Kore Kosmou (Lecture 1)
Presented on: Tuesday, February 18, 1986
Presented by: Roger Weir
Hermetic Tradition: From Egypt to America, From Osiris to Benjamin Franklin
Presentation 7 of 24
Kore Kosmou
Presented by Roger Weir
Tuesday, February 18, 1986
Transcript:
The date is February 18, 1986. This is part 7 of the series at the Whirling Rainbow by Roger Weir entitled Hermetic tradition Osiris to Franklin.
Kore Kosmou.
Someone in the room: is that CH Corey?
Ladies and gentlemen, we're okay speaking Greek. K-o-r-e.
Remember Persephone.
Someone in the room: oh yeah
Kore. This is a very special group. very special usage. Kosmou as in Cosmos. K-o-s but the m-o-u ending. This is a different inflection somewhat of a cosmos but a Kosmou. A little bit different. K-o-s-m-u. Yeah. We'll get to that in just a moment.
The first month we looked at the ancient Egyptian tradition. How ancient? The Pyramid Texts which we looked at date from roughly 3,000 B.C. or 5,000 years ago. And we saw that at the very beginning of 5,000 years ago that the texts were already sophisticated. Not the spiritual tradition in Egypt, when Egypt came into the dynastic period, was already ancient. There is no archaeological or objective way yet to be able to date this. One thing that's apparent though. One thing that has been finally recognized, late in the 20th century is that the Egyptian wisdom was indigenous to Africa. It was not imported from anywhere. Not from India. Not from Europe. Not from Atlantis. Not from any other place. It was indigenous to Africa. It is an African wisdom.
And apparently as far as we can tell the genesis of the civilization that produced the original wisdom was in the Sahara Desert. And that as the Sahara Desert became desiccate, that is waterless, about 9,000 B.C.-10,000 B.C., that tremendous migrations were forced upon the people there. In our time in the last 10 or 20 years the same conditions that applied to the Sahara then are being applied to that broad grassland swatch between the tropical forests and the Sahara. Called the Sahel. And in our time those countries in the Sahel, Somalia Ethiopia, Chad, Niger, Mauritania, are all suffering catastrophic human depopulation. Through starvation. Through forced nomadic movements, largely south sometimes north. These were the conditions that obtained about 12,000 years ago in the Sahara.
We just don't have a record of what happened. We don't have any way of piecing together any kind of a chronology whatsoever between 10,000 B.C. and roughly 3,000 B.C. there are educated guesses. And at some time or another we can give the information that's known. But the overall view is that one just doesn't know.
What we do know. And what we can discover. And what we have seen. Is that around 3,000 B.C. when Egypt as a sacred entity came into being with the dynastic phase. The concern the ultimate concern was with the spirit of man after death. And that in the after-death realm. And it was a realm. The spirit survived and had to go on a journey and met with all kinds of dangers. And that the dangers were not random or haphazard but had a pattern to them. So much so was the pattern understandable that there was a sequence of instructions given to royal souls so that they might complete their journey through the realm of the dead and come back to life.
And that the earliest Hermetic wisdom is this wisdom. The wisdom given to the soul surviving the death of the body so that it may come back to life. And thus, have an eternal return. Now this is entirely keeping with a natural development of, of the human spirit. There's nothing exotic
06:25
in this. There's nothing arcane in this. There's nothing occult in this at all. It was a natural base happening. But we have seen that there was a sea change. There was a chemical change in consciousness about 2,000 years ago. And what had developed indigenously in a natural-based progression towards ultimate patterned wisdom changed. The basis of the change was that the wisdom instruction was no longer given to the soul after death but was given to the living. They went from books of the dead to books for the living. This is a monumental change. This is not, this is not the next step in that progression. There is no next step in that progression. If there's any way to understand it, it is as if the wisdom literature which had all been for the after-death phase, the transcendental mode, had been gotten hold of and pulled out from death and pulled into life. So that ultimate wisdom instead of being in a transcendental realm, in an afterlife realm, in a disembodied spirit realm was now put into the physical realm of the living. Into the existentially poignant now realm of life. This is not a development. This is not in another phase. the only word that we have in English to describe this a word that Carl Jung, is about the only educated individual to use it accurately in the last hundred years. The word is taken from the Greek and the word is enantiodromia. Enantiodromia.
And an enantiodromia is a turning upside down of all the values. the values are still there but that the order of the values is, is inverted. So that what you thought was the pecking order is turned upside down and the highest is now the lowest. And the beginning or the lowest is no longer the lowest but is in this enantiodromia seem to be the center. So that in the turning upside down of the values, the top becomes the bottom, but the bottom becomes not so much the top, but it becomes the middle. Because when so remembers how it was. so instead of having a pyramid one now has an hourglass shape.
