Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts, Herbert Silberer [good inspirational books .txt] 📗
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The master's degree, this necessarily last degree, corresponds to an ideal that is set us as a task: we must strive towards it even if its realization is beyond our powers. Our temple will never be finished, and no one expects to see the true eternal Hiram arise in himself. (W. S. H., p. 94.)
We find also in Wirth, how the work is divided into three main steps, which begin with the purifying, turn towards the inner soul, and end with the death-resembling Unio Mystica; here we find, too, in the last degree the unattainable ideal, which like a star in heaven shall give a sure course to the voyage of our life. The viewing of the exalted anagogic conception as a perspective vanishing point, makes allowance for the possible errors of superposition in the anagogic aspect of the elementary types.
The tripartite division, which we meet in the great work, shows the frequently doubted inner qualification of the three degrees of freemasonry. As they answer a need, they have again prevailed, although they were not existent in the masonic form of the royal art at the beginning (about two centuries ago); I say “again,” because similar needs have already earlier produced similar forms. (Cf. L. Keller's writings.) Whether we consider ethical education [pg 414] in general or the intensive (introversion) form of it, mysticism, we have in either case a process of development, and degrees are necessary to express it symbolically. The effort, appearing from time to time, to multiply the degrees has been justified. We can divide what is divided into three sections into seven also (7 operations in alchemy, 7 levels of contemplation, 7 ordinations, etc.), although it is not really needed. But the idea of abolishing the three degrees can only arise from a misapprehension of the value of the existing symbolism. That masonry is a union of equal rights is not affected by the presence of the degrees, provided that their symbolic significance is not overstepped. The degrees form a constituent part of the symbolic custom itself and like it are to be intangible.
The symbols of all the lofty spiritual religious communities, for which the royal art presents itself as a paradigm or exemplar, put before us, as it were, types of truth. Single facts which the symbols may signify (or that could be read into the symbols) are not the most important, but rather the totality of all these meanings. The totality (which can be acquired only by a sort of integration) is something inexpressible; and if it also succeeded in expressing this inexpressible, the words of the expression would be incomprehensible to any finite spirit, as the individual facts are.
The symbols are the unchangeable, the individual meanings are the variegated and the changeable. [As for the masonic symbolism in particular, I am [pg 415] in agreement with Robert Fischer (Kat. Erl., III, fin.). “Freemasonry rests on symbols and ceremonies; in that lies its superior title to continued existence. They are created for eternal verities and peculiarly adapted thereto; they are fitted to every grade of culture, indeed to every time, and do not fall like other products of the time, a sacrifice to time itself.... Therefore a complete abolition of our symbols can meet with assent as little as an enfeeblement of them can be desired. Much more must we strive in order that a clear understanding may sift out the abstract, corresponding to our spiritual eye, from the concrete necessary for our physical eye, so that the combined pictures shall be resolved in the simple fundamental truths. By this means the symbols attain life and motion and cannot be put down for things that decay with time.”] Therefore the symbols should never be changed in favor of a particular meaning, which becomes the fashion (or be brought closer to it over and above the given relation). What is to be maintained through variations of meaning, is not the meanings but the symbols themselves.
To each person symbols represent his own truth. To every one they speak a different language. No one exhausts them. Every one seeks his ideal chiefly in the unknown. It matters not so much what ideal he seeks, but only that he does seek one. Effort itself, not the object of effort, forms the basis of development. No seeker begins his journey with full knowledge of the goal. Only after much circulation [pg 416] in the philosophic egg and only after much passing through the prism of colors does that light dawn which gives us the faint intimation of the outline of the prototype of all lesser ideals. Whoever desires hope of a successful issue to this progress must not forget a certain gentle fire that must operate from the beginning to the end, namely Love.
