From Chaos to Light – Psycho-dramatic representation of the Journey through the Great Work
Like during a storm, the flash of light crossed the infinite and with a vibrant sound it penetrated the black form and became matter itself, starting to animate and color itself.
The white broke, originating a rainbow of seven colors and each color emitted Its note and it took its position according to the established Order.
The Verb was incarnated, matter had to be consecrated. But the spirit in the matter of man soon forgot the Verb and the sound became noise. The Light faded and the deepest abyss opened for the little Soul that, separated from the Abode of the Father, had just become Life.
In the brier where it fell, it saw the ghosts of pain and violence, betrayal and grief, indifference and selfishness crawling next to it.
Stunned and incredulous it wandered among rubble and destruction, finding the remains of the promised land only among its own memories.
But suddenly it heard a familiar sound, then another and another; its heart started beating faster and faster. It recognized its sisters; it wasn't alone any longer against the obscure power of Darkness.
And the Great Work started . The restoration of the Spiritual Kingdom in Matter, Kingdom of Chaos .
Slowly oblivion vanished and the light of Spirit , at first flickering like a candle, became gradually brighter and brighter and it showed the little Soul the True Path. And It showed it to the hearts that wanted to see it.
And it was Light in the Matter as well.
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I wrote this short prologue in order to give a psycho-dramatic view to the history of the ‘fall' of our soul, which we know is the same for all Souls. Likewise, the last part of the Journey on the Path to their ‘reintegration' in the Celestial Jerusalem is the same for all Souls.
The One, in the statement: ‘ I Am Him Who Is! ', with an Act of Will, manifests part of Himself ‘ in the Waters of Chaos' so that the divine Energy becomes Vibration-Sound-Light and, slowing down its frequency from thought to light, becomes Matter and Form.
This energy, though, pays this new emerging reality with the oblivion of its original Self and as soon as the mind, the self of Form , becomes aware of its own ‘ I am this ', it achieves the concept of separation from the other Selves and the illusion ‘ but I am not those '.
This statement is the mother of all errors.
In that mind, the lower conscience of the Soul doesn't recognize itself any longer as emanation of the spiritual One, but it lives in an unreal and lost world of unknown and separated shadows, where the obscure Evil of egocentrism and incomprehension irremediably arises.
Oblivious to its own conscience, man's self doesn't recognize other ‘Sister Souls' as well as its own.
In the Forms there aren't any Brothers or Sisters, but only adversaries to beat and subdue to the Moloch of power and will of the personal selves.
The result of this first position taken is betrayal, generated by false coalitions and because of the violence of ideologies as means of affirmation. The grief of men falls into the indifference of the observers for everybody, winners and losers.
This is the fundament that lets the injustice of disparity between men appear in the world; with it the conflict of separation arises.
Once separation and conflict appear in man's actions they bring the ill-omened result of error and with it pain and affliction. The problem of evil and error is the true plague that man is fighting inside himself (the Armageddon) since they arose inside him and he won't be able to stop fighting until they have been completely resolved.
The matter, though, is not detached from its own Ego ( or, if we like, the superconscious of modern psychoanalysis ), but it is indeed joined to it by the invisible thread of conscience which, painful presence in the error, the mind often tries to disown, getting inebriated by the cup of profane life, which, it believes, contains the sweetest and gentlest nectar, whilst it hides the bitter drink of disillusion.
The latter appears even more obvious in the last defeat of old age and death, when we lose any hope to keep what we paid dearly, in the ephemeral World of Form, where everything changes and nothing stays forever.
This is the world of delusion.
Yet the Soul stretches towards the heart that looks for it and it bonds with that man with a thread that, fine at first, will later be the passage and the Path towards the infinite.
This Path is indicated in the Ancient commentaries with a particular quality ; it is worth thinking carefully about its meaning, especially those who would like to own its access key ( psychological ); it is called by the Brotherhood the Path of Measure.
‘...who will well commensurate all diversities will find all the responses...' Galileo Galilei
The reawakening from oblivion must be certainly considered as a drama foreseen and expected by the Self as integrating part of the initiatory psycho-drama that is the Human Work in the divine Project, emanated by the Mind of God, the Great Architect of the Universe.
But this journey back to the origins cannot and doesn't want to be immediate.
It is necessary for the mind, in order not to burn its inner sight, to be prepared to receive and support the Light of Knowledge that the Soul can pour on it by shadowing it.
What is necessary is a proper preparation, a steady will, the knowledge of times and ways due to the building of the links between the different psychic inner structures (the Bridges, whose colors indicate the different qualities of energy that are transmitted ).
