2

I.2

Telestic Transformation & Philosophical Re-birth

Algis Uz^davinys

92-149

"the statue is related to the ka {KL} ... of the deified deceased; therefore

the offerings should ... be regarded as a way of sustaining ... his ka {KL}.

{Said "offerings" are of foods : indeed, the very word \KL\ must be a degraded form of Strong's 400 \>okel\ 'food'.}

The mummy is related to the ba {BL} ... of the deified deeased ... . ...

{\BL\ is most likely a degraded form of Strong's 60 \>ebel\ 'lamentation, mourning'.}

R. B. Finnestad says [1978, p. 134] :

[quoted] The deified man is ... rendered cultically accessible through animating his statue with his ka. When the mummy is the object, attention is directed to ... his ba that flies like a bird from the closed burial chamber."

[quoted from Burckhardt 1987, pp. 154-5] "According to Egyptian doctrine, the lower subtle modality of man, which the Hebrews call the 'breath of remains' ... can be held and fixed by ... the mummy. This form ... sublimates this 'breath' and fixes it, making it a kind of link ... of the survivors ..., ... by means of which its blessings can reach them."

"The Upper Egyptian pavilion-like shrine of the vulture goddess Nekhbet {NH^B-t} was known as the Great House (... per-aa {PR-<L}, Hellenized as 'pharaoh'). ...

The Lower Egyptian shrine of the serpent goddess Wadjet {WLD-t} is the House of Flame (per-nu)."

p. 95

"Usually the tomb is called akhet {LH^-t}, the 'horizon' ... . ... Here ... deceased

p. 96

human beings acquire im-akh {JM-LH^}, blessedness, ... achieved by rising through the spinal column ... ."

"Socrates cites Euripides as saying, 'Who knows, if life be death, and death be life?' and continues : 'Perhaps we too are dead, for

I heard this from some wise man, that we are now dead,

{"Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God" (Epistole to the Kolossaieus 3:3).}

and that for us the body is a tomb' (Gorg. 492E-493A)."

"[There are persons who, post-mortem,] will carry water to pour into a perforated jar in a similarly perforated sieve.

{The jar is emblematic of one's post-mortem container for memory, while the container wherein the water is being transported to the jar is emblematic of one's piety during life. If one's piety be defective during life, so shall oneis capacity for memory post-mortem be defective.}

And ... the sieve ... means ... the soul of the foolish, because it is perforated and through lack of belief and forgetfulness unable to hold anything (Gorg. 493BC)."

{This ascription to post-mortem loss (of divine waters in one's custody) of post-mortem failure (of one's memory), is rather similar to the Orphic ascription of failure (of one's memory postmortem, so that one will be unable to carry memories into a future incarnation) to lack of knowledge of which pool (Pool of Memory instead of Pool of Forgetfulness) to quaff of waters from.}

p. 96

"the body (soma) functions as a fence (peribolos) around the soul :

'Since the soul does penance for those things it is expiating, it has the body (soma) as a fence (sema), in order that it may be saved (sozetai) ...' (Crat. 400C). ...

The tomb is a kind of magic temenos ..., constructed around the House of Gold (per neb),

p. 97

the burial chamber ... guarded by Isis, Nephthys, Neith, and Selqet ... . ...

The descent (kathodos) of the soul into the particular human body is recognized by Plotinus as the soul's essential task to order and govern all subsequent lower manifestations :

[quoted] ... the inclination (neusis) is an illumination (ellampsis) to what is below ..., for if it [viz., "what is below"] did not exist the soul would have nowhere to illuminate. ... (Enn. I.1.12.25-29)"

p. 97

"The winged soul ... attains to ... dominating the lower psychic forces. These forces ..., if properly ritualized, purified and controlled, may help the higher soul in its ascent (anodos) ... ."

p. 98

"During their cultic service, the Egyptian priests are lifted up into union with the gods ... . ... This is achieved through ... rites which recapitulate cosmogony or in phot[-]agogia ... ."

"The Egyptian tomb between visible and invisible ... is ... most important ..., since 'the time that one spends on earth is only a dream', according to The Harper's Song (Theban Tomb 50). ...

In fact, the tomb is built for the gods so as to affirm their eternal order ... ."

"the number of the body is called bomiskos (5 * 6* 7 = 210) by the Pythagoreans, bomiskos being the dimunutive form of bomos, the term for the altar ... ."