So that the symbol for the Egyptian wisdom, the Hermetic wisdom, for all time up until about 2000 years ago up until 0 B.C. the symbol was the pyramid. And at the top of the pyramid, just like in the esoterica image on the back of our bills. And you look at the back of the American one-dollar bill because it was designed by Hermetic masters. And there is the pyramid on the left. and at the top of the pyramid is the eye it's right there in green and white. And if you look at it the top of the pyramid with the eye is separated from the rest of the pyramid.
We saw in the Gardner's Egyptian Dictionary last week under the epithets for Thoth, the Egyptian Hermes, that some of the epithets are he is the restorer of the woodsed eye. The woodsed being the, the wholesome eye of Horus. The sound eye of Horus. The sound eye. The eye that does not see distortedly. And it's this eye of Horus that's transcendentally the top of the pyramid and yet is above the pyramid.
That's important for our feminine Hermetic treatise tonight called The Kore Kosmou. And The Kore Kosmou in Hermetic Greek means the eye pupil of the universe it's the God's eye view of the universe. Not man's eye view. But God's eye view of the universe. The best that man's view of the universe can do on a natural based development. the best that he can do. The very finest. The most elegant, ultimate wisdom that he can attain to was attained in Egypt in The Pyramid Texts. And it goes right out to a pyramid. And the pyramids are sacred because they present that natural order accurately. But there came an event, an enantiodromia, drama aware it was turned upside down and the eye that was God's eye transcendentally was taken out of the transcendental and put into the existential. Gods eye was put in the world. It's curious. It's curious. Because God's eye doesn't go from the top to the bottom, but it goes from the top to the middle to the fulcrum. to the focus. To the place where time passed, and a future come together in the present at the center of the hourglass. the eye in the pyramid, the Eye of Horus, comes to the center of the world. But the base of the pyramid goes from Earth up into heaven. So, you have an in enantiodromia.
Someone from the room: Is that what the star of David is about?
In the understanding of this. In the bringing of this into our consciousness now, we have a particular. Almost said peculiar and I think I should say peculiar. We have a peculiar difficulty in understanding this exact point. Because in our time, Jung says we are suffering from an enantiodromia.
The great genius, madman genius Friedrich Nietzsche characterized the coming century, the 20th century, as that time where there will be a trans evaluation of all values. And he did it most poignantly in his great visionary book called Thus Spoke Zarathustra. And the hero of Thus Spoke Zarathustra as the ubermensch, the Superman. And misunderstanding Nietzsche's Superman caused unholy havoc with the German mind. And any other kind of a mind in the 20th century that has come into contact with it. Just like 2,000 years ago unholy havoc was wrought by people who lived in those times and misunderstood the symbolism of what was happening.
And so, it is particularly, it is peculiarly incumbent upon us in our time to understand this right. And it's not anything that can be broadcast over the television. It has to be delivered personally and very small personable companionable circumstances. Because those are the only conditions under which we can even bear to hear the enormous responsibility that is in our hands and on our shoulders. Otherwise it sounds like a fiction. It sounds like a dream. And from the decayed perspective of upside-down human beings it is only a fantasy. and this is their problem. The spirit has become only a fantasy. The word spirit is to them a synonymous with phantom. But as we will see, increasingly in this course and especially tonight, that the spirit is no phantom. The Holy Ghost is no phantom at all. In fact, it is the power of the world. It is the only vitality that is real.
So, it is difficult to approach this. Psychologically speaking the material is supercharged with numinous ominousness. And it's difficult to even address it much less to open up the package and let it shine forth. We become almost blinded by the intensity. By the relevance to us of the material.
So, when we come to the Hermetic treatise The Kore Kosmou probably the best thing that I can do is to say that the translation that was available a hundred years ago to the theosophist. To Madame Blavatsky. To those individuals who were striving a hundred years ago to attain to a vision. The people who were contemporaneous with Friedrich Nietzsche. The founding of the Theosophical Society is exactly contemporaneous with the writings of Thus Spake Zarathustra. they translated The Kore Kosmou with the title of The Virgin of the world.
And this is the Anna Kingsford, Edward Maitland translation of The Kore Kosmou. And it's called The Virgin of the World of Hermes Mercurius Trismegistus. Now first rendered into English. And this was done in 1884. 1884. And you can buy and consult this reproductions of it published by the Wizards bookshelf in San Diego. And I think available for about nine dollars if you can imagine. What an age that we live in. That you can go through life and never hear of all the important things, but you can go and find them for nine dollars. Surreal. Surreal.
