Mummies and Luminaries

One of the biggest challenges to practitioners of traditional sciences, such as astrology, is that of setting aside the prejudices that have been instilled in us from modern education.  One of the prejudices is a pervasive form of arrogance, which can be summarized by the formula: “Primitive people believed ……., but now we know…….”  When metaphysical principles are taught at all, they are taught from this perspective.

Here is an example of this type of teaching from Grout’s History of Western Music (3rd Edition)

For some Greek thinkers music also had a close connection with astronomy, not only through the identity of mathematical laws that were thought to underlie both the system of musical intervals and the system of the heavenly bodies, but also through a particular correspondence of certain modes and even certain notes with the various planets.  Such magical connotations and extensions of music were common among all Eastern peoples.  The idea was given poetic form by Plato in the beautiful myth of the “music of the spheres”; it is echoed by writers on music throughout the Middle Ages, and appears also in Shakespeare and Milton.  Ptolemy, one of the most important of the ancient writers on music, was also the leading astronomer of antiquity–as, in our own day, many of the best amateurs of music are physical scientists.

Now, at first, one may not think that this statement is too bad, but, as it turned out it was the only reference to the metaphysics of music in one of the more important textbooks for the study of music theory.

MummyAnother such example is the modern interpretation of Egyptian mummification practices.  During the mummification process, the heart was careful preserved intact in the body and the brain was discarded as unimportant.  The modern interpretation of this is that the Egyptians did not understand anatomy, and they did not know what the brain did.  From even a pragmatic standpoint, this condescending interpretation is contrary to the available data.  The fact that mummies thousands of years old are available to us to study should be enough to convince us that this culture had a very sophisticated understanding of the human body.  If we let go of the prejudice that has been instilled in us, we can start to really think about what the Egyptians may have been doing.

Unlike the modern perspective, from a traditionalist perspective, it is axiomatic that our forebears were our superiors, and that they knew more than we do now.  So rather than presuming that the Egyptians did not know what they were doing, the presumption changes to being that they knew and understood something that we have lost.  As it turns out, from a metaphysical standpoint, this practice is quite fascinating, and is instructive to us in re-educating ourselves to understanding traditional science.

The starting point for this analysis is that the Egyptians carefully preserved the heart.  ImageWhile modern Western society associates the heart with love, specifically romantic love, traditionally, the Heart was always Solar.  From a traditionalist perspective, Solar does not refer to the physical Sun, but to the Solar principle (although the physical Sun is the cosmic representation of the Solar principle).  The Solar principle is the Creative Aspect of the Divine, or the Mother principle.  The Solar principle in humans, as microcosms of the cosmos, is that part of us which is always connected to and even One with the Divine.

Traditionalists speak of the Solar Intellect, which is the part inside of us that understands all things.  In this day and age in the West, we have lost our understanding of the Solar Intellect, but the concept is still present in Eastern thought.

Just as the physical Moon reflects the light of the physical Sun, the Lunar principle is a reflection of the Solar principle.  The Lunar principle governs all physicality.  The Lunar principle also represents our individual souls.  The reflection of Solar Intellect is Lunar Reason.  Lunar Reason is how we process information on the material plane.  We also use Lunar Reason to process information we receive from our senses and to intuit matters that lie beyond our senses. We also use Lunar Reason to make inferences and to synthesize information into a usable form.

In modern times, we tend to believe that the information we receive from our senses is the most reliable information; however, this was not the case in the Ancient world.  Although, the brain or head being governed by the Lunar principle is not nearly as universal as the heart being governed by the Solar principle, the anatomical function of the brain almost directly corresponds with the concept of Lunar Reason.   Interestingly enough, there has been research that has shown that recipients of heart transplants take on the characteristics of the heart donor, so it is possible that the heart may have an anatomical function that is congruent with its metaphysical function.

So, if we were to presume that the Egyptians knew exactly what they were doing, this becomes quite instructive to us.  The Egyptians careful preserved the heart, which symbolically represents the Solar Principle.  They discarded the brain, which is the anatomical seat of Lunar Reason.  This would mean that they believed that in the afterlife, we would need our Solar Intellect, but that we would no longer need our Lunar Reason.  From a Traditionalist perspective, this is exactly right.  Lunar Reason is necessary for us in the world of flux and change, but the Solar Intellect is what survives and what is eternal.  Lunar Reason is also necessarily subordinate to Solar Intellect.

This is a huge change in the schema most of us were raised with.  We have been taught that the sense-data plus Lunar Reason are all that exists and that all we can be sure of is what we can process with our senses or derive from our senses.  The Traditionalist perspective is exactly the opposite.  The symbolic and the metaphysical is what we can be sure of.  The information we receive from our senses is transitory, part of the world of flux and change.  In other words, from the perspective of the Eternal, our Hearts are of primary importance, but our brain is only important from the perspective of our physical, material existence.

