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From Anarchy to degeneration- Imposing External Law. Judaism. Extract Two. Part Five: The Path Of The Masters
by Katherine Frisk, The Phaser.com:
[Editor’s note: Although this section is called “Judaism,” a commonly recognised term, it is a misnomer. A more correct term should be, “Hebrewism,” or some such title. “Israelism”perhaps? This term encompasses all twelve tribes and the children of Israel.
Judaism in its correct context is relevant to the tribe of Judah only, and specifically to those who called themselves “Jews,”who returned to Israel after the Babylonian exile and built the first temple in Jerusalem. Contrary to the stories found in the Torah, no archeological evidence has yet been found, in spite of many years of excavation, of the first temple ever having been built. It appears that these stories have been pilfered along with the stories of Solomon from Egyptian texts which include such writings as Psalms and Proverbs
This would be accurate in the political climate of the time prior to the Babylonian exile and is in alignment with “Hebrewism,”or “Israelism,” pick your acronym.
Israel as founded by Joshua, never set out to build a temple. If anything they were opposed to such a concept. The Holy place of worship was the original Zion, the mountain, the watchtower which was Mount Gerizim at present day Nabulus. From this mountain the Hebrews could see for miles in all directions. It was on this summit that the watchmen, the watchers stood guard, keeping an eye out for approaching enemies. The true temple was the night sky, the heavens, adorned with the sun by day and the moon, stars, constellations and planets at night, celebrated during the Feast of Tabernacles.
Israel as established by Moses and Joshua was essentially a Federation, or a Republic of twelve tribes, each with their own autonomy. The highest authority was not a king or even the high temple priests but was a court of Judges, and notably, one of the first Judges was Deborah, a woman. Judgement was tempered with Mercy and Knowledge with Wisdom. Proverbs 8 is a very good example of this balance between male and female aspects.
The later “fall from grace,” and the breaking of the Covenant by installing a monarchy as well as a temple and the high priesthood that goes with it, according to many scholars, marks the Hebrew separation between them and the “Supreme Bring.” (1 Samuel 8) To use Dr. Johnson’s terminology here, they fell from anarchy to degeneration. Dr. Johnson picks up the story mainly from the return from Babylon. ]
The Jewish people have a unique and distinctive history. Abraham, his son Isaac, and his grandson Jacob, were the founders of Judaism,Abraham was Chaldean by birth, of the city of Ur. Ur was then noted for its philosophical speculations, its astrology and its occult sciences. Judaism was almost wholly borrowed, absorbed from the people among whom they lived. By them it was modified and reconstructed into what is now known as Judaism. The world does not seem to understand, especially the Christian world, that the Jewish religion was taken almost bodily from heathen religions. The Jewish religion is as much heathen as is Brahmanism. It was born out of heathenism. But from our viewpoint that is nothing to its discredit..All religions evolve from those that were extant in the culture prior to their emergence, for they aspire to fulfill the needs of a time, and a people’s needs do not change radically overnight. A religion usually absorbs into its structure and doctrine those elements of the preceding religions which are still relevant to the people it serves, and the essence always passes from one religion to the next. Truth belongs to no race, class or country. It is universal.
The early Jews were semi-nomadic shepherds, ranging the lands between Babylonia and Syria. Abraham had imbibed some of the Eastern wisdom, we believe, and had combined it with the prevailing manner of sacrificial worship of the deity of his people, Yahveh, or Adonai. In those days religious practices throughout the world were primitive in form and streamed with animal blood.
There seems to be something deeply rooted in human consciousness which has always led man to make bloody sacrifices. What is it? It is doubtless the subconscious recognition that ‘sin must be atoned for, or in other words, that every debt must be paid. And that is nothing more nor less than the Indian doctrine of karma, Karma is only the practice of sacrifice reduced to a fixed law of nature. Amongst the earliest peoples, they could not generalize that much. They only felt that something must be done to payoff the debt. Reduced to its concentrate, the law of karma is nothing more than that.
