28th Degree: Knight of the Sun - Part 2 of 3

01:14 Introduction

Gene:

Hello Dave.

David:

Hello Gene. How are you today?

Gene:

Good. You ready for part two?

David:

Yes. But, as always, before we get started, I want to remind everyone that Show Notes, Chapter Markers and a Transcript of this, and all episodes, are available on our website - WayOfTheHermit.com. As Gene just said, this episode is part two of a three-part series on the 28th Degree - Knight of the Sun.

01:37 Morals and Dogma

Gene:

And, as we explained last time, the reason for having three episodes is that the 28th Degree is over 200 pages in the “Annotated Edition”, so it makes up about a one-fourth of “Morals and Dogma”.

David:

Right, and we just want to do it justice. In a way, this one Lecture is a distillation of the entire Scottish Rite system, at least to this point.

Gene:

It really is. But of course, you can’t just skip all the previous material and expect to understand this Degree.

David:

That’s true of any of the degrees.

Gene:

But especially this one.

02:09 Christian Interpretation of Blue Lodge Degrees

David:

That’s true. So, what’s the first thing you have from the Lecture?

Gene:

The first thing I have is Pike’s Christian interpretation of the Blue Lodge Degrees. He starts it off by saying “Before we enter upon the final lesson of Masonic Philosophy, we will delay a few moments to repeat to you the Christian interpretations of the Blue Degrees.”

David:

Yeah, I thought that was very interesting. Do you want to go through that interpretation?

Gene:

Umm… not the whole thing. It’s very detailed. But I do have a quote from the beginning that will give people an idea of what his interpretation is like.

David:

OK.

Gene:

It says - “Man, after the fall, was left naked and defenseless (and)... prone to evil, the human race staggered blindly onward into the thick darkness of unbelief, bound fast by the strong cable-tow of the natural and sinful will… This condition of blindness, destitution, misery, and bondage… is symbolized by the condition of the candidate, when he is brought up for the first time to the door of the Lodge.”

David:

And he says the death and resurrection of Hiram symbolizes the Initiate being reborn with a brand new world view and in possession of the “Master’s Word” which symbolizes “the Saviour Himself; the WORD that was in the beginning - that was with God, and that was God; the Word of life, that was made flesh and dwelt among us.”

Gene:

Pike really does give a great interpretation of the symbols of the first three degrees in Christian terms. And he ends by saying - “Such are the explanations of our Christian brethren; entitled, like those of all other Masons, to a respectful consideration.”

David:

So, one thing it’s saying there is to be tolerant of the beliefs of others, as always.

Gene:

As always.

David:

But, because I know what’s in this Lecture, I think he may also be bracing people, too - maybe especially Christian people, for what’s coming at the end of the Lecture.

Gene:

Oh yeah.

David:

There’s a quote later on about the Mysteries of Dionysus that says it contains symbols “that if irreverently contemplated, were sure to be misunderstood.”

Gene:

And this Degree has some of those, too. So, what’s the first thing you have from the Lecture?

04:17 Gods of Heaven

David:

Well, the first part of the Chapter is about the similarity of myth throughout the world.

Gene:

Which we’ve covered before.

David:

Right. And as we’ve said, Pike may be “cherry picking” some of his examples,  but if you look at the material he references, you can’t deny that there are great similarities, not necessarily equivalences, because of the cultural differences.

Gene:

It’s Pike’s version of some of Joseph Campbell’s later research.

David:

It really is. And as Joseph Campbell also noted, one of the key similarities between all cultures is that we share the earth and sky and that is where most of the myths come from - descriptions of celestial movements and the changes on Earth that accompany those movements.

Gene:

Pike says - “You have heretofore, in some of the Degrees through which you have passed, heard much of the ancient worship of the Sun, the Moon, and the other bright luminaries of Heaven, and of the Elements and Powers of Universal Nature.”

David:

And the movements of the stars were symbolized by (the) Heroes, Gods and Goddesses of myth. The Lecture says that “You have been made, to some extent, familiar with their personifications as Heroes suffering or triumphant, or as personal Gods or Goddesses, with human characteristics and passions, and with the multitude of legends and fables that do but allegorically represent their risings and settings, their courses, their conjunctions and oppositions, their domiciles and places of exaltation.”

