Greetings and welcome back as we continue chapter 25 of Albert Pike’s Morals and Dogma.
As we continue, we will find Pike describing the descent of souls from the heavens.
Many spiritual paths adhere to the belief that the souls descend from the heavens into the human body either before or after the physcical birth of the person or even animal.
There are deep symbolisms based upon from where the souls descend and even ascend back into the heavens that I will leave the reader to decide upon what symbolism (if any) the reader will adhere to (or not). Do take note of your own masonic lodge and you might find the astrological constellations being represented in one way or another, and also take note of your movement through the signs.
And now, LET’S READ PIKE!
Let us, in order to understand this old Thought, first follow the soul in its descent. The sphere or Heaven of the fixed stars was that Holy Region, and those Elysian Fields, that were the native domicile of souls, and the place to which they re-ascended, when they had recovered their primitive purity and simplicity. From that luminous region the soul set forth, when it journeyed toward the body; a destination which it did not reach until it had undergone three degradations, designated by the name of Deaths; and until it had passed through the several spheres and the elements. All souls remained in possession of Heaven and of happiness, so long as they were wise enough to avoid the contagion of the body, and to keep themselves from any contact with matter. But those who, from that lofty abode, where they were lapped in eternal light, have looked longingly toward the body, and toward that which we here below call life, but which is to the soul a real death; and who have conceived for it a secret desire,--those souls, victims of their concupiscence, are attracted by degrees toward the inferior regions of the world, by the mere weight of thought and of that terrestrial desire. The soul, perfectly incorporeal, does not at once invest itself with the gross envelope of the body, but little by little, by successive and insensible alterations, and in proportion as it removes further and further from the simple and perfect substance in which it dwelt at first. It first surrounds itself with a body composed of the substance of the stars; and afterward, as it descends through the several spheres, with ethereal matter more and more gross, thus by degrees descending to an earthly body; and its number of degradations or deaths being the same as that of the spheres which it traverses.
We also read in this paragraph that contact with the “contagion of the body” and all other matter was not in the best interest of the soul. We also learn that the descent into the body of the soul is a painful and arduous process.
To arrive into imperfection from perfection is a journey of death and sadness, until the soul arrives into the body, and then we make our journeys in the flesh.
This is akin to the gnostic story of the holy Sophia descending from the pleroma into the void with the permission of the ineffable father of all.
When Sophia entered into the void of darkness, through her thoughts she created the demiurge and the world which we know now. The demiurge, being imperfect, also then created this imperfect world and humanity which we know today.
It was ignorance in which we were created, and it is ignorance that we strive to rise above in gnostic thought.
In freemasonry, ignorance is the darkness in which we desire to escape. And the “salvation” from ignorance is education and further gnosis or “knowing” of the physical world in which we exist, and the spiritual world in which we strive to return to.
Next
The Galaxy, Macrobius says, crosses the Zodiac in two opposite points, Cancer and Capricorn, the tropical points in the sun's course, ordinarily called the Gates of the Sun. These two tropics, before his time, corresponded with those constellations, but in his day with Gemini and Sagittarius, in consequence of the precession of the equinoxes; but the signs of the Zodiac remained unchanged; and the Milky Way crossed at the signs Cancer and Capricorn, though not at those constellations.
p. 438
Through these gates souls were supposed to descend to earth and re-ascend to Heaven. One, Macrobius says, in his dream of Scipio, was styled the Gate of Men; and the other, the Gate of the Gods. Cancer was the former, because souls descended by it to the earth; and Capricorn the latter, because by it they re-ascended to their seats of immortality, and became Gods. From the. Milky Way, according to Pythagoras, diverged the route to the dominions of Pluto. Until they left the Galaxy, they were not deemed to have commenced to descend toward the terrestrial bodies. From that they departed, and to that they returned. Until they reached the sign Cancer, they had not left it, and were still Gods. When they reached Leo, they commenced their apprenticeship for their future condition; and when they were at Aquarius, the sign opposite Leo, they were furthest removed from human life.
Very interesting points made here through Pike’s studies of ancient thought, and none of this too far removed from gnostic ideals.
Manly P. Hall in “The Secret Teachings of All Ages” takes Pike’s observations and expounds on these ideals. I recommend a good reading of Manly P. Halls writings and viewings or “listenings” of his lectures to further understand the observations Pike is making here.
Gnostic studies from The Gnostic Bible and readings from gnosis.org are very helpful as well.
Let’s Move On
The soul, descending from the celestial limits, where the Zodiac and Galaxy unite, loses its spherical shape, the shape of all Divine Nature, and is lengthened into a cone, as a point is lengthened into a line; and then, an indivisible monad before, it divides itself and becomes a dead--that is, unity becomes division, disturbance, and conflict. Then it begins to experience the disorder which reigns in matter, to which it unites itself, becoming, as it were, intoxicated by draughts of grosser matter: of which inebriation the cup of Bakchos, between Cancer and Leo, is a symbol. It is for them the cup of forgetfulness. They assemble, says Plato, in the fields of oblivion, to drink there the water of the river Ameles, which causes men to forget everything. This fiction is also found in Virgil. "If souls," says Macrobius, "carried with them into the bodies they occupy all the knowledge which they had acquired of divine things, during their sojourn in the Heavens, men would not differ in opinion as to the Deity; but some of them forget more, and some less, of that which they had learned."
We smile at these notions of the ancients; but we must learn to look through these material images and allegories, to the ideas, struggling for utterance, the great speechless thoughts which they envelop: and it is well for us to consider whether we ourselves have yet found out any better way of representing to ourselves the soul's origin and its advent into this body, so entirely foreign to it; if, indeed, we have ever thought about it at all; or have not ceased to think, in despair.
In these paragraphs, Pike reminds us of the “forgetfulness” the soul has of its journey.
Gnostics refer to this as the ignorance we have as we live in our human form, but in our human form we also recognize the “inner spark” of enlightenment and the void we feel should we not nourish our desire for enlightenment.
In the last paragraph, Pike acknowledges that we may think in a condescending way of the ancients allegories, but then Pike challenges us to think for ourselves what these allegories might mean, what lessons do they hold for us individually as we conduct our own studies of the soul IF we study the soul at all.
I encourage you all to find time to study the spiritual aspects of our humanity, and to find the meanings in all allegories which we are subjected to in our churches and lodges. Not every person will or should see the allegorical meanings in either institution the same way.
What IS important is that we all become more enlightened after studying the allegories, which in turn helps to enlighten society as we change ourselves for the better.
That’s it for this week.
Notice yet another new URL for this study as blog.com has not been very reliable. I’ve switched to blogger.com as google seems to keep this site up and going with no real down time.
it has been a year or turmoil as I have tried to keep this study going both in my physical sense and electronically, so keep me in your thoughts, things WILL get better!
See you next week!