Wednesday, October 1, 2008

LIGHT MAGIC & MASONRY-THE PILLARS

Light, Magic, and Masonry

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...why is the term "light" so frequently used and preferred throughout the Christian scriptures, to denote the spiritual condition of man? Why are nations, whose minds are cultivated and stored with knowledge, said to be "enlightened?"...simply because all knowledge was once supposed to be imparted by the God of the sun through its descending rays of light. Hence light and knowledge are now synonymous terms
Kersey Graves
(Bible of Bibles, 1863 AD)


Light As Thought

What light is to the outer physical world, intellect is to the inner world of consciousness - Arthur Schopenhauer

Not many of us realize that there are two kinds of thinking that operate simultaneously. There is thinking with the brain and thinking with the mind. The mind and the brain are not the same thing. The latter is basically an organic machine programmed by our worldly experiences through this lifetime. The former is an phylogenetic inheritance, an archive containing the thought impressions of all those men and women who have lived before us and whose myriad experiences have been recorded in the "Akashic Record," the "Ancestral Brain" or, in psychological parlance, the "Collective Unconscious." Thinking with the mind might turn out to be quite a delusion. It might turn out that human beings think for the mind rather than with it.

Contrary to what we falsely believe, we do not come into this world "innocent." Innocence, as William Blake knew, is merely our state of mind when introduced to the world's myriad phenomena for the first time. To the young brain everything inside and out seems new, fresh, exciting, and incomprehensible. Originally, before we are taught otherwise, we do not even try to think about what happens to us or about what we see and experience. We simply experience. And apparently, it is enough to do so, at least for most young people. As we age, however, we gain experience and innocence eventually flees never to return. It vanishes when we begin contemplating our experiences, when a mind begins contemplating itself, or rather what it imagines to be itself. And painful experiences seem to compel men to think on the meaning of their lives. As Schopenhauer wrote: "Without pain, life is meaningless."

As we grow, we certainly continue to crave the freshness and spontaneity we once knew. However, we fail to realize that it is our own minds, our consciousness, that needs to be new and fresh every day and not our experiences. The mind that is split, infirm, narcissistic, toxic and/or prejudiced, can hardly be expected to function in a healthy, spontaneous manner, or to know anything as a certainty. As such a mind decays it loses its mutability and ceases to function holistically. It continues to have experiences and relationships, but few are deep and truly meaningful. Such a "calcified" mind is content to take orders, to allow others to lead it, and to seek unison with others of its sordid kind. It loathes independence and aloneness. It despises darkness, silence, and inwardness. It despises anyone that is inward, quiet, and "dark." It does not realize that, sooner or later, it will have to inherit the very shadows it has cast by way of its shallow, acquisitive, hyper-focused patterns of thought.

The correlation of consciousness with masculinity culminates in the development of science, as an attempt by the masculine spirit to emancipate itself from the power of the unconscious...We call this path "ascent" because we experience consciousness and the world of light as being "above" us and unconscious and darkness "below" still under the spell of the primitive symbolism which associates the upright posture of the human figure with the development of the head and the rest of the "higher" centers of consciousness - Erich Neumann (The Origin and Evolution of Consciousness)

…thinking which does not start from and continue in close relation to its foundations in the physical universe must lead to falsity - Alvin Boyd Kuhn

Light, Sight, and Seeing

A shadow is just the part of Her that His light can’t banish or erase - Michael Tsarion

Living in the world involves sensing the world. The most important sense is that of sight. Through sight we receive the vast majority of our knowledge about the world and about reality. Seeing is achieved by way of the human eye. The eye, and the act of seeing, is dependent upon light that transmits or conducts a good portion of the world's contents to the brain. Light is, as they say, knowledge. The very word phenomena (meaning the stuff of the world) comes from the Greek word phainomenon that derives from phaos, meaning "Light." It follows that a man's imperfect understanding of the phenomena of light can be detrimental to him. His ignorance, in this regard, may leave him open to subtle manipulation from those extremely well acquainted with the many intriguing properties and dimensions of light, to those who would refer to themselves as elites and alumni, the illumined, illustrious, and elevated.