The Symbolism of Fairy Tales

One of the places where we can find Universal Truth is in fairy tales.

Cinderella BeforeYes, fairy tales…the timeless stories we tell our children, such as Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Beauty and the Beast.  Fairy tales have been criticized in modern Western culture as being unrealistic or naïve and have been decried by feminists as for their portrayal of women as weak and helpless, needing protection and saving from a man.  These criticisms really show how hard it is for the modern Western mind to get beyond literalistic thinking – reading fairy tales as if they were modern novels about individuals.

This literalism is actually quite an insidious inoculation from being able to really understand the true meaning of fairy tales or to get any real good out of them.  So, the first step in being able to understand fairy tales and derive real metaphysical truth from these tales is to understand that they are not literal stories.  They speak to Truth (with a capital T), not to factual truths.  They are in the category of Mythology and Folklore, not stories of actual human beings.

So, we have just said fairy tales are not literal, factual truths, nor stories of actual human beings.  So, what are fairy tales then?

Fairy tales are timeless stories of the human condition and our separation and reunion with the Divine.  All separation from the Divine and from each other is only a temporary state, and that the only permanent state is that of reunion and Unity.  Fairy tales all have common features.  While fairy tales can be enjoyed and are instructive without an understanding of the meaning of these features, an understanding is helpful to reverse the rationalist conditioning that many of us have been exposed to from earliest childhood.

Children’s Stories

One of the features of fairy tales is that they are told to children and that they appeal to children in a magical way.  The appeal to children is so powerful, that even in our heavily rationalist, materialistic culture, they have survived.  While in response to Western rationalist, feminist thought, Disney has changed its telling of these timeless stories, particularly with respect to the roles and characteristics of the female characters, the older and more traditional movies, such as Cinderella and Snow White, are just as popular as they have ever been.  Little girls are entranced by Disney princesses so much that they are effective marketing tools.

The sad thing is that the appeal to children is seen as a way to compartmentalize these stories as not being serious or relevant to adults or the Modern World.  Yet, to the more traditional Essentialist mind, children are supposed to be told stories of Universal Truth.  In the Sutra of The Way of Simplicity, it is written:

For the truth is such that a child may understand it, yet the sage, if she have not simplicity and love, may struggle with it for all of her life and have nothing.

What is your truth, if it cannot be shared with a child?

For in the eyes of Eternity, how little is the space between and infant and the wisest of the world?

These stories are not to be abandoned by adults.  Yes, one will and should understand these stories differently as one matures, and indeed maturity requires one to be able to see Truth in a deeper way.  On the other hand, as an Essentialist, one places special importance and value on stories that are told to children as those that speak to Universal Truth.

Once Upon A Time

Another feature of a true fairy tale is that the setting is “once upon a time.”  This is the marker that this is a story outside time and space.  This should also be the first clue that these stories are not to be read literally.  These speak to Truth that goes beyond time and space, and therefore beyond our literal human lives.

ImagePrincesses and Prince Charming

Commonly in fairy tales, Princesses and Princes are the main characters.  This is another marker that these stories deal with matters beyond materiality and are not to be taken literally.  These stories speak to ideals and to archetypes, symbolized by royalty.

These stories also speak to the interaction between the metaphysical passive (the Princess) and active (Prince Charming), in eastern terminology, yin and yang.  In Eastern and Traditional thought, the passive state is the highest state, and the active state serves the passive.  So, to an Essentialist, even thinking of these stories as any type of statement on the roles of actual gendered individuals is ridiculously literalistic.  The interaction between the Princess and Prince Charming shows the interplay between the passive and the active states of being, with the passive generally representing the higher state. “Earth moves but Heaven is still”.

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Curses/Witches/Evil Queens

Another common feature of fairy tales is the involvement of evil.  While as an Essentialist, on one level everything in existence is part of the Divine, on another level, inherent in manifestation is the struggle between good and evil.

This is a paradox, but one that is necessary to accept.  Evil is as much of a part of manifestation as good and always seeks to destroy good.  This is seen in that there is usually some form of “curse” that is placed on the protagonist.  Interestingly, the types of curses upon the Princesses and the Princes are quite different.  Princesses are trapped in drudgery and materiality (“Cinderella”) or completely asleep (“Sleeping Beauty” and “Snow White”).  Princes are turned into monsters or lower beings (“Beauty and the Beast” and “The Frog and the Princess”).

