DRAGONTREE 8
DRAGONTREE is an Open Access Journal One key request of researchers across the world is unrestricted access to research publications. Open access gives a worldwide audience larger than that of any subscription-based journal ad thus increases the visibility and impact of published work. It also enhances indexing, retrieval power and eliminates the need for permissions to reproduce and distribute content. DRAGONTREE is fully committed to the Open Access Initiative and provides free access to all articles as soon as they are published.
DRAGONTREE 8
Winter Solstice, December 2011
The Labyrinth & the Grail Maiden, by Iona Miller
Blavatsky on the Dragon
Monarchy, by Tracy Twyman
Blavatsky on the Dragon
Monarchy, by Tracy Twyman
The highest Dragon Wisdom is Self-Knowledge and the revelation of I AM GOD/GODDESS, I AM THE INFINITE. This is everyone's birthright, their evolutionary destiny, regardless of who they are. Because of the ego inflation and attachment that a Dragon bloodline generates within a person, it can be more of a hindrance than a support. Ego is the biggest obstacle on the path. We should all continually contemplate this.
The Path of the Dragons is not simply about the attainment of Power. It is about knowing how to use that Power. In the Grail legends we learn that the Grail King Anfortas mis-used his power and became a cripple. He used it in a self serving manner and suffered the consequences. Only when presented with the question "Who does the Grail serve" did he heal. He then understood that the power, i.e., the "Grail," serves everyone, not just the individual that wields it. The greatest Dragons are those who serve the world and use their power for the good of humanity. They are the ones who have also used their power to transform themselves, rather than using it to control and dominate others. They have achieved true Self-Knowledge and union with the transcendant Self. They know that, in truth, the Dragon is not them but the vehicle that takes them to the Self. The Dragon is the force created by the Spirit at the beginning of time to serve as its vehicle in the material worlds so it can eventually know itself.
The reason that we Dragons are experiencing a revival at the moment is not so we can rule the world. It is because throughout history we have been guardians of the knowledge of alchemy and gnosis. This is the knowledge that is needed now as we move into a new era. The revival of the Dragons corresponds to the revival of the Goddess Tradition; their wisdom of alchemy and gnosis is a branch of the Goddess Tradition. The Left Hand Path teaches the path of destruction and transformation. It teaches alchemy and yoga, all the modalities that give a person Self-Knowledge by destroying and transforming those parts of him or her that keep them from knowing themselves as the Infinite incarnate. The patriarchy is dedicated to control and keeping things exactly the same through its technology and laws. This is good in the middle of a cycle, but at the end of a cycle we need the destructive-transformation wisdom of the Dragons to destroy the old and make way for the new. Therefore, we can best serve our function by spreading the teachings of alchemy and gnosis.
One goal of the Dragon Conference is to synthesize the wisdom of the Dragon into a universal teaching while also re-interpreting the Left Hand Path of the Dragon so that the public does not associate it with evil and the Devil anymore. The Left Hand Path is the path of alchemy and gnosis; it is simply the evolutionary path to enlightenment that has been followed within mystery schools, orders, and the great masters for many thousands of years. Just as the Right Hand Path is associated with patriarchy and dogmatic religion, the Left Hand Path is associated with the non-dogmatic ancient Goddess Tradition and seeks to free one from the bondage of human, social consciousness, and transport them to the unqualified, unified vision of the universe and Self-Knowledge.--Mark Amaru Pinham
The Path of the Dragons is not simply about the attainment of Power. It is about knowing how to use that Power. In the Grail legends we learn that the Grail King Anfortas mis-used his power and became a cripple. He used it in a self serving manner and suffered the consequences. Only when presented with the question "Who does the Grail serve" did he heal. He then understood that the power, i.e., the "Grail," serves everyone, not just the individual that wields it. The greatest Dragons are those who serve the world and use their power for the good of humanity. They are the ones who have also used their power to transform themselves, rather than using it to control and dominate others. They have achieved true Self-Knowledge and union with the transcendant Self. They know that, in truth, the Dragon is not them but the vehicle that takes them to the Self. The Dragon is the force created by the Spirit at the beginning of time to serve as its vehicle in the material worlds so it can eventually know itself.
The reason that we Dragons are experiencing a revival at the moment is not so we can rule the world. It is because throughout history we have been guardians of the knowledge of alchemy and gnosis. This is the knowledge that is needed now as we move into a new era. The revival of the Dragons corresponds to the revival of the Goddess Tradition; their wisdom of alchemy and gnosis is a branch of the Goddess Tradition. The Left Hand Path teaches the path of destruction and transformation. It teaches alchemy and yoga, all the modalities that give a person Self-Knowledge by destroying and transforming those parts of him or her that keep them from knowing themselves as the Infinite incarnate. The patriarchy is dedicated to control and keeping things exactly the same through its technology and laws. This is good in the middle of a cycle, but at the end of a cycle we need the destructive-transformation wisdom of the Dragons to destroy the old and make way for the new. Therefore, we can best serve our function by spreading the teachings of alchemy and gnosis.
One goal of the Dragon Conference is to synthesize the wisdom of the Dragon into a universal teaching while also re-interpreting the Left Hand Path of the Dragon so that the public does not associate it with evil and the Devil anymore. The Left Hand Path is the path of alchemy and gnosis; it is simply the evolutionary path to enlightenment that has been followed within mystery schools, orders, and the great masters for many thousands of years. Just as the Right Hand Path is associated with patriarchy and dogmatic religion, the Left Hand Path is associated with the non-dogmatic ancient Goddess Tradition and seeks to free one from the bondage of human, social consciousness, and transport them to the unqualified, unified vision of the universe and Self-Knowledge.--Mark Amaru Pinham
The Collapse of Time Into Now
Ours has been described as a society suffering from space-time compression, a state in which ‘time passes us by’ and we are forever ‘running out of time’ as global capitalism speeds up the pace of life. Closely related to this, some might argue, time plays a key role in many of our anxieties – in the ‘panicked nature’ of reactions to perceived emergencies, in which action is constantly required now, lest delay bring disaster, or in the nervous approach of December 2012 and the end of the Mayan calendar. As a cultural element, religion is not immune to these influences, as we observe with the eschatological guessing-game of some groups. But how are religion and time related in a given context, and how can we extend our analysis beyond the modern day? There is a relation between religion and time in the contexts of geography, psychology, history, anthropology, gender, philosophy, politics, cultural and sociology, that cross historical and geographical boundaries:
• Religious seasons, calendars, liturgical time and holy days
• Ritual and time
• Time in literature, scripture, narrative and oral histories
• Foundational, mythic and eschatological discourses
• The ‘end times’
• Eternity and afterlife; time cycles
• Philosophies of time and temporalities
• Telescoping and collapsing time
• Prophetic time and constructions of the future
IRDC Eastern European Royal Ashina Line
In 2008-2009, the Shaman/Qam Emelye Ulubayan of Ashkenazi family from Southern Russia claimed that the Spirits of Elders/Begs of Khazaria during number of hers lucid dreamings , recognized the Krupa family as descent of Obadiah - Hebrew King of Khazars from Ashina Royal Clan, and that they called/named prof. Freddy Krupa de Tarnawa as "Prince (SHAD or BEG in Turkic) of Itil" and that the family is connected to Princess Chichak (Flower) /Tzitzak was daughter of Khazar Quaghan Bihar/, who married into the Byzantine Royal family and became the mother of Emperor Leo IV, the Khazar. By those claims she, not knowing that fact, re-confirmed visions of Zagreb clairvoyant "Iskra" who described , in 2000, the Krupa family as "line of power, from North, and Jews-forced converts on Christianity".
In 2009, the house was recognised by the International Commission and Association on Nobility.
In 2010, the house was recognized as "draconian" by Nicholas de Vere of international NGO "Imperial and Royal Dragon Court".
This ancient royal bloodline has been verified and certified (comparative method applied), in 2010, by iGENEA, of Zurich, (largest genetic genealogy organization of Europe), as "The Ashina of Khazaria".
The Labyrinth & the Grail Maiden
Starfire
The Grail is light, just as woman is light, and both are the light of the 'Sun'. Transcendent consciousness, (symbolized on the Tree of Life by Tiphareth, the solar Sphere), is embodied in the ancient 'Great Rite' of the Dragon families. The 'hierosgamos' is a symbolic and psychophysical act with neurological and meta-genetic effects. Discovered in the paleolithic era, shamanic sexuality is the legacy of the Great Goddess cultures.
Rock womb-tombs were memorialized as megalithic monuments from the 11,000 year old labyrinth of the stars, Gobekli Tepe in Turkey, to the neolithic subterreanean Hypogeum of Malta, and later Delphi, whose root is δελφύς delphys, "womb". Vagina-shaped ritual caves are found globally. Kashmir has a sanctuary called Garbhagriha, the house of the womb, where regeneration is effected and the higher self of the devotee is reborn. At Mycenæ, so-called “beehive” tombs were constructed as wombs of stone to receive the dead. The Sumerian word sal, means “vulva,” “womb,” and “woman.” Also, the Latin matrix carries the meanings “female cavity,” “womb,” “matron,” and “mother.”
Fire in the Belly
Nenkovo, a vagina-shaped ritual cave in Bulgaria illustrates the central Mystery. At noon the sun penetrates into the cave through an opening in the ceiling creating a phallus of light on the floor. It progressively grows longer, reaching toward the womb altar. In Winter, with the sun low on the horizon, the phallus elongates to reach the altar and symbolically fertilize the womb. The Hawara labyrinth in Egypt was decorated with reliefs of the Dragon god Sobek. The womb temple is a place for rebirth. The circle of life and the circle of breath are related through "womb breathing." Universal energy underlies the process of transformation, as the basis of life. Through vase breathing we simulate the state of a baby in the womb. The energy body feeds on light which enriches, energizes and stabilizes all parts of the body.
http://vimeo.com/17011448
The Grail is light, just as woman is light, and both are the light of the 'Sun'. Transcendent consciousness, (symbolized on the Tree of Life by Tiphareth, the solar Sphere), is embodied in the ancient 'Great Rite' of the Dragon families. The 'hierosgamos' is a symbolic and psychophysical act with neurological and meta-genetic effects. Discovered in the paleolithic era, shamanic sexuality is the legacy of the Great Goddess cultures.
Rock womb-tombs were memorialized as megalithic monuments from the 11,000 year old labyrinth of the stars, Gobekli Tepe in Turkey, to the neolithic subterreanean Hypogeum of Malta, and later Delphi, whose root is δελφύς delphys, "womb". Vagina-shaped ritual caves are found globally. Kashmir has a sanctuary called Garbhagriha, the house of the womb, where regeneration is effected and the higher self of the devotee is reborn. At Mycenæ, so-called “beehive” tombs were constructed as wombs of stone to receive the dead. The Sumerian word sal, means “vulva,” “womb,” and “woman.” Also, the Latin matrix carries the meanings “female cavity,” “womb,” “matron,” and “mother.”
Fire in the Belly
Nenkovo, a vagina-shaped ritual cave in Bulgaria illustrates the central Mystery. At noon the sun penetrates into the cave through an opening in the ceiling creating a phallus of light on the floor. It progressively grows longer, reaching toward the womb altar. In Winter, with the sun low on the horizon, the phallus elongates to reach the altar and symbolically fertilize the womb. The Hawara labyrinth in Egypt was decorated with reliefs of the Dragon god Sobek. The womb temple is a place for rebirth. The circle of life and the circle of breath are related through "womb breathing." Universal energy underlies the process of transformation, as the basis of life. Through vase breathing we simulate the state of a baby in the womb. The energy body feeds on light which enriches, energizes and stabilizes all parts of the body.
http://vimeo.com/17011448
|
|
The etymology of labyrinth has two interlinked variations: 1) derived from labrys, a pre-Hellenic word said to mean ’double headed axe’, 2) derived from the Latin labia meaning ’lips’ or ’folds’. The double-headed axe was sacred to Zeus, the Grecian Thor, whose hammer was a variant of the labrys. The spinning hammer formed the shape of the swastika as it flew through the air, whipping up the whirlwind. This whirlwind and the spiral swastika that symbolized it were the figurative progenitors of the stylized maze, labyrinth or Vortex. Nevertheless the hammer, shaped like two opposed crescent moons was, like the labrys, a female emblem.
At the highest level, the labyrinth symbol works on several different but interconnected levels:
The Folds of Time,
The Spiral Cosmos,
The Folds of Human Self Deceit,
The Journey of Life,
The Brain and Spinal Column,
The Womb.
