Symbols in Manly P. Hall's Big Book and in Melville's Moby Dick

Transcript (PDF)

Symbolism
Presentation 1 of 12

Symbols in Manly P. Hall's Big Book and in Melville's Moby Dick
Presented by Roger Weir
Thursday, October 2, 1980

Transcript:
The date is October the 2nd, 1980. The subject of the lecture to be given by Roger Weir on the general subject of symbolism in tonight's lecture is Symbols in Manly Palmer Hall's Encyclopedic Outline of Masonic, Hermetic, Qabbalistic, and Rosicrucian Symbolical Philosophy, and in Melville's Moby Dick.

And I'll show you some images on the slide projector while you hear it. The music is by Alan Hovhaness, and he was an American who died a few years ago. And this is called, And God Created Great Whales. Perhaps we could turn those lights off and just see a few images here while we hear. These are Hopi Indians, about 1900 in a photograph taken by [inaudible name]. These are Indian whalers from Vancouver. The UK is due to go on. All. This is a drawing of a man dug up in Siberia, under 20 foot of frozen ginger, for about 10,000 years ago. With his tattooing. Queequeg. The cosmic tattooing. This is about 10,000 years ago. 10 to 12,000 years before the last ice age. Did you see? Comprehends castle's precautionary. A nurse told me. Suppose we have a template of. World. The man needs to stretch out to find his mojo. The passing out. We never know what the circumstance. Urging. The same period, making him a Morgan. As for. We really are mysterious. And. Year of the presidency. Another kind of circumference. Sign of the magician. Sorry, I have it backwards. Is the signature that Queequeg signs when he declined here at Tig.

There's another way of expressing. Lives, an ocean of images and the oceans of the world. I. Man was discovered some way to express. An estimated. I have ever seen. You notice there is there is no center for simply is there by implication. And there's no way around. That is not a part of the structure. It is a lack of shape. That's the way in. Like Moby Dick. This. Hangings. Your old goddess. Alchemical symbols from our manuscript. Untranslated in the press library. Sometime this year. Translate. The shimmering delineation of reality. One. The birth of man from the animals. The birth of the animal. And this began. These are from the juncture mountains in the middle of the Sahara Desert. To come together 4000 years ago. That was the furthest point. Of great civilization. The mistress is a new painting by Max Ernst done when he lived in Arizona. The red Painted Deserts of Arizona. Forgot all about his sarcastic. The European home that begins. Really? This way of life in the ocean. A series of bird like emergencies. This is a vision by a great Chinese painter, Chargois. And this was done in the southern summer Dinosphere about 8 or 900 years ago. And again, like the Tai chi. Like that image of the whale emerging out of nothingness. The rocky promontory emerging out of this furnace, the sparseness of it. And here, a very similar kind of thing done by an American artist who is still alive and who Wigner and Chagua 900 years ago in China.

And Wyeth in New England, in our own times. Very, very curious. I don't say parallel, but some interesting shadings of reality in their vision. Very, very, very similar. This is a slide from the film oaken, which we'll be seeing the films in color, but unfortunately the museum slide that I got for the black and white and it is a mysterious place. I've been there and. The amphitheatre of the western Canadian plains is like the ocean, except you're literally out of sight of anything. It becomes so flat that you could see the curvature of the Earth. And they come upon. Structure. What is left there? All the materials used in making the Last Sun Dance lodge were collected around that pole and left left to decay as they would a little place near the bow River. But 150 miles north. On the Montana border. This is another slide from the film. We'll be seeing the whole film narrated by the Blackfoot people themselves. This is a holy procession. Just to show you some images. We'll come back to most of these things. I just want to acquaint you now with a broad spectrum of things to generate a field of inquiry. More images just to present things to you. Just to acquaint you. That's inside the Sundance Lounge, the Evergreen Lodge.

The lodge whose walls. I like forest. This is a painting by Andrew Wyeth. When you read the section in Moby Dick where Queequeg is laying in bed and Ishmael notices that the tattooing on his skin blends into the quilt, that the pattern of the of. Cover of himself is almost an extension of his skin. Suddenly, there's this illusion that Ishmael has over the years. And what was just the most mundane. Everything suddenly transforms and we have a whole different view. Of what reality turns out to be. It's also by my. Man blending. Distant thunder. This is from the caves of Dunhuang, and about a thousand years ago, by Buddhist monks in the center of the Gobi Desert. Real Shambala is. This is the point of honour of the Buddha and the nimbus around his head, the symbol of universal consciousness and the circle of monks around the body like a larger nimbus. Lanes of Shadary, laughing momentarily into his architectural structure and disappearing. We, incidentally, have a version on the right on the wall of this scene. Very famous scene. The painting called The Little Known Bird of the inner on. This painting was in the collection of Charles Morton, and when he died it was sold for a measly sum. I guess these days $26,000. This is by Morris Graves. We've seen more graves work. A little known bird of the. Something about looking at structures.

