Treaty of Esoteric Symbology and Archaic Cosmogony of the Masonic Temple for the Freemason Brothers
Index: The Path of Man through Archaic Traditions Races and the subdivision of Peoples
The Path of Man through Archaic Traditions
To the eyes of the Apprentice it appears obvious the need to develop inside his own mind the ability to grasp the three-fold interpretation of every possible topic examined.
The first allows the observation of the succession of events in their ordinary manifestations.
The second allows to catch the thread of man's thought in the effort to fulfill his needs, in continuity and similitude of events, despite being represented in different exterior forms.
Finally, the third grants access to the understanding of the world of causes, where it is possible to conceive how every event in the physical world is due to the impulse of Life to manifest and express itself through Its forms, of which man is one, and to continue its journey creating a wave that permeates and drives everything, known to us as Evolution.
The three abilities described so far are still part of the world of Form, Personality in man. Therefore they are physical and passive.
Only by overcoming it, although in manifestation, Man will be able to consider himself in contact with the Reality of Life and to consciously manifest the factors of his own future.
Here the fourth level appears.
During his journey the researcher encounters topics that suit particularly well the re-discovery of the esoteric history of the humankind. They allow him to follow the thought process of the man who built them by going back on the path of his history.
This means that we must never consider the customs or culture of a Nation as its result, but we must find the links that joins the nation itself to the common roots and all the others through the topics.
These roots, common to all nations, start and develop, although in apparently different forms and languages, from a unique matrix always present in all the diversities; it is identifiable because it is constantly linked to the evolutionary Work of Man.
This common matrix, constant and present in all of man's work, although with differences caused by the different characteristics of his mind and his different abilityies of expression during the Eras, is considered by the Initiates to the Mysteries as the Tradition or Great Mother.
To face each of these topics with the mental attitude of the archaeologist is the approach suitable to penetrate the many strata that the history of man has layered around itself; such an operation is certainly fascinating for an esotericist. It is an immersion into the deep layers of man's history beyond the limits of what we normally know.
Although considering the skepticism with which such operation is observed by the many laics in our Order, who focus their attention to the finding and selection of physically certain and irrefutable objective verifications, in order to demonstrate their theories for the approval of other people, we, who don't need to turn art into research or work, or even a profession, will feel free from the need to demonstrate to the commercial world what we love to discover.
In the topics that we will deal with in this fourth chapter, history, myth and legend blend. But since we are positive that they originate from previous causes, we will overcome this limit as well.
To draw this kind of itinerary for a free thinker means first of all to structure firstly and around our creative mind , in geometrically essential form, all the available information, ready to move them according to the need of research.
The erudite man is involved in his choices by what he knows, whilst the wise man involves and uses his own knowledge to reach his ideal goals.
We are taught that for every topic the research system must necessarily be three-fold. But there is not the supremacy of a system over another. Whatever the access point in the thought-system, it leads towards the spiral motion that allows man's mind to lift itself and go up.
The creation of stars and heaven - XII century miniature
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With theological research, the explanation of reality is made by referring to forces independent from phenomena. |
With metaphysical research, reality is explained by resorting to both theological explanation and positive knowledge. |
Ptolemy. The Armillary Sphere.
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Representation of the Big Bang
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In the positive stage, the explanation is given by an empirical survey of reality and scientific laws. |
In the light of the research system just explained, it is appropriate to be able to connect Archaic Cosmogonies and Arts with Traditions and Science , in order to obtain a global view that allows the understanding of the real dimensions of the topic treated; this is certainly true not only for the present one, which will converge in the ritual use of Perfumes.
Our journey is carried out through territories that don't appear alike in their form and substance; therefore we will rely on what scientific research can give us, through the study of the changes of climate and the following Dynamic theories of the earth's crust; it is immersed for the understanding of our past and emerged for our present with the possible modifications of the territories for our future.
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In order to complete the picture of the changes in the scenes where the events of the history of Races of human collectivity occurred, we still have two factors to consider; the cataclysms reported in the historical and religious memory of every people and the continuous change in the configuration of continents, by effect of the motion of oceans and their drift caused by sea currents. |
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The scientific conclusions are shown with the help of the following image:
In order to widen the horizon of our research, I would like to accompany scientific theories with the ideas of a very able Mason affiliated to the Grand Lodge, Sir William Scott. Through a thorough research on Archaic Traditions, he reconstructed a very likely configuration of the two lost Continents, Lemuria and Atlantis, which are still objects of curiosity for many historians.
Lemuria, mythical continent disappeared after Hyperborea , was part of the first fragmentation of the earth's crust, still completely unstable, that was initially a unique fluctuating form. It is indicated in the ancient Oriental Tradition by the name of Shalmali, country of the Third human Race. Below is a passage from an ancient Commentary on the subject.
The Great Mother worked under the waves
it worked even more promptly for the third (Race) and its waist and navel appeared outside the water. It was the Belt, the sacred Himavat that stretches out around the world'
This Continent, as described in the Tradition, finds confirmation in the modern studies on the morphology of the emerged lands, which indicate its presence in a huge primordial aggregate called Pangaea. Other scientists indicate this continent with the name of Gondwana, a territory that still has this name and that at present is part of India .
This ring is believed to have surrounded the globe almost entirely from the Himalayan range, emerging from water, up to Cape Horn, from Siberia to Sweden and Norway on the North side, Africa and Madagascar on the South, from Australia to the present Patagonia . Seven hundred thousand years before Eocene, cataclysms of volcanic origin caused its disappearance; the fragments now visible are the Easter Island, Australia , Madagascar and many big islands and peninsulas in the north, such as Sweden and Norway .
