibility to get every creation of Saturn, from mineral to man, with us in the development. And this is part of our task now and in the future, and it is a result of the work toward this goal, transforming our astral body to Spirit Self, Manas. The minerals of Earth is transformed to vegetable matter.

New Venus

Planetary Seal of New Venus

On Venus we are transforming the etheric body to Life Spirit or  Buddhi, and on Vulcan we are transforming the physical to Spirit Body, Atma. On Venus the lowest kingdom is the animal kingdom and on Vulcan the lowest kingdom is the human kingdom.

This cycle of seven planets are bound to the Chakras, where Earth corresponds to the Heart, to Christ, who transformed Earth, gave it life, for the new future, called New Jerusalem, the New Jupiter.

The Creation are described by Steiner in “From the Akasha Chronicles” and Max Heindel in “The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception or Mystic Christianity“.

In each of these Earth-incarnation man develops a higher level of consciousness as described:

There are seven grades of human consciousness: trance consciousness, deep sleep, dream consciousness, waking consciousness, psychic, super-psychic and spiritual consciousness. Actually these are in all twelve stages of consciousness;  the five others are creative stages. They are those of the Creators, of the creative Gods. These twelve stages are related to the twelve signs of the zodiac. The human being must pass through the experiences of these twelve stages. He ascended through the trance, deep sleep and dream consciousness up to the present clear day consciousness. In the succeeding stages of planetary evolution he will reach still higher stages. All those which he has already passed through he will also retain within him. The physical body has the dull trance consciousness as this was gained by man on Old Saturn. The human etheric body has the consciousness of dreamless sleep, as this developed on Old Sun. The astral body dreams in the same way as one dreams during sleep. Dream consciousness derives from the Old Moon period. On our present Earth, man achieves waking consciousness. The ego has clear day-consciousness. RS

 

The Snake and the Heel in Mythos

The motif in the birth of Krishna, where his mothers brother wished to take his life, and his wounded feet as a result of his fight with the snake, are known in different myths, within the same time frame, for Zarathustra, Oedipus, Dan, and Isak. I am not making a deep interpretation, which Steiner does better than I, but I just want to emphasize the motif:

Hence the legend relates how the child Krishna, even at his birth, was surrounded by miracles, and that Kansa, the brother of his mother, wished to take the life of the child. In the uncle of the child Krishna we see the continuance of the old, and Krishna has to defend himself against him; for Krishna had to bring in the new, that which kills the third epoch and does away with the old conditions for the external evolution of mankind.

That was the twofold deed of Krishna, He acted as a world-historical hero, in that he crushed the head of the serpent of the old knowledge and compelled man to re-enter the physical body, in which alone the ego could be won as free and independent ego, whereas formerly all that made man an ego streamed in from outside.

I am wounded in the feet, but with my own body I tread under foot the head of the serpent,” that is to say, the serpent with its head ceases to be the instrument of thought. The physical body and especially the physical brain, kills the serpent, and the serpent revenges itself by taking away from one the feeling of belonging to the earth. It bites one in the heel.

Steiner

There may also be a relation to Orpheus [Orphan] and Eurydice. Orpheus could charm animals by his music, as Zarathustra could charm the animals when people would kill him as child, and also Eurydice was bitten in the heel like Krishna. Both Zarathustra and Orpheus was killed at the Holy place of Apollo/Ahura Mazdao.

Poets like Simonides of Ceos said that, with his music and singing, he could charm birds, fish and wild beasts, coax the trees and rocks into dance.

While fleeing from Aristaeus (son of Apollo), Eurydice ran into a nest of snakes which bit her fatally on her heel.

He uses the word agurteuonta (αγυρτεύοντα), a term used by Sophocles in Oedipus Tyrannus to characterize Teiresias as a trickster with an excessive desire for possessions.

Zoroaster appears as “Sarastro” in Mozart’s opera Die Zauberflöte, which has been noted for its Masonic elements, where he represents moral order (cf. Asha) in opposition to the “Queen of the Night.“

Oedipus was set out in the wood to die, with his feet mutilated. He was found by shepherds after an attempt to get rid of him. Teiresias was a blind prophet, as in the story about Krishna. Oedipus goes through life with clubbed feet. Steiner relates the story of Oedipus and the Sphinx with Faust and the clubfooted Mephistopheles of Goethe (Steiner).

In Apocalypse of Moses chapter 26 states:

1 But he turned to the serpent [in great wrath] and said: “Since thou hast done this, and become a thankless vessel until thou hast deceived the innocent hearts, accursed art thou among all beasts.

2 Thou shalt be deprived of the victual of which thou didst eat and shalt feed on dust all the days of

3 thy life: on thy breast and thy belly shalt thou walk and be robbed of hands and feet. There shall not be left thee ear nor wing, nor one limb of all that with which thou didst ensnare them in

4 thy malice and causedst them to be cast out of paradise; and I will put enmity between thee and his seed: he shall bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise his heel until the day of Judgement.”

 Jacob says the following words about his son Dan:

“Dan shall judge his people, as one of the tribes of Israel. Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the path, that biteth the horse heels, so that his rider shall fall backward. I have waited for thy salvation, O LORD.”

Literature

Wikipedia have a good reference article on the symbolism of serpents:

Wikipedia – Serpent(symbolism)

The Snow Queen

The Snow Queen by H.C. Andersen is an extraordinary story, containing the primary dangers of man.

We have the following main players in the story:

• The Devil, who creates the troll-mirror who distorts the perceived reality.
• The Snow Queen, which palace and gardens are in the lands of permafrost. She is successful in abducting Kay after he has fallen victim to the splinters of the troll-mirror.
• An old sorceress, who maintains a cottage on the river, with a garden that is permanently in summer. She seeks to keep Gerda with her, but Gerda’s thought of roses (the flower most favored by herself and Kay) awakens her from the old woman’s enchantment.
• Kay, a little boy, who falls victim to the splinters of the troll-mirror and the blandishments of the Snow Queen.
• Gerda, the heroine of this tale, who succeeds in finding and saving Kai from the Snow Queen.
• The Rose.

The two children, who like brother and sister, grow up together as in the garden of Eden.

When they became ‘I’ conscious Kay got a splint from the troll-mirror in his eye, and now saw a distorted view of the world, where the beautiful became ugly, and the ugly became beautiful, or in other words, he lost sight of the magical, the spiritual, which he could still see as a child. He fell victim to materialism or the Ahrimanic, symbolized through the Snow Queen (Lilith), who kills love and compassion in his heart by her everlasting winter. He could no longer enjoy the Roses.

Gerda went seeking for Kay, to get him home again, but she felt victim to the old sorceress, who also tried to kill the love and compassion through the everlasting summer, a reminiscent of the old Eden, symbolizing the retreat into the spiritual, or the Luciferic. She was saved by her love to the Rose, which the sorcerer has banished from her garden. It is interesting that many abridged versions don’t have this part of the story included.

Through Gerda’s love and tears Kay is saved from from his frozen condition, and the Rose makes him cry causing the glass splinter to fall from his eye.

When they came home again they were grown up.

The story ends with:

The grandmother sat in the bright sunshine, and read aloud from the Bible: “Unless ye become as little children, ye cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.”

And Kay and Gerda looked in each other’s eyes, and all at once they understood the old hymn:

“The rose in the valley is blooming so sweet, And angels descend there the children to greet.”

There sat the two grown-up persons; grown-up, and yet children; children at least in heart; and it was summer-time; summer, glorious summer!

It is interesting that the girl is susceptible to the lures of Lucifer and the boy is susceptible to the lures of Ahriman, and that she gets him out of the clutches of Ahriman.

Moira Li-Lynn Ong connects the story to depression, which is the Ahrimanian sickness of today, in The shattered mirror as symbol of depression:

The tale begins with the shattering of a magical mirror, its pieces spreading over the world. When a shard enters a person’s eye, they only see the negative aspects of things. When it enters someone’s heart, it turns to ice. The symptoms of depression are eerily similar, including irritability, negative thoughts and perhaps even worse, numbness.
The story shifts thereafter to a little boy and girl, Kay and Gerda. They can be regarded as anam cara, soul-friends. Alternatively, they may be seen as halves of the same soul. Initially, their relationship is happy and loving, reflecting a person in harmony with himself.

Other references

Healing Tales and The Snow Queen

The Snow Queen 1 of 3 (video)

The Snow Queen 2 of 3

The Snow Queen 3 of 3

The Sons of Jacob and the Zodiac

It’s generally agreed that the twelve sons of Jacob has to do with the twelve signs of the zodiac, but there are many different views on how the sons, and the sons of Joseph who fathers two of the tribes, are distributed on the signs.

The homepage Meaning Life Center contains many interesting interpretations on the Old Testament, and especially A day in the life of a Jew is interesting in this connection.

The table shows the result of my work, and below the table follows my reasons and references.

	Fixed	Mutable	Cardinal
Air	Ephraim, Man Aquarius ♒ ♄,Asenath	Simeon Gemini ♊ ☿, Leah, Gerizim	Asher Libra ♎ ♀, Zilpah, Ebal
Fire	Judah, Lion Leo ♌ ☉, Leah, Gerizim	Naphtali Sagittarius ♐ ♃, Bilhah, Ebal	Gad Aries ♈ ♂, Zilpah, Ebal
Water	Dan, Eagle Scorpio ♏ ♂, Bilhah, Ebal	Manasseh Pisces ♓ ♃, Asenath	Issachar Cancer ♋ ☾, Leah, Gerizim
Earth	Reuben, Ox Taurus ♉ ♀, Leah	Zebulun Virgo ♍ ☿, Leah, Ebal	Benjamin Capricorn ♑ ♄, Rackel, Gerizim

Contains the names of the signs, the old ruling planet, the mountain, and the mother of the son.

Family Tree of the Sons of Jacob

The Mothers

There are five mothers, the two wifes of Jacob, and their handmaids, and the wife of Joseph:

Leah gave birth to six sons and Dinah.

Rachel’s handmaid, Bilhah, gave birth to Dan and Naphtali.

Leah’s handmaid, Zilpah, gave birth to Gad and Asher.

Rachel gave birth to Joseph, and, near Bethlehem, Benjamin.

Asenath, the Egyptian wife of Joseph, gave birth to Manasseh and Ephraim.

Canaan – the territory of the Tribes of Israel

Chart of Canaan with the Tribes of Israel

The Mountains

The tribes are split in two groups:

The tribes Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Joseph, and Benjamin were connected to Mount Gerizim, Mountain of Blessing, Deut 27:12.

The tribes of Reuben, Gad, Asher, Zebulun, Dan, and Naphtali were connected to Mount Ebal, Mountain of Cursing. Deut 27:13.

Four Quadrants

In astrology the Zodiac are split in four quadrants, with the initial four star signs as the centers of these, that is the Ox, Lion, Eagle, and Man. God places the twelve tribes in four groups, so my thesis is that these groups corresponds to the quadrants.

First quadrant, South:

With Reuben as Taurus, would pitch camp on the South, with Simeon and Gad. Second rank: Num2:16.

In the first quadrant, everything is seen from out of the ego.

Second quadrant, East:

Judah as Leo, would pitch camp on the East. With him would be the tribes of Issachar and Zebulun. First rank.

In the second quadrant, everything is seen from from the family or tribe..

Fourth quadrant, West:

Ephraim, son of Joseph, as Aquarius, would pitch on the West, with Manasseh, son of Joseph, and Benjamin. Third rank.

In the third quadant we have left the tribal and reached the national viewpoint.

Third quadrant, North:

Dan as Scorpio, would pitch on the North, with Asher and Naphtali. Fourth rank.

In the fourth quadrant we have left the national for the universal, for humanity.

Center: The Levites would be located in the center (middle) of the four camps and were NOT to be numbered. Num2:17,33.

Zodiac with the tribes of Israel.

First Quadrant – South

2. Reuben = bull

“Reuben, thou art my firstborn, my might, and the beginning of my strength, the excellency of dignity, and the excellency of power. “

As we are around the year 2000 BCE. in the bull’s age, it will be natural to start with the bull’s sign.

Taurus represents fecundity of spring, the sign of Venus, where the moon, as a symbol of all nurturing substance, is elevated. He laid with his fathers wife and is connected with the field where he found the mandrakes.

3. Simeon and Levi = Gemini:

“… Simeon and Levi are brethren; instruments of cruelty are in their habitations…I will divide them in Jacob, and scatter them in Israel.”

They are the twins, where Levi is separated from his brother and the Zodiac. In our intellectual arrogance we kills even love and its true fruits.

1. Gad = Aries:

“… a troop shall overcome him: but he shall overcome at the last.’. His mother Leah exclaims: “What happiness”, as she has given birth to Gad, whose name is a pun on the term ‘happiness’.”

Characterized as a warrior chief matching the ruling Mars of Aries.

Jacob blessing his sons

Second Quadrant, East

5. Judah = Leo:

“Judah, thou art he whom thy brethren shall praise: thy hand shall be in the neck of thine enemies; thy father’s children shall bow down before thee. … Judah is a lion’s whelp … The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be.”

Leo-born are known for their pride and desire to control the situation themselves. In addition Leo have joy of children and has natural skills for teaching. It is the Sun sign, which also highlights the Lion’s desire for self-expression.

6. Zebulun = Virgo:

“God hath endued me with a good dowry; now will my husband dwell with me, because I have born him six sons,” and “Zebulun shall dwell at the shore of the sea; a harbor for ships shall he be….”

Moses’ parting words to the two tribes were:

Rejoice, Zebulun, in your excursions, and Issachar in your tents.

From  “A day in the life of a Jew“:

“Our sages explain:  Zebulun and Issachar made a partnership between them. Zebulun dwelled at the seashore, and would go out in his ships to engage in trade and make a profit, and support Issachar, who sat and occupied himself with the study of Torah.

Issachar and Zebulun thus represent the other two major items on the Jew’s daily schedule. After climbing the four rungs of the heart to serve G-d in prayer, the Jew moves “from the synagogue to the study hall” to bind his mind to G-d through the study of the Torah, G-d’s communication of His wisdom and will to man. Following that, the Jew goes out into the world as a businessman or professional, to “know Him in all your ways” and do “all your deeds for the sake of Heaven.” “

Virgo is a ‘ministering principle’, people who often cares about others’ wellbeing and health. The word ‘gift’ is associated with the name and can hang with the Festival of Sukkoth in Israel, in the month of Tishri, the first month of the year after the New Year which begins in our September month. A thanksgiving for nature’s gifts: The star Spica in Virgo symbolizes the wheat ear in the left hand of Virgo.
Virgo is a practical sign, connected with going out in the world in contrast to the Torah study.

7. Issachar = Cancer:

“Issachar is a strong ass couching down between two burdens: And he saw that rest was good, and the land that it was pleasant; and bowed his shoulder to bear, and became a servant unto tribute.’”

In Cancer are the stars Aselli, or little asses, connected to the flag of Issachar, what Jacob compares to an ass.
Issachar and Zebulun could be changed!

Third Quadrant – North

8. Dan = Scorpio:

“Dan shall judge his people, as one of the tribes of Israel. Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the path, that biteth the horse heels, so that his rider shall fall backward. I have waited for thy salvation, O LORD.”

This description may well sound a bit harsh to our ears, but nevertheless demonstrates the fact that Scorpio-born people are able to distinguish between lies and truth. Also they are rarely deceptive. It may make others uneasy, why they choose to call scorpions for suspicious and distrustful of people. The area of sky is also characterized by constellations serpents (snake) and Ophiuchus (serpent bearer), where we find the star Unuka / hai (serpent heart or neck), which expresses ‘the face of God’ is said to be a strict judge, as by irradiation of the planets can ask the incarnate human spirit against the obligations to adhere to the truth.
Biting the horse heels could be the following Saggitarius.

9. Asher = Libra:

“Out of Asher his bread shall be fat, and he shall yield royal dainties.”

No other possibility in this setup.

10. Naphtali = Saggitarius

” …is a hind let loose: he giveth goodly words.”

Naphtali is represented by a gazelle or running stag, which sounds like Saggitarius.

Fourth Quadrant – West

This quadrant contains sons of Rachel, and sons of Joseph. It’s reasonable to expect Joseph’s sons to have reached longer than Benjamin, so he must be Capricorn.

11. Ephraim = Aquarius.

Ephraim is mentioned first of the three, so he should be Aquarious.

12. Manasseh = Pisces.

As Ephraim and Benjamin are placed, Manasseh can only be Pisces.

10. Benjamin = Capricorn:

“… shall ravin as a wolf: in the morning he shall devour the prey, and at night he shall divide the spoil. “

The ruling planet is Saturn, and it was under great pains that Rachel gave birth to her son, followed by her death.
Benjamin was the first to be born in the holy land, the first in the fourth quadrant.

The above quotations are from Genesis.
The daughter Dinah was born after Zebulun and just before Joseph. A mystery in herself; it’s not the only place where a single woman is connected to a group of twelve (or seven of twelve.)

Jacob blessing Ephraim and Manasseh

References

Pictures of star signs by Rudolf Steiner.

Paul Mahler Dam in “Skriften på himlen”. I had thought about researching this subject for a long time, but Paul’s book inspired me to start the project.

Various interpretations and sources:

The 12 Tribes of Israel.

The Symbology of Twelve Signs.

The Divine Civilization of New Jerusalem.

A day in the life of a Jew. Contains many interesting interpretations around the Old Testament.

Planetary symbols

The Shambhala Warriors

You cannot go to Shambhala for it is not a place. The Kingdom of Shambhala exists in the hearts and minds of the Shambhala warriors. The Shambhala Warrior

Chögyam Trungpa has written an interesting book “Shambhala: the Sacred Path of the Warrior ” which tells of a pre Buddhist Tibetan religion of the Shambhala Warriers. There is a good page describing the ideas of the book here Shambhala the Path of the Warrior. See also WikiPedia.

