The Manichean Stream, Freemasonry, Templars and the Third Logos

I have had some problems with Manes and the Manichean stream, I had difficulties connecting it to the Rosicrucian stream or for them to coexist. I understood the incarnations of the Rosicrucian stream, but the incarnation of Manes didn’t fit in. The knowledge of the Three Logoi changes that, the puzzle pieces began finding each other. There were three streams led by three pairs of personalities, not just one.

I have Steiners text on the Three Logoi here: The Logos Walks the Earth and the Theosophists view here: The Three Logoi in the Theosophical tradition. The subject is difficult, but I think it’s worth it.

Steiner have written a text on the Manichean stream in connection with the Freemasons and Templars, The Temple Legend Lecture Six. The connection with the Third Logos is illuminating, it explains the more physical aspects compared to the Rosicrucian stream. I have added comments in italics starting in the margin where the text itself is indented.

From the Lectures on the Temple Legend

Manichaeism founded a mighty spiritual stream to which the mediaeval Albigensians, Waldensians, and Cathari also belonged, and later the Order of the Templars and through an extraordinary concatenation of relationships, Freemasonry. Freemasonry really belongs here, in spite of the fact that it united with the Rosicrucians.

The tradition is as follows: In Western Asia there lived a merchant who was exceedingly learned. He was the Author of four works: (1) The Mysteries, (2) The Letters, (3) The Gospel, and (4) The Thesaurus. Tradition holds that his death he left the writings to his widow, who was a Persian.

She had once redeemed a slave named Manes and he was called ‘the Son of the Widow.’ His followers called themselves ‘Sons of the Widow.’

Manes designated himself ‘Paraclete’ or ‘Holy Spirit’ promised by Christ to humanity — that is as an incarnation of the Holy Spirit, merely a reincarnation of the same.

This means that Manes was the Third Logos.

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In the legend of Manichaeism we have a starting point for this examination. It is the Temple Legend.

The Master architect Hiram Abiff, who was the Third Logos of that time, made his masterpiece, building the Temple of Solomon, showing he was ready to become the next Second Logos. King Hiram was the Second Logos of that time.

In their next incarnation Elijah gave the mantle on to Elisha, the Third Logos became Second Logos. The new Third Logos was the incarnating Jesus, who became one with the Earth, who entered the cave, and disappeared. The old Third Logos came out of the cave, the resurrection of Lazarus, who became the new Second Logos under the evangelist John.
The new Third Logos incarnated as Manes, starting the Stream of Manichaeism, continuing after the old Temple Builder Hiram Abiff.

Manes studied all major religions at that time and Manes was merging the different streams into one.

All these Spiritual Streams came to expression esoterically through legends. The Legend of Manes is a legend dealing with super-sensible truths, a mighty cosmic legend.

The Spirits of Darkness wished to storm the Kingdom of Light. They came to its borders for the attack. They were, however, able to achieve nothing. Now they were to be punished by the Kingdom of Light. But in the Kingdom of Light there is only good. Thus the Demons of Darkness could only have been punished through good.

Therefore the Spirits of the Kingdom of Light took a portion of their own kingdom and mingled it into the Kingdom of Darkness. Thereby a leaven, so to speak, came into the Kingdom of Darkness and a kind of vortex arose.

The soul incarnated into the body.

Death came into it, whereby it consumed itself. It now carried within itself the seed of its own destruction. There then arose from the Kingdom of Light the Archetypal Man, the human race who must mingle with the Kingdom of Darkness and overcome it.

The human body, the physical, etheric and the astral body, is the darkness, and the human soul the redeemer.

The deep and profound thought here contained is the following: the darkness must be overcome through the Kingdom of Light, through the mingling of the Good with the Evil, in order that the Evil may be redeemed, but not through punishment.

The conception underlying this is also that of Theosophy, namely that Evil is only an untimely Good. For example, an excellent piano technique is good, but if the executant wanted to hammer it out on the piano in the concert hall, there it would be evil.

That which without any doubt is evil today must have been, in its own time proper place, good. The guiding forces of the Lemurian epoch would work evil in a later epoch if they were then still mingled in evolution.

Animals are perfect to live the life they live. Emotions like anger, hatred, envy, and many more, and desires of various kind were necessary to be a successful animal. This is what became our inherited sins, when we got a self, the self couldn’t control these powerful emotions and desires, they became an evil.