Sacrifice in some form appears in the Vedas and is a concomitant of all early forms of religion. This amounts to an almost unIversal recognition of the stem fact that nature demands full payment for everything. But the great mistake of man has been to imagine vainly that he.can escape payment by any such trick or subterfuge as offering a sacrifice as a substitute, a payment by proxy. Early man tried to hoodwink nature by a clever scheme of substitution. Only in the childhood of the race could such a thought ever have entered the human brain. By such a scheme men only deceived themselves. They certainly could not deceive nature or the lord of justice; Not only did this naive plan fail to accomplish its purpose, but it also added to”the guilt of the sinner. Instead of cancelling his debt, it doubled it. It worked backwards. By sacrificing an animal or a human being for the sins of the living, fresh sins were committed and more debt incurred. Instead of getting rid of past obligations, the sacrificer added to his debts. His load of karma grew heavier instead of lighter.
Abraham was a shepherd patriarch among the wandering tribes of Amorites, Chaldean in origin. But we are concerned here only with the Jewish religion. That religion is so mixed in origin that it is difficult to trace it. Before the Babylonian captivity, the religion was not very well-defined. About the year 600 B.C., the Jews were taken to Babylon in virtual slavery. During the following seventy years, partaking of the culture and philosophy of their masters, they absorbed their customs and their more refined way of life. Before their return home, under the gracious patronage of Cyrus, they had become a very different people.
[Dr. Johanson has not included the Egyptian influence here on Hebraic belief and attributes all to the Sumerian civilizations. If Israel is divided in two, it is between the Joseph tribes and their absorption of Egyptian teachings and philosophy compared to the tribe of Judah who absorbed the Babylonian influence. This is where Israel becomes split between the Kingdom of Judea and the Kingdom of Israel. Proverbs, Psalms, the Song of Songs and even the Ten Commandments have been traced to ancient Egyptian texts, some even lifted off the papyrus sheaves of “The Coming Forth Of Day.” Clearly most, if not all of the wisdom teachings were originally plagiarized from Egypt, including the basic precepts of social behaviour, externally imposed law, found in the Ten Commandments.]
There is another point which we wish to make clear regarding the Jewish faith and its relation to the path of the Masters. That is the very definite marking of the higher path running through ~of the old Jewish scriptures. We have neither time nor space to trace that in detail. But we wish simply to call attention to it. Perhaps someone else may give it a more detailed study.
There is no conflict between ancient Judaism and the science of the Masters. The latter science simply carries the student further. For example, the Masters speak of the second region on the higher path, and they name it Trikuti. This is the Brahm Lok of the Vedas and the Gita. It is the highest world or plane known-to ancient yogis or rishis. It is the supreme region today to practically all religions. In the Jewish Kabbalah it probably corresponds to the plane known as ‘the Atzilotic world’. The entire Kabbalah is replete with hints and references which cannot be understood, except in the light of the Masters’ teachings.
In the Kabbalah there are six distinct stages in the body and four above. This corresponds to the Vedic system, where there are six chakras _below 1 and four in the superphysical regions-they are the sun worlds, the moon worlds, the lightning worlds, and finally the Brahm Lok, regarded by it as the supreme region. In the Kabbalah they are named from below up, Malcuth, Yesod, Hod, Tiphereth, Netzach, Gevurah, Chesed, Binah, Chocmah, and Kether. They are regarded as the ten manifestations of God, each with a name; in each of these regions, the deity takes certain qualities and is named accordingly. They are, in fact, ten different stages of the manifestation of the deity. These several stages are to be attained by meditation upon the corresponding centers.
[As Dr. Johnson points out, universal truth runs throughout all the world’s religions no matter from which civilization this is gleaned. We do not know the correct source for the Kabbalah, but what we do know is that there was more than one source. Johnson attributes the Judaic knowledge of this through Eastern influence during their stay in Babylon. However, this system was already in place in Egypt. The Kabbalah is also a version of the Egyptian Tree of Life reflected on earth in the many temples that lined the Nile River.
Isis/Malcuth, Osiris/Yesod, Seth/Hod, Horus/Tiphareth, Nepthys/Netzach, Geb/Gevurah, Nut/Chesed, Shu/Binah, Tefnut/Chocmah, Amen/Kether.
The question is, does the source come from Egypt in the west or Babylon in the east? This question always become irrelevant when we realize that this is astronomy and that the sun shines down on us all in the same way the “Supreme Being”pervades the entire universe and all that is beyond our physical vision. As in the Part Three, Zoroaster: the ‘Holy Immortals,” male and female are always in balance. Kether/Amen is the crown and Isis/Malkuth is his wife.