All these abilities and virtues will be necessary to the Initiate in order for him to rule his kingdom, linking the ( metaphysical ) domains that exist above his ordinary conscience , with the ( physical ) Kingdom that live under it and adapting them with his Work of intelligent mediation up to turning them, as it is said in the hermetic Precept: ‘ …as above as below…'.
Of course we cannot exclude the possibility that, in certain conditions, a sudden ‘illumination' can happen. But it is fair to think that this is not the path generally carried out by the Adept. Except those who are recalled by the White Hierarchy to manifest a particular Work.
What does it mean to build the links among the best mental structures of man, if not the essence of the Work of construction of one's own inner Temple and at all the five levels of its invisible constitution?
In this inner Temple called Psyche and then Soul of Man , we will be able to recognize all the journeys that we can carry out, classifying the quality of the advancement in the steps of the Work ( levels of conscience and ability ).
In this Journey through himself man learns to acquire the synthesis of life, thanks to the right experiences gathered for having known and rectified all his mistakes, letting the blindfold of ignorance that veiled his eyes fall. During his journey every man finds the analogy between micro and macrocosm in this synthesis.
In the Precept of ‘ re-cognize Thyself ', once he has knocked down all walls ( ideological perimeters ) and pillars ( profane and exoteric doctrines ) of the exterior Temple, like any other personal limitation was knocked down, the Initiate will finally be able to escape the whited sepulcher of Personality, where it had been relegated by its own spiritual unconsciousness and walk free towards the Light that illuminates the Great Work.
To build the Bridge with the Heavens means to cross and join in oneself those steps of evolution idealized in the 10 Sephiroths or ‘Spheres of Conscience' or 10 ‘Philosophies' of the Journey, through the 22 Paths of the Sephirotic Tree*, up to the Trinitarian Triangle whose top is the Spirit of Kether. These ‘evolutionary spheres' drive the Work of the initiate, like a unique Path, from Tiphereth to Da'ath, towards the only opening that, abandoning the horizontal plane of the World of Chaos, the Labyrinth where the profane is lost, lifts up on the vertical plane of Initiation. Not Icarus, but new Daedalus, because ‘only with our own hands' man can build for himself the ‘ Wings of Knowledge and Wisdom ', to go up to the perpendicular that leads to the superior Self.
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* 33 levels – In this instance we also count the eleventh Sephiroth, Da'ath. Invisible, because it contains the Threshold of Passage of the last initiatory ‘Transformation'. 10 visible Sephiroths, an invisible one and 22 journeys express 33 levels of ‘esoteric maturation' of the initiate. The same number of levels, 33, is stated in the ‘orthodox' practice of initiatory Freemasonry.
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The fall of Man into matter
So far we have outlined the contents shared by all Mystic Cosmogonies, fragments of language and emotions that every man crosses during his psychological childhood , as a response to his search for the fleeting meaning of life, of invisible and wonderful.
The first impact of any man with the occult side of life is dramatically veiled by the grief of memories kept in traditions created by a spiritual Humankind, but by a mind that is still a child , which considers itself dispelled and abandoned in the world of matter, deprived of any wonderful attribute and denied the contact with the ‘divine', who was its safe reference and guide and whom it still confusedly remembers it descends from.
This drama or great rejection , so well represented in the allegory of the expulsion of man from heaven, its spiritual placenta , has always left in this oblivious soul the deep anguish of any puppy who, seeing himself driven away from a safe and protected place, wanders in the darkness, not knowing which direction to take without a source of external Light . In actual fact, for any man who has laboriously advanced using his inner Light, up to reaching the Thresholds of the Greater Initiation, this drama is brightened up by the understanding of the need of this action of apparent abandonment , wanted and achieved by the spiritual Archetype, called ‘the Great Chosen' and Universal Supreme Unity.
This two-fold need, which the Initiate gradually learns to recognize and accept as a sublime gift of himself, is the conscious acquisition by will and Free Will of his own role in the Plan for the Evolution of the Humankind and the conscious acquisition by will and Free Will of his own role in the Plan for the Evolution of the Planet.
These two plans, in the whole, are the actuation of the Great Work, which every Initiate becomes aware of being integrating part of, participating to it with all of himself.
Indeed, every man is part of the evolutionary Work, both personal and universal, with all the elements that make it. From the physical and concrete part of his own body to the emotional part of his own individual Personality, up to the conscious energy called Soul, reflection of the spiritual essence of the Monad.
Al the energies that form, as the Commentaries say, ‘ the many Clothes of Man ', are physical and metaphysical portions ‘ of the greatest Cloth of the Planet , which we experience and let live '* of a function that in esoteric Catechisms is called ‘ the Universal Communion between all living things'.
