Wanderings of the Soul

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Hermetic Tradition: From Egypt to America, From Osiris to Benjamin Franklin
Presentation 4 of 24

Wanderings of the Soul
Presented by Roger Weir
Tuesday, January 28, 1986

Transcript:

After, after tonight we'll move to the standard Corpus Hermeticum. So next week we'll get to the material that we all recognize as being the basic Hermetic document. So, we're going to jump from the B.C. centuries or B.C. millennia into the 2nd century A.D. in Alexandria. And we'll start off with The Poimandres, which is the most poignant and impressive while the Hermetic texts.

We've been spending the first month on ancient Egypt because the Hermetic tradition is Egyptian. We think of Hermes as being Greek of course. And it is significantly, significantly Greek. And here in this monograph by Karl Kerenyi published by the Jung people in Zurich. The subtitle is Hermes Guide of Souls. Guide of souls. And it's as psych Pappas that we want to consider the Hermetic tradition and the figure of Hermes. And how it comes out to be that eventually there is a Hermes Trismegistus. And that particular fact is one of the more arcane elements in Western civilization.

We've been working for three weeks and this is the fourth week on The Pyramid Texts. And it is only recently that we've had really excellent translations. In The Bollingen Series and there are about six volumes. two of them in two parts. And they're so expensive now that almost nobody will buy them if they don't have them. They run about 300 dollars apiece. So, it'd be about 2,500 bucks for the eight volumes.

This one that we're going to look at that tonight The Wandering of the Soul as our major last work, actually contains three documents. The first document is called The Book of Two Ways. **inaudible 2-3 words** The Book of Two Ways. The second book in here is called The Quarats. And The Quarats it literally means caverns. But what it referred to were the tombs which were usually covered by a masonry block house called a mastaba. And the dead of course
being put into these masterbas were like being secreted into caverns. The third book in here, which will just allude to, is a book on the ancient Egyptian game of draughts. And it's interesting that gambling and games have always been associated with religious journeys. And all one has to think of now is that there is always a joker in the deck. There's always a trickster in the pantheon.

One thing that we should establish again and again because it's so easy to miss. And I'm going to read the quotation from a book written some time ago by a Mason. The Symbolism of the Gods of the Egyptians by T.M. Stuart published in 1927. And this is good advice to us. he writes,
We have no literary records of the earliest ages. We have been taught to regard the natural workings of the human mind in the case of savages and children as taking the place of early records. During the years spent in the study of ancient teachings the results of mind work in savages and children have been studied with the amazing conclusion that wisdom dwells in minds attentive to their own thought. Let they be minds of so-called savages and children or the minds of more mature individuals.
Wisdom dwells in minds attentive to their own thought. introspection is not a bookish concern. Introspection is not some element of intellectualism. But it's the very essence of wisdom. The turning inward. The collecting inward.

And this process of turning inward only occurs where there is language. And the basic structure of language in this process of turning inward is to collect the cycles of expression into ever larger and more complete patterns. And we call conveniently, traditionally, this activity myth making. And the collection of the myths is a mythology. And once a mythology is established. Once a circle of language has been enunciated, has been learned. There is a possibility then of turning inward in a new way for what one discovers is that there is a center towards which all of the purposes of the circle of language expression tend to unite in. And it's that sense of a center, that sense of a self, that produces a transformation.

And the transformation is in an area that we call the symbol. It's not so much that there is an actual symbol there. There could be. There needn't be. But the concern is that the focus towards the center produces a quality of presence which we call the self. As distinct from that naive individual who had to participate on the circle rim of mythologies. But the transformed deeper person is a self-that's focused interiorly. And has a sense of presence of the all. So that the self always, whether in savages or children are mature people, when one has a sense of self one has a sense of invisible presence and invisible force.

