The 108-Year Roscrucian Cycle Part Two

The previous post examined the 108-year Rosicrucian cycle as imparted by H. Spencer Lewis. This describes a system of alternating 108-year periods of open and hidden activity for Rosicrucian lodges. The post proposed that this cycle has been in effect in the years from 1904, the dawn of the Aeon of Horus, to 2012. In this year the behind-the-scenes Work of more than a century will be revealed to all.

Here, this lunatic fiction will be ballooned out even further. It will be shown that Crowley appears, either knowingly or otherwise, to have encoded the key developments of this 108-year timeframe within the 22 major arcana cards of his version of the tarot, The Book of Thoth.

While Crowley, and artist Lady Frieda Harris, altered some of the iconography and names in their deck, the basic structure, number and order of the cards highly conform to the traditional tarot. If anything, Crowley hoped to reverse some of the discrepancies and contradictions that he saw prevented the older tarot decks from fully corresponding to other occult systems like astrology, the Kabbalah, Egyptian mythology, etc. The Thoth deck, in this regard, is both modernist and traditional.

In most versions of the tarot, the 22 cards of the major arcana correspond to the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and both the cards and the alphabet can be placed on the 22 paths connecting the ten sephiroth on the Tree of Life. Certain authors also correspond the 22 trumps with the 22 chapters of The Book of Revelation.



It is well-known among occultists that the "story" of the major arcana on one level depicts an alchemical transformation of the would-be initiate. This blog will also touch upon this interpretation at some point. What is not so discussed, though, is that the sequence of 22 cards also reveals a collective and historical undertaking of the Great Work. It is surprising that this reading of The Book of Thoth is not more widespread, especially given Crowley's own preoccupation with the shifting of the ages.

This post will contend that the sequence of 22 cards in the major arcana of the Thoth deck depict the 108-year period of Great Work that will fully usher in the Aeon of Horus this year.

Bullock-Befriending Bard

The number 22, like the year 1904, is also prominent in the life and work of James Joyce. Joyce placed much significance in the fact that he was born on the Second of February -- 2/2 or 22. In addition to being the 33rd day of the year, on leap years ( and Joyce's year of birth -- 1882 -- was a leap year) there are 333 days left in the year. It was also celebrated as Imbolc in pagan Ireland, and later Christianized as St. Brigid's Day. Brigid plays a very important role in Joyce's fiction.

 

Joyce's first novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, was first serialized on Feb. 2nd, 1914. His most celebrated novel, Ulysses, was published on his 40th birthday on Feb. 2nd, 1922 (2/2/22). The date June 16th, the setting of the novel, also sums to 22 (6+16), and both Joyce's protagonist, Stephen Dedalus, and Joyce himself were 22 years of age in 1904. Robert Anton Wilson points out in his Coincidance (a title taken from the Wake), that the first sentence of Ulysses contains 22 words the final being "crossed":

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.

 
As several scholars have pointed out, this opening scene is really a mock mass, a theme that continues throughout Ulysses and eventually degrades into an open black mass. Joyce is consciously inverting religious tradition in order to make us all conscious of its power. Contrary to appearance, Joyce is entirely respectful of esoteric tradition and would have known well that in Jewish tradition only those 40 and over are allowed to study the Kabbalah. His final book, Finnegans Wake, is pure Kabbalah.

Both Crowley and Joyce, then, recognized the value of 22. The 22 major arcana map out the progression of this 108-year period between ages. I have not found a precise pattern in the "playing" of these cards. They are not evenly played at regular intervals during the 108 years. Instead, it appears that like in Mckenna's Timewave Zero there is an acceleration or compression towards the end of the cycle. More cards are played near the culmination of the 108 years. 

Much work needs to be done here to make this a comprehensive theory. What follows is a rough sketch that is only intended to be suggestive. At this point it is nothing more than a fictional narrative.

The Dark Mandala

The first card which is readily recognized in relation to events comes very late in the sequence. It is hoped that at some point the whole progression of 22 trumps will be matched with events that have taken place from 1904 to 2012, but at this stage I'll start with the playing of card 16, The Tower.



The iconic connection between The Tower and the attack on the World Trade Center on 9/11 was quickly noticed by many observers. The fire from above, the collapsing tower, the falling bodies, even the sinister overseeing Eye are symbols common to both.



9/11 is still a great mystery that continues to influence nearly everything on the world stage. There is no consensus as to what happened or what it ultimately meant. Even the official version of events, as is often pointed out, is a conspiracy theory and the only question is how far and how deep the conspiracy extends. It is obvious that the official U.S. 9/11 Commission was in no way interested in finding this out. The actual details will likely remain in shadow.

The greater significance of 9/11, though, is its identity as an era-changing event. While it falls late in the 108-year cycle, it is the opening pulse of the more compressed fractal iteration of 11 years. As noted in the last post, this shorter period roughly corresponds to the 11-year sunspot cycle.

In a sense, it is a major bifurcation point. It tended to push people in one of two directions. On the one hand, it provoked an even deeper entrenchment into the dualistic mindset -- "either you're with us or with the terrorists." Conspiracy theorists also did not escape this polarizing trance. The active dualism was only replaced by the "patriots" or "truth seekers" vs. the "globalists," the "NWO," or the "Illuminati." This might represent a higher turn in the spiral, but it remains mired in dualism.
 

On the other hand, 9/11 forced a smaller group of people even further down the rabbit hole. It exposed the matrix-like unreality of the entire world system. Everything is a part of the conspiracy. But beyond even the matrix is the realization that even the dreamers are a part of the dream. The Illuminati are dazzled by their own Spell. We are the Illuminati. It reminds me of Nietzsche's "History of an Error," in which he explains the interdependence of  "reality" and "appearance,"

The real world—we have done away with it: what world was left? the apparent one, perhaps? … But no! with the real world we have also done away with the apparent one!