In ancient epochs, in Atlantis and Lemuria, all knowledge was in part influenced by that which stands above man. Not until our own epoch have men matured to the stage where they have, as brothers, human beings who have passed through all stages since the middle of the Lemurian Race.

To help man against the desires and emotions man was controlled from above, from the group souls. When we were ready to take responsibility we incarnated into the body we earlier had hovered above after Jesus entered the Earth at Golgotha, and we with him.

In the Fifth Root Race, the guidance of the soul from above withdraws, leaving it to take its own paths. In esotericism, the soul was called the Mother or Isis. The Father was the Instructor or Osiris, who represented the inpouring Divine. He is the Revealer. The soul conceives or receives. The soul is the Mother.

Osiris is the First Logos, Isis the Second Logos and Horus the Son the Third Logos.

During the Fifth Root Race the Father withdraws. Then the soul is widowed, becomes the Widow. The soul, which will later on become completely independent, is designated by Manes, the Divine Fructifier, as the Widow. Then Manes designates himself as the Son, [Father is First Logos, Mother is Second Logos and Mani is Third Logos. ] He it is who prepares the soul to become independent.

The Dark Night of the Soul happens when the soul becomes alone.

Everything that comes from him is a call to the Divine-Spiritual Light of the soul, a rebellion of the soul against everything which has not come from out of the soul itself. ‘You must strip off everything that is external revelation, everything that external authority has transmitted to you. Then you must become ripe to behold your own soul.’

This is central, everything external is opinions, rules, illusions, wishful thinking of the ego, feelings, desires, and so forth, what we also know as karma in eastern tradition and sin in western.
…

From the Kingdom of Light a spark is sent into the Kingdom of Darkness in order that through itself the Darkness may be redeemed, in order that Evil may be overcome through [caring] gentleness.

We must explain the confluence of Life and Form out of the cooperation of Good and Evil. Life becomes form through finding opposition. It does not all at once express itself in a form.

Only consider how Life hurries from form to form. Life has fashioned the lily, then Life overcomes the Form and it passes over into the seed out of which a new form will be born. Life is formless it could[n’t] live out its own nature in itself. Life is everywhere.

Only incarnated does our development have lasting result.

The limited form is the hindrance. There would be no forms if Life were not obstructed and arrested in its forces which stream out in every direction. Form grows precisely out of that which at higher stages appears as fetters.
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The new Life is poured into the old Form. What was formerly Life, later becomes Form for a new Life.

The fructification of Manes is today the Life of men. The Form is what has come, like a seed, out of the Lunar Epoch. In that epoch, evolution was the Life of men. Now this is its outer shell, its form.

Our body is the result of the evolution on the old Æon Moon. Manes, who we also know as Jesus or Abel, the Son of Man, was also prepared in that period to take over as the Logos of the physical. He was the archetype of the physical body up through the first half of Earth, where the Second Logos, Cain, the Son of God was the archetype of the human soul.

The triangle pointing down is the Third Logos, the Triangle pointing up is the First Logos, the center or all of it is the Second Logos.

In the confluence of Life and Form, the other is given at the same time. The Good of an earlier age unites with the Good of a newer age. That gives at the same time the possibility of material manifestation, the possibility of manifested existence. That is the doctrine of Manichaeism.

What is the meaning of the utterance of Manes that he is the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, the Son of the Widow? It means that he will prepare for that epoch in which the men of the Sixth Root Race will be led by themselves, by the light of their own souls. [The Third Logos.]

Aton, the sun disc, was the Third Logos
and I think Akhenaten was an incarnation
of the Third Logos.

Manes will create an overlapping stream, a stream which goes further than the stream of the Rosicrucians. The stream of Manes goes over to the Sixth Root Race which has been in preparation since the founding of Christianity. Christianity will appear in its perfected form in the Sixth Root Race.

The Rosicrucian stream is started by the new Second Logos, Lazarus/John, and it concerns the development of the soul. The Stream of the Third Logos, Manichaeism, concerns the body, and it continues after the soul have ended, have raised, preparing the next Æon.

Life as such overcomes every Form. It propagates itself through Christianity and lives in all forms and confessions. Whoever seeks the Christian Life will find it. It creates Forms and shatters Forms. [The Holy Spirit, the redeemed Lucifer, Shiva.