But the translation of The Virgin of the World, of The Kore Kosmou is too important to be left to a hundred-year old translation. So, we're going to come to Scott we're going to come to Scotts Hermetica in four volumes, which is now available in paper bound again. I think it's 18 dollars a volume. I have the Dawson's of Palmall reproduction of this. Which was pretty expensive at the time that I bought it.
The Kore Kosmou is actually a dialogue between Isis and her son Horus. between the woman and her son. Between the cosmic woman and her cosmic son. Between the cosmic feminine and that eye that was once separated from the natural base by a transcendental transformation. And now because of the enantiodromia is in the center of the world. And so, the mother has to tell, the cosmic feminine has to disclose to the once transcendental masculine eye that it's no longer transcendental that it's in the world. That its no longer at the top, that it's in the center. And that because of this repositioning it has responsibilities not only to the heavenly realms but also to the earthly realms. Not only to the realms after death but to the realms in life. That the sound eye of creative masculine wisdom has to also look to the earth and not just of the heavens. And you can't just look to souls after death, but you have to look to the spirits in the living. And the son needs to know this because he doesn't know this naturally. If the son takes after the father, he will be celestial, and he will leave. As celestial heroes always do.
But this time the son has to be told that he has to be in the world. That it's not enough to be divine in heaven that you have to come into the world and be in that world. You have to be the focus in the center of the world. Because the living are just as important as the dead.
Well when we talk this way and we date 2,000 years ago we begin to get some idea of the eerie accuracy of spiritual history. That all these events did actually occur and did happen. And now we're so misunderstood that were so oppressed to even begin to believe that such significance could have occurred at all. And yet it did. Significance on such a massive scale that it takes a double take and a triple date today to even recognize that it is a shape that is there in our lives. It is like people who live all of their lives next to a massive cliff several miles high and it takes a tremendous feat of self-awareness to realize that the cliff is there. Because it was just so massively there it, it is the basic reality. Where someone who's grown up next to the ocean and you never realize that the ocean is there to you, you move away someday. And after a while you begin to miss something. What are you missing? You miss seeing the ocean where is the sea?
We in our time are in the condition of waking up to the fact, waking up in this in enantiodromia that the most massive change in consciousness in the human species that happened 2,000 years ago has not been understood. Was so much a part of the new reality that we're just now waking up to the fact that is a new reality. That all this time has been a new reality but that we were living in the ruts of bad habits that were engendered for tens of thousands of years before it happened. And if there's anything new age now, it's simply waking up to the fact that the New Age began then. And if there's anything new age now it's waking up to this. Not creating something yet new not creating new complications. Because there are no new complications to create. There are no complications.
So, when there's an enantiodromia. When there's a turning upside down of the valuation in the universe, the bottom goes to the top, but the top becomes the center. It's not that you just turn it upside down. But that in turning it upside down one realizes that the old valuation is now phatasmally there. Invisibly still there. But that the invisible is still there is what conditions us. And so, the objective task is to recognize the new valuation that the pinnacle of the eye of Horus in the pyramid of wisdom is no longer transcendentally at the top but is in the center of the world. And that that pyramid base, that natural base, that used to be there objectively for us is now only there an invisible unconscious sense. And that what is objectively there is a new structure that opens out like a cone. from this interior focused eye of truth. The sound eye of Horus. The masculine eye of penetrative vision. But without the feminine context, the masculine eye of penetrative vision knows nothing.
And so, in our Hermetic dialogue The Kore Kosmou, or in its translation the Virgin of the World, Isis instructs her son Horus. And what's what because he has to know, and he has to hear it from the woman. He has to hear it from the feminine wisdom.
When we turn to The Kore Kosmou. And in my edition volume one of Scott's Hermetica, it starts on page 457. From the holy book of Hermes Trismegistus, which is entitled Kore Kosmou,
Isis says give heed my son Horace for you shall hear secret doctrine. Of which our forefather comethis was the first teacher. It so befell that Hermes heard this teaching from comethis the eldest of our race. I heard it from Hermes, the writer of records at the time when he initiated me in the great rites. And you shall hear it now from me.
This is the meaning of tradition. Even among the divine there's tradition.
What I give to you I myself have heard. And he who taught me personally received it personally from his teacher and so on. And that at the origin of it was someone the eldest of all who realized it. So that the realization is the origin. And because the realization is the origin it has a different character, a different quality immediately from The Pyramid Texts. How is this so? We can't let this fade. We can't let it go. The Pyramid Texts like all traditional natural based wisdoms are of indefinite age. they go back to primordial beginninglessness. This is the wisdom with the with the human race. Has always been with us. This wisdom has a beginning. And its beginning is in the realization by a consciousness. So that the wisdom that's being passed down now is a tradition that is not natural based but is based upon consciousness. Consciousness. It's different. It's different.
