Number Eight, from the Sign of Chaos.
Even though we have worked out the meanings of this Number applied to other topics, starting from the basis of the Menorah, we still have something interesting to say about it, still remaining within the limits of minimal Rules.
In this Number, 4+4, it is hidden the occult meaning of the Oblong Floor of the Reflection Chamber and of the Floor of the Masonic Temple, except, in the latter, for the Third Square, the Sancta Sanctorum of the Temple, value 12, where the Worshipful Master is situated. The latter, Light of the East (the Sun) symbolically works under the Perpendicular (the Plumbline or Initiatory Bridge) of the Great Architect of the Universe.
We have seen the eight-pointed Star as the Sign of Chaos. But to simply stop at that first and far too synthetic statement would not allow the researcher to completely and exhaustively own the meaning hidden in that shape.
The archetype of the number Eight is the Number Two and in it we find – as in the 2 – the concept of dualism connected to the pair of opposites which through the mediation of man (of man’s mind) become complementary and therefore his allies.
We find the same condition in the complementariness of Rhombus and Square. The Square represents the Form of Personality and all its egocentric tendencies to satisfy the emotions developed in its little sphere of the “personal present”, achievable through the perception of the physical counterpart of the senses alone.
This involves the complete abandonment and disinterest from one’s own Ego, for all those activities born in that little personal and blind sphere in the presence of the outside world. In order for the Ego to “resound in a response” (Law of Magnetic Attraction) it is necessary that that Personality is at least occasionally aligned in the vertical line of the “Plumb line” that connects them. The Bridge we often talk about.
Until then we can say that their lives not only experience two different levels of conscience, so different that they cannot communicate, but we can add that their lives have goals so different that they are opposite.
These two Entities so close but so different and both so focused on goals that appear at first sight irreconcilable, create such disarray in the sensitive conscience as well as in the insensitive one of man that it manifests the Chaos effect which his mind undergoes, until the moments of the choices that await him at the crucial points of the Path of his own evolution.
If those choices, initially a result of the sum of external as well as internal influences, will be directed to the vertical Path, sooner or later we will be caught by the sphere of energetic influence of the Triad, like a space capsule by the mass of a planet.
If this didn’t happen after various opportunities, farther and farther from the rarefied field of the higher influence, which I call animic instinct, that “little sphere of intelligent life” would fall, getting lost in the empty black space of the Path of the Left Hand.
In order to compose those different tensions in a harmonious whole, the Brother must cross and positively overcome those two stages that we have already seen and called Orientation (in the horizontal arm) and Initiatory Re-orientation (in the vertical arm) up to forming in itself what we know as the Sign of Hiram. In actual terms, we can redefine those two passages as: depolarizing the attention from transient and temporary things and consciously focusing it on the magnetic and attracting effect of the pole of one’s own Ego. |
The Sign of Hiram |
If we want to understand, through a natural example, the effect on our “concrete-astral” mind of the initial influence of the Ego, we must observe the tendency of salmons to swim upstream. Under that influence we perceive far more than a simple “vertical vocation” to Initiation; it becomes a need for the man on the Path.
At that point of his journey, man has the need to focus all his energies in forcing the passages among circumferences that hold the spheres of conscience, represented in the 10 Sephiroths of the Tree of Life.
This is why being able to focus all his dynamic drives, lower and higher, in a unique spot, they become his allies and the ability to exteriorize the Act of Will that transcends every obstacle appears in Man.
But the Brother who “wants” that Initiation should consider already that knowing the formal aspect of every part of the Order is not enough in order to be able to reach it. Neither he can by any other means than the Adept reaching the Motion and Intelligent Aspect (3rd Aspect) which alone will lead him to the Abyss of Transformation, expressed in the Tree of Life with the Sephiroth Da^ath.
This will be possible by disciplining all of our tensions under the direction of one unique mental vision. The Project of the Initiate.
For this purpose, we will need to adapt to the use of what we call today “psychodynamics” and that we find in the following terms:
| Meditation |
stage 1 |
Use of the mind in the rationalization of thought |
Concentration |
stage 2 |
Focalization of any thought form, as an entity separated from Chaos |
Visualization |
stage 3 |
Creative tension between Principles and superior Mind. The use of the Eye of the Mind.. |
Will |
stage 4 |
Dynamic projection of the image (project) between Archetype, Mind and exterior creativity.
The Bridge between “Wanting” and the “Act of Service to the Humankind”. |
The idea of crossing the threshold of mediocrity without the support of those higher psychic means to which we must train ourselves to respond is simply unthinkable.
Giordano Bruno |
Giordano Bruno is a western researcher for whom I feel great affection and respect. The great determination and clear consistency with which he asserted until the end his own intellectual and spiritual realizations, so much so that he did not accept any compromise with the foolishness of the profane powers, like many other “eminent scientists” did, makes him a very special Brother to my eyes. I mention him in this paragraph because he found “in the Art of Memory” a safe access for reaching the metaphysical thought. That Art, once developed, lead the “Traveler” far from the world of Chaos towards the true freedom and realization of Man in the conceptualization in self of the Archetype.
We can trace an interesting note of what Giordano Bruno achieved by analyzing the title of another Work of His: “The Shadows of Ideas”. Darkness represents thoughts, reflections and wishes of that mind detached from the Triad, Personality.
