Prometheus and Initiation - GCOL Toronto Lecture 6B

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Jeremy Crow gives a public lecture in Toronto, Canada at the 6th official meeting of the Greater Church of Lucifer on the mythology surrounding Prometheus and how it relates to the path of occult initiation.

Stage 1: The Sub-Lunary (aka Elemental) Realm

Prometheus creates humanity out of clay and gives us the gift of standing upright like the gods. This stage represents primal mastery of the physical realm starting with basic survival first and then moving on to increasing one’s health/fitness and wealth.

Stage 2: The Planetary Realm

Prometheus steals the Fire of the Olympic Gods (Venus, Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, etc...) This represents the forbidden knowledge held by each of the gods of Olympus (aka the planets) being obtained by the initiate. This stage is also described in occult terms as passing through the first Seven Gates. A backlash generally comes with any subversive act that undermines the power of the status quo, represented symbolically in myth by the binding of Prometheus to a rock and his regenerating liver being eaten by an eagle every day.

Stage 3: The Zodiacial Realm

The myth of Hercules and his 12 Labours represent the journey of the sun through the 12 signs of the zodiac over the course of each solar year. During his 12 Labours, Hercules kills the eagle and frees Prometheus from his shackles. This stage involves becoming aware of short term and longer term cycles and learning how to best harness the changing tides of energy and influence. This is the Eighth Gate of occultism.

Stage 4: The Ninth Gate

Apotheosis, or attaining the state of divinity. This is represented in the myth of Chiron the Centaur giving up his immortality to Prometheus. This completes the full emancipation of Prometheus from his state of bondage. The work of an initiate at this stage is focused on manifesting artifacts that encapsulate a portion of their soul. This frees the individual up from complete dependence on the physical body, as these artifacts will continue to influence the world even after the death of the creator’s fleshy body. These artifacts can be thought of as additional physical vehicles for the individual’s soul.

Stage 5: Passing the Torch

At this point your focus is on lighting the torches of others with the flame you have been nurturing. This may take the form of mentoring students, sharing information with peers and even developing organizations such as businesses and Esoteric Orders which will perpetuate your corpus of archived knowledge well into the future in some way. This also includes the raising of children for those called to start a family of their own. We can playfully borrow the metaphor of the "Seven Year Reign of the Antichrist" from the apocalyptic Christianity. This is the short window of time in which you have the most power to make your mark in the world and firmly establish your own Titanic legend and legacy. There is no Promethean myth directly associated with this stage for the simple reason that the member is expected to ultimately write their own legend.

Stage 6: Transcending the Human Flesh

Whether your fleshy physical body is still operating or not, at this state you are now acting as a raw force in the world. The death of the body does not mean the end of what you have become. Your influence continues to impact the world regardless, because you have set up engines of change that may operate for decades or even centuries into the future.

For information on how this pattern maps onto the degree structure for the Titanic Order of Prometheus, visit:
https://torchbearertarot.com/2017/02/21/presentation-on-promethean-initiation/

Video Transcript

So what I'm going to be talking about today is is one of these characters from mythology and this is from Greco-Roman mythology and this is the character of Prometheus and you know it's a very popular character and I think a lot of people already understand the story but we're gonna go through it step by step and understand how Prometheus is one of these ideal or close to ideal examples from mythology that kind of give us an idea of what it means to be a "Bringer of Light."

You know, the word Lucifer is literally means "Bringer of Light" or "Light Bringer" and we have this concept, you know, the non-theistic Luciferians tend to think of Lucifer or the Light Bringer as an archetype rather than an individual character. It's more of a pattern, or almost a formula, you know? And if you if you have ever investigated the works of Joseph Campbell, the mythologist, he has this theory of "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" and he describes what is kind of an archetypal pattern that he sees in a lot of these characters throughout mythology, you know, ancient times-to-present where this character will go through a certain journey and he refers to that as "The Journey of the Hero" and I thought, "You know, okay so what would that mean on the Left Hand Path? What is the journey of the Left Hand Path hero? You know, the journey of the Light Bringer; the archetype of Lucifer. What is that? What is that actual pattern?" And the more I studied, the more I realized that actually this IS what Joseph Campbell was talking about in the first place.