The Rigden is the Kings of Shambhala and they match the Bodhisattva’s of Devachan:

“The imperial rulers of Shambhala, who are called the Rigden Kings, are inhabitants of the cosmic mirror. They are referred to as ultimate drala. When you contact the wisdom of the cosmic mirror, you are meeting the ultimate dralas, the Rigden kings of Shambhala. Their vast vision lies behind all the activities of mankind, in the open, unconditioned space of mind itself. In that way, they watch over and protect human affairs, so to speak. This is quite different from the notion that the Rigdens are living on some celestial plane, from which they look down at the earth.” Taken from here by Chögyam Trungpa.

And more here Shambhala Lineage, by Chogyam Trungpa:

Fundamentally, the notion of lineage in the Shambhala teachings is connected with how the wisdom of the cosmic mirror is transmitted and continued in human life, human existence. The quality of the cosmic mirror is that it is unconditioned, vast open space. It is an eternal and completely open space, space beyond question. In the realm of the cosmic mirror, your mind extends its vision completely, beyond doubt. Before thoughts, before the thinking process takes place, there is the accommodation of the cosmic mirror, which has no boundary—no center and no fringe. As we discussed, the way to experience this space is through the sitting practice of meditation.

Experiencing the realm of the cosmic mirror gives rise to wisdom—the wisdom of vast and deep perception, beyond conflict, which is called drala. There are various levels of experiencing drala. The primordial or ultimate level of drala is experiencing directly the wisdom of the cosmic mirror. When you experience that wisdom, then you are contacting the origin of the Shambhala lineage, the source of wisdom.

So, when you contact the wisdom of the cosmic mirror, you are meeting the ultimate dralas, the Rigden kings of Shambhala. Once having made a connection to ultimate drala, it is possible for the primordial wisdom and vision of the Rigden kings to be passed down to the level of human perception. The vastness of perception can be captured in simplicity, a single perception, on the spot. When we allow vastness to enter our perception, then it becomes drala; it becomes brilliant and luminous—magical. When we have this experience, then we are meeting what are called the inner dralas. The inner dralas are empowered by the wisdom of the cosmic mirror, the Rigdens, to manifest brilliance and elegance in this phenomenal world.

From AT.

Quantum physics and Consciousness

A friend of mine have just made me aware of the physicist Amit Goswami:

Quantum physics, as well as a number of other modern sciences, he feels, is demonstrating that the essential unity underlying all of reality is a fact which can be experimentally verified. Because of the enormous implications he sees in this scientific confirmation of the spiritual, Goswami is ardently devoted to explaining his theory to as many people as possible in order to help bring about what he feels is a much needed paradigm shift. He feels that because science is now capable of validating mysticism, much that before required a leap of faith can now be empirically proven and, hence, the materialist paradigm which has dominated scientific and philosophical thought for over two hundred years can finally be called into question.

And

Consider instead the possibility that the entire story only existed as an abstract potential—a cosmic dream among countless other cosmic dreams—until, in that dream, life somehow evolved to the point that a conscious, sentient being came into existence. At that moment, solely because of the conscious observation of that individual, the entire universe, including all of the history leading up to that point, suddenly came into being. Until that moment, nothing had actually ever happened. In that moment, fifteen billion years happened. If this sounds like nothing more than a complicated backdrop for a science fiction story or a secular version of one of the world’s great creation myths, hold on to your hat. According to physicist Amit Goswami, the above description is a scientifically viable explanation of how the universe came into being.

And

Goswami is convinced, along with a number of others who subscribe to the same view, that the universe, in order to exist, requires a conscious sentient being to be aware of it. Without an observer, he claims, it only exists as a possibility. And as they say in the world of science, Goswami has done his math. Marshalling evidence from recent research in cognitive psychology, biology, parapsychology and quantum physics, and leaning heavily on the ancient mystical traditions of the world, Goswami is building a case for a new paradigm that he calls “monistic idealism,” the view that consciousness, not matter, is the foundation of everything that is.

From the interview (it’s simply filled with Goodies):

WIE: In your book The Self-Aware Universe you speak about the need for a paradigm shift. Could you talk a bit about how you conceive of that shift? From what to what?

Amit Goswami: The current worldview has it that everything is made of matter, and everything can be reduced to the elementary particles of matter, the basic constituents—building blocks—of matter. And cause arises from the interactions of these basic building blocks or elementary particles; elementary particles make atoms, atoms make molecules, molecules make cells, and cells make brain. But all the way, the ultimate cause is always the interactions between the elementary particles. This is the belief—all cause moves from the elementary particles. This is what we call “upward causation.” So in this view, what human beings—you and I—think of as our free will does not really exist. It is only an epiphenomenon or secondary phenomenon, secondary to the causal power of matter. And any causal power that we seem to be able to exert on matter is just an illusion. This is the current paradigm.

Now, the opposite view is that everything starts with consciousness. That is, consciousness is the ground of all being. In this view, consciousness imposes “downward causation.” In other words, our free will is real. When we act in the world we really are acting with causal power. This view does not deny that matter also has causal potency—it does not deny that there is causal power from elementary particles upward, so there is upward causation—but in addition it insists that there is also downward causation. It shows up in our creativity and acts of free will, or when we make moral decisions. In those occasions we are actually witnessing downward causation by consciousness.

WIE: In your book you refer to this new paradigm as “monistic idealism.” And you also suggest that science seems to be verifying what a lot of mystics have said throughout history—that science’s current findings seem to be parallel to the essence of the perennial spiritual teaching.

AG: It is the spiritual teaching. It is not just parallel. The idea that consciousness is the ground of being is the basis of all spiritual traditions, as it is for the philosophy of monistic idealism—although I have given it a somewhat new name. The reason for my choice of the name is that, in the West, there is a philosophy called “idealism” which is opposed to the philosophy of “material realism,” which holds that only matter is real. Idealism says no, consciousness is the only real thing. But in the West that kind of idealism has usually meant something that is really dualism—that is, consciousness and matter are separate. So, by monistic idealism, I made it clear that, no, I don’t mean that dualistic kind of Western idealism, but really a monistic idealism, which has existed in the West, but only in the esoteric spiritual traditions. Whereas in the East this is the mainstream philosophy. In Buddhism, or in Hinduism where it is called Vedanta, or in Taoism, this is the philosophy of everyone. But in the West this is a very esoteric tradition, only known and adhered to by very astute philosophers, the people who have really delved deeply into the nature of reality.
…
AG: Yes, it is. Henry Stapp, who is a physicist at the University of California at Berkeley, says this quite explicitly in one of his papers written in 1977, that things outside of space and time affect things inside space and time. There’s just no question that that happens in the realm of quantum physics when you are dealing with quantum objects. Now of course, the crux of the matter is, the surprising thing is, that we are always dealing with quantum objects because it turns out that quantum physics is the physics of every object. Whether it’s submicroscopic or it’s macroscopic, quantum physics is the only physics we’ve got. So although it’s more apparent for photons, for electrons, for the submicroscopic objects, our belief is that all reality, all manifest reality, all matter, is governed by the same laws. And if that is so, then this experiment is telling us that we should change our worldview because we, too, are quantum objects.
…
AG: We all hope so. Now this is called the “quantum measurement paradox.” It is a paradox because who are we to do this conversion? Because after all, in the materialist paradigm we don’t have any causal efficacy. We are nothing but the brain, which is made up of atoms and elementary particles. So how can a brain which is made up of atoms and elementary particles convert a possibility wave that it itself is? It itself is made up of the possibility waves of atoms and elementary particles, so it cannot convert its own possibility wave into actuality. This is called a paradox. Now in the new view, consciousness is the ground of being. So who converts possibility into actuality? Consciousness does, because consciousness does not obey quantum physics. Consciousness is not made of material. Consciousness is transcendent. Do you see the paradigm-changing view right here—how consciousness can be said to create the material world? The material world of quantum physics is just possibility. It is consciousness, through the conversion of possibility into actuality, that creates what we see manifest. In other words, consciousness creates the manifest world.
…
AG: I mean that literally. This is what quantum physics demands. In fact, in quantum physics this is called “delayed choice.” And I have added to this concept the concept of “self-reference.” Actually the concept of delayed choice is very old. It is due to a very famous physicist named John Wheeler, but Wheeler did not see the entire thing correctly, in my opinion. He left out self-reference. The question always arises, “The universe is supposed to have existed for fifteen billion years, so if it takes consciousness to convert possibility into actuality, then how could the universe be around for so long?” Because there was no consciousness, no sentient being, biological being, carbon based being, in that primordial fireball which is supposed to have created the universe, the big bang. But this other way of looking at things says that the universe remained in possibility until there was self-referential quantum measurement—so that is the new concept. An observer’s looking is essential in order to manifest possibility into actuality, and so only when the observer looks, only then does the entire thing become manifest—including time. So all of past time, in that respect, becomes manifest right at that moment when the first sentient being looks.

It turns out that this idea, in a very clever, very subtle way, has been around in cosmology and astronomy under the guise of a principle called the “anthropic principle.” That is, the idea has been growing among astronomers—cosmologists anyway—that the universe has a purpose. It is so fine-tuned, there are so many coincidences, that it seems very likely that the universe is doing something purposive, as if the universe is growing in such a way that a sentient being will arise at some point.

And

Connie: We think science and spirituality are mutually exclusive but lately it seems that the two ideas are moving closer together.

Amit: The division happened because of a quirk of history: that classical physics was discovered before quantum physics. If quantum physics had been discovered first we would not have these separations between science and spirituality. Carl Popper coined the phrase “promissory materialism.” Materialism will always remain promissory in those areas of spirit, soul, mind, meaning and what life is all about. Science based on materiality will never make total sense. It fits some questions that have a reductive tendency. Some things we do are materially oriented. If you need a job you learn a skill. But on the other hand if you want to be happy, to think money or work will make us happy is foolhardy. One becomes happy by connecting with wholeness. This wisdom has escaped most scientists.

I am finding a shift among budding scientists who want to find real answers to questions like happiness, soul, reincarnation and the meaning of life. All those questions that science thought it could never answer. It’s clear that if we continue our present direction, the decline of the stock market and business ethics are just a few of the symptoms of the disease, which is leaving spirit, ethics and values out of the equation. If you understand reincarnational philosophy, you’ll know that we come back again and again if we are unethical. No one would ever dare to be unethical. You do come back and you have to answer for those propensities. So there’s no sense in building bad karma, bad propensities.

Video’s

Video 1

Video 2

Video 3

Biography:

Amit Goswami: Amit Goswami is a theoretical nuclear physicist and member of The University of Oregon Institute for Theoretical Physics since 1968, teaching physics for 32 years. After a period of distress and frustration in his private and professional life starting at the age 38, his research interests shifted to quantum cosmology, quantum measurement theory, and applications of quantum mechanics to the mind-body problem. He became best known as one of the interviewed scientific experts featured in the 2004 film What the Bleep Do We Know!?. He is the author of six books including the successful textbook, “Quantum Mechanics.” Amit is a pioneer of science within consciousness “science based on the primacy of consciousness” which is developed in his books “The Self-Aware Universe: How Consciousness Creates the Material World” and “Science and Spirituality.” He has also authored “Quantum Creativity” and “A Quantum Physicist’s Guide to Enlightenment,” “The Visionary Window” and “Physics of the Soul,” and the upcoming “Integral Medicine.” Amit gives workshops in the United States, Brazil, Sweden, and India on the subjects of quantum creativity, quantum healing, physics of the soul, and science and spirituality.

Further:

Blog of Amit Goswami

Wikipedia

WikiQuote

Amazon

Also read-worthy The Universe, Quantum Physics, and Consciousness by Subhash Kak, Ph.D.

Good and Evil, Sin and Karma

Good is Love, and Evil is lack of Love, and Love is Christ (Son of God in the hexagram).

Love is the equilibrium of The Father and The Mother, and lack of Love is when we are out of equilibrium, that is, either the Mother or the Father are dominating. On Earth this condition is called Evil, or to be precise, Lucifer and Ahriman (Satan, Mammon, …) to show what dominates.

Sin creates Karma, and you sin when you do something you KNOW is evil/wrong, so a Cannibal living in a Cannibalistic tribe don’t create Karma because of cannibalism, not before the Christian priests come and tell him about the ten commandments, that you may not kill. This is also one of the reasons why children don’t create Karma.

Remember, Karma helps us to grow, it’s our memory from life to life.

A Rosicrucian once said: “We are on this Earth to sin, so sin, until you are tired of it, then stop, don’t continue as per habit.”. Or, in other words: It’s OK to fall, but not to stay down.

Those who don’t live because they are afraid to Sin don’t learn, they don’t create the necessary equilibrium between Chaos and Order, Feelings and Thinking, giving Love, Wisdom, and Will.

Heal the Kids

I have never known much about Michael Jackson, I think I first found out who he was after his problem with the face.

A newspaper commented on the Memorial Service at the Staples Center, mentioning that the family still had problems with commercialism.

There was a reference to a speech Michael held at Oxford University which were impressing. I have here an extract from his speech (Speech at Oxford University(2001)):

But I do have a claim to having experienced more places and cultures than most people will ever see. Human knowledge consists not only of libraries of parchment and ink – it is also comprised of the volumes of knowledge that are written on the human heart, chiselled on the human soul, and engraved on the human psyche. And friends, I have encountered so much in this relatively short life of mine that I still cannot believe I am only 42. I often tell Shmuley that in soul years I’m sure that I’m at least 80 – and tonight I even walk like I’m 80! So please harken to my message, because what I have to tell you tonight can bring healing to humanity and healing to our planet.

All of us are products of our childhood. But I am the product of a lack of a childhood, an absence of that precious and wondrous age when we frolic playfully without a care in the world, basking in the adoration of parents and relatives, where our biggest concern is studying for that big spelling test come Monday morning.

But while performing and making music undoubtedly remain as some of my greatest joys, when I was young I wanted more than anything else to be a typical little boy. I wanted to build tree houses, have water balloon fights, and play hide and seek with my friends. But fate had it otherwise and all I could do was envy the laughter and playtime that seemed to be going on all around me.
There was no respite from my professional life. But on Sundays I would go Pioneering, the term used for the missionary work that Jehovah’s Witnesses do. And it was then that I was able to see the magic of other people’s childhood.

I loved to set foot in all those regular suburban houses and catch sight of the shag rugs and La-Z-Boy armchairs with kids playing Monopoly and grandmas baby-sitting and all those wonderful, ordinary and starry scenes of everyday life. Many, I know, would argue that these things seem like no big deal. But to me they were mesmerizing.

Today, it’s a universal calamity, a global catastrophe. Childhood has become the great casualty of modern-day living. All around us we are producing scores of kids who have not had the joy, who have not been accorded the right, who have not been allowed the freedom, or knowing what it’s like to be a kid.

Today children are constantly encouraged to grow up faster, as if this period known as childhood is a burdensome stage, to be endured and ushered through, as swiftly as possible. And on that subject, I am certainly one of the world’s greatest experts.

Ours is a generation that has witnessed the abrogation of the parent-child covenant. Psychologists are publishing libraries of books detailing the destructive effects of denying one’s children the unconditional love that is so necessary to the healthy development of their minds and character. And because of all the neglect, too many of our kids have, essentially, to raise themselves. They are growing more distant from their parents, grandparents and other family members, as all around us the indestructible bond that once glued together the generations, unravels.

This violation has bred a new generation, Generation O let us call it, that has now picked up the torch from Generation X. The O stands for a generation that has everything on the outside – wealth, success, fancy clothing and fancy cars, but an aching emptiness on the inside. That cavity in our chests, that barrenness at our core, that void in our centre is the place where the heart once beat and which love once occupied.

Love, ladies and gentlemen, is the human family’s most precious legacy, its richest bequest, its golden inheritance. And it is a treasure that is handed down from one generation to another. Previous ages may not have had the wealth we enjoy. Their houses may have lacked electricity, and they squeezed their many kids into small homes without central heating. But those homes had no darkness, nor were they cold. They were lit bright with the glow of love and they were warmed snugly by the very heat of the human heart. Parents, undistracted by the lust for luxury and status, accorded their children primacy in their lives.

I would therefore like to propose tonight that we install in every home a Children’s Universal Bill of Rights, the tenets of which are:

1. The right to be loved without having to earn it

2. The right to be protected, without having to deserve it

3. The right to feel valuable, even if you came into the world with nothing

4. The right to be listened to without having to be interesting

5. The right to be read a bedtime story, without having to compete with the evening news

6. The right to an education without having to dodge bullets at schools

7. The right to be thought of as adorable – (even if you have a face that only a mother could love).

Friends, the foundation of all human knowledge, the beginning of human consciousness, must be that each and every one of us is an object of love. Before you know if you have red hair or brown, before you know if you are black or white, before you know of what religion you are a part, you have to know that you are loved.

If you enter this world knowing you are loved and you leave this world knowing the same, then everything that happens in between can he dealt with. A professor may degrade you, but you will not feel degraded, a boss may crush you, but you will not be crushed, a corporate gladiator might vanquish you, but you will still triumph. How could any of them truly prevail in pulling you down? For you know that you are an object worthy of love. The rest is just packaging.

But if you don’t have that memory of being loved, you are condemned to search the world for something to fill you up. But no matter how much money you make or how famous you become, you will still fell empty. What you are really searching for is unconditional love, unqualified acceptance. And that was the one thing that was denied to you at birth.

Friends, let me paint a picture for you. Here is a typical day in America – six youths under the age of 20 will commit suicide, 12 children under the age of 20 will die from firearms – remember this is a DAY, not a year – 399 kids will be arrested for drug abuse, 1,352 babies will be born to teen mothers. This is happening in one of the richest, most developed countries in the history of the world.

Yes, in my country there is an epidemic of violence that parallels no other industrialised nation. These are the ways young people in America express their hurt and their anger. But don’t think that there is not the same pain and anguish among their counterparts in the United Kingdom. Studies in this country show that every single hour, three teenagers in the UK inflict harm upon themselves, often by cutting or burning their bodies or taking an overdose. This is how they have chosen to cope with the pain of neglect and emotional agony.

In Britain, as many as 20% of families will only sit down and have dinner together once a year. Once a year! And what about the time-honoured tradition of reading your kid a bedtime story? Research from the 1980s showed that children who are read to, had far greater literacy and significantly outperformed their peers at school. And yet, less than 33% of British children ages two to eight have a regular bedtime story read to them. You may not think much of that until you take into account that 75% of their parents DID have that bedtime story when they were that age.