We have to fudge here for just a moment. And be didactic just for a moment to save time. You can follow it through in the Saturday series if you want. Where we have plenty of time to develop it. Consciousness begins with an interior symbolization which is the realization. And that symbolic vision then radiates out in the form of a magical realm. Magical realm as in fairytales. That the origins of consciousness are in this magicality. And one of the hallmarks of consciousness is as magicality. The sense that this is a significant. This is meaningful. That who we are and what we are doing it is fraught with intelligent meaningfulness. That it has purpose to it. That this is right. Not only right in terms of nature but right in terms of us also.
So that the personal the individual comes into conscious manifestation in this magicality. And the Hermetic tradition changes 2,000 years ago to a magical tradition. It was a natural tradition and now it becomes a magical tradition. it was in The Pyramid Texts, The Egyptian Books to the Dead for the soul after death. It is now for the spirits of the living. The spirits of the living are conscious. The souls after death are still natural. There's nothing unnatural to have a soul wandering through the nether world after death. There's nothing unnatural in that at all. There's nothing even supernatural about that. to think that that supernatural is to be truncated in a narrow cultural relativism that's a European based and rather recent. Any peoples, any human peoples. Let's extend it. Any sentient beings anywhere in the universe. Have always naturally understood that one's of vitality does not end with the dissolution of the vehicle. What is natural is that it continues of course.
So that the natural based wisdom orientated towards the soul after death, that whole valuation turned upside down 2,000 years ago. And instead of being for the dead, it was for the living. And instead of being natural based, it's now magical based. Because it's conscious. Has to be conscious. And that the culmination of it is no longer the culmination but is an interior focus exactly at the center. And because it's a focus at the center, the mystical eye of Horace. And I use that term now mystical. The mystical eye of Horace is no longer in a celestial mode but is in the horizon of truthfulness between heaven and earth. Exactly between heaven and Earth. And in that horizon between heaven and earth that's where we exist. That's where human beings exist. So that the horizon of wisdom is no longer divine but as human. Human. It's no longer natural but is conscious.
And so, the incumbency on the tradition, on the Hermetic tradition, changed. It was no longer enough to instruct the royal soul in its journey after death, now one had to instruct all of the living who could hear it. He who has ears to hear let him hear it. Whoever it is. If they can hear, they deserve to hear. They are elect not in any natural sense but in the conscious sense. When they are conscious enough to hear then they should hear.
And what should they hear? the whole truth. Everything. That what is occult or what is hidden in the old rule, in the old tradition, is now occult and hidden simply because of the development of consciousness. And there is no other ossification. There's no other pecking order whatsoever. As conscious as anyone is, that is how much of the truth they should be given.
So that the old way of teaching wisdom, which was to give step-by-step procedure for the journey of the soul changed. And it was no longer a step-by-step procedure, but it was the entire truth presented in its full matrix. So that the conscious realization of truth takes a different form from the natural learning of truth. The natural learning of truth takes a, a phase stepping instructive way, the ladder. But the conscious way is like the target. But the target is a maze. It's all there but one doesn't right away know it. One has to sort it out patiently. Not by learning step by step so much but by discovering the wholeness of it. So, the process is no longer having instruction given to you from the outside, rung by rung, but it's that the whole truth is presented to you and you have to discover it. You have to learn to uncover it progressively. That you're not making anything happen but you're discovering what has already occurred. This is the way consciousness learns. This is the way the spirit of man learns. When he teaches himself.
When God teaches man then he gives him step by step. He says you can deal with amino acid so be a protozoon. Now you can deal with the cellular movement so move up. You can deal with higher integration so be a frog. But when you can deal with consciousness then you have to be a human being. And then here no longer in the animal orders. You're in the center of the universe. You're in the horizon of wisdom. Of Hermetic primordial wisdom. So, this instruction comes in this sea change of consciousness.
So, after Isis says,
Take heed Horus. Take heed my son. This is what now you see with your mystic eye of wholeness. But notice having thus spoken Isis first poured forth for Horus a sweet draught of ambrosia. Such a draught as the souls are want to receive. When they dwell among the Gods. and thereupon, thereupon she thus began her most holy discourse.
So, she gives her son communion before she begins the discourse. What is the communion? The communion is the ambrosia. The drink of the Gods. The ambrosia that once one went on to the beyond there one had the ambrosia. Now the ambrosia is brought down and given to you before the instruction.
With that communion then, with that communion the transformation is symbolically affected. And the instruction is given then to the interior mystical eye and the horizon of humaneness as distinct from the celestial eye of transcendental wisdom.