05:40 Gods of Nature

Gene:

And the same holds true for the processes of Nature. Pike goes through many, many myths and stories, which we’ve covered pretty completely in previous degrees. The stories of Osiris, Dionysus, Hercules, Mithras, Odin, Thor, Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, and the Tao. But the main idea Pike is trying to get across is that again, in cultures all around the world, the processes of Nature were personified.

David:

Right. The Gods and Goddesses of Nature were symbols of the alternation of Light and Darkness that plays out in the day and in the year, and of the corresponding changes that occur on Earth.

Gene:

Again, we’ve covered this material in previous degrees, so it’s mostly a review.

David:

Mostly, but he prefaces that discussion by saying - “We ask now your attention to a still further development of these truths, after (which) we shall have added something to what we have already said in regard to the Chief Luminary of Heaven.”

Gene:

The “Chief Luminary of Heaven” is the Sun. It was the Sun’s apparent death and rebirth that was enacted in their “Ancient Mysteries”. What’s the new information that Pike is teasing there?

David:

That to use the Sun as a symbol for the All, it has to include Darkness, too… if it’s to be a complete and whole symbol, otherwise it isn’t a good symbol of Unity.

Gene:

In the last episode, there was a quote that said we had fallen into error by splitting God in two and keeping only the Light part.

07:12 Dionysus

David:

Right. This Degree is about finding a symbol that heals that split, a symbol that incorporates both Light and Darkness. Pike presents several such symbols, like the Chinese concept of the Tao, the Hindu God Shiva, when he’s seen as Creator, Preserver and Destroyer, but the one I want to talk about is the Greek God Dionysus.

Gene:

OK. The Lecture discusses how in Greek mythology, Apollo is usually thought of as representing Light and Dionysus as Darkness. Dionysus was usually depicted with horns and in the company of satyrs, or goat-men. Which makes you immediately think of our modern-day representation of the Devil. So basically, Apollo ruled the Light half of the year and Dionysus the “Darkside”.

David:

But the Lecture goes on to say that Dionysus and Apollo “were the same, yet different, contrasted, yet only… filling separate parts in the same drama; and the mystic and heroic personifications… seem, at some remote period, to have proceeded from a common source. Their separation was one of form rather than of substance.”

Gene:

We think of those functions as separate, but they’re part of one thing. They’re two sides of a coin.

David:

Right, but the real Truth is the coin. The Lecture says - “The Mysteries taught the doctrine of Divine Unity… Whose Oneness is a seeming mystery, but really a truism…” That truth is… “Dionysos… the life of Nature, who prepares in darkness… the return of life and vegetation.”

08:37 The Ancient Mysteries

Gene:

Dionysus and Osirus, symbolized the vitality of the Earth, and they were both represented by a Phallic symbol, or as the union of the male and female, like in Buddhist depictions of Deities united with their Yoginis.

David:

Right. And that quote I referred to earlier actually says that the symbols of “The Mysteries… if irreverently contemplated, were sure to be misunderstood.”

Gene:

Right. That’s people with “Pornographic Memories”.

David:

Yeah, but really it’s anyone who’s not been prepared to understand what those symbols really mean.

Gene:

I know. And it was the role of the Hierophants in the “The Ancient Mysteries” to pass on through Initiation, the true interpretation of the sacred symbols. We talked about this in the 24th Degree. The word “Hierophant” means “to reveal the Holy things”.

David:

And Seers are those who have seen or had their eyes opened to that revealed Truth. Now seems like a good time to repeat what Seers supposedly said at the end of their Initiation into the “Eleusinian Mysteries” - "I have fasted, I have drunk the kykeon, I have taken from the box and after working it, I have put it back in the open basket.”

Gene:

That’s still as enigmatic as ever, but we probably have a better idea of what they saw, likely something that might be considered offensive to the uninitiated. But really, most myths, if taken literally, would be offensive or downright crazy. I mean, there’s a part of the Dionysus myth when, as a child, he was torn apart, roasted and eaten by the Titans. That sounds like what witches were accused of doing.

David:

Yeah it’s horrible if you take it literally. But… “Take eat, this is my body” - as a symbol, it’s communion!

Gene:

Right! The Lecture says that “If we adhered to the literally historic sense, antiquity would be a mere inexplicable, hideous chaos, and all the Sages deranged: and so it would be with Masonry and those who instituted it. But when these allegories are explained, they cease to be absurd fables… and become lessons of wisdom for (all) humanity.”