The Tomb or Creachaire,
The Vortex or Sumaire
The fire of Prometheus is not the fire of Kundalini going up the spine to the brain, but the fire of wisdom moving down the spinal column to the womb to become Starfire, which when shed is drunk in the royal ’Rite of the Vampire’. Starfire potentiates, amplifies and accelerates a fuller consciousness that turns the void into a pleum of gnosis. The double triangle labrys design, identical with the one found in the labyrinth of Knossos but without the handle, was used up until medieval times to denote the womb. The genital symbolism is therefore quite clear. Whether the word Labyrinth is derived from labrys or labus, it strongly indicates the maze or labyrinth was originally a graphic symbolic representation of the womb and vaginal channel.
At the highest level, the labyrinth symbol works on several different but interconnected levels:
The Folds of Time,
The Spiral Cosmos,
The Folds of Human Self Deceit,
The Journey of Life,
The Brain and Spinal Column,
The Womb.
The Tomb or Creachaire,
The Vortex or Sumaire
The fire of Prometheus is not the fire of Kundalini going up the spine to the brain, but the fire of wisdom moving down the spinal column to the womb to become Starfire, which when shed is drunk in the royal ’Rite of the Vampire’. Starfire potentiates, amplifies and accelerates a fuller consciousness that turns the void into a pleum of gnosis. The double triangle labrys design, identical with the one found in the labyrinth of Knossos but without the handle, was used up until medieval times to denote the womb. The genital symbolism is therefore quite clear. Whether the word Labyrinth is derived from labrys or labus, it strongly indicates the maze or labyrinth was originally a graphic symbolic representation of the womb and vaginal channel.
The labyrinth of Chartes Cathedral, built by the Knights Templars in the 13th century, like many ritual mazes, has no blind alleys or fake routes. At its center there is a six petaled "Plantagenet" or wild rose, carved into which there seems to be an M figure reminiscent of the symbol of Virgo, which is the M for "Our Lady", the Virgin Mary Magdalene, to which the Ichthys or Salmon of Wisdom has been appended, denoting the genital nature of the whole glyph itself. This maze in in the cathedral dedicated to Notre Dame symbolizes the womb of the Virgin. The Rose Garden symbolism of the core of the labyrinth of Chartres is an echo of the Garden of Solomon and the Rose of Sharon, meaning ’Blood of the Virgin Princess’, and also of the later forest labyrinth of Melusine, with its fountain, mentioned in medieval French literature.
The Labyrinth of Solomon is in fact a medieval alchemical symbol doubtlessly denoting the "scented fountain garden" of Sheba. In the French stories Melusine lies in hiding at the centre of her maze garden, waiting to prey on victims returning from the Hundred Years War. She would draw them in and drink their blood. Conversely she also lay at the centre of the maze, as the prize of the quester for the Grail. The centre of the maze incorporated a cook cubic stone n from which spurted the waters of life, La fonteine de soif, and the blood of the virgin womb. At Chartres the Rose in the center of the maze can be seen bathed in the sanguine light of the sun beaming through a strategically placed pane of red stained glass, making the combined Grail symbolism apparent.
The Chartres Maze was probably based itself on earlier patterns associated with Melusine and Sheba, which themselves were based on the swastika, the pre-eminent glyph of the Vortex or Sumaire, the "sucker-in" and source of life and life’s blood. Associated with this is the concept of the maze as a dance pattern which, similar to the original sacrificial sword dance of the Danes and the Scots, was an echo of the spiraling witches’ dance around the vortex and a celebratory rite of the Wild Hunt. For some, entry into the maze would result in their life being drained away by the virgin occupant, whose repast she would pass on to her kind, as she acted as the fountain of thirst and fed them in turn from her holy blood. In a sense then, where the Minotaur at Knossos is concerned, (who is frequently interchangeable with the Scythian Centaur in classical art), he is also representative of the vampire king. In England labyrinths have been euphemistically referred to as "fish traps" or Veres (Norse: ’Ver’). http://drakenberg.weebly.com/labyrinths.html
The Labyrinth of Solomon is in fact a medieval alchemical symbol doubtlessly denoting the "scented fountain garden" of Sheba. In the French stories Melusine lies in hiding at the centre of her maze garden, waiting to prey on victims returning from the Hundred Years War. She would draw them in and drink their blood. Conversely she also lay at the centre of the maze, as the prize of the quester for the Grail. The centre of the maze incorporated a cook cubic stone n from which spurted the waters of life, La fonteine de soif, and the blood of the virgin womb. At Chartres the Rose in the center of the maze can be seen bathed in the sanguine light of the sun beaming through a strategically placed pane of red stained glass, making the combined Grail symbolism apparent.
The Chartres Maze was probably based itself on earlier patterns associated with Melusine and Sheba, which themselves were based on the swastika, the pre-eminent glyph of the Vortex or Sumaire, the "sucker-in" and source of life and life’s blood. Associated with this is the concept of the maze as a dance pattern which, similar to the original sacrificial sword dance of the Danes and the Scots, was an echo of the spiraling witches’ dance around the vortex and a celebratory rite of the Wild Hunt. For some, entry into the maze would result in their life being drained away by the virgin occupant, whose repast she would pass on to her kind, as she acted as the fountain of thirst and fed them in turn from her holy blood. In a sense then, where the Minotaur at Knossos is concerned, (who is frequently interchangeable with the Scythian Centaur in classical art), he is also representative of the vampire king. In England labyrinths have been euphemistically referred to as "fish traps" or Veres (Norse: ’Ver’). http://drakenberg.weebly.com/labyrinths.html
Thus at the highest level, as a whirlpool attracting and distributing life and life’s blood, the Labyrinth was both tomb and womb, life taker and life giver. The Dragon Path has much in common with modern Chaos Theory which reflects nature's organic way of balancing chaos and emergent order. The labyrinth is like a Strange Attractor that that does not consist of a simple point, curve or higher dimensional manifold, but contains an infinite complex of manifolds. The Dragon is a chaotic Strange Attractor that leads us deep into multiple feedback loops. To 'enter the dragon' we have to be willing to enter that choas and penetrate to the still center of primordial awareness for renewal.
It is a complex interaction of fields which forms the attractor and which forms the complex around the structure. It is not a "thing" at the center of a bunch of orbits. Rather, it is a complex infinity of interaction. Field interaction may be the strange attractor. This may be hard to understand -- but not the first-hand experience of chaos in our lives affecting our fixations, fascinations, attention, and intentions. Chaos as the Universal Solvent dissolves problems, heals, allows life to flow in new, creative patterns. These new patterns embody the evolutionary dynamic. According to chaos theory, free-flowing energy is capable of self-organization. In consciousness this means that the obstructions to free flowing energy must first be dissolved.
It's O.K. to let go periodically and temporarily become unstructured nothingness and open to holistic re-patterning. Chaos is self-organizing, self-iterating, and self-generating. It is an evolutionary force. The tendency of new forms emerging from chaos is toward a higher degree of adaptation, hence evolution (Kauffmann, 1991). This "recycling" of consciousness leads to a self-referential vortex. Chaotic systems revolve around nexus points, known as strange attractors, because of their unpredictable quality. Rather than being "point-like," they are more like vortices within vortices.
The Philosopher's Stone is like a psychic lodestone (or vortex). It acts like an inner magnet, ordering the contents of our consciousness around it (through feedback loops) in chaotic, yet meaningful fashion. The Philosopher's Stone may thus be seen as a "strange attractor" in the life of anyone engaged in the quest for transformation. It is an instinctual attraction toward processes which dissolve the ego and liquify consciousness, leading to transpersonal experience after symbolic death/rebirth. Freedom in the exploration of imagery comes from the creative capacity to experience loss. Experiencially, it appears as being channeled into the swirling mass of interacting symbols, an overwhelming vortex of pure information. We are sucked inexorably into interaction with the self-symbol, sucked into ourselves, like flotsam is pulled into a whirlpool.
This is the vortex of the system, the vortex of self, where all levels cross. It overwhelms or tangles the mental processes, the self-imaging processes that maintain the illusion of stable personality and individual boundaries. In solutio, the body is joined with the soul and spirit. The skin-boundary dissolves into visceral as well as spiritual perception. Awareness of physical processes may be greatly amplified, appearing as impressions, intuitions, sensations, sounds, odors. The body is always speaking silently. Through this raw, physical expression, that which was solid becomes liquified, dissolved, deliteralized.
The concrete image of the body "morphs" into the flow of pure energy, in a variation of Transubstantiation. It is the "rapture" of being seized up into the heavenly realm. The flow of dynamic energy from the deep Self reawakens and activates the body, and also that portion of the unconscious that the body carries. The body not only carries, but is the memory of the entire evolutionary cycle. Consciousness can access any portion of this material memory through creative regression. The body manifests kinesthetic, preverbal, and preconceptual memory of its direct experience. Immersion in the healing creative energy flow is like a spiritual baptism, which facilitates creative reformation of ordinary consciousness, and even the physical body.
Vortex-consciousness is a meta-process of complex feedback and resonance. In an environment that seems to be increasingly in flux and perhaps heading toward an avalanche of societal and environmental change, open-ended experimentation is a valuable way in which, as a community, we might gain, at least, a symbolic understanding of our being and the genius of our potential.
It is a complex interaction of fields which forms the attractor and which forms the complex around the structure. It is not a "thing" at the center of a bunch of orbits. Rather, it is a complex infinity of interaction. Field interaction may be the strange attractor. This may be hard to understand -- but not the first-hand experience of chaos in our lives affecting our fixations, fascinations, attention, and intentions. Chaos as the Universal Solvent dissolves problems, heals, allows life to flow in new, creative patterns. These new patterns embody the evolutionary dynamic. According to chaos theory, free-flowing energy is capable of self-organization. In consciousness this means that the obstructions to free flowing energy must first be dissolved.
It's O.K. to let go periodically and temporarily become unstructured nothingness and open to holistic re-patterning. Chaos is self-organizing, self-iterating, and self-generating. It is an evolutionary force. The tendency of new forms emerging from chaos is toward a higher degree of adaptation, hence evolution (Kauffmann, 1991). This "recycling" of consciousness leads to a self-referential vortex. Chaotic systems revolve around nexus points, known as strange attractors, because of their unpredictable quality. Rather than being "point-like," they are more like vortices within vortices.
The Philosopher's Stone is like a psychic lodestone (or vortex). It acts like an inner magnet, ordering the contents of our consciousness around it (through feedback loops) in chaotic, yet meaningful fashion. The Philosopher's Stone may thus be seen as a "strange attractor" in the life of anyone engaged in the quest for transformation. It is an instinctual attraction toward processes which dissolve the ego and liquify consciousness, leading to transpersonal experience after symbolic death/rebirth. Freedom in the exploration of imagery comes from the creative capacity to experience loss. Experiencially, it appears as being channeled into the swirling mass of interacting symbols, an overwhelming vortex of pure information. We are sucked inexorably into interaction with the self-symbol, sucked into ourselves, like flotsam is pulled into a whirlpool.
This is the vortex of the system, the vortex of self, where all levels cross. It overwhelms or tangles the mental processes, the self-imaging processes that maintain the illusion of stable personality and individual boundaries. In solutio, the body is joined with the soul and spirit. The skin-boundary dissolves into visceral as well as spiritual perception. Awareness of physical processes may be greatly amplified, appearing as impressions, intuitions, sensations, sounds, odors. The body is always speaking silently. Through this raw, physical expression, that which was solid becomes liquified, dissolved, deliteralized.
The concrete image of the body "morphs" into the flow of pure energy, in a variation of Transubstantiation. It is the "rapture" of being seized up into the heavenly realm. The flow of dynamic energy from the deep Self reawakens and activates the body, and also that portion of the unconscious that the body carries. The body not only carries, but is the memory of the entire evolutionary cycle. Consciousness can access any portion of this material memory through creative regression. The body manifests kinesthetic, preverbal, and preconceptual memory of its direct experience. Immersion in the healing creative energy flow is like a spiritual baptism, which facilitates creative reformation of ordinary consciousness, and even the physical body.
Vortex-consciousness is a meta-process of complex feedback and resonance. In an environment that seems to be increasingly in flux and perhaps heading toward an avalanche of societal and environmental change, open-ended experimentation is a valuable way in which, as a community, we might gain, at least, a symbolic understanding of our being and the genius of our potential.
