17

Postmodernity and Semiotic Self-Apotheosis

Per Faxneld

425-46

p. 426

"Pe`rez-Reverte (b. 1951) has been described as the ... Spanish author ... most popular outside his native country. ... Pe`rez-Reverte's fourth novel ... a light-hearted rejoinder to Eco's Il pendolo di Foucault ("Foucault's Pendulum") ... treats a similar theme ..., the tendency to over-interpret a half arbitrary selection of ... signs ... as being bearers of esoteric signification. ...

p. 427

Pe`rez-Reverte ... employs esoteric themes and motifs to illustrate ... older approaches to the world : the upholding of absolute truths ..., tradition and stability ... . ...

p. 428

Here, the struggle by the characters to transcend the episodic should ... be understood in terms of the classic esoteric stance where the world is read like a book filled with hidden signs. ...

p. 429

Regardless of the impact Barthes, Lyotard and related thinkers have had ..., there are good reasons to be hesitant concerning the oft-repeated ... description of our time as ... typified by the lack of Great Truths."

[fn. 15 "Cf. my criticism of such theories in Faxneld, 'Review : The Lure of the Dark Side', 411-412."] {The "Great Truths" needful are the doctrines of polytheism.}

p. 430

"'excessive intertextual reading and iinking of literary references' ... can ... in the spirit of Eco's Il pendolo di Foucault also be seen as a criticism of the overheated correspondence teachings esotericism."

"Scholarly demonology identifies Lucifer with knowledge.

{'Knowledge' Strong's 1108 \gnosis\, viz., Strong's 1844 \de<ah\ : in <iraqiy >aramaic, \MANDA<\, in the Ginza personified as apparent aequivalent to Pauran.ik \MANDHAtr.\}.

In Genesis {specificly, B-Re>s^iyt 3:1-7}the devil in the form of a serpent

{FALSE! The nah.as^ ('serpent') of B-Re>s^iyt 3:1-7 is nowhere in the TNaK identified with S`at.an ('Diabolos/Devil'); this erroneous identification is (for ulterior political motives) invented in the grossly-dissembling politically-oriented New Testament.}

succeeds in getting man to stop being a simpleton and gain ... lucidity, knowledge {"of good and evil", viz., awareneness of the importance of public ethics in socio-political considerations} ... ."

The death of God,

{More actually, that which is contemplated is the abolition of fact-suppressing monotheistic intolerance (characteristic of monistic tyrranies), and its replacement with fact-promoting polytheistic tolerance; combined with replacing YHWH's brutal militaristic secret-police-sustained autocracy with, instead, mutual co-operation amongst networked committees of divine-and-praeternatural entities exemplary for their loving-kindness.}

theology ...

{More actually, that which is contemplated is the abolition of monotheistic mono-theology (of ruthless autocracy enforced by ferocious tyrrant Jahweh over severely-dominated mal>akiym, harshly controlled as slaves) with in replacement, instead, a polytheistic poly-theology of egalitarian co-operative communality serving for the benefit of all.}

is the insight this initiator brings to the adept. Satan {read \S`at.an\}'s function as initiator is underscored by ... repeatedly explaining how an adept is lead {sic! : read "led"} along the path of initiation by his esoteric mentor." {Or, as indeed in this case, led by an esoteric mentrix, similarly as in the case of Carl Jung's being led by his own self-styled female "Soul" (Psukhe/Anima), as described in his long-secret Red Book. "C. G. Jung's ... confrontation with ... a feminine soul animated the composition of Jung's great Red Book, the book he formally titled Liber Novus." ("JLMLN")}

p. 432

"Jacques Cazotte's Le Diable amoureux ("The Devil in Love", 1772) ... . ...

p. 433

Cazotte (1719-1792) was a member of an esoteric society, L'Ordre Martiniste ... . With the help of miraculous esoteric powers he ... attempted counter-revolution of the mystics ... . ...

{"Among the Martinists who performed in the staged 1780s-1790s French destabilizations were Franz Anton Mesmer, Count Cagliostro (real name Giuseppe Balsamo), Jacques Cazotte, Fabré d'Olivet, and Joseph de Maistre." ("SAA")}

As an esoteric Catholic ... he celebrated absolute criteria for morality and religion ... . {"the alliance of Cazotte, of Cagliostro, of Martinez, of Saint Martin, of the comte de St. Bermain, of Eckartshausen ... arrived at the same result, the weakening of Christianity." ("ChICFNWO")} {This is to say, exoteric religion was to be weakened, while esoteric religion was to be strengthened.}

{"Martinism, a mocking perversion of Catholicism, considers Fallen Man to be in exile in this earthly existence, deprived of his powers. Man can only restore his original condition by initiation to the inner ranks of a secret society ... ." ("SAA")}