[quoted from Lindsay 1970, p. 258] "The resurrection that the alchemist seeks in himself and in his materials ... is something that manifests itself in the here and now ... . It is a movement from a lower level of life to a higher level, from one level of consciousness to a level with a qualitatively higher centre of organisation."

p. 102

"A. K. Coomaraswamy argues that liberation ... if for the gods, not for men : we must not suppose that 'we' are the heroesof this cosmic drama. ...

p. 103

Therefore, as A. K. Coomaraswamy pointed out [1987, p. 137], means to refer our activities to their noetic archetypes : 'If we can ... give a true account (ratio, logos) of ourselves and our doings ... it will mean that our actions have been ... to the point (sadhu) and in good form (pratirupam)."

"Proclus argues :

[quoted] ... why the theologians say that at

the dismemberment of Dionysus

{More actually this occurred in the lifetime prior to when he was known as "Dio-nusos". In that praevious lifetime, he was known, instead, as "Zagreus" (a name cognate with Skt \yaj-\ 'to be immolated').}

his intellect was preserved undivided

{more actually, his "heart" (GM 30.b) : There are likewise North-AmerIndian variant forms of myth concerning a god who persisted through his heart, e.g., the Nez Perce mound-hearted breath-inhaling monster ("NPCS"; "C&M").}

through the foresight of Athena and was the first to be divided, and certainly ... into seven ... . ... (In Parm. 808 ...)."

{"To the Pythagoreans the number 7 is represented by the heptad and is associated with the Greek maiden goddess Athene." (CPsH, p. 195)}

"Dialectic investigates existent things that are real (ta onta) ..., discusses good ..., what is eternal ... . It ... settles down in the realms of intellect, feeding the soul in what Plato calls 'the plain of truth' (Phaidr. 248B), where the soul finds its true food.

Seeking scientific knowledge (episteme {epistemology}) of everything,

dialectic uses the method of division

{separating the existent from the inexistent, the good from the ungood, the aeternal from the non-aeternal}

to distinguish the Forms {the Archetypes} and to determine the essential nature of each thing (Enn. I.3.4.5-14). Regarded as the supreme science (which has close analogies in all kinds of ancient metaphysics expressed in ... mythological discourse), dialectic is able to distinguish between appearance and reality, multiplicity and unity, various levels of being {such as, potentiality and actuality} and gradations of form {such as, mutability and stability}. ...

Therefore the dialectic may be regarded as a well-ordered rite of thought : it is efficacious and real to the extent that it is ritualized according to the intelligible patterns and rules of logic."

p. 106

"Therefore the philosopher's task is to make proper use of his love [of wisdom] for the passage to invisible noe[:]tic beauty. ... For this reason he ... contemplates realities. The practice of dialectic for ascent is a kind of spiritual askesis ... involves ... the direct perception of noe[:]tic Forms by intellectual intuition, noesis {noesis} ... . ...

The end of the dialectic journey is ... the

p. 107

unity of the intelligible circuit, thereby [quoted from Anton 1992, p. 23] 'attaining assimilation to ... consciousness of the ultimate ne-in-the-many, prior to the return to the One itself'."

p. 110

"The final union, ... the unification of Intellect with the One is ... a 'state-outside' (ekstasis) ... ."

p. 111

"The divine breath (pneuma), which descends and enters the initiate, or 'the presence of the fire of the gods and some ineffable form of light' (... De myster. 113.8-9), are such that they cover the initiate completely in a circle ... ."

p. 112

"Proclus argues that the transcendent Forms ... are ... unknowable (agnosta) to our knowledge, being contemplated only by the divine Intellect :

p. 113

[quoted] This is is so ... especially for those that are beyond (ep>ekeina) the intellective gods; for ... only illumination (ellampsis) from the intellective gods renders us capable of being connected to those intelligible-and-intellective Forms..., ... evelating our soul ... to the place above Heaven. (In Parm. 949.13-38)"

"As the Bes with seven heads he ... 'keeps his name mysterious before the gods, the giant of a million cubits'."

"Agathos Daimon ... gave birth to an enormous Egg which contained ...

the biform god with golden wings,

{Double-faced god Vis.n.u rideth upon golden-winged bird Garu-tman.}

namely Phanes, who combined in himself all ... cosmic powers,

having two faces, one in front and one behind."

{thus, resembling Latin god Janus}

"The desolate realm of Rosetau,

{= mythic realm Rasa-tala (described in puran.a-s)}

the 'Land of Sokar, who is on his sand', is regarded as

a sandy landscape where the solar barque needs to be towed

{The the ship Argoi was left "high and dry a mile or more inland, the argonauts towed their ship over a "lifeless desert" (GM.154.e).}

and is itself transformed into a fiery serpent.