Blavatsky, Secret Doctrine
Blavatsky on the Dragon
Blavatsky claimed that the universal “religion of the ancients” was the worship of the Dragon and the Sun. She said, “The tradition of the Dragon and the Sun is echoed in every part of the world, both in its civilized and semi-savage regions. It took rise in the whisperings about secret initiations among the profane, and was established universally through the once universal heliolatrous religion. There was a time when the four parts of the world were covered with the temples sacred to the Sun and the Dragon; but the cult is now preserved mostly in China and the Buddhist countries. … We find (a) the priests assuming the name of the gods they served; (b) the ‘Dragons’ held throughout all antiquity as the symbols of Immortality and Wisdom, of secret Knowledge and of Eternity; and (c) the hierophants of Egypt, of Babylon, and India, styling themselves generally the ‘sons of the Dragon’ and ‘Serpents’."
The Chaldeans had their ten and seven Anedots, which was the generic name for their Dragons of Wisdom. The name of the Dragon in Chaldea was not written phonetically, but was represented by two monograms, probably meaning, according to the Orientalists, "the scaly one." We find the priests assuming the names of the gods they served, the "Dragons" held throughout all antiquity as the symbols of Immortality and Wisdom, of secret Knowledge and of Eternity.
The allegory of Oannes, the Anedot, reminds us of the Dragon and Snake-Kings; the Nagas who in Buddhist legends instruct people in wisdom on lakes and rivers, and end by becoming converts to the good Law and Arhats. Musarus Oannes, the Anedot, known in the Chaldean "legend," transmitted through Berosus and other ancient writers as Dagon, the "Man-Fish," came to the early Babylonians as a reformer and an instructor. Appearing from the Erythraean (Red) Sea, he brought them civilization, letters and sciences, law, astronomy, religion, teaching them agriculture, geometry, and the arts in general. There were Anedoti who came after him; but Musarus Oannes was "the first to appear, and this he did in the reign of Ammenon, the third of the ten antediluvian Kings whose (divine) Dynasty ended with Xisuthrus, the Chaldean Noah."
The meaning of the allegory is evident. The "fish" is an old and very suggestive symbol of the Mystery-language, as is also "water;" Hea was the god of the sea and Wisdom, and the sea serpent was one of his emblems, his priests being "serpents" or Initiates. The hidden meaning becomes clear to the Occultist once he is told that "this being (Oannes) was accustomed to pass the day among men, teaching; and when the sun had set, he retired again into the sea, passing the night in the deep, for he was amphibios," i.e., he belonged to two planes, the spiritual and the physical. ... Oannes is dimly reflected in Jonah, and even in John the Precursor, both connected with Fish and Water. Layard showed long ago that the "fish's head" was simply a head gear, the mitre worn by priests and gods, made in the form of a fish's head, and which in a very little modified form is what we see even now on the heads of the high Lamas and Romish Bishops. Osiris had such a mitre. The fish's tail is simply the train of a long stiff mantle as depicted on some Assyrian tablets, the form being seen reproduced in the sacerdotal gold cloth garment worn during service by the modern Greek priests. http://www.blavatsky.net/magazine/theosophy/ww/additional/ListOfCollatedArticles/TheChaldeanLegend.html
THEOSOPHY, Vol. 44, No. 7, May, 1956
(Pages 317-323; Size: 20K) TWO ARCHETYPAL SYMBOLS(1)
TWO symbols that remain as bulwarks of ecclesiasticism are the Dragon and the Virgin. The former has been reduced to the status of a snake in the form of a humanized Devil, the latter to a woman apotheosized in the flesh. Yet, as regards occult history, they have not been long so regarded. The sign and myth of the mother and child were known thousands of years before the Christian era. According to Plato, it was at the ray of this first mother, one in three, that "God lighted a fire which we now call the sun." The Mother or Virgin is the Pleroma, the universal soul, the vehicle of Light and the receptacle of all forms. It is the great magic agent called by some the astral light, by others the Sidereal Virgin and the Mysterium Magnum; and by the Eastern Occultists Æther, the reflection of Akasha. From its swelling electric bosom spring matter and spirit. Within its beams lie the beginnings of all physical and chemical action, and of all cosmic and spiritual phenomena. It is a Force which vitalizes and disorganizes; it gives life and produces death, and from its primordial point gradually emerged into existence the myriads of worlds, visible and invisible celestial bodies.
The symbol of the Dragon has ever represented Divine Wisdom. It is the "Logos," also the sun; the Dragon and the Serpent were names given to the "Wise Ones," the initiated adepts of olden times. The Dragon, considered now mythical, is "in fact an extinct antediluvian monster." In Babylonian antiquities it is referred to as the "scaly one" and connected on many gems with Tiamat, the sea. "The Dragon of the Sea" is repeatedly mentioned. In Egypt, it is the star of the Dragon (then the North Pole Star), the origin of the connection of almost all the gods with the Dragon. Bel and the Dragon, Apollo and Python, Osiris and Typhon, Sigurd and Fafnir, and finally St. George and the Dragon, are the same. They were all solar gods, and wherever we find the sun there also is the Dragon, the symbol of Wisdom. The Hierophants of Egypt and of Babylon styled themselves "Sons of the Serpent-God" and "Sons of the Dragon." "I am a Serpent, I am a Druid," said the Druid of the Celto-Britannic regions, for the Serpent and the Dragon are both types of Wisdom, Immortality and Rebirth.
In the Hindu Mythology Vasuki, the Great Dragon, pours forth upon Durga from his mouth, a poisonous fluid which overspreads the ground, but her consort (Siva) caused the earth to open her mouth and swallow it. Thus the mystic drama of the celestial virgin pursued by the dragon seeking to devour her child, was not only depicted in the constellations of heaven, but was represented in the secret worship of the temples. It was the mystery of the god Sol, and inscribed on a black image of Isis. In days of old -- of the divine Dynasties on Earth -- the now dreaded reptile was regarded as the first beam of light that radiated from the abyss of divine Mystery. Various were the forms which it was made to assume, and numerous are the natural symbols adapted to it, as it crossed æons of time; as from Infinite Time itself -- Kala -- it fell into the space and time evolved out of human speculation. These forms were Cosmic and astronomical, theistic and pantheistic, abstract and concrete. They became in turn the Polar Dragon and the Southern Cross, the Alpha Draconis of the Pyramid, and the Hindu-Buddhist Dragon which ever threatens, yet never swallows the sun during its eclipses.
Cosmically, the Dragon represents the ceaseless creative and destructive force, the sevenfold potency. The Virgin represents the universally reproductive power found in nature. It is a force whose secret powers were thoroughly familiar to the ancient theurgists, but is denied by modern sceptics. The antediluvian children, who perhaps played with it, using it as the boys in Bulwer-Lytton's Coming Race use the tremendous "vril" -- called it the "Water of Phtah." Their descendants named it the Anima Mundi, the soul of the universe; or the "Milk of the Celestial Virgin," the Magnes and other names. But our modern learned men will neither accept nor recognize it under such appellations; for it pertains to magic, and magic is in their conceptions a disgraceful superstition. Woman stands in early cosmogony in relation to "matter" or the great deep, as the "Virgin of the Sea" who crushes the Dragon under her foot. For one acquainted with these tenets it becomes more than suggestive to learn that with the Catholics the Virgin Mary is not only the accepted patroness of Christian sailors, but also the "Virgin of the Sea." So was Dido the patroness of the Phoenician mariners, and together with Venus and other lunar goddesses -- the moon having such a strong influence over the tides -- was the "Virgin of the Sea." Mar, the Sea, is the root of the name Mary.
From the remotest antiquity the serpent was held by every people in the greatest veneration, as the embodiment of Divine Wisdom, and the symbol of Spirit. Hermes or Thot in Egypt regarded the serpent as "the most spirit-like of all the reptiles"; and the Gnostic serpent with the seven vowels over the head is but a copy of Ananta, the seven-headed serpent on which rests the god Vishnu. It is mankind which has become the "Serpent of Genesis," and thus causes daily and hourly the Fall and sin of the "Celestial Virgin" -- which thus becomes the mother of gods and devils at one and the same time; for she is the ever-loving, beneficent deity to all those who stir her Soul and heart, instead of attracting to themselves her shadowy manifested essence, called by Eliphas Levi "the fatal light" which kills and destroys. The serpent became the type and symbol of evil, and of the Devil, only during the middle ages. The early Christians -- besides the Ophite Gnostics -- had their dual Logos: the Good and Bad Serpent, the Agathodæmon and the Kakodæmon.
The seven-headed serpent has more than one signification in the arcane teachings. It is the seven-headed Draco, each of whose heads is a star of the Lesser Bear; but it was also, and pre-eminently, the Serpent of Darkness (i.e., inconceivable and incomprehensible) whose seven heads were the seven Logoi, the reflections of the one and first manifested Light -- the universal Logos. The septenary Dragon-Logos has been in the course of time split up, so to say, into four heptanomic parts, or twenty-eight portions. Each lunar week has a distinct occult character in the lunar month; each day of the twenty-eight has its special characteristics; and each of the twelve constellations, whether separately or in combination with other signs, has an occult influence either for good or for evil. This represents the sum of knowledge that men can acquire on earth. Yet few are those who acquire it, and still fewer are the wise men who get to the root of knowledge symbolized by the great Root Dragon, the spiritual Logos of these visible signs. But those who do, receive the name of "Dragons," and they are the "Arhats of the Four Truths and of the 28 Faculties," or attributes, and have always been so called.
All the dragons and serpents of antiquity are seven-headed, "one head for each race, and every head with seven hairs on it," as the allegory has it. From Ananta, the Serpent of Eternity which carries Vishnu through the Manvantara, from the original primordial Sesha, down to the seven-headed Akkadian Serpent. This typifies the seven principles throughout nature and man; the highest or middle head being the seventh. The legends of every nation and tribe, whether civilized or savage, point to the once universal belief in the great wisdom and cunning of the serpents. They are "charmers." They hypnotize the bird with their eye, and man himself very often does not feel above their fascination influence. The symbol is a most fitting one.
The Ophites asserted that there were several kinds of genii, from god to man; that the relative superiority of these was ruled by the degree of light that was accorded to each; and they maintained that the serpent had to be constantly called upon and to be thanked for the signal service it had rendered to humanity. For it had taught Adam that if he ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, he would raise his being immensely by the learning and wisdom he would thus acquire. Such was the exoteric reason given. It is easy to see whence the primal idea of this dual, Janus-like character of the Serpent: the good and the bad. This symbol is one of the most ancient because the reptile preceded the bird, and the bird the mammal.
Thence the belief, or rather the superstition, of the savage tribes who think that the souls of their ancestors live under this form, and the general association of the serpent with the tree. The legends about the various things it represents are numberless; but, as most of them are allegorical, they have now passed into the class of fables based on ignorance and dark superstition. For instance when Philostratus narrates that the natives of India and Arabia fed on the heart and liver of serpents in order to learn the language of all the animals, the serpent being credited with that faculty, he certainly never meant his words to be accepted literally. It was the wisdom and the learning of the "Wise Ones" that were devoured or assimilated by their followers, whence the allegory. When the Scandinavian is fabled to have roasted the heart of Fafnir, the Dragon whom he has slain, becoming thereby the wisest of men, it meant the same thing. Sigurd had become more learned in the runes and magical charms; he had received the "word" from an initiate of that name, or from a sorcerer, after which the latter died, as many do, after "passing the word."
Epiphanius lets out the secret of the Gnostics while trying to expose their heresies. The Gnostic Ophites, he says, had a reason for honoring the Serpent: it was because he taught the primeval men the Mysteries. The Alexandrian Neo-Platonists asserted that to become real Chaldees or Magi, one had to master the science of the periods of the Seven Rectors of the world, in whom is all wisdom. The "True and Perfect Serpent" is the seven-lettered God. The Nagas of the Hindu and Tibetan adepts are human Nagas (Serpents), not reptiles. Moreover, the Serpent has ever been the type of consecutive and serial rejuvenation, of IMMORTALITY and TIME.
According to the notions of the oldest philosophers the earth, serpent-like, casts off its skin and appears after every minor pralaya in a rejuvenated state, and after the great pralaya resurrects and evolves again from its subjective into objective existence. Like the serpent, it not only "puts off its old age," says Sanchoniathon, "but increases in size and strength." This is why not only Serapis, the "Dragon of Wisdom" in Egypt during the first centuries of Christianity, and later, Jesus, was represented by a great serpent, but even why in the nineteenth century big snakes were kept in Moslem mosques. In India in some children's cradles a pair of serpents, male and female, are reared with the infant, and snakes are often kept in houses, as they are thought to bring good luck. They are the progeny of Sarpa Rajna, the earth, "Queen of the Serpents," and endowed with all her virtues.