The dualistic reality models as shown in movies like The Matrix quite naturally morph into the more complex, less certain, multi-layered models as depicted in a film like Inception. Of course these are mainstream representations. Fans of Philip K. Dick and psychedelics would have known all this long ago. With 9/11, the clear blue-sky veil of reality was irreparably rent. The door opened between the two pillars. Strange things are pouring through.

9/11 does not wholly represent the crowning act of the New World Order, a mass sacrifice and the capping of the pyramid, but instead it is a desperate gesture, a fumble and flailing to maintain illusory control. But it is also something more than this. It was, and really still is, the centre of a dark mandala of world attention.

 

It was a ritual on a global scale orchestrated more than anything, perhaps, by the process of consciousness itself.  9/11 satisfied a mass desire for something momentous to happen, something apocalyptic, something to shake us all up, something to make us face our many problems, something to get things rolling. If 9/11 did not happen we would have been forced to make it happen. Maybe we did?

Quite early on, researchers like Goro Adachi, Jake Kotze and others pointed out the "megaritual" quality of 9/11. Those deepest down the rabbit hole, addicts of the red pill, were "initiated" by this ritual and able to see the matrix beyond the matrix beyond the matrix..... Conspiracy theorists went mainstream and predictable, and synchronicity artists are now entrenched in the radical margins. 

The next card was not played for several years after 9/11. Presumably the full consequences of 9/11 had to first run their course before the next act was staged.

Following 9/11, Fear and his cohorts have had a heyday -- the War in Afghanistan, the War on Terror, the War in Iraq, multiple terrorist attacks across the globe, the deepening and darkening of the conspiracist subculture, all manner of natural disasters, multiple epidemic scares, the Patriot Act and its equivalents internationally, the steroidal expansion of the police state control grid, etc., etc. All this was an expected outgrowth of 9/11.

Higher Turn of the Spiral

The next shoe to drop, though, was economic -- the "financial  9/11" of 2008, signified most obviously by the collapse of Lehman Brothers. The world must not only be transformed geopolitically, and in terms of "security," but the entire structure of the production, distribution and consumption of wealth must be completely overhauled. All human transactions must be transformed.

The card for this is not as obvious as The Tower, as its corresponding event is not as sudden or dramatic. And whereas The Tower has almost wholly negative connotations the next trump, The Star, is much more ambiguous in its meaning. The collapse of the global economic system is undoubtedly a terrible thing, but for many it represents the end of a great evil and its demise is the sign of Hope. This is precisely the meaning of The Star.

  
We know from some of the earliest tarot decks, as in the interpretation of Antoine Court de Gébelin, that the star of Card 17 is really the Dog Star, our old friend Sirius. Crowley uniquely corresponded this card with the Hebrew letter, Daleth "the Door" -- the letter of Da'at. There is a mystery in this.

We also know that the astrological sign corresponding to this card is Aquarius, the water-bearer. The Star is the sign, for those who have eyes to see, of the coming Age of Aquarius -- the dawning of which coincides with that of the Aeon of Horus. Of her design of the Star card Frieda Harris writes,

This is built up as a design on a spiral to show the rising force of a new age. The woman holds two cups, the north and south poles of magnetic attraction. Above her a new star is rising, beneath her are the crystallising dogmas of a former Age.

The spiral represents the transcendence of Euclidean conceptions of space. Crowley writes that "It will be seen that every form of energy in this picture is spiral." In the New Aeon even our old ideas of time and space must be laid aside. Joyce repeatedly makes this same point in both Ulysses and Finnegans Wake.

The spiral appeared in the sky of Norway on Dec. 9, 2009. This is a classic NCE (Non-Consensus Event). The official story is that it was an out-of-control Russian missile, but many still believe that it was a type of UFO or an opening wormhole. A creative interpretation is that it was a "crop-circle of the sky."

Whatever it was, it brought the figure of the spiral to the conscious attention of millions. It was a living symbol of the "playing" of the Star card.  While old forms, most notably economic, are in the process of passing away a symbol, "real" or not is unimportant, of the new was revealed -- and coincidentally on the day before Obama received the Noble Peace Prize in Norway. 

The Sinister Passage

The next card in the major arcana is The Moon. This is called by Frieda Harris "the most sinister card."



Card 18 reveals the dangerous passage between the towers of death and horror. In this it reminds one most of the terrifying journey Frodo and Sam made between the towers of Minas Morgul in order to pass into the dark land of Mordor in The Lord of the Rings. As in the meaning of this card, theirs was a journey through a shadowy realm that was necessary in order to restore the light. Harris also writes,

This card represents the state of impure horror, hidden darkness which must be passed through before light can be reborn.

The Moon further represents illusion and the breaking of illusion. It is "at the brink of important change." This dangerous passage well describes our collective experience of the last year and a half. We all have had the sense, consciously or not, that the world is on the brink. We live in constant anxiety of total economic collapse as the ramifications of the 2008 crisis have not in any way resolved themselves.



In 2011, protests, riots and revolutions spread across the globe most in direct response to economic pressures. It is a mistake to conclude that these movements were in all cases fully created and/or manipulated by the elite. Obviously the intelligence agencies had their fingers in the pie -- it is their job to attempt to control events -- and we see this most in "rogue" nations like Libya and Syria.

But what of all the unrest in allied or complicit countries -- in Bahrain, in Djibouti, in Kuwait, in Israel, in Spain, in Chile, in the UK, in New York City? Was this all orchestrated as well? Or, as this blog keeps saying, is something bigger happening? Is the genuine unrest and the covert manipulation all part of a more complex pattern?

Added to the disruptions in economic and social systems are the "natural" disasters which have been afflicting much of the planet -- earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, droughts, storms of all sorts. Are the "Illuminati" the cause of all of these as well? Or, reflecting the non-divisible unity of mind and body, is the imbalance of the global brain -- planetary human civilization --  causing dis-ease within the body of the Earth? The narrow passage is also the passage along the birth canal. The scarab acts as midwife and a new Sun is about to be born.

The sign of The Moon card came with the Moon herself. On December 21, 2010 -- two years before the Mayan calendar end date -- there appeared a dramatic and rare Winter Solstice lunar eclipse. To me, the blood red Moon is as good a sign as any of the dark passage before the coming Aeon emerges brightly from the shadows for all to behold.