What does she say? What does the cosmic feminine say to her heroic spiritual son who must redeem the world? She says, "In as much as heaven with its many circles my son is placed all above the world of things below. It must be that all the world which lies below has been set in order and filled with contents by the things which are placed above." She tells him right away, as above so below. She says the order that's here is the order that's there also. And only the eye that you have now in the center can see that that's true. But only one hierarchy in those orders is ever objectively visible at any one time. The other is always subjectively invisible. So, when you were addressing the world, when you are looking at the world objectively then the celestial is invisibly subjective. But when you're looking objectively at the celestial then it's the world that is subjectively invisible. They are never together subjectively invisible. They're never together objectively visible. The only perspective from which the complementarity of invisible and visible, above and below, can be seen in its symmetrical wholesomeness is through the eye of wisdom at the horizon of the center of the world.
Now the earliest Hermetic wisdom in Egypt 5000 years ago Pyramid Texts one becomes Lord of the Horizon. That's what Horus is. He is Lord of the Horizon. And what can Lord of the horizon do? A Lord of the horizon can go above the horizon and go across the celestial realms. And go below the horizon and go along the nether realms and come back up. So that the threshold of the horizon is no longer a limitation. One becomes Lord of the horizon precisely exactly by the capacity to penetrate going above or below the horizon. This is a sacred capacity. Without that capacity one is trapped either above or below. One is trapped in one hierarchy or the other. So that a secular profane animal man is trapped in the lower orders. There are angelic demonic forces that are trapped in the upper orders.
So that there needs to be the divine man who makes permeable as Lord of the Horizon the thresholds between visible and invisible, between life and death. So that there is commerce in between them. So, there's movement articulation. So that the wholesomeness of the universe is reestablished. So that the entirety of the orderingness of it is reestablished. This is what is being talked about here.
What is above as an order and filled with contents and it's done just as above. For the things below have not power to set an order the world above. They're the weaker mysteries. They must yield to the stronger. And the system of things on high is stronger than the things below and is wholly steadfast and cannot be apprehended by the thoughts of mortal men.
Because this document was so numinously important at that time as now. But critically at that time in Alexandria around 200 A.D. everyone who was involved in trying to understand that enantiodromia that transformation read each word in each paragraph of The Kore Kosmou, of all the Hermetic treatises, with an eye and a mind towards trying to understand its esoteric unfoldingness. And because this eye and this mind was in that kind of mode, the religious cultural background of whoever those individuals were came out. And because this was such primordial material all of it came out. Because if they were going to deal with it consciously...
Please turn your cassette now. Mr. Weir continues on the other side without a break in the continuity.
END OF SIDE ONE
And as we showed before that consciousness has to learn by progressive disclosure. They were too close to it. Almost none of them were able to disclose at all. They did the best they could. There was nothing wrong. The errors that crept in, the flaws that crept in, were almost impossible to avoid at the time. In fact, two thousand years later, eighteen hundred years later, it's a very rare individual at all that can see with any kind of humanity it's almost impossible. that can see the error, the flaws, can see them creeping in. Just like the tapes that change. Now the tapes have to record on the other side. If the mechanism doesn't work the recording doesn't go on the other side. And one only gets a partial message. And that happened a lot with the kind of consciousness that were there eighteen hundred years ago. Even with the best of them.
Most of the individuals that had privy to these documents, to this teaching, heard it in terms of the cultural and religious relativity that they were immersed in. And because of the numinous nature of the material and because of the disclosure technique that's needed to open it all up, almost none of them opened it up fully.
And so, after this first page of The Kore Kosmou there's a complete jump. And from somebody who interpolated what this was supposed to mean that put something else in. and it's been there ever since.
But we're not dealing with instruction. We're not dealing with natural phase form progressions. If we were then the scholars would be right. And this is an extraneous excerpt. It has no business being here. It's by different hands. A different kind of a Greek. But we're not scholars. And we're not naive. And we aren't conscious. We can sense the whole and so we come back to material and we see that yes, it is an emanation. It is from someone else. They're presenting it from a culturally relative religious viewpoint that's conditioned by one can go on and recognize. And we could point out for an hour so the characteristics that are there. We could tap sociological techniques and psychological analysis. And grammatical disclosures and and bring it all out.
But we're Hermetic and we're learning the Hermetic tradition the way it should be learned. And we can see that this is not happenstance that this interpolation comes and rests in here for 1,800 years. This is also very significant that this kind of an interpolation would be there. So, we read it in the same order. We keep it in our document. but we're aware now that what we're disclosing to ourselves is not one document but like a buckshot pattern. And we don't have just one person instructing us. We have a number of persons instructing us. But they all come from the same period. they all come from the same numinous pattern. So, if we don't look too closely and don't follow slavishly what is being said to us. if we back off one step and then take ourselves back once more and just look at the whole of what is being presented to us, we will gain a very accurate presentation of what it really meant at this time. of what really purposefulness there was at this time. And that's what we need in our time. We need to know what did they do? How did they get us here? Because what they were making here, they were making the consciousness of Western man.