Clearly, we do not have to ask ourselves where all of this pain, anger and violent behaviour comes from. It is self-evident that children are thundering against the neglect, quaking against the indifference and crying out just to be noticed. The various child protection agencies in the US say that millions of children are victims of maltreatment in the form of neglect, in the average year. Yes, neglect. In rich homes, privileged homes, wired to the hilt with every electronic gadget. Homes where parents come home, but they’re not really home, because their heads are still at the office. And their kids? Well, their kids just make do with whatever emotional crumbs they get. And you don’t get much from endless TV, computer games and videos.

They say that parenting is like dancing. You take one step, your child takes another. I have discovered that getting parents to re-dedicate themselves to their children is only half the story. The other half is preparing the children to re-accept their parents.

When I was very young I remember that we had this crazy mutt of a dog named “Black Girl,” a mix of wolf and retriever. Not only wasn’t she much of a guard dog, she was such a scared and nervous thing that it is a wonder she did not pass out every time a truck rumbled by, or a thunderstorm swept through Indiana. My sister Janet and I gave that dog so much love, but we never really won back the sense of trust that had been stolen from her by her previous owner. We knew he used to beat her. We didn’t know with what. But whatever it was, it was enough to suck the spirit right out of that dog.

A lot of kids today are hurt puppies who have weaned themselves off the need for love. They couldn’t care less about their parents. Left to their own devices, they cherish their independence. They have moved on and have left their parents behind.

Then there are the far worse cases of children who harbour animosity and resentment toward their parents, so that any overture that their parents might undertake would be thrown forcefully back in their face.

But what I really wanted was a Dad. I wanted a father who showed me love. And my father never did that. He never said I love you while looking me straight in the eye, he never played a game with me. He never gave me a piggyback ride, he never threw a pillow at me, or a water balloon.

But I remember once when I was about four years old, there was a little carnival and he picked me up and put me on a pony. It was a tiny gesture, probably something he forgot five minutes later. But because of that moment I have this special place in my heart for him. Because that’s how kids are, the little things mean so much to them and for me, that one moment meant everything. I only experienced it that one time, but it made me feel really good, about him and the world.

Almost a decade ago, I founded a charity called Heal the World. The title was something I felt inside me. Little did I know, as Shmuley later pointed out, that those two words form the cornerstone of Old Testament prophecy. Do I really believe that we can heal this world, that is riddled with war and genocide, even today? And do I really think that we can heal our children, the same children who can enter their schools with guns and hatred and shoot down their classmates, like they did at Columbine? Or children who can beat a defenseless toddler to death, like the tragic story of Jamie Bulger? Of course I do, or I wouldn’t be here tonight.

To all of you tonight who feel let down by your parents, I ask you to let down your disappointment. To all of you tonight who feel cheated by your fathers or mothers, I ask you not to cheat yourself further. And to all of you who wish to push your parents away, I ask you to extend you hand to them instead. I am asking you, I am asking myself, to give our parents the gift of unconditional love, so that they too may learn how to love from us, their children. So that love will finally be restored to a desolate and lonely world.

But it all begins with forgiveness, because to heal the world, we first have to heal ourselves. And to heal the kids, we first have to heal the child within, each and every one of us. As an adult, and as a parent, I realize that I cannot be a whole human being, nor a parent capable of unconditional love, until I put to rest the ghosts of my own childhood.

And that’s what I’m asking all of us to do tonight. Live up to the fifth of the Ten Commandments. Honour your parents by not judging them. Give them the benefit of the doubt.

That is why I want to forgive my father and to stop judging him. I want to forgive my father, because I want a father, and this is the only one that I’ve got. I want the weight of my past lifted from my shoulders and I want to be free to step into a new relationship with my father, for the rest of my life, unhindered by the goblins of the past.

In a world filled with hate, we must still dare to hope. In a world filled with anger, we must still dare to comfort. In a world filled with despair, we must still dare to dream. And in a world filled with distrust, we must still dare to believe.

Literature

Beinsa Douno – Source of Love and Life

Michaels Speech at Youtube

Esoteric Aspects of the Isis figure

The following texts relates the Isis figure to the Soul. The three Mothers of the soul, as described in “Isis and Madonna” are the Sentient soul (Orektikon), the Intellectual soul (Kinetikon), and the Consciousness soul (Dianoetikon) as seen here.

Isis and Madonna :

… Therefore in the true sense of spiritual science we do not speak only of one Mother but of the Mothers, realizing that what we have today as the physical Mother is the last development of the soul-spiritual figure out of the spiritual realm. There are in fact images of Isis representing not one Mother but Mothers, three Mothers. In front we have a figure, Isis with the Horus child at her breast, resembling the oldest representations of the Madonna. But behind this figure in certain Egyptian representations we have another figure, an Isis, bearing on her head the two familiar cow horns and the wings of the hawk, offering the “Crux Ansata” ☥ to the child. We see that what is physical, human, in the foremost figure is here more spiritualized. Behind there is yet a third figure, bearing a lion’s head and representing the third stage of the human soul. This is how these three Isis figures appear, one behind the other. It is an actual fact that our human soul bears in it three natures — a will nature, found in the inmost depths of the being, a feeling nature and a wisdom nature. These are the three soul Mothers; we meet them in the three figures of the Egyptian Isis.

Isis:

“I am the All; I am the Past, the Present and the Future. My Veil has no Mortal ever lifted.”

Or

“I AM, which is, and which was, and which is to come my veil no mortal can raise.”

The Widows Son :

The soul was always known as the “mother” in all esoteric (mystical) teachings; the instructor was the “father.” Father and mother, Osiris and Isis, those are the two forces present in the soul: the instructor, representing the divine which flows directly into man, Osiris, he that is the father; the soul itself, Isis, the one who conceives, receives the divine, the spiritual into itself, she is the mother. During the fifth Root Race the father withdraws. The soul is widowed. Humanity is thrown back onto itself. It must find the light of truth within its own soul in order to act as its own guide. Everything of a soul nature has always been expressed in terms of the feminine. Therefore the feminine element—which exists only in a germinal state today and will later be fully developed—this self-directing feminine principle which is no longer confronted by the divine fructifier, is called by Mani the “Widow.” And therefore he calls himself “Son of the Widow.”

Search for the New Isis, the Divine Sophia :

But the Isis legend must show itself as being fulfilled in another way in our time. We cannot lose the Christ and what he, in a higher form than Osiris, gives us; but we can lose, and we have lost, what is portrayed for our Christian understanding standing at the side of Osiris — Isis — the mother of the Saviour, the divine wisdom, Sophia. If the Isis legend is to be renewed, then it must not simply follow the old form
…
Oh, the soul will attain to altogether new feelings if it feels committed to experience the new Isis legend within modern humanity. Lucifer kills Isis and then places her body into the infinity of space, which has become the grave of Isis, a mathematical abstraction. Then comes the search for Isis, and her discovery, made possible through the inner force of spiritual knowledge.
…
Just as the Egyptians looked from Osiris to Isis, so we must learn to look again to the new Isis, the holy Sophia. Christ will appear again in his spiritual form during the course of the twentieth century, not through the arrival of external events alone, but because human beings find the power represented by the holy Sophia. The modern age has had the tendency to lose this power of Isis, this power of Mary. It has been killed by all that arose with the modern consciousness of humankind. And the confessions have in part exterminated just this view of Mary.

Isis and the Soul:

Isis, when she is purified and has laid aside all that she has received from the physical, is impregnated from the spiritual world and gives birth to Horus, the higher man, who is to be victorious over the lower human being. Thus we see Isis as the representative of the human soul, as that in us which as the divine spiritual is born of the universal Father and has remained within us, seeking Osiris and only finding him through initiation or death. By conjuring this Osiris and Isis saga in a picture before our soul we are looking into the realm that lies behind the physical world of the senses, into a time when man was still among the Mothers, the primordial grounds of existence, when Isis was not yet enclosed in the physical body but still united in the golden age with her spouse Osiris.

Hanlon’s Razor, Common Sense, and Conspiracies

There are no problems today which don’t need a commission, nobody dare or can take a decision, as no one trust common sense any more. This missing common sense is the background for many so-called Law’s, as the following laws concerning Malice contra Incompetence, and these common sense laws describes some of the symptoms of The Trap of Materialism. Many Conspiracy Theories builds on malice where it really are incompetence.

The following law’s are taken from Wikipedia.

Hanlon’s razor:

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Robert A. Heinlein‘s 1941 short story “Logic of Empire”

“You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity“

“Heinlein’s Razor”

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity, but don’t rule out malice. or … but keep your eyes open.

Grey‘s Law

“Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.“

Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774)

“…misunderstandings and neglect create more confusion in this world than trickery and malice. At any rate, the last two are certainly much less frequent.“

Albert Einstein:

“Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the universe.“

Compare Schiller‘s “

Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain.“

Elbert Hubbard said,

“Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.”

Napoleon Bonaparte

“Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.

German General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord in Truppenführung, 1933:

“I divide my officers into four classes; the clever, the lazy, the industrious, and the stupid. Each officer possesses at least two of these qualities. Those who are clever and industrious are fitted for the highest staff appointments. Use can be made of those who are stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy however is for the very highest command; he has the temperament and nerves to deal with all situations. But whoever is stupid and industrious is a menace and must be removed immediately!“

Sir Bernard Ingham’s Cock-up theory

“Cock-up before conspiracy“.

The full quotation

“Many journalists have fallen for the conspiracy theory of government. I do assure you that they would produce more accurate work if they adhered to the cock-up theory.“

Is it possible to make Intelligent Machines?

Intelligent Machines

I have had some discussions with engineers who had Intelligent Machines as their religion, and the most interesting part was that it was the Atheists who dreamed about the thinking machine.

I will analyze the feasibility of intelligent machines, with the computers we have now, from three different scientific approaches: The Mathematical, the Physical, and the Biological.

It is interesting that the believers in Intelligent Machines ignores the evidence, especially the Mathematical evidence which is the most definitive and stringent, this is also the reason I call them believers as they ignore facts, dreaming of a future with machines a lot wiser and knowledgeable than man, replacing God.

Mathematical Evidence

Kurt Gödel made the Incompleteness Theorems:

It is possible to have a complete and consistent list of axioms that cannot be produced by a computer program (that is, the list is not Computably Enumerable).

And

The incompleteness theorems also implies that not all mathematical questions are computable.

It states simply that there are problems which man can solve and machines can’t.

The BBC program `Dangerous Knowledge (part 9/9)’ looks at this Mathematical Prof.

Other documentation

Roger Penrose shows with examples why they cant think in: “The Large, the Small and the Human Mind“.

In this Hard Talk interview about the recurring big bang Roger Penrose touches the problem.

Physical Limitations

When you look out into the room, you are sitting in, you have a picture or really a video of everything at once and constantly. It means that this view of your surroundings, and your thoughts about it, are in your Consciousness. Seen from a computational view it is really fantastic, and Computer Science today can only dream of something that seems to be Conscious! Even with future technologies as Quantum Computing is it a question if we can make Conscious Computers at all.

Computers are something called Von Neumann Machines, which again is defined through the theoretical Turing Machine, and Turing Machines can only work on one bit at a time, which is only a small part of the information necessary to make a single point on a computer or television screen.

The consequence is that Computers can only have a part of a point of a picture in what we can call their ‘Consciousness’ at a time, and that is not enough to even contain the color information of a point. What they have calculated in one instance is forgotten in the next. It’s only when we see the result on the screen or on paper that it becomes Conscious through our consciousness, that is, we see the  screen as a whole, extracts the relevant information in all its complexity, and understands it’s implications.

A computer cannot be Intelligent however big and speedy it is.

Brain Science

Erich Harth in ’Windows on the Mind’,  1982:

The brain presents two seemingly irreconcilable aspects: It is a material body, exhibiting all the physical properties of matter, and it possesses a set of faculties and attributes, collectively called mind, that are not found in any other physical system.

In his book “The Creative Loop,..” he elaborates further on how the physical mind functions, and why it’s superior to any known devices.

Literature

The book by Erich Harth’s “The Creative Loop, How the Brain Makes a Mind” gives an intelligent description of the physical working of our brain.

The book Stairways to the Mind by Alwyn Scott gives a broader overview of the area.

No Theory of a Conscious Machine yet

There have been talked about thinking machines for forty years, but there have not been a single theory for building one yet. There have been made a lot of programs running on super computers which can simulate some aspects of the mind, but the programs have nothing to do with real intelligence.

Computers are good at those things where we are bad, that is remembering and calculations, but they can’t think.

With the knowledge we have to day, if it had been possible to program consciousness into our current computers, we would have done it by now.

Future possibilities

It may be possible to make thinking computers if its build on Quantum Computing, as the numbers of entangled bits in the computers processing unit can be increased considerable above the one bit we have today, but I am not sure that it is enough to create consciousness.

Literature

Hubert Dreyfus: What Computers Can’t Do: The Limits of Artificial Intelligence.

Quantum Consciousness: A Discussion between Stuart Hameroff and Alwyn Scott.

Tarjei Straume on the Technological Singularity.

The Trap of Materialism

The Materialistic society we are living in have some build in dangers, which will draw our society in a direction of less faith or trust in man, giving more inhuman conditions for all, and the problem is that we may see it as inevitable.

In the following paragraphs I will look at its implications, which will be seen through greater aggressiveness, less social skills, and decreasing possibilities to control our future, less possibility to make decisions both in grand scale and in our own lives, both at home and job.

The Trap works through various mechanisms, as

• Materialism, a purely physical view of the universe,
• Pervasive Politics, proliferation of the political system in daily life,
• Groupings, emphasis on group, race, and ethnicity, us and them,
• Orthodoxy, literal and “simple” interpretation of the Gospels,
• Superstition, esoteric beliefs without foundation in thinking skills,
• Abstract Thinking, cultivating abstract theorization,
• Quantitative Thinking, purely quantitative (statistical) observation.

These combined with a Dualistic world view, where everything is Black and White, will increase the strife between people all over the world.

Dualism sees everything in opposites,

and this is one of the greatest dangers today: If you are not with me, you are against me. That is a widespread sickness, especially on the Internet where you can hide under anonymity, but orthodoxy of any kind: religious, atheistic, or political, moves our future in a dangerous direction. What makes it so dangerous are that both sides believe that they fight on the side of good, but the reality is that they both fight for extremism, truth is always somewhere in between.

The deception is not to see the full picture, to understand both sides in any relation!

The challenge is to find the Golden Mean between the extremes.

The following paragraphs will look into different areas where Dualism endangers our society.

Materialism

Science is seen as the absolute truth against black superstition represented by religion. It’s not seen as different and complementing views on the same reality. It has started the Atheistic religion, attacking spirituality and moral values. Darwin is their prime god, and their Messiah are the Sentient Robots they hope will come and save the world. The problem are that most of the Atheists don’t really understand what they are preaching, and they don’t accept scientific results if it’s against their own beliefs. See Is it possible to make Intelligent Machines?

Science can’t make decisions or take responsibility, as Science in itself have no moral. Science is always used by others, more dynamic groups of society, by players on the market or in politics, which moral aren’t better than the Courts or the Voters.

“Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.” Martin Luther King Jr.
“I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.” Richard Feynman
“As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice of action arise, human science is at a loss.” Noam Chomsky

Pervasive Politics

You see Dualism in politics, especially in two-party systems, where there is no space for other views. Politics dominates today everybody’s life, in contrast to forty years ago, where politics was talked about at the elections every fourth year. The laws gave then rules for the relation between the citizens, today the laws regulate the relation between state and citizens.

The politics invasion of the private sphere destroys the natural equilibrium of the society. The economic system today is an example of this, the equilibrium of that system ends regularly in chaos as the system is made for the speculators, not for the companies, nor for the country and its citizens. Today the decisions are taken by regulations or laws on behalf of groups, where prior the decisions were taken by those who knew about the concrete cases on behalf of persons. Wrong decisions had only small consequences then, where wrong decisions today have far heavier consequences as more people are dependent on these decisions.

“Justice without mercy is unjust.” Eli Wamberg

This is a problem all over the world, and it gets worse the more laws and rules people have to follow.

One of the biggest lies of today: We need more regulations as a result of the society’s complexity. Wrong, it’s more complex as a result of all those regulations. Computers takes the complexity out of complex tasks, and prefabricated goods takes the complexity out of manual work, so what is complex today, except the laws?

Groupings

There is a tendency to split up in groups, instead of seeing mankind as one; people split up after race, religion, language, land, locality, sex, or whatever. There are lots of hate in this, not least on the Internet.

“Insanity in individuals is something rare – but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.”  Friedrich Nietzsche

Orthodoxy

There is a tendency to read religious text’s to narrowly, as Jehovah Witnesses, and other religious groups who take their holy books too literally. Durban Two, where the Islāmic countries tries to prohibit any critic of  religion, is a typical example showing that discussions of religious content is unwanted. New religious movements like Scientology, Atheism, the Moonies, and so on, are also too rigid.

“Beware the man of one book.“  Saint Thomas Aquinas

Superstition

Another trap is to accept the words of religious, esoteric, and scientific origin without thoughts. Rudolf Steiner stresses particularly that esoteric students are in danger of reading esoteric literature without conscious understanding, but that includes also Atheists reading scientific texts without understanding.

Abstract Thinking

in contrast to real understanding. It’s seen everywhere, and is also part of the previous areas. Man is seen as a thing not as a being. The reality is not abstract, and every decision based on abstract thinking is wrong, especially if living beings are involved.

Quantitative Thinking

and Statistics without understanding. Let’s say a politician want to make a law, and it will make 0.123% of all families go bankrupt, but as the percent is low nobody sees it as a problem. Nobody understands that there are real people behind those figures. Quantitative thinking always works through abstractions.

Big Mother

The development moves in a direction where we can expect that our personal ‘I’ is assimilated by the masses, the collective. In the western world we are talking about freedom, that nobody shall tell us what to do, and we are fighting (Duality problem) against conspiracies, against CO2, against many other things, but we don’t define and work consistently for a world worth living in. At the same time our capabilities to decide our own destiny are diminishing, regulated by law, organizations, computers, and infrastructure. The result may be that everybody just follow the route with least resistance, which are built through directives, regulations, computer capabilities, ending in a situation where nobody thinks or makes decisions any more. And it’s all made for the good of the citizens by the Big Mother.