David:

One other thing the Lecture added this time in the story of Dionysus was Pallas Athene. He said that after the Titans tore Dionysus to pieces, “Pallas restored the still palpitating heart to his father, who commanded Apollo to bury the dismembered remains upon Parnassus.”

Gene:

And de Hoyos had a footnote about that line. He quotes Clement of Alexandria as saying that Athena, “having abstracted the heart of Dionysus, was called Pallas, from the vibrating of the heart.” - like that’s what gave her the name Pallas.

David:

Hmm. Maybe that’s what makes her the “Palladium of the Order”. She preserved the “Sacred Heart” of the Mysteries.

Gene:

That sounds right to me. There’s another quote about Dionysus that says - “All soul is part of the Universal Soul, whose totality is Dionysos… He died and descended (into) the Shades; and his suffering was the great secret of the Mysteries, as death is the grand mystery of existence.”

11:45 Rise of the Priesthood

David:

And throughout the Lecture, Pike refers to the Truth preserved in the “Ancient Mysteries”, as the “Primitive Revelation” or the “Primitive Truth”. He then goes on to explain how he believes this Truth was forgotten. He says that what was “originally revered as the symbol of a higher principle, became gradually confounded or identified with the object itself, and was worshiped; until this error led to a more degraded form of idolatry.”

Gene:

And it wasn’t just misunderstandings either. The Lecture says “that haughty pride which seems an inherent part of human nature led (them) to represent… fragmentary relics of (the) original truth as a possession peculiar to themselves; thus exaggerating their value, and their own importance, (or representing themselves) as peculiar favorites of the Deity, who had chosen them as the favored people to whom to commit these truths.”

David:

That’s really the rise of the Priesthood as intermediaries instead of teachers and Initiators.

Gene:

It is. That quote continues by saying that “To make these fragments, as far as possible, their private property, they reproduced them under peculiar forms, wrapped them up in symbols, concealed them in allegories, and invented fables to account for their own special possession of them. So that, instead of preserving… their primitive simplicity… they overlaid them with poetical ornament; and… a fabulous aspect, until by close… examination we can discover the truth which the apparent fable contains.”

David:

And by forgetting the true meaning of the sacred symbols, the Lecture says that “they wandered ever deeper into the darkness, and were lost; and there was for them no longer any God; but only a great, dumb, soulless Universe, full of mere emblems and symbols.”

13:33 Down the Rabbit Hole

Gene:

That feeling of having fallen or of being separate and cut off from God, we called “The Primal Wound” in the 5th Degree. It’s that deep feeling that something is wrong with us, or really, wrong with the world.

David:

I’ve got a clip from “The Matrix” that needs to go here, because it really is where we are in the Degree. We’re about to go down a rabbit hole.

Gene:

Cool! Then I say - “Follow the white rabbit!”

David:

OK. Here it is. It’s long, but I promise it’s all relevant.

Morpheus (The Matrix):

I imagine that right now you’re feeling a bit like Alice, tumbling down the rabbit hole… huh? You have the look of a man who accepts what he sees because he is expecting to wake up. Ironically, this is not far from the truth. Let me tell you why you're here. You're here because you know something. What you know, you can't explain. But you feel it. You've felt it your entire life. That there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there… like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know what I'm talking about?

Neo (The Matrix):

The Matrix?

Morpheus (The Matrix):

Do you want to know what it is? The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us, even in this very room. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes, to blind you from the truth.

Neo (The Matrix):

What truth?

Morpheus (The Matrix):

That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else, you were born into bondage, born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch. A prison for your mind. Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself. This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you just how deep the rabbit hole goes. Remember, all I’m offering is the truth, nothing more.

David:

So are you ready to go down the rabbit hole?

Gene:

I’m a red pill kind of guy. What can I say?

15:45 Helen Keller

David:

Alright. I need to tell a story, and it may seem like a diversion, but it’s not. It links together ideas in “The Matrix”, the Kabbalah and Gnosticism, and it’s just a cool story. It’s the story of Helen Keller.

Gene:

OK.

David:

When Helen Keller was 19 months old, she contracted an illness that caused her brain to swell and as a result, she lost her sight and hearing. She later described her early years as like living “at sea in a dense fog". And she says - “I was like that ship before my education began, only I was without compass or sounding-line, and had no way of knowing how near the harbour was. “Light! give me light!” was the wordless cry of my soul.”