"In Marlowe's version, for example, Faust is given books by Lucifer's messenger Mephostophilis {distorted form of \Mephistopheles\ < (OnEtD"Mephistopheles", citing Göthe scholar Karl Julius Schröer 1886) Strong's 4650 \mepiys.\ 'maul/mallet' + Strong's 2950 \t.apal\ 'patch[er]; forge[r]' (as in >iyob 13:4)}

[fn. 41 "Marlowe, The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, 18. Cf. E. M. Butler's discussion of the 'magical Faustian manual entitled The Black Raven', in The Fortunes of Faust, 73 f."] {A meaning of 'mallet-forger' would naturally identify the dverg Sindri who (Prose Edda, Skáldskaparmál 43 -- "CThH") forged To`rr's hammer Mjo,lnir.}

"Eliphas Le'vi (1810-1875) pioneered an ambivalent view of Lucifer as ... {controlling or praesiding over} a cosmic fluidum he designated the "astral light" ... .

Romantic poets like William Blake (1757-1827) and Percy Shelley (1792-1822) had of course already celebrated Satan {read \S`at.an\} in several works, and were followed by later authors like Nobel laureate Giosue` Carducci ... that were even more blatant in their sympathy for the Devil."

p. 439

"Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891), chief

p. 440

ideologist of the Theosophical Society. Her magnum opus, The Secret Doctrine (1888), contained a lengthy discussion of how Lucifer ... in ...

The etymological meaning of his name, "lightbringer" {a signification likely deduced from (DMWA, p. 1208b) \hilal\ 'new moon' -- but this meaning may be a variation on 'madness' as supposed "lunacy" (generated from being stricken  with moon-beams)}, thus

{How-be-it, the original of this name, Strong's 1966 \heylel\, is from Strong's 1984 [this name's # being likely the reason for Orwell's choice of it for book-title] \halal\ 'boast, be mad, rage' with active participle Strong's 1947 \howlelah\ 'madness' : cognate with (DMWA, p. 1208b) \halal\ 'fright, terror, dismay'.}

that bestowed enlightenment {more actually, lunacy} upon man. According to Blavatsky, ... He stands for 'the Light of Knowledge' and is the (Blavatsky 1888, p. 507) 'ever-living symbol -- nay apotheosis -- of ...the intellectual independence of mankind."

"The last point is ... to find ... -- guided by the Devil herself -- ... a higher, more esoteric understanding of ... mysteries, which is certainly not postreligious, nor postmodern. ...

Coming from a very different angle {very different from postreligious postmodernism}, ... aim for a self-deification, where they would gain supernatural powers and a cosmic stature on par with that of God. Such lofty goals are certainly ... found elsewhere ..., and in a majority of so-called ... Left-Hand Path groups ..., this fact tends to explicitly be the central purpose of their endeavors."

18

Esoteric Theories of Color

Joscelyn Godwyn

447-76

p. 449, Table 18.2 correlation of heraldic tinctures, planets, and gemstones, according to Courtois (1414)

correlation of planets and gemstones : Hindu, Persian, and Polish sources (J.R.S.A. "Or. Chr.",  p. 570b)

Her. Tinct.

Planet

Gemstone

Hindu

Persian

Polish

Or [Gold]

Sun

TOPAZ

Ruby

TOPAZ

Diamond

Argent [Silver]

Moon

PEARL

PEARL

Crystal

Crystal

Gulez [Red]

Mars

Ruby

Coral

Bloodstone

Emerald

Azure [Blue]

Jupiter

SAPPHIRE

Topaz

Carnelian

Carnelian

Sable [Black]

Saturn

DIAMOND

SAPPHIRE

Sapphire

Turquoise

Vert [Green]

Venus

EMERALD

DIAMOND

Amethyst

Amethyst

Purpur [Purple]

Mercury

Amethyst

EMERALD

Touchstone

Lodestone

"Saint-Yves d'Alveydre (1842-1909) ... was the creator of the Arche'ome`tre, a complex colored diagram ... designated as 'the key to all the religions and sciences of antiquity and the reformation of all contemporary arts'. The diagram with its associated treatise was partially published after his death by Rene' Gue'non's Gnose group, then in fuller form under the ... coterie of Ge'rard Encausse (1865-1916), known in esoteric circles as Papus."

p. 466

"In 1887-89 an Indian Theosophist, Rama Prasada ..., published in the Theosophist a series of articles that were expanded into a much-read book, usually known as Nature's Finer Forces. These presented the Tattwas as colored symbols of the five elements, each with a characteristic shape ... . ... .  ... the Golden Dawn ... eagerly fastened onto the Tattwa symbols ... . Israel Regardie writes that they were the basis for the Order's earliest experiments in clairvoyance."