But, in addition, a form for the Christian Life of the Sixth Root Race must be prepared. A number of human beings must be formed into an organization, a Form, in which the Christianity of the Sixth Root Race can find its place. This Form, this external Form of Society must spring from a handful of men whom Manes prepares.

These beings are the pioneers or old souls of the next development phase.

This is the community that Manes prepares. Therefore the first endeavor of Manicheanism is to shape external life in its pure form. That is why Manicheanism laid such great stress on purity.

This is complicated. The Second Logos has it’s I in the soul, it’s the archetype for mankind.
The Third Logos has its I in the astral body, and it’s highest layer is Buddhi.

The Logoi descends down into the creation, with its consciousness creating light in the darkness. It is preparing the bodies for the humanity who will develop in the next Æon, the New Jupiter or New Jerusalem. The Third Logos is the archetype for the next humanity.

The Animals was the perfected result of the last Æon, and up through the first half of the Earth Æon, the Third Logos of that time developed the human body, also working on and with the coming Third Logos. This is also called the Three pre-earthly deeds of Christ/Krishna.

The Cathari were a sect which appeared like a meteor. They gave themselves this name, Cathari, because Cathari means ‘the Pure Ones.’ They were human beings who had to keep themselves pure in their mode of life and in their moral relationships.

In Manicheanism, it was less a question of the cultivation of Life but rather of the cultivation of the external Form of Life for the Sixth Root Race. In this Sixth Root Race, Good and Evil will form a far greater contrast than they do today.

The Third Logos has to do with the body so it has of course to do with the external form.

What will appear in the Fifth Round for the whole of humanity, i.e., that the physiognomy will be a direct expression for that which karma has created in man, so, in the Sixth Root Race, Evil will appear, especially in the Spiritual.

There will be men who are mighty in Love and Goodness. But Evil will also be there as a mood and a disposition without any covering, within a large number of human beings. They will extol Evil. Some inkling in regard to the Evil in the Sixth Root Race glimmers in many men of genius. (Nietzsche’s Blond Beast is a portent of this Evil in the Sixth Root Race.)

The task of the Sixth Root Race is to draw Evil again into itself through [caring] gentleness. In those who are the followers of the Sons of the Widow there will live the inviolable principle that Evil must be overcome through gentleness. That is the task of the Manichean spiritual stream. It appears in forms which many can call to mind, and need not be mentioned. It must express itself in the forming of a community which has to spread above all things: Peace, Love, and Non-resistance to Evil. It must create a Form for the Life that is to come later.

Augustine worked out the Form of the Catholic Church. It was the Form for the present, and had to be the most vigorous opponent of the Form for the future. Augustine, building the Form for the present, Faustus striving to prepare in man the sense for the Form of the future — that was the contrast in the third and fourth centuries after Christ. It is still there. It comes to expression later, again modified and toned down, in the two streams of Augustinianism and Manichaeism.
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That is the contrast which developed in the third and fourth centuries A.D. It is still present and finds expression in the struggle of the Catholic Church against the Knights Templars, the Rosicrucians, Albigenses, Cathars and so on. All of them are eliminated from the physical plane, but their inner spirit continues to be active. This contrast manifests again later in modified but still violent form in two currents born out of Western culture, that of Jesuitism (pertaining to Augustine) and that of Freemasonry (Manicheism). Those who lead the battle on the one side are all conscious of what they are doing — they are the Catholics and Jesuits of the higher degrees. Of those, however, who are on the other side, who lead the battle in the spirit of Mani, only very few are conscious; only those at the head of the movement are conscious of it.

Thus Jesuitism (belonging to Augustine) and Freemasonry (Manicheism) confront one another in later centuries. They are the offspring of ancient spiritual currents. That is why you have in both these currents a continuation of the same ceremonies connected with initiation that you find in the old currents. The initiation into Jesuitism has the four degrees: Coadjutores temporales, Scholares, Coadjutores spirituales, Professi. The degrees of initiation in the true occult Freemasonry are similar. The two run parallel to one another but they point in quite different directions.

The peacock was a symbol for Lucifer, the Third Logos, and it
is also connected to Manes:

The Three Logoi and the Mayan

I found these symbols in my research on the Three Logoi:

They seem to originate from the Mayans. They are very much alike the symbols Steiner gives for the three Logoi:

See the original text in The Logos Walks the Earth.

They come from the research of Augustus Le Plongeon (1825-1906) of the Mayans:

He was influenced by Theosophy and introduced a suncross as the Third Logos, but without any word definitions as with the others.