As a symbol, the serpent had as many aspects and occult meanings as the tree itself; the "Tree of Life," with which it was emblematically and almost indissolubly connected. In the beginning of their joint existence as a glyph of Immortal Being, the Tree and Serpent were divine imagery, truly. But whether viewed as a metaphysical or a physical symbol, the tree and serpent, jointly or separately, have never been so degraded by antiquity as they are now, in this our age of the breaking of idols, not for truth's sake, but to glorify the more gross matter. Certain symbologists entirely fail to see that their interpretations of the "Tree of Life," as the cross and phallus, fitted the symbol and approximated it only on the lowest and last stage of the evolutionary development of the idea of the Giver of Life. It was the last and the grossest physical transformation of nature, in animal, insect, bird, and even plant. For biune, creative magnetism, in the form of attraction of the contraries, or sexual polarization, acts in the constitution of the reptile and bird as it does in that of man. Moreover, the modern symbologists and Orientalists -- from first to last -- being ignorant of the real mysteries revealed by Occultism, can necessarily see but this last stage. If told that this mode of procreation is but a passing phase, a physical means of furnishing the conditions to, and producing the phenomena of life which will alter with this, and disappear with the next Root-race -- they would laugh at such a superstitious and unscientific idea. But the most learned Occultists assert this because they know it.
The Chaldeans had their ten and seven Anedots, which was the generic name for their Dragons of Wisdom. The name of the Dragon in Chaldea was not written phonetically, but was represented by two monograms, probably meaning, according to the Orientalists, "the scaly one." We find the priests assuming the names of the gods they served, the "Dragons" held throughout all antiquity as the symbols of Immortality and Wisdom, of secret Knowledge and of Eternity.
The allegory of Oannes, the Anedot, reminds us of the Dragon and Snake-Kings; the Nagas who in Buddhist legends instruct people in wisdom on lakes and rivers, and end by becoming converts to the good Law and Arhats. Musarus Oannes, the Anedot, known in the Chaldean "legend," transmitted through Berosus and other ancient writers as Dagon, the "Man-Fish," came to the early Babylonians as a reformer and an instructor. Appearing from the Erythraean (Red) Sea, he brought them civilization, letters and sciences, law, astronomy, religion, teaching them agriculture, geometry, and the arts in general. There were Anedoti who came after him; but Musarus Oannes was "the first to appear, and this he did in the reign of Ammenon, the third of the ten antediluvian Kings whose (divine) Dynasty ended with Xisuthrus, the Chaldean Noah."
The meaning of the allegory is evident. The "fish" is an old and very suggestive symbol of the Mystery-language, as is also "water;" Hea was the god of the sea and Wisdom, and the sea serpent was one of his emblems, his priests being "serpents" or Initiates. The hidden meaning becomes clear to the Occultist once he is told that "this being (Oannes) was accustomed to pass the day among men, teaching; and when the sun had set, he retired again into the sea, passing the night in the deep, for he was amphibios," i.e., he belonged to two planes, the spiritual and the physical. ... Oannes is dimly reflected in Jonah, and even in John the Precursor, both connected with Fish and Water. Layard showed long ago that the "fish's head" was simply a head gear, the mitre worn by priests and gods, made in the form of a fish's head, and which in a very little modified form is what we see even now on the heads of the high Lamas and Romish Bishops. Osiris had such a mitre. The fish's tail is simply the train of a long stiff mantle as depicted on some Assyrian tablets, the form being seen reproduced in the sacerdotal gold cloth garment worn during service by the modern Greek priests. http://www.blavatsky.net/magazine/theosophy/ww/additional/ListOfCollatedArticles/TheChaldeanLegend.html
THEOSOPHY, Vol. 44, No. 7, May, 1956
(Pages 317-323; Size: 20K) TWO ARCHETYPAL SYMBOLS(1)
TWO symbols that remain as bulwarks of ecclesiasticism are the Dragon and the Virgin. The former has been reduced to the status of a snake in the form of a humanized Devil, the latter to a woman apotheosized in the flesh. Yet, as regards occult history, they have not been long so regarded. The sign and myth of the mother and child were known thousands of years before the Christian era. According to Plato, it was at the ray of this first mother, one in three, that "God lighted a fire which we now call the sun." The Mother or Virgin is the Pleroma, the universal soul, the vehicle of Light and the receptacle of all forms. It is the great magic agent called by some the astral light, by others the Sidereal Virgin and the Mysterium Magnum; and by the Eastern Occultists Æther, the reflection of Akasha. From its swelling electric bosom spring matter and spirit. Within its beams lie the beginnings of all physical and chemical action, and of all cosmic and spiritual phenomena. It is a Force which vitalizes and disorganizes; it gives life and produces death, and from its primordial point gradually emerged into existence the myriads of worlds, visible and invisible celestial bodies.
The symbol of the Dragon has ever represented Divine Wisdom. It is the "Logos," also the sun; the Dragon and the Serpent were names given to the "Wise Ones," the initiated adepts of olden times. The Dragon, considered now mythical, is "in fact an extinct antediluvian monster." In Babylonian antiquities it is referred to as the "scaly one" and connected on many gems with Tiamat, the sea. "The Dragon of the Sea" is repeatedly mentioned. In Egypt, it is the star of the Dragon (then the North Pole Star), the origin of the connection of almost all the gods with the Dragon. Bel and the Dragon, Apollo and Python, Osiris and Typhon, Sigurd and Fafnir, and finally St. George and the Dragon, are the same. They were all solar gods, and wherever we find the sun there also is the Dragon, the symbol of Wisdom. The Hierophants of Egypt and of Babylon styled themselves "Sons of the Serpent-God" and "Sons of the Dragon." "I am a Serpent, I am a Druid," said the Druid of the Celto-Britannic regions, for the Serpent and the Dragon are both types of Wisdom, Immortality and Rebirth.
In the Hindu Mythology Vasuki, the Great Dragon, pours forth upon Durga from his mouth, a poisonous fluid which overspreads the ground, but her consort (Siva) caused the earth to open her mouth and swallow it. Thus the mystic drama of the celestial virgin pursued by the dragon seeking to devour her child, was not only depicted in the constellations of heaven, but was represented in the secret worship of the temples. It was the mystery of the god Sol, and inscribed on a black image of Isis. In days of old -- of the divine Dynasties on Earth -- the now dreaded reptile was regarded as the first beam of light that radiated from the abyss of divine Mystery. Various were the forms which it was made to assume, and numerous are the natural symbols adapted to it, as it crossed æons of time; as from Infinite Time itself -- Kala -- it fell into the space and time evolved out of human speculation. These forms were Cosmic and astronomical, theistic and pantheistic, abstract and concrete. They became in turn the Polar Dragon and the Southern Cross, the Alpha Draconis of the Pyramid, and the Hindu-Buddhist Dragon which ever threatens, yet never swallows the sun during its eclipses.
Cosmically, the Dragon represents the ceaseless creative and destructive force, the sevenfold potency. The Virgin represents the universally reproductive power found in nature. It is a force whose secret powers were thoroughly familiar to the ancient theurgists, but is denied by modern sceptics. The antediluvian children, who perhaps played with it, using it as the boys in Bulwer-Lytton's Coming Race use the tremendous "vril" -- called it the "Water of Phtah." Their descendants named it the Anima Mundi, the soul of the universe; or the "Milk of the Celestial Virgin," the Magnes and other names. But our modern learned men will neither accept nor recognize it under such appellations; for it pertains to magic, and magic is in their conceptions a disgraceful superstition. Woman stands in early cosmogony in relation to "matter" or the great deep, as the "Virgin of the Sea" who crushes the Dragon under her foot. For one acquainted with these tenets it becomes more than suggestive to learn that with the Catholics the Virgin Mary is not only the accepted patroness of Christian sailors, but also the "Virgin of the Sea." So was Dido the patroness of the Phoenician mariners, and together with Venus and other lunar goddesses -- the moon having such a strong influence over the tides -- was the "Virgin of the Sea." Mar, the Sea, is the root of the name Mary.
From the remotest antiquity the serpent was held by every people in the greatest veneration, as the embodiment of Divine Wisdom, and the symbol of Spirit. Hermes or Thot in Egypt regarded the serpent as "the most spirit-like of all the reptiles"; and the Gnostic serpent with the seven vowels over the head is but a copy of Ananta, the seven-headed serpent on which rests the god Vishnu. It is mankind which has become the "Serpent of Genesis," and thus causes daily and hourly the Fall and sin of the "Celestial Virgin" -- which thus becomes the mother of gods and devils at one and the same time; for she is the ever-loving, beneficent deity to all those who stir her Soul and heart, instead of attracting to themselves her shadowy manifested essence, called by Eliphas Levi "the fatal light" which kills and destroys. The serpent became the type and symbol of evil, and of the Devil, only during the middle ages. The early Christians -- besides the Ophite Gnostics -- had their dual Logos: the Good and Bad Serpent, the Agathodæmon and the Kakodæmon.
The seven-headed serpent has more than one signification in the arcane teachings. It is the seven-headed Draco, each of whose heads is a star of the Lesser Bear; but it was also, and pre-eminently, the Serpent of Darkness (i.e., inconceivable and incomprehensible) whose seven heads were the seven Logoi, the reflections of the one and first manifested Light -- the universal Logos. The septenary Dragon-Logos has been in the course of time split up, so to say, into four heptanomic parts, or twenty-eight portions. Each lunar week has a distinct occult character in the lunar month; each day of the twenty-eight has its special characteristics; and each of the twelve constellations, whether separately or in combination with other signs, has an occult influence either for good or for evil. This represents the sum of knowledge that men can acquire on earth. Yet few are those who acquire it, and still fewer are the wise men who get to the root of knowledge symbolized by the great Root Dragon, the spiritual Logos of these visible signs. But those who do, receive the name of "Dragons," and they are the "Arhats of the Four Truths and of the 28 Faculties," or attributes, and have always been so called.
All the dragons and serpents of antiquity are seven-headed, "one head for each race, and every head with seven hairs on it," as the allegory has it. From Ananta, the Serpent of Eternity which carries Vishnu through the Manvantara, from the original primordial Sesha, down to the seven-headed Akkadian Serpent. This typifies the seven principles throughout nature and man; the highest or middle head being the seventh. The legends of every nation and tribe, whether civilized or savage, point to the once universal belief in the great wisdom and cunning of the serpents. They are "charmers." They hypnotize the bird with their eye, and man himself very often does not feel above their fascination influence. The symbol is a most fitting one.
The Ophites asserted that there were several kinds of genii, from god to man; that the relative superiority of these was ruled by the degree of light that was accorded to each; and they maintained that the serpent had to be constantly called upon and to be thanked for the signal service it had rendered to humanity. For it had taught Adam that if he ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, he would raise his being immensely by the learning and wisdom he would thus acquire. Such was the exoteric reason given. It is easy to see whence the primal idea of this dual, Janus-like character of the Serpent: the good and the bad. This symbol is one of the most ancient because the reptile preceded the bird, and the bird the mammal.
Thence the belief, or rather the superstition, of the savage tribes who think that the souls of their ancestors live under this form, and the general association of the serpent with the tree. The legends about the various things it represents are numberless; but, as most of them are allegorical, they have now passed into the class of fables based on ignorance and dark superstition. For instance when Philostratus narrates that the natives of India and Arabia fed on the heart and liver of serpents in order to learn the language of all the animals, the serpent being credited with that faculty, he certainly never meant his words to be accepted literally. It was the wisdom and the learning of the "Wise Ones" that were devoured or assimilated by their followers, whence the allegory. When the Scandinavian is fabled to have roasted the heart of Fafnir, the Dragon whom he has slain, becoming thereby the wisest of men, it meant the same thing. Sigurd had become more learned in the runes and magical charms; he had received the "word" from an initiate of that name, or from a sorcerer, after which the latter died, as many do, after "passing the word."
Epiphanius lets out the secret of the Gnostics while trying to expose their heresies. The Gnostic Ophites, he says, had a reason for honoring the Serpent: it was because he taught the primeval men the Mysteries. The Alexandrian Neo-Platonists asserted that to become real Chaldees or Magi, one had to master the science of the periods of the Seven Rectors of the world, in whom is all wisdom. The "True and Perfect Serpent" is the seven-lettered God. The Nagas of the Hindu and Tibetan adepts are human Nagas (Serpents), not reptiles. Moreover, the Serpent has ever been the type of consecutive and serial rejuvenation, of IMMORTALITY and TIME.