This quality was called Godlike. the very nature of the Gods, of a God, was this invisible force. but this invisible force which was within was a transformation and could no longer just inhabit the rim of mythologies. or the cycle of rituals. Or the pattern of nature's eternal round. This self this, Godlike invisible presence, when it came back out from the inside was transformed.

And when it comes out, when the symbol projects itself out into the world, we have a new nature. We have magic. And the realm of magic occurs when the inner self projects itself back out onto the world. This invisible force then is known as consciousness. And this is how consciousness comes to be. There's no consciousness until there's a transformation to a central self-presence. Then in the coming back into the world consciousness is born and magic, a magicality is there. All elements are changed. in the sense that all elements now are changeable and transformable because the quintessence of consciousness is that it is the product of transformation. It is in fact the harbinger of the message, the Hermetic message, all is mutable. All. Except the unity, the invisible one. That is the force that moves and inhabits all expressions.

For the Egyptians, the thousands and thousands of Gods were but different aspects of the same invisible force. The Sun was not the God Ra. The Sun is only the visible manifestation of a major quality of the God. The God is the invisible centered self-presence behind the face of the Sun.

Over at the PRS in the parking lot and along Los **inaudible word** wonderfully placed is a kneeling Egyptian scribe. With his hands dutifully down at his side his head bowed in silent prayer. And he is facing Mount Wilson. Because it's there that the conception of the galaxy was discovered about 60 years ago here in Los Angeles. And Mr. Hall had that scribed place there in homage to the recognition of the largest structure that we have. But on the back of that scribe he is an homage to the Sun. and then an homage further to the invisible presence behind the Sun. And then the third homage to that which is oneself. Thou art that also. This is a thrice greatest Hermes. This is the esoteric arcane message so that when the magical realm comes out and Thoth is the messenger of the Gods in the sense that he brings that basic capacity. Which deals primarily with language. Which deals primarily with magic. Which deals primarily with ushering through transformations. That central self, called the soul. Which must make its journeys through language and through magic and come back into the real.

And this is why when we turn to a book like Wanderings of the Soul, we are concerned not so much with now how does Thoth fit in here? So that we can make some analogy then. How does Hermes fit with Thoth? And then make some further analogy, how does Hermes Trismegistus and the Magus tradition happen to fit in with it? This would be foolish. this kind of level of thinking is usually what one would receive. Here something is different.

Let's look at The Book of two ways. When we come to it The Book of Two Ways describes two ways, two roads that lead to heaven. one is the road of Rossetto on water and land. And the second road is the road of Osiris, which is a road in the sky. Or if one understands that the road of Rossetto is in the sky and the road of Osiris is in the netherworld. There are different recensions of these books.

Like we talked about last week the Tibetan...The Egyptian Book of the Dead has three major recensions. The Heliopolis recension which is the oldest and goes back to the Old Kingdom. The Pyramid of Unas 3,000 BC. The Theban recension which is the one that Wallis Budge edited. Which is usually available in paperbacks. And that comes from the 18th and 19th, 20th dynasties about 2100 B.C. The third reception the Saite recension of The Egyptian Book of the Dead actually was in use until 200 A.D. And the only evidence that we have of the Saite recension in English here in The Egyptian Book of the Dead translation done 1924 by E. Novelle and LePage Renault. We have some of the added chapters. we have all 186 chapters of The Egyptian Book of the Dead in this translation. Very hard to find this volume.

From as early as Egyptian civilization started in terms of dynasties. In terms of being able to write in hieroglyphics until 200 The Egyptian Books of the Dead were used. And they were stopped being used in 200 A.D. not on that year but roughly around that time period. And next week we're going to take a look at this mystery. Why after 3,000 years of use would the use be curtailed? And we'll see that there's very good reason for this. In fact, a monumental reason.

But the Egyptian Book of the Dead and all of its various recensions gives us a very puzzling situation. These instructions are for the soul in the afterlife. They're funerary texts. They go on or sometimes or are called coffin texts. They go on the tombs.