Here Comes The Sun

Card 19 is The Sun and the imagery of this card matches nicely with the symbolism that's been apparent in London 2012. There is good reason to suppose that this powerful trump was "played" during the Closing Ceremony.

Crowley's version of the card depicts the Sun rising over the World Mountain. The mountain is at once Mount Olympus, the Glastonbury Tor and the Mount of Purgatory.

The Closing Ceremony, while not as multi-layered and as rich in symbolism as the Opening, is certainly a ritual to mark the shifting of the ages. I won't go through every aspect of this symbolism, others have already brought much of it to light, but I'll focus on aspects of the Ceremony relating to the ongoing analysis of this blog.

With the very first act we know where we are. During the first performance by Emeli Sandé the camera takes a close-up of the truck she is singing on. The truck is wrapped, like everything else in the ceremony, with newsprint bearing headlines from the plays of Shakespeare and other works of British literature.

The first headline we notice should be familiar to the readers of this blog -- "We are such stuff as dreams are made of." This is from Prospero's famous soliloquy closing The Tempest, which was quoted at the end of a previous post. We are still in the dreamland of Purgatory. We are still on Prospero's mysterious island.

This all becomes blatant a few minutes later. The focus shifts to the middle of the stadium, the intersection point at three crosses of a huge Union Jack, where Winston Churchill emerges from the top of the Big Ben tower (note the time shown on the clock -- 9:11) and delivers the same Caliban speech as Brunel gives at the Opening Ceremony.

 

This sets up a number of symbolic parallels. The centre of the three crosses of the Union Jack, representing also the saints of Britain, is at the same "location" as the Glastonbury Tor was during the Opening Ceremony. This is the Axis Mundi. As George Michael revealed during his performance later in the evening,

Remember right now you are at the centre of the universe.

The Big Ben tower is the equivalent to the great Oak, the World Tree, which was the living portal atop of the Tor at the Opening Ceremony. We notice that while Brunel gave Caliban's speech at the base of the World Mountain now, after completing the Purgatory of the Games, Churchill/Brunel gives the same speech emerging from the "Tree" at the summit of the "Mountain."

Dante gives us our bearings here. At the top of Mount Purgatory is the Earthly Paradise, Eden. We can only return to the Garden after purging all of our sins -- transmuting selfish vices into virtues. The three crosses of the Union Jack also remind us of this -- the three X's of the XXXth Olympiad. These are the three crosses of Golgotha, another representation of the World Mountain which by tradition was the resting place of the skull of Adam.



The three crosses are also the two pillars and the veil of the Temple. The veil is torn and and we return to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the site of the Fall. Once again we come back to the portal of Da'at. This exactly what is being conveyed at the centre of the Olympic stadium during the Closing Ceremony of London 2012.   

This should not surprise us. This point is always where we return to at the shifting of the ages. The world is once again at the chaotic tipping point between the Fall and the Redemption. The Closing Ceremony, London 2012 in general, the entire sequence of the thirty modern Olympic Games, the "playing" of the Major Arcana exist as rituals to honour this passage in an attempt to derive power from it.

Also situated at the middle of the stadium, the intersection of the three crosses, is a familiar symbol -- the Ferris Wheel. This simulation of the obviously esoteric London Eye is either anchored to or suspended above the centre during the entire Ceremony. Why?



This is an obvious response to the original Ferris Wheel last in operation at the 1904 Olympic Games in St. Louis. The 2160 passenger capacity represents the 2160 years of an astrological age. The wheel's return to the centre of London 2012 indicates that the cycle has now closed. The wheel has turned, a new age has now begun, the 108 years of hidden activity is now complete.   

Many of the "headlines" shown may also refer to this juncture, this transition between states:

To be or not to be,
This is how the world ends,
After this is silence

We are in a moment of collective passage through the portal, through the stargate. The Ceremony contained much symbolism of this sort, too much to briefly explicate here. Many researchers have pointed out the connections of the Ceremony and the Aurora shooting -- Michael Caine, Bruce Wayne's butler in the Dark Knight trilogy, counting down to a Batman pantomime. Why was this featured? Either as synchronicity or as an intended message, the implications are pretty staggering.

We can expect more and more of these sorts of connections, and an ever increasing number of people to become aware of them. I think it is a mistake, though, to interpret these connections too hastily or too definitively. Too much is in play here and things are moving too quickly to make any final conclusions. All we can say with certainty is that the weirdness is approaching a crescendo.

Up From The Ashes

The most significant point of the entire ceremony was the extinguishing the Flame in the Olympic Cauldron. The symbolism here was absolutely mind-blowing. The Flame may have been snuffed out, but the Phoenix arose from the ashes. The transition into the New Aeon was completed.



The symbolism of the phoenix is precise -- it exemplifies the culmination of the Great Work. In The Secret Teachings of All Ages, Manly P. Hall spells this out very clearly,

Mediaeval Hermeticists regarded the phoenix as a symbol of the accomplishment of alchemical transmutation, a process equivalent to human regeneration.... to all initiates and philosophers the phoenix is the symbol of the transmutation and regeneration of the creative energy -- commonly called the accomplishment of the Great Work.

We see this reflected in the iconography of numerous alchemical prints of the Medieval and Renaissance periods. It is easy to see the parallels with the Closing Ceremony.
　
 
The Phoenix is also commonly known as the bird that rises from the ashes of its parent and former self. This symbolism is universally related with the turning of the ages. As the bird of fire returns to its nest, incinerates itself, and a new bird rises from the ashes the grand cycle is renewed. Just as the Phoenix is both an individual and a collective symbol, so the Great Work is completed on both individual and collective levels.

The length of the cycle that the Phoenix's fiery death and rebirth spans has differed in traditional accounts. While 500 years became the standard classical Greek reckoning, there is evidence of an older and much more precise Egyptian measure.