According to the notions of the oldest philosophers the earth, serpent-like, casts off its skin and appears after every minor pralaya in a rejuvenated state, and after the great pralaya resurrects and evolves again from its subjective into objective existence. Like the serpent, it not only "puts off its old age," says Sanchoniathon, "but increases in size and strength." This is why not only Serapis, the "Dragon of Wisdom" in Egypt during the first centuries of Christianity, and later, Jesus, was represented by a great serpent, but even why in the nineteenth century big snakes were kept in Moslem mosques. In India in some children's cradles a pair of serpents, male and female, are reared with the infant, and snakes are often kept in houses, as they are thought to bring good luck. They are the progeny of Sarpa Rajna, the earth, "Queen of the Serpents," and endowed with all her virtues.
As a symbol, the serpent had as many aspects and occult meanings as the tree itself; the "Tree of Life," with which it was emblematically and almost indissolubly connected. In the beginning of their joint existence as a glyph of Immortal Being, the Tree and Serpent were divine imagery, truly. But whether viewed as a metaphysical or a physical symbol, the tree and serpent, jointly or separately, have never been so degraded by antiquity as they are now, in this our age of the breaking of idols, not for truth's sake, but to glorify the more gross matter. Certain symbologists entirely fail to see that their interpretations of the "Tree of Life," as the cross and phallus, fitted the symbol and approximated it only on the lowest and last stage of the evolutionary development of the idea of the Giver of Life. It was the last and the grossest physical transformation of nature, in animal, insect, bird, and even plant. For biune, creative magnetism, in the form of attraction of the contraries, or sexual polarization, acts in the constitution of the reptile and bird as it does in that of man. Moreover, the modern symbologists and Orientalists -- from first to last -- being ignorant of the real mysteries revealed by Occultism, can necessarily see but this last stage. If told that this mode of procreation is but a passing phase, a physical means of furnishing the conditions to, and producing the phenomena of life which will alter with this, and disappear with the next Root-race -- they would laugh at such a superstitious and unscientific idea. But the most learned Occultists assert this because they know it.
Monarchy, by Tracy Twyman, 2003
James VI of Scotland
James I of England
When the Stewart King James VI of Scotland ascended the throne of England to become King James I of Great Britain, he made a speech that shocked and appalled the nobles sitting in Parliament. They had been waxing increasingly bold over the last few years, attempting to limit the powers of the crown to strengthen their own. What shocked them was that James used his coronation speech to remind them of the ancient, traditional belief that a monarch is chosen by God to be His emissary and representative on Earth, and ought therefore to be responsible to no one but God. In other words, James was asserting what has become known to history as ‘The Divine Right of Kings’, and they didn’t like it one bit.
Quotes from the speech show how inflammatory his words actually were:
"The state of monarchy is the most supreme thing upon earth, for kings are not only God’s lieutenants upon earth, and sit upon God’s throne, but even by God himself are called gods... In the Scriptures, kings are called gods, and so their power after a certain relation compared to divine power. Kings are also compared to fathers of families: for a king is truly Parens Patriae, the politique father of his people... Kings are justly called gods, for that they exercise a manner of resemblance of divine power upon earth: for if you will consider the attributes to God, you shall see how they agree in the person of a king."
The nobles were aghast. This fat, bloated pustule telling everyone to worship him as a god! It seemed patently ridiculous. Even more offensive, James finished up his speech by putting Parliament in its place basically telling them that, since he ruled by the grace of God, any act or word spoken in contradiction of him was an act against God himself. James continued:
"I conclude then this point, touching the power of kings with this axiom of divinity: that as to dispute what God may do is blasphemy... so is it sedition in subjects to dispute what a king may do in the height of his power. I would not have you meddle with such ancient rights of mine as I have received from my predecessors... All novelties are dangerous as well in a politic as in a natural body, and therefore I would loathe to be quarreled in my ancient rights and possessions, for that were to judge me unworthy of that which my predecessors had and left me."
Although it was James I that made the concept famous, he certainly did not invent the idea of Divine Right. The concept is, as we shall show, as old as civilization itself.
As harsh and dictatorial as it may seem, such a system actually protected the rights of individual citizens from even larger and more powerful bullies such as the Parliament and the Pope. When power rests ultimately in the hands of a single individual such as a king, beholden to nobody except God, who need not appease anyone for either money or votes, injustices are more likely to be righted after a direct appeal to him. Furthermore, past monarchs who held their claims to power doggedly in the face of increasing opposition from the Catholic Church managed, as long as they held their power, to save their subjects from the forced religious indoctrination and social servitude that comes with a Catholic theocracy. Author Stephen Coston wrote in 1972’s Sources of English Constitutional History that:
"Without the doctrine of the Divine Right, Roman Catholicism would have dominated history well beyond its current employment in the Dark Ages. Furthermore, Divine Right made it possible for the Protestant Reformation in England to take place, mature and spread to the rest of the world."
The Divine Right practiced by European monarchs was actually based on a more ancient doctrine practiced by the monarchs of Judah and Israel in the Old Testament. Many European royal families considered them to be their ancestors, tracing their royal European lineage back to the Jewish King David, sometimes through the descendants of Jesus Christ. Such a line of descent was (and is) known as the "Grail Bloodline."
One of Europe’s most famous monarchs, Charlemagne the Great, was often called "David" in reference to his famous ancestor, and Habsburg King Otto was called "the son of David." In fact, the European tradition of anointing kings comes from that practiced in the Old Testament. Author George Athas describes how the ceremony symbolized the Lord Yahweh adopting the new king as his own son:
"Firstly, the king was the ‘Anointed’ of Yahweh - the mesiach, from which we derive the term ‘Messiah.’ At his anointing (or his coronation), the Spirit of Yahweh entered the king, giving him superhuman qualities and allowing him to carry out the dictates of the deity. The psalmist of Psalm 45 describes the king as ‘fairer than the sons of men’, and continued to praise his majestic characteristics. This king also had eternal life granted to him by Yahweh. The deity is portrayed as saying to him, ‘You are my son - today I have sired you.’ The king was Yahweh’s Firstborn - the bekhor - who was the heir to his father’s estate. He was ‘the highest of the kings of the earth.’ Thus, the king was adopted by Yahweh at his coronation and, as such, was in closer communion with the deity than the rest of the people. On many occasions, Yahweh was called the king’s god.
The king was distinguished far above the ordinary mortal, rendering him holy and his person sacred. It was regarded as a grievous offence to lay a hand on him. Thus, to overthrow the king was rebellion of the most heinous sort and an affront to the deity who had appointed the king... We can note that the King of Judah and Israel is described in divine terms. He is, for example, seen as sitting at Yahweh’s right hand, and his adopted son. We find similar motifs of Pharaohs seated to the right of a deity of Egypt. Psalm 45:7 calls the king an ‘elohim’ - a god. Psalm 45:7also says ‘Your throne is like God’s throne.’"
Here we see the basis for King James’ claim that the scriptures likened human kings to gods. As such, kings were strongly associated with the priesthood as well, and in some cases took on priestly functions. However, traditionally, the Jewish priesthood was dominated by the Cohens of the Tribe of Levi, which was biologically related but functionally separate from the royal line of David - that is, until Jesus came along, heir to both the kingly and priestly titles through his lineage back to both tribes.
However, in other more ancient cultures, such as the Egyptians, the royal and priestly functions were inseparable. In addition to regarding their Pharaohs as the literal offspring of deities, and in fact, deities themselves, the Egyptians believed that the gods had given them the institution of kingship itself. Their first king had been one of their main gods: Osiris, whom all human kings were expected to emulate. Richard Cassaro, in his book, A Deeper Truth, elaborates:
"... during the First Time [The Golden Age when the gods ruled directly on Earth] a human yet eternal king named Osiris initiated a monarchial government in Egypt and imparted a wise law and spiritual wisdom to the people. At the end of his ministry, Osiris left his throne to the people. It was, thereafter, the duty of every king to rule over Egypt in the same manner Osiris had ruled.
This concept that kingship began with a single divine ruler of whom all subsequent human kings are descendants can be traced back to the oldest civilization acknowledged by history, Sumeria, and the other Mesopotamian cultures that followed, such as the Assyrians and the Babylonians. To quote Henri Frankfort:
"In Mesopotamia, the king was regarded as taking on godhood at his coronation, and at every subsequent New Year festival. However, he was often seen as having been predestined to the divine throne by the gods at his birth, or even at the beginning of time. Through a sacred marriage, he had a metaphysical union with the mother goddess, who filled him with life, fertility, and blessing, which he passed onto his people."
The Encyclopedia Britannica has identified three different types of sacred kingship that were recognized in the ancient world. The king was seen as,
(1) the receptacle of supernatural or divine power
(2) the divine or semi-divine ruler
(3) the agent or mediator of the sacred
However, this author believes it is safe to say that all of these concepts stem from the almost universal belief that kingship descended from Heaven with a single divine being who was literally thought of as the ancestor of all those who followed. This king, was known to the ancients as Kronos, the Forgotten Father, and this is another name for the deity/planet, Saturn. He was the ‘brightest star in the heavens", who fell to Earth and intermarried with the wives of men to breed a race of human kings (the Grail Bloodline). After that he was imprisoned in the Underworld by his father, Zeus, the Most High God, for disobeying a social taboo against interbreeding with humans, and sharing secret knowledge with them.
Some might think this contradicts the traditional association of ancient kings with the Sun-God, but in fact, Saturn himself was a sun god of a sort. In ancient times Saturn was the dominant figure in the night sky and as such became known as ‘the midnight sun’ (a term later used by occultists to refer to the Grail). From its position in the sky it appeared to stand still, as the rest of the night sky revolved around it. It was therefore also called ‘The Central Sun.’
Interestingly, although this theory of mine has long been in the works, I’ve recently stumbled across an author named David Talbott who shares this hypothesis on the origin of kingship. From a piece on his website, entitled "Saturn as a Stationary Sun and Universal Monarch’, we read:
"A global tradition recalls an exemplary king ruling in the sky before kings ever ruled on earth.
This mythical figure appears as the first in the line of kings, the father of kings, the model of the good king. But this same figure is commonly remembered as the central luminary of the sky, often a central sun, unmoving sun, or superior sun ruling before the present sun.
And most curiously, with the rise of astronomy this celestial ‘king’ was identified as the planet Saturn."
One can see traces of this ancient progenitor of kings just in the word ‘monarchy’ itself. The syllable "mon" means "one" in Indo-European language systems, as in "The One King Who Rules Over All." But in Egypt, "Mon" was one of the names of the sun god, (also called Amun-Re) in its occluded state, at night, when the sun, as they saw it, passed beneath the Earth. The word meant literally for them, "The Hidden One", because he ruled the world (and the Underworld) from his secret subterranean prison. The syllable "ark" comes from the Greek "arche", meaning "original", or "originator." As the first "monarch", Kronos was the originator of kings, the Forgotten Father of all royal bloodlines. Many of our commonly associated symbols of kingship date back to the time when Kronos first introduced it, and are directly derived from him.
For instance, the crown symbolizes the (central) sun, the "Godhead" descending upon the brow of the wise king. The Sumerian kings adorned their crowns with horns, just like Kronos was believed to have done. The throne was Kronos’ seat on his celestial boat in heaven, and has also been passed down to us. Kronos and his descendants were known as Shepherd Kings, an appellation used by royalty throughout history, and this is the origin of the king’s scepter, which was once a shepherd’s staff. The coronation stone and the orb surmounted by a cross are also Saturnian/solar symbols, and the Egyptian word for the sun, Re, may be the source of the French word for king, Roi.
Kronos, and the god-kings who followed him, were known by the title "Lord of the Four Corners of the World." This has given birth to the universal, recurring archetype of "Le Roi du Monde", a concept that was brilliantly explored in a book by René Guenon of the same name. In a surprising number of cultures throughout the world and throughout history, there exists this concept of "The Lord of the Earth", an omnipresent and eternal monarch who reigns from within the very center of the Earth itself, directing events on the surface with his superhuman psyche. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, "The Lord of the Earth" is a term applied to Satan, or Lucifer, who, like Saturn, was the brightest star in Heaven, but was cast down by God. Like Saturn, he was imprisoned inside the bowels of the Earth, in a realm called Hell.