Ithyphallic beams of light enter the vesica-shaped eye and the repetition of this motion, second by second, can be justifiably likened to a sexual act. In fact, the entrance of light piercing the passive eye is experienced as a very erotic act by the human brain that is, after all, a mass of super-sensitive nerves. This subtle optical experience may be compared to a miniature orgasm small enough to not be noticed consciously but strong enough to be very stimulating and entrancing to the subconscious part of us.

Over time, the transmittance of information via the light creates deep impressions on the brain and mind. Again, this has phallic connotations. Because of the inherent eroticism of the light we literally become addicted to light and the thinking to which it gives birth. Thought is the original addiction and as addicts we do not realize how strongly held and dependent we have become upon thought and upon light. As the original addiction thought inevitably gives rise to all other addictions that plague us. The brain has antipathy to darkness that it fears and upon which the unconscious can project its specters. This is why it has decided to associate divinity with light and why we, subsequently, adore the light as the fundamental aspect of god.

Men are light-infatuated. However, light is dualistic, since where light is there too will a shadow be. Similarly, where god is, the devil will also be. This is the paradox that perplexes the exponents and adherents of solar-based religions.

God is good but also wrathful. God is merciful but also vengeful. God is truth and also contradiction. If god is light, does he have a dark side?

Few can account for the strange ambivalence within the nature of god. We can and will account for it, however, when we realize the all-important connections between God and Lucifer, Light and Mind, Light and Thought. In short, light does not reveal mysteries, it creates them.

Any development, at any stage, that strives toward patriarchal consciousness, toward the sun, looks on the moon spirit as the spirit of regression, as the terrible mother, as a witch - Erich Neumann (The Origin and Evolution of Consciousness)

…monotheism does not mirror human society. Humans are first and foremost social animals. A deity who was alone, not by choice but because there were no other companions for Him, was a concept without parallel in human society. The god of the Israelites did not have a wife, a son, a daughter, or a mother - Leonard Schlain (The Alphabet Versus the Goddess)

It is vital to understand how important these seemingly abstract metaphysical principles are to the elites ("great lighted ones") within the secret societies, those worshippers of Lucifer - The Prince of Light. To successfully combat them and foil their designs we have to be as intellectually astute as they are. We must know what they know and understand as they do. We must know what it is that commands their allegiance and we must know just how fervent their allegiances are. In writings to his Illuminati and Masonic brethren, Albert Pike, reveals the esoteric connections between Lucifer, Light, and Phallicism:

In the Book of Enoch, in speaking of the fallen angels it is said: "The name of the first is Yekun: he it as who seduced all the sons of the Holy Angel; and causing them to descend on earth, led astray the offspring of men...and the name, as Yekain, is fitly represented by a phallic column" - Albert Pike (Book of the Words)

Yekun becomes Jakin, one of the pillars at the gates of Solomon's (Aton's) Temple. We see these two stately pillars at the portals of all Masonic lodges and important government buildings. These phallic altars to Lucifer (Aton) can be found in most civic centers in the world as the obelisk, tower, or single erect stone monument. They stand in the center of prominent city "squares" and near important banks, churches, and educational institutions. The very word phallic comes from phalos which meaning "white" or "bright." It is akin to phaos that also means "light."

By the very name, it (the phallus) was connected with the Sun - Albert Pike

So, when we discuss the masculine tendency, the acquisitive drives, and the plague of aggression and brutality that causes havoc in the world, let us understand that it is metaphysically rooted in the ideology of light. It is Luciferianism, or Atonism, whether the average over-driven sense-infatuated maniac realizes it or not. It is born from the womb of light and it sports a halo of light. Yes, tyranny and violence are shining beasts made of light the great weapon in the hands of the "Light Bearers" who have expertly mesmerized the world with their spectacular light works. It is a Gnostic idea. A pretty hard one to take.