The Egyptian precursor to the Phoenix is called the Bennu, a mythical bird whose self-immolation and resurrection coincided with the Sothic cycle of 1461 years. The Sothic cycle describes the number of years, due to precession, it takes for Sirius to rise with the Sun at the same position. (It's interesting that the Wikipedia entry for this notes that, "This cycle was first noticed by Eduard Meyer in 1904...")

The Phoenix has in this way always been connected with Sirius. This blog has explored how the 70 days of the Torch Relay represented the traditional journey of Sirius through the underworld, or Duat. We also looked at how the actual heliacal rising of Sirius with the Sun over London occurred on Aug. 12th, the day of the Closing Ceremony.

The symbolism of the Phoenix, then, not only points to the heliacal rising but to the shifting of the ages. This refers to the 108-year transitional period, but also to the wider shift between the Ages of Pisces and Aquarius and possibly even greater cycles of time as the Maya calculated.

 

A Strange Loop

Many researchers and web commentators appeared almost disappointed that false flag doom did not strike London 2012. They were convinced that all signs seem to indicate this and when it did not occur they concluded that the "Illuminati" themselves promoted this false conspiracy in order to further discredit and ridicule the "Truth" movement. After "crying wolf" for so many times the "Truth" movement would be understandably entirely ignored by the public as a source of reliable information.

This whole line of analysis, this blog maintains, is misguided. The elite may have promoted these conspiracy theories, but not primarily to discredit anyone. The conspiracy theorists are already sufficiently effective at this. Instead, the promotion of the esoteric, conspiratorial dimension of London 2012 was to attract attention.

Billions of mainstream sports fans predictably tuned into the mass spectacle, but the spinners of the matrix also required a more discerning audience. They want us, esoteric researchers, to analyze their symbolism, to speculate on its meaning, and spread these theories over the web. They require the ambiance -- made legitimate because derived from "alternative" sources -- of fear and mystery that we imbue the Games with.

Perhaps we are creating the occult narrative. The masonic sorcerers require our input. This appears to be confirmed in rumours that the theme of "the green and pleasant land," etc. was inspired by Danny Boyle's perusal of conspiracy websites. Regardless of the veracity of these of rumours, we see this kind of thing everywhere.



In movies, in music videos, in concerts, in advertisements, in political campaigns, in fashion, and so on we see the same esoteric symbolism and meaning as is exposed in conspiracy sites. Are the marketing experts and trendsetters simply scouring the net for new and vital memes, realizing that occult and conspiratorial images and suggestions will get their products and clients far more widespread and close attention then conventional promotion? Are we all just unwitting and unpaid stooges in a vast viral marketing scam? Are we only auditory distortions in a giant feedback loop?

If this the case, why bother to continue with this? Why provide TPTB both the creative fodder and the attention that they so desperately crave? Once again, though, we must look beyond the obvious polarities. Are the symbols coming from esoteric researchers which are then co-opted and disseminated by advertisers hungry for attention? Or do corporations and governments intentionally use these esoteric symbols in order to derive magical influence from them, and later we researchers expose these intentions?

This is a chicken and egg question. Could it be, though, that the symbols emerge, as it were, on their own? Does the human collective unconscious, acting like a psychic planetary thermostat, cause symbols and archetypes to well up into consciousness as they are required? This is the suspicion of this blog. The 108-year cycle is much more like a pattern or a rhythm than a plan.

 The Forging of the Lapis

Sirius rises with the Sun in Leo, the House of the Sun. The Phoenix presides over the hottest dog-days of summer when Sirius doubles the power of the Sun. Representations of The Sun Card in other tarot decks directly associate it with the Phoenix, and the eight rays of the Sun are often shown in a pattern identical to the crosses of the Union Jack. There is little doubt that The Sun was played during the Closing Ceremony of London 2012.

  

The following 17th century alchemical print, reproduced in Jung's Psychology and Alchemy and titled "The Mountain of the Adepts," really encapsulates much of the symbolism behind London 2012. The Great Wheel, the London Eye, is shown here as the precessional cycle of the zodiacal ages. This reveals that the Great Work is both individual and collective.

The four elements are also the four directions, the four points of the cross, the Four Apostles, and the four kingdoms of Britain with their respective saints. The Mountain, like Purgatory and like the Glastonbury Tor, rises up from seven tiers -- depicted here as the seven stages of the alchemical process. 

 
The fiery Phoenix arises from the ashes of the consummation of the Sun and the Moon. This consummation is discussed in Dante, in Blake, and throughout the poetic and alchemical tradition. It is the hieros gamos of Dante and Beatrice, The Lamb and the Holy City, Salt and Mercury, the boy and girl dancing together on the mountain of the Sun card.

This Divine Marriage reverses the Fall of Adam and Eve, and the rise of the Phoenix signifies the new Redemption. The final forging of the Lapis, the Philosopher's Stone, is the equivalent to the return of Christ (and also Antichrist). It is also the portal of Da'at.

All symbols, to be effective, must be ambiguous. They must contain at once the entire cosmic cycle of dissolution and coagulation. They must contain day and night, summer and winter. For something to be truly Whole, as Jung continually taught, it must also integrate its Shadow. This is why we go astray when we interpret ritualized events like London 2012 as only the evil Illuminati, or as only the culmination of the Agenda to implement the full New World Order.

There is no doubt that this is a big part of what is going on. But it is not all. Just as on a fairly mainstream level we can interpret the Olympics in two opposing ways -- idealistically as the coming together of all nations in a celebration of human excellence, or cynically as an orgy of nationalism and corporate consumerism only made possible with the implementation of a temporary police state -- esoterically we can also take two perspectives.

Was London transformed into Zion? The green and pleasant land of the opening was by the closing a Union Jack highway intersection. No obvious transcendence there. But it, like 9/11, was also the centre of a planetary mandala of attention -- a mandala that even sucked in hardened and cynical researchers like myself. We also played our role. And that was the point. The Sun card was played and the Ages are completing their shift.