In fact, it is quite clear that the figure of Satan cmes from Saturn, the "Fish-Goat-Man", and obviously the two words are etymologically related. Perhaps this is why the "Grail Bloodline", the divine lineage from which all European kings have come, is traced by many back to Lucifer. The medieval Christian heretics known as the Cathars took this concept to its logical conclusion. They insisted that, since Satan is the ‘King of the World’ ("Rex Mundi’, as they called him), and Jehovah was, in the Bible, the one who created the world, Jehovah and Satan must be one and the same. For preaching this they were massacred unto extinction by the Papacy.
However, in the Eastern tradition, "the Lord of the Earth" represents the ultimate incarnate manifestation of Godhood. They too see him as ruling his kingdom from the center of the Earth, in a subterranean city called either Shamballah or Agartha. And in this tradition, the Lord of the Earth is also a super-spiritual being capable of incarnating on the surface of the Earth in a series of ‘Avatars’, or human kings who rule various eras of existence.
According to New Age author Alice Bailey:
"Shamballa is the seat of the ‘Lord of the World’, who has made the sacrifice (analogous to the Bodhisattva’s vow) of remaining to watch over the evolution of men and devas until all have been ‘saved’ or enlightened."
One of the names that the Hindus use for "The Lord of the Earth" is Manu, who, writes Guenon, is,
"a cosmic intelligence that reflects pure spiritual light and formulates the law (Dharma) appropriate to the conditions of our world and our cycle of existence."
Author Ferdinand Ossendowski adds:
"The Lord of the World is in touch with the thoughts of all those who direct the destiny of mankind... He knows their intentions and their ideas. If they are pleasing to God, the Lord of the World favours them with his invisible aid. But if they are displeasing to God, he puts a check on their activities."
These are obviously activities that human kings, as incarnations of the Lord of the Earth, are expected to replicate in their own kingdoms to the best of their ability. In fact, a number of human kings throughout history have been viewed by their subjects as incarnations of the "Lord of the Earth", embodying the concepts that he represents. These include Charlemagne, Alexander the Great (who was believed to have horns literally growing from his head, just like Saturn), and Melchizedek, a mysterious priest-king mentioned repeatedly in the Old Testament and imbued with an inexplicable importance. He was called the "Prince of Salem" (as in Jeru-Salem), and is said to have shared bread and wine with Abraham on Mt. Moriah. Some believe that the cup which they used is the artifact that later became known as the Holy Grail.
Some have also identified him with another king of Jerusalem, Adonizedek, and with Shem, Noah’s son. Nobody knows what his ancestry is, who his descendants might have been, or why, thousands of years later, Jesus Christ was referred to in the scriptures as, "A priest according to the Order of Melchizedek."
Of Melchizedek’s significance, René Guenon writes:
"Melchizedek, or more precisely, Melki-Tsedeq, is none other than the title used by Judeo-Christian tradition to denote the function of ‘The Lord of the World’...
Melki-Tsedeq is thus both king and priest. His name means ‘King of Justice’, and he is also king of Salem, that is, of ‘Peace’, so again we find ‘Justice’ and "Peace’, the fundamental attributes pertaining to the ‘Lord of the World.’"
Even more pertinent information is provided by René Guenon’s good friend Julius Evola, who in his book The Mystery of the Grail wrote:
"In some Syriac texts, mention is made of a stone that is the foundation, or center of the world, hidden in the ‘primordial depths, near God’s temple. It is put in relation with the body of the primordial man (Adam) and, interestingly enough, with an inaccessible mountain place, the access to which must not be revealed to other people; here Melchizedek, ‘in divine and eternal service’, watches over Adam’s body. In Melchizedek we find again the representation of the supreme function of the Universal Ruler, which is simultaneously regal and priestly; here this representation is associated with some kind of guardian of Adam’s body who originally possessed the Grail and who, after losing it, no longer lives. This is found together with the motifs of a mysterious stone and an inaccessible seat."
Clearly, that foundation stone of the world is the same as the Black, or Hidden Sun in the center of the Earth, or the ‘Grail Stone’ which is said to be hidden in that location. The Grail Romances provide us with much insight into the ‘King of the World’ concept. He is represented in the story by one of the supporting characters, Prester John, a king who is mentioned in passing as ruling over a spiritual domain in the faraway East, and who, quite fittingly, is said to come from Davidic descent.
Evola continues:
"The Tractatus pulcherrimus referred to him as ‘king of kings’ rex regnum. He combined spiritual authority with regal power... Yet essentially, ‘Prester John’ is only a title and a name, which designates not a given individual but rather a function. Thus in Wolfram von Eschenbach and in the Titurel we find ‘Prester John’ as a title; the Grail, as we will see, indicates from time to time the person who must become Prester John. Moreover, in the legend, ‘Prester John’ designates one who keeps in check the people of Gog and Magog, who exercises a visible and invisible dominion , figuratively, dominion over both natural and invisible beings, and who defends the access of his kingdom with ‘lions’ and ‘giants.’ In this kingdom is also found the ‘fountain of youth.’"
"The dignity of a sacred king is often accompanied by biblical reminiscences, by presenting Prester John as the son or nephew of King David, and sometimes as King David himself... ‘David, King of the Hindus, who is called by the people ‘Prester John’ - the King (Prester John) descends from the son of King David."
The "Lord of the Earth", or the figures that represent him, are often symbolized by a victory stone, or a foundation stone which is emblematic of their authority. For instance, British kings are crowned on the "Stone of Destiny", believed to have been used as a pillow by Jacob in the Old Testament. Such a stone is often referred to in mythology as having fallen from Heaven, like the Grail Stone, which fell out of Lucifer’s crown during his war with God, and became the foundation stone for the Grail kingdom, having the power, as it is written, to ‘make kings.’ Because it fell from Heaven, the Grail is also often associated with a falling star, like that which Lucifer represents. Of course the Black Sun in the center of the Earth also represents Rex Mundi‘s victory stone. It is interesting, then, that in the Babylonian tongue, the word "tsar" means "rock", and is not only an anagram of "star", but a word that in the Russian language refers to an imperial monarch.
Sometimes the monarchial foundation stone is represented as a mountain, especially the World or Primordial Mountain that in mythology provides the Earth with its central axis. The Sumerians referred to this as Mt. Mashu. Its twin peaks were said to reach up to Heaven, while the tunnels and caves within it reached down to the depths of Hell. Jehovah in the Bible, sometimes called El Shaddai ("The Lord of the Mountain") had Mt. Zion for a foundation stone, and was believed to actually live inside of the mountain. Later, the kingdom of Jesus Christ was said to be "founded upon the Rock of Sion".
The stone that fell from Heaven, the royal victory stone, is also sometimes depicted under the symbolic form of a castrated phallus, such as that of Kronos, whose disembodied penis was hurled into the ocean, and there spawned the Lady Venus. This story is a recapitulation of the Osiris story, as well as the inspiration for the Grail legends, in which the Fisher King is wounded in the genitals, causing the entire kingdom to fall under a spell of perpetual malaise. The only thing that can heal the king, and therefore the kingdom is the Grail. This is a recurring theme in world mythology. The king and/or the kingdom that temporarily falls asleep or falls under a magic spell which renders it/him ineffectual for a time, until the stars are right, or the proper conditions are met. This causes the king and his kingdom to reawaken, to rise from the ashes, from the tomb, or often, to rise out of the sea.
The cycle recurs in the tales of the Lord of the Earth, who alternates between periods of death-like sleep within his tomb in the center of the Earth, and rebirth, in which he once again returns to watch over his kingdom, to restore righteousness and justice to the land. He then presides over a new, revitalized "Golden Age".
Julius Evola writes of the archetype:
"It is a theme that dates back to the most ancient times and that bears a certain relation to the doctrine of the ‘cyclical manifestations’ or avatars, namely, the manifestation, occurring at special times and in various forms, of a single principle, which during intermediate periods exists in an unmanifested state. Thus every time a king displayed the traits of an incarnation of such a principle, the idea arose in the legend that he has not died but has withdrawn into an inaccessible seat whence once day he will manifest, or that he is asleep and will awaken one day... The image of a regality in a state of sleep or apparent death, however, is akin to that of an altered, wounded, paralyzed regality, in regard not to its intangible principle but to its external and historical representatives.
Hence the theme of the wounded, mutilated or weakened king who continues to live in an inaccessible center, in which time and death are suspended.... In the Hindu tradition we encounter the theme of Mahaksyapa, who sleeps in a mountain but will awaken at the sound of shells at the time of the new manifestation of the principle that previously manifested itself in the form of Buddha. Such a period is also that of the coming of a Universal Ruler (cakravartin) by the name of Samkha. Since samkha means ‘shells’, this verbal assimilation expresses the idea of the awakening from sleep of the new manifestation of the King of the World and of the same primordial tradition that the above-mentioned legend conceives to be enclosed (during the intermediate period of crisis) in a shell. When the right time comes, in conformity with the cyclical laws, a new manifestation from above will occur (Kalki-avatara) in the form of a sacred king who will triumph over the Dark Age.
"...many people thought that the Roman world, in its imperial and pagan phase, signified the beginning of a new Golden Age, the king of which, Kronos, was believed to be living in a state of slumber in the Hyperborean region. During Augustus’ reign, the Sibylline prophecies announced the advent of a ‘solar’ king, a rex a coelo, or ex sole missus, to which Horace seems to refer when he invokes the advent of Apollo, the Hyperborean god of the Golden Age. "
Rene Guenon, Evola’s good friend, believed in this concept, and that the periods of slumber for the Lord of the Earth have been cyclically brought to a close by apocalypses. After this, Le Roi du Monde would return to clean up the wreckage and once more look after his faithful flock. In the Revelation of St. John the Divine, three kings actually return from periods of slumber, death, or prolonged absence: Jesus, Satan, and Jehovah, and naturally, the governmental entity that God chooses for this utopian world is the one which has always been associated with holiness and righteousness: monarchy.
Monarchy was the first form of government observed by man, and it was, according to almost every culture, created by God himself. It is the primordial, archetypal form of government, the most natural, that which all other forms of government vainly try to mimic, while at the same time violating its most basic tenets. Monarchy was, for thousands of years, all that man knew. The idea of not having a monarch, a father figure to watch over them, to maintain the community’s relationship with the divine, represented to them, not freedom, but chaos, uncertainty, and within a short time, death. The common people did not jealously vie for positions of power, nor did they desire to have any say in the decision of who would be king. In fact, most of them preferred that there be no decision to make at all: most monarchies functioned on the principle of primogeniture, passing the scepter and crown down from father to son, or in some cases, through the matrilineal line. The decision was up to nature or God, so therefore just and righteous in itself.
Furthermore, they knew they could count on their king or queen to watch over them as they would their own children, to be fair and honest, to protect them from invasion, to maintain the proper relationship between God and the kingdom. They desired to make their kingdom on Earth reflect the order and perfection that existed in God’s kingdom in Heaven.
And for thousands of years before the modern era, when 90% of the population was not intellectually capable of participating in government or making electoral decisions, monarchy stood as a bulwark against the disintegration of the societal unit, providing a stability that otherwise could not be achieved. If monarchy had not been invented, human history could never have happened.
Richard Cassino, in A Deeper Truth, said it best:
"Since the obligation of every king... is to maintain law, order, morality, spirituality, and religion within his kingdom, then the very design of a monarchy itself was probably conceived by the superior intelligence called God so as to endow mankind with a sound system of government. In other words, the concept of kingship was designed for, and delivered to, the peoples of earth by God to teach mankind to live in a humanized social environment... Human history, with its past and present kingdoms and kings - Egypt, Assyria, Persia, Babylon, Sumer, Aztec, Inca, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Great Britain, to name a few - stands as a testimony to the fact that the monarchial form of government has been the basis for almost every civilization."
If monarchy is the most perfect form of government, and if it has been responsible for providing us with at least 6000 years of human history, why now does it seem to be only an ancient pretension? Why is the concept of having a monarchy actually function in government considered to be a quaint but laughable thing of the past? Have we really moved beyond monarchy?
Hardly. If you were to graph the entire 6000 years of known human history and isolate the period in which civilized nations have been without monarchs, it would be merely a blip on the spectrum. In fact, of the civilized Western nations, few do not have a monarch reigning either de jure or de facto (although they continue to elect Presidents from royal European lineage.) Most nations that maintain representational government still have a monarch either recognized by the government, or by the people at large. Although essentially powerless, these monarchs maintain a symbolic link between a nation and its heritage, its most sacred, most ancient traditions.