…there were no religious wars in the ancient world before monotheism - Leonard Schlain (The Goddess Versus the Alphabet)

The rise of masculine power and of patriarchal society probably started when man began to accumulate personal, as over against communal, property and found that his personal strength and prowess could increase his personal possessions. This change in secular power coincided with the rise of sun worship under a male priesthood...Sun worship was usually introduced and established by an edict of a military dictator, as happened in Babylon and Egypt, and probably other countries as well - M. Esther Harding (Woman's Mysteries)

Nicholas Copernicus displaced Mother Earth from the center of the universe and replaced her with Father Sun - Leonard Schlain (The Alphabet Versus the Goddess)

We find out just how important light is to Masons from one of their most distinguished members, Albert Mackey, who wrote several books on the meaning of Masonry and its various rites and traditions. In his book The Symbolism of Freemasonry, Mackey added an entire chapter on light and what it means to a Mason. He wrote on the subject thusly:

here again we have in Masonry that old and often-repeated allusion to sun-worship, which has already been seen in the officers of a lodge, and in the point within a circle. And as the circumambulation is made around the lodge, just as the sun was supposed to move around the earth, we are brought back to the original symbolism with which we commenced—that the lodge is a symbol of the world.

This rite of intrusting is, of course, divided into several parts or periods; for the aporreta, or secret things of Masonry, are not to be given at once, but in gradual progression. It begins, however, with the communication of LIGHT, which, although but a preparation for the development of the mysteries which are to follow, must be considered as one of the most important symbols in the whole science of masonic symbolism.

Light was, in accordance with this old religious sentiment, the great object of attainment in all the ancient religious Mysteries. It was there, as it is now, in Masonry, made the symbol of truth and knowledge. This was always its ancient symbolism, and we must never lose sight of this emblematic meaning, when we are considering the nature and signification of masonic light. When the candidate makes a demand for light, it is not merely for that material light which is to remove a physical darkness; that is only the outward form, which conceals the inward symbolism. He craves an intellectual illumination which will dispel the darkness of mental and moral ignorance, and bring to his view, as an eye-witness, the sublime truths of religion, philosophy, and science, which it is the great design of Freemasonry to teach.

Light was venerated because it was an emanation from the sun, and, in the materialism of the ancient faith, light and darkness were both personified as positive existences, the one being the enemy of the other. Two principles were thus supposed to reign over the world, antagonistic to each other, and each alternately presiding over the destinies of mankind. The contests between the good and evil principle, symbolized by light and darkness, composed a very large part of the ancient mythology in all countries.

Cities are meticulously designed and laid out by Masons. Those who live within the perimeters of cities unconsciously partake in giant Masonic rituals. The word city comes from the same root as cteis, meaning "vagina." Today, city centers or plazas contain symbols of the male and female. The term "city hall" comes from cteis, meaning "vagina" or "womb," and phallus, meaning "penis." St. Peter's Square in Rome bares a "thistle" design. This represents Scotland and the Druids of that ancient land. The city of Rome, and Great Pyramid of Giza, are both perfectly aligned with the sun doors of Ireland's two most astounding megalithic sites, those of Newgrange and Knowth.


Masonic City Designs

To the ancients, everything in creation was related. The events of the heavens were to be mirrored upon the earth, as well as within the mind and heart. The builders of the great monuments, in Ireland, Egypt, and other countries, made sure that their earthly cities were aligned and dedicated to prominent constellations, stars, and luminaries. Sidereal symbols still frequently appear in our cities, state buildings, civic halls, and on heraldry and corporate logos, etc.


Masonic Tracing Boards.

Symbolic devices containing information about the night sky, astrology, the human body, and other esoteric phenomena. Many cities are laid out to represent these tracing boards.

The Three Masonic Columns

Representing the three pyramids on the Giza Plateau, which parallel the Newgrange complex in County Meath, Ireland: Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth. They also represent the paths known as the Ida, Pingala, and Shusumna, as well as the three main Kabalistic Pillars of the Tree of Life. The ladder is also a metaphor for the steps of the pyramid reaching up toward heaven. The sun above the ladder is Jacob, or rather Jacob is a metaphorical character based on the sun. The British flag, called the "Union Jack" actually refers to the biblical and Masonic Jacob, or the sun. The so-called Temple of Solomon, and its two famous pillars, are believed to have been constructed by architect Hiram Abiff. As we show in our Appendix on Druidic symbolism, Abiff was a Phoenician Druid or Elder.