He was a photographer and amateur archeologist, and well known for his many photographs from the Mayans. His interpretations was influenced by Theosophy and it gives many interesting commentaries.

James M. Churchward took the findings of Plongeon and replaced them to India and later to Tibet and used it to promote his ideas of Mu or Lemuria. There are interesting anecdotes and observations but he have a thesis he manipulates the observations to prove. If he had tried to prove Atlantis as the center of America, Europe and Africa instead he wouldn’t have had to manipulate the evidence.

Churchward gave these glyphs:

And he described the glyphs as:

 Hun – The Creator is one.

 Lahun, two – He is two in one.

 Mehen, man – Together they created man, mehen.

Mehen is the physical man, Lahun is life in man and Hun is the Creator.

Plongeon wrote this on the Third Logos, Mehen:

The blue color is the skin of etheric beings as seen in the physical world. The Third Logos is the land, the Earth.

Churchward wrote this on the glyph of the Third Logos:

A glyph, generally a circle but sometimes oblong with two parallel lines drawn through its center dividing it into three parts as shown (Niven’s Mexican Tablet No. 2379), is a common universal symbol.

 

It is found among the cliff writings of our western states, in inscriptions on the Mexican Pyramid at Xochicalco, in the Maya writings of Yucatan. It appears in a writing on Inscription Rock, northeast Brazil near the boundary of British Guiana, and in other various American carvings. It occurs in the ancient writings of the Uighurs, Hindus, Babylonians and Egyptians.

The Second Logos incarnates again and again and Zarathustra was such an incarnation. He quite possibly incarnated under that name a number of times. The winged symbol are used for the Second Logos in different cultures, like with Isis in Egypt:

A little curiosum, the symbol for the Deathly Hallows from the seventh Harry Potter book is interesting in this connection.

The triangle represents the Invisibility Cloak, the line the Elder Wand
and the circle the Resurrection Stone.

The circle represent zero, the line represents one and the triangle represents three, the first three spiritual numbers. Two don’t exist, duality is an illusion. Zero is the First Logos, one is the Second Logos and three is the Third Logos.

The Resurrection Stone represents the First Logos, it really don’t take part in life on Earth. The Elder Wand represents the Second Logos, the absolute power. The Invisibility Cloak represents the Third Logos, the invisible net behind all of the physical reality, Indras Net.

The Art of Asha, an Analysis

“The Art of Asha” are the origin of chess and was introduced by Zarathustra as a kind of teaching aid describing the spiritual powers or hierarchies behind the physical world. Professor Edmond Bordeaux Székely have described the The Art of Asha in “The Essene Book of Asha“.

Today most knowledge of Ashas spiritual background have been lost, only names, a few comments about each piece and the movement rules are known, as they are the same as for chess today.

It has irritated me for some time that nothing more was known, it sounded interesting. As all religions and esoteric traditions are different facets of the same reality, it should be possible to find the meaning behind the Art of Asha.

In a contemplation a week ago I found the key, and I quickly found the relation to Kabbalah, and one key is that man is an inverted plant, what both Hinduism, Kabbalah and Rudolf Steiner states.

Board for the The Art of Asha

Here the positions and the names of the forces of Ahura Mazda and Ahriman, the white and dark powers:

As all religious and spiritual traditions describe the same reality it should be possible to find it’s relation to other more known systems, like Kaballah.

And it was not so difficult to find the right positions when I had placed the King/Creator/Man at the bottom of the tree, and Eternal Life just above in the Angels sephira, the puzzle pieces found their places naturally.

I placed the Queen/Preserver at the top, but it was wrong in many ways, so she moved into the center, that expressed her strength much better, just as the weakness of the king was clear through his position outside the ring.

Looking at the meaning of the Asha pieces and the corresponding Sephira they seem to match beautifully.

The symmetry of the pieces is also perfect, so I think it’s a very good theory of the relation.

I have not unraveled how it should be used, there are possibilities for some experimenting, like following the play of two persons around some topic, seeing how it develops, how it ends.

First model – the Pieces of Asha in The Tree of Life

This is the result of the first contemplation, here we have the pieces placed on the Tree of Life. The King is the head of the reverse tree.

Second model – Planets and Life Periods

Further contemplation gave this new version, where our development cycle is added, together with chakras and planets.

More on the chakras here “Some Results of the Initiation“