The hero is the journey of the left-hand path hero and even has a lecture (I don't remember what the lecture is called) but in that lecture he actually explicitly says what his definition of Right Hand Path and Left Hand Path is. So the right-hand path in his view is the the social norms; the status quo; the institutions of the culture and society that you were raised in. That's the right hand path: just going along with what you're taught and believe and not really questioning it. Just kind of being part of that comfortable, established path that exists. That is the Right Hand Path. And the Left Hand Path, it's actually somebody who goes outside of that, who becomes an outsider for some reason or another, goes on this journey and explores the darkness, the unknown and conquers in some way, shape or form becomes victorious along this path alone, confronting fear, confronting the unknown and eventually comes back to that community and enriches the community with that gained, whatever that may be. Sometimes it's symbolic in the form of treasure. Other times it's knowledge or wisdom. Sometimes it's a whole new order that becomes established when they come back.

Sometimes they get punished when they come back for trying to... for bringing in this new information that's unwelcome. But generally that's the whole... the kind of the arc, and as I've gone through this I looked at Prometheus as one of these examples of a... it's a near ideal of the Left Hand Path or Light Bringer arc of the specific type of Hero that we're talking about here. And so I wanted to go over some of the different stages or elements of the Prometheus myth and kind of share some of my insights with you on those various stages.

So to begin with Prometheus was the one who was said to have actually created the human species. You know, Prometheus and his brother went around creating various different species and giving them their own unique individual properties and skills to survive in the world and find their niche. Prometheus gave humans the ability to stand upright like the gods did and so already you have that idea that Prometheus has created us in a way that is very similar to the gods, the ruling powers that be, you know, and so he created us out of clay and built us up and, you know, we breathe air and things like that, right, so there's a lot of different ways you can take this.

It can be, you know, taken literally by people who are literalists, where they say, "Oh, well this God created us is how humans got here!" Okay, you know, but I like to take it more in a symbolic way, you know, and say, "Okay, well what does this represent?" And it can represent some sort of ancestral memory of how, you know, we evolved from one species to another and such like that, right? Like how the human species even came about because there's difference. Definitely we've seen in the fossil record that hominids... different types of hominids have walked the earth and eventually we have the species of hominid that we are now. And so we can say that you know we're similar to the one that came before, that we came out of, and it could be some sort of ancestral memory that's mythologized that whole process. But that doesn't really give us anything to work with. Like, how does that apply in our lives so we can take it to another level here?

I like to see this process is almost like as if we're recreating ourselves. We don't change the way we look, really. You know, we're still the same as we were before but we've changed. We've taken a new beginning. It's an initiation, you know? And it's for it to be about, you know, on the first stages of initiation on the occult path we tend to focus... We have to look at the Maslow's hierarchy of needs. So you have to satisfy the most basic needs before you can even really consider going up to the next level of abstraction.

So when we first start out on the path of initiation we have to work with the elements You know, the here and the now. The things that... daily things that we have to deal with and get our lives in order and take our own power back and take responsibility for where we are in our lives and where we're going and make those choices. And so I kind of see it as that initiation into the elements. And to the level of survival now in the story, humans were very poorly equipped to survive and so they ended up relying on the gods. Zeus, you know, was the king of the gods, or, you know, Jupiter if you look at the Roman names for the same gods of Olympia. And they had to rely on the gods to provide. So in the sense that's almost like when we're growing up. You know, we don't know. We're not able to provide for ourselves, you know, and so there's a long period of time when humans are getting to the point where we are independent.