As in The Pyramid of Unas we saw that the complete structure of the tomb on the inside was covered, walls and gabled of ceilings, with the text. so that one would read the text as one walked through the tomb structure. The entrances. The corridors. The chambers. The anti-chambers. The sarcophagus room. The walking journey of the soul, the moving journey of the soul, reads this text as it goes. And as it reads and goes is able to progress, is able to continue.

And at the end of the journey is an emergence, a coming out again. But the coming out again, the coming forth. And the name for The Egyptian Book of the Dead is The Coming Forth by Day. The coming forth, the last task is to be able to cross the horizon back into life. Like the Sun rising has to actually lift up above the horizon and ascend into the celestial realms again. It's not a one-time triumph, for it we'll have to do this again and again.

But to ensure this journey for the soul which must move like the hidden presence expressed by the God Ra. The soul has to have instruction. Because in its secular naturalism it can only progress as far as a mythology. It can only go to a mythology. That's as far as nature really takes us. The transformation from a mythic understanding to a symbolic presentation of self is what is needed. Mythic representations are always limited by nature. They're always natural base. But a symbolic self is presentation of itself not representation of anything else.

For it's that quality of being able to present itself as the invisible God that allows it then to come out and express itself as magic. And in the magical realm one no longer has a mythology. there are no myths in the magical realm. There are only fairytales. There are only then spells. There are then only incantations. This quality of magic writing. and it is Thoth who provides this magic writing. Who is able to take the language structures of Mythology into the secret realm, into the unified realm, and bring it back out. In the form of effective spells. Effective hymns. Effective incantations. Effective instructions for enabling the soul to complete its journeying. To be able to progress.

For a long in the netherworld for the Egyptians it was a perilous journey. All of the demonic forces in the universe were there in the netherworld. Life was never so dangerous as the netherworld. Therefore, one needed to have all of the guidance that one could have. In fact, the emphasis on the perils of the afterlife made the God of the dead Osiris eventually become the most important God expression in Egypt.

Early on, early in Egypt in the Heliopolis recensions of The Book of the Dead one finds the emphasis on Ra or Re, the Sun God. Who is an expression of Atun, the undifferentiated. And sometimes the Egyptians would use the term, which is phonetized as NTR. Usually they put a consonant in there, an E so they pronounce it Netter. but this does a disservice. For if you just stay with the NTR how does that sound out. one has to say NNNN TTTT ERRRR. And one sees that there's an occult transformation that happens with the T. that the NNN is palatable with
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the tongue up and you have to release
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the tongue for the T. and then you can
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utter the ERRR. if you don't release the
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tongue you can't complete the magic. you
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can't complete the name, which in Greek
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was translated as Thais. the God. not a
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God, the only God. the
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invisible presence who moves in such
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comprehension that all of the Gods are but scintillating aspects of that one.

And it is that one alone that one must affinatize oneself to. For if one is stupid. Or merely clever or just so-called learned. You would choose to affinitize yourself with this God or that God or some God or some combination of Gods. Or some aspects and try to put a pastiche together for yourself. Oh well I like Isis. She'll for me. Oh, I like the combination of Horus and Nephthys and Isis. I'm gonna go with that. If you go with anything less than the unnamed invisible one you will not make it through. The wanderings of the soul will not be effective.

And so, Thoth's primary task was to convey the sense that all of the spells and incantations are not parrying different
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aspects of obstruction but were meant
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to carry you on a single thread journey.
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if you thought that you were parrying
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different aspects that at this stage
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there's this agglomeration of
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Difficulties. and at the next stage
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there's a another one. if you fragment
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Yourself you would lose track of the sense of the one. The divine one. Therefore, in the spells, in the incantations, in the instructions constantly there are reminders to the soul thou art that. You are that one. You tell all of these obstructions in the same way. Make room for me. I am the author of the universe.