“All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.” Noam Chomsky

Political Correctness

Political Correctness is sneaking in everywhere, without any conscious effort by any conspiratorial agency, but because of the path of least resistance.

“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum – even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.” Noam Chomsky

No Childhood

Many of the restrictions and laws are made because of lacking parenting, children no longer learn to live in a community, they are each and all small kings and princesses, who don’t understand that others don’t see them as such. Their understanding of scientific, historic or creative endeavors is as small as it has ever been. The children learned more at the camp fire than the children of today. As they don’t know how to behave, more and more laws are created to remedy the lacking parenting.

The central problem are that Children aren’t allowed to be children any longer, or as Michael Jackson says:

“Childhood has become the great casualty of modern-day living. All around us we are producing scores of kids who have not had the joy, who have not been accorded the right, who have not been allowed the freedom, or knowing what it’s like to be a kid.

Today children are constantly encouraged to grow up faster, as if this period known as childhood is a burdensome stage, to be endured and ushered through, as swiftly as possible.”
…
“Love, ladies and gentlemen, is the human family’s most precious legacy, its richest bequest, its golden inheritance. And it is a treasure that is handed down from one generation to another. Previous ages may not have had the wealth we enjoy. Their houses may have lacked electricity, and they squeezed their many kids into small homes without central heating. But those homes had no darkness, nor were they cold. They were lit bright with the glow of love and they were warmed snugly by the very heat of the human heart. Parents, undistracted by the lust for luxury and status, accorded their children primacy in their lives.” Michael Jackson, Speech at Oxford University(2001)

Complicated Structures

You can’t make tax-systems as complicated as they are today without computers, and you can’t control the many citizens or employees, as we can today, without computers; the amount of data are enormous. They make it possible to create structures which are difficult to manage without using computers, and computers don’t know HR.

GM and the American Automobile Industry are good examples of these gigantic Companies, who would be impossible to manage without stiff administrative structures and computers, and it’s extremely difficult to change these structures if needed. But modern software organizations have the same problems, with their software base, as Microsoft with their operating system, and their Office System, Yahoo with it’s big software base and reductions in labor have their problems, and new organizations as Google with it’s extreme growth will quickly get into the same problems, the only way out are to regularly rebuild old systems from the ground without any application reuse, and keeping different applications separated on application level, and using methods who makes the programming as simple and cost effective as possible.

These big organizations are extremely susceptible to the Peters Principle:

“In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.”

I believe computers can be a boon to mankind, but we have to control how and what they are used for, not letting their possibilities decide our future, as their strength can be used both for the good and the bad.

Management and Computers

You can use computers to many things, they can plan routes for transport to decrease energy consumption, and many other useful things. This sounds good, but if we don’t take care, it could mean that it makes the knowledge and experience of man superfluous or even dangerous; man’s role degraded to a machine.

The need for knowledge is diminishing everywhere in the society, except within the computer world. Many jobs who needed educated Craftsmen can now be done by unskilled labor, as building materials don’t need special skills any more, and the computer has taken over a lot of paper work and decision-making. This makes everybody to secretaries except the secretaries, even executives writes their own letters and calculating sheets on their computers, instead of using secretaries, so they could do what they were hired and paid for: Manage.

The term “Human Resources” is in itself a degradation, people are not individuals any longer, they are a kind of commodity. See “Human Resources” by Scott Noble.

Large Structures

The physicist Geoffrey B. West studies large structures like cities and corporate organisations, and has found that cities increases it’s productivity and also it’s problems, while corporate organisations decreases their productivity as they grow.

“Bettencourt and West discovered that corporate productivity, unlike urban productivity, was entirely sublinear. As the number of employees grows, the amount of profit per employee shrinks. “

“The graph reflects the bleak reality of corporate growth, in which efficiencies of scale are almost always outweighed by the burdens of bureaucracy. “When a company starts out, it’s all about the new idea,” West says. “And then, if the company gets lucky, the idea takes off. Everybody is happy and rich. But then management starts worrying about the bottom line, and so all these people are hired to keep track of the paper clips. This is the beginning of the end.”

“The danger, West says, is that the inevitable decline in profit per employee makes large companies increasingly vulnerable to market volatility. Since the company now has to support an expensive staff — overhead costs increase with size — even a minor disturbance can lead to significant losses. As West puts it, “Companies are killed by their need to keep on getting bigger.”

The New York Times

Public organisations have of course the same problems as the corporate companies, as they don’t trust their employees.

Cities are good examples on how the unstructured principles works, how the size of the city increases the production per citizen.

“According to the data, whenever a city doubles in size, every measure of economic activity, from construction spending to the amount of bank deposits, increases by approximately 15 percent per capita. It doesn’t matter how big the city is; the law remains the same. “This remarkable equation is why people move to the big city,” West says. “Because you can take the same person, and if you just move them to a city that’s twice as big, then all of a sudden they’ll do 15 percent more of everything that we can measure.”

“When Bettencourt and West analyzed the negative variables of urban life, like crime and disease, they discovered that the exact same mathematical equation applied.”

“For West, the impermanence of the corporation illuminates the real strength of the metropolis. Unlike companies, which are managed in a top-down fashion by a team of highly paid executives, cities are unruly places, largely immune to the desires of politicians and planners. “Think about how powerless a mayor is,” West says. “They can’t tell people where to live or what to do or who to talk to. Cities can’t be managed, and that’s what keeps them so vibrant. They’re just these insane masses of people, bumping into each other and maybe sharing an idea or two. It’s the freedom of the city that keeps it alive.”

The New York Times

No Competent Leaders

What makes it so frustratingly absurd is that we are giving our independence to a system, a network of directives and conventions, without any persons being in charge. There is nowhere you can go saying that it’s wrong and it should be otherwise, everybody will tell you, that’s how it is and it has always been that way, and it can’t be in any other way, as it’s too costly to change the computers programming just because of you! Of cause, we have leaders in the top of the state or the corporate companies, but as the decision-making are moved up through the hierarchy (following automatic rules,) it becomes more and more difficult to manage the big organizations, as everything becomes dependent on one decision maker alone, and few know how to or can change the course. It’s more difficult to change the direction of a State, Organization, or a Company than a Super Tanker. The organizations becomes automatons, and the companies go down in case of unanticipated events which craves structural changes.

GM and the American Automobile Industry are good examples of this inability to change, they had known for decades that they should change their models to compete with Japanese and European manufacturers, but they couldn’t.

The incompetence of these organizations will give rise to Conspiracy Theories as Hanlon’s Law warns about:

“Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”

The following video shows many of the tendencies mentioned. Most banks don’t have types as Potter any longer, the bank works and thinks like a machine without any feelings or empathy at all, costumer service is a word not a fact.

From Move Your Money who tries to resist the Corporate Ideology.

Automated Decisions

Buying and selling on the stock market are for a great part based on automated decisions on computers, but as we have seen, it can go terrible wrong when some unanticipated events shows up. What’s worse, the stock market was made to foster strong and sound companies, not for computer controlled gaming, but for intelligent investment.

As fewer and fewer managers can make decisions, these decisions will be automated as rules in computers, and it will be impossible to make decisions based on individual concerns.

Decreasing Social Intercourse

Computers are exceptional for entertainment, you can live your life on the Internet, without any direct social contact. You can play games, make your work through the net if necessary, discuss, hunt sex/ books/ programs/ random data on the net (can be like drugs,) book your food from a local pizzeria, book escort girls, men, and boys, eventually finding mates on the net if you really want to live together with another being:). The film Matrix is a plausible destiny, not by force, but semi freely. It’s not Big Brother, it’s Big Mama.

Less Social Skills

In the old days, children, teenagers, and adults learned by living in a community, and there was room for everybody, also the village idiot. These and other unusual persons were educated by their surrounding who were mostly normal. We are today living more and more on the Internet, learning our social skills through social applications and computer games, the old community’s influence are replaced by the influence of the Internet comrades, and as like seeks likes, they can only increase their phobias or other disorders. Examples are numerous: pedophilia, school killings, terrorists, all kind of surrealistic interests, and so forth. The Law of Sayre’s are relevant in many of these cases:

“In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the stakes at issue.”

No Privacy

Children and teenagers can be reached by mobile and GPS always and everywhere, followed on the Internet through Twitter or Facebook by their parents. No privacy. The same goes for the adults, no privacy, open for state officials, economic institutions, and employers. Password protection, pseudonyms, and like precautions is no hindrance, Cyber-Investigators will find everything, relevant or not. You can not even go to the North Pole or to Himalaya in peace, they can always reach you, and you them.

Where’s the remotest place on Earth?

In our hyper-connected world, getting away from it all is easier said than done. New Scientist.

Conspiracy Theories

The frustration has to go somewhere, and while there are no one responsible for our situation, and no one with enough insight, determination, and power to change the situation, we invent some god-like powerful conspirators who in all secrecy, with hundreds of employees, stands behind all the bad in this world. The truth is, that most leaders are so incompetent that it hurts. Just look at Iraq. The military invasion was well thought out, but the rest was incompetence par excellence. And that is not an exception, it’s the rule. Of cause there are conspiracies and secret operations, but if more than one participant knowing about the conspiracy are alive a year later, it’s just a question of time before the world know. Another reason to use few people are that really competent people are difficult to find, and the more people involved the bigger the risks for failure, and the bigger the consequences of a failure, the less interesting the project becomes. The best way to check if a conspiracy theory is viable or not, isn’t the technical evidence but the psychology and the necessary resources behind, how big is the risk, who gains, what’s their gain, how many participate, and what expertise are necessary.

A sober view on Conspiracy Theories from the left:

Noam Chomsky on Conspiracy Theories
In case the video is not functioning look here

What’s the mechanism behind the development?

Literature

Allan Bloom

The Closing of the American Mind, Simon & Schuster Inc.

Christopher Lasch

Haven in a Heartless World, 1977, Basic Books, Inc.

In the American political vocabulary, “family” and “family values” no longer simply evoke pictures of harmonious scenes; they also push our buttons (left and right) about what is wrong with society. One of the earliest and sharpest cultural commentators to investigate the twentieth-century American family, Christopher Lasch argues in this book that as social science “experts” intrude more and more into our lives, the family’s vital role as the moral and social cornerstone of society disintegrates – and, left unchecked, so does our political and personal freedom. Haven in a Heartless World is a trenchant analysis of the plight of the family. Lasch takes a clear-eyed look at the institution in which America’s future generations are being raised and finds it faltering.

Geoffrey B. West

A Physicist Turns the City Into an Equation:

A New York Times article on his work.

Growth, innovation, scaling, and the pace of life in cities:

Describes the mathematical background for his work.

Atticannie’s Blog

Why Teacher Drink, the sequel: Natalie Munroe speaks out

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

have written a little book called “Night Flight” which describes man’s fight against the Materialistic docility to keep man competent and responsible.

By Rudolf Steiner

Inkarnation Ahrimans in German/Deutch and in English.

Political Correctness

Political Correctness is sneaking in everywhere, without any conscious effort by any conspiratorial agency, but because of the path of least resistance.

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum – even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.

Noam Chomsky

The Eightfold Path

The Wheel of Dharma

1. Right View -

I view things from what appears to me outwardly.

Man attains this kind of knowledge about the world when he acquires a right view of things, a view that has nothing to do with sympathy or antipathy or preference of any sort. He must strive as best he can to acquire the right view of each thing, purely according to what presents itself to him outwardly. That is the first principle: the Right View of things.

2. Right Intent -

I judge in accordance with my right view.

Secondly, man must become independent of what has remained from earlier incarnations; he must also endeavor to judge in accordance with his right view of a thing and not be swayed by any other influences. Thus Right Judgment is the second principle.

3. Right Speech -

I give true expression of my right view and judgment.

The third is that he must strive to give true expression to what he desires to communicate to the world, having first acquired the right view and right judgment of it; not only his words but every manifestation of his being must express his own right view, that and that alone. This is Right Speech.

4. Right Focus -

I let my right view, judgment, and speech become deed.

The fourth principle is that man must strive to act, not according to his sympathies and antipathies, not according to the dark forces of Samskara within him, but in such a way that he lets his right view, right judgment and right speech become deed. This is Right Action.

5. Right Alertness -

I act in my highest and best line of work.

The fifth principle, enabling a man to liberate himself from what is within him, is that he should acquire the right vocation and station in the world. We may best understand what Buddha meant by this, if we remember how many people are dissatisfied with the tasks devolving upon them, believing that some other position would be more advantageous. But a man should be able to derive from the situation into which he is born or into which fate has placed him, the best that is possible, i.e. to acquire the right `occupation’ or `vocation’. Whoever finds no satisfaction in the situation in which he is placed, will not be able to derive from it the power to unfold right activity in the world. This is what Buddha called Right Vocation.

6. Right Purpose -

I work steadily till right action becomes a habit in me.

The sixth principle is that a man should make increasing efforts to ensure that what he acquires through right views, right judgment and so forth, shall become habit in him. He is born into the world with certain habits. A child gives evidence of this or that inclination or habit. But man’s endeavors should be directed, not towards retaining the habits, proceeding from Samskara but towards acquiring those that gradually become his own as the result of right views, right judgment, right speech, and so on. These are the Right Habits.

7. Right Effort -

I link the present with the past and thus account for what I have already learned in previous lives.

The seventh principle is that a man should bring order into his life through not invariably forgetting yesterday when he has to act to-day. He would never accomplish anything if he had to learn his skills anew each time. He must strive to develop recollectedness, mindfulness, regarding everything in his life. He must always turn to account what he has already learned, he must link the present with the past. Thus along the Eightfold Path man must acquire Right Mindfulness in the sense of Buddha’s teaching.

8. Right Motivation -

I let the things of the world speak directly to me without partiality to views of other humans or my former incarnations.

The eighth quality is acquired when, without partiality for one view or another and without being influenced by any element remaining in him from former incarnations, he surrenders himself with pure devotion to the things of the world, immerses himself in them and lets them alone speak to him. This is Right Contemplation.

Buddha – Mercury

This is the Eightfold Path, of which Buddha said to his disciples that if followed it would gradually lead to the extinction of the thirst for existence with its attendant suffering, and impart to the soul something that brings liberation from elements enslaving it from past lives.

Throat Chakra, the Sixteen Petaled Lotus

The Eightfold Path is connected to the Vishuddha, the throat Chakra or the Sixteen Petaled Lotus as Rudolf Steiner Calls the astral organ.

In “Knowledge of the Higher Worlds And Its Attainment” Rudolf Steiner goes more in depth with the Eightfold Path. The Initial words from the text about the Sixteen Petaled Lotus:

The organ in the vicinity of the larynx has sixteen petals or spokes; the one in the region of the heart twelve, and the one in the pit of the stomach ten.

Now certain activities of the soul are connected with the development of these organs, and anyone devoting himself to them in a certain definite way contributes something to the development of the corresponding organs. In the sixteen-petaled lotus, eight of its sixteen petals were developed in the remote past during an earlier stage of human evolution. Man himself contributed nothing to this development; he received them as a gift from nature, at a time when his consciousness was in a dull, dreamy condition. At that stage of human evolution they were in active use, but the manner of their activity was only compatible with that dull state of consciousness. As consciousness became clearer and brighter, the petals became obscured and ceased their activity. Man himself can now develop the remaining eight petals by means of conscious exercises, and thereby the whole lotus flower becomes luminous and mobile. The acquisition of certain faculties depends on the development of each one of the sixteen petals. Yet, as already shown, only eight can be consciously developed; the remainder then appear of their own accord.

The development proceeds in the following manner. The student must first apply himself with care and attention to certain functions of the soul hitherto exercised by him in a careless and inattentive manner.   There are eight such functions …

[In Danish: "Hvordan når man til erkendelse af de højere verdener?" af Rudolf Steiner.]

References

I have made the presentation of Buddhas Eightfold Path from Rudolf Steiners lectures on The Gospel of Luke.

The goal was to make a short and simple description of the path, followed with references for deeper understanding of the why.

Se also the Twelf Petaled Lotus, Ahanhata, The Heart Chakra:

And the Six Petaled Lotus, Svadhistana, The Sacral Chakra:

Kristina Kaine has elaborated over the theme in “Eightfold Path of Buddha in the Gospel of St John“.

A meditation for modern man: Meditation as contemplative inquiry : when knowing becomes love / Arthur Zajonc

See also The Noble Eightfold Path at Wikipedia.

The Path

What are the feminine and masculine sides we all talk about?

We all talk about our feminine and masculine sides without really knowing what we talk about.

I read Theosophy, Anthroposophy, Rosicrucian literature, Jung, Fromm, and other psychoanalysts, adding to my intuitive understanding, but I still didn’t grasp it fully.

Many interesting, partly frustrating, experiences gave finally a long searched result. I will not describe precisely what Animus and Anima are, as it is explained better by others, but I will show where they fit into the seven layer model of man, and how they fit into the Steiner and Aristotle model.

I will take it a little further by explaining a few but basic rules around Dream Interpretation and the Roles of the participating figures.

Jung and the Aristotelian model of the Soul

The model of Steiner/Aristotle split in three groups, the Body, the Soul, and the Spirit. Each part can again be split in three, the body as Physical, Ether, and Sentient body, and the soul as Sentient, Intellectual, and Consciousness soul, and the Spirit as Spirit self, Life spirit, and Spirit body. The model is described in The Essential Nature of Man.

Age contains the periods where each body and relating chakra is developed. (7) signifies change of teeth and (14) start of puberty. The Crown with 49 is by grace not through work. Following the Hebrew’s a person was first adult at 50.