When we do get to that level of independence we have a lot more freedom over our lives. And this brings us to the next mythology of Prometheus where Prometheus decides that we have a great potential and steals the fire of the gods and brings it to humanity and teaches them the use of fire. And this dramatically increases our abilities to have power over our own destinies. You know this is a massive ability to actually choose what we're gonna do with our lives and in a very wide range of possibilities here.

So this fire of the gods, it's kind of in the planetary realm. It's this forbidden knowledge that gods didn't want us to know because they wanted us to be subservient to them. And Zeus doesn't like the fact that the fire got taught to humanity because he liked us animalistic and needy. And so it's like the planetary realm in a sense. If you look at the occult initiation it goes from the elemental realm. We go to the next level and this is the whole range of Arts and Sciences that we can explore in our lives. So these are the planets. The gods of Olympia are the same thing that we refer to as the planetary realm, you know like Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, all of these, right? So that's the next stage in the whole thing.

And what happens to Prometheus, the outsider, the Titan, you know, part of the old order, when he gives us that knowledge there's a backlash, you know? It upsets the status quo. It upsets the established order because this information empowers humans to do... to be independent and do what they want without having to rely on the gods. And so what happens is Zeus... there's a backlash. The established order has a backlash on Prometheus or this and binds him to a rock or a mountain and has an eagle come in and eat his liver every night and it grows back. And so he's eternally being tortured every... and it keeps repeating over and over and we're into these cycles which leads us to the next stage.

The next stage is where he actually gets unbound from that rock. So before we move onto that, I think it's important to note that when we talk about something that upsets the established order when we share our knowledge or ideas that make people question the beliefs that they... that are not questionable and they're not allowed to question, you know, this upsets a lot of people and there's a backlash. This is a thing that happens. They're put outside their comfort zone. It's called cognitive dissonance. So they're given information that conflicts with the... what they based their whole lives upon and they don't like it. And then they push away and oftentimes it'll even be a violent reaction. And they'll do whatever they can to avoid this cognitive dissonance; this sense that this information that is forbidden because it challenges the previously established idea of things.

So now we get into the next level where Prometheus actually becomes unbound. There are three conditions that Zeus or Jupiter put on Prometheus in order for him to actually escape these bonds. The ego must be defeated, the chains must be broken and an immortal has to give up its life. So along comes Hercules and he's on these twelve labors, which is very symbolic of the transit of the Sun through the 12 signs of the zodiac, you know, and here we have cycles again, you know, the night and day where he's being tortured eternally and then we have the the yearly cycle of the Sun moving through the the 12 signs of the zodiac.

So now we've gone from the elemental realm to the planetary realm and now we've gone even further to the fixed stars or the belt of the zodiac. And this is a standard progression that we see in occultism. And you see this in Dante's Inferno, you know. You see this in the Chaldean ladder of lights. You see this in the the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. You know, it's a very Universal progression.

And so Hercules comes along and he kills the eagle with a poisoned arrow and he breaks the chains, freeing Prometheus so he's able to kind of move around, do his thing, you know, and he's kind of gained a certain level of mastery. It's about, to me, I feel this is symbolic of gaining a certain level of mastery over his life. That in our lives as initiates gaining a certain level of mastery over your life that that backlash is something that you can deal with and you can still move on and do whatever you like. You know how to work the system in a sense and this comes through experience and knowledge and maturity, you know, where you're able to just say, "You know what? I don't agree. This is why and I'm going to move forward on that. I don't care that people are trying to make me feel frayed or making me feel isolated or any type of imaginary punishment or anything like that that they could place upon me. It won't stop me from accomplishing my will anymore." and that I think comes through experience and wisdom that comes through knowledge as you go through your life.

So you hit that next level in Maslow's hierarchy of needs and now he's still not completely free. He's free to do as he wishes he's free to move around, do what he wants, but he hasn't had that third condition met. So elsewhere, meanwhile, Hercules is talking with his childhood instructor Chiron and he drops one of his arrows by accident and it pierces the skin of the centaur Chiron and because this centaur is immortal he was just suffering and it's agony because he can't die, but he has been poisoned. And so ultimately what ends up happening is he gives up his immortality to Prometheus.