There are only two cards left to complete the 108-year cycle which we can expect to see played by the end of this year. The first will be The Aeon, when the new age is definitively announced, and The Universe is last, when the completion of cycle merges into the completion of all cycles. And with The Universe comes the return of the Woman and the Snake.

   

Postscript One Hundred and Eight

In a cosmic giggle-type confirmation of these blog posts a crop circle appeared in England on Aug. 26th, probably the most stunning of the entire season, featuring a huge circle with a three dimensional cube inside of it. The cube is showing only three of its faces, but on each face is 36 "squares." In total, then, there are 108  sections.

Additionally, as the three hidden faces of the cube presumably also have 108 divisions then we reach the full 216 years of the Rosicrucian cycle -- 108 years of hidden activity and 108 years of open movement. Is there still any doubt that this year begins the next cycle?

Da'at Night

The focus of this blog is not only the symbolic analysis of the many "occult" events occurring presently, but to also examine the historically unprecedented phenomenon of a multitude of web researchers all presenting their own unique interpretations of these events, sharing ideas, locked in debate, their ideas feedbacking into the events themselves.

I write this just hours before the Opening Ceremony for London 2012, come what may, but the event I'd like to focus on happened a week prior -- the start of the last week of the 70-day underworld journey. I'm referring, of course, to the mass shooting, resulting in 12 dead and 58 wounded, during the premier The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colorado. Certainly an occult event.

As is now almost commonplace, there is commentary from the usual sources linking the shooting to mind control programs, reports of other people involved, speculations about it being a "false flag" event, examples of "predictive programming", etc. The fact that this type of conspiratorial analysis happens so close on the heels of such an event, and that skepticism towards the "official story" is so widespread and direct, is itself a fascinating phenomenon. It is hard to imagine such a reaction even ten years ago. There has been a change in public consciousness.

In addition to this, though, is even a deeper layer of analysis. This second, perhaps we can call it synchronistic or even "synchromystic," layer is now growing at a faster rate than traditional conspiratorial theorizing and, while complementary to some degree, it really threatens to supplant the first entirely.

When an event like this occurs, individuals across the globe and throughout the web automatically scour the available facts on the lookout for "coincidences", better termed as synchronicities. As strange as it might seem, it is natural for these researchers to look for, and inevitably find, syncs linking the Aurora shooting with the London Olympics. It is interesting to look both at these syncs and also the whole phenomenon that determines them.

I'll summarize some of these syncs here and then I'll examine others more connected to the discussions of this blog. Finally, I'll move into the real subject of this post -- where is this all headed? What is this underworld or Abyss that we are collectively passing through? Where does it lead? This will be the first of likely several posts on the hidden sephirah of Da'at. But first the Dark Knight.

A synchronicity on the first level of analysis is the uncanny fact that a high level medical school, in a nearby suburb of Denver, was giving drills to medical students on how to deal with just this type of mass shooting at a theatre. The drill, the only of its kind in the country, occurred on the same day as the shooting.

 "The irony is amazing, just amazing," said Rocky Vista Dean Dr. Bruce Dubin.

This type of coincidence can easily be assimilated into the conspiratorial model. It matches the well-known pattern of similar drills happening at the same time, and concerning the same type of attacks, as 9/11, 7/7, etc. The drills themselves, and the analysis explaining the "MO" of the drills, have become predictable.

The other synchronicities, especially those which link the shooting to London 2012, are not so easily explained. A weird one is that witnesses were brought a few blocks away by police to Aurora's Gateway High School which proudly boasts to be "the home of the Olympians". Did the Illuminati plan this as well?

Web researchers also noted that in the trailer of the new James Bond movie, Skyfall, which is being shown in theatres immediately before Dark Knight Rises, there is a prominent centre skyline shot of the Aurora building in Shanghai. Immediate predictive programming?

Other researchers discovered that both the words "Aurora" and "London" equal 444 in English gematria. That's a weird enough connection, but a closer look shows that "Christ", "Lucifer", and "Messiah" also equal 444. This is resonant with the last post in which the ambiguity of Christ and Lucifer was shown in their relation to Venus, the morning star.

One researcher pointed out that Dark Knight Rises allegedly includes a bomb plot where a nuclear device is set to go off 23 days after it is activated. Having not seen the movie yet, I can't confirm this, but if this true, as he or she warns, 23 days after the explosive premier on 7/20 would be 8/12 -- the day of the closing ceremony for London 2012. It's interesting, as pointed out here, that 8/12 is also the date of the heliacal rising of Sirius over London. 

Does Aurora, which means "dawn," symbolically refer to the dawn of Sirius?

 

Among all the syncs uncannily connecting the Dark Knight shooting with the London Olympics, the one that really stands out, and it is one that seems to have escaped notice up to this point, is the fact that the alleged perpetrator shot 70 people (12 killed and 58 wounded) -- exactly the number of days in the Olympic Torch Relay, and exactly the number of days Sirius was traditionally said to journey in the underworld. One victim for every day in the Duat?

What is going on here? Why should any of these syncs appear? And why should they be discovered in the way they were? Is this just a matter of apophenia -- arbitrarily finding meaningful patterns in places where no such meaning exists? Clearly, though, if these things are not mere coincidences, then they point to something far more bizarre than even the spells of the most adept of masonic sorcerers. In short, if taken as being significant, they point to the limitations of conspiratorial analysis.

The excellent and fearless researcher, Goro Adachi, makes exactly this point in a recent article on the Aurora shooting:

The Olympic ceremonies are a "mega-ritual," no doubt about that. So many people out there are shouting: "Oh my god, alien invasion! Project Blue Beam! False flag attack!" It's understandable but most are just new at this. I've been at this for more than a decade. I was heavily into this before 9/11. I can point to the fact that I wrote an article on the 9/11 attacks in October 2001 from a multicontextual perspective that's not so different from what I talk about today... including Mars.

From experience I can say that foresight is not something easily attained. Our reality is not static, it's dynamic. The future is fluid and influenced by what we do, see, and are aware of in the present. The future reacts to our actions and perception so as not to "reward" the unworthy with the gift of foresight. The more purely you align with truth, the more you are "worthy", that is to say, the more you resonate with the future (unrealized possibilities).