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* The Clothes of Man - …and Mary asked Jesus: ‘who are your disciples like?' and He answered: ‘they are like children ( the souls ) who entered a field that is not theirs ( the physical body ). When the landowners will come ( the archetypes of the physical elements ) he will tell them: ‘leave our field!'. And at their presence they will strip of their clothes to leave the field'.
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For the memory of the child-like Humankind the drama we were talking about is the memory of its individualization up to composing its own Kingdom of Nature .
This drama started ( always and only for the memory of Man ) with having been driven away from the Kingdom of Heaven (the ethereal planes of the Planet ) where he lived and removed from the shield and protection of a ‘divine' intelligence, shared and complete for all the beings, which directed him from the outside ( like still from the outside all the inhabitants of the Kingdoms of Nature below man's are directed ).
It was so until the presence of the mind ( the snake of the Eden ) appeared in the ethereal conscience of man. It weighed down its feminine ( receiving ) side, with its thoughts directed to the desire to own ( dynamic ) and understand ( the biblical conversation with the snake ), building inside it, with its drives towards the matter ( temptations to the possession of physicality, which the apple is the symbol of ) the plane below, the astral Body.
Man, son of the spirit , is ready to materialize, having prepared in his fall into the matter any previous clothing, he is ready to wear the clothes made of skin of an animal body , building apparently by himself, without any visible influences , the Human Kingdom, the new and second-last of the five Kingdoms of Nature.
Five Kingdoms that the Great Architect arranged to be part of the domain of Man, once he has reached the end of the Work of Construction of the Universe ( far from being finished ).
For the constitution of this new Kingdom of Nature in the World of Matter, it was necessary for man to forget his primordial ( ethereal-spiritual ) status and to stop referring to the protection of a Unique Intelligence, superior but conditioning, predominant and absolute and go by learning to the constitution of an individualized Will that achieves Discrimination and Free Will, but ‘…not without the pain of error of those who have lost the clear-vision of the Spirit'.
The Path of spiritual re-integration
Will, Discrimination and Free Will appear in the conscience of man as a response to the presence of the Ego. At first only intuitive , this first relation with the super-conscious will be sufficient to recall with more and more strength, in the lower of mental matter, the superior energy of the Triad. Until then, we thought that we had been removed and rejected by this energy, called the Light of the Soul ; but it will become clear that this was a delusion as well.
As we have said, the correct vision of the two right reasons for the labor and work of the Initiate will come to his help, when he is free in the mind but still crucified by the nails of the Four Elements (Earth, Water, Air and Fire ) to the cross of his material manifestation; it is the evolution of the Humankind and the Work of consecration of the Planet.
He understands how he experiences and lets live the planetary energies that he uses, continuously creating with them his own energetic Clothes ( from the ethereal to the astral Body, from the mental to the animic Body. Whilst the monadic Body belongs to the solar Logos ) and refining them by constantly using them.
Through nourishment and respiration man transforms the elements of matter unconsciously discriminating its dross and changing its noble elements into energies, thoughts, emotions and actions more sophisticated as the qualities of his conscience and the properties of his mind progress (see Esotericism and alimentary praxis ).
The purpose of this inner evolution is to ‘be able to build' with the Firmness of our own Thought, steady and perfect mental forms because as it is said: ‘…the Son will create, in the domains ruled by Him, by Will of His Father and in His name he will administer with justice'.
The esoteric Teaching states that the energies-Thought , continuously regenerated by the more and more qualified use that the Initiates and men ‘of good-will' make of it through their meditations, reflections and mental concentration, qualify more and more the Space that surrounds them ( psychic Habitat ), elevating the power of vibration. Indeed, the spiritual thought is called by hermeticists ‘Fire'. In the Hermetic Commentaries is also said that the space around a Master, when he talks, becomes inflamed; whilst the spiritual space or divine Kingdom is called, in the same tradition, ‘the Ocean of Fire'.
This explains the following postulate, present in the Philosophy of any Eastern and Western School and which is mistakenly considered lesser: ‘ …think with uprightness and you will do good (to the Humankind); never fall in low (vulgar) or negative thoughts or you will create conflict (in the lower worlds as well) but if you cannot do it, stop thinking what you are thinking about. Always think positive and you will see the reason for Good in all things and events (of life).'
To develop the direction showed by these few indications means to strengthen the ivory key that we thought broken , which opens, to the eyes of the researcher, the Door as narrow as the needle's eye of the occult meaning of the Great Work. This meaning is kept and covertly spread in the forms of Greater Catechisms and in the symbols of the High Degrees of Freemasonry.
It is precisely on the comprehension of these meanings that the Greater Initiate* makes in his Work the Great Alliances with the 5 th Kingdom of Nature , the spiritual World.
Because of these alliances his gestures, words and actions become ‘prerogatives of the attributes of Power'.