	The Bodies of Man	Steiner Aristotle	Age From – To Chakra	Feminine associations	Usage In Dreams
					Man	Woman
1	Physical body Malkuth	Physical Body	0 – (7) Root
2	Etheric body Yesod	Ether or Life body Threptikon	(7) – (14) Generative	Lilith	Anima	Animus
		Sentient body Aesthetikon	(14) – 21 Solar Plexus
3	Astral body Hod Kama
		Sentient soul Orektikon	21 – 28 Heart	Maria Magdalene
					Lower I The Persona
4	Ego Netzach Nous Monad	Intellectual soul or Heart and Mind soul Kinetikon	28 – 35 Throat	Maria, Cleophas wife
		Consciousness soul Dianoetikon	35 – 42 Brow	Virgin Sophia	Higher I The Divine Child
5	Manas Tiphareth Transformed astral body	Spirit self	42 – 49 Crown		The Teacher The Wise Man or Woman
6	Buddhi Chesed Transformed etheric body	Life spirit	49 – 56	The World Mother
7	Atma Geburah Transformed physical body	Spirit body	56 – 63

In Dream Interpretation

The three Soul components:

• Sentient soul represents Anima for men and Animus for woman,
• Intellectual soul represents the Lower ‘I’/Persona/Ego, and
• Consciousness soul represents the Higher ‘I’.

Anima/Animus

Anima/Animus represents the base unconscious Feelings and the Ether body, and are represented by female actors in mens dreams and male actors in womens dreams. It can be your husband/wife, friends, colleagues, classmates, old girlfriends/boyfriends, or an unknown person.

As it concerns feelings, you seldom speak with your Anima/Animus, it’s mostly some kind of action, Love or some affection, or the opposite to that, showing the state between your feminine and masculine side.

Animus/Anima can in real seldom situations represent your physical body, if there is something which should be taken care of. And remember, it’s the opposite of your own gender.

Ego, Persona or Lower ‘I’

The Ego, the Lower ‘I’ represents Thinking, and is represented by the dreamer in the dream. One of the goals is to unify the Lower ‘I’ with the corresponding Anima/Animus, that is Feeling and Thinking. The relation is connected with the Chymical Wedding.

Shadows or False Ego’s

There can also be other actors (Shadows), playing the role of False Ego‘s . Typically friends, classmates, colleagues, or less common, typically in groups, unknown players. These persons sometimes characterize traits which tells what the dream is about, but in all circumstances it’s easier for the “dreaming facility” to use an existing person than to create a new personality.

The Shadow’s I see as debris flowing around in the unconscious mind blocking the Chakras. They are the background for the plot of the dreams.

The False Ego’s are the persona’s we set up when relating to other people to hide us behind, protect our selves, or to impress other persons. Their role in the dreams are to show that they are there and to remove them you have to recognize them. There can of course be persons in the dream which is only extras just to give the background, but then they will be out of focus, they will be difficult to remember.

Higher ‘I’, The Divine Child

The Higher ‘I’ represents the Willing, and is usually represented by a child, or teenager in the dream. Whatever happens to the child is a result of your life. The more the child prosper the better. The goal is to become the Divine Child.

The Wise Teacher

One more role is the Teacher, which I presumes represents the Spirit self, and in dreams usually shown as your Father, Mother, a Teacher, or Chief from your real life, who you have some respect for. They can in the dream be connected with the next floor upstairs. Can be both sexes, but I think it’s mostly of the opposite gender.

Dream Symbols

Three other symbols which are paramount in dreams are your House, various Schools, and Transport Vehicles:

In dreams the House usually represents your physical and psychical state of development. Is it clean, is it in chaos, are you building on your second or third floor, is it finished?

The schools tells a little about how it is going, are you in a kindergarten, school, High School, or the University? Are there room for you, have you forgotten your books, and so forth.

In dreams transport vehicles tells about how your journey is progressing. If you are riding a bicycle you are not doing especially well. Your car can go out of gasoline, you may have lost your ticket for the bus,  come late for the train, or you got a first class ticket for the airplane.

Numbers

It is extremely seldom that numbers in dreams are remembered, as they normally have no meaning. It’s like reading a book in a dream, where the reading is remembered not the text. If you remember a number it’s important to write it down quickly. What the number signifies depends on the context, it could be the number of days, time of day, number of hours, a specific date, and so forth.

Names

It’s also seldom to hear Noun’s in dreams, so when your hear one, try to find out what it stands for. Some of these names can be quite humorous, but still contain vital information.

Anonymous dream persons

Actual people from the real world will be played by anonymous players, you have to use the context to decipher the real world implication.

Here and Now

Most dreams are rather concrete, and they accentuate specific problems from the day before, and these problems are typically waves of underlying currents, life themes, which should be handled.

What makes dreams difficult to understand are that we live in the middle of our problems, that we cant overview our own situation; but our dreams can, and if we learn to interpret our dreams it will help us to understand our own situation.

Dream Interpretation and Chakras

From time to time there may be dreams telling about your progress or in which areas you have problems; here some symbols and colors related to the Chakras.

The Figure are the symbol of the Chakra, hold the cursor above the symbol, a short text maybe with a word in UPPERCASE, tells what which part to look for, as an example is Muladhara’s symbol a Square. Clicking on a symbol opens a Vortex of Light description of the Chakra. The Crown chakra has no dream symbol as I am aware of.

Chakra	Color	Animal	Figure	Comments
Sahasrara Crown	Purple			Moon ?
Ajna Third Eye Pineal	Indigo			Clairvoyance, psychic abilities, imagination, dreaming, Mercury.
Vishuddha Throat	Blue	White elephant		Pressure when you are not communicating your emotions properly, Venus.
Ahanhata Heart	Green	Birds, animals with antlers		Lack of compassion, Sun.
Manipura Navel Solar Plexus	Yellow	Sacrificial animal		Personal Power, anger or a sense of victimization, Mars.
Svadhistana SacralHara	Orange	Water animals		Emotional problems or sexual guilt, Jupiter.
Muladhara Root	Red	Elephant, horse, and other big and heavy animals		Earth, survival, grounding, stillness, Saturn.

Examples

The Tin Drum

A friend of mine had a dream where she was going in front of a group of girls in a concentration camp playing on a tin drum.

The group of girls were her false ego’s, she put up whenever she met any of her friends, family, and so forth. She was trapped like in a concentration camp by that behavior. She understood the dream herself.

To met a person again.

I walked on the platform going to get a train. I met a young girl, but walked on. I then sat down between two girls, where one of them was the same I passed earlier, but older.

Or

I were in a discotheque and met a girl, I then continued walking around before i ran into her again.

Both dreams was preparing the same meeting with an old acquaintance, and contained in the small group of dreams about the future.

A real short dream

Saw a Trampoline.

The person had the previous day done a lot of work without coming anywhere; if the dream theme is recurring a change in the theme of life is needed.

Literature

Dreams

Myths-Dreams-Symbols

based on Eric Ackroyd1 & 2 and Edward C. Whitmont.

The Individuation Process: The Shadow, Anima/Animus, Mana personalities, the higher Self.

Site directory.

Dream Interpretation: A Biblical Understanding

Af Herman Riffel

Many believers read the scriptural accounts of dreams and never think it could happen to them. Today, though, many are realizing that God has never ceased using dreams and visions to guide, instruct, and warn. This book will give you a biblical understanding of dreams that you never had before!

A Step-By-Step Approach

I find that a very useful guideline for dream interpretation, especially at first, is to take everything in the dream to represent an aspect of the dreamer.

For example, if the dream involves the person travelling in a car with their uncle, then the car represents some aspect of the person’s life, and the uncle also represents a part of the person. This isn’t the only way to interpret dreams, but it’s a very good starting point, I think.

Here’s the step-by-step approach that I use.
I hope that by going through the example and then trying the exercise you’ll start to get a feel for what’s involved in trying to interpret a dream, whether it’s your own or someone else’s.

This Step by Step Approach contains a description of Dream Interpretation which is quite usable with my terminology. It also contains descriptions of how to combine the I Ching with Dream Interpretation.

Dream Encyclopedia

Example: The House in Your Dream
…..
Each dream image holds enormous data, emotional response, and created patterns of behaviour. So in considering the house in your dream you need to remember you are in touch with a full surround databank of fantastic information about you, your past and your possibilities. You can interact with this information by exploring it in the right way. And to help with this let us look at and question some of the possibilities your dream house might hold.

…..

Contains many interesting and usable entries about the Archetypes used in dreams.

Dream Dictionary

Example with House:

Seeing a house in your dream, represents your own soul and self. Specific rooms in the house indicate a specific aspect of your psyche. In general, the attic represents your intellect, the basement represents the unconscious, etc. If the house is empty, then it indicates feelings of insecurity. If the house is shifting, then it suggests that you are going through some personal changes and changing your belief system. Dreaming that you are cleaning your house means your need to clear out your thoughts and getting rid of old ways. You are seeking self-improvement. Seeing an old, run-down house in your dream, represents your old beliefs, attitudes and how you used to think or feel. A situation in your current life may be bringing about those same old attitudes and feelings. Alternatively, the old house may symbolize your need to update you mode of thinking. Dreaming that your house is broken into, suggests that you are feeling violated. It may refer to a particular relationship or current situation in your life. Alternatively, it indicates that some unconscious material is attempting to make itself known. There are some aspects of yourself that you have denied. Dreaming of a haunted house means unfinished emotional business, related to your childhood family, dead relatives, or repressed memories and feelings. Dreaming that a house disappeared, indicates that you are not feeling grounded. You feel uprooted by a particular circumstance or relationship in your life.

This entry looks quite ok, I havent checked other entries.

Dreams and Dreaming

Dreams as not really nonsensical, but a lot of them are crypted somehow. Major psychologists have studied how dreams work and why they appear, and whether they occur according to patterns, and which patterns. Carl Jung, Medard Boss, Calvin Hall, Montague Ullman and others have decreed that dreams do carry meanings, but you need to understand how dreaming functions. Dreams functions on their own terms. Through the basics of dream interpretations to get a hold on many of them.

Some dreams reflect mind content that pertains to tasks and problems and other issues the mind gets deeply involved in. And parts of the jumbled “video clips” within may just present “left-overs” from days before. Dream interpretations need to be tentative, perhaps open-ended too. Consider the deep feelings and messages involved in the recurrent and most impressive dreams you have had.

Decode and interpret the flows of various icons, images, scenes, actors, happenings, concomitant feelings so as to arrive at tentative or putative postulates about what impressive dreams could mean. In such work there is help in mulling over single, outstanding ideas or episodes inside the stream or flow of a single dream. Take notes of them and learn to draw special illustrations that serve you in a log book. all of it could help, but it may be time-consuming work that had better be done for the whole life. In short, you have to learn to assess well.

Carl Gustav Jung on Dreams

Here we come upon something of the utmost importance for the applicability of dream-analysis: the dream describes the inner situation of the dreamer, but the conscious mind denies its truth and reality, or admits it only grudgingly.

More on Carl Jung’s Archetypes.

Jungian dream interpretation: a handbook of theory and practice

Comprehensive guide to an understanding of dreams in light of the basic principles of analytical psychology. Particular attention to common motifs, the role of complexes, and the goal and purpose of dreams.

Catching the Thread:

Sufism, Dreamwork, and Jungian Psychology

By Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Irina Tweedie

Aristotle

In  Greek Sculpture and the Four Elements J.L.Benson references Steiner on Aristotle’s description of the soul of man:

Aristotle distinguishes in man the vegetative soul, by which he means approximately what we call ether body, then the aesthetikon or sensitive soul, which we call the sentient or astral body. Next he speaks of orektikon which corresponds to sentient soul, then comes kinetikon corresponding to the intellectual soul, and he uses the term dianoetikon for the consciousness soul.

J.L.Benson writes in Greek Color Theorie and the Four Elements :

To my knowledge Steiner, working closely with concepts from Goethe’s scientific work, is the only modern thinker to give full weight to the macrocosmic aspect of the microcosmic foursome. Above the physical body (which Aristotle dealt with en passant : de An. 411a he uses the term etheric body for Aristotle’s threptikon or nutritive soul, astral or sentient body for the aesthetikon or sensitive soul and ego for nous .

Rudolf Steiner

On dreams:

One gradually notices that one’s dream life takes on a more regular character. The spiritual world flows into this at first. Meditation is the occult key for this. One should get a notebook and briefly write down characteristic dreams in the morning. Thereby, one gets practice in retaining what flows to one from higher worlds. That’s the first elementary method to later get to bringing spiritual experiences through, that is, that they break through into bright day consciousness. Dreams that are only reminiscences from daily life or that are based on heart disturbances, headaches or other bodily conditions are only of value if they’re clothed in a symbolical form, for instance if the thumping heart appears as a cooking oven, or the painful brain as a dome into which animals creep, etc. Only the symbolism is of value here and not the dream’s content. For the symbolic form is initially used by the spiritual world to introduce us to the forces of higher worlds. That’s why one must pay attention to the fine points of this symbolism. In your case — according to your capacities — it’ll also be good if you compare the dreams that you become aware of with the experiences of the next day. For your dreams may soon take on a portentous character. If this happens we’ll say some more about how this thing can be made productive for your spiritual life. Please give these indications a try and tell me how things are going in about eight days.

The Essential Nature of Man from Theosophy.

Chakras

Vortex of Light

This site offers an abbreviated introduction to the Chakra System, applications for meditation and healing using this system, and its relationship to other healing systems.

Chrystal Links

Visual appealing page on the Chakras.

Kheper.net

Contains information on a deeper Esoteric level

Myths-Dreams-Symbols

Anthropos and Sophia

Christ and Maria flanked by the Esoteric Christianity represented by Sct. John, and Exoteric Christianity, represented by the Church.

Madonna and Child (or The Ansidei Altarpiece) painted by Raphael.

In the center column of this picture by Raphael we have Christ as the Son of Man, known as Anthropos the second Adam, and Maria also known as Sophia. Together they are known as Anthroposophia by the Anthroposophists.

They follow here the setup of the Kabbalah Tree of Life, Where the Exoteric Christianity is placed to the Right representing Sct. Peter and Salomon, and Esoteric Christianity are placed to the Left representing Sct. John, and Hiram Abiff the builder of Salomon’s Temple, and Christian Rosencreutz. Se The Temple Legend and The Masonic Legend for the legends behind Rosicrucianism and Masonry.

When Christ Gave John and Peter their Missions

Jesus Speaks with Peter

When they had finished breakfast, Jesus asked Simon Peter,
“Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?”

Peter said to him, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”

Jesus told him, “Feed my lambs.”

Then he asked him a second time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?”

Peter said to him, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”

Jesus told him, “Take care of my sheep.”

He asked him a third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?”

Peter was deeply hurt that he had asked him a third time, “Do you love me?” So he said to him, “Lord, you know everything. You know that I love you!”

Jesus told him, “Feed my sheep. Truly, I tell you with certainty, when you were young, you would fasten your belt and go wherever you liked. But when you get old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten your belt and take you where you don’t want to go.” Now he said this to show by what kind of death he would glorify God.

After saying this, Jesus told him, “Keep following me.”

Jesus and the Beloved Disciple

Peter turned around and noticed the disciple whom Jesus kept loving following them. He was the one who had put his head on Jesus’ chest at the supper and had said, “Lord, who is the one who is going to betray you?”

When Peter saw him, he said, “Lord, what about him?”

Jesus said to him, “If it is my will for him to remain until I come back, how does that concern you? You must keep following me!” So the rumor spread among the brothers that this disciple wasn’t going to die. Yet Jesus didn’t say to Peter that he wasn’t going to die, but, “If it is my will for him to remain until I come back, how does that concern you?”

What it meant was that John would die physically, but not mentally, when he incarnated again he would remember, from life to life, who he was. Text taken from International Standard Version.

Changing Hierarchies through Time

Why does the Kabbalah Tree of Life look as it does,
and has it always looked that way?

In the Rosicrusian Cross I had a picture of the Kabbalah Sephirots as they are placed today:

Kabbalah Sephirots as they are placed today.

It’s usually thought that it has looked like this since the day man was created many planetary cycles (aeons) ago. But, as God emanates down through his creations, his emanations three aspects (Son, Mother, and Father), ascends up through the Sephirots leading their creations up, and the placements of the Sephirots changes therefore on the pillars, after which aspect occupies a given Sephira. That is, Sephirots with the Mother aspect are placed on the Left Pillar, Sephirots with the Son aspect are placed on the Middle Pillar, and Sephirots with the Father aspect are placed on the Right Pillar.

A complicated example, which also explains the background for Daat:

Binah, Chokmah, and Kether are placed the way they are because Binah contains The Mother, the Creator of Man (Thrones.) The Creator has to be just above the Abyss, as she is above any of our spiritual bodies. The Mother should have been in Chokmah which is a feminine Sephira, and  Binah should have contained the Son, and Kether should have contained The Father aspect.

While The Mother is in Binah, The Son is hidden in one of the other Sephirots, so there is missing a Son-Sephira below Kether, where Binah in reality should have been placed, and where the knowledgeable have placed an imaginary Sephira called Daat instead, symbolizing the hidden Son.

Short after the time of Christ (The Second Adam) with Elohim, The Father or Osiris, The Mother or Shekinah/Sophia/Isis, and The Son or Horus/Anthropos:

Microcosm, Lower Part of Tree of Life

We come from here to the Kabbalah of today by shifting the Æon’s one up, the Mother/Elohim moved from Tiphareth to Geburah, thereby Geburah was placed in the Left Pillar and Tiphareth moved from the Left Pillar to the Center Pillar, as the Son moved into Tiphareth, and so forth.

It is interesting to see the Heavenly, and Earthly triangles with the emanation of the Son as Man. These two triangles overlaid makes the Hexagram:

The Elements

YHVE are the letters for the Sephirots in the Third Hierarchy, Microcosm. Yod is Air, Heh is Fire, Vav is Water, and the last Heh is Earth. After the emanation of the Son, that is, today, the Elements has moved according to the Pillars. If we use the YHVE letters, Yod is fire, Heh is Water, Vav is Air, and the second Heh is still Earth. The reason are that the Right Pillar is Fire, the Left Pillar is Water, and the Center Pillar is Air, and Malkuth is always Earth.

Emanation of the new Æon

Franz Hartmann about the emanation from WHAT IS TRUE CHRISTIANITY?