In The Book of Two Ways we have this kind of instruction. "I was born in Roseto. my spirit has been given me by my lord. Re, Horace of the horizon. My dignity as impede as the purifier of Osiris. I receive adoration Rosetta. When led by the Gods over their horizon I am the one who is led by them."

And later on, in The Book of Two ways, "Words spoken by mysterious-of-names, Lord of all." these are hyphenated, mysterious-of-names, Lord of all. You see the magical comprehension? The sense of the symbolic unity. And the use of a mythology which has been transformed now into Hermetic mantras.

He says in front of those who caused the strife to be silenced when the courtiers travel. Then you say this, proceed in peace so that I may repeat to you the four perfect things that my own heart created. Inside the coils of the enveloper. The serpent mayhem in order to put an end to iniquity. I have made four perfect things in the pylons of the horizon. I have created the four winds which every man breathes being surrounded by them. This is my work. I have made the Great Flood. The strength of the weak as well as of the strong. This is my work. I have made every man similar to his brother. I did not ordain that they commit iniquity. It is in their hearts which destroyed what I had ordered. this is my work.
And again, and again we found, find this.

And finally, the summations come in. "I possess life. I am its Lord. The scepter will not be taken from my hand."

So, one of the primary Hermetic tasks for all time is to give courage to the soul. Courage to the questor. And the only way that the Questor can be given courage is to show them how to transform from their secular nature to their sacred presence. And only when they have transformed from their secular nature to their sacred presence can they then use the magical realm on their own. And then the magical realm is able to use language in a new way. Then instead of the simple representative cycles that we are given, we make new shapes. We make the sigils of the magical realm which are efficacious for consciousness.

And consciousness in this sense is nature transformed. Nature transformed. So that there's something supernatural about consciousness if you will. And its super naturalness allows it then to glide through the realms of nature. Glide through what would stop a secular person.

And thus, the natural realm of the netherworld for the Egyptians it was natural. The netherworld was just like this world here only it was in the netherworld. And if the soul were secular because it can't learn in the netherworld it has to learn in life. It has to be able to take this with. If you didn't have the instructions of Thoth, you would be stopped by the obstacles. You might be lucky. You might be clever. You might be but you would never be able to get through it all. Because you would still be natural. You would still be secular. And the secular setup of the nether world is like loaded dice. It's loaded to stop you by nature. So, if you're just being natural, you're done for. It is only in the transform sigil of consciousness, with specific instructions based upon the sense of the unity of it all. That it all is one.

"I am the lord of one, therefore I can rise above the horizon at last back into life. I may be reborn. I may be resurrected. for I have the occult key, the hidden key within. All is one. I am the Lord. I possessed life. I am its Lord. The scepter will not be taken from my hand."

So here in The Book of Two Ways we have at the very origins of the Hermetic tradition, several thousand years before Christ, the basic understanding.

Spell number 96,
Osiris made me to be his living soul according to the Word of the Gods. I come by day. I copulate with him. I come forth as my soul in all my forms to the place which is green. In the midst of gifts at the zenith. Osiris has washed my mouth with the milk of the Red Cow, which comes out of the light. Which gives birth to Ra every day. I have crossed the sky. I have traversed the light. I have traversed the western sky. I have crossed the eastern sky. It is Ra who creates me. It is I who create the soul of Ra. I have come to thee o kid of the great one. Door keeper of the fighter of the Gods. She who ward's off the evil ones.
Who are the evil ones? The evil ones are the secular ones who have not transformed. It is not like they're evil because they're bad. They're evil because they have not transformed. They are limited by nature. You can take that in two ways.

The good is essentially transformed so that is not limited by nature anymore. It is free. It is liberated. That is the good. To think that the good is simply a complement of evil leaves one still in the natural realm. Leaves one still stupid and prey to the cycles. One will never progress. You can never get through. You will never be reborn. You will never have life everlasting with that. You are doomed structurally. It's a built-in kicker. You're going to be a victim. You have to transform.