p. 467

[quoted from Regardie 1984, IV, 15] "This clearly perceived by the mind's eye, let the student at once imagine that it enlarges itself, becoming an object large enough for him to pass through. The next step is to imagine that he is actually passing through this ..., as though it were a door."

element

its color-symbol

its shape-symbol

Akas`a (aither)

black

prolate sphairoid

Vayu (air)

blue

disk or circle

Tejas (fire)

red

aequilateral triangle

Apas (water)

silvern

crescent

Pr.thivi (earth)

yellow

square or cube

p. 468

"Edwin S. Babbitt (1828-1905), an American Spiritualist ... founded a new healing discipline, color therapy. In his ... Principles of Light and Color (1878) Babbitt ... describes how in 1870 he began cultivating his interior vision, with signal success ... . ... At the same time, ... his experiences ... led him to formulate a theory of the atom, and to draw a diagram of its positive and negative poles and the vortices swirling around it."

p. 469

"Blavatsky's successor Annie Besant teamed up with Leadbeater ... . Spurred by Babbitt's example, they focused their powers first on the atomic world, publising the results as 'Occult Chemistry' in the periodical Lucifer (November, 1895).

Next they turned their attention to the human aura, producing a short book, Thought Forms (1901), that Leadbeater quickly supplemented with his own Man, Visible and Invisible (1902).

In 1905 Thought Forms reappeared in a second, enlarged edition rhat became generally known.  ... art historians recognize [Tuchman 1986] the importance of Besant and Leadbeater's work for its influence on Kandinsky, Mondrian, Kupka, and other early abstract artists."

"Red signified Anger;

Yellow, Highest Intellect;

Blue, Pure Religious Feeling;

Green, Sympathy; and

Orange, Pride."

"beside the physical body, humans possess a mental and an astral body that are perceptible to clairvoyants as auras. In these bodies, 'Each definite thought produces a double effect -- a radiating vibration and a floating form' [Besant & Leadbeater 1905, p. 21]."

p. 470

"in Watchers of the Seven Spheres (1933), a book of poems and paintings by H. K. Challoner, ... the intention is the

p. 471

same : to make visible the usually invisible. Challoner was the nom-de-plume of Janet Me'lanie Ailsa Mills (1894-1987). ... Also like many ..., she came to occult activity from a position of disbelief and reluctance. Eventually a discarnate "teacher" persuaded her to write, at his dictation, an account of her previous incarnations. This became a popular book, The Wheel of Rebirth.

A second, artistic phase followed ... . ...

Finally there came a brief phase in which Mills was put in contact with the deva or angelic kingdom, and it was then that 'the poems and pictures reproduced ["in Watchers of the Seven Spheres"] were precipitated through my hand'."

"A larger collection of deva portraits was painted in 1937 by ... Ethelwynne M. Quail. Somewhat resembling those of Janet Mills, they too conclude with a tribute to Roerich : a painting of

The World Mother remarkably similar to his work of the same name and year. [fn. 81 : "Hodson, Kingdom, plates 28, 29.

{"Mother of the World" is an epithet of Vajra-yana goddess Prajn~a-paramita ('Wisdom Transcendental'), which is whom Roerich definitely intended; though Gnostic goddess Sophia ('Wisdom') is likewise designated "Mother of the World".}

But Quail ... was working under human direction. The Theosophist Geoffrey Hodson (1886-1983) employed her to execute paintings of nature spirits, angels, mountain gods, and devas that he had seen on his world travels in the 1920s, and he did not publish the work until 1952, after Quail had died."

"These few examples suggest ... the effects of psychedelic drugs, which have their characteristic palettes of colors. {More accurately, the divine world whereinto those "psychedelic drugs" welcomingly lead "have their characteristic palettes of colors", to wit, the transpicuity and radiance of the aeternal reality of the divine worlds, in contrast to the futile insignificance of the meaningless and unreal illusory material universe.} ... .  

{So-called "psychedelic drugs" are truly entheogenic eucharists which, via the vibration-sequences coded into their molecular interactions, when ingested automatically open vibrationally-coded combination-locks to praeternatural portals into transcendental worlds, therewith transporting the raptured souls of mere mortals into the glories of those aeternal splendors. The Christian eucharist of mundane wheaten wafer and mundane uva wine is, in contrast, a meaningless, futile humbug, accomplishing nothing.}

... but the occultists contaminated their imaginations with their beliefs {but can eyewitness-perceiving of divine reality be legitimately designated "beliefs"?} and projected them outside {but are not witnessings of universes beyond the mere material plane-of-existence already "outside" of it?} ... ."

{In actuality, occultists liberate their divinely-betokened visions from the futile delusion of purposeless, worthless mere imagination; for mere imagination must infect with contamination all which it may touch, but the divine reality of occult vision is a benefit which endureth even forevermore.}