They also constitute a government-in-waiting, should the thin veneer of illusory ‘freedom’ and ‘equality’ that maintains democracy break down. The modern system of Republican government is based not so much on the freedom of the individual, but on the free flow of money, on debt, usury, and inflation, on a monetary house of cards known as "Fractional Reserve Lending." It would only take a major and slightly prolonged collapse of the monetary system to eliminate this governmental system. At that point, civilized man will have essentially two choices: anarchy or monarchy, and if people have any sense at all they will choose the latter, rather than subjecting themselves to a chaotic succession of despots interspersed with periods of violence and rioting, and the poverty that comes with the lack of a stable state.
It would be the most natural thing in the world for the royal families of Earth, as well as the monarchial system which they have maintained, and which has maintained us for thousands of years, to just slide right into place. The kingdom of the gods, who once ruled during man’s Golden Age, would awaken from their slumber and heed the call to duty, like Kronos, their Forgotten Father, and monarch of all, who soundly sleeps within his tomb in the primordial mountain, waiting for his chance to once again hold dominion over the Earth.
James I of England
When the Stewart King James VI of Scotland ascended the throne of England to become King James I of Great Britain, he made a speech that shocked and appalled the nobles sitting in Parliament. They had been waxing increasingly bold over the last few years, attempting to limit the powers of the crown to strengthen their own. What shocked them was that James used his coronation speech to remind them of the ancient, traditional belief that a monarch is chosen by God to be His emissary and representative on Earth, and ought therefore to be responsible to no one but God. In other words, James was asserting what has become known to history as ‘The Divine Right of Kings’, and they didn’t like it one bit.
Quotes from the speech show how inflammatory his words actually were:
"The state of monarchy is the most supreme thing upon earth, for kings are not only God’s lieutenants upon earth, and sit upon God’s throne, but even by God himself are called gods... In the Scriptures, kings are called gods, and so their power after a certain relation compared to divine power. Kings are also compared to fathers of families: for a king is truly Parens Patriae, the politique father of his people... Kings are justly called gods, for that they exercise a manner of resemblance of divine power upon earth: for if you will consider the attributes to God, you shall see how they agree in the person of a king."
The nobles were aghast. This fat, bloated pustule telling everyone to worship him as a god! It seemed patently ridiculous. Even more offensive, James finished up his speech by putting Parliament in its place basically telling them that, since he ruled by the grace of God, any act or word spoken in contradiction of him was an act against God himself. James continued:
"I conclude then this point, touching the power of kings with this axiom of divinity: that as to dispute what God may do is blasphemy... so is it sedition in subjects to dispute what a king may do in the height of his power. I would not have you meddle with such ancient rights of mine as I have received from my predecessors... All novelties are dangerous as well in a politic as in a natural body, and therefore I would loathe to be quarreled in my ancient rights and possessions, for that were to judge me unworthy of that which my predecessors had and left me."
Although it was James I that made the concept famous, he certainly did not invent the idea of Divine Right. The concept is, as we shall show, as old as civilization itself.
As harsh and dictatorial as it may seem, such a system actually protected the rights of individual citizens from even larger and more powerful bullies such as the Parliament and the Pope. When power rests ultimately in the hands of a single individual such as a king, beholden to nobody except God, who need not appease anyone for either money or votes, injustices are more likely to be righted after a direct appeal to him. Furthermore, past monarchs who held their claims to power doggedly in the face of increasing opposition from the Catholic Church managed, as long as they held their power, to save their subjects from the forced religious indoctrination and social servitude that comes with a Catholic theocracy. Author Stephen Coston wrote in 1972’s Sources of English Constitutional History that:
"Without the doctrine of the Divine Right, Roman Catholicism would have dominated history well beyond its current employment in the Dark Ages. Furthermore, Divine Right made it possible for the Protestant Reformation in England to take place, mature and spread to the rest of the world."
The Divine Right practiced by European monarchs was actually based on a more ancient doctrine practiced by the monarchs of Judah and Israel in the Old Testament. Many European royal families considered them to be their ancestors, tracing their royal European lineage back to the Jewish King David, sometimes through the descendants of Jesus Christ. Such a line of descent was (and is) known as the "Grail Bloodline."
One of Europe’s most famous monarchs, Charlemagne the Great, was often called "David" in reference to his famous ancestor, and Habsburg King Otto was called "the son of David." In fact, the European tradition of anointing kings comes from that practiced in the Old Testament. Author George Athas describes how the ceremony symbolized the Lord Yahweh adopting the new king as his own son:
"Firstly, the king was the ‘Anointed’ of Yahweh - the mesiach, from which we derive the term ‘Messiah.’ At his anointing (or his coronation), the Spirit of Yahweh entered the king, giving him superhuman qualities and allowing him to carry out the dictates of the deity. The psalmist of Psalm 45 describes the king as ‘fairer than the sons of men’, and continued to praise his majestic characteristics. This king also had eternal life granted to him by Yahweh. The deity is portrayed as saying to him, ‘You are my son - today I have sired you.’ The king was Yahweh’s Firstborn - the bekhor - who was the heir to his father’s estate. He was ‘the highest of the kings of the earth.’ Thus, the king was adopted by Yahweh at his coronation and, as such, was in closer communion with the deity than the rest of the people. On many occasions, Yahweh was called the king’s god.
The king was distinguished far above the ordinary mortal, rendering him holy and his person sacred. It was regarded as a grievous offence to lay a hand on him. Thus, to overthrow the king was rebellion of the most heinous sort and an affront to the deity who had appointed the king... We can note that the King of Judah and Israel is described in divine terms. He is, for example, seen as sitting at Yahweh’s right hand, and his adopted son. We find similar motifs of Pharaohs seated to the right of a deity of Egypt. Psalm 45:7 calls the king an ‘elohim’ - a god. Psalm 45:7also says ‘Your throne is like God’s throne.’"
Here we see the basis for King James’ claim that the scriptures likened human kings to gods. As such, kings were strongly associated with the priesthood as well, and in some cases took on priestly functions. However, traditionally, the Jewish priesthood was dominated by the Cohens of the Tribe of Levi, which was biologically related but functionally separate from the royal line of David - that is, until Jesus came along, heir to both the kingly and priestly titles through his lineage back to both tribes.
However, in other more ancient cultures, such as the Egyptians, the royal and priestly functions were inseparable. In addition to regarding their Pharaohs as the literal offspring of deities, and in fact, deities themselves, the Egyptians believed that the gods had given them the institution of kingship itself. Their first king had been one of their main gods: Osiris, whom all human kings were expected to emulate. Richard Cassaro, in his book, A Deeper Truth, elaborates:
"... during the First Time [The Golden Age when the gods ruled directly on Earth] a human yet eternal king named Osiris initiated a monarchial government in Egypt and imparted a wise law and spiritual wisdom to the people. At the end of his ministry, Osiris left his throne to the people. It was, thereafter, the duty of every king to rule over Egypt in the same manner Osiris had ruled.
This concept that kingship began with a single divine ruler of whom all subsequent human kings are descendants can be traced back to the oldest civilization acknowledged by history, Sumeria, and the other Mesopotamian cultures that followed, such as the Assyrians and the Babylonians. To quote Henri Frankfort:
"In Mesopotamia, the king was regarded as taking on godhood at his coronation, and at every subsequent New Year festival. However, he was often seen as having been predestined to the divine throne by the gods at his birth, or even at the beginning of time. Through a sacred marriage, he had a metaphysical union with the mother goddess, who filled him with life, fertility, and blessing, which he passed onto his people."
The Encyclopedia Britannica has identified three different types of sacred kingship that were recognized in the ancient world. The king was seen as,
(1) the receptacle of supernatural or divine power
(2) the divine or semi-divine ruler
(3) the agent or mediator of the sacred
However, this author believes it is safe to say that all of these concepts stem from the almost universal belief that kingship descended from Heaven with a single divine being who was literally thought of as the ancestor of all those who followed. This king, was known to the ancients as Kronos, the Forgotten Father, and this is another name for the deity/planet, Saturn. He was the ‘brightest star in the heavens", who fell to Earth and intermarried with the wives of men to breed a race of human kings (the Grail Bloodline). After that he was imprisoned in the Underworld by his father, Zeus, the Most High God, for disobeying a social taboo against interbreeding with humans, and sharing secret knowledge with them.
Some might think this contradicts the traditional association of ancient kings with the Sun-God, but in fact, Saturn himself was a sun god of a sort. In ancient times Saturn was the dominant figure in the night sky and as such became known as ‘the midnight sun’ (a term later used by occultists to refer to the Grail). From its position in the sky it appeared to stand still, as the rest of the night sky revolved around it. It was therefore also called ‘The Central Sun.’
Interestingly, although this theory of mine has long been in the works, I’ve recently stumbled across an author named David Talbott who shares this hypothesis on the origin of kingship. From a piece on his website, entitled "Saturn as a Stationary Sun and Universal Monarch’, we read:
"A global tradition recalls an exemplary king ruling in the sky before kings ever ruled on earth.
This mythical figure appears as the first in the line of kings, the father of kings, the model of the good king. But this same figure is commonly remembered as the central luminary of the sky, often a central sun, unmoving sun, or superior sun ruling before the present sun.
And most curiously, with the rise of astronomy this celestial ‘king’ was identified as the planet Saturn."
One can see traces of this ancient progenitor of kings just in the word ‘monarchy’ itself. The syllable "mon" means "one" in Indo-European language systems, as in "The One King Who Rules Over All." But in Egypt, "Mon" was one of the names of the sun god, (also called Amun-Re) in its occluded state, at night, when the sun, as they saw it, passed beneath the Earth. The word meant literally for them, "The Hidden One", because he ruled the world (and the Underworld) from his secret subterranean prison. The syllable "ark" comes from the Greek "arche", meaning "original", or "originator." As the first "monarch", Kronos was the originator of kings, the Forgotten Father of all royal bloodlines. Many of our commonly associated symbols of kingship date back to the time when Kronos first introduced it, and are directly derived from him.
For instance, the crown symbolizes the (central) sun, the "Godhead" descending upon the brow of the wise king. The Sumerian kings adorned their crowns with horns, just like Kronos was believed to have done. The throne was Kronos’ seat on his celestial boat in heaven, and has also been passed down to us. Kronos and his descendants were known as Shepherd Kings, an appellation used by royalty throughout history, and this is the origin of the king’s scepter, which was once a shepherd’s staff. The coronation stone and the orb surmounted by a cross are also Saturnian/solar symbols, and the Egyptian word for the sun, Re, may be the source of the French word for king, Roi.
Kronos, and the god-kings who followed him, were known by the title "Lord of the Four Corners of the World." This has given birth to the universal, recurring archetype of "Le Roi du Monde", a concept that was brilliantly explored in a book by René Guenon of the same name. In a surprising number of cultures throughout the world and throughout history, there exists this concept of "The Lord of the Earth", an omnipresent and eternal monarch who reigns from within the very center of the Earth itself, directing events on the surface with his superhuman psyche. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, "The Lord of the Earth" is a term applied to Satan, or Lucifer, who, like Saturn, was the brightest star in Heaven, but was cast down by God. Like Saturn, he was imprisoned inside the bowels of the Earth, in a realm called Hell.
In fact, it is quite clear that the figure of Satan cmes from Saturn, the "Fish-Goat-Man", and obviously the two words are etymologically related. Perhaps this is why the "Grail Bloodline", the divine lineage from which all European kings have come, is traced by many back to Lucifer. The medieval Christian heretics known as the Cathars took this concept to its logical conclusion. They insisted that, since Satan is the ‘King of the World’ ("Rex Mundi’, as they called him), and Jehovah was, in the Bible, the one who created the world, Jehovah and Satan must be one and the same. For preaching this they were massacred unto extinction by the Papacy.
However, in the Eastern tradition, "the Lord of the Earth" represents the ultimate incarnate manifestation of Godhood. They too see him as ruling his kingdom from the center of the Earth, in a subterranean city called either Shamballah or Agartha. And in this tradition, the Lord of the Earth is also a super-spiritual being capable of incarnating on the surface of the Earth in a series of ‘Avatars’, or human kings who rule various eras of existence.
According to New Age author Alice Bailey:
"Shamballa is the seat of the ‘Lord of the World’, who has made the sacrifice (analogous to the Bodhisattva’s vow) of remaining to watch over the evolution of men and devas until all have been ‘saved’ or enlightened."
