Andrew Cort's Blog, page 7

Titans, Gods, & War in Heaven

The Greeks symbolized the continuing process of unified Divinity transforming itself into diverse entities and qualities – the ‘One’ becoming ‘Many’ – as the appearance of the Titans: the elder gods who descended (by the power of the Logos) from the stars to the level of our sun. These were the children of Uranus and Gaia. They included Cronus and his wife Rhea, the ruling Titan deities, who represented heaven (sky) and earth (land) on the one hand, and also embodied the necessary qualities of Time and Space respectively. There were a great many others as well, such as Oceanus, Tethys, Hyperion, and Themis. And many of these had children and grandchildren, among whom were Prometheus and Atlas.

According to legend, Uranus hated his children and forced them to be held captive within Gaia. They conspired against him with their mother’s aid, but when the time came to rebel they all recoiled in fear, with the exception of the brave Cronus. When Uranus approached his wife, Cronus fell upon him and castrated him with a sickle.

The story represents the separation of the Eternal world from the Material world. Uranus (divine ‘Being’) has by now impregnated matter (‘Becoming’) with all the seeds and forms and qualities that it requires. He had kept his progeny hidden and latent, but now it is time for them to live. His castration means that he will no longer fertilize Gaia, and thus a door (the Threshold) between ‘the Above’ and ‘the Below’ has been closed by the advent of Time (Cronus), and the creative process in this world thenceforward must continue to unfold automatically, abundantly, and mechanically on its own.*

Cronus and Rhea soon gave birth to the next generation of gods, the ‘Planetary’ gods – symbols of the highest ideals, who will take over from the Titans after a great War in Heaven.

(* This legend is also found in the story of Noah in the Old Testament. Noah is a symbol of high, spiritual Individuality, the divinely appointed figure from whom the whole regeneration of human life would come forth after the purging Flood: in other words, Noah, like Uranus, ‘seeded’ the world. According to the Old Testament, his son Ham was later punished for coming into his father’s tent and seeing him naked in his sleep. But in the story preserved in legends, Ham (or, in some stories, Ham’s son Canaan) was punished because he castrated Noah.)

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Like Greek Mythology and Looking at their Inner Meaning?

A Glorious Destiny

One day, on a busy street in Louisville, Kentucky, the famous Trappist Monk, Thomas Merton, found himself surrounded by Jews and Christians, Blacks and Whites, and others.

He suddenly experienced a radical sensation of inclusion. “It was like I was waking from a dream of separateness,” he later wrote, “of spurious self-isolation in a ‘special’ world – the world of renunciation and supposed holiness. The sense of liberation from this illusion of difference was such a relief, that I laughed out loud. 

“It is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race. ”

The Lesser Mysteries of Eleusis

The Eleusinian Mysteries were open to virtually everyone (only murderers, and people who could not understand the Greek language that was spoken in the rites, were excluded), and during the nearly two thousand years that they were celebrated, thousands of men, women, slaves, foreigners, common folk, and illustrious public figures (including Plato, Cicero, Augustus Caesar, Marcus Aurelius, and many others), all made the holy pilgrimage to Eleusis.

The Lesser Mysteries

As preparation for the greater initiation to come, the Lesser Mysteries revealed the stark truth of our unpurified souls, imprisoned within the body, hypnotized by the world of the senses. Through stories, hymns, dances, theatrical performances, and rituals, the initiates experienced the horrifying abduction and imprisonment of their own souls, descending into the world of matter and illusion, which is symbolized by the abduction of Persephone and her imprisonment in the realm of Hades.

The Story:

Demeter was away, and her daughter Persephone was playing with the other young goddesses in a meadow, filling baskets with beautiful flowers. She had no way of knowing that grim Hades, who had been walking on the surface to inspect the damage from an earthquake, had seen her, had been struck by an arrow of Eros (which Aphrodite had urged him to loose), and had fallen in love with her. Hades had then gone to his brother Zeus, Persephone’s father, and obtained permission to take the girl for his wife.