Osiris/Yesod= Virgo and Pisces. Seth/Hod= Leo and Aquarius. Horus/Tiphareth= Gemini and Sagittarius. Nephthys/Netzach= Cancer and Capricorn. Geb/Gevurah= Taurus and Scorpio. Nut/Chesed=Aries and Libra.
Again I come back to Leonardo Da Vinci. “Look up!” In the painting of “The Last Supper,” the twelve also represent the twelve constellations, with the woman to the right of Jesus being Virgo, the Virgin. The central figure is Osiris, the risen Lord, who ascends to eternal life in the heavens as Orion. This painting can also be seen in the light of the twelve children of Jacob sitting around the dinner table, his daughter Diana included, whilst the thirteenth member is his most beloved son, Joseph.. There is no King of the Jews of the tribe of Judah here, other than Judas who represents him in name and in action. As Judas betrayed Jesus, so Judah sold Joseph into slavery.]
Kether is the crown region, the supreme, where the soul unites with Eheyeh, attaining what the Hindus name nirvana. At each of the stages upward, the soul gains certain virtues and powers, and realizes the deity in an ascending scale of glory from stage to stage. For example, in the highest region the soul realizes union with God. In Chocmah, he gains perfect wisdom, and understanding of the whole universe. In Binah, he gains understanding above ordinary men; in this region the deity is Yahveh Elohim. In Chesed, he is imbued with mercy as a chief virtue; in Gevurah, strength, severity, justice, law; in- Tiphereth, beauty, harmony, rhythm; in Netzach, victory-God is known there as Jehovah Sabaoth, the Lord of Hosts. In Hod he is glory, splendor; in Yesod, the foundation of all things, that out of which life flows. This corresponds to the generative center, the indri chakra of the Hindus. Last of all, the lowest is Malcuth, meaning the inner kingdom, the lowest subtle plane, and it is there that the deity is seen as Adonaiha -Aretz, the lord of the earth, which corresponds to Ganesh of the Hindus.
An important mystical philosophy or theosophy of the Jews is called the Kabbalah. The word is derived from the Hebrew kabal, signifying ‘to receive’, because it is the doctrine _received from the elders. The word has sometimes been used, in an enlarged sense, to include all the explanations, maxims and ceremonies which have been traditionally handed down to the Jews. In its more limited acceptation, in the symbolic science of Freemasonry from which standpoint we may interpret it, the Kabbalah may be defined as a system of philosophy which embraces certain mystical interpretations of scripture and metaphysical speculations concerning the deity, man and spiritual beings. In these interpretations and speculations, according to the Jewish teachers, were developed the most profound truths of religion which, to be comprehended by finite beings , are obliged to be revealed through the medium of symbols and allegories.
Much more might be given but it is foreign to our purpose. We have given this much to show that the Jewish Kabbalah, corresponding very closely with the .teachings of the old rishis, has many similarities with the esoteric teachings of the East when it is understood at a higher level which is coincident with the teachings of the Masters.
The Jews, as all know, were finally dispersed and scattered among the nations. Many times they ran the narrow gamut of utter extinction. At the same time, their religious principles underwent changes, now fading out and now reviving; at one time the Jews almost lost their identity and then they gained a new birth. During the Middle Ages, exiled Jewry kept itself alive by various mystical interpretations of its mission and destiny as expressed in a vast Kabbalistic literature, which ultimately found its most unified, most perfect written expression in the Zohar, The Book of Splendor, which rediscovered the kingdom of the soul. Inventing a wholly new terminology, it did this in a specific sense, not then known in mystic Jewry. Says the Zohar:
Believe not that man consists solely of flesh, skin and veins. The
real part of man is his soul, and the things just mentioned are
only outward coverings. They are only veils, not the real man.
When man departs this life, he divests himself of all the veils
which cover him.
The author of this was surely close to the Eastern wisdom. It sounds much like the language of a Master. The Zohar, even before its author’s death in 1305, had exerted a very great influence not only upon Jewish thought but also upon Christian thinking. How much it may have had to do with the general awakening of that critical time, it may be difficult to determine. But by and by, even the Zohar failed to keep alive the vigor of the Jewish spiritual ideals. Materialistic world currents were constantly undermining spirituality everywhere among both Jews and Gentiles the world over. It has always been so. It must always be so.
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From Anarchy to degeneration- Imposing External Law.Christianity. Extract Two. Part Six: The Path Of The Masters
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Anarchists and The Golden Age- Extract One: The Path of The Masters