So, it reads, "It is Ra who creates me. it is I who create the soul of Ra. I am the forceful one who comes by day. Who seizes his enemies. Make way for me. that I may have power over my legs. That I may come forth by day against my enemy." What is the enemy? The enemy is the built-in obstacleness of nature. What was the mythic image of this? Set. Set. Set was originally incidentally storm Gods, bad weather. So that's the kind of obstacles you get. The bad weather in the netherworld. What is the bad weather in the netherworld? This, this obstacleness. The enemies. The untransformed nature.

"Make way for me. that I may have power over my legs." To be able to keep going. "That I may come forth by day against my enemy. That I may have power over him as ordained by hidden-forms." There's no longer a designation of any kind of a name. who ordained this? Hidden-forms with a hyphen. That's who did it. "I have come today to the court." You see the existential awareness? The quality of presence. "I have come today to the court. my case with him has been heard. I am justified against him." Where is this language coming from? What is this, this court? the court is in The Egyptian Book of the Dead mythology basically. The court is the trial between Horus and Set. And who is the helper for Horus so that he may win? The ancient Egyptian spiritual drama The Triumph of Horus, which we read from two weeks ago. The University of California Press edition of it. The Triumph of Horus. Thoth. It is the Thoth who gives the arguments. Who wins the case for Horus against Set.

But in the netherworld for Osiris the case is different. Osiris is brought before the Gods and he may not win on the basis of argument. It is not the kind of case that can be weighed in the balance and decided for one against another. That was in the natural realm. That was in the natural world where justice can be decided by poignant argument. In the netherworld, Osiris has to work in terms of unity only. Therefore, for Thoth is not there to win the case by argument but to allow Osiris to justify himself before all the Gods. How does he justify himself? He presents his symbolic inner consciousness, his self-presence, as the king of the underworld that all is one. NTR obtains.

So, we read, "I have come today to the court. my case with him has been heard. I am justified against him. A way is open for me against him by hidden-Forms." That's the name. The epithet. Hidden-forms. "Way is open for me against him." the obstacles. whatever it is, by hidden-forms. "hidden forms has saved me. He has saved the breath of my nose. No harm shall come about in my days. He has brought me to this place."

One of the curses in ancient Egypt in the Hermetic tradition, one of the scare curses, was that may your nose and lips be cut off if you are unable to speak the right mantra at the right time. Well what would that feeling be of having your nose and your lips cut off? Helplessness. And Oh, helplessness because you're open and you don't know what to do. It's the kinesthetic feeling of the ultimate quandary. You can't do, you can't speak. You have no lips. You can't breathe. You have no nose. You are very well aware of it yeah.

So, it says, it reads, "A way is open for me against him." By hidden-forms.
"Hidden-forms has saved me. He has saved the breath of my nose. No harm shall come about in my days. He has brought me to this place. my food exists upon earth. My magic makes me a spirit." You see how intelligible all this is now? You don't have to be an Egyptologist. You just have to be a Hermeticist. "My thanks giving to him is upon earth. For he has brought me to my enemy. I have power over him as hidden-forms has decreed. Many faces has sent me out against him. So, if he judges hear him."

And then the culmination of The Book of Two Ways spell 914, Thoth's closure to the Amduat. "To be with the great ones. Salutation to you souls. Lords of terror on the waters. I have come to you. I am he. There in the midst of his eyes." What's the midst of the eyes? the focus. The, the quintessential presence of the focus. That presence is the symbolic self. So that when one sees the symbol of the Eye of Horus now, one gets a sense of the of the occult significance of this. The single eye is that interior presence. The focus of the secret interior. The mystical eye of Horus is that. Or if one presents it as the Sun, the Sun is winged. Whose wings are those? Those are the Ibis wings. originally in archaic times and later on they became the Falcons wings. The Hermetic sign of the unity. The unity of God.