Something about seeing into the crystalline structure of the mind. Binding therein symbols of our freedom. That's what's in that big book. This, of course, is Stonehenge. It's a shot taken by the director of our observatory. Who was there, who was quite an interesting expert on early astronomers. Early now doesn't mean a thousand years ago. Early things mean seven, eight, 9000 years ago. One of the most mysterious things I've ever seen is a sculpture by Henry Moore. Henry Moore has reactivated himself. The old archetypes of stone. You could almost mistake is. For the living presence of stone in. Built about 5000 years ago. That's what Maura looks like is a man. This is taken about 7 or 8 years ago. Ten years ago, to that mountain in Ferrara, Italy, where everybody from Michelangelo down is mined marble. And there he is, the sculpture looking at his marble. So you take nature. You take nature. You have to start with nature. That's where we are. And you move around into ritual. He ritually cuts up big chunks of marble. Sixth back carts from around the world. And then you move into language. You make a form shaped that has a vocabulary of. Expression. And out of this language level comes similar. Nature, ritual, language or mythology. That's how it emerges. And you can see in the symbol all the way back to the beginning, to the natural beginnings, as in, yes, that's an interesting sculpture.

And it's made out of marble. It's that simple. And it's that. Everything will. This is a woman from the Blackfoot people. He was still alive. She was there at that last Sundance. In society. Dancing. This is Marc Chagall's portrait of the Horned Moses, born blind. Close by the cosmos. Just like that tattooed man from Siberia. A lot of things to look at. This is boxer's portrait of Leonardo da Vinci. Sometimes symbolism stretches its way out. We've got to feel the circumference. We don't know what it's like. We have to try. See what it feels like. This is what Leonardo da Vinci felt like to Max Ernst about 19. Review by. That's a Hopi Indian. Dressed as one of the kitchen. He's bringing the nourishment. And it's amazing. It is symbolic places like. Portrait of Leonardo DaVinci. When I first got to Arizona and New Mexico and actually saw some of his surreal fantasies and actual operation, he probably stopped to think Long Tum. I know from looking at his paintings of that period that he certainly calmed down. The bouquet of everlasting life. Sure you can say it saved. But you go and take it and hold it in a certain ritual. Mitchell is a symbol of everlasting. Surrounded again and again, more and more layers of meaning. In activity. Until you. Under the. The penultimate symbolic expressions.

And I think you'll find the Hopi Indians are extremely. You're very, very. This is Apollo. This is the way prayers are sent. This particular couple has eagle feathers and evergreens and the tail of the tuft. Send it on its way. None of this is primitive. Hopi symbols. Merchants symbol. You'll see it in the book. That's what it looks like there at Black Mesa. Looking out on the landscape. It doesn't look like much in this photograph. Those people chose to live there. Long time ago. Before the Vikings. And their homes are. Nestled into nature, almost as if just another one step extension of the dance of nature itself. We are Christians as we are charming and beautiful and full of. The finest mysteries of. Back to one of these alchemical containers in Chinese scroll. Does it look too alchemical? But that bucket of blueberries is just as mysterious and. Containers. Just a few more. These are just to give you some images to go on. The way in which we move. It's a very curious thing because we feel that, well, we've done nothing. And yet, episode by episode, we build up in the dance of life until we discover that we've been going through a very meaningful motion and find ourselves suddenly disclosed in an arena of understanding. And that's exactly what this symbolizes. And this to. The most mundane of all things. An open basket waiting in the center.

Atlanticus. A house where humans. Original. It can be this kind of a ritual. This is another view of the. Of the cemetery of General Custer's warriors. There are no tombstones for the Indians. Who died here at. Battle of the Little Big Horn. I took this shot to put that cold iron post right in the center. One of the external views of the Indian is something that we. And shed very, very easily. This is what it looks like. I couldn't get the horizon fast enough, but the camera. So I told you, this is the wind River mountains about 15 miles away. With this. If it is true that wisdom has its origins and roots in nature, then those people who have lived close to nature have its grand vistas every day. Does it not make sense that they would have had some approach which we may not be privy to? That the markings of understanding. Could look like that. Or that? And one last slide give you a little background on me. That's my Blackfoot Indian daughter on the left and my goddaughter on the right, part of the Palace of Versailles. Two Indian children in front of her side. Having a good time. Well, thanks very much. And, uh, we'll see you next week. I hope you have a chance to pick up the materials. Thank you very, very much. Thank you.

END OF RECORDING