Gene:

Ah! “More light!”

David:

Exactly. But anyway, what I wanted to get to was what is referred to now as the “Helen Keller Moment”, which she described in her autobiography as her “soul’s awakening”. She says that she and her teacher, Anne Sullivan were walking “down the path to the well-house, attracted by the fragrance of the honeysuckle with which it was covered. Someone was drawing water and my teacher placed my hand under the spout. As the cool stream gushed over one hand she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly, then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten - a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that “w-a-t-e-r” meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free!”

Gene:

“In the beginning was the Word.”

David:

Yes. And she said “That word startled my soul, and it awoke, full of the spirit of the morning, full of joyous, exultant song. Until that day my mind had been like a darkened chamber, waiting for words to enter and light the lamp, which is thought.”

Gene:

So, that’s an actual account of “light dawning in darkness”.

David:

It is. And here’s one more quote from her autobiography “The Story of My Life” - “I left the well-house eager to learn. Everything had a name, and each name gave birth to a new thought. As we returned to the house every object which I touched seemed to quiver with life. That was because I saw everything with the strange, new sight that had come to me.”

18:09 The Matrix

Gene:

So, that’s really a first-hand account of the birth of the Logos in a person - actually her experience of acquiring language. Another quote from the Lecture that’s relevant here says that “after endowing man with… senses and a thinking mind, a portion, a spark, of God Himself penetrates … man, and becomes a living spirit within him.”

David:

And with that spark, Helen Keller created her own internal world, her Microcosm. Whereas before that, she described her experience as like living in a timeless fog.

Gene:

Which reminds me of what they call in Kabbalah “tohu and bohu”, which means darkness and chaos, before the Light was born.

David:

But here’s the key question - what really happened when she “woke up” or became conscious in a human way?

Gene:

She realized that the sign for “water” referred to the water that was flowing over her hand from the pump, but really, she understood for the first time what a symbol is.

David:

That’s right. It’s like a Light dawned or an eye opened that allowed her to use symbols generally, not just that one.

Gene:

Language got kick-started and with it her whole world booted up because she became conscious of things, in a human way, for the first time. She started creating and living in an organized world of things with names.

David:

Exactly. She started constructing her own Microcosm, but everything that was made began with, and was only possible, because of that first realization.

Gene:

“And the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and without it was not any thing made that was made.” That makes it clear. The Logos is our ability to use and manipulate symbols.

David:

That’s clear to me, too. But do you think it would be clear to someone who had not experienced that awakening themselves?

Gene:

Ah! I see what you did there!

David:

Yeah.

Gene:

We’ve all experienced that “Helen Keller Moment” of awakening, which is the incarnation of the Logos in us. We just don’t remember it. Helen Keller only did because she was older when it happened.

David:

Exactly. Here’s another quote “Incarnate Intelligence, or THE WORD… is creation's Soul as well as Body, within which the Divine Word is written in those living letters which…is the prerogative of the self-conscious spirit to interpret…. God made man in His own likeness… That image (is) in the breast of every individual… and of mankind in general… and every reflecting mind may discover (it) in its own interior.”

Gene:

That moment, when it happens, is like our own personal “Big Bang”, our “point within the circle.” It’s our “Axis Mundi”. Everything gets organized around, or really by, that central point.

21:02 Living in a Dream World

David:

Yes. And, to quote Morpheus again, it’s also the “world that’s been pulled over our eyes to blind us from the truth.”

Gene:

What truth?

David:

Because we process the world through symbols, we live in a mental construct. It’s not reality. It’s a story about reality that we mistake for reality.

Gene:

So we mistake our Microcosm for the Macrocosm.

David:

Yes.

Gene:

That explains what the Hindus mean by “Maya” or illusion. The Lecture says that “the mind of finite beings is impressed by one uninterrupted series of illusions, which they consider as real… Of these illusions, the first and most essential is individuality. By its influence… the soul becomes ignorant of its own nature, origin, and destiny. It considers itself as a separate existence, and no longer a spark of Divinity… an infinitely small… portion of one great whole."

David:

But that’s a consequence of Language. Words and symbols, by their very nature, cut the world into pieces, which we can recombine in useful ways, as we’ve said.

Gene: Yeah. “Solve et coagula”. Dissolve and recombine. It’s what we do, as humans.

David: But there’s one more question we should ask about the story of Helen Keller.