True Love and Transformation

In fairy tales, the curse is always lifted or the Princess is freed or rescued.  It is love that lifts the curse.  Love is seen to have a magical transforming power.  Indeed, it is only love that can defeat the evil antagonist.   This is the feature that is most criticized by modern society, as setting unrealistic expectations of marriage and being harmful to women.  Yet, to an Essentialist, this is the Ultimate Truth.  Love is transforming and healing.  This transforming love is not romantic human love, it is Divine, Godly Love, which is the only thing that can transform and heal.

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While Divine Love is not romantic human love, the interplay between the Transforming Love manifested by the Princes and that manifested by the Princesses is interesting in and of itself.  The Princes show their love through actions, i.e., fighting the Evil Queen, searching for the girl who fits the slipper.  The Princesses show their love through wisdom and awareness, i.e. seeing the beauty within the beast,  kissing the frog. The Princess is often the divine Spirit who recognizes the lost soul in its earthly disguise.

Happily Ever After

As fairy tales begin with “Once Upon a Time,” they end with the protagonist “living happily ever after.”  In a sense, this is the resolution of the paradox of the curse and Evil Queen.  Good ultimately triumphs over evil.  While evil is inherent in manifestation, the only Truth is the Divine.

We can never be permanently separated from the Divine.  There is only one resolution.  The evil must be overcome, the curse must be lifted, the Prince and Princess must come together, and they must “live happily ever after.”  That is also the only resolution in the separation inherent in manifestation.  We must return to the timeless state of union with the Divine.
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See also:

Mythology and Folklore

What is Tradition?

Often in this blog, there is reference to the term Tradition.  This begs the question, what is meant by the word Tradition?  What tradition are we speaking of?  Are not there many different traditions all over the world?

To answer this, we must differentiate between Tradition and traditions.  There is only one Tradition.  Tradition is what has been passed down to us from the One Source through our foremothers from the beginning of time.  All earthly traditions are imperfect reflections of the One Tradition.  Tradition is where we learn about Universal Truth.  Our modern day religions, folk tradition, fairy tales, and stories we tell our children, like the ones about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, are examples of traditions.  These stories have changed over time and many of the deep meanings have been lost, but one can still learn about Universal Truth from these stories and traditions.

One such a tradition is the Swedish tradition surrounding St. Lucia Day.  On St. Lucia Day, the oldest daughter is supposed to lead her siblings in a parade wearing a white robe with a crimson sash and a wreath of candles on her head.  She serves their parents coffee and pastries.  There is a traditional pastry served on that day called Lussekatter.  Below is a picture of these pastries:

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If one researches this tradition, one will learn of the story of St. Lucia, a Christian martyr, who is stated to have brought prisoners food in the catacombs.  Her sainthood was evidenced by the miracle of food appearing during a famine in Sweden.  Yet, the symbols of this tradition speak to much older stories.  It is celebrated on December 13, which was the date of the Winter Solstice under the older Julian calendar.  The tradition is filled with symbols related to mid-Winter celebrations from long before the Christian or any other current tradition.  The oldest daughter with light on her head coincides with Light from Heaven coming to us from the Northern Gate, bring sustenance, Light and warmth.  As an aside, this is also why Santa Claus comes from the North Pole.  Even the pastries are symbols of Light!

One could ask, well, which tradition is True…the Christian story of St. Lucia or the older symbolism of Light and the Winter Solstice?  While questions like this are common in modern Western thinking, this really represents a false dichotomy.  One can honor the tradition and learn from the tradition whether one sees it as a celebration of the Christian saint or the Winter Solstice.  Both teach us about God’s sustenance and Light being brought to us during the darkest time.  The Christian story of the saint does not supplant the older story; it puts it in a new context.  The story is the same.

Another question one can ask is whether it is worthwhile to continue a tradition if the story is forgotten and all that is left is the form.  Many modern thinkers say that these traditions should be discarded as if they no longer have meaning.  Some will even discard traditions just *because* they are old, and of course, we know better than to have these superstitions in modern times.  To a traditional thinker, this is hubris and arrogance.  Modern minds are less wise and are further from an understanding of Truth than the minds of our ancestresses.  This is axiomatic in Traditional thought throughout the world.  We should assume that the traditions that have been passed to us are good and true.  If we discard the tradition, we lose that which has been passed down to us, and this is sadder and more destructive than the loss of written records from the past.  Even if we do not understand the tradition, the remnants of the tradition can still lead us (or our descendants  to have access to Truth, even in a fragmented form.  If the tradition is gone, there is nothing to learn from.

Does that mean that we should not examine these traditions?  Of course we should examine our traditions.  For one thing, learning the reason for the traditions can teach us much of metaphysical truth.  Are there times that we will find that some of our traditions are based on false teachings or error?  Yes, of course.  On the other hand, we should start with the presumption a tradition is correct, and it is the burden of proof, so to speak, upon the one discarding the tradition rather than on the one arguing to keep the tradition.  Do people sometimes use tradition in ways that are harmful, misguided, or just plain wrong?  Yes, of course, just as they can use science or anything else in such ways.  Does that mean the tradition should be discarded?  Absolutely not.  Erroneous application of tradition does not invalidate a tradition, although the error can and should be corrected, if possible.