It is claimed that at the beginning of certain historical periods — when old religious truths are about to be forgotten, and the idolatry of form assumes the place of true religion — some great spirit (planetary) appears upon the earth, incarnated into a human form, and by his word and example impresses the old truths forcibly upon a number of receptive minds, to communicate to others, and thus lay the foundation of a new religious system, embodying old truths in a new form.

It is believed that the man Jesus of Nazareth was the mortal form in which such a spirit was embodied; the latter being no less than what I believe every planetary spirit to be — an emanation from the Universal Logos or Word.

Literature

The Demiurge or Demiurgos and the AEon‘s or Eon‘s are described in

Gnostic Doctrines and Supersensible Influences in Europe

A Depth of Beginning, Notes on Kabbalah by Colin Low.

Emanation and Ascent in Hermetic Kabbalah

This document consists of slides and notes for a public talk presented at the Spirit of Peace. Colin Low.

Chaos or Order? No, Life!

We see everything in opposites,

Right or Wrong,  Chaos or Order,  Good or Bad,  Yin or Yang,  Hot or Cold, …

But,
There is more to it than that.

We all talk about Order fighting Chaos, and most of us see ourselves fighting Chaos on the side of Order. But thats not how the universe is, and that is the reason why so many of our struggles go wrong.

Man is always struggling on one or the other side,
instead of finding the middle way.

Lets take a simple example: The Sun is the most Chaotic we know and the Moon is the most ordered we have, nearby. A Black Hole is of course more ordered, but our moon is just up there. The Sun and The Moon are two opposites, and we would not like to live on any of them, one too hot and the other too cold, so we live on Earth, somewhere in between those two extremes, alive in Equilibrium. Seen from that point of view, both the Sun and the Moon is deadly Bad, while the Earth is Good for living.

I define the Equilibrium as the midpoint between chaos and order, and in this context it is Life (I prefer the vocabulary of chaos theory for that of thermodynamics.)

The more ordered or dead the universe is, the higher entropy of the universe following the Second Law of Thermodynamics. With time the entropy will increase until the absolute death of the universe. So, with Entropy, big is Bad!

Following the Second Law life depends on the difference between Warm and Cold:

Since any thermodynamic engine requires such a temperature difference, it follows that no useful work can be derived from an isolated system with maximum entropy; there must always be an external energy source and a cold sink.

Its interesting that our universe have suns and planets, and life on at least one planet, contrary to the Second Law. The life on Earth has been build against all odds, decreasing the local entropy constantly, since the Big Bang.

Misuse of Resources

Today we are increasing the entropy here on Earth with an alarmingly high rate. Our use of the resources of Earth and our destruction of nature is increasing the entropy and destroying our chances for survival in the long run, removing natures possibilities to decrease the entropy while trying to keep the equilibrium.

In Scientific American there is an intelligent article “Does Nature Break the Second Law of Thermodynamics?” about Thermodynamics and local self-organization.

As we normally think in dualities, we have problems defining equilibrium. If we take Thermodynamics as an example, they define equilibrium in the one extreme where entropy is highest, where the universe is dead. In Chaos-theory equilibrium lies somewhere between chaos and order.

From “The Middle Way” by Radha Burnier:

Sir Martin Rees, the eminent scientist who is the British Astronomer Royal, states in his book Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape the Universe, that there is this kind of equilibrium or balance in the cosmos itself. According to him, these six numbers, which are either very, very small or very large, represent various forces in the universe, but all those forces exist in a state of equilibrium. It is very similar to the Eastern idea that there are three gunas or three kinds of forces working throughout manifestation. When they are in a state of equilibrium, it is called spiritual sattva or truth. Sir Martin Rees mentions that through the ages, the force of gravity has been in a state of fine balance with the force of expansion. If the force of gravity were too great, the universe would collapse into nothing. If the force of expansion were too great, the universe would expand away into nothingness.

In Christianity we talk about following the Golden Middle way, staying away from the sides, and the Indians talk about Dharma, the way to follow. In Kabbalah the Pillars at the sides are the opposites, Order to the left and Chaos and energy to the right, and the middle pillar is the equilibrium, Life. In the crosses on Golgotha we have Christ in the middle symbolizing life, Love.

Here a description of The Second Law of Thermodynamics without Entropy, very instructive.

Literature

Ilya Prigogine

Ilya Prigogine

From WikiPedia

Prigogine is known best due to his definition of dissipative structures and their role in thermodynamic systems far from equilibrium, a discovery that won him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1977.

Dissipative structures theory

Dissipative structure theory led to pioneering research in self-organizing systems, as well as philosophic inquiries into the formation of complexity on biological entities and the quest for a creative and irreversible role of time in the natural sciences.

His work is seen by many as a bridge between natural sciences and social sciences. With professor Robert Herman he also developed the basis of the two fluid model, a traffic model for urban networks, using Bose-Einstein Condensation theory in traffic engineering.

Other Work

In his later years, his work concentrated on the mathematical role of determinism in nonlinear systems on both the classical and quantum level. He proposed the use of a rigged Hilbert space in quantum mechanics as one possible method of achieving irreversibility in quantum systems. He also co-authored several books with Isabelle Stengers, including End of Certainty and the classical book La Nouvelle Alliance (The New Alliance).

The End of Certainty

In his 1997 book, The End of Certainty, Prigogine contends that determinism is no longer a viable scientific belief. “The more we know about our universe, the more difficult it becomes to believe in determinism.” This is a major departure from the approach of Newton, Einstein and Schrödinger, all of whom expressed their theories in terms of deterministic equations. According to Prigogine, determinism loses its explanatory power in the face of irreversibility and instability.

….

In deterministic physics, all processes are time-reversible, meaning that they can proceed backward as well as forward through time. As Prigogine explains, determinism is fundamentally a denial of the arrow of time. With no arrow of time, there is no longer a privileged moment known as the “present,” which follows a determined “past” and precedes an undetermined “future.” All of time is simply given, with the future as determined as the past. With irreversibility, the arrow of time is reintroduced to physics. Prigogine notes numerous examples of irreversibility, including diffusion, radioactive decay, solar radiation, weather and the emergence and evolution of life. Like weather systems, organisms are unstable systems existing far from thermodynamic equilibrium. Instability resists standard deterministic explanation. Instead, due to sensitivity to initial conditions, unstable systems can only be explained statistically, that is, in terms of probability.

The Golden Triangle and the Fibonacci Spiral

The Essene Gospel of Peace

This gospel is directed against the select, which makes it more direct in its language and contains more specific directions for the audience.

It contains rules for cleansing the body as a primary step to developing the spirit, in connection with the Earthly Mother, and mentions the three higher layers of Man.

The Earthly Mother

Alba

Book one of The Gospel of Peace starts with

And then many sick and maimed came to Jesus, asking him. “if you know all things, tell us, why do we suffer with these grievous plagues? Why are we not whole like other men? Master, heal us, that we too may be made strong, and need abide no longer in our misery. We know that you have it in your power to heal all manner of disease. Free us from Satan and from all his great afflictions. Master, have compassion on us.”

He then tells about the Earthly Mother, and how through following her laws getting healthy.

“I tell you in very truth, Man is the Son of the Earthly Mother, and from her did the Son of Man receive his whole body, even as the body of the newborn babe is born of the womb of his mother. I tell you truly, you are one with the Earthly Mother; she is in you, and you in her. Of her were you born, in her do you live, and to her shall you return again. Keep, therefore, her laws, for none can live long, neither be happy, but he who honors his Earthly Mother and does her laws.

He then describes how to cleanse the body through fasting and other measures, and diets following the rules before the fall.

The road to the Heavenly Father goes through the Earthly Mother:

“I am sent to you by the Father, that I may make the light of life to shine before you. The light lightens itself and the darkness, but the darkness knows only itself, and knows not the light. I have still many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them yet. For your eyes are used to the darkness, and the full light of the Heavenly Father would make you blind. Therefore, you cannot yet understand that which I speak to you concerning the Heavenly Father who sent me to you. Follow, therefore, first, only the laws of your Earthly Mother, of which I have told you. And when her angels shall have cleansed and renewed your bodies and strengthened your eyes, you will be able to bear the light of our Heavenly Father.

The description of the trinity, The Heavenly Father, The Earthly Mother and The Son of Man is rather interesting as the Mother is seldom mentioned in the scriptures.

The Heavenly and Earthly Triangle

These three is clearly matching the three pillars of Kabbalah. These beings has their lower bodies in the Astral Triangle of the Kaballah. The Earthly Mother corresponds to The Pillar of the Left which is associated with  Shekinah or Sophia, and the lower aspect of Shekinah is Metatron.

The Holy Streams

In Book Four, The Teaching of the Elect, the three holy Streams are mentioned

I tell you truly, your body was made not only to breathe, and eat, and think, but it was also made to enter the Holy Stream of Life. And your ears were made not only to hear the words of men, the song of birds, and the music of falling rain, but they were also made to hear the Holy Stream of Sound. And your eyes were made not only to see the rising and setting of the sun, the ripple of sheaves of grain, and the words of the Holy Scrolls, but they were also made to see the Holy Stream of Light. One day your body will return to the Earthly Mother; even also your ears and your eyes. But the Holy Stream of Life, the Holy Stream of Sound, and the Holy Stream of Light, these were never born, and can never die. Enter the Holy Streams, even that Life, that Sound, and that Light which gave you birth; that you may reach the kingdom of the Heavenly Father and become one with him, even as the river empties into the far-distant sea.

These three Streams are placed in the Ethical Triangle of the Kaballah:

• The Holy Stream of Life is Manas,
• The Holy Stream of Sound is Buddhi, the Word, and
• The Holy Stream of Light is Atma

And they are placed in the Kabbalah tree as

The Second Triangle of The Kabbalah

These three Sephirots of the second Triangle, below the Abyss, are Called “The World Father” or Atma, “The World Mother” or Buddhi, and “The World Son” or Manas by the Rosicrucian’s. They are the higher members of Man.

Gaea

Asphodel P.Long have made some interesting papers on the feminine part of God:

Asherah, the Tree of Life and the Menorah : Continuity of a Goddess symbol in Judaism?

Lilith

Canaanite Goddesses

The following text has some interesting details, except the combination of the Feminine with the Holy Spirit, but it is a common error:

On the Nature of the Divine Mother

Notes on Earthly Mother,…, Sophia and the Feminine.

About the Essenes and Gnostic texts.

The Three Crosses of Golgotha

The three crosses on Golgotha is a significant scene in the New Testament. It signifies the main powers in the development of the Earth, as described in the The Tree of Life from the Kabbalah.

When only the cross with Christ is shown, we see only a small part of the mystery, as the crucifixion contains a trinity.

Edvard Munch – Golgotha

As Rudolf Steiner is one of the primary Christian esoteric teachers I have taken the following texts from Christ and the Human Soul:

Christ on the Cross between the two malefactors. The malefactor on the left hand mocks at Christ: “If thou wilt be God, help thyself and us!” The malefactor on the right says that the other ought not to speak thus, for both had merited their fate of crucifixion, the just award of their deeds; whereas He was innocent and yet had to experience the same fate. And the malefactor on the right went on to say: “Think of me when thou art in thy kingdom.” And Christ answered him: “Verily I say unto thee, today thou shalt be with me in Paradise.”

The Cross to the left, representing Ahriman, is the Pillar of Severity or Form, the right Cross, representing Lucifer, is the Pillar of Mercy or Force, and the Middle Cross, Christ, is The Pillar of Mildness or Consciousness.

If one begins to consider the matter in a human-anthropomorphic sense and simply makes of Lucifer a kind of inner and Ahriman a kind of outer criminal, there will be difficulty in getting on; for we must not forget that Lucifer, besides being the bringer of evil into the world, the inner evil that arises through the passions, is also the bringer of freedom. Lucifer plays an important role in the universe, and so does Ahriman.

They are not Evil as such, but they are part of the development of Man, and of other spirits just above and below us.

…, I laid particular emphasis on the fact that the progressive gods have assigned to Lucifer and Ahriman roles in the spiritual world; and that discrepancy and disharmony appear only when they bring down their activities into the physical plane and arrogate to themselves rights which are not allotted to them.

Through our fight against these two powers we grow, and we reach Equilibrium, Tao.

Now the root of the whole matter, which must again and again be emphasized, is that the Christ, as Christ, does not belong with the other beings of the physical plane. From the moment of the Baptism in the Jordan, a Being who had not previously existed on Earth, a Being who does not belong to the order of Earth-beings, entered into the corporeality of Jesus of Nazareth. Thus in Christ we are concerned with a Being who could truly say to the disciples: “I am from above, but ye are from below”, which means: “I am a Being of the kingdom of Heaven, ye are of the kingdom of Earth.”

Christ is the emanation of the Son, the Middle Pillar, the Equilibrium of the Left and Right Pillar.

Heavenly and Earthly Triangles at the Time of Christ

He lived through the whole development cycle of man in one life, purifying all the seven bodies as seen in the Tree of Life. That is also the reason why Christ can not be born again like a Bodhisattva, his body is merged with the Earth. When Christ comes again, its a personal experience for each individual when (s)he is ready and not a collective encountering on a global scale.

Christ introduced Love as the Law above all. A comment by Henry T. Edge in Theosophical Light on the Christian Bible:

This means that there are two laws in our nature — that of instinctual self-gratification, which we share with the beasts, though in man, being allied with intellect, this instinct acquires an evil character; and that of the divine nature. When Jesus or any other Teacher, enjoins the law of Love, the Golden Rule, he simply points out the only rule of conduct which is proper for man, if man is to live in accordance with man’s nature. The fact that these wise teachings seem so ineffectual, so much disregarded, should not cause undue despondency or cynicism. They have remained as a lamp for our feet throughout ages of darkness, and are still recognised as our sheet anchor. Whatever failure there may have been in practice, the principle has been maintained. The doctrine of each for himself was not so long ago proclaimed as an economic panacea; but its disastrous results have become apparent. If there are cynical individuals who try to make a gospel out of self-seeking, they are not happy. The man who worships self exclusively cuts himself off from life and enters a path which, if persisted in, would lead to his being isolated with the object of his worship — a fate awful to contemplate.

The message of Christ was revolutionary at that time, changing the tribe mentality of an eye for an eye with the responsibility of the person, love your next as yourself. It started a new evolution in the mind of man introducing the humanitarian thought in mankind. We are now in the critical phase where we will see if we can keep our human integrity in the egocentric climate of todays materialism.

The Thieves

From Wikipedia

Gestas, also spelled Gesmas, is the apocryphal name  given to one of the two thieves who was crucified alongside Jesus. According to legend, Gestas taunted Jesus about not saving himself, while Dismas asked for mercy. Dismas was saved, and Gestas was not. Gestas was on the cross to the the left of Jesus and Dismas was on the cross to the right of Jesus.

The apocryphal Arabic Infancy Gospel refers to Gestas and Dismas as Dumachus and Titus, respectively. According to tradition, Dumachus was one of a band of robbers who attacked Saint Joseph and the Holy Family on their Flight into Egypt, as recorded in Jacobus de Voragine‘s “Golden Legend“.

The Rosicrucian Cross

The Rosicrucian Cross is the symbol for the Spiritual Stream started by Christian Rosenkreuz known under the name Rosicrucianism.

The Rosicrucian Cross combines the seven Red Roses, Lotus Flowers or Chakra’s with the Cross we have seen in the Caduceus Staff or the Tree of Life of the Kabbalah. When the Roses Bloom on the cross, the Chakras has been opened. The twelve rays are the influence of the Zodiac as the roses symbolize the planets.

With the Black Cross.

A meditation on the cross by Rudolf Steiner:

Imagine you see before you a black cross. Let this black cross be for you a symbol for the baser elements that have been cast out of man’s impulses and passions; and at the point where the beams of the cross meet, picture to yourself seven resplendent bright red roses arranged in a circle. Let these roses symbolize for you a blood that is the expression of passions and impulses that have undergone purification.

And further on the cross:

He who tears the roses from the black cross and has nothing left but the black cross, would fall into the clutches of Ahriman. The black cross in itself represents life when it strives to embrace inanimate matter. Also, if one were to separate the cross from the roses, keeping only the latter, one would nor find the proper thing. For the roses, separate from the cross, tend to elevate us to a life of selfish striving toward the spiritual, but not to a life in which we reveal the spirit in a material world. Not the cross alone, not the roses alone, but the roses on the cross, the cross carrying the roses: That is our proper symbol.

The seven Roses can be combined with the five pointed star of Venus (Lucifer) as used by the Rosicrucian Fellowship:

There exist a third cross with only one Rose:

The Rose represents the female principle while the Cross represents the masculine principle. The same is represented through the sign for Earth, The Universal Androgyne:

In Max Heindel‘s description of the Temple Legend, where Hiram Abiff builds the Temple of Salomon, he writes the following about the Origin of the Cross:

Hiram was again conducted to the surface of the earth and as he walked from the scene of his shattered ambition, the conspirators set upon and fatally wounded him; but before he expired, he hid the hammer and disc upon which he had inscribed the Word. This was never found until ages later when Hiram, “the widow’s Son,” was reborn as Lazarus and became the friend and pupil of the Lion of Judah, who raised him from death through initiation. When the hammer was found it had the shape of a CROSS, and the disc had become a ROSE. Therefore Hiram took his place among the immortals under the new and symbolical name

Christian Rosenkreuz.

He founded the Order of Temple-Builders which bears his name; in that Order aspiring souls are still instructed how to fuse the base metals and make the White Stone.

One of the entrances to the temple was decorated with Roses. The Rose connects to Shekinah (Sophia) who has been titled ‘The Rose of the World’, Rosamundi.

The hammer Hiram Abiff received from Tubal-Cain is The Tau Cross:

The Cross is still used in Masonic Symbolism.

Arthur Edward Waite on the Rosicrucian Cross in Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross:

‘Thus the Rose is a symbol of Mary because of her motherhood, but in relation to her it belongs to divine things, even as she herself stands on the threshold of Deity, being Spouse of the Divine Spirit and bearer of the Divine word made flesh. So also is the Rose of Shekinah, a Divine Rose, as she whom it typifies is Divine Mother of souls.’