Now Persephone had wandered away from her companions, enticed by an extremely large and radiant narcissus plant with a hundred blooms, which Zeus had caused to grow as a snare for the girl. As she reached out her hands to touch the beautiful flower, the ground shook and opened wide beneath her feet, and Hades, charging forth in his chariot, sprang upon her and grabbed her and bore her down into the earth, despite all her screams. No one heard her cries, except for Helios, the Sun, who hears and sees everything, and his sister Hecate, the Moon, the goddess of darkness and the night. But her cries were echoed off the mountains, and Demeter heard them from far away. Yet she could see her beloved daughter nowhere.

In his subterranean palace, Hades forced Persephone to become his queen.

The human soul, the initiates learned, like Persephone, has its real home in the spiritual realm, free of the bondage of matter. Only there is it truly alive. The Lesser Mysteries represented the agony of the soul as it ‘dies’ to its real nature, and descends into the illusions and limitations of ‘life’ within a human body. Entranced by the transient beauty of the world (the narcissus and other flowers), and longing for experience in the world of the senses, the soul is trapped and it descends. The words and images of ‘descent’, however, are only figurative: we have no better language to describe the transition from ‘Heaven’ to ‘Earth’, which is not a change of location but only a change of condition.

The critical teaching of the Lesser Mysteries was that we will only be worse off after death, unless we take steps during this life to turn our longing for the illusions of the senses into a longing for the truths of the spirit – for this is Hades, the descent has already taken place, and if our soul sleeps through our physical life, it may continue to sleep through all eternity, passing back and forth from dream to dream. To drive this home, the Mysteries testified gloomily to the recurring descent into hell, and the endless aimless wanderings of unawakened and unperfected souls. At last, when the ceremonies ended, the participants were given the honorary title of Mystes

The Allegory of the Cave

To illustrate his four levels of existence and consciousness, Plato relates his celebrated ‘Allegory of the Cave’ in the Republic. The story begins with human beings who have lived in a large underground cave since birth, chained in such a way that they can only see in front of them, being prevented by the chains from turning their heads. Here, deep beneath the surface, they are living symbolically in the lowest level of consciousness, Eikasia. We will see that everything they perceive is illusory.

There is a passageway to the surface which is always present, and sunlight always shines through it, but they are not aware of it since they cannot ‘turn their heads’, they cannot expand their vision to include it. And they have no reason to turn their heads:

In the back of the cave, unbeknownst to the prisoners, a fire is blazing, shining its light onto the cave wall in front of them. Between the fire and the prisoners’ backs, a Marionette Show is always going on, and the puppet shadows that are cast on the front wall are the only things these prisoners have ever seen. Voices are speaking behind them, but they can only hear the echoes which appear to be coming from the shadows on the front wall.

‘Truth’ for these prisoners is obviously nothing but the shadows of puppets. This is the consciousness of Eikasia, the level of consciousness in which we see surface images and reflections and take them for reality. We do so because that is all we have ever seen: we have no reason to suspect that anything else exists, unless some higher influence touches our lives and informs us. If that never happens we cannot ‘turn our heads’, we cannot see or think about anything else. And so, we pass through life with no inkling that we are prisoners in a cave witnessing nothing but dreams.

But if it does happen, the prisoners begin to realize their mistake:

At first, when any of them is liberated and compelled suddenly to stand up and turn his neck round and walk and look towards the light, he will suffer sharp pains; the glare will distress him, and he will be unable to see the realities of which in his former state he had seen the shadows;

This is the first experience of the second level of consciousness, Pistis, and it is painful. We can all recall the pain when an early world-view was shattered, and the difficulty we had in accepting something new. The first inclination is always to refuse to believe it, and to retreat to our familiar, comfortable illusions.

Once in Pistis, the prisoners are no longer witnessing mere shadows. But notice what they are being asked to look at and to call ‘real’: Puppets! Imitations of real people, animals, and other things, “made of wood and stone and various materials”. This is a higher level of existence than the shadows on the wall – the puppets are solid, tangible, and substantial, and very much like real things. But they are still not ‘really real’. They are only copies. (“Like ourselves”, notes Socrates. We are puppets.)