False Dichotomies

The rationalist error and culture of literalism in the West creates a number of false dichotomies.  One of the most famous and controversial is the Creation/Evolution debate between religion and modern science.  To an essentialist, both sides of this debate are in error, and the heated arguments between adherents of these two camps become a bit silly.  There are, of course, shades of grey with respect to the two belief systems, and few actually subscribe to the hardest versions of the two sides.  That being said, the strictest adherents of these camps argue as follows:

 

Creationist Thought:  The Christian version of Creationism begins with a belief that the Judeo-Christian written Tradition, the Bible, is literally true and historical.  The world we live on was created about 6,000 years ago.  The heavens and earth were created in 6 days according to the Judeo-Christian Creation Story, and we can trace back the age of the earth through the genealogy asrecorded in Genesis.  Adam and Eve were historical figures that lived on this world in physical form and were tempted into disobedience against God and were expelled from the Garden of Eden, which was a physical place on this earth.  There are those in this camp that hold that this version of how we came to be is the basis for their faith, that because they believe in God, the Judeo-Christian written Tradition must be historical and literal.

Now, as I said before, this is only the most extreme version of this belief system.  There are also more moderate versions which take the story regarding the age of the earth as symbolic rather than literal.  That being said, there is a tremendous amount of ink spilled and research dollars spent to research the historical accuracy of stories from the Judeo-Christian Tradition, so I would posit that the literalist viewpoint pervades even moderate Christian thinking.

Evolutionist Thought:  The earth that we live in is countless billion years old and formed by chance from random elements that were left over from a supernova countless more billion years ago, which also happened by chance.  Somehow a random group of amino acids formed together to make proteins which randomly became single celled organisms.  These organisms evolved from these single celled organisms to complex forms of life like human beings through a process of mutation and natural selection for traits that had greater survival value.  This belief system promotes a value system of “survival of the fittest” and that the weak perish so that the strongest survive.  There are those in this camp that hold that the physical evidence that has been found to support this belief system proves that God does not exist, particularly as they believe that they have disproved the story of creation as told in the Judeo-Christian written Tradition.

Of course, again, this is the extreme viewpoint.  Most who believe in evolution do not take the research as a conclusion that God was not involved in our formation or is non-existent.  Still, this viewpoint is what is mostly taught in our culture, and one must subscribe to it, at least in part, to be taken seriously in most Western academic circles.

To an essentialist, both of these camps are in error, and this is a false dichotomy.  To begin with, essentialist thought does not hold that a religious tradition must be historical and literal to be Truth.  In fact, Truth, to be Truth, cannot be historical and cannot be based in space and time.  Space and time belong to the world of flux and change, and therefore, are by nature illusion.  Truth is found beyond space and time and beyond the world of flux and change.  In essentialist thought, we are not our bodies; our souls inhabit a physical form in this place and time.  Our souls have been around from the beginning of time, long before they entered the physical bodies they may currently be in, and our souls will return to their Source at the end of time.  The mechanism by which our physical bodies were formed is immaterial to the nature of our souls or to whether or not our physical bodies were formed in the mind of God from a Sacred Archetype.  The question of how God formed our bodies, whether creating them out of the dust all at once, whether growing them from the seed of a single celled organism, or whether there was some other mechanism involved, may be interesting but tells us nothing about the Truth beyond physicality and beyond space and time.  We can read both the Sacred Tradition and observe the Natural World to speculate as to how our physical bodies were formed, but that tells us nothing about Truth.

This error on the part of both the very conservative and so-called progressive modern thinkers is the basis for the criticism of the practice of astrology by both of these camps.  The very conservative will say that they do not believe in the practice of astrology because they “follow the will of God, not the stars.”  The progressive will state all of the scientific observations of astronomy to point out the superstitions of the primitive humans were in error.  They also will criticize those who believe that their lives are controlled by the stars.

Both sides miss the point.  Even in the Judeo-Christian tradition, it is written, “And God said, ‘Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and for years, and let them be lights in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth.”  In all traditional religions, the study of the stars and the planetary bodies marked times for religious festivals and for all human activity.  The stars were seen as signs given to us by the Divine, not as actors in and of themselves.

The “scientific” world-view also mistakes the nature of astrology as the study of how the planets act upon us.  Modern astrology has also followed this error in ascribing meaning to heavenly bodies, such as asteroids and the like, which are not a part of the sacred tradition.  This error also plays a role in the meanings ascribed to the outer planets, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, but this is another topic for another day.

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