{The argonaut Mopsos "trod upon a Libyan serpent" (GM.154.f).}

The Book of the Hidden Chamber, designated ... as Amduat {JM-DWL-t}, locates this land, ... renewing the ... Eye, in the dark fourth hour of the Sun's night journey."

p. 127

"According to Porphyry, the constitution (schesis) of the body is retained in Hades through the stamping of an eidolon (image, simulacrum) on the pneuma by phantasia (Sent. 32). He says that to be in Hades for the soul is

[quoted from Guthrie 1988, pp. 42-3] to preside over an image whose nature is ... to have an obscure hypostatic form of existence. That is why ...

p. 128

the soul ... descends into Hades when ... she impresses a form on the pneuma ..., and thus acquires an image. ... (Sent. 32)"

"the gnostic ... invokes the mysterious nocturnal Sun, like Lucius, the initiate of the Isis mysteries in Apuleius,

who at midnight caught sight of the Sun,

{The sun is visible at midnight on circumpolar regions (Arctic and Antarctic).}

dazzling in radiant light (.. Metam. XL.285)."

p. 131

"Proclus says

[quoted] Just as nature {physis} stands creatively above th visible figures, so the soul, exercising her capacity to know ..., projects on the imagination, as on a mirror, the principles of the figures; and the imagination, receiving in pictorial form these reflections of the ideas within the soul, by their means affords the soul an opportunity to turn inward ...

p. 132

and attend to herself. ... It is as if a man ... should ... possess such a power as

would enable him to become at the same time the seer and the object seen (In Euclid. 141.2 ff.)."

{This paradox is also described in Bauddha expositions of results of meditation/contemplation.}

"The end of Odysseus' journey would be marked with a complete ignorance of material works : when a wayfarer, seeing Odysseus' oar would think it was a winnowing fan, the the ultimate ... return to the divine Intellect would be accomplished.

S. R. Hill [1992, p. 82] regards a winnowing fan as 'the very symbol of Ganesha (Gan.a-is`a}'s ears,

{Cf. Dumbo the Elephant's ears for flying in the air, likely alluding to how "The Mughal Dynasty in India was started by Babbar"the elephant"" ("WHT").}

which kept the words of untruth and of the unwise away from the soul."

p. 146

"the Egyptian initiate ... identifies himself with the winged soul in order to fly to the solar barque and join ... the gods. ... . ... the winged soul cannot be abandoned by the gods : there is ... return to the starry arche-

p. 147

types and ... [Burkert 2000, p. 311] '... there is the beholding of the well ordered cosmos ... . ...' ...

As in the Pyramid Texts, the stars are regarded as the archetypal abodes of divinized souls".

3

I.3

Metallourgy & Demiourgy : Hephaistos

Rod Blackhirst

150-66

p. 155

"Towards the end of Iliad XVIII, Hephaestus is at his forge ... making ... a set of twenty tripods. ... These ... move of their own accord. They go centre-wards to the assemblies of the gods, then

they retreat to the periphery of the assembly hall. ...

{WRONG! They retreat, instead, to the periphery of the house of Hephaistos himself.}

As Proclus says [On the Timaios, 2.281 : transl. by Thomas Taylor], these twenty tripods are, in fact, the three-pointed

interstices

{NAY! not "interstices" (which would be gaps), but rather the meeting-points, each of 3 regular geometrical plane polygons.}

of the regular dodecahedron. ...

{Similarly as a dodecahedron hath 12 facets, even so, in accordance with the "the meaning of the twelve alphabets" (mentioned in the Nama-samgiti, according to the 6th chapter of the Swayambhu Puran.am -- W"SP"), "the twelve-year-long drought" is quelled by Swayambhu (according to the 9th chapter of the Swayambhu Puran.am -- W"SP").}

It says [Iliad 18.387 sq : transl. by Samuel Butler, 1898] :

[quoted] Thetis came to the house of Hephaestos, imperishable,

star-bespangled,

{Are said star-spangles each 3-rayed, thus similar to the 3-legged stools?}

fairest of the abodes i heaven, a house of bronze wrought by the lame god's own hands. She found him busy ... making twenty tripods that were to stand by the wall of his house, and he set wheels of gold under them that they might go of their own selves to the ...

p. 156

gods, and then come back again ... ."

"Hephaestus ... has one foot in the realm of the gods but also one foot in the ... physical world."

{This might parallel the case of the angelos who "had in his hand a little book open" : "he set his right foot upon the sea, and his left foot upon the Earth" (Apokalupsis of Ioannes 10:2).}