Note A (80). I put here not merely those comparisons of motives which are alike at the beginning, but also those that are important for our further consideration. My rendering of them is partly abridged. Signs of similarity are, as Stucken explains, not employed to express an absolute congruence, but predominantly in the sense of “belongs with” or “or is the alternate of.” Stucken's comparison I, A, goes: Moses in the ark = spark of fire in the ark = Pandora's books = Eve's apple; I, B: Moses in the ark = the exposed = the fatherless = the persecuted = the deluge hero [the one floating in the ark]. II, A: Eve's apple = Moses in the ark = Onan's seed = fire = soma = draught of knowledge, etc. III, B: Tearing open of the womb = decapitation or dismemberment = exposure = separation of the first parents. IV, B: The dismembered [man or woman] = the rejuvenated = the reborn [m. or w.]. VI, A: Potiphar motive = separation of first parents = Onan motive. VII, A: The wicked stepmother = Potiphar's wife = man eater. VII, B: Flight from the “man eater” = flight from Potiphar's wife = flight from the wicked stepmother = separation of the first parents = magic flight. IX, A: The first parents = magic flight. IX, A: The killed ram = Thor's ram = Thyestes' meal = soma. XIII, A: The exposed = the persecuted = the dismembered child = the slain ram—the helpful animal. XIX: The Uriah letter = the changed letter = word violence [curse = blessing]. XX: Scapegoat = ark. XXVIII: Wrestling match = rape of women = rape of soma = opening of the chest [opening of [pg 418] the hole] = rape of the garments [of the bathing swan ladies]. XXIX: Castration = tearing asunder [consuming] of the mother's body = the final conflagration = the deluge. XXXIII, A: Dragonfight = wrestling match = winning of the offered king's daughter = rape of the women = rape of fire = deluge. XL, A: Incest motive = Potiphar motive. XL, B: Incest = violation of a [moral] prohibition. XL, C: Seducer [male or female] to incest = “man-eater.” XLIV, A: The father who rejects the daughter = “man eater.” XLIV, B: Separation of the first parents = refusal of the daughter [refusal of the “king's daughter” promised to the dragon fighter] = substitution. XLV, A: Sodomy = substitution = rape = parthenogenesis = marriage of mortal with the immortal = seduction = adultery = incest = love = embraces of the first parents = wrestling match. Otherwise is marriage of mortal with the immortal = incest = separation of the first parents. (SAM Book 5.)
Note B (128). That the ideas of gold and offal lie very near each other is shown in numerous forms and variations in myth, fairy tale and popular superstition. I mention above all the figure of the ducat or gold-dropper which has probably been attenuated from a superstition to a joke, and around it are gathered such expressions as “he has gold like muck,” “he must have a gold dropper at his house”; then the description of bloody hemorrhoids as golden veins; the fabulous animals that produce as excrement gold and precious things. Here belong also the golden ass [K. H. M., No. 36], which at the word “Bricklebrit” begins “to spew gold from before and behind,” or [Pentam., No. 1], at the command, “arre cacaure,” gives forth gold, pearls and diamonds as a priceless diarrhea. [Arre is a word of encouragement like our get-up; cacuare is derived naturally from cacare, kacken = to cack, perhaps with an echo of aurum, [pg 419] oro, gold.] It occurs frequently in sagas that animal dung, e.g., horse manure, is changed into gold as, inversely, gold sent by evil spirits is easily turned [again] into dung. Gold is, in the ancient Babylonian way of thinking, which passes over into many myths, muck of hell or the under world. If a man buried a treasure so that no one should find it, he does well to plant a cactus on the covered [treasure] as a guardian of the gold, according to an old magical custom. An attenuation of the comparison dung = gold seems to be coal = gold. In Stucken we find the comparison excrement = Rheingold = sperm [S. A. M., p. 262] and connected with it [pp. 266 ff.] a mass of material mythologically connected with it. I mention the similar parallels derived from dream analysis (Stekel, Spr. d. Tr., passim), further in particular the psychologically interesting contributions of Freud on “Anal character” (Kl. Schr., pp. 132 ff.) like Rank's contribution. (Jb. ps. F., IV, pp. 55 ff.)
Note C (280). According to Jung it is a characteristic of the totality of the sun myth which relates that the “fundamental basis of the ‘incestuous’ desire is not equivalent to cohabitation, but to the peculiar idea of becoming a child again, to return to the parents' protection, to get back into the mother again in order to be born again by the mother. On the way to this goal stands incest, however, i.e., necessity in some
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