Three Obelisks of Rome

There are presently 13 in all, imported from Egypt.

The obelisk was...consecrated to the sun - Albert Pike

In Egypt the obelisk stood for the very presence of the Sun God himself - Carl Claudy (Introduction to Freemasonry)

Nicholas Copernicus displaced Mother Earth from the center of the universe and replaced her with Father Sun - Leonard Schlain (The Alphabet Versus the Goddess)

Solar obelisk in Bangor, Northern Ireland: This obelisk with fasces and lion's heads ostensibly commemorates the dead of the First World War.

Rene Magritte (1898-1967)

The Belgian surrealist artist Rene Magritte was fascinated with the strange manner in which light worked upon the human mind. He wisely remarked:

Everything that we see obscures something else we want to see

Like Goethe, Rembrandt, Vermeer, M. C. Escher, Salvador Dali, Georges De Chirico, and other philosophically-minded artists obsessed with the physical and metaphysical properties of light, Magritte was partly referring to the remarkable ability of human beings to believe in ideas of reality rather than in reality itself.

He was speaking about the strange antipathy that apparently exists between idea and reality, appearance and fact, deception and truth, darkness and light.

This antipathy was a mystery that also perplexed the Oriental mystics who rendered the problem in their Yin Yang symbol, known as the "Eyes of the Dragon." This symbol expressed a similar concept as the two eyes of the Egyptian god Ra. The Masons also embodied the dichotomy in their checker board designs. For the Masons the black squares represent human ignorance, while the white squares represent knowledge. Those who occupy the black squares of ignorance, so to speak, are not considered fully human or alive. They are known by Masons as Muggers. This is where we derive the common word for an imbecile or recalcitrant - Mug. As far as most esoteric Masons are concerned, muggers do not really deserve to exist. Only those who live for advancement, progress, and knowledge, and who have given their sworn allegiance to Masonic principles, are fully alive. Only they can know the light and be of the light.

Baphomet - with the horns of wisdom and the torch of knowledge. The arms point up and down to growth and progress or decay and regression. The female breasts and phallic caduceus indicate that Baphomet is androgynous. Indeed, the very name Baphomet may derive from Ptah (father) and Ma'at (mother) the Egyptian gods; or, alternatively, from Baphe (baptism) and Metis (wisdom)

The Yin-Yang - is also known as the "Eyes of the Dragon." It represents that within the darkness is the light, and within the light hides the darkness. Light and darkness One cannot exist without the other. The stronger a light shines the darker the shadows it casts.

Certain Gnostic groups associated light with Lucifer - the Fallen Angel. The Kabalists maintained that Lucifer fell from heaven like a zigzagging lightening flash. Light, they believed, descended downwards through ten major centers known as Sephiroth (spheres). After its descent, the light, in a relatively diminished form, came to rest in the realm known by Kabalists as "Malkuth" - the Physical Plane. The light that men normally perceive in the world outside, and that illumines thought inwardly, is of this diminished variety. It has the power though to lead the initiated neophyte to higher grades and frequencies. Once the initiate has reached the highest level, known as "Kether," he is considered "Enlightened" and "All Knowing." By following the light and being in the light he has had to face his own darkness and dirt. He has had to cleanse himself of impurity and overcome imperfection. He has to bathe in the light, as it were, to eradicate ignorance. As a "Son of the Light" he believes everything that is erroneous, imperfect, and passive, to be the darkness.

Malkuth sits between the two pillars known to Masons as "Jachin" and "Boaz." Therefore, the sphere or sephiroth of Malkuth is the analog of Masonic temples or lodges of light that have their portals between two pillars. The temple represents the entrance of and to Malkuth. The number of Malkuth is 10. This number is written as TEN that obviously connotes ATEN or ATON. This is the reason, for instance, why the headquarters of the British government is at TEN Downing Street.

The light, or knowledge, at this low level, is so weak in magnitude and so far removed from the realm of pure spirit that only exceptionally wise and mentally empowered individuals can comprehend reality as it really is and see beyond the myriad illusions that infest the world and lower mind. Those devoid of psychological insight, objectivity, and moral purity, cannot escape living mediocre lives riddled with contradiction. It is not difficult to recognize and define the individuals who belong to this sorry category. They are those who wish to live forever but who despise getting old. They are those who desire to know everything but who do not wish to open their minds.