Now suppose that a prisoner is reluctantly dragged up the passageway into the sunlight. At first his eyes will be pained, and the brightness will be dazzling. He will have to become gradually accustomed to the light. The passageway itself represents the level of consciousness called Dianoia, where false assumptions are discarded and Reason begins to search for higher principles that underlie the tangible objects (the puppets) of Pistis.

Eventually, after exiting the passageway, his vision may clear, and for the first time he will begin to see real things. He will become able to “gaze upon the light of the moon and the stars and the spangled heavens”. This, allegorically, is the fourth and highest level of consciousness, Noesis, the awareness of the archetypal Forms, the awakening of Nous and the direct apprehension of what is truly ‘real’.

Finally, with experience and practice, and time for the Eye of the Soul to adjust to the brightness, he may even be able to perceive the highest reality, the Sun, which here represents ‘the Good’.

[T]he idea of the Good appears last of all, and is only seen with an effort; and, when seen, is also inferred to be the universal author of all things beautiful and right…, and this is the power upon which he who would act rationally either in public or private life must have his eye fixed.

This is the power upon which he who would act rationally either in public or private life must have his eye fixed. This final statement is the heart of the ethics of Socrates and Plato * the morality of aspiration. It answers the essential question of how an ethical human being ought to live. It simultaneously defines the unshakable foundation necessary for a just and ethical society. To do what is right, for oneself or toward others, requires that one’s inner ‘eye’ be awake and focused on what is truly, objectively, ‘the Good’ * and this is not a matter of opinion, to be determined at our usual level of Being. It requires a completely different level of Being, a high level of consciousness which can only be achieved through constant efforts of the soul to reach an ideal of perfection. Plato taught a method for realizing this goal. It is the aim of his teaching. It is the aim of the Western Tradition.

How is this going to end??

Like pretty much everyone else, I want to see the fighting and killing in Gaza come to an end. A friend has suggested that if the Israelis’ would give the Palestinians Hope, and even switch from war to rebuilding their infrastructure, lifting the embargo, dismantling the settlements, and other acts of peace and goodwill, this would have an effect. I agree with the sentiment, but I can’t help wondering if could be effective. I can’t help wondering if ANY attempt at peace would or could be effective as long as Hamas is in power. Here are some statements in Hamas’ Charter. How does one negotiate and collaborate with people who say these things? What realistic choices does Israel have?

‘”Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it” (Preamble)

“In the face of the Jews’ usurpation, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised.” (Article 15)

Peace initiatives are explicitly ridiculed:

“[Peace] initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement… There is no solution for the Palestinian problem except by Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are but a waste of time, an exercise in futility.” (Article 13)

“The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: ‘O Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.” (Article 7)

Then, of course, there’s the usual tiresome anti-Semitic claims they probably learned for ‘Mein Kampf’ (which Arafat made all his followers read), peppered with a few modern additions like how evil the Rotary Club is:

“With their money, they took control of the world media… With their money they stirred revolutions in various parts of the globe… They stood behind the French Revolution, the Communist Revolution and most of the revolutions we hear about… With their money they formed secret organizations – such as the Freemasons, Rotary Clubs and the Lions – which are spreading around the world, in order to destroy societies and carry out Zionist interests… They stood behind World War I … and formed the League of Nations through which they could rule the world. They were behind World War II, through which they made huge financial gains… There is no war going on anywhere without them having their finger in it.’ (Article 22)

And let’s not forget the “Protocols of Zion” that Hitler enjoyed so much, and were discredited long ago as obvious forgeries:

‘Zionism scheming has no end, and after Palestine, they will covet expansion from the Nile to the Euphrates River. When they have finished digesting the area on which they have laid their hand, they will look forward to more expansion. Their scheme has been laid out in the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’.’ (Article 32)

“The HAMAS regards itself as the spearhead and the vanguard of the circle of struggle against World Zionism… Islamic groups all over the Arab world should also do the same, since they are best equipped for their future role in the fight against the warmongering Jews.” (Article 32)

So I ask you, how is this ever going to end? Israel obviously cannot lay down their arms in the face of this kind of hatred and determination to kill them. Israel isn’t going to go away, any more than Americans are going to return to Europe and give the land back to Native Americans.(arguably just, but no one is expecting it to happen. But all this killing and slaughter of innocents can’t be the solution.

