Greetings everyone and welcome to this week’s study and opinion of Albert Pike’s Morals and Dogma as we continue on with Chapter 25.
This time we continue to read Pike’s accounts of the ancients beliefs on soul travel, or how souls were thought to enter and leave the body.
This time we begin with the beliefs of the ancient Greeks.
Now, LET’S READ PIKE!
In the ancient doctrine, certain Genii were charged with the duty of conducting souls to the bodies destined to receive them, and of withdrawing them from those bodies. According to Plutarch, these were the functions of Proserpine and Mercury. In Plato, a familiar Genius accompanies man at his birth, follows and watches him all his life, and at death conducts him to the tribunal of the Great Judge. These Genii are the media of communication between man and the Gods; and the soul is ever in their presence. This doctrine is taught in the oracles of Zoroaster: and these Genii were the Intelligences that resided in the planets.
Thus the secret science and mysterious emblems of initiation were connected with the Heavens, the Spheres, and the Constellations: and this connection must be studied by whomsoever would understand the ancient mind, and be enabled to interpret the allegories, and explore the meaning of the symbols, in which the old sages endeavored to delineate the ideas that struggled within them for utterance, and could be but insufficiently and inadequately expressed by language, whose words are images of those things alone that can be grasped by and are within the empire of the senses.
It is not possible for us thoroughly to appreciate the feelings with which the ancients regarded the Heavenly bodies, and the ideas to which their observation of the Heavens gave rise, because we cannot put ourselves in their places, look at the stars with their eyes in the world's youth, and divest ourselves .of the knowledge
p. 442
which even the commonest of us have, that makes us regard the Stars and Planets and all the Universe of Suns and Worlds, as a mere inanimate machine and aggregate of senseless orbs, no more astonishing, except in degree, than a clock or an orrery. We wonder and are amazed at the Power and Wisdom (to most men it seems only a kind of Infinite Ingenuity) of the MAKER: they wondered at the Work, and endowed it with Life and Force and mysterious Powers and mighty Influences.
As we can determine in these past few weeks, the ancients were very interested in “soul travel” if you will.
The inquisitive human mind always is in search of the answers to “where did we come from?” and “where are we going?"
The ancients also seemed interested in figuring out HOW did we get here, and how will we get back home?
So, according to Pike, the aancients believed in genii or we could call them “soul guides” that has helped our souls arrive to where we are now and these guides will also guide us back.
Pike makes mention that we often try to solve the equations of where we come from and where we are going through ritual and initiation.
It is not always immediate results after initiatory experiences that the real learning begins on a Mason’s path, but the initiation experience should have at least opened a door to higher learning and understanding and TOLERANCE. But initiation should also open the door to become intolerant of intolerance as well.
Earlier in our studies of Pike, I have written several times about what is culturally acceptable as opposed to what is “right” or “wrong”.
And we know that the sensless killings we witness all over the world these days cannot be accepted and is not acceptable in any culture.
Masons should stand against any intolerant behavior at all times.
Especially within our own lodges.
And, this is where we shall end our study for today as Pike does once again shift gears.
Thanks for your time reading along with me, and please never don’t hesitate to express your own civil opinions as well.
See you next week!