They are those who wish to avoid pain but who never find out why pain arises in their lives; who say they desire freedom and yet abuse it when they find it; who want the "light" but who deeply fear facing the dirt it will reveal in them; and who want to see reality as it is but who don't realize that doing so will first entail seeing oneself as one truly is.

Those who cannot, or who will not, face reality, have no chance of changing reality - Michael Tsarion (Atlantis, Alien Visitation and Genetic Manipulation)

Some esoteric teachings profess spirit to be above and beyond the realms of time. It does not evolve to perfection since it is perfect already. To such mystics the concept of Becoming has no meaning. Spirit, like the Universe from which it arose and of which it is a part, is already perfect as it is. It is the ego of man that acquires a level of existential sophistication and maturity through experience and time.

The ever-changing entity (the human ego) is dependant upon the movement of time. It is the human ego that operates in time and that is dependent upon time.

Since the ego projects itself into the future and expects that its perfection exists tomorrow "sometime" it becomes caught in a paradox. This is because tomorrow does not exist. It is merely a projection of the ego. The ego believes in progress and commits itself to the dream of tomorrow. Nevertheless, the reality is that for every step the ego takes toward this phantom perfection the more its imperfection is affirmed. Its quest is born from a fallacy and its goal is therefore unachievable. The place in which the perfection is said to be does not even exist. it is a figment of the mind that conceives it. The ego cannot find a way out of this paradox and it exists like a spider caught in its own web.

The ambient power and ego-less intelligence of nature threatens the ego deeply. The ego's power is finite while the universe's energy is infinite. The ego dies while nature is eternal. The Druids instructed men to revere this infinite power source and to obey the ordinances of nature the great sustainer, teacher, and healer. The Luciferians teach men to lust for scientific understanding.

The ithyphallic pillars of light. The globes are astrological. They are the earth and celestial sphere. The black and white squares represent ignorance and knowledge. Knowledge has been associated with light. The word knowledge comes from "Gnosis." The capital "G" is a sigil for occult knowledge and for the Gaonim - the Atonist Princes of Light. In their reckoning of reality, men are separated into groups of the ignorant and the knowledgeable.

They sharpen the left hemisphere of the brain and seek to control and shape nature into whatever form the ego of man deems right for its own sanity and security. The Druids, like most tribal Shaman, taught men how to be suspicious of their ideas of reality that are not reality. They taught their seekers the means of deconstructing these false ideas. The Luciferians, on the other hand, tend to exalt their idea of reality into a god. A Druid seeks the truth of a thing, whereas a Luciferian seeks the idea of a thing. Modern man is lost in his own ideas. He is not miles apart from other people, he is ideas apart. To close the gap men conform to similar ideas. They conform and become victims of consensus trance. This regrettable trait is exploited by those who seek to enslave human beings.

These concepts, pertaining to light, god, and power, are so alien to us because we have, in our present solar-centric, technocratic milieu, successfully divided reality into a myriad conflicting parts and have instigated unsustainable hierarchies that bear no resemblance to the holarchic structure of nature. Like lost and marooned, but over-zealous Robinson Crusoes, we reign supreme over our island universes like demented kings with sun stroke, believing ourselves to be ever so civilized, enlightened, and advanced.

Perhaps Mahatma Gandhi was right when he cynically said that civilization would be "a good idea," and perhaps sociologist Konrad Lorenz was right when he humorously implied that man is merely the missing link between apes and human beings. Perhaps, in persisting with our vain ardor to repair what is not broken and "improve" upon perfection we have finally lost our vision of the inherent, ambient order and beauty all around us that is not "plugged-in," wasteful, or finite, and that operates flawlessly without mind, thought, ego, or human consciousness. Our own inner ugliness and toxicity prevents us from looking deeply into that pristine mirror of nature to see all that we are and all we should be. We have become nature's rotten-apples, her unwanted abortions so to speak, who must, for the greater good, be left to perish in the great Plutonic storms that approach us and that we, due to our existential vagrancy, have summoned into being.