Most "conspiracy theorists" don't have this quality in them which requires a great sense of balance, lots of self-examination and ego-control. That's why 99.999% of the time they can't foresee anything correctly. Their uncontrolled ego magnet screws up the truth compass. If you can't start from a place of no assumptions and no preconceived worldview, you won't get far. If you go "I'm a Christian" or "I'm an atheist", or "I'm looking for conspiracies by the NWO, the stinking Illuminati!" for instance, you're immediately done right there before you even start, a dead-ender. Talk about self-sabotage. It's so easy to contaminate our reality/future vision with our conscious and subconscious preconceptions.

So, while listening to folks like Alex Jones might initially help you deprogram yourself from the mainstream unquestioning mindset, constantly listening to the endless stream of their version of "I hate my parents, they ruined my life, bahhhh!" day in and day out, well, now that's just another worldview programming, another religion, yes, "mind control." It's very unhealthy. You need to stay balanced so as not to get stuck in a fixed line of thinking. That just makes you a robot.

In other words, reality is far stranger than even the conspiracy theorists will allow for and, in a way that is threatening for dogmatic theorists of any stripe, the observer in his very act of observation alters what he is observing. The theorist's own self will, unwittingly or not, enter into the body of his theory. The deeper down the rabbit hole we go the further we sink into the depths of our own shadows. The process of gathering Knowledge, especially of this esoteric caliber, is itself a journey through the Abyss.

This is what needs to be explored more thoroughly before any of these "occult" events can be understood.

Finding Nemo

The story could start anywhere, but for fun I'll start it a long way in both space and time from London 2012. Let's begin with ex-Harvard psychologist and LSD advocate, Timothy Leary, in the desert of Algeria. Leary had been busted out of prison in 1970 by the Weather Underground and had been smuggled away to Algeria under the "protection" of the Black Panther Party.

According to Leary's friend, the writer Brian Barritt, the story goes that after in turn escaping from the Black Panthers, Leary and Barritt eventually ventured out into the desert at Bou Sadaa in 1971. Here, in the desert, the two had a life-altering acid trip together.

 
They later found out that they had tripped in almost exactly the same location where the magician Aleister Crowley and his poet friend, Victor Neuberg, had tripped on mescaline and performed the important crossing the Abyss ritual in 1909. Crowley himself considered that he and his partner were just continuing in the spirit of the English Renaissance magus, John Dee, and his partner Edward Kelly by employing the Enochian magic that these men had developed. Barritt writes:

Tim and myself tripped for the first time together in the same area in which Crowley and Neuburg dropped mescaline and performed a magical ceremony using Dr. Dee's script!

The new information shakes and impresses us both. It's not reincarnation we are thinking of so much as recurring cycles with different representatives each time around. We feel we are riding the same current that powered Dr Dee and Edward Kelly in the 16th century and Crowley and Neuburg at the beginning of this one. I see a similarity between Kelly, Neuburg and Barritt paralleling the one between Dr Dee, Aleister Crowley and Dr Leary.

The synchronicity involved in this understandably blew their minds, to the point where Tim began to identify himself with Crowley.

There are synchronicities and synchronicities, this is no Jungian beetle crawling over a window sill, this is international! The mysterious force that brought Tim to Bou Saada had to get him out of prison in the States first, fly him across the Atlantic and drive him out of Algiers itself by using Eldridge Cleaver. Was it the same unconscious directive that scooped up Aliester and Victor sixty years ago and deposited them amongst the cones of sand? They seem to have had no more idea of their mission than we had.

 

Crowley himself writes about his experiences in Algeria in his book, The Vision and the Voice in which he talks about the crossing of the Abyss working he conducted with Neuberg. This ritual working would become a major initiatic milestone in Crowley's magical system. He later wrote: 

This doctrine is extremely difficult to explain; but it corresponds more or less to the gap in thought between the Real, which is ideal, and the Unreal, which is actual. In the Abyss all things exist, indeed, at least in posse, but are without any possible meaning; for they lack the substratum of spiritual Reality. They are appearances without Law. They are thus Insane Delusions... Now the Abyss being thus the great storehouse of Phenomena, it is the source of all impressions.

 

The Abyss is the gap between the real and unreal, the noumenal and the phenomenal, and to successfully pass through this gap the initiate was required to destroy his ego. If this did not happen the life, or at least the mind, of the initiate would be destroyed. Crowley first performed this ritual in the desert at Bou Sadaa, and there are some who argue that even he did not successfully cross and that this is why things went badly for him at the end of his life.

To pass through the Abyss Crowley always cautioned that the magician must fully shed his ego to attain his Higher Self. He must become Nemo (Greek for "no man"). To ensure that the magician has done this, or to prevent the success of those who do not become an egoless Nemo, the initiate must must also deal with Choronzon, the Guardian of the Threshold. 

This demonic being is really the last, most shadowy, vestiges of our ego made solid and monstrous by its will to perpetuate itself. It was Choronzon that Dee and Kelly also encountered in their experiments with Enochian magic.

 

 

Guardians of the Gate

Choronzon is really the archetype of various Guardians of the Threshold which can be found in the mythology and temple architecture of cultures across the planet. In every case, these beings protect sacred areas or zones of being from the defilement of the base Self or ego. This they do through fear, repulsion and the threat of violence to the body and the soul.

One of Crowley's successors, Kenneth Grant, claimed that we can find a similar Guardian of the Threshold entity in the fiction of horror writer, H.P. Lovecraft. The Lovecraftian Old One that Grant most associates with Choronzon is Yog-Sothoth. Here Lovecraft describes Yog-Sothoth:

Nor is it to be thought ... that man is either the oldest or the last of earth's masters, or than the common bulk of life and substance walks alone. The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be. Not in the spaces we know, but between them, they walk serene and primal, undimensioned and to us unseen. Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and when they shall break through again...