The Archaic Tradition talks about the changed climatic conditions as a consequence of that unique but terrible cataclysm...
The Axis of the Wheel bent down. The Sun and the Moon stopped shining on the head of this part of those born from sweat. People saw snow, ice and cold. Men, animals and plants decreased their growth (height)
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In the meantime, in the west, the third of the disappeared continents, Atlantis, established itself as the cradle of Rmohal , the Fourth of the human Races.
In history there are many traces left by this Continent, together with the events and myths contained in it, in characters such as Homer and in particular Plato , whose real name was Aristocles . The latter mentions its existence in two of his works, Timaeus and Critias , and he describes in detail its position.
His contemporary ( 300 b.C. circa ) Manetho , a famous Egyptian historian, in a papyrus kept in the Saint Petersburg museum, describes the Kingdom of the Wise Men of Atlantis , dating their presence at 13,900 years earlier in the area which is now immersed, corresponding to the northern Atlantic ridge , which is 16,000 km circa long (the global mid-oceanic ridge is longer than 50,000 km).
In the ten-volume treaty by the Greek Laertius , called The lives and opinions of eminent philosophers , we can find mention of papyruses and documents owned by Egyptian priests dating 48,863 years prior to the kingdom of Alexander the Great, containing description of arts and customs of that people. Alexander ( 356-323 B.C.) himself dated the destruction of Atlantis in the year 9,564 B.C.
On the western side there are as many testimonies in religions and myths. There are two important manuscripts from the Maya people; one is the Chilam Balam , which contains a collection of ancient texts about religion and history, with the description of the events of that catastrophe. The description is also in the second manuscript, the Troano Codex , belonging to the Maya from Yucatan, whose king Plongeon had it translated 3,500 years ago circa.
The second manuscript goes as follows:
in the year 6 of the Khan, the 11Muluc of the month of Zac, terrible earthquakes started, which continued uninterrupted until the 13 Chuen. The district of the Clay hills, the country of Mu, was sacrificed. After lifting up twice it suddenly disappeared during the night, whilst the ground was shaken by continuous volcanic forces.
Since it was close to the sea, the earth sank and resurfaced in many points many times. At the end the surface gave way and divided in many parts, not being able to resist the force of convulsions; they sank with their 64 million inhabitants. This occurred 8,060 years before the writing of this book
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This is in brief the reconstruction of modifications of territories, scenes of the events of history of the Humankind.
Before devoting our attention to the link that will lead us to rejoin the symbolism of the Temple, it is appropriate to remind the Apprentice of the importance, for the researcher as well as for the scholar, of keeping the right proportions for any topic dealt with, in order to preserve a suitable view of the whole, both in the historic and traditional perspective, up to the origins that determined the topic itself.
The famous Seal of Atlantis, also present in many Phoenician colonies, is in actual fact the map of the mythical capital of the Continent of Atlantis, Poseidonia or City of the Bridge (!), as concordantly described in many documents in a succession of three canals and three rings of dry land and an exit-port that lead to the open sea. |
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Races and the subdivision of Peoples
Oriental Cosmogony helps us with the diagram above; it shows its vision of the initial involution followed by evolution of man, in what is called the Path of Return.
Since this Philosophy is well known to both researchers and esotericists, I don't think that we need any further explanation. Nevertheless, in order to spare the Apprentice a laborious research in the future, I would like to add the names of the Root Race that made the Races closer to us.
Any of us individually can study the topic further by going back in time. For the topics that we will deal with later, though, we have a special reason to stop and start over from the Fourth Race and its Peoples, looking at how events developed in times and places, knowing that the names used, although indicating the same Peoples or territories, change depending on the language, on Cosmogonies and men in the various Nations.
With reference to the previous diagram,
IV Race
Rmohals
Tlavatli
Toltec
Turanian
Semite
Akkadian
Mongolian
100,000 B.C. all the other mixed stocks descend from these.
V Race
Hindu / 60,000 B.C.
Arabian / 40,000 B.C.
Iranian / 30,000 B.C.
Celtic / 20,000 B.C.
Teutonic / 20,000 B.C.
Other mixed stocks descend from these.
At present, the most interesting stocks are forming, besides Europe, where many established themselves, in Australia and in the United States of America .
And with the advent of the VI Race there is also the occurrence of the great changes that will lead to the third of the great separations from Eras, as the Archaic Tradition reminds us,
when Divinity walked among men
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The most ancient Commentary that an ordinary researcher can consult describes with these words the events that led to the last great separation:
Verse 38 -
thus two by two on the Seven Zones, the Third Race gave birth to the Fourth-race men
Verse 39 The First, on every Zone, was moon-colored; the Second yellow like gold; the Third red; the Fourth brown, which became black with sin. The first seven human shoots were all of one complexion. The next seven began mixing.
Verse 40 Then the Third then the Fourth became tall with pride. We are the Kings, it was said; we are the Gods.
Verse 41 They took wives fair to look upon. Wives from the mindless, the narrow-headed. They bred monsters. Wicked demons, male and female
Verse 42 They built temples for the human body. Male and female they worshipped. Then the third eye (Spirit) acted no longer.
Verse 43 They built huge cities. Of rare earths and metals they built, and out of the fires vomited, out of the white stone of the mountains and of the black stone, they cut their own images in their size and likeness, and worshipped them.
Verse 44 They built great images nine yatis high (8.3 m) , the size of their bodies. Inner fires had destroyed the land of their fathers. The water threatened the Fourth.
Verse 45 The first great waters came. They swallowed the seven great islands.