Gene:

What’s that?

David:

That spark in her mind that, as we’ve said, went on to create her world, as it’s done for us, where did that spark come from? What caused it?

Gene:

I guess, another part of her mind? From another deeper part of her consciousness that was beyond Language, which reminds me of the Taoist saying - “The Tao that can be named is not the true Tao.”

David:

Exactly. The actual creator of human consciousness is outside of Language. It’s bigger than that because it actually creates that in people. Here’s another quote - “the framer of the fiery world is the mind of mind, who first sprang from mind, clothing fire with fire. Father-begotten Light! for He alone, having from the Father's power received the essence of intellect, is enabled to understand the mind of the Father.".

Gene:

So the “Father” in that quote is the consciousness beyond language that created the Logos, or the Son.

23:20 The Clear Light

David:

And you could say it’s the only Son (S-O-N) because it becomes our Sun (S-U-N), our Light or organizing principle throughout our life, our reasoning power. But another Truth here is that the Father and the Son are One.

Gene:

And by that, I think you mean that they’re both part of a perpetual process that goes on as long as there are human beings. The Lecture says - “The energy of mind is life, and God is that energy in its purity and perfection. He is therefore life itself, eternal and perfect; and this sums up all that is meant by the term "God.”

David:

Right. God refers to the ultimate organizing principle. And that quote continues by saying that when we deeply contemplate or meditate on that concept, with “all material interference being excluded, the distinction of subject and object vanishes in complete identification, and the Divine Thought is "the thinking of thought."

Gene:

Yeah. That’s slippery, but it sounds like what’s known as Samadhi which is “a non-dualistic state of consciousness” where the subject becomes One with the object of observation. Which would seem like a first step to seeing all of Reality as a totality, first seeing yourself that way.

David:

Yes. And the Lecture says that “this was part of their doctrine: (that) One great and incomprehensible Being has alone existed from all Eternity. Everything we behold and we ourselves are portions of Him… To imagine all nature, with all its apparently independent parts, as forming one consistent whole, and as itself a unit, required an amount of experience and a faculty of generalization not possessed by the rude uncivilized mind, and is but a step below the idea of a universal Soul.”

25:11 The Kabbalah

Gene:

That ties back to our discussion in the last episode about the Kabbalistic concept of Adam Kadmon. Adam Kadmon is the whole “Tree of Life” and the ten Sephiroth are his, and her, component parts.

David:

Yeah, the Lecture says “The Sages proudly wore the name of Kabbalists. The Kabbalah embodied a noble philosophy, pure, not mysterious, but symbolic… The Kabbalah is the key of the occult sciences; and the Gnostics were born of the Kabbalists.”

Gene:

And the Lecture says that the Kabbalah “taught the doctrine of the Unity of God, the art of knowing and explaining the essence and operations of the Supreme Being, of spiritual powers and natural forces, and… determining their action by symbolic figures; by the arrangement of the alphabet, the combinations of numbers, the inversion of letters in writing and the concealed meanings which they claimed to discover therein.”

David:

So what do you think about those practices?.

Gene:

That part of the quote that said “arrangement of the alphabet”, I think refers to letter permutation. One practice was to permute the letters of a “Divine Name” or a sacred word or even the entire alphabet and chant each combination… and they might do that for hours.

David:

Those practices would definitely disrupt the normal way we process language.

Gene:

Maybe to slip out of “The Matrix”?

David:

I think that’s the purpose of those practices. To see the “real world”, you know.

26:40 Stairway to Heaven

Gene:

Yeah. But anyway, the Lecture says that by the Kabbalistic “science of numbers” we could “arrive at the discovery of the Principle or First Cause of things, called… The Absolute or Unity… that pivot round which it is compelled to group the aggregate of its ideas… (the) center of all systematic order… unknown in its essence, but manifest in its effects.”

David:

That’s good, but I think I can give a simpler definition of Kabbalah.

Gene:

OK.

David:

Esoteric counting.

Gene:

Interesting. We’ve talked about one as Unity, two as Duality, etc., down to ten as the manifest Universe.

David:

That’s the downward current. How something becomes manifest.

Gene:

So, the upward current would be walking those ideas back from something concrete to things more abstract until finally the seed that it sprang from - its source?

David:

Right. But let’s talk about something concrete. Let’s say you get an idea to make a piece of art… let’s say, a podcast.