 

We should keep in mind that Lovecraft calls Yog-Sothoth, the gate (Gateway High School?) The gate, or the door, has turned up in this blog previously as related to the Oak, or Duir -- the Celtic letter which corresponds to the Greek Delta or the Hebrew Daleth. Daleth is the initial letter of Da'at, which we will soon discover is the true Door to the Abyss.

It is also very fascinating that Grant works out a whole, very complex mythology whereby Yog-Sothoth/Choronzon is equated with the star, Sirius. This blog will slowly make its way into these murky waters. It is helpful first, though, to examine some other Guardians of the Threshold.

The term Nemo, or "no man," that Crowley is using to title the egoless adept who crosses the Abyss comes from Homer's Odyssey. In the famous story Odysseus uses his wits to escape the cave of the Cyclops, Polyphemus. He tells the monster that his name is No Man, and then later gets Polyphemus drunk and blinds him. When the Cyclops cries to his neighbours for help they ignore him as being mad when he complains that "no man" is attacking him.

 

Odysseus uses his wits to escape the Guardian, but he can only do so by giving up his identity and his ego. He does not pass through the Abyss successfully, however. After leaving the cave he reasserts his sense of self by boasting of his name and heritage to the blinded Cyclops, who in turn curses him. The full extent of the selfish folly of Odysseus, or Ulysses, is not revealed until Dante sings of the hero's last and tragic voyage. I'll return to this in another post.

Gates of Eden

Another key example of this type of Guardian, and this time from the Bible, is the Covering Cherub who with a flaming sword prevents humanity's premature re-entry into the Earthy paradise of Eden.




The Covering Cherub plays a large role in the poetic cosmology of William Blake. Blake combines the symbolism of the jeweled New Jerusalem, or Zion, which returns in the sky in Revelation, with the description of the terrifying but glittering Cherub of Ezekiel 28. Here Lucifer is identified with the Covering Cherub with the fiery sword.

¹³ You were in Eden,

   the garden of God;

 every precious stone adorned you:

   carnelian, chrysolite and emerald,

   topaz, onyx and jasper,

   lapis lazuli, turquoise and beryl.

Your settings and mountings were made of gold;

   on the day you were created they were prepared.

¹⁴ You were anointed as a guardian cherub,

   for so I ordained you.

You were on the holy mount of God;

   you walked among the fiery stones.

In Blake's theosophy it is necessary to overcome the Cherub, which ultimately he identifies with the Self or Ego, in order to regain entry into Paradise. This entirely matches with Crowley's teaching and, as we'll see, with the Kabbalah. Blake also notes that this Cherub also appears, with its double, on the Ark of the Covenant. Generally these Cherubim are viewed as being Michael and Gabriel, but Blake makes a good case that in the original mythology these two are Michael and Lucifer -- two opposing aspects of the same being.

This agrees with the Hero Twin stories we've been looking at. The Covering Cherub blocking entrance to the gates of Eden, the Guardian of the Threshold, is both Christ and Antichrist. The symbols are all ambiguous. Blake viewed the Bible as being circular and not linear. It begins in the Garden and ends with the appearance of the City of Zion, the final revelation. But in a way the cycle repeats with a Fall from the City into the Garden and from there into this fallen Mundane Shell.

 

The fierce, iridescent Guardian is also, from another perspective or state of consciousness absent of ego, the vision of the New Jerusalem -- the true Zion which awaits us all. Christ and Antichrist return together.

Before returning to the Garden, and from there to the City, we must overcome the Cherub who is assigned, we should remember, to prevent humanity from eating of the Tree of Eternal Life having already sinfully partaken of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. It is in these two trees, and the Fall associated with them, that the solution to the greatest mysteries are found.
 
 

It was knowledge that really condemned Adam and his offspring. Eve and Adam, like most of us, attempted to know something that they weren't really ready for. In short, they attempted to cross the Abyss without first ridding themselves of ego, without first gaining the eternal life of selflessness. This is quite explicit in the mythology. Knowledge in Hebrew is Da'at and this is what the tree is named.

Know in the Biblical Sense

Da'at means knowledge. It can be found in Proverbs 24:4:

 Da'at fills the rooms with precious things.

Apparently the rooms here refer to the 6 chambers of the heart. In the Kabbalah, Da'at is the union of the Wisdom of Chokmah and the Understanding of Binah. This in turn has been viewed since the time of the Zohar as being the sexual union of Father and Mother. This is knowledge in the biblical sense of "And Adam knew his wife Eve." Here is the place of hierogamy, divine marriage, where in union separate egos are melded and dissolved in love.

In the Kabbalah the two trees of Eden are united as one, the Tree of Life, which consists of three pillars and ten centres of emanation, or sephiroth. The middle pillar of the Tree of Life also contains the hidden 11th sephirah, Da'at. In Crowley's system this sephirah is also the location of the Abyss, which the adept has to cross to reach the higher centres. 

On the Tree of Life, each one of the sephiroth became identified with one of seven planets, the elements or the zodiac. The hidden sephirah of Da'at, really the union of all of the other centres, much later became identified with Sirius. 

We should keep in mind the full symbolic equation (although this is all approximate): Da'at=the Abyss=the Guardian of the Threshold=Choronzon=the Covering Cherub=Yog-Sothoth=Sirius. 

The Twin Pillars

The two pillars of the Tree of Life are symbolically also the two pillars, Jachin and Boaz, of the Temple of Solomon. These pillars later go on to become major symbols in Freemasonry. Solomon's Temple, though, is most well known as being the house of the Ark of the Covenant. It houses the great mystery of God.


The second Temple, based on Solomon's construction, enters largely into the story of Christ. Gentle Jesus famously kicked out the money lenders, but in a more esoteric sense, and this is also Blake's sense, Christ embodied the Temple. The two thieves he was crucified with also represent the two pillars (and the three make XXX).



One thief asks for Mercy, and is forgiven and granted Heaven, and the other scornful thief faces his Justice in Hell. Mercy and Justice are exactly the equivalents of Jachin and Boaz. The parallels become undeniable at the time of Christ's death. The Temple veil is rent in two from top to bottom. The mystery is finally revealed for all to see.