In the old cemeteries of Philadelphia, one finds on the Rosicrucian graves. you can always detect which ones were Rosicrucian because they have the little wings around the circle. Usually they disguise it as a nice little angelic cherub. with a round face of the cherub and the wings of the cherub folded up. Because the Hermetic tradition learned in the terrible 3rd century A.D. that you have to cover up wisdom in this world. They kill you because you know, and they don't. And they hear what you say but they don't understand. And you seem to be unhandlable so you have to disguise yourself. So, the Hermetic tradition as we will see always teaches how to disguise. No one ever knows unless they choose to reveal. No one would know.

This quality of deep esotericism permeates Thoth. Permeates the Hermetic tradition. Thoth originally came from a district in Northern Egypt whose central religious mythological image was the Ibis. This is why Thoth is always a pictured in hieroglyphics usually with, as an Ibis. It was because it was from the geographic part of northern Egypt called the Ibis Gnome. There were different gnomes. I think thirty in the North and thirty-four in the South. Districts. Geographical districts.

Thoth was also a moon God. Thoth was the moon. Re was the Sun. Ra as the Sun. Re is the presence behind the Sun. Thoth is the presence behind the moon. Why? The sun is unchanging. The moon is always changing, always in phases. But the phases are comprehensible. Thoth is the very image of celestial transformation according to secret pattern.

Two elements in that secret pattern are mysterious. One is the fullness. How does a fullness then diminish? One can understand the building up to fullness. But how does the fullness then diminish? And not only does it diminish, it diminishes to nothing. And then it comes back. And so, the mysteries of all and nothing are in the moon. So that Thoth is a magician. He is capable of dealing with the nothing and the all. That Pleroma and the nadir. the nadir. The sunyata. The void.

Hence because he can deal with all this. And with all the transformations in between he is thus the God of wisdom. Can you see how naturally it flows? He is thus the God of wisdom because he can do this. He knows this. He can teach this. How can he teach this? Because he has also invented language. But a magical language. It's not just based on nature. It's not just limited by nature. It is transformed through symbol so that I can express itself out in the magical realm. Then language is different. Then language has not a cyclic form but a sigil form. Then instead of cute little verses, then you have the kind of poetry that Pindar wrote. I mean if you're just natural based you think he's writing about athletes who won the Olympic contest. Whereas if you have the mystical Hermetic insight, you see Pindar is something else. As one translator said one time it's difficult to translate Pindar because every translation is like taking an eagle on a short walk with a short leash. Because Pindar is really wild. Any great poet, anyone who is able to use language in a magical way has this Hermetic influence.

And Thoth thus is the God of wisdom. And because he has this wisdom of transformation from nothing on through to the all and back again. Because he has that he is also the one who understands the order of the cosmos. His wisdom includes the all and the nothing. And the transformations in between. And thus, the sense of the order of the cosmos. So that his language always is informed by this tremendous range.

And the accrual, the accumulated penetration of the consciousness of all this range will be called the real. that is what it is. The real. All of that accumulated consciously that is real.

So that it becomes rather mundane and prosaic for somebody to say oh well these things are real. What has not even begun to understand the real. You have it, you haven't even gotten to kindergarten. Not even in nursery school.

Are we running out of time?

Someone in the room: **inaudible words**

I tell you the machines don't like it.

END OF SIDE ONE

Yours are the hardest.

I'm just going to bring something in here about the game. One of the games that they used to have in the early Egyptian times before the game of draughts was known as mayhem. Mayhem the name of the serpent. It's like a world serpent. And mayhem is played on a circular board depicting the serpent man crawled up with its head in the center and its tail along the outside of the board. Well now if you have the body of the serpent with the head swallowing its tail on the outer circle of the game, that's just the eternal cycle. That's nature. That's what nature is. But when the head can go into the center of it then that's consciousness. Then that's transformation. Then one has a very peculiar esoteric Hermetic symbol that one can use.