We today have that consciousness. Not only that consciousness but as we talked about before our whole subconscious flow is based upon progressions of this. And our whole archetypal sense of what is collectively unconsciously true was formulated and precipitated exactly at this time. So, the whole structure of our minds, conscious subconscious and archetypal unconscious, all in tune to the way this instrument was able to give the harmony. So, we have to be able to see what they did then in order to understand what we are now. And we can do that. We have that capacity. Every bit of it. And with the right learning situation over the next year well we'll just patiently open it up and show how it was.
In this way we can see that we have been working at a great disadvantage in our time. That our understanding of the world has been on a nursery school level. An impractical level. We could never have survived if we had just kept on the way that we were. We were in a naive nursery school mentality playing with dynamite. Now we can grow up.
The interpolation comes in and says,
Thereupon men moaned being afraid. the beautiful, the everlasting duration of the things above. One could look up and see the beauty of the sky when it was flooded by light of the Sun. and the well-nigh equal majesty of the night. torch let with light less than the sun's yet bright. when in their turn, the other holy powers moved along their paths in heavens with ordered movements in fixed periods of time. And by certain secret effluences wrought order and growth and the same things below. Thus, arose fears upon fears and ceaseless questionings.
What's being said here? That man and his life on Earth has always had problems. Not the sort of office problems that we think are problems today. But some of the basic problems. How to get something to eat. How to keep alive. Basic problems. But whenever man looked up the Sun, the moon and eventually it occurred to him the stars, had a repetitive order that seemed to not change at all. The conditions in his life would change radically from year to year, from month to month. Even from day to day. And sometimes even from hour to hour. But the Sun and the moon and especially the stars were always the same. Not the same in a movement lessness but the same in their movements. So that the realization came that the trustworthy pattern of movement is up there. well let's study up there. What about it? And it took a long time. It took a tremendously long time. to learn. What are those patterns? Not only of the Sun and the moon, that took long enough. But of the stars.
And so, the stars had to me...be made comprehensible. And thus, the constellations of the stars were the way in which they were symbolized. And symbols always occur out of a mythology. And so, it was a mythologically based natural awareness that led to the symbolization of the heavens. And out of all those constellations all those that were there in the sun's path were the most formative.
And so, the 12 constellations of the zodiac became the symbolic necklace. And in the symbolic necklace of 12, the balance was between the sixth and seventh. And the sixth one was Virgo, the Virgin. the Virgin of the world. Virgo. The heavenly virgin. And after her the seventh sign was Libra, the balance. The balance of Justice. the Virgo, the virgin of the world is Justice herself and Libra is justice himself. And in between Virgo and Libra, the feminine and the masculine, the astrological balance of the necklace of reality of the suns giving life to earth. And the suns connection with the stars above. So that the mentality of the suns elliptical path through the starry heavens, influencing the earth became the first symbolic understanding of this horizon. And the horizon of understanding became the zodiac like that. And the archetypal transition point in the zodiac was from Virgo to Libra. That movement.
The Virgin of the World this dialogue is called. Isis to Horus. Virgo the celestial virgin to her son who's supposed to be the balance. Horus the Libra. Isis the Virgo. This is the very crux of understanding.
But what happened? What happened when there was an understanding? That there was a pattern? there was an order? Isis tells her son. she says, "From this came fear upon fear and ceaseless questionings." Why the fears? Why the questionings? Because if there's an order then then we should be living in that order. And how are we going to do that?
And now you can see the quandary that came. Do you remember the last two weeks and The Poimandres? In The Poimandres the seven levels, the seven planetary levels, the seven musical notes, are the ladder of destiny. It's the scale of fate. It's the ordering of the world that's made by the heavenly order. And the best that one can do is to acclimate oneself to the harmony of that order. But when, when acclimates oneself, when one reaches the harmony, one is able to hear the chord of the seven together. In music it's that the eighth note starts the cycle again. Or completes or seals the cycle by coming back on a higher level to the beginning.
And so, the octave or the ogdoad was the whole. the whole. And when one got to the, the eighth the freed one from the constraints of the seven. It gave one a sense of the whole. So that instead of having the notes one had the chord of the whole. And when one had the chord of the whole one could see, one could understand, that it wasn't only the notes visibly that were important, but it was the interval between the notes invisibly that was articulately important also. So that when one understood the octave, one understood that the wholeness of the order included the spaces of articulation as well as the notes of declination. That it was the context of silence that made the notes available. It was the context of the eternal feminine that made the eternal masculine viable. and then it was understood that the interval and the notes together, fused together, transform sound into music.