Now what does that mean? The centaur, I feel, kind of represents the body. The physical body, in a sense. Ultimately, you know, we don't have this physical vehicle forever. Ultimately it starts to age and deteriorate and becomes less effective for accomplishing our will in the world. So what do we have to do? We have to take it to the next level and we have to find new physical vehicles if we want to maintain our influence in the world.

There are two ways of doing this: You can establish what I like to call artifacts. These are physical things in the world that you've created that will continue on after the physical body stops working; that will continue to influence people going forward. So you could write a book, plant a tree, you could have a child, you know, you could create... you could make art. You know, like, it could be a painting. It could be a song that's recorded. These artifacts exist in the world and become a physical vehicle for a part of your will that's out there in the world influencing.

We all know that there are certain artists that not only did they continue to influence people long after they died, their influence continued to grow because they have these physical vehicles out there. They copied parts of themselves onto these artifacts or that they manufactured; that they've introduced into the world. These, uh, they're engines of change that imprint their will upon the world, in a sense.

Now there's another way of doing this too and that is through other people. So copying parts of You know, by even just having these group discussions we're kind of copying parts of each other onto each other, you know? And now the difference is that when you have these physical artifacts, say a book, it's a crystallized part of your philosophy and will. It's static. It stays the same but when you copy an idea onto another person they take it and run with it. It mutates. It grows. It continues to change.

So I think it's kind of important if that is part of our goal to achieve immortality that we have both. That we have these crystallized forms and we also have these living, mutating forms of ourselves that are out there in the world and having physical vehicles and that could be other people. That could be books. But they're two different ways of going about it. And it allows... having that interaction with others allows those ideas to grow and change and mutate into new things and we don't want it to be static. We like to change, you know? Anytime that it stays solid, like, and unchanging it's kind of dead, in a sense. But with these artifacts, they can inspire other people and copy themselves onto those people and then it can grow and change and mutate again, you know? So it kind of preserves certain ideas in a crystallized form. And then you... it also allows it to go out there in the world and grow and change.

So then the final stage... well, that stage in a sense, when he becomes immortal, it's through... it happens as the physical vehicle starts to die, right? And has to go... that immortality is transferred to others, right? We give our immortality to other people and they run with it. And finally, ultimately, our physical body stops working. In a sense we transcend the physical body but we become a concept; become an idea. You know, we become what we... the impact that we've made in the world. And that continues. And it continues through these various different vehicles. And it can spread and it can change as it goes and in a sense Prometheus kind of reinstitutes a new generation of Titans. By giving this knowledge to the humans, the humans now become, kind of, the new Titans in the world and they were just pure potential before but now that they have these empowering... this empowering knowledge they become as gods walking upon the Earth.

And that's basically the whole... the whole cycle of Prometheus. And he was considered a hero... a cultural hero. He wasn't considered a bad guy or a devil. We see other examples of Luciferian archetypes such as the serpent in Eden, but that was considered a cultural devil, right? That was considered something bad but essentially a lot of the same elements are there. So now the only thing that I think would make the Prometheus concept even more ideal is if if it was another human. You know, our ancestors rather than this external God that gifted humanity with this knowledge.

Whether it... I think it would be more empowering to think of it... if I could change one thing it would be our ancestors figuring things out and sharing it along the way. And as we go, breaking down these established orders to create something better something newer something different. And as it changes and grows it will continue. And they'll always be these people that challenge the status quo and these are the light bearers. These are the people that are able to go out and conquer and come back and bring that information that they shared... from... that they got from the unknown to spur us forward.

And that's my talk!

(The Question & Answer Period Was Not Transcribed But Is Contained In The Video)

If you would like to connect with me, please check out my other Steemit content here:

https://steemit.com/@jeremycrow

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