The Shadows of Ideas.
The implicit luminosity of the Ideas which the author refers to in this title is for those ideas that come from the metaphysical kingdom of the Triad, where the Bridge of connection with the universal archetype is situated. |
When the Triad gets connected with the physical and obscure brain of the Form of the Initiate, it enlightens it, projecting its own Light of Intelligence creating in the lower worlds of the thought forms Shadows of itself.
The Lesser Initiate.
When that “illumination” (increase of the vibrating activity of the mental energy) forms a “Steady channel of thought” between Triad and brain, that personality will not be the Shadow any longer, but the Reflection of the Soul.
The Greater Initiate.
The mason who wants to learn about the teachings of Giordano Bruno, without forgetting the esoteric reading key through which he needs to approach it, could not help but find the analogy in the spirit of the esoteric teaching contained in the XVII degree of the Scottish Rite with the necessary fusion between two forces.
Of the western (centrifugal) activity in the symbolism of the “Eastern and Western Knights” (notice the order) of the Art of Memory of Giordano Bruno and of the eastern (centripetal) introspection of the Power of the Mind, expressed in the teachings of the Raja Yoga (the Siddhi of the Eastern Initiates).
The freemason who is able to fully notice that analogy will see the opening of the secret door of two small mysteries.
First small mystery: Raja means king, sovereign, but in this initiatory context Raja Yoga means the Royal power of the Mind. The equivalent of the Royal Art for the western Adept who really understood it.
It becomes clear, then, the meaning that was hidden in the use of the name of the Biblical character that was certainly not a Great Initiate, King Solomon.
To those who see and not just look the symbology of the Masonic Catechism is a container full of occult knowledge. In this instance as well the message hidden in the form of legend is received only by those who can at the same time align the esoteric meanings of King Solomon, the King sat on the throne between the eyes, as the Commentaries about Initiation state, and the Seven Secret Masters, which are the seven energetic centers in the body of the Initiate and that when they are active convey in his microcosm the Life of the Seven Sacred Planets, in order to find in the inner rebirth the Master Hiram, allegory of the Initiatory Spirit of the Humankind.
When this truth takes shape in the mind of the Brother mason he will see the revealed meaning of the second small mystery.
Joining the wisdom of the “Eastern Knights” with the dynamicity of the “Western Knights” is the allegory used by the Masters of the Order of the High Degrees to hide the occult teaching that establish in the fusion of the abilities and prerogatives of the left side (active) of the brain, the West of man, with those of the right lobe (passive), his East, to obtain the illumination of the mind.
By bringing to the mind of the Initiate the active contribution of both the sides of the brain (this is the occult meaning of the Crown placed on the head of the Initiate and the Kings) we determine the ring of a complete mind, because it is both perceptive (feminine) and intuitive (masculine).
That Crown (the ring of the mind) lit up by the precious stones that symbolize the colors irradiating in the head of the Initiate by the energy of the Seven Sacred Planets (the 7 Aspects) allows the access to the GNOSIS of the Rose and Cross contained covertly in the teachings of the XVIII degree of the Scottish Rite.
In order to complete our examination of the Number Eight, we need to conceptually develop all the symbolic elements and their meanings contained in this image. |
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The choice of fish and not any other animal demonstrates that the Creator of this Symbol (Christ drew it on the sand for his disciples) unmistakably meant the Era of Pisces (lasting 2,500 years) just gone, which represented the lesser cycle of the Age of Iron, the Vulgar Era or Era without Light, called in the Eastern Philosophy Kali Yuga. The two fishes similar to the Sign of Chaos represent the lower and higher Selves that move in juxtaposition until they become complementary through an act of love and peace. The Bro will be able to see the same symbology when, at the Number 12, he understands the reason of the oppositions between the annual Zodiac, the illusion of matter and the reality of the Greater Zodiac.
As we will see, in the Wheel of the Greater Zodiac the Soul of man moves from Aries towards Pisces, whilst his personality rotates in reverse, in the non-existing Zodiac from Aries towards Taurus.
“Modern” astrologists are completely unreliable because they don’t consider this.
The Ancient Wisdom says that:
«...the Initiate stops the Wheel and once its shadow is extinguished only one Sign remains: the Higher one.»
I don’t think further comments are necessary with such an obvious meaning.
What could escape the younger Brother is the most important detail of the Symbol, the rope that joins the two Fishes is the Number Eight. |
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This symbol can be found in all the sacred decorations inscribed on the Floors of the Temples. It represents the concept of infinite in the manifestation, therefore quite different from the concept of absolute Infinite. Indeed the 8 is an infinite looping (circumduction) in the material three-dimensional space; this is why it is called a Timeless Work.
Being able to escape this motion on the spot means to be able to stop the Wheel of Illusion (of the Matter). This only happens to those who realize (remembering where they come from) they are not that Matter, but that they are only using it (remembering where they are going).
The Initiate who unravels the Enigma of his True Nature hidden in his First Occult Center is freed from the need of Rebirth (in the Matter) because, to paraphrase a Master, he understand he is not a subject of a Kingdom on this Earth.
And the Initiations continue on other levels.
888, the Initiatory Seal of the Infinite Motion in the 3 levels of the manifestation of the Universe. The researcher should look again at the two Seals of the Apprentice and the Master at the Number 4 and, comparing them with this, he should study their evolution.