That the maturity of consciousness, having come through the levels of destiny, one becomes freed from that. Freed. And one changes life in a bound condition to life in an unbound condition. An unbound condition lessness. And this is the this is the change. This is the Hermetic change.
And so, Isis tells her son Horus in this interpolation, but this interpolation is still significant because it's within the pattern of purpose at the same time. she says,
And as long as the craftsman who made the universe willed not to be known all was wrapped in ignorance. But when he determined to reveal himself, he breathed into certain God-like men a passionate desire to know him. And bestowed upon their minds a radiance ampler than that which they had already had within their breasts. So that they might first will to seek the yet unknown God. And then have power to find him.
I will find thee in the mysteries of the darkness of the eye though no image will I see. That was the old formulation.
She says, "But to this Horace my wondrous son. It would not have been possible for men of mortal breed to do." She's saying even, even with all of this enthusiasm. Even with the desire to know. Even with like a radiance within oneself. As long as human beings remained secular, they could not understand. They would never find it. They had to be transformed into the sacred. because it's only man who's transformed into the sacred who is able to see that God isn't up there transcendentally away from his life. But is right there at the center in the horizon where he lives and where he is. Where else is he going to be? And as long as one thinks Oh help me down here, there's never any spiritual maturity. It's always that I will manifest the divine here best I can. That leads to maturity.
This material at the time. And I'm going to set The Kore Kosmou aside for just a moment. And we'll come back to it next week. I have to bring some other material in. When this was written. When this was fresh. when it was the problem, the first textbook in the Western **inaudible word** astrology was written. it was called Des Astronomica. Written in Latin by Manilius. And we have here in the Loeb classical library, published by Harvard University Press the translation of Manilius' Astronomica. And it's the first astrological textbook in the Western world. Before this it was called the Chaldeans science. And if you weren't a Babylonian Magi you were not given this instruction. This is the first time it was put into a book.
What has Manilius, and he lived in the reigns of Augustus Caesar and Tiberius Caesar. He lived right at the time of 0 B.C., 0 A.D. He says, "The temperaments of those who span of life," talking about Virgo. "She pronounces at their birth. Virgo will direct to study." Virgo directs men to study. If you were born on the sign of the virgin, the celestial Virgin. to study. "And she will train their minds in the learn at Arts." You see she is a, a feminine Thoth. she is a feminine Hermes. That's what she is. She is the feminine Hermes. "Trained them to study. Direct their minds in the learned arts." What is the most learned art? To discover the real. That's the most learned art.
She will give not so much abundance of wealth as the impulse to investigate the causes and effects of things. On them she will confer a tongue with which charms the mastery of words and that mental vision which can discern all things. However, concealed they be by the mysterious workings of nature.
What eye penetrates the mysterious workings of nature? Consciousness the sound eye of Horace is conscious as long as he remains a son of Isis, he's still just natural. He has to be himself conscious. Then he can see. And what does he see? He sees into her nature. He sees into the world and understands it. And understands that her world and this order, like his father's world in that order and that together they make the wholeness of reality. And that he is indeed born out of that union between the two of them. And that's where he exists. Not only exists that's where he is real.
Manilius telling us of Virgo, "On them she will confer a tongue which charms the master of words and that mental vision which can discern all things. However, concealed they be by the mysterious workings of nature. From the Virgin will come the stenographer. The one who is able to write it down also." You see. And this is the, the image of Thoth. With his stylist. He is not just delivering the wisdom, but he is writing it down. So that the Hermetic tradition is that not only is it given in dialogue orally but that it is written down. The arcane numinous image of the original Hermetic master is that all of these secret books were written completely at the beginning and then they were hid. And it's only as man matured that he found these hidden books. And when he would fin, get to a level of consciousness where he could understand it, he would find these books. And he would open these books and then he would learn. And as he matured further and further, he would find more books. Because Hermes hid the books. Hid the books.
You see it's the symbol. It's the archetype of consciousness learning. How does consciousness learn? By progressive disclosure. It's all there at the beginning it's just that we didn't see it all. We have to learn to, to see it all. And what happens then is we, we learn that we don't make up the meaning. We don't progressively put it together, but we discover it as it is. This is the, this is the Hermetic emphasis. It's an art. It's an art.
