Your Esoteric Initiation Part 2: EVERYTHING YOU THOUGHT YOU KNEW IS ACTUALLY THE OCCULT
The argument between science and religion has always been useless, because they are both different sides of one coin: esoteric occultism. This is not in theory either, but in practice, as will be described ahead—but these misunderstandings do not stop here. Mainstream scholars of both fields have hit a brick wall in their understanding, which has become glaring and apparent, yet still unattended as ever. A greater number of individuals have surely begun to realize this, both scholar and layman alike, but still there have been too many who have not penetrated this thick layer of confusion.
Instead of reaching a study of metaphysical phenomenology and Natural Law, often the people who are fed up with the Mainstream view will settle for ideas like “Aliens built the pyramids,” “Humans were created to mine gold,” or “New Age/New Thought” and the embarrassingly ostentatious claim of the “Law of Attraction,” which is far too poor of a developed theory to actually incorporate into one’s life. However, is this trying to rule out that “extradimensional entities” (not necessarily extra “terrestrials”) have popped their heads in on human history before? Not necessarily. Nor is this article claiming that thoughts do not have a causal effect in the physical world—but ancient aliens building pyramids and new age ideals are like hiking halfway up a mountain, declaring that the incline is just another part of the peak, and climbing back down with a sense of completion that is still false.
The point is this: there is a reason that people had to form secret societies to promulgate this information. Not only was it coveted for its potential uses, but society has always failed to discern the occultists who are simply seeking their own stake of truth, from the occultists who are seeking to manipulate others for their own personal gain. Perhaps the term “occultist” might throw some people off, so the term “metaphysicist” is offered as slang. It is important to get past the idea that the “occult” is a set of dogmatic spiritual beliefs, like some sort of religion. The occult is, in the long run, the decentralized pursuit of the hidden objective: Natural Law and Order (which can be considered the Law of Karma, or other names). The mentioning of names like Nikola Tesla and Isaac Newton should not be surprising in this context, as these are simply a couple of gentlemen that history has been gracious enough to remember, that have understood these principles.
People are beginning to realize the connection between spirituality and science, but what too many people are still missing, is that spirituality created science. All schools of thought today etymologically stem from the concept of ancient “Philosophy,” first and foremost. For the vast majority of human history, there was never even a consideration of “science” and “religion” as different categories.
As it was firmly laid out in the first part of this series, the initiatic mysteries of the Gnostic teachings are the empirical and historical definition of Natural Law as it has been understood by man. By understanding the mysteries of initiation, there is no longer a need to mince words and squabble with dogmatic individuals—everyone is united under the banner of an empirical and logical search for truth, and the dogmatic—the uninitiated—will continue to wander through the maze of their own neuronal karma.
Incepted in Babylon, promulgated by Egypt, and disseminated by the Greek and Hebrew, gnosis was originally instilled in the human by the Babylonians’ charting of the heavens, leading to the origination of astronomy as astrology in early society (setting aside for this conversation, the lengthy and detailed origins of these sciences in India, and the probability that the ancient metaphysics of the far east and west were never totally separate from each other). More specifically than even astrology, is the lesser known concepts of “Astro-theology.”
Far from some New Age ideas about star worship (which is what a lot of these watered down horoscopes, et cetera, represent), Astrotheology represented the idea that in order to “worship” God properly, a person had to know exactly what to worship. To explain this further, it is important to briefly digress and explain where the etymological esoteric origins of monotheism have stemmed from. As the Divination Arts (Sciences) of Gnosticism were slowly promulgated in the search for an empirical understanding of God and spirituality, the occult concepts of the Microcosm and Macrocosm synthesis brought about the classical adage “As above, so below;” as man represented the microcosm of the Divine nature he was connected to, so should the macrocosmic reflection of man be something similar to him.
To ancient metaphysicists, the human being represented a nuanced encapsulation of the universe, and the universe represented a nuanced and boundless potential of the spirit of man. This was not to be interpreted as a literal person in the sky, but rather to impress the deep reflective natures of the Microcosm and Macrocosm of the universe. Perhaps the best, synthesized word on this subject could be a chapter in Manly Palmer Hall’s The Secret Teachings of All Ages, a compendium of western esoteric history that was published in 1928; this research still remains one of the most comprehensive books on the subject ever written—especially on public record. The chapter, The Human Body in Symbolism, can be read here.
With this working definition, the Gnostic Mysteries sought to painstakingly detail both their inner minds and the outer, astronomical nature of the heavens, in order to perceive the metadata of the two sets, in an attempt to understand God, or more accurately put: “gnosis.” The Houses of the Zodiac and the Procession of the Equinox began as the cornerstone of analysis in Babylon, simultaneously developing mathematics (considered as numerology) in order to detail the quantities and ratios involved with the habits of the sky.
Supplementary to this, the Tarot cards were developed using an elaborated collection of the astronomical/neurological equivalencies, combined with the esoteric origins of mathematics. Tarot was inarguably the original “playing card,” and so calling these cards something like “a spiritual version of a card game” is etymologically incorrect. All card games are aberrations of the Tarot, technically. The Tree of Life has a bit of a murkier history, and it should be expressed here that none of these events can be pinpointed to a specific person, or date, et cetera, and instead represents a complex evolution of thought that transcended time and culture, and continues to do so. However, while the Hebrew Kabbalists are credited with the promulgation of the Tree of Life diagram, it is known that this knowledge was impressed on the Hebrew in Egypt, the Egyptians likely having it handed down from somewhere else.