How is this going to end??

The Right Thing for the Wrong Reason?

We know that when others tell us what is good and true, their words must always be questioned. We pay lip service to this admonition, but it requires more. The integrity of our own mind must be considered sacred. “I am ashamed,” Emerson lamented, “to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions.” This does not mean we should stick blindly and stubbornly to every unexamined belief. Most of the time, ‘belief’ is only a way of adhering to one conviction or another on thoughtless and inadequate grounds: perhaps because someone told us to believe it, perhaps because believing it makes us comfortable and spares us the effort of thinking for ourselves. Emerson is speaking here of an inner certainty that is not based on submissiveness to others, mere stubbornness, or wishful thinking, but on objective inner experience. I remember along these lines an evening long ago when a wise teacher of mine made a statement and asked me what I thought of what he’d claimed. I said politely, “I believe you.” Boy, was that ever the wrong answer! He bellowed at me so that the room shook, “You believe me?!? You have no right to believe what I say! How dare you take my work for your own! You find out for yourself!”

Emerson grieved over the fact that we all tend to be far too concerned with how we look in others people’s eyes. This is why we often do what we think we ought to do – which means that even if it is what we ought to do this is the wrong reason for doing it. “Men do what is called a good action,” he notes, such as “some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine…. Their works are done as an apology…. Their virtues are penances.” This is simply hypocrisy – acts of kindness and generosity that have nothing to do with one’s own volition. “I do not wish to expiate, but to live.”

The Sacred Number “3″

Three, a number imbued with exquisite symbolic meaning, is represented by a ‘Triangle’, the geometric form that is created from three invisible points and the three invisible lines that connect them. The number One (a Point) has no dimensions, and Two (a line) has one dimension: thus, One and Two belong to the realm of unmanifest pure Mind – they cannot be seen by the human eye. A Triangle combines two dimensions (left/right and up/down), and this gives it a unique, peculiar, and immensely significant quality. Like any flat surface, it can be seen — if it is facing you in its upright position. But if a triangle is flipped horizontally so that its side is facing you, then there is only a line facing you — and a line is totally insubstantial and invisible. This means that a Triangle can ‘appear’ in the Material world and then ‘disappear’ out of it. In other words, the ephemeral number Three lies curiously in between the Intelligible world of Spirit and the Sensible world of Matter. Three represents a ‘Threshold’ between them, a passageway that links the manifest with the transcendent. This ‘Threshold’ can be thought of as the locus of the soul, which is partly of the manifest world and partly of the unmanifest world. It may also be thought of as the dwelling place of angels and demons, beings that are partly of the earth and partly of the heavens. For Plato, this is the level of Dianoia, the level of abstract principles, mathematics, and pure reason, between matter (with its illusions and opinions), and the eternal world of the perfect archetypal Forms.

Lammas (Lugnasadh), August, 2014

Lammas, or, Lugnasadh, is a Gaelic name for a festival celebrating the first fruits of the harvest, as well as the fruits of our labors as we hopefully see the desires that we had at the start of the year now unfolding. The feast commemorates the funeral games of Lugh, Celtic god of light, and son of the Sun. In the mythological story of the Wheel of the Year, the Sun God transfers his power into the grain, and is then sacrificed when the grain is harvested. This is one of many worldwide stories of a dying, self-sacrificing and resurrecting god of the harvest, who dies for his people so that they may live. Peoples throughout history have held celebrations at the time of the first harvest, including the Jewish observance of Shavuot, and the corresponding Christian Pentecost. Among many Pagans, Lammas is one of four major major Sabbats (Samhain, Imbolc, Beltane, and Lammas) that are celebrated throughout the year.

The power of the sun enters the grain, it ripens, and is then harvested and made into the first bread of the season. This is the Saxon ‘loaf-mass’, now ‘Lammas’. Seeds are saved for planting next year’s crop (with our deepest disingenuous apologies to Monsanto), so that the sun god may rise again in Spring with new life, just as the sun also rises anew in the sky. As the new season’s first loaf of bread is baked, the harvest Goddess, Demeter (Ceres), is thanked for her blessings.