"His letter then represents a word and by means of his symbols he can keep ahead of utterance and record in new notation the long speech of a rapid speaker." He's saying he can articulate through symbols what naturally and normally one couldn't follow. One couldn't remember it all. One couldn't imagine the wholeness of the pattern. Only through the symbol. Only in the way in which the symbol unites they heard the sound and the vision, the, the scene unites those together does the mind become focused and honed. And able then to perceive the wholesome pattern of the real.
"But with the good there comes a flaw," writes Manilius. There comes a flaw. There's a flaw here that needs to be paid attention to. What is the flaw? The flaw is bashfulness handicaps the early years of such persons. Doesn't seem so serious. It's absolutely devastating. The spiritual are always the most unprotected when they're young. They're always pray for every ruffian around. They're always the ones who are misled the most and the worst. So that test of them is always the most excruciating because they are always trying to believe and know and see and understand and it's never right, never right, never right. And the tendency is to lose faith. To lose confidence that there's any truth that there is anything that one can know. That there's any revelation that courage can finally disclose.
And so Manilius says, "The bashfulness of their early years of such persons for the maid, the celestial virgin, by holding back their great natural gifts puts a bridle on their lips and restrains them by the curve of authority. And this a small wonder because in a virgin her offspring is not fruitful." And a virgin her offspring is not fruitful. If she remained a celestial virgin, she would be barren. If she remains a celestial virgin, though she is right, she is the cosmic lady. She is barren. The bashfulness, the bridal on their gifts natural gifts by authority would be terminal. We'd never lived long enough to grow up to, to mature. And that's why the enantiodromia has to come. The virgin has to become fertile. She has to be able to give birth. She has to be able to be fruitful. She has to come into the world too. Because the enantiodromia doesn't happen that way.
And so, while the masculine pyramidal moves from an earth-based up to a heavenly base. The heavenly feminine has to come down to the earth. She has to become viable in life. She has to be able to become fertile. Willing to give life. It's only then that that circle of wholesomeness is established. that the celestial father becomes viable from the earth. And the celestial mother becomes viable also from the earth. And then there can be a birth.
Manilius says that this is the character of Virgo. at the same time as Manilius, at the same time as The Kore Kosmou, at the same time as the life incarnation of Jesus. At the very center of authority at the very place where all the powers of the world came together in the city of Rome in the person of Augustus Caesar. He put together the celestial Imperium in terms of human power. And he took his magus. He took his holy man, Virgil, and said write me the sacred book which will fix this power for all time here. And Virgil wrote The Aeneid which did that.
And the reason why Augustus chose Virgil is because in The Fourth Eclogue of Virgil called Virgil's Messianic Eclogue, came the mystical prediction of the new age. The Fourth Eclogue, this is the Penguin Classics translation H.D.P Giley. That's his son, Giley.
"Sicilian muses grant me a slightly grander song. Not all the lighted trees and lowly tamarisks but woods if woods we sing be worthy of a council." That is worthy of a general around. "Now the last age of Kumi's prophecy has come." The Kumi of the Sibyl and Kumi. "The great succession of centuries is born afresh. Now two returns the virgin." And so, in The Messianic Eclogue right away is the reinstatement that the whole cycle of ages, which have declined from the age of gold to the age of silver to the age of brass to the decayed age of iron. And what happens at the very end of the age of iron is that the celestial virgin, the last of the divinities among man leaves man and goes up to heaven. She's the last one to abandon man. All the other Gods have gone before them. Can't stand a degeneracy of man. It's the celestial virgin who in her love for us refuses to leave until the very end. Where even she can't take the degradation anymore. Unlike the Holy Spirit of romance, she gathers her skirts and she leaves the realm of mankind. and when she assumes the heavenly throne. Reassumes her heavenly place, the horizon of man is completely bereft of all divinity. Completely desecrated.
I'd outlined for you from Ovid in The Metamorphosis and Hesiod in his Theogony what happens. I guess I'll, I'll read you from Ovid and then you can see how, how bad it gets. Ovid lived at the very same time as Virgil. The very same time is Manilius. At the same time as Jesus. The same time as Augustus. The same time that our Hermetic literature was beginning all of this. What was the name of his book? The Metamorphosis. The changes. The transformations. Everybody was trying to understand it. The whole civilization came to this crunch.
What happens at the final age is that complete degeneracy and disorder comes in and man is left alone in complete evil. And it's because of being left alone in complete evil that a call goes out from the spiritual nature of man in his deepest travail. And the whole order turns upside down and all of the divinity comes back into play again. So, the sign is when the Virgin, who has become fertile in order to give birth to the divine man. When she assumes, reassumes her celestial habitat that's the final straw that breaks the back of the age. Who was the virgin of the age? Not Isis but the Virgin Mary. And when was the Virgin Mary divinized, 1950.
We'll come back to this next week.
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