In The Fraternity of the Rose Cross the connection between the Rosicrucian Rose and the Kabbalah is shown through the Ten petals of the Rose and the Pythagorean Number:

The rose is a yonic symbol associated with generation, fecundity, and purity. The fact that flowers blossom by unfolding has caused them to be chosen as symbolic of spiritual unfoldment. The red color of the rose refers to the blood of Christ, and the golden heart concealed within the midst of the flower corresponds to the spiritual gold concealed within the human nature.

The number of its petals being ten is also a subtle reminder of the perfect Pythagorean number. The rose symbolizes the heart, and the heart has always been accepted by Christians as emblematic of the virtues of love and compassion, as well as of the nature of Christ – the personification of these virtues. The rose as a religious emblem is of great antiquity. It was accepted by the Greeks as the symbol of the sunrise, or of the coming of dawn.

The perfect Pythagorean number ten (tetractys) can be developed by adding the points in a pyramid four high = 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10:

First row are Kether, second row are Chokmah and Binah, third row are Chesed, Geburah, and Tiphareth,  and fourth row are Netzach, Hod, Yesod, and Malkuth.

The Tree of Life in Rosicrucian Context

Many see Kabbalah as an intellectual game without any relation to the real world, nothing could be more wrong! It’s a description of man, and what is involved in his development. Each Sephira is, of course, a spiritual principle, but for all spiritual principles there are also living beings, and further more, each being is also part of a larger being.

The Tree of Life seen from a Rosicrucian viewpoint: The seven Roses represents the seven lower Sephirots (or Chakras), where the three upper Sephirots are above man, on the other side of the Abyss.

Kabbalah Tree of Life with Rosicrucian names

The three Sephirots of the second Triangle, below the Abyss, are Called “The World Father” or Atma, “The World Mother” or Buddhi, and “The World Son” or Manas by the Rosicrucian’s, which are the higher layers of Man. This can also be seen in this table.

The Tree of Life can also be written with the European Esoteric names for the Sephira:

European Esoteric Names for the Sephira in the Kabbalah Tree of Life

The Ten Sephira corresponds to the Spirit of Love, Harmony, Will, Wisdom, Motion, Form, Personality or Time, Fire, Twilight, and Man.

Spiritual Hierarchy in Various Context

The Spiritual Hierarchy
Traditional	Other	Kabbalah	Esoteric
First Hierarchy			Spirits of
Seraphim		Kether	Love
Cherubim		Chokmah	Harmony
Thrones		Binah	Will
Second Hierarchy
Kyriotetes	Dominions	Chesed	Wisdom
Dynamis  Mohat	Mights, Virtues	Geburah	Motion, Movement
Exusiai	Powers, Authorities	Tiphareth	Form
Third Hierarchy
Archai Asuras	Principalities, Primal Beginnings	Netzach	Personality, Time
Archangels	Messengers of the Beginnings, Sons of Fire, Fire Spirits	Hod	Fire
Angels	Messengers, Sons of Life, Lunar Pitris	Yesod	Twilight

The Crest of Johann Valentin Andreæ
The Microcosmic Cross
Esoteric Christianity and the Mission of Christian Rosenkreutz

http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/FoundEsoter/19050928p01.html

Serpents of the Kundalini Fire

To continue the tale of the serpents lets look at the Kundalini Fire from India. The Kundalini system looks like the Caduceus Staff with the two Serpents around the spine: The serpents has two different colors like the two outer pillars in the Kabbalah Tree of Life, and they have the same interpretations as the Feminine and Masculine energies. Seven Lotus Flowers or Chakras, which are spiritual organs, are placed on the spine.

Macrocosmic Man

Left side of Man  is the masculine side and the right side is the feminine side, as we see the Tree of Life from the front, the macrocosmic man.

Chakras in the Tree of Life
! Face looking out of paper !

The correspondence between the Chakras (see later) and the Sephirots:

1. Sahasrara or the Crown Chakra, corresponds to Keter
2. Ajna, the Third Eye , or the Brow Chakra corresponds to Chokmah, and the back head chakra with Binah.
3. Vishuddha or the Throat Chakra corresponds to Chesed and Ta Chui, The Neck Chakra, with Gevurah.
4. Ahanhata or the Heart Chakra corresponds to Tiferet
5. Manipura or the Navel Chakra, where Hod corresponds to the Liver and Netzach corresponds to the Stomach
6. Svadhistana or the Sacral Chakra corresponds to Yesod
7. Muladhara, the base of spine, the Root Chakra, corresponds to Malkhut

From the heart and up the feminine and masculine energies are nearly in Equilibrium with the heart near the center.

5. Chesed, 6. Gevurah, 7. Chokmah, 8. Binah, 9. Daat, 10. Kether

Microcosmic Man

Rudolf Steiner describes the two sides of man as being a kind of fight between Luciferic and Ahrimanic powers, where Lucifer is the masculine power (Yang) and Ahriman is the feminine power (Yin). Both described in the literature as Serpents or Dragons. Lucifer represents The Right Pillar, and Ahriman The Left Pillar. They are on Earth seen as Evil powers, but they are necessary factors in our development, as we both need the Feminine and Masculine influence, but we need to find the balance between them. From The Balance in the World and Man, Lucifer and Ahriman:

The left part of you — your left man, as it were — is the fortification set up by Lucifer, and your right man is the fortification set up by Ahriman. And the whole art of life consists in finding the true balance between them.

See also an extended Collection of Steiner texts about Lucifer and Ahriman(pdf) . The energy flows from the left side to the right side, from the Luciferic or Masculine side to the Ahrimanic or Feminine side.

Microcosmic Man

Crossed arms or legs shortcuts the natural streams and should be avoided, except where specified in meditative practices.

From The Kingdom of God from www.adishakti.org/

“Now this Kundalini is the power which is placed in the sacrum bone, nowhere else… And imagine this bone is called sacrum; “sacrum” means “sacred. So they knew there was something in it… This is the primule, is the germinating power within us. Now this fact has been accepted for thousands of years in India and elsewhere. For in the Bible also … they talk of the Tree of Life. That is the same as this… So this is the thing that is being described in our ancient books, in all the scriptures, even in the Qur’an they are described as Ruh, R,U,H, Ruh. “Ruh” means the “cold breeze”, the “cool breeze”. The cool breeze of the Holy Ghost is described in the Bible also.

Japanese Mitsudomoe

The Mitsudomoe represents the trinity of the Shinto religion: Sky, Man, and Earth, which is the same as the three Pillars of Kabbalah: first, second and third, or Steiners Lucifer, Christ, and Ahriman, or the Hindi Rajas, Sattva, and Tamas.

Japanese Mitsudomoe

Korean Sam-Taegeuk

In Sam-taegeuk we have the same three, with red as heaven, blue as Earth, the physical world, and yellow as man.

Korean Sam-Taegeuk

In relation to Kabbalah, blue is the left pillar, yellow the center pillar, and red is the right pillar.

Bön tradition of Tibet

Bön is the oldest spiritual tradition of Tibet, and they use the same symbol as the Korean Sam-Taegeuk.

The Three Gunas

In the Aurvedic tradition the three Gunas are the three principles of the world. The “trinity”, Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, represent the gunas, or qualities of rajas, sattva and tamas. From Brahman, Atman, Karma and Gunas

They are sattva (goodness, virtue, essence), rajas (power, passion, activity) and tamas (dullness, inertia). All earthly events, like the laws of nature, are guided by one of the three gunas or a combination thereof. There should be a balance between them for harmonious workings of the world. Disequilibria will lead to chaos, war, suffering, corruption and destruction.

The three gunas dominate People by various degrees and a way to regulate these in the body and mind is through ayurvedic cooking:

Sattvic foods :

Are fresh, juicy, light, unctuous, nourishing, sweet and tasty.
Give the necessary energy to the body without taxing it.
The foundation of higher states of consciousness.
Examples : juicy fruits, fresh vegetables that are easily digestible, fresh milk and butter, whole soaked or also sprouted beans, grains and nuts, many herbs and spices in the right combinations with other foods,…

Rajasic foods :

Are bitter, sour, salty, pungent, hot and dry.
Increase the speed and excitement of the human organism.
The foundation of motion, activity and pain.
Examples : sattvic foods that have been fried in oil or cooked too much or eaten in excess, specific foods and spices that are strongly exciting, …

Tamasic Foods :

Are dry, old, decaying, distasteful and/or unpalatable.
Consume a large amount of energy while being digested.
The foundation of ignorance, doubt, pessimism, …
Examples : foods that have been strongly processed, canned or frozen and/or are old, stale or incompatible with each other – meat, fish, eggs and liquor are especially tamasic.

Saints and seers can survive easily on sattvic foods alone. Householders that live in the world and have to keep pace with its’ changes also need rajasic energy. They ought to keep a balance between the sattvic and rajasic foods and try to avoid tamasic foods as much as possible.

Tamas is Yin or the left pillar of the Kabbalah Tree of Life, and Rajas is Yang or the right pillar, and Sattva is the equilibrium, Tao the imaginary line between Yin and Yang, the center pillar.

Hatha Yoga

The definition of Hatha Yoga, from Erin Goldman:

Yoga, as you may know, means union. Hatha is actually two words in one. Ha meaning sun and tha meaning moon. So one might say that Hatha Yoga is the union of opposites (of sun and moon). We all have “sun energy” within us. This is a masculine, active, fire energy. We also have within us “moon energy”. This is a feminine, passive, cooling energy. The practice of Hatha Yoga joins together these two opposite energies, creating a balanced individual. The combination of the words Ha and Tha in sanskrit means forceful. Thus, the practice creates a more balanced and more powerful you.

And as Ha are the masculine Sun it relates to Rajas, Yang or Lucifer and Tha the feminine Moon relates to Tamas, Yin or Ahriman, and Hatha is the equilibrium and relates to Sattva, Tao, or Christ.

Yamas and Niyamas

In Hatha yoga there are a set of moral and ethic directives, Yamas and Niyamas, that work on the area of Ha and Tha:

The Yamas

Since Yama comes from the root word ‘yam’ ‘to hold’ or ‘to rule’, yama yoga represents the behaviours that ‘control’ certain negative tendencies (the ‘animal/instinctive nature’) that occur in all human beings. These are the five ideals of:

• Ahimsa (non-violence)
• Satya (truth)
• Asteya (non-stealing, or non-cheating)
• Brahmacharya (continence, involving self-restraint and moderation in all you do)
• Aparigraha (non-coveting, including no envy, jealousy or unhealthy competitiveness).

The Niyamas

The niyamas are the general actions that are necessary if we truly want to achieve a condition of health and deep balance within ourselves. The niyamas ask us to aim for:

• Purity (Sauca)
• Contentment (Santosha)
• Ardour (Ishawar-Pranidhana)
• Discipline (Tapas)
• And study of the Self (Svadhyaya)

Yamas is rules to discipline Tha or Yin where Niyamas are rules to discipline Ha or Yang.

Ketu and Rahu

Satyam

Brhadaranyaka Upanishad 5.4.1-5.5.1:

“Clearly, that is itself, and that was just this, namely, the Satyam (the real or true) itself. ‘Brahman is the real (Satyam)’– a man who knows this immense and first-born divine being in this manner conquers these worlds. ‘Brahman is the real (Satyam)’– a man who knows this immense and first-born divine being in this manner, would he ever be conquered himself? For Brahman is simply Satyam (the real or true).

…..The gods venerated only Satyam (the real or true) , which is made up of three syllables — sa, ti, yam. Sa is one syllable, ti is another, yam is the third. The first and last syllables constitute the real, while the middle syllable is the unreal. So the unreal is trapped on both sides by the real and becomes completely united with the real. The unreal does not injure a man who knows this.”

And a slightly different explanation given in Chandogya Upanishad 8.5.4:

“Now the name of Brahman is Satyam (Real or true). This word has three syllables: sa, ti, and yam. Of these, sat is the immortal, and ti is the mortal, while the syllable yam is what joins those two together. Because the two are joined together (yam) by it, it is called yam. Anyone who knows this goes to the heavenly world every single day.”

The last can be shown in western esoteric tradition as:

Incan Tradition

In the Incan tradition they have yachay, munay, and llankey which is the same as the three Pillars of Kabbalah: first, second and third, or Steiners Lucifer, Christ, and Ahriman, or the Hindi Rajas, Sattva, and Tamas:

In the Andes they recognize three ways of knowing, each associated with a different part of our physical body. I have found this distinction to be very useful in organizing my thoughts about what the Andean culture has to offer and how it differs from our own. One way of knowing is through the yachay, which is located in the head. The yachay is the center of the intellect. A second way of knowing is through the munay, which is located in the heart. The munay is the center of love. And a third way of knowing is through the llankay, which is located slightly below the navel. The llankay is the center of the physical body. The Andeans take the whole of who we are as a being and differentiate it into three aspects, sometimes, for they also differentiate it in other ways as well, into two aspects (the right side and left side of the body), or some other number, depending upon the context. [...]  Anyway, one class of distinctions the Andeans make in our existence is between the intellect (yachay), the heart (munay), and the ability to manipulate the physical world (the llankay), we can be differentiated in other ways as well. Kenosis.

The Pentagram and the Ether Streams

Steiner describes, in “From the Contents of Esoteric Classes“, the pentagram with:

We’re always surrounded by five ether streams in the world around us on earth. They’re called earth, water, fire, air and thought ethers. These etheric streams are also active in man: earth either from the head to the right foot, from there water ether to the left hand, from there fire ether to the right hand, from there air ether to the left foot, and then thought ether back to the head. This is the occultist’s sacred pentagram, the symbol of man. Its point is directed upwards, which indicates that the spirit streams to man from the heights. The pentagram is present in many flowers and other things in nature. The sign of black magic is a pentagram with one point at the bottom, through which magicians attract bad forces from the earth and send them out of the two top horns into the environment by means of their bad will in order to use soul and nature forces for their own egotistical, evil purposes.

The cross sections of the five etheric streams and their connections with color, taste, and body regions are as follows:

Prithivi Tattwa, earth ether, square with only the corners distinct, yellow, sweet, bones and muscles;
 Apas Tattwa, water ether, crescent moon at fifth day, white, tart, digestion;
 Teja/Agni Tattwa, fire ether, equilateral triangle, red, hot, blood;
 Vaju Tattwa, air ether, circle, green, sour, nerves;
Akasha Tattwa, thought ether, two intersecting spirals — one is distinct, dark blue, bitter, lymph vessel system.

The five ether streams are called Tattwas.

And in “The Creative Cosmic Tone“

It is characteristic of it [the etheric body] that it is indeed, the architect, the creator of the physical body. Just as ice forms out of water, so does the physical body fashion itself out of the etheric body, which, like the ocean, is flooded through by many currents flowing in all directions. Among them are five main currents. When you stand with feet apart and arms outstretched, you can accurately follow the direction of these five currents. They form a pentagram. Everybody has these five currents hidden in him. The healthy etheric body appears so that these currents are, as it were, his bony framework. You must not suppose however, that everything pertaining to the etheric body is only within, because when a person moves, for instance, the currents actually go through the air. This pentagram is as mobile as a man’s physical bony framework. Thus, when the occultist speaks of the pentagram as the figure of man, it is not a matter of something that has been thought out, but rather he is speaking of it as the anatomist does of the skeleton.

The Rosicrucian Cross

The Rosicrucian Cross is the symbol for the Spiritual Stream started by Christian Rosenkreuz known under the name Rosicrucianism. The Rosicrucian Cross combines the seven Red Roses, Lotus Flowers or Chakra’s with the Cross we have seen in the Caduceus Staff or the Tree of Life of the Kabbalah. When the Roses Bloom on the cross the Chakra’s has been opened. The twelve rays are the influence of the Zodiac as the roses symbolize the planets.

In this context, the roses are Yang and the cross Yin, but together they are life, Tao or in Hindi Rajas, Tamas and Sattva.

In Steiners terminology Lucifer, Ahriman and Christ:

He who tears the roses from the black cross and has nothing left but the black cross, would fall into the clutches of Ahriman. The black cross in itself represents life when it strives to embrace inanimate matter. Also, if one were to separate the cross from the roses, keeping only the latter, one would nor find the proper thing. For the roses, separate from the cross, tend to elevate us to a life of selfish striving toward the spiritual, but not to a life in which we reveal the spirit in a material world. Not the cross alone, not the roses alone, but the roses on the cross, the cross carrying the roses: That is our proper symbol. RS

From a meditation by Steiner:

Imagine you see before you a black cross. Let this black cross be for you a symbol for the baser elements that have been cast out of man’s impulses and passions; and at the point where the beams of the cross meet, picture to yourself seven resplendent bright red roses arranged in a circle. Let these roses symbolize for you a blood that is the expression of passions and impulses that have undergone purification.

Kundalini Rising

There are three forces connected with the spine, also called Aaron’s rod. These are Kundalini, the serpent-fire, Ida the female force, and Pingala the male force. The Moon moves in the Ida and the Sun in the Pingala. Ida is cooling. Pingala is heating. The two serpents, around the Spine, has two different colors like the two outer pillars in the Kabbalah Tree of Life, and they have the same interpretations as the Feminine and Masculine energies. They connect Earth with the spiritual world and the spiritual world with Earth. For these to flow the Lotus Flowers, or Chakras, has to be open or running. When European esoteric talk about Initiation eastern religions talk about Kundalini Rising. The development path is described in The Eightfold Path.

Chakras

The Chakras is known all over the world and are the spiritual organs controlling our body. The Inkas in south America know five of them, and they match the Indian descriptions.

The five ñawi (eyes) are roughly equivalent to the chakras. Kulli ñawi corresponds to the third eye, Sonqo ñawi to the heart, kunka ñawi to the throat, cosco ñawi to the navel, and siki ñawi to the root chakra.