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* The Greater Initiate – With Initiation the great differences are affirmed in the field of conscience. A Master appears like a man (or a woman) from a phenomenal point of view; he has physical attributes, functions, habits and expression instruments of the 4 th Kingdom of Nature . But inside the form, his conscience is totally changed.
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Man finally understands that the pains and dramas of his own life don't originate from a kind of unknown and obscure punishment , but, on the contrary, that they are integrating part of the traditional 12 Labors (see The 12 Labors of Hercules and the Path of the Zodiac ) necessary to reach Initiation. Whilst the effort that he faces is to participate to the Great Work beside the Great Architect of the Universe.
It is a Work of reintegration of the matter, until it is made sacred together with the Initiate. The Initiate, aware of his own duties , not only gracefully welcomes ‘what awaits in the unfolding of his own destiny', but bears in mind every teaching of the initiatory Tradition made by the effort and experience of those who preceded him in that Path of Comprehension, Knowledge and Realization. This Path connects all men to the universality of their own existence; therefore it is necessary in order to economize the tension and the effort of those who walk on it and to accelerate the steps of the Initiatory Journey hermetically called from Chaos to Light .
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Red Freemasonry. From the Ritual of the Mason Prince, Knight of the Eagle and the Pelican.
XVIII degree of the A.A.S.R., whose philosophy revolves around the Gnostic ideal.
‘What time is it?
It is the first hour of the day when the veil of the Temple was torn
And darkness and dismay spread on Earth.
And the Light was obscured (1).
And the Masonic tools were broken (2).
And the Flaming Star disappeared (3).
And the Cubic Stone was broken.
The Word was lost (4).'
My intention in this work was to develop as clearly and definitely as possible the esoteric concepts implied in the above passage.
Just to cross the meanings hidden in the words of this short ritual passage of the XVIII degree, and at the same time to avoid crossing others , the unwinding will be long and complex; but before starting our Journey through those meanings, let's briefly analyze the most relevant terms.
(1) Matthew XXVII / 45, 46, 47, 51 ‘ From the sixth hour until the ninth hour darkness came over all the land. About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? – which means, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' When some of those standing there heard this, they said, ‘He's calling Elijah.' At the moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook and the rock split.
Mark XV / 33, 34, 35 ‘ At the sixth hour darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?'
Luke XXIII /44, 45, 46 ‘ It was now about the sixth hour, and darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour, for the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Jesus called out with a loud voice, ‘Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.' When he said this, he breathed his last.'
In these first sentences we find two concepts that we will analyze in detail later. The first is the obscuring of the Truth in the conscience, or if you prefer, in the mind of the men who didn't recognize the divinity inborn in Jesus' nature , the Christ Son of God. The second is the split of the veil of the Temple ; it is obvious that if the curtain is the sky, the Temple which the Apostles are referring to is the Planet itself, which then reacted to the offence given to the Great spiritual Entity. What reacted this way was later called Anima Mundi.
(2) As we will see later at great length, the tools which the Ritual is talking about are in actual fact abilities and virtues of the Psyche of the initiate.
(3) In esoteric iconography the sign of Pentalpha is the symbol of Man. In the strictest sense it represents the five Kingdoms of Nature contained by Man and his Form.
I) the Mineral kingdom, the skeleton;
II) the Vegetable kingdom, liquids;
III) the Animal kingdom, its Form or physical body;
IV) the Human kingdom, the world of Thought, first joined with instincts, passion and desires to the previous kingdom; in the highest and most qualified part of the Psyche or superior Ego it joins to the following Kingdom, the 5 th ;
V) the Spiritual kingdom involves the part considered as metaphysics of Man (Celestial), his Soul and Monad. Their presence, or better, their activities in the lower planes of man inflame his mind, illuminating it and spiritually transfiguring his Personality.
(4) The Cubic Stone, in the language of lesser initiates , represents our own Personality that must be processed and made completely smooth in order to be placed, symbolically, together will all the others ( other initiates ) in order to accomplish the ideal building that is the Temple dedicated to the ( greater ) Glory of the Great Architect of the Universe.
This Temple is the allegory of the universal Communion of all the Initiates ( in spirit ) that expresses, through Love and Wisdom, the Principles of the Universal Religion. Christ taught to imitate him, not to adore him. ‘ I am the Way and through me you will find the Home of the Father' , in the real application of this teaching we determine the difference between vulgar religion ( passive adoration and criterion of interpretation either subjective or of separated Groups of humanity ) and Universal Religion ( active identification of self, with the subsidiary Principles emanated by the One Archetypical Principle) .
The Cubic Stone in the greater language also called ‘of the Mysteries' contains another meaning. 