The story of Christ, then, is another example of the crossing of the Abyss. His Cross is another representation of the Tree of Life.

On this Tree there are the ten sephiroth but there are also 22 paths connecting these ten. Each of these 22 paths are assigned one of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. It may be necessary to get deeper into this at a later stage, but for now it is important to note the thirteenth path, the path of the letter Gimel.

The 13th path runs from the heart sephirah of Tiphareth to the crown of Kether. It is one of the most, if not the most, important paths of the Tree of Life because it passes directly across the Abyss separating the Microprosopus of the lower seven sephiroth, to the Macroprosopus of the upper supernal triangle. The 13th path of Gimel, then, passes across the Abyss and through the 11th (non)sephirah of Da'at. Da'at, as was mentioned, is identified by modern astrologers like Gareth Knight as Sirius.

Here is an image of the Masonic tracing board, based on the Jachin and Boaz pillars of Solomon's Temple seen also in the Tree of Life of the Kabbalah. The middle pillar, and its ladder on the tracing board, leads up to a blazing star between the Sun and the Moon. From the writings of Albert Pike, and others before him, we know that this star is also Sirius. The symbolism is becoming clearer.

The 22 major arcana of the tarot are also corresponded to Hebrew letters in the occult tradition. The card associated with Gimel and the 13th path is the High Priestess. She will become very important later when discussing specific crossing the Abyss rituals. Here she is now enthroned between the two pillars.


 

And here is a more modern version of the same set of symbolism:

Over the Rainbow

One more symbol to introduce briefly before wrapping this up is the Rainbow Bridge. The Rainbow Bridge is situated in exactly the same place on the Tree of Life as the Abyss. It spans Da'at and in all cultures, as in the Bifrost of Norse mythology, it is viewed as being a bridge between men and the gods. The meaning is essentially the same.

Once we pass over the Rainbow Bridge, across the Abyss, and become No Man (as Odysseus did for a time) by transcending the ego, we reach the Star. It is between and beyond all of the opposites. Sun and moon, dark and light, good and evil, male and female, spirit and matter. It is also the state of lucid dreaming, between consensus waking and dreaming sleep. In this lucid state we create our own systems, as Blake taught us.

 

The examples of Crossing the Abyss provided here have tended to be individual journeys. It is important to realize, though, that this passage also happens collectively at certain times. Carl Jung in his later book, Flying Saucers, discusses just this sort of passage in relation to the passage from the Age of Pisces (an age of dualism -- symbolized by Christ and Antichrist) to the Age of Aquarius (an age of a more unified vision).  

As we know from ancient Egyptian history, there are symptoms of psychic changes that always appear at the end of one Platonic month and at the beginning of another. They are, it seems, changes in the constellation of the psychic dominants, of the archetypes or "Gods" as they used to be called, which bring about, or accompany, long-lasting transformations of the collective psyche. This transformation started within the historical tradition and left traces behind within it, first in the transition of the Age of Taurus to that of Aries, and then from Aries to Pisces, whose beginning coincides with the rise of Christianity. We are now nearing that great change which may be expected when the spring-point enters Aquarius.

I agree with Jung that humanity collectively is right now in one of these rapid transformations of the collective psyche -- a shift of the Ages. Whether or not this is occurring exactly in 2012, or whether the shift will be subtle or dramatic are not very important questions. I personally think that it is this year that marks the shift, but in any case the change will come soon.

 

Given this, humanity is once again at a point where collectively we enter into an imaginative space between the Ages. We are all crossing the Abyss together. This is sort of a twilight zone where nothing is fully formed yet everything exists in potential. 

In the Kabbalah this exactly corresponds with the hidden sephirah of Da'at, which can be represented by Sirius on a macrocosmic scale. To be conscious of this shift is to gain access to great power. Awareness allows one to form the emerging Age. This is why those who would keep us transfixed by their Spell want to prevent us from being aware.

By studying the myths of all cultures regarding the shifting of previous Ages, and prophecies for the present shift, we can find valuable symbols and concepts. The appearance of the Hero Twins, the descent into and surfacing of the underworld, the revelation of the New Jerusalem, the crossing of the Abyss, the Rainbow Bridge, the final battle, etc. all return at these points of climax within the cycle. To grasp all of this simultaneously, as one complete vision, is to crack the Spell. 

Prophets not Profit

In all of the occult "mega-rituals" that we witness, one of the biggest about to happen in a few hours, we have the ability to use the Spell against the spell-casters. All of these symbols are ambiguous. The reality engineers have the exact same archetypes to work with as we do. No more and no less. Use their own spectacle to elevate. As the Blake scholar, Northrop Frye, wrote in 1947 almost as if he knew about London 2012:

England has to choose whether to turn its green and pleasant land into Jerusalem or a howling waste of Satanic mills, and Blake is practically the only Englishman who can express the fact that that choice is now before England, and is still a choice. Jerusalem is Blake's contribution to the struggle between the prophet and the profiteer for the soul of England which is England's Armageddon: it is a burning-glass focusing the rays of a fiery city on London in the hope of kindling an answering flame.

In a few short hours, the Flame will light the Cauldron and the underworld journey will come to an end. Sirius, symbolically, will rise from the Duat, just as she will physically at the end of the Games. We do not know what will happen -- whether the prophet or the profiteer will come out on top. We do know the passage through the Abyss is at full pace now. Synchronicities are multiplying, just as Jung said they would be at these times. Things are about to get even weirder.

And speaking of profiteers, London's mayor gave a rousing, V for Vendetta-like, big screen, Buckingham Palace, Torch rally-spectacle speech yesterday in which he said:

The excitement is growing so much I think the Geiger counter of Olympo-mania is going to go zoink on the scale! People are coming from around the world and they're seeing the greatest city on earth.

Zoink! Geiger counter?? Is he just playing with us, or is he really that out of touch?
Is phoney Olympo-mania about to bite the dust? Can Batman save us?