The Chinese know them and use them in their medicine. They are the base for Astrology, and most alternative medical schools. When we are born, our Astral organs contains a picture of our Karma, which through our youth are build into the Etheric organs, and the pictures are erased from the Astral body as they are imprinted in the Etheric body. Astrology tells about Karmas influence on you, through those Etheric organs. Through your life you build your new karma in your Astral body, constantly modeling the Astral organs. When the Kundalini fires, your Astral body’s Chakras are imprinted into the Ether body, and you have now made your own Etheric organs, from the Karma you have build in this life, and is now free from the tyranny of your birth chart. The Chakras relation to our spiritual bodies are shown in a table in Dream Interpretation in Esoteric Work

Yetzer ha Tob and Yetzer ha Ra

From “An Introduction to the Study of the Kabalah” by William Wynn Westcott:

In another form of symbolism the Kabalist tells us a man has two companions, or guides; one on the right, Yetzer ha Tob, to good acts, he is from the higher Sephiroth; and one on the left, Yetzer ha Ra, encouraging the appetites and passions, temptations to evil, is an agent of Samael and of The Beast.

Man is in a very unfortunate position according to the Zohar 95 b, for it is there said that the Evil Angel joins him at birth, but the Good Angel only at the age of 13 years.

Merkabah

Merkabah, also spelled Merkava, is the divine light vehicle allegedly used by ascended masters to connect with and reach those in tune with the higher realms, symbolized with the Kabbalah. “Mer” means Light, “Ka” means Spirit, and “Ba” means Body. Mer-Ka-Ba means the spirit/body with rotating fields of light, which transports energy in our spiritual bodies, our chakras are the seven lowest of these sephira.

The four Chayot angels, Man, Ox, Lion and Eagle, represent the basic archetypes that God used to create the current nature of the world, the lower 4 sephira. They also relate to the inner planets, Earth, Moon, Venus, and Mercury.

In Alchemy

In Synergetic Qabala the relation between the Gunas and Alchemical metals are described

Alchemy is not concerned exclusively with consciousness, but also seeks the subtle transformation of the body, so that the physical level is also brought into perfect equilibrium.  Thus, the alchemical metals may be considered analogous to the chakras of the yogis.  We can draw another parallel among the three major principles of alchemy and those of Yoga, which are known as the Gunas. Mercury……….Sattva Sulphur………Rajas Salt……….Tamas The quality of Mercury is vital and reflective; it equates with the spiritual principles of goodness and intelligence; Sattva guna is illuminative.  The quality of Sulphur is fiery and passionate like the principles of Rajas, which incites desire, attachment and action.  The quality of Salt is arrestive and binding, and reflects the gross inertia of matter, which is much like Tamas.  These gunas and the three alchemical substances symbolize spirit, soul and body.  Another “alchemical” way the gunas were applied concerns food: sattvic foods incline one toward meditation and the spiritual life (fruits, vegetables, nuts, and grains); rajasic foods are stimulating (i.e. spicy food); tamasic food incites the baser instincts (animal flesh). The concept of four basic elements, harmonized in a fifth, is also common to both alchemy and yoga doctrines.  The Indian elements are known as Tattvas.  They are:  Akasha (quintessence); Tejas or Agni (fire); Apas (water); Vayu (air); Prithivi (earth).  Furthermore, the preparation for the practice of both alchemy and yoga requires a moral or ethical preparation.  Both stress that evil tendencies should be overcome while positive virtues are developed.  This includes both behavior and the purification of various body centers.  The objective is not wealth, but health or wholeness. Alchemy also speaks of a “secret fire”, which is often compared to a serpent or dragon.  Here again, we find the correspondence to Kundalini, the serpent-power.  Alchemy is performed by the aid of Mercury, the illuminative principle, and the powers of the sun and moon.  Both alchemists and Tantrics practice with the essential aid, sometimes sexual, of a mystical sister, the alchemist’s soror mystica or yogi’s yogini, complement of King/Queen, Shiva-Shakti, God/Goddess joined together in the miracle marriage.  The yogic system works in three channels in the subtle body.  One equates with the sun, another with the moon.  They are called ida and pingala.  The third, or harmonizing channel, is known as sushumna, and is associated with illumination.  The twin serpents twine together and open the third way, as shown in the Cadeusus.

Paracelsus in “The life of Philippus Theophrastus Bombast of Hohenheim…” by Franz Hartmann

The Bible tells us that Man is made out of nothing ; that is to say, his spirit, the real man, is from God, who is not a thing, but the eternal reality ; but he is made into three somethings or substances,’ and these three constitute the whole of Man: they are himself, and he is they, and from them he receives all that is good or evil for him. Every state in which man can possibly enter is determined by number, measure, and weight.’ The “Three Substances” are the three forms or modes of action in which the universal primordial Will is manifesting itself throughout Nature, for all things are a Trinity in a Unity. The ” Salt” represents the principle of corporification, the astringent or contractive and solidifying quality, or, in other words, the body ; the ‘Sulphur’ represents the expansive power — the centrifugal force, in contradistinction to the centripetal motion of the first quality — it is that which “burns,” i.e., the soul or light in all things ; and the “Mercury” is the Life, i.e. that principle or form of will which manifests itself as life, or consciousness and sensation. Each of these forms of will is an individual power ;  nevertheless they are substantial, for “matter” and “force” are one, and originate from the same cause. The three substances, held together in harmonious proportions, constitute health; their disharmony constitutes disease, and their disruption death.

Steiner in Salt, Mercury, Sulphur

In olden times men did not use the abstract word think to express something that arose in the mind as a picture. When a real knower spoke about ‘thinking’ he spoke of the salt-process just described. Nor did he speak in an abstract way of the ‘will’ but of the astral forces laying hold of the airy element in man, of the sulphur-process from which the will is born. Willing was a process of concrete reality and it was said that the adjustment between the two — for they are opposite processes — was brought about by the mercury-process, by that which is fluid and yet has form, which swings to and fro from the etheric nature to the astral nature, from the fluidic to the aeriform.

Dambala and Aida Wedo – Tahiti

Body, Soul, and Spirit

In the western countries the church only work with Body and Soul, having done away with the spirit in 689. Steiner says :

 Even the concept of the threefold nature of the human organism or the human being in its entirety has in a certain respect been abolished for occidental civilization by the eighth Ecumenical Council of Constantinople in the year 869. I have often mentioned this. The dogma was then established that the Christian does not have to believe in the threefold human being but only in a twofold human being.
The belief in body, soul and spirit was tabooed, and medieval theologians and philosophers who still knew a great deal about the true facts had a hard time to circumvent this truth, for the so-called trichotomy, the “membering” of the human being into body, soul, and spirit had been declared a heresy. They were compelled to teach the duality, namely, that man consists of body and soul, and not of body, soul and spirit.

and here:

Outside the circle of spiritual science, as you know, the total nature of man is thought of as consisting of but two parts, the bodily-physical and the psychic. In the realm of recognized science it is not customary nowadays to mention the spirit. Indeed, following certain premises, the result of reverting to the threefold organization of man (body, soul and spirit), as did the catholicizing Viennese philosopher, Günther, in the nineteenth century, raised scientific misgivings and also the blacklisting, in Rome, of Günther’s interesting books. This was done because as early as 869, at the eighth Ecumenical Council at Constantinople, the Catholic Church, in contradiction to both the Old and the New Testaments, had abolished the spirit. It had guided the development of dogmatism in such a way that the organization of man was permitted to comprise body and soul only. Curiously enough, this catholic development has persisted into our present science. If we seek to ascertain from history why scientists admit only body and soul we find but one reason. In the course of time the spirit has been forgotten; the habits of thought prevalent in certain circles have lost the ability to accept the spirit along with the soul of man.

This has melted soul and spirit together to one unit giving the dualistic view with body and soul as opposites, placing the bad Ego in the body and the goodly in the soul, where the Ego should be in the equilibrium in the soul between the materialistic body and the goodly spirit, we should walk the golden middle-way between the physical and the spiritual..

Literature

I have used “The Kabbalistic Sefirot and the Chakras“, and “The Chakras” by Kheper.net, and “Chakras” by Bellabenes Astralseiten (German), in preparation of this text. The Mans inner Cosmic System looks at the organs role in the body. Steiner says that the meaning of Mercury and Venus was changed in old times, so when Steiner connect Venus with the Kidneys and Mercury with the lungs, old traditions will typically do the opposite, as in Universal Healing TAO.

Notes on Lucifer & Ahriman, The spiritual Bodies and Initiation, and The Eightfold Path. A visually inspiring page on Chakras at Chrystal Links. In “Knowledge of the Higher Worlds And Its Attainment” Rudolf Steiner goes more in depth with the Lotus Flowers or Chakras. In “The Occult Significance of the Bhagavad Gita” Steiner looks at Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas. Kundalini Shakta by Arthur Avalon (Sir John Woodroffe). In Alchemy: Salt, Mercury, Sulphur and Alchemy: The Evolution of the Mysteries by Rudolf Steiner.

Principles of Christian Dream Interpretation

This paper is quite interesting. The Jews and Christians has thousand of years experience with dream interpretation and they accepted the spiritual world as the source of the dreams which our psychoanalysts don’t, and that limit their success in dream interpretation.

Ha and tha

Tao – The Equilibrium of Yin and Yang

When looking for the Caduceus Staff I thought about the Yin-Yang symbol, as they also have the curves of the serpents. As the Staff in Caduceus and the Middle Pillar of the Kabbalah Tree of Life, the symbol of Yin and Yang has an imaginary line separating the two sides: Tao! In Christianity we call the line for The Golden Middle Way and in India its called Dharma or the “Middle Way” by the Buddhists and the “razor-edged path” in the Upanishads.

Yin – Tao – Yang

All creation starts with the unity splits in two and later unifies again. From The Gold Egg Model:

According to Chinese myth, before the world began there was chaos shaped like a hen’s egg. The huge Pan Gu separated this egg into Yin and Yang. Yin formed the earth, Yang formed the sky. Yin stood for all the female, wet, dark things of nature, while Yang stood for all the male, dry and bright things. There could be no perfect happiness till there was a balance between Yin and Yang.

Wuji is the uncreated, the primordial, limitless void, the possibility for the created and Taiji is the created, Yang and Yin, heaven and earth.

Creation

The description of Tao (from“About the Tao”):

It is so very deep
So tranquil
It seems to barely exist at all.
Its origin is unknown
It preceded the Gods themselves.

Matches the Sephira Keter, which represents the infinite, and is found in the first triangle of the Tree of Life,  separated from Man by the Abyss.

From WikiPedia

“Dion Fortune describes Keter as pure consciousness, beyond all categories, timeless, a point that crystallises out of the Ein Soph, and commences the process of emanation that ends in Malkuth.”

From “The Middle Way” byRadha Burnier:

Hearing the term “the razor-edged path,” one might think it is the most dangerous, but it is the safest of all paths because it is where a complete equilibrium is preserved and therefore there is complete security. It is a path where there is a profound peace, a path where there is absolute harmony. If you stray from that path, get lost in the surroundings, and find other paths, there maybe conflict, there may be hesitation, but when you tread the middle path, it is secure, because it is one-pointed and in it, harmony can be found from the beginning to the end.

Rudolf  Steiner calls Yin for Ahriman and Yang for Lucifer, and the imaginary separating line for Christ.

All things in the universe are either Yin or Yang, but there are no absolutes:  nothing is ever all Yin or all Yang, but a balance between the two forces, when for example day changes into night, it is an example of Yang changing into Yin; when winter turns into spring; it is considered a changing from Yin to Yang. These forces are opposite and yet complementary, and share an interdependent relationship; without Yin, there is no Yang, and without Yang, no Yin. Yang is generally associated with what are bright, warm, and in motion. Yin is generally associated with what are dark, still and cold.

Neijing says,

“Yin and yang are the law of Heaven and Earth, the outline of everything, the parents of change, the origin of birth and destruction, and the house of shen ming( God or higher consciousness, the spirit, Tao), when curing sicknesses we should base our point of view on the roots (Yin and Yang)”.

“The principle of Yin and Yang is the basic principle of the entire universe. It is the principle of everything in creation.”

“If Yin and Yang change the people will change likewise and their destiny can then be prefigured. … In ancient times those people who understood Tao patterned themselves upon the Yin and the Yang and they lived in harmony with the arts of divination.”

“Obedience to the laws of Yin and Yang means life; disobedience means death.”

“In Heaven there are ethereal spirits; upon earth there is form and shape.”

“Heaven was created by an accumulation of Yang, the element of light; Earth was created by an accumulation of Yin, the element of darkness.”

From I Ching

“In the heavens phenomena take form; on earth shapes take form.”

“Since in this way man comes to resemble heaven and earth, he is not in conflict with them. His wisdom embraces all things, and his Tao brings order into the whole world; therefore he does not err.”

From A Holistic Look at an ancient Chinese Energy Modality I have

According to the Daoists the left of the body is Yang and the right is Yin . Yang represents the male aspects of the human being. Males according to Traditional Chinese Medicine mostly have anger issues . That would mean the acupressure therapist should start on the left side of the male body. All emotional issues , like anger, fear, worry, sadness and joy are functional aspects that involve an output of energy and are therefore described as Yang. Yin represents the female aspects of the human being . Traditionally women have mostly Yin related issues that have to do with blood, lymph and all the fluids . These are structural issues. In this case, the therapist starts on the right side of the body . Also, the area above the navel is described as Yang, while the area below is described as Yin.

Relating Yin and Yang to the sides and up and down of the body. Other traditions work with the same notion:  Serpents of the Kundalini Fire. Not all Chinese texts are in agreement here, just as many new age authors have it reversed.

Chart of the Great Ultimate (Taiji tu)

Rudolf Steiner on TAO:

“The Tao gives expression to the highest to which a large part of humanity can look up and has revered for thousands of years.It is something which was considered as a distant goal of the world and of humanity, the highest element which man carried as a germ within him, which would one day develop into a fully opened blossom from the innermost depths of human nature.

Tao signifies both a deeply hidden basis of the soul and at the same time an exulted future. Not only the name Tao, but the very thought of Tao filled those who had insight into it with timid reverence. The Tao religion is based on the principle of development, and it proclaims:

‘That by which I am surrounded today is but a stage which has to be overcome. I must clearly see that this development in which I am involved has a Goal, that I am going to work towards an exulted Goal and that within me there lives a power which spurs me on to come to the Great Goal of Tao.

If I can feel this great force within me and if I can feel that all creatures are aiming towards this great goal, then this force becomes the guiding force rushing towards me in the wind, sounding out of the stones, flashing its light to me from the sun. In the plant it is revealed as the force of growth, in the animal as feeling and perception. It is the force which will continually create form after form for every exulted aim, through which I know myself to be at one with the whole of nature, which flows out from me and into me with every breath I take, the symbol for the highest evolving spirit which I experience as life itself. I feel this force as Tao.” (November 16, 1905)

In Korea they have the Taegeuk, where Red symbolizes heaven and blue the material world, Earth.

From Wikipedia:

Taegeuk refers to the ultimate reality from which all things and values originate according to oriental philosophy.

The taegeuk is from the Eastern Zhou Dynasty in ancient China.The taegeuk design dates back to the 7th century BC in China but recent excavations go back even further. This shows that the taegeuk design and thought were utilized earlier in China than in elsewhere. There is a stone carved with the taegeuk design in the compound of Gameunsa Temple, built in 628 AD during the reign of Silla’s King Jinpyeong. Traces of taegeuk design have been found in the remains of the ancient cultures in China: in Longmen Grottoes and in YuyuanTai Chi village astrology. The taegeuk design was also used to drive off evil spirits. In the Goryeo and Joseon dynasties, the design was later used to represent Korean taoism and to express the hope for harmony of eun and yang to enable the people to live happy lives with good government. The blue and red swirling semicircles of the Taegeuk pattern have existed since ancient times.

Celtic Yin yang swirls on bronze plaque from Mairy, Marne, dated to 4th century BC; on display at Musée des Antiquités nationales in Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

Celtic bronze plaque

Roman shield pattern of the Roman Mauri Osismiaci (ca. AD 430), with the dots in each part kept in the same shade of color

Roman shield pattern

A Japanese futatsudomoe (two-fold tomoe)

Japanese Futatsudomoe

References

Doctrine of the Mean, Wikipedia.

Golden Mean(philosophy), Wikipedia.

Yin and Yang in medicine.

According to the
Daoists the left of the body is Yang and the right is Yin . Yang represents the male
aspects of the human being. Males according to Traditional Chinese Medicine mostly
have anger issues . That would mean the acupressure therapist should start on the left side
of the male body. All emotional issues , like anger, fear, worry, sadness and joy are
functional aspects that involve an output of energy and are therefore described as Yang.
Yin represents the female aspects of the human being . Traditionally women have mostly
Yin related issues that have to do with blood, lymph and all the fluids . These are
structural issues. In this case, the therapist starts on the right side of the body . Also, the
area above the navel is described as Yang, while the area below is described as Yin.

The Caduceus staff and the Tree of Life

The Caduceus staff of Hermes

The two serpents in Caduceus represents the Pillars of Severity and Mercy while the central staff represents the Pillar of Mildness. The wings represents the Binah – Chokmah line, and with Keter as the top of the Cross.

In the Aquarian Mandala they wrote

“The Caduceus is the Staff of Hermes, the Spiritual Teacher of the Greeks and Egyptians known as Thoth-Hermes or Hermes Trismegistus. He is Mercury the Psychopomp – leader of souls to God. He is the Power of Fohat descending in spiral emanation through the Seven Planes.”

which clearly tells the same story as the Kabbalah Tree of Life.

I have later found this picture, but without text:

so i am not the first with this idea.

Here are an Egyptian Winged Disk, the emblem of the Sun, with Eagle Wings and two Cobras, showing its likeness to the Caduceus and to Isis with wings:

The Winged Disk

The Kabbalah Tree of Life

The Kabbala Tree of Life with the Angelic Hierarchies as mentioned by Paul.

Each of these circles, Sephira (Sephirots is plural), is a creation, with Man as the lowest creation. A diagram for angels would have the Angels as lowest Sephira. Angels are defined by having the Ether body as the lowest layer, which we have as the second lowest layer. The layers are described here: Dream Interpretation in Esoteric Work

The left pillar are the feminine, Yin, the forming principle, and the right pillar the masculine, Yang, the creative power, and the central pillar the androgyne, the equilibrium between the left and right pillar, consciousness, life.

What defines the Creation called Man is that the lowest layer in man is the physical, which means that minerals, plants, animals, and man is part of the same creation.