Benjamin Franklin in his Hermetic majesty wanted to have for the American flag the coiled snake but the inscription don't tread on me. Now you can see how esoteric this is. It goes all the way back. It's consistent all the way through. By the end of this year you'll be able to pick this up. And you can tell at a glance who's in the Hermetic tradition. And who's just playing at being metaphysical. Who's just guessing at occult. It'll save you a lot of money. You won't have to go to a lot of lectures. You just read what they say they're going to do, and you can see right away whether they know or not. Very easy.

The game was depicted as early as the third dynasty, 2700 B.C. it is seems to have gone out of fashion after the end of the Old Kingdom. There was a crisis in Egyptian civilization after the sixth Dynasty. The royal lineage crumbled. And for quite a long time. What is known as the first intermediary period from dynasty seven to twelve there was a lot of small Kingdom set up. Every major city set up itself as a kingdom. And, and various territories had princes. And it they all the middle management said we're going to take over. No more executives. Middle management is going to run everything. We're going to be just as important as they are. And then of course there is a revolution and the dynastic history changes. And what is known as the Middle Kingdom will come. Now of course that will go through its cycle and there'll be a second intermediate period and there'll be a new Kingdom. And a third immediate period. And so, there'll be these cycles.

And the Hermetic tradition will pay attention to the fact that civilization is natural. Is a natural phenomenon for man. That it has a cycle. It has an eternal return. So that there has to be a thread of consciousness which survives the cycle. Which is not affinitized to the ups and downs, the rise and fall.

So that it's not just a question of maturing an individual through transformation to get the individual through the vicissitudes of the cycles of nature. But there must in the strategic sense be a way to educate some lineage of human beings who carry the thread of understanding through the thousands of years of civilization. And it's after the fall of the old kingdom in the first intermediate period that the Hermetic tradition faced this. And it's after the fall of the Middle Kingdom in the second intermediary period that began to be understood that this is a real problem. And after the fall of the New Kingdom in the third intermediate period, it was well understood by the Hermeticists, we have got to find a way to transmit indefinitely an unbroken lineage, the esoteric keys of transformation. And we can't tie them into the structures of civilization at all because these are naturally going to fall. At some time in the future they're going to crumble. And we can't just have it good for a thousand years. We've got to have it good forever.

And thus, the Hermetic tradition will seriously entertain around that time the fact that they are going to have to find a way to cultivate and teach and educate the soul in an everlasting way. Because anything less than everlasting would not do. They couldn't design it just for say ten thousand years. What if there are cycles which they haven't seen? Which after ten thousand years we'll all wisdom perish then? for this is arcane. This is extraordinarily difficult to understand, to learn. The natural man will never know it. Only someone who is unnatural gets a cue. Someone for whom nature has gone astray. It's only somebody who has hurt by life, been suffered by nature, who would even guess that there must be something else. Only someone who has suffered can understand that it can't be just nature it has to be something else.

So, the Hermetic tradition will focus itself more and more on the problem, how do we teach discovering the real everlastingly? And the whole concern will change. That it's not enough to teach people to survive the netherworld. It's not enough. One has to bring the teachings into a different mode. Not to teach the living for death but to teach the living for everlasting life. That will be the problem. And after the appearance of the Christ that will be the only thing to do is to teach the living forever las...lasting life. Because the tradition will see that indeed this is the only solution to the problem of the rise and fall of nature in cycles that dwarf man's lifetimes. Or his capacity even structure by plan. Any kind of a plan. There are not many plans that are good for more than a thousand years.

So, the Hermetic tradition, which we will see in close-up next week, will focus itself upon the transition from The Egyptian Book of the Dead material to the presentation of the material to the living for gaining a sense of how to approach the real everlastingly. And the first document that we will take is The Poimandres. And we'll do that next week.

Thank you for your kind attention.

END OF RECORDING