Gene:

Just something at random.

David:

Sure. But first there’s just a fuzzy idea, or really, for me on this podcast, I just had a feeling of wanting to do something that I really cared about. That was the initial spark that came into my mind. And as it fell there, it picked up more tangible aspects, like the medium it would be - a podcast, the format it will take - you and me having a discussion, which equipment to use, how to make it available - until finally, we actually have a podcast.

Gene:

Alan Moore says that is real magic. From a spark or a fragment of an idea, something totally abstract, down to something you can hold in your hand, or in the case of our podcast, something you can listen to. But it’s something physical and tangible that was literally created from nothing.

David:

So, manifestation is esoteric counting from one to ten.

Gene:

Which requires you to understand the symbolism of numbers, as we’ve related throughout the Degrees.

David:

Yes.

Gene:

And counting backwards from ten to one would be taking something physical and distilling out its qualities back to the initial spark of the idea that spawned it.

David:

Right. Thoughts come into your mind, they fall, attach to more and more concrete attributes until “poof” they manifest.

Gene:

And that makes a great analogy to the “Gnostic Myth” of the fall of souls to Earth as they become attached to material things. It’s also “Jacob’s Ladder” with the angels ascending and descending. Thoughts becoming things and then having thoughts about things.

29:15 The Dual Current

David:

That’s the “Dual Current”. The “Emerald Tablet of Hermes” says - “It ascends from earth to heaven and descends again to earth and receives the force of things superior and inferior.”

Gene:

In regular terms, that’s analysis and design. But here’s the more poetic phrasing from the Lecture - “’The dissolution of the world,’ they say, consists in the destruction of the visible forms and qualities of things; but their material essence remains, and from it new worlds are formed by the creative energy of God; and thus the Universe is dissolved and renewed in endless succession."

David:

One other thing about the “Emerald Tablet”, it’s credited to Hermes, the creator of Language and Writing.

Gene:

And you could see his Caduceus as the dual current, the two snakes with the rod between them being the fixing of that force on an object of thought. Which brings me to my last quote which says “And yet, after all this transcendentalism, the very essence of thought consists in its mobility and power of transference from object to object… we can conceive of no thought, without an object… about which to think.”

30:27 Conclusions

David: 

That seems like a good place to end our discussion of the first half of the Lecture. We’ll continue our discussion next time with other symbols of the “Dual Current”. So, what did you think about the Lecture so far?

Gene: 

Wow! This one was intense!

David: 

It really was. What else do you want to say before we end this one?

Gene: 

Really, just one more thing.

David: 

What’s that?

Gene: 

It’s my definition of a true occult symbol.

David: 

OK. What’s your definition of a true occult symbol?

Gene: 

It’s a symbol that refers to something that is hidden from yourself.

David: 

So how does that work? What’s an example?

Gene: 

Well, like the “Eye in the Triangle” - people always say that’s an occult symbol.

David: 

Is it?

Gene: It can be. We talked about Helen Keller and that awakening she had, and really that we’ve all had, but don’t remember it. If I said that the “Eye in the Triangle” stands for that “Helen Keller Moment” then yeah, it’s now a true occult symbol, because it refers to something that’s hidden from us. You can’t ever go back to before that moment. Something woke up, or opened its eye… and that becomes YOU, or what you believe is you.

David: 

That’s good. I like your definition.

Gene: 

So what else do you have this time?

David: 

A couple of quotes. The first quote I have is about the relationship between religion and the mind. It says “The history of religion is the history of the human mind; and the conception formed by it of Deity is always in exact relation to its moral and intellectual attainments. The one is the index and the measure of the other.”

Gene: 

That’s nice. I like that.

David: 

The other quote I have talks about the “Dual Current” like the “Emerald Tablet” does. It uses the term “superior” to mean the abstract, and the “inferior” to mean the more concrete or material.

Gene: 

OK.

David: 

It says “Such is the universal life of the world, reproduced in all the beings which its superior portion creates in its inferior portion, that is as it were the matrix of the world, or of the beings that the heavens engender in its bosom.”

Gene: 

And you actually brought it all back around to “The Matrix”!

David: 

I did.

Gene: 

Sweet! That’s a good place to end.

David: 

I think so, too. So Gene, what are we doing next time?

Gene: 

In the next episode, we complete our discussion of the 28th Degree - Knight of the Sun.