The August full moon is also known as the ‘Barley Moon’ as the first grain harvest begins. The grain has sprouted, it holds food for harvesting as well as seed for the next generation. This is a time to think about and meditate on the connections in life, a time to remember the infinite cycles of life that have gone before us and will continue on after our own brief journey on Earth comes to an end.

PLATO’S PARABLE OF THE SHIP

Long ago, Socrates knew that nations (like souls, to which he compares them) are not very well-ordered: few citizens do what they are best suited for, everyone wants to interfere with everything, and only buffoons are typically in charge. In The Republic, Socrates narrates a wonderful parable to demonstrate his point.

“Imagine then a fleet or a ship in which there is a captain who is taller and stronger than any of the crew…. The sailors are quarreling with one another about the steering – everyone is of the opinion that he has the right to steer, though he has never learned the art of navigation…and will further assert that it cannot be taught, and they are ready to cut in pieces anyone who says the contrary. They throng about the captain, begging him to commit the helm to them; and if at any time they do not prevail, but others are preferred to them, they kill the others or throw them overboard…. [Finally, having put the noble captain out of commission] with drink or some narcotic drug, they mutiny and take possession of the ship….”

After this, the sailors “make free with the [ship’s] stores”, and “eating and drinking, they proceed on their voyage in such a manner as may be expected of them.” They love and compliment whoever approves of their behavior, and accuse all others of being fools and good-for-nothings – including of course, the captain.

Sound familiar? Of course, if Socrates is correct, this is also the condition of our souls: The rightful authority has been narcotized, the staff has mutinied and is running amok, and the elements of wisdom and conscience are belittled, ignored, or even destroyed.

But where is the ‘Captain’ of the human soul? For Socrates and Plato, the ‘True Ruler’, that ought to be making decisions, would have to be that part of the mind which absolutely knows, beyond any mere opinion, the difference between good and evil − the part of our soul that is capable of unerringly discerning ‘the Good’. Does such a place exist? Plato thought so. He called this part of the soul Nous.

Nous is that special place in our intellect – beyond the confines of imagination, belief, and even reason – that arrives at knowledge by sudden, uncontradictable, insight. Such an insight (we have all had them) may follow in the wake of a long and painstaking period of questioning and pondering, or it may appear inexplicably out of the blue, but when it arrives it arrives in a flash. In general, these are rare and involuntary events, for this is a potential human faculty that usually lies dormant. But Socrates believed that it is possible for this faculty to become conscious and deliberate. In fact, ‘awakening Nous‘− not merely studying or thinking − is the highest task of anyone who wishes to perfect his or her soul. It is possible, even easy, to have a keen and clever mind, to know a great many facts, and to be filled with practical and theoretical knowledge, and yet to have no authentic Wisdom because one’s Nous (the “Eye of the Soul”) has never awakened. Such a soul is always like that ship whose captain has been narcotized, a ship which is either in a state of endless anarchy, or which has been taken over by one or another tyrannical usurper: some harsh or foolish passion, appetite, belief or prejudice, which ‘rules’ and ruins one’s life.

For Socrates, then, Wisdom is not about knowing many things or understanding difficult ideas. It is always and only about awakening one’s soul to wonder and insight.

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For more about ancient Greece, their thoughts, their mythology, and the Eleusinian Mysteries,
you may enjoy my book:
LOVE, WISDOM AND GOD:
The Longing of the Western Soul

Rumi

When you feel the qualities of Gabriel in you,

you fly up quickly

like a fledgling not thinking of the ground.

When you feel asinine qualities in you,

no matter how hard you try to do otherwise,

you will head toward the stable.

The mouse is not despicable for its form,

which is a helpless victim to birds of prey,

the mouse who loves dark places and cheese

and pistachio nuts and syrup.

But when the white falcon

has the inner nature of a mouse

it is a disgrace to all animals.

- Rumi, Jalal al-Din, from his poem Those You Are With, translated by John Moyne and Coleman Barks, in Open Secret: Versions of Rumi, Threshold Books, Putney VT, 1984, p. 80