One of the names that the Hindus use for "The Lord of the Earth" is Manu, who, writes Guenon, is,
"a cosmic intelligence that reflects pure spiritual light and formulates the law (Dharma) appropriate to the conditions of our world and our cycle of existence."
Author Ferdinand Ossendowski adds:
"The Lord of the World is in touch with the thoughts of all those who direct the destiny of mankind... He knows their intentions and their ideas. If they are pleasing to God, the Lord of the World favours them with his invisible aid. But if they are displeasing to God, he puts a check on their activities."
These are obviously activities that human kings, as incarnations of the Lord of the Earth, are expected to replicate in their own kingdoms to the best of their ability. In fact, a number of human kings throughout history have been viewed by their subjects as incarnations of the "Lord of the Earth", embodying the concepts that he represents. These include Charlemagne, Alexander the Great (who was believed to have horns literally growing from his head, just like Saturn), and Melchizedek, a mysterious priest-king mentioned repeatedly in the Old Testament and imbued with an inexplicable importance. He was called the "Prince of Salem" (as in Jeru-Salem), and is said to have shared bread and wine with Abraham on Mt. Moriah. Some believe that the cup which they used is the artifact that later became known as the Holy Grail.
Some have also identified him with another king of Jerusalem, Adonizedek, and with Shem, Noah’s son. Nobody knows what his ancestry is, who his descendants might have been, or why, thousands of years later, Jesus Christ was referred to in the scriptures as, "A priest according to the Order of Melchizedek."
Of Melchizedek’s significance, René Guenon writes:
"Melchizedek, or more precisely, Melki-Tsedeq, is none other than the title used by Judeo-Christian tradition to denote the function of ‘The Lord of the World’...
Melki-Tsedeq is thus both king and priest. His name means ‘King of Justice’, and he is also king of Salem, that is, of ‘Peace’, so again we find ‘Justice’ and "Peace’, the fundamental attributes pertaining to the ‘Lord of the World.’"
Even more pertinent information is provided by René Guenon’s good friend Julius Evola, who in his book The Mystery of the Grail wrote:
"In some Syriac texts, mention is made of a stone that is the foundation, or center of the world, hidden in the ‘primordial depths, near God’s temple. It is put in relation with the body of the primordial man (Adam) and, interestingly enough, with an inaccessible mountain place, the access to which must not be revealed to other people; here Melchizedek, ‘in divine and eternal service’, watches over Adam’s body. In Melchizedek we find again the representation of the supreme function of the Universal Ruler, which is simultaneously regal and priestly; here this representation is associated with some kind of guardian of Adam’s body who originally possessed the Grail and who, after losing it, no longer lives. This is found together with the motifs of a mysterious stone and an inaccessible seat."
Clearly, that foundation stone of the world is the same as the Black, or Hidden Sun in the center of the Earth, or the ‘Grail Stone’ which is said to be hidden in that location. The Grail Romances provide us with much insight into the ‘King of the World’ concept. He is represented in the story by one of the supporting characters, Prester John, a king who is mentioned in passing as ruling over a spiritual domain in the faraway East, and who, quite fittingly, is said to come from Davidic descent.
Evola continues:
"The Tractatus pulcherrimus referred to him as ‘king of kings’ rex regnum. He combined spiritual authority with regal power... Yet essentially, ‘Prester John’ is only a title and a name, which designates not a given individual but rather a function. Thus in Wolfram von Eschenbach and in the Titurel we find ‘Prester John’ as a title; the Grail, as we will see, indicates from time to time the person who must become Prester John. Moreover, in the legend, ‘Prester John’ designates one who keeps in check the people of Gog and Magog, who exercises a visible and invisible dominion , figuratively, dominion over both natural and invisible beings, and who defends the access of his kingdom with ‘lions’ and ‘giants.’ In this kingdom is also found the ‘fountain of youth.’"
"The dignity of a sacred king is often accompanied by biblical reminiscences, by presenting Prester John as the son or nephew of King David, and sometimes as King David himself... ‘David, King of the Hindus, who is called by the people ‘Prester John’ - the King (Prester John) descends from the son of King David."
The "Lord of the Earth", or the figures that represent him, are often symbolized by a victory stone, or a foundation stone which is emblematic of their authority. For instance, British kings are crowned on the "Stone of Destiny", believed to have been used as a pillow by Jacob in the Old Testament. Such a stone is often referred to in mythology as having fallen from Heaven, like the Grail Stone, which fell out of Lucifer’s crown during his war with God, and became the foundation stone for the Grail kingdom, having the power, as it is written, to ‘make kings.’ Because it fell from Heaven, the Grail is also often associated with a falling star, like that which Lucifer represents. Of course the Black Sun in the center of the Earth also represents Rex Mundi‘s victory stone. It is interesting, then, that in the Babylonian tongue, the word "tsar" means "rock", and is not only an anagram of "star", but a word that in the Russian language refers to an imperial monarch.
Sometimes the monarchial foundation stone is represented as a mountain, especially the World or Primordial Mountain that in mythology provides the Earth with its central axis. The Sumerians referred to this as Mt. Mashu. Its twin peaks were said to reach up to Heaven, while the tunnels and caves within it reached down to the depths of Hell. Jehovah in the Bible, sometimes called El Shaddai ("The Lord of the Mountain") had Mt. Zion for a foundation stone, and was believed to actually live inside of the mountain. Later, the kingdom of Jesus Christ was said to be "founded upon the Rock of Sion".
The stone that fell from Heaven, the royal victory stone, is also sometimes depicted under the symbolic form of a castrated phallus, such as that of Kronos, whose disembodied penis was hurled into the ocean, and there spawned the Lady Venus. This story is a recapitulation of the Osiris story, as well as the inspiration for the Grail legends, in which the Fisher King is wounded in the genitals, causing the entire kingdom to fall under a spell of perpetual malaise. The only thing that can heal the king, and therefore the kingdom is the Grail. This is a recurring theme in world mythology. The king and/or the kingdom that temporarily falls asleep or falls under a magic spell which renders it/him ineffectual for a time, until the stars are right, or the proper conditions are met. This causes the king and his kingdom to reawaken, to rise from the ashes, from the tomb, or often, to rise out of the sea.
The cycle recurs in the tales of the Lord of the Earth, who alternates between periods of death-like sleep within his tomb in the center of the Earth, and rebirth, in which he once again returns to watch over his kingdom, to restore righteousness and justice to the land. He then presides over a new, revitalized "Golden Age".
Julius Evola writes of the archetype:
"It is a theme that dates back to the most ancient times and that bears a certain relation to the doctrine of the ‘cyclical manifestations’ or avatars, namely, the manifestation, occurring at special times and in various forms, of a single principle, which during intermediate periods exists in an unmanifested state. Thus every time a king displayed the traits of an incarnation of such a principle, the idea arose in the legend that he has not died but has withdrawn into an inaccessible seat whence once day he will manifest, or that he is asleep and will awaken one day... The image of a regality in a state of sleep or apparent death, however, is akin to that of an altered, wounded, paralyzed regality, in regard not to its intangible principle but to its external and historical representatives.
Hence the theme of the wounded, mutilated or weakened king who continues to live in an inaccessible center, in which time and death are suspended.... In the Hindu tradition we encounter the theme of Mahaksyapa, who sleeps in a mountain but will awaken at the sound of shells at the time of the new manifestation of the principle that previously manifested itself in the form of Buddha. Such a period is also that of the coming of a Universal Ruler (cakravartin) by the name of Samkha. Since samkha means ‘shells’, this verbal assimilation expresses the idea of the awakening from sleep of the new manifestation of the King of the World and of the same primordial tradition that the above-mentioned legend conceives to be enclosed (during the intermediate period of crisis) in a shell. When the right time comes, in conformity with the cyclical laws, a new manifestation from above will occur (Kalki-avatara) in the form of a sacred king who will triumph over the Dark Age.
"...many people thought that the Roman world, in its imperial and pagan phase, signified the beginning of a new Golden Age, the king of which, Kronos, was believed to be living in a state of slumber in the Hyperborean region. During Augustus’ reign, the Sibylline prophecies announced the advent of a ‘solar’ king, a rex a coelo, or ex sole missus, to which Horace seems to refer when he invokes the advent of Apollo, the Hyperborean god of the Golden Age. "
Rene Guenon, Evola’s good friend, believed in this concept, and that the periods of slumber for the Lord of the Earth have been cyclically brought to a close by apocalypses. After this, Le Roi du Monde would return to clean up the wreckage and once more look after his faithful flock. In the Revelation of St. John the Divine, three kings actually return from periods of slumber, death, or prolonged absence: Jesus, Satan, and Jehovah, and naturally, the governmental entity that God chooses for this utopian world is the one which has always been associated with holiness and righteousness: monarchy.
Monarchy was the first form of government observed by man, and it was, according to almost every culture, created by God himself. It is the primordial, archetypal form of government, the most natural, that which all other forms of government vainly try to mimic, while at the same time violating its most basic tenets. Monarchy was, for thousands of years, all that man knew. The idea of not having a monarch, a father figure to watch over them, to maintain the community’s relationship with the divine, represented to them, not freedom, but chaos, uncertainty, and within a short time, death. The common people did not jealously vie for positions of power, nor did they desire to have any say in the decision of who would be king. In fact, most of them preferred that there be no decision to make at all: most monarchies functioned on the principle of primogeniture, passing the scepter and crown down from father to son, or in some cases, through the matrilineal line. The decision was up to nature or God, so therefore just and righteous in itself.
Furthermore, they knew they could count on their king or queen to watch over them as they would their own children, to be fair and honest, to protect them from invasion, to maintain the proper relationship between God and the kingdom. They desired to make their kingdom on Earth reflect the order and perfection that existed in God’s kingdom in Heaven.
And for thousands of years before the modern era, when 90% of the population was not intellectually capable of participating in government or making electoral decisions, monarchy stood as a bulwark against the disintegration of the societal unit, providing a stability that otherwise could not be achieved. If monarchy had not been invented, human history could never have happened.
Richard Cassino, in A Deeper Truth, said it best:
"Since the obligation of every king... is to maintain law, order, morality, spirituality, and religion within his kingdom, then the very design of a monarchy itself was probably conceived by the superior intelligence called God so as to endow mankind with a sound system of government. In other words, the concept of kingship was designed for, and delivered to, the peoples of earth by God to teach mankind to live in a humanized social environment... Human history, with its past and present kingdoms and kings - Egypt, Assyria, Persia, Babylon, Sumer, Aztec, Inca, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Great Britain, to name a few - stands as a testimony to the fact that the monarchial form of government has been the basis for almost every civilization."
If monarchy is the most perfect form of government, and if it has been responsible for providing us with at least 6000 years of human history, why now does it seem to be only an ancient pretension? Why is the concept of having a monarchy actually function in government considered to be a quaint but laughable thing of the past? Have we really moved beyond monarchy?
Hardly. If you were to graph the entire 6000 years of known human history and isolate the period in which civilized nations have been without monarchs, it would be merely a blip on the spectrum. In fact, of the civilized Western nations, few do not have a monarch reigning either de jure or de facto (although they continue to elect Presidents from royal European lineage.) Most nations that maintain representational government still have a monarch either recognized by the government, or by the people at large. Although essentially powerless, these monarchs maintain a symbolic link between a nation and its heritage, its most sacred, most ancient traditions.
They also constitute a government-in-waiting, should the thin veneer of illusory ‘freedom’ and ‘equality’ that maintains democracy break down. The modern system of Republican government is based not so much on the freedom of the individual, but on the free flow of money, on debt, usury, and inflation, on a monetary house of cards known as "Fractional Reserve Lending." It would only take a major and slightly prolonged collapse of the monetary system to eliminate this governmental system. At that point, civilized man will have essentially two choices: anarchy or monarchy, and if people have any sense at all they will choose the latter, rather than subjecting themselves to a chaotic succession of despots interspersed with periods of violence and rioting, and the poverty that comes with the lack of a stable state.
It would be the most natural thing in the world for the royal families of Earth, as well as the monarchial system which they have maintained, and which has maintained us for thousands of years, to just slide right into place. The kingdom of the gods, who once ruled during man’s Golden Age, would awaken from their slumber and heed the call to duty, like Kronos, their Forgotten Father, and monarch of all, who soundly sleeps within his tomb in the primordial mountain, waiting for his chance to once again hold dominion over the Earth.