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- TEMPLE OF SERAPIS|
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THE WATER VESSEL
"Tilopa now filled several vessels with water, emptied them
into one vessel and then refilled the many from the One. I understand this filling and refilling as the fact that one value appears in many (forms) and that the many have only one value." Guenther,
H.V. The Life and Teachings of Naropa, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1971. p. 38. 14 The esoteric meaning here is that the tenets that were thought to have been exterminated are carefully transferred for safety's sake into another vessel.” Margaret Starbird, The Woman with The Alabaster Jar, Mary Magdalen and the Holy Grail, Bear & Company, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1993. p..112. These two quotations from two different traditions deserve a certain amount of attention. The symbolism of Two Jugs, or Two Vases, also appears in Arcanum 17, The Star. It seems that the left jug is Silver and the right, Golden. According to the Church of Light: " "Arcanum XIV is
figured by the genie of the sun holdling a golden urn and a silver urn,
and pouring from one to the other the conducting fluid of life." And: "The fluid transferred from one urn to another is the symbol of transmutation..." |
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We are under no obligation to read this ".. conducting fluid of life..." in a literal sense. For Margaret Starbird fluid = tenets. In other words, the Teachings, which are transmitted from from Form to another. This is in essense what the word transformation means. And it is a subject that has caused no amount of grief to esoteric scholars. Then this is this very potent statement by Hesse: ". . . cross-fertilizations between the disciplines occurred frequently" Hesse, The Glass Bead Game. Here, disciplines = forms = vessels = fluid = tenets. and: cross-fertilizations = transference Let us look at a Masonic example: “Although there is evidence for a generic connection between the Craft and the Ancient Mysteries, there is no explanation of how the material might have been transmitted or how the tradition could remain hidden through the rigours of the Dark Ages and the probing of the Inquisition.” W. Kirk MacNulty, Freemasonry – A Journey through Ritual and Symbol, Thames and Hudson, London, 1991, p. 67.. The Masonic Lineage - is also a codification of the Architecture of the
Universe into mathematical and geometrical patterns. God as the Grand Architect
of the Universe, so to speak - Transmission cannot take place in a Void - and thus a FORM is necessary. These FORMS are not always what we expect. That is to say, they are NOT necessarily clothed in an esoteric garb, or controlled by academics or politicians. Culture is one example - music another. Culture-forms that are more exoteric - manifested in the Renaissance in particular. Often, the violent hegemony of a particular theological system - for example the Christian Inquisition - which ran for almost 800 years - made it necessary for the Secret Teachings to be placed in codes and ciphers. This struggle to survive - birthed an entire range of esoteric languages - one of which is the Sacred Tarot - another the system known as Alchemy, or for example, the symbols embedded in watersmarks from the 13th century onwards, of which Harold Bayley made a study.. Wherever the Transmission reveals itself in Activity, there is a parallel translation action. The Transmission moves across various cultural forms. In this sense, strictly speaking, it is TRANSFORMATIONAL. In turn, we, as the observers of this process, and its participants, have to have the necessary mental elasticity to perceive these forms, without falling into the various traps of separatist thinking. For example, Astrology cannot, historically, be separated from the doctrine of the Microcosmos-Macrocosmos. But this doctrine is essentially Hermetic. Therefore, Astrology, is an Hermetic Art. The same applies to Alchemy. And the other esoteric Sciences can be included as well. The Hermetic Transmission is absolutely inclusive. Again, the stream of this transmission, merely translates itself. if such a stream can be said to have a self. "It has been our endeavor, therefore, to transmit the tradition exactly as it has been revealed to us by our researches." Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game, p. 49 In this superbly cryptic statement, Hesse lays before us a few routes from which to commence. The Tradition is transmitted. The Nature of this Transmission, is in itself highly coded. The Tradition, is Revelation. NATURE AS THE TRADITION That 'Nature' itself, is the Transmission. This perspective is very much embedded in the Tao, which uses analogies from Nature to represent the various qualities of existence. Part of this vocabulary, is of course, the world of the Elements, Fire, Water, Air and Earth. Using the analogy of the snow-peaks, from which the streams descend, joining into rivers - and then into the sea. So the Lineage has literally flown down the Ages. Another good example is the Transmission from Tilopa to Naropa - and so on in Tibetan Buddhism. Streams, rivers, the sea, are all fluids. The fluids flowing from the Silver urn to the Golden urn. TRANSMISSION Which ever way we look at this problem, there is only one solution that my own research has convinced me as being probable. If we look, by analogy, at the 20th Century transmission of Tibetan Buddhism to the West, we see that many variations and different Schools of Tibetan Buddhism have taken root in the so-called Occidental World. The same applies to the various branches of the Christian Church, which all seeded themselves in the New World, e.g. the Puritans in America, Catholics in South America and Anglicans in the English Colonies. Therefore, why should the same not apply to, for example, the religion of Ancient Egypt? The religion of Egypt in any event, with its vast history of bifurcation, its various sacred centres and galaxy of Gods, certainly did not present a unified, monoform to the outside world. It makes sense, as a paradigm, that the different Schools and Religious Colleges of Egypt, would send diplomatic streams into the 'outer' world, to civilizations beyond the Nile Valley. One such stream, via the matrix of Roman colonization, allowed for the dispersion of Egyptian religions as far afield as the Alps. There were Isis Temples in the Val d'Aosta and Bologna. But in terms of sheer cultural concentration, the Bay of Naples seemed to attract the most initiatory activity. When I first read the C.C. Zain claim that the Tarot could be traced back to Ancient Egypt, I was not very impressed. 40 years later, there is no so much doubt in my mind, that there might be a partial truth to this. And this evidence, is historically embedded in what I call the Anthony and Cleopatra paradigm. Rome and Alexandria, and on this axis, the Mystery Schools of the Bay of Naples play an important role. And in particular context to the Tarot, the: THE NATURE OF TRANSMISSION " the potency of the Hermetic impulses toward a new vision of the world..." From: Frances A. Yates, The Hermetic Tradition in Renaissance Science, in: Singleton, C.S. ed., Art, Science and History in the Renaissance, Baltimore, 1968, pp.260 - p.261
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