While history is not an exact science, there is a great deal of scholastic analysis that has gone into the idea of the Babylonian holy citadel, Etemenanki (which was a towering pyramidal-type structure, known as a “ziggurat”) as being the biblical Tower of Babel. Little is known about Etemenanki today, and even less remains of it, but this ancient structure was clearly used for nothing other than spiritual discernment and practice, likely of the astronomical variety (among other practices). Whether or not this temple or one like it can be considered as the literal Tower of Babel (if there was a literal tower), a brief assessment of the matter can be this: The story of the tower represents the initiation and original unification of these esoteric “spirit sciences,” under the “temple” of the Gnostic Mysteries (whether this be a literal or metaphorical tower, the point is overall moot, since these structures of spiritual significance and gravity were known to exist in Babylon, clearly). The “moral” given in the story of the Tower could be considered as the extent of the hardships that gnosis must go through in order to flourish—the very predicament that this series of articles is attempting to elaborate on. However, the details of the biblical story could and likely do have a layered variety of understanding to it.
In any case, Old Kingdom Egypt was undoubtedly heavily influenced by Babylon through the transmission of the gnostic sciences. Whether this be a direct transmission or by proxy is something that scholars have continued to quarrel about, but the influences are empirically undeniable. In fact, it seems a heavily viable theory (if not already proven in simple empirical deduction) that the seasonal miracles of the Nile River and the transmission of these esoteric sciences are what allowed Old Kingdom Egypt to flourish so quickly (quickly by historical standards, that is). Egypt advanced its understanding of the anatomy of the human experience and the universe, by continuing the studies of astrology through the Procession of the Equinox and how this affected human consciousness (known as the “Yuga Cycles” in India).
Egypt as well continued its studies of numerology and what was eventually to be considered as “Pythagorean mathematics,” after it was impressed onto the Greeks, and flourished by Pythagoras and his unsung colleagues. Known for its artistic prowess, ancient Greece was overwhelmingly successful in its social incorporation of mathematics at the vibratory level: music. However, the Greeks cannot be solely attributed to the continuation of esoteric mathematics, as what is called Pythagorean mathematics is also heavily prevalent in Hebrew Kabbalistic metaphysics, known as gematria, which is the numerological system used to categorize the Bible. Obviously, discussing these intricate historical particulars is a little hopelessly futile, since the history of the promulgation of these esoteric sciences is a tangled rat’s nest that scholars have been trying to piece together for centuries. This article does not claim to have the complexities of this story mapped out, but is meant to serve as an initiation into this subject (pun intended) and nothing more.
With this in mind, from here, in a flurry of esoteric cultural exchange, the Hebrew, Greeks, and Romans set the next stage of spiritual development: the exoteric nature of the esoteric. This means that an allegory represents the surface-level representation, and the deeper level that it is meant to signify. In Egypt, for instance, this two-step process was essentially known by all Egyptians. However, the Greek, Roman, and Hebrew gnostic traditions marked an abrupt and definitive split in the administration of this knowledge. Egypt as well laid the groundwork for the god-king, which was adopted by emergent societies ever since, and still continues in degrees to this day. Born out of the idea that only a truly enlightened human is fit to lead, the Pharaonic idea of the god-king ultimately became an excuse for elitism and royal bloodlines. The emergent Greek, Roman, and Hebrew cultures would then take note of this god-king ploy, and use it to not only conserve power, but to help them further divide the esoteric from the exoteric. Thus is the generalized, overarching, but well-sourced birth of the modern sociopolitical function of certain branches of certain occult secret societies.
This brief history lesson, is presented in order to present this template: everything of philosophical, spiritual, and even technological significance can be traced back to the occult. This is a generalization of course, but not by much. As discussed, astronomy came from astrology, physics from metaphysics, mathematics and even music from numerology, psychology from the Tarot and esoteric symbolism, psychiatry and psychopharmacology from herbalism and shamanism, modern politics from esoteric philosophies of governance, modern space travel developments from the study of the multiplicity of dimensions in occultism—characterized, as one example, by the Tree of Life diagram (NASA’s occult origins).
In fact, as a final nail on the coffin, a novel by Stefan Andriopoulos titled, Ghostly Apparitions: German Idealism, the Gothic Novel, and Optical Media, details the spiritualist origins of media technologies like the radio and television, the television having been originally developed by spiritualist societies attempting to create a technological tool for a séance. So, while it might be a slippery slope to outright call a television a Ouija board, it can be said that the latter did historically inspire the former.
All in all, what can be taken away from this is that wisdom has much more to do with context of knowledge, and not simply having knowledge. History’s occulted information isn’t exactly an unheard secret (although there will always be plenty of these), but more to the point, it is the concealment of the advents of human culture and society—and these advents are demonstrably related to gnosis as characterized throughout human history.
Basically, there is gnosis in every